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Americas History For The Ap - James A Henretta Complete PDF
Americas History For The Ap - James A Henretta Complete PDF
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James A. Henretta
University of Maryland
Eric Hinderaker
University of Utah
Rebecca Edwards
Vassar College
Robert O. Self
Brown University
AP® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse,
this product.
Preface
Why This Book This Way
The new College Board standards for AP U.S. History expert in native and early American history, Eric brings
present exciting opportunities and big challenges. As the a fresh interpretation of native and colonial European
authors of America’s History, we have closely followed societies and the revolutionary Atlantic World of the
College Board changes by attending and participating in eighteenth century that enlivens and enriches our nar-
numerous AP workshops, webinars for teachers, and the rative. Eric joins James Henretta, long the intellectual
AP Annual Conference. We believe the new exam, with anchor of the book, whose scholarly work now focuses
its focus on themes and Historical Thinking Skills, rep- on law, citizenship, and the state in early America;
resents a positive direction. But we know it means Rebecca Edwards, an expert in women’s and gender
major changes for you, so we’re here to help. history and nineteenth-century electoral politics; and
The AP U.S. History classroom presents a unique Robert Self, whose work explores the relationship
dilemma. How do we offer our students a basic under- between urban and suburban politics, social move-
standing of key events and facts while inviting them to ments, and the state. Together, we strive to ensure that
see the past not as a rote list of names and dates but as energy and creativity, as well as our wide experience in
the fascinating, conflicted prelude to their lives today? the study of history, infuse every page that follows.
How do we teach our students to think like historians? The core of a textbook is its narrative, and we have
As scholars and teachers who go into the classroom endeavored to make ours clear, accessible, and lively. In
every day, we know these challenges well and have it, we focus not only on the marvelous diversity of
composed the eighth edition of America’s History to peoples who came to call themselves Americans, but
help instructors meet them. America’s History has long also on the institutions that have forged a common
had a reputation in the AP community for its balanced national identity. More than ever, we daily confront the
coverage, attention to AP themes and content, and collision of our past with the demands of the future
ability to explain to students not just what happened, and the shrinking distance between Americans and
but why. The latest edition both preserves and substan- others around the globe. To help students meet these
tially builds upon those strengths. challenges, we call attention to connections with the
The foundation of our approach lies in our com- histories of Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa,
mitment to an integrated history. America’s History and Asia, drawing links between events in the United
combines traditional “top down” narratives of political States and those elsewhere. In our contemporary digi-
and economic affairs with “bottom up” narratives of tal world, facts and data are everywhere. What students
the lived experiences of ordinary people. Our goal is to crave is analysis. As it has since its inception, America’s
help students achieve a richer understanding of politics, History provides students with a comprehensive expla-
diplomacy, war, economics, intellectual and cultural nation and interpretation of events, a guide to why his-
life, and gender, class, and race relations by exploring tory unfolded as it did and a roadmap for understanding
how developments in all these areas were intercon- the world in which we live.
nected. Our analysis is fueled by a passion for exploring Of course, the contents of this book are only helpful
big, consequential questions. How did a colonial slave if students read and assimilate the material before
society settled by people from four continents become coming to class. So that students will come to class pre-
a pluralist democracy? How have liberty and equality pared, they now receive access to LearningCurve — an
informed the American experience? Questions like adaptive, gamelike online learning tool that helps them
these help students understand what’s at stake as we master content — when they purchase a new copy of
study the past. In America’s History, we provide an inte- America’s History. And because we know that your
grated historical approach and bring a dedication to classroom needs are changing rapidly, we are excited to
why history matters to bear on the full sweep of Amer- announce that America’s History is available with
ica’s past. LaunchPad, a new robust interactive e-book built into
One of the most exciting developments in this edi- its own course space that makes customizing and
tion is the arrival of a new author, Eric Hinderaker. An assigning the book and its resources easy and efficient.
vii
viii 13&'"$&8):5)*4#00,5)*48":
To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and North America and the Atlantic World, 1660–1763,”
LaunchPad, see the “Versions and Supplements” sec- explains the diversification of British North America
tion on page xii. and the rise of the British Atlantic World and empha-
sizes the importance of contact between colonists and
Native Americans and imperial rivalries among Euro-
pean powers. Part 3, “Revolution and Republican
A Nine-Part Framework Culture, 1763–1820,” traces the rise of colonial protest
Highlights Key Developments against British imperial reform, outlines the ways that
the American Revolution challenged the social order,
One of the greatest strengths of America’s History is its and explores the processes of conquest, competition,
part structure, which helps students identify the key and consolidation that followed it.
forces and major developments that shaped each era. A Part 4, “Overlapping Revolutions, 1800–1860,”
four-page part opener introduces each part, using traces the transformation of the economy, society, and
analysis, striking images, and a detailed thematic culture of the new nation; the creation of a democratic
timeline to orient students to the major developments polity; and growing sectional divisions. Part 5, “Cre-
and themes of the period covered. New Thematic ating and Preserving a Continental Nation, 1844–
Understanding questions ask students to consider 1877,” covers the conflicts generated by America’s
periodization and make connections among chapters empire building in the West, including sectional politi-
while reinforcing AP themes and Thematic Learning cal struggles that led to the Civil War and national con-
Objectives. By organizing U.S. history into nine distinct solidation of power during and after Reconstruction.
periods, rather than just thirty-one successive chapters, Part 6, “Industrializing America: Upheavals and
we encourage students to trace changes and continu- Experiments, 1877–1917,” examines the transforma-
ities over time and to grasp connections between politi- tions brought about by the rise of corporations and a
cal, economic, social, and cultural events. powerhouse industrial economy; immigration and a
In this edition, we have closely aligned the book’s diverse, urbanizing society; and movements for pro-
part structure to the redesigned AP U.S. History course gressive reform.
to make the transition to the new exam seamless. From Part 7, “Domestic and Global Challenges, 1890–
beginning to end, you’ll find that our nine-part organi- 1945,” explores America’s rise to world power, the cul-
zation corresponds to the College Board’s nine periods. tural transformations and political conflicts of the
To help your students prepare for the new exam’s 1920s, the Great Depression, and the creation of the
expanded attention to Native Americans, precontact welfare state. Part 8, “The Modern State and the Age
native societies and European colonization are now cov- of Liberalism, 1945–1980,” addresses the postwar
ered in two distinct parts, allowing us to devote compre- period, including America’s new global leadership role
hensive attention to the whole of North America before during the Cold War; the expansion of federal respon-
the 1760s. In the modern period, our final two parts sibility during a new “age of liberalism”; and the growth
offer expanded coverage of the period after 1945, mir- of mass consumption and the middle class. Finally,
roring the AP exam’s increased attention to the recent Part 9, “Global Capitalism and the End of the Amer-
past. Throughout, our part introductions give students ican Century, 1980 to the Present,” discusses the con-
the tools to understand why the periodization looks the servative political ascendancy of the 1980s; the end of
way it does, helping them build the Historical Thinking the Cold War and rising conflict in the Middle East;
Skills the course demands. The nine parts organize the and globalization and increasing social inequality.
complex history of North America and the United States
into comprehensible sections with distinct themes, a
structure that provides instructors with the crucial his-
torical backbone while allowing them the freedom to
adapt specific examples from their classroom.
Hundreds of Sources
Part 1, “Transformations of North America, Encourage Comparative and
1450–1700,” highlights the diversity and complexity of
Native Americans prior to European contact, examines
Critical Thinking
the transformative impact of European intrusions and America’s History has long emphasized primary sources.
the Columbian Exchange, and emphasizes the experi- In addition to weaving lively quotations throughout
mental quality of colonial ventures. Part 2, “British the narrative, we offer students substantial excerpts
PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK THIS WAY ix
from historical documents — letters, diaries, autobiog- than a quarter new to this edition. Informative captions
raphies, public testimony, and more — and numerous set the illustrations in context and provide students
figures that give students practice working with data. with background for making their own analysis of
These documents allow students to experience the past the images in the book. Keenly aware that students
through the words and perspectives of those who lived lack geographic literacy, we have included dozens of
it, to understand how historians make sense of the past maps that show major developments in the narrative,
using data, and to gain skill in interpreting historical each with a caption to help students interpret what
evidence. Each chapter contains three source-based they see.
features that prepare students for the rigor of the Taken together, these documents, figures, maps,
Document-Based Question (DBQ). and illustrations provide instructors with a trove of
American Voices, a two-page feature in each chap- teaching materials, so that America’s History offers not
ter, helps students learn to think critically by com- only a compelling narrative, but also — right in the
paring texts written from two or more perspectives. text — the rich documentary materials that instructors
New topics include “The Debate over Free and Slave need to bring the past alive and introduce students to
Labor,” “Jewish Immigrants in the Industrial Econ- historical analysis.
omy,” “Theodore Roosevelt: From Anti-Populist to
New Nationalist,” and “Immigration After 1965: Its
Defenders and Critics.”
New America Compared features use primary
sources and data to situate U.S. history in a global con-
Study Aids Support
text while giving students practice in comparison and Understanding and Teach
data analysis. Retooled from the Voices from Abroad
feature from the last edition to include data in addition
Historical Thinking Skills
to primary sources, these features appear in every The study aids in the eighth edition have been com-
chapter on topics as diverse as the fight for women’s pletely revised to better support students in their
rights in France and the United States, an examination understanding of the material and in their develop-
of labor laws after emancipation in Haiti and the United ment of Historical Thinking Skills. New Identify the
States, the loss of human life in World War I, and an Big Idea questions at the start of every chapter guide
analysis of the worldwide economic malaise of the students’ reading and focus their attention on identify-
1970s. ing not just what happened, but why. A variety of learn-
Finally, we are excited to introduce a brand-new ing tools from the beginning to the end of each chapter
feature to aid you in teaching Historical Thinking support this big idea focus, which is in line with the
Skills. A Thinking Like a Historian feature in every new AP exam’s emphasis on Thematic Learning Objec-
chapter includes five to eight brief sources organized tives. As they read, students will gain proficiency in
around a central theme, such as “Beyond the Procla- Historical Thinking Skills via marginal review ques-
mation Line,” “Making Modern Presidents,” and “The tions that ask them to “Identify Causes,” “Trace Change
Suburban Landscape of Cold War America.” In this over Time,” and “Understand Points of View,” among
DBQ-like environment, students are asked to analyze other skills. Where students are likely to stumble over
the documents and complete a Putting It All Together a key concept, we boldface it in the text where it is
assignment that asks them to synthesize and use the first mentioned and provide a glossary that defines
evidence to create an argument. Because we under- each term.
stand how important primary sources are to the In the Chapter Review section, a set of Review
study of history, we are also pleased to offer an all- Questions is given for the chapter as a whole that
new companion reader, Sources for America’s History, includes a new Thematic Understanding question,
featuring a wealth of additional documents, includ- along with Making Connections questions that ask
ing unique part sets tied to AP Thematic Learning students to consider broader historical issues, develop-
Objectives. ments, and continuities and changes over time. A brief
As in past editions, an outstanding visual program list of More to Explore sources directs students to
engages students’ attention and gives them practice in accessible print and Web resources for additional read-
working with visual sources. The eighth edition fea- ing. Lastly, a Timeline with a new Key Turning Points
tures over 425 paintings, cartoons, illustrations, photo- question reminds students of important events and
graphs, and charts, most of them in full color and more asks them to consider periodization.
x 13&'"$&8):5)*4#00,5)*48":
Timothy R. Mahoney, University of Nebraska–Lincoln process. Karen R. Soeltz, Sandi McGuire, and Janie
Eric Mayer, Victor Valley College Pierce-Bratcher in the marketing department under-
Glenn Melancon, Southeastern Oklahoma State stood how to communicate our vision to teachers; they
University and the members of college and high school sales
James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville forces did wonderful work in helping this edition reach
Frances Mitilineos, Oakton Community College the classroom. We also thank the rest of our editorial
Anne Paulet, Humboldt State University and production team for their dedicated efforts: Asso-
Thomas Ratliff, Central Connecticut State University ciate Editors Robin Soule and Jen Jovin; Editorial
LeeAnn Reynolds, Samford University Assistant Victoria Royal; Susan Zorn, who copyedited
Jenny Shaw, University of Alabama the manuscript; proofreaders Arthur Johnson and
Courtney Smith, Cabrini College Lindsay DiGianvittorio; art researchers Pembroke
Timothy Thurber, Virginia Commonwealth University Herbert and Sandi Rygiel at Picture Research Consul-
Sarah E. Vandament, North Lake College of the Dallas tants, Inc.; text permissions researcher Eve Lehmann;
County Community College District and Kalina Ingham and Hilary Newman, who oversaw
Julio Vasquez, University of Kansas permissions. Finally, we want to express our apprecia-
Louis Williams, St. Louis Community College–Forest tion for the invaluable assistance of Patricia Deveneau,
Park who expertly suggested topics and sources for the
Thinking Like a Historian features in Chapters 8–14;
As the authors of America’s History, we know better Kendra Kennedy, for crucial research aid; and Eliza
than anyone else how much this book is the work of Blanchard and Erin Boss, and especially Michelle
other hands and minds. We are indebted to Mary Whalen and the U.S. historians — Robert Brigham,
Dougherty, William J. Lombardo, Dan McDonough, Miriam Cohen, James Merrell, and Quincy Mills — for
and Jane Knetzger, who oversaw this edition, and Laura their invaluable help and advice at Vassar. Many thanks
Arcari, who asked the right questions, suggested a mul- to all of you for your contributions to this new edition
titude of improvements, and expertly guided the man- of America’s History.
uscript to completion. As usual, Denise B. Wydra and
James A. Henretta
Joan E. Feinberg generously provided the resources
Eric Hinderaker
we needed to produce an outstanding volume. Annette
Rebecca Edwards
Pagliaro Sweeney did a masterful job consulting with the
Robert O. Self
authors and seeing the book through the production
Versions and Supplements
Adopters of America’s History and their students have sends students back to the book for review. Students
access to abundant extra resources, including docu- answer as many questions as necessary to reach a target
ments, presentation and testing materials, the acclaimed score, with repeated chances to revisit material they
Bedford Series in History and Culture volumes, and haven’t mastered. When LearningCurve is assigned,
much more. See below for more information, visit students come to class better prepared.
the book’s catalog site at highschool.bfwpub.com
/henretta8e, or contact your local Bedford, Freeman, NEW Annotated Teacher’s Edition for
and Worth sales representative. America’s History
The Annotated Teacher’s Edition provides a wealth of
NEW Assign LaunchPad — the Online, guidance and support for AP teachers. Developed for
Interactive e-Book in a Course Space the AP U.S. History exam redesign, annotations include
Enriched with Integrated Assets model answers for questions in the book, teaching tips,
Historical Thinking Skills practice, pacing guides,
The new standard in digital history, LaunchPad course exam alerts, and more. The teacher’s edition helps
tools are so intuitive to use that teachers find it’s easy to teachers at all levels build the most successful AP U.S.
create assignments, track students’ work, and access a History course they can. Authors Matthew J. Ellington
wealth of relevant learning and teaching resources. It is of Ruben S. Ayala Senior High School, Jason George of
the ideal learning environment for students to work the Bryn Mawr School, and George W. Henry Jr. of
with the text, maps, documents, video, and assessment. East High School are all experienced AP instructors,
LaunchPad is loaded with the full interactive e-book exam readers, and workshop leaders with a deep famil-
and the Sources for America’s History documents collec- iarity with the AP U.S. History redesign.
tion — plus LearningCurve, short author video chapter
previews, additional primary sources, videos, guided
Strive for a 5: Preparing for the AP U.S.
reading exercises designed to help students read actively
History Examination
for key concepts, boxed feature reading quizzes, chap-
ter summative quizzes, and more. LaunchPad can be Revised for the redesigned course, this print guide
used as is or customized, and it easily integrates with provides students with narrative and thematic over-
course management systems. And with fast ways to views of each historical period, chapter reviews orga-
build assignments, rearrange chapters, and add new nized around AP key concepts, and AP-style practice
pages, sections, or links, it lets teachers build the course exams, including source-based multiple-choice and
materials they need and hold students accountable. document-based questions as well as short- and long-
answer essay questions. The guide is authored by
Warren Hierl of the Career Center, Winston-Salem,
NEW Assign LearningCurve So You Know NC (retired), Louisa Moffitt of Marist School, Atlanta,
What Your Students Know and They GA, and Nancy Schick of Los Alamos High School,
Come to Class Prepared NM (retired), all experienced AP teachers, exam read-
Assigning LearningCurve in place of reading quizzes is ers, and workshop leaders.
easy for instructors, and the reporting features help
instructors track overall class trends and spot topics Take Advantage of Instructor Resources
that are giving students trouble so they can adjust their Bedford/St. Martin’s has developed a rich array of
lectures and class activities. This online learning tool is teaching resources for this book and for this course.
popular with students because it was designed to help They range from lecture and presentation materials
them rehearse content at their own pace in a non- and assessment tools to course management options.
threatening, gamelike environment. The feedback for Most can be downloaded or ordered at highschool
wrong answers provides instructional coaching and .bfwpub.com/henretta8e.
xiii
xiv 7&34*0/4"/%4611-&.&/54
Computerized Test Bank. The test bank includes a NEW Teaching Ideas for AP History: A Video Resource.
mix of fresh, carefully crafted multiple-choice, short- This DVD is a new professional resource for teachers of
answer, and essay questions for each chapter. It also AP United States, European, and World History. In
contains brand new source-based multiple-choice three hours of interviews with thirty AP history
questions and partwide essay questions. All questions experts, teachers, and college professors, this video
appear in Microsoft Word format and in easy-to-use offers a wealth of advice on varied topics, including
test bank software that allows instructors to add, edit, creating a syllabus, reading and writing strategies, and
re-sequence, and print questions and answers. specific assignments to help students develop their
Instructors can also export questions into a variety of Historical Thinking Skills while learning historical
formats, including Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and content. The disc also includes dozens of files — from
Moodle. lesson plans to graphic organizers — that can be down-
loaded and used in class, as well as a series of down-
NEW Teacher’s Survival Guide. Created for teachers, loadable discussion questions for teachers that allow
by teachers, this unique set of resources — a test bank the DVD to be used effectively in a formal professional
and a roundtable — offers APUSH teachers assessment development setting.
tools, help with redesigning their U.S. history courses,
and thoughtful advice from veteran teachers and col- America in Motion: Video Clips for U.S. History. Set
lege professors. history in motion with America in Motion, an instruc-
Created by Matthew J. Ellington, James Bokern, tor DVD containing dozens of short digital movie files
Michael A. Smith, and William Polasky III — veteran of events in twentieth-century American history. From
AP U.S. history teachers, exam readers, and workshop the wreckage of the battleship Maine to FDR’s fireside
leaders — the ExamView U.S. History Test Bank for chats to Oliver North testifying before Congress, Amer-
the New AP® Course allows teachers to create and edit ica in Motion engages students with dynamic scenes
tests and quizzes for in-class or at-home use. Organized from key events and challenges them to think critically.
according to the redesigned curriculum framework, All files are classroom-ready, edited for brevity, and
the test bank’s nine parts include 250 formative multiple- easily integrated with PowerPoint or other presenta-
choice questions focused on key concepts, more than tion software for electronic lectures or assignments. An
300 stimulus-based multiple-choice questions, numer- accompanying guide provides each clip’s historical
ous short-answer and long-essay questions, and 8 com- context, ideas for use, and suggested questions.
plete DBQs.
The test bank is accompanied by Teaching U.S. Videos and Multimedia. A wide assortment of videos
History: A Roundtable Discussion focused on teach- and multimedia CD-ROMs on various topics in U.S.
ing the new AP U.S. History course with insights from history is available to qualified adopters through your
experienced AP teachers into the redesign of the U.S. Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative.
history survey, including teaching with themes, empha-
sizing historical thinking skills, and balancing breadth Package and Give Your Students Even More
and depth in the course. Stretch your budget and package your favorite text with
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customizable PowerPoint multimedia presentations Bedford, Freeman, and Worth sales representative.
that include lecture outlines with embedded maps, fig-
ures, and selected images from the textbook and extra NEW Sources for America’s History. Edited by Kevin B.
background for instructors. Also available are maps Sheets of SUNY Cortland, and designed to comple-
and selected images in JPEG and PowerPoint formats; ment the textbook, Sources for America’s History pro-
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Microsoft Word and PowerPoint formats; the Instruc- documents as well as editorial apparatus to help students
tor’s Resource Manual in Microsoft Word format; and understand the sources. Unique part sets that support
outline maps in PDF format for quizzing or handing Thematic Learning Objectives are closely aligned to
out. All files are suitable for copying onto transparency the new AP periodization. Available at a discount
acetates. when packaged with the print text and included in the
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LaunchPad e-book. Also available on its own as a guide is based on the acclaimed “History Matters” Web
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NEW Bedford Digital Collections @ bedfordstmartins Trade Books. Titles published by sister companies Hill
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sion, and immigration to U.S. involvement in wars A Student’s Guide to History. This complete guide to
abroad and on U.S. soil. Introductory pages for each success in any history course provides the practical help
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Benjamin teaches a wide range of skills, from prepar-
Maps in Context: A Workbook for American History. ing for exams to approaching common writing assign-
Written by historical cartography expert Gerald A. ments, and explains the research and documentation
Danzer (University of Illinois at Chicago), this skill- process with plentiful examples.
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tial connections between geographic literacy and Going to the Source: The Bedford Reader in American
historical understanding. Organized to correspond to History. Developed by Victoria Bissell Brown and
the typical U.S. history survey course, Maps in Context Timothy J. Shannon, this reader’s strong pedagogical
presents a wealth of map-centered projects and conve- framework helps students learn how to ask fruitful
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ence working with maps. and develop critical reading skills. The reader’s wide
variety of chapter topics that complement the survey
The Bedford Glossary for U.S. History. This handy course and its rich diversity of sources — from personal
supplement for the survey course gives students his- letters to political cartoons — provoke students’ inter-
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terms — from abolitionism to zoot suit — that they will fully interrogate historical sources.
encounter in lectures, reading, and exams.
America Firsthand. With its distinctive focus on
U.S. History Matters: A Student Guide to U.S. History ordinary people, this primary documents reader, by
Online. This resource, written by Alan Gevinson, Kelly Anthony Marcus, John M. Giggie, and David Burner,
Shrum, and the late Roy Rosenzweig (all of George offers a remarkable range of perspectives on America’s
Mason University), provides an illustrated and anno- history from those who lived it. Popular Points of View
tated guide to 250 of the most useful Web sites for stu- sections expose students to different perspectives on a
dent research in U.S. history as well as advice on specific event or topic, and Visual Portfolios invite
evaluating and using Internet sources. This essential analysis of the visual record.
Brief Contents
LearningCur ve bedfordstmartins.com/highschool/henretta8e
Historical Thinking, Reading, and Writing Skills for AP U.S. History xxxviii
xvi
15 Reconstruction, 1865–1877 478
16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 508
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 6 American Experiments, 1521–1700 40
AMERICAN VOICES
The Spanish Conquest of Mexico 32
xviii
PART 2 British North America and the Atlantic World, 1660–1763 76
Chapter 3 Chapter 4
The British Atlantic World, Growth, Diversity, and Conflict,
1660–1750 80 1720–1763 114
How did the South In what ways were
Atlantic System create Britain’s American
an interconnected colonies affected by
Atlantic World, and how events across the
did this system impact Atlantic, and how were
development in the British their societies taking
colonies? on a life of their own?
xix
PART 3 Revolution and Republican Culture, 1763–1820 146
Chapter 5 Chapter 6
The Problem of Empire, Making War and Republican
1763–1776 150 Governments, 1776–1789 182
Consider whether the collapse How revolutionary was the
of British authority in the American Revolution? What
thirteen rebellious colonies political, social, and economic
might have been avoided changes did it produce, and
through compromise measures what stayed the same?
and more astute leadership.
Was colonial independence
inevitable, and was war the
only way to achieve it?
xx
Chapter 7 Chapter 8
Hammering Out a Federal Republic, Creating a Republican Culture,
1787–1820 214 1790–1820 248
What was required to make In eighteenth-century Europe,
the United States a strong, the leading principles were
viable, independent republic in aristocracy, patriarchy,
its early years, and how did mercantilism, arranged
debates over the Constitution marriages, legal privilege, and
shape relations between the established churches. What
national government and the principles would replace those
states? societal rules in America’s new
republican society?
The Political Crisis of the 1790s 216 The Capitalist Commonwealth 250
The Federalists Implement the Constitution 216 Banks, Manufacturing, and Markets 250
Hamilton’s Financial Program 216 Public Enterprise: The Commonwealth
Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision 218 System 255
The French Revolution Divides Americans 219 Toward a Democratic Republican Culture 256
The Rise of Political Parties 223 Opportunity and Equality—for White Men 257
A Republican Empire Is Born 226 Toward Republican Families 258
Sham Treaties and Indian Lands 226 Raising Republican Children 262
Migration and the Changing Farm Economy 228 Aristocratic Republicanism and Slavery 264
The Jefferson Presidency 231 The Revolution and Slavery, 1776–1800 264
Jefferson and the West 231 The North and South Grow Apart 266
The War of 1812 and the Transformation of The Missouri Crisis, 1819–1821 268
Politics 234 Protestant Christianity as a Social Force 269
Conflict in the Atlantic and the West 234 A Republican Religious Order 270
The War of 1812 236 The Second Great Awakening 271
The Federalist Legacy 241 Religion and Reform 273
Chapter Review LearningCurve 245 Women’s New Religious Roles 275
xxi
PART 4 Overlapping Revolutions, 1800–1860 280
Chapter 9 Chapter 10
Transforming the Economy, A Democratic Revolution,
1800–1860 284 1800–1844 314
What were the causes and What were the main features
consequences of the Industrial of the Democratic Revolution,
and Market revolutions, and and what role did Andrew
how did they change the way Jackson play in its outcome?
ordinary Americans lived?
The American Industrial Revolution 286 The Rise of Popular Politics, 1810–1828 316
The Division of Labor and the Factory 286 The Decline of the Notables and the Rise of
The Textile Industry and British Competition 287 Parties 316
American Mechanics and Technological The Election of 1824 318
Innovation 290 The Last Notable President: John Quincy
Wageworkers and the Labor Movement 291 Adams 319
The Market Revolution 293 “The Democracy” and the Election of 1828 321
The Transportation Revolution Forges Regional The Jacksonian Presidency, 1829–1837 322
Ties 293 Jackson’s Agenda: Rotation and
The Growth of Cities and Towns 297 Decentralization 322
New Social Classes and Cultures 301 The Tariff and Nullification 323
The Business Elite 301 The Bank War 325
The Middle Class 302 Indian Removal 326
Urban Workers and the Poor 304 The Jacksonian Impact 331
The Benevolent Empire 305 Class, Culture, and the Second Party System 332
Charles Grandison Finney: Revivalism and The Whig Worldview 332
Reform 306 Labor Politics and the Depression of
Immigration and Cultural Conflict 310 1837–1843 334
“Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” 335
Chapter Review LearningCurve 311
Chapter Review LearningCurve 341
AMERICA COMPARED
The Fate of the American and Indian Textile AMERICA COMPARED
Industries 289 Alexis de Tocqueville: Letter to Louis de Kergorlay, June
29, 1831 317
THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
The Risks and Rewards of Technological Innovation 298 AMERICAN VOICES
The Character and Goals of Andrew Jackson 328
AMERICAN VOICES
A Debate over Catholic Immigration 308 THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
Becoming Literate: Public Education and Democracy 336
xxii
Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Religion and Reform, The South Expands: Slavery and Society,
1800–1860 344 1800–1860 376
To what extent did How did the creation of a
individualism, new religious cotton-based economy change
sects, abolitionism, and the lives of whites and blacks
women’s rights (as the in all regions of the South?
movement was called in the
nineteenth century) change
American culture between
1820 and 1860?
Individualism: The Ethic of the Middle Class 346 The Domestic Slave Trade 378
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism 346 The Upper South Exports Slaves 378
Emerson’s Literary Influence 347 The Impact on Blacks 381
Rural Communalism and Urban Popular The World of Southern Whites 383
Culture 349 The Dual Cultures of the Planter Elite 383
The Utopian Impulse 349 Planters, Smallholding Yeomen, and Tenants 388
Joseph Smith and the Mormon Experience 352 Expanding and Governing the South 391
Urban Popular Culture 354 The Settlement of Texas 391
Abolitionism 357 The Politics of Democracy 392
Black Social Thought: Uplift, Race Equality, and The African American World 395
Rebellion 360 Evangelical Black Protestantism 395
Evangelical Abolitionism 361 Forging Families and Communities 396
Opposition and Internal Conflict 363 Negotiating Rights 397
The Women’s Rights Movement 366 The Free Black Population 401
Origins of the Women’s Movement 366
From Black Rights to Women’s Rights 367 Chapter Review LearningCurve 404
xxiii
PART 5 Creating and Preserving a Continental Nation, 1844–1877 406
Chapter 13 Chapter 14
Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, Two Societies at War,
1844–1860 410 1861–1865 444
What were the causes of the How did the military and
Mexican War, and in what political goals of the war bring
ways did it bring about a significant changes to social,
growing sectional crisis during economic, and cultural life?
the 1850s?
Manifest Destiny: South and North 412 Secession and Military Stalemate, 1861–1862 446
The Push to the Pacific 412 The Secession Crisis 446
The Plains Indians 415 The Upper South Chooses Sides 447
The Fateful Election of 1844 417 Setting War Objectives and Devising
War, Expansion, and Slavery, 1846–1850 418 Strategies 449
The War with Mexico, 1846–1848 418 Toward Total War 452
A Divisive Victory 421 Mobilizing Armies and Civilians 452
California Gold and Racial Warfare 425 Mobilizing Resources 456
1850: Crisis and Compromise 428 The Turning Point: 1863 462
The End of the Second Party System, Emancipation 462
1850–1858 430 Vicksburg and Gettysburg 464
Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act 430 The Union Victorious, 1864–1865 466
The Whigs Disintegrate and New Parties Rise 431 Soldiers and Strategy 466
Buchanan’s Failed Presidency 433 The Election of 1864 and Sherman’s March 468
Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Triumph,
1858–1860 437 Chapter Review LearningCurve 475
Lincoln’s Political Career 437 THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
The Union Under Siege 438 Military Deaths — and Lives Saved — During the Civil
War 458
Chapter Review LearningCurve 440
AMERICA COMPARED
AMERICAN VOICES War Debt: Britain and the United States, 1830–1900 461
The Mexican War: Expansion and Slavery 422
AMERICAN VOICES
AMERICA COMPARED Gender, Class, and Sexual Terror in the Invaded
The Gold Rush: California and Australia 426 South 472
THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
Biography as History 434
xxiv
Chapter 15 Chapter 16
Reconstruction, Conquering a Continent,
1865–1877 478 1854–1890 508
What goals did Republican How did U.S. policymakers
policymakers, ex-Confederates, seek to stimulate the economy
and freedpeople pursue during and integrate the trans-
Reconstruction? To what Mississippi west into the
degree did each succeed? nation, and how did this
affect people living there?
The Struggle for National Reconstruction 480 The Republican Vision 510
Presidential Approaches: From Lincoln to The New Union and the World 510
Johnson 480 Integrating the National Economy 511
Congress Versus the President 481 Incorporating the West 515
Radical Reconstruction 482 Mining Empires 516
Woman Suffrage Denied 485 Cattlemen on the Plains 518
The Meaning of Freedom 487 Homesteaders 519
The Quest for Land 487 The First National Park 524
Republican Governments in the South 493 A Harvest of Blood: Native Peoples
Building Black Communities 495 Dispossessed 525
The Undoing of Reconstruction 497 The Civil War and Indians on the Plains 526
The Republicans Unravel 497 Grant’s Peace Policy 528
Counterrevolution in the South 498 The End of Armed Resistance 532
Reconstruction Rolled Back 499 Strategies of Survival 534
Lasting Legacies 501 Western Myths and Realities 535
xxv
PART 6 Industrializing America: Upheavals and Experiments, 1877–1917 540
Chapter 17 Chapter 18
Industrial America: Corporations and The Victorians Make the Modern,
Conflicts, 1877–1911 544 1880–1917 574
What new opportunities and How did the changes wrought
risks did industrialization by industrialization shape
bring, and how did it reshape Americans’ identities, beliefs,
American society? and culture?
xxvi
Chapter 19 Chapter 20
“Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Whose Government? Politics, Populists,
Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917 606 and Progressives, 1880–1917 636
How did the rise of large cities In the Progressive Era, how
shape American society and and why did reformers seek
politics? to address the problems of
industrial America? To what
extent did they succeed?
AMERICAN VOICES
Theodore Roosevelt: From Anti-Populist to New
Nationalist 658
xxvii
PART 7 Domestic and Global Challenges, 1890–1945 668
Chapter 21 Chapter 22
An Emerging World Power, Cultural Conflict, Bubble, and Bust,
1890–1918 672 1919–1932 704
As the United States became What conflicts in culture
a major power on the world and politics arose in the
stage, what ideas and interests 1920s, and how did economic
did policymakers seek to developments in that decade
promote in international help cause the Great
affairs? Depression?
AMERICA COMPARED
Hollywood in Europe 727
xxviii
Chapter 23 Chapter 24
Managing the Great Depression, Forging The World at War,
the New Deal, 1929–1939 734 1937–1945 766
What new roles did the How did World War II
American government take on transform the United States
during the New Deal, and how domestically and change its
did these roles shape the relationship with the world?
economy and society?
Early Responses to the Depression, 1929–1932 736 The Road to War 768
Enter Herbert Hoover 736 The Rise of Fascism 768
Rising Discontent 738 War Approaches 769
The 1932 Election 739 The Attack on Pearl Harbor 772
The New Deal Arrives, 1933–1935 740 Organizing for Victory 773
Roosevelt and the First Hundred Days 740 Financing the War 773
The New Deal Under Attack 745 Mobilizing the American Fighting Force 776
The Second New Deal and the Redefining of Workers and the War Effort 777
Liberalism, 1935–1938 747 Politics in Wartime 781
The Welfare State Comes into Being 747 Life on the Home Front 781
From Reform to Stalemate 749 “For the Duration” 782
The New Deal’s Impact on Society 751 Migration and the Wartime City 783
A People’s Democracy 751 Japanese Removal 787
Reshaping the Environment 759 Fighting and Winning the War 788
The New Deal and the Arts 761 Wartime Aims and Tensions 788
The Legacies of the New Deal 761 The War in Europe 789
The War in the Pacific 792
Chapter Review LearningCurve 763
The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War 793
AMERICA COMPARED The Toll of the War 795
The Great Depression in England and the United
Chapter Review LearningCurve 797
States 737
xxix
PART 8 The Modern State and the Age of Liberalism, 1945–1980 800
Chapter 25 Chapter 26
Cold War America, Triumph of the Middle Class,
1945–1963 804 1945–1963 838
In the first two decades of the Why did consumer culture
Cold War, how did competition become such a fixture of
on the international stage and American life in the postwar
a climate of fear at home decades, and how did it affect
affect politics, society, and politics and society?
culture in the United States?
Containment and a Divided Global Order 806 Postwar Prosperity and the Affluent Society 840
Origins of the Cold War 806 Economy: From Recovery to Dominance 840
The Containment Strategy 808 A Nation of Consumers 843
Containment in Asia 813 Youth Culture 847
Cold War Liberalism 818 Religion and the Middle Class 849
Truman and the End of Reform 818 The American Family in the Era of
Red Scare: The Hunt for Communists 820 Containment 850
The Politics of Cold War Liberalism 825 The Baby Boom 850
Containment in the Postcolonial World 826 Women, Work, and Family 851
The Cold War and Colonial Independence 827 Challenging Middle-Class Morality 855
John F. Kennedy and the Cold War 829 A Suburban Nation 856
Making a Commitment in Vietnam 832 The Postwar Housing Boom 856
Rise of the Sunbelt 862
Chapter Review LearningCurve 834 Two Societies: Urban and Suburban 863
THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN Chapter Review LearningCurve 865
The Global Cold War 810
AMERICAN VOICES
AMERICA COMPARED
Coming of Age in the Postwar Years 852
Arming for the Cold War 814
THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
AMERICAN VOICES
The Suburban Landscape of Cold War America 858
Hunting Communists and Liberals 822
AMERICA COMPARED
Hanoch Bartov: Everyone Has a Car 860
xxx
Chapter 27 Chapter 28
Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Uncivil Wars: Liberal Crisis and
Rights Movement, 1941–1973 868 Conservative Rebirth, 1961–1972 902
AMERICA COMPARED
The Global Protests of 1968 920
xxxi
PART 8 (continued) PART 9 Global Capitalism and the
Chapter 29 Chapter 30
The Search for Order in an Era of Limits, Conservative America in the Ascent,
1973–1980 936 1980–1991 972
How did the legacy of social What factors made the rise of
changes — such as shifting the New Right possible, and
gender roles, civil rights, and what ideas about freedom and
challenges to the family — citizenship did conservatives
in the 1960s continue to articulate in the 1980s?
reverberate in the 1970s,
leading to both new
opportunities and political
disagreement?
AMERICA COMPARED
Economic Malaise in the Seventies 946
AMERICAN VOICES
Debating the Equal Rights Amendment 954
xxxii
End of the American Century, 1980 to the Present 968
Chapter 31
Confronting Global and National
Dilemmas, 1989 to the Present 1002
How has globalization affected The Clinton Presidency, 1993–2001 1020
American politics, economics, Post–Cold War Foreign Policy 1022
and society? Into a New Century 1025
The Ascendance of George W. Bush 1025
Violence Abroad and Economic Collapse at
Home 1030
The Obama Presidency 1030
xxxiii
Maps, Figures, and Tables
CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 5
Map 1.1 The Ice Age and the Settling of the Americas 9 Map 5.1 Eurasian Trade and European Colonies,
Map 1.2 Native American Peoples, 1492 10 c. 1770 154
Map 1.3 West Africa and the Mediterranean in the Map 5.2 Britain’s American Empire in 1763 156
Fifteenth Century 24 Map 5.3 British Troop Deployments, 1763 and 1775 163
Map 1.4 The Eurasian Trade System and European Map 5.4 British Western Policy, 1763–1774 170
Maritime Ventures, c. 1500 29 Map 5.5 The Ohio Country, 1774–1775 175
Map 1.5 The Spanish Conquest of America’s Great Figure 5.1 The Cost of Empire, 1690–1790 155
Empires 31 Figure 5.2 Trade as a Political Weapon, 1763–1776 166
Figure 1.1 The Yearly Rhythm of Rural Life and Death 19 Table 5.1 English/British Imports and Exports (annual
averages in pounds sterling) 153
CHAPTER 2
Table 5.2 Ministerial Instability in Britain, 1760–1782 160
Map 2.1 The Columbian Exchange 44 Table 5.3 Patriot Resistance, 1762–1776 171
Map 2.2 The Plantation Colonies 46
Map 2.3 Eastern North America, 1650 48 CHAPTER 6
Map 2.4 River Plantations in Virginia, c. 1640 54 Map 6.1 Patriot and Loyalist Strongholds 184
Map 2.5 The Eurasian Trade System and European Spheres Map 6.2 The War in the North, 1776–1777 185
of Influence, 1650 59 Map 6.3 Native Americans and the War in the West,
Map 2.6 The Puritan Migration to America, 1620–1640 61 1778–1779 191
Map 2.7 Settlement Patterns in New England Towns, Map 6.4 The War in the South, 1778–1781 194
1630–1700 65 Map 6.5 The Confederation and Western Land Claims,
Figure 2.1 Chronology of European Colonies in the 1781–1802 202
Americas 42 Map 6.6 Land Division in the Northwest Territory 203
Figure 2.2 Chesapeake Whites: Workers, Dependents, and Map 6.7 Ratifying the Constitution of 1787 210
Indentured Servants, 1640–1700 55 Figure 6.1 Middling Men Enter the Halls of Government,
1765–1790 198
CHAPTER 3
Map 3.1 The Dominion of New England, 1686–1689 85 CHAPTER 7
Map 3.2 Britain’s American Empire, 1713 91 Map 7.1 The Presidential Elections of 1796 and 1800 225
Map 3.3 Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Map 7.2 Indian Cessions and State Formation,
1700–1810 93 1776–1840 227
Map 3.4 The Growing Power of American Merchants, Map 7.3 Regional Cultures Move West, 1790–1820 229
1750 104 Map 7.4 U.S. Population Density in 1803 and the Louisiana
Figure 3.1 The Transit of Africans to the Americas 92 Purchase 235
Figure 3.2 A Black Majority Emerges in South Carolina, Map 7.5 The War of 1812 240
1700–1740 97 Map 7.6 Defining the National Boundaries,
Figure 3.3 Family Connections and Political Power, New 1800–1820 244
Jersey, 1700–1776 106 Figure 7.1 Hamilton’s Fiscal Structure, 1792 217
Table 3.1 English Colonies Established in North America, Table 7.1 Major Decisions of the Marshall Court 242
1660–1750 83
Table 3.2 Navigation Acts, 1651–1751 85 CHAPTER 8
Table 3.3 English Wars, 1650–1750 88 Map 8.1 The Expansion of Voting Rights for White Men,
1800 and 1830 257
CHAPTER 4 Map 8.2 The Status of Slavery, 1800 265
Map 4.1 The Hudson River Manors 120 Map 8.3 The Missouri Compromise, 1820–1821 269
Map 4.2 Ethnic and Racial Diversity in the British Colonies, Map 8.4 The Second Great Awakening, 1790–1860 273
1775 125 Figure 8.1 Number of Church Congregations by
Map 4.3 Religious Diversity in 1750 126 Denomination, 1780 and 1860 271
Map 4.4 European Spheres of Influence in North America,
1754 136 CHAPTER 9
Map 4.5 The Anglo-American Conquest of New Map 9.1 New England’s Dominance in Cotton Spinning,
France 139 1840 288
Map 4.6 Westward Expansion and Land Conflicts, Map 9.2 Western Land Sales, 1830–1839 and
1750–1775 142 1850–1862 294
Figure 4.1 Transatlantic Migration, 1500–1760 121 Map 9.3 The Transportation Revolution: Roads and Canals,
Figure 4.2 Estimated European Migration to the British 1820–1850 296
Mainland Colonies, 1700–1780 122 Map 9.4 Railroads of the North and South, 1850 and
Figure 4.3 Church Growth by Denomination, 1861 297
1700–1780 133 Map 9.5 The Nation’s Major Cities, 1840 300
Figure 4.4 Mainland Population and British Imports 141 Figure 9.1 Leading Branches of Manufacture, 1860 286
xxxiv
Table 9.1 Cotton Textile Production and Consumption in CHAPTER 16
India 289 Map 16.1 Expansion of the Railroad System,
Table 9.2 Textile Production in the United States 289 1870–1890 513
Map 16.2 The Santa Fe Railroad System, 1885 514
CHAPTER 10
Map 16.3 Mining Frontiers, 1848–1890 517
Map 10.1 The Presidential Election of 1824 319 Map 16.4 Settlement of the Pacific Slope, 1860–1890 517
Map 10.2 The Presidential Election of 1828 322 Map 16.5 Indian Country in the West, to 1890 526
Map 10.3 The Removal of Native Americans, Map 16.6 The Sioux Reservations in South Dakota,
1820–1846 330 1868–1889 534
Figure 10.1 The Rise of Voter Turnout, 1824–1844 322 Table 16.1 Status of Civilization (from Morgan, Ancient
CHAPTER 11 Society, 1877) 530
Map 11.1 Major Communal Experiments Before CHAPTER 17
1860 349 Map 17.1 The New South, 1900 557
Map 11.2 The Mormon Trek, 1830–1848 353 Map 17.2 Sources of European Immigration to the United
Map 11.3 The Underground Railroad in the 1850s 363 States, 1871–1910 559
Map 11.4 Women and Antislavery, 1837–1838 370 Figure 17.1 Business Activity and Wholesale Prices,
Figure 11.1 The Surge in Immigration, 1854–1855 356 1869–1900 546
Figure 17.2 Major Destinations for Emigrants,
CHAPTER 12
1881–1915 560
Map 12.1 Distribution of the Slave Population in 1790,
1830, and 1860 379 CHAPTER 18
Map 12.2 American Settlements, the Texas-Mexican War, Map 18.1 National Parks and Forests, 1872–1980 584
and Boundary Disputes 393 Map 18.2 Women’s Suffrage, 1890–1919 593
Figure 12.1 Cotton Production and Producers, Table 18.1 High School Graduates, 1870–1910 587
1800–1860 378
Figure 12.2 Forced Slave Migration to the Lower South, CHAPTER 19
1790–1860 380 Map 19.1 The Lower East Side, New York City, 1900 613
Map 19.2 The Expansion of Chicago, 1865–1902 616
CHAPTER 13
Figure 19.1 Floor Plan of a Dumbbell Tenement 616
Map 13.1 Territorial Conflict in Oregon, 1819–1846 412
Table 19.1 The World’s Biggest Cities, 1800–2000 611
Map 13.2 The Great Plains: Settler Trails, Indian Raiders, and
Traders 414 CHAPTER 20
Map 13.3 The Mexican War, 1846–1848 419 Map 20.1 The Presidential Elections of 1880, 1884, and
Map 13.4 The Mexican Cession, 1848 424 1888 639
Map 13.5 The California Gold Rush, 1849–1857 427 Map 20.2 The Heyday of Western Populism, 1892 643
Map 13.6 The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas- Map 20.3 Disenfranchisement in the New South 646
Nebraska Act of 1854 429 Map 20.4 The Presidential Elections of 1892 and
Map 13.7 Political Realignment, 1848 and 1860 436 1896 648
Table 13.1 Nonnative Population Increases from Gold Rush Map 20.5 The Presidential Election of 1912 660
in United States and Australia 426 Table 20.1 Major Federal Progressive Measures,
1883–1921 662
CHAPTER 14
Map 14.1 The Process of Secession, 1860–1861 447 CHAPTER 21
Map 14.2 The Eastern Campaigns of 1862 450 Map 21.1 The Great Powers in East Asia, 1898–1910 679
Map 14.3 The Western Campaigns, 1861–1862 453 Map 21.2 Policeman of the Caribbean 683
Map 14.4 Lee Invades the North, 1863 465 Map 21.3 U.S. Participation on the Western Front,
Map 14.5 The Closing Virginia Campaign, 1918 688
1864–1865 469 Map 21.4 Europe and the Middle East After World
Map 14.6 Sherman’s March Through the Confederacy, War I 698
1864–1865 471 Table 21.1 World War I Casualties 689
Map 14.7 The Conquest of the South, 1861–1865 474
Figure 14.1 Slavery and Secession 448 CHAPTER 22
Figure 14.2 Economies, North and South, 1860 457 Map 22.1 Ku Klux Klan Politics and Violence in the
Figure 14.3 United States and United Kingdom National 1920s 715
Debt as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product, Map 22.2 The Presidential Election of 1928 718
1830–1900 461 Figure 22.1 Unemployment, 1915–1945 728
CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 23
Map 15.1 Reconstruction 483 Map 23.1 The Great Depression: Families on Relief 739
Map 15.2 The Barrow Plantation, 1860 and 1881 491 Map 23.2 Civilian Conservation Corps Camps 745
Table 15.1 Primary Reconstruction Laws and Constitutional Map 23.3 Popular Protest in the Great Depression,
Amendments 484 1933–1939 748
xxxv
Map 23.4 The Dust Bowl and Federal Building Projects in CHAPTER 28
the West, 1930–1941 759 Map 28.1 The Presidential Election of 1964 906
Map 23.5 The Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933–1952 761 Map 28.2 The Vietnam War, 1968 910
Table 23.1 American Banks and Bank Failures, Map 28.3 The Presidential Election of 1968 923
1920–1940 741 Map 28.4 The Presidential Election of 1972 932
Table 23.2 Major New Deal Legislation 750 Figure 28.1 Americans in Poverty, 1959–2000 908
CHAPTER 24 Figure 28.2 U.S. Troops in Vietnam, 1960–1973 911
Table 28.1 Major Great Society Legislation 907
Map 24.1 Japanese Relocation Camps 787
Map 24.2 World War II in Europe, 1941–1943 790 CHAPTER 29
Map 24.3 World War II in Europe, 1944–1945 791 Map 29.1 From Rust Belt to Sun Belt, 1940–2000 944
Map 24.4 World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1942 793 Map 29.2 States Ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment,
Map 24.5 World War II in the Pacific, 1943–1945 794 1972–1977 953
Figure 24.1 Government Military and Civilian Spending as a Figure 29.1 U.S. Energy Consumption, 1900–2000 938
Percentage of GDP, 1920–1980 773 Figure 29.2 The Inflation Rate, 1960–2000 943
Figure 24.2 World War II Military and Civilian Deaths, Figure 29.3 Falling Gross Domestic Product 946
1939–1945 774 Figure 29.4 Rising Unemployment 946
Figure 24.3 Gross Domestic Product Rates Worldwide, Figure 29.5 The Increase in Two-Worker Families 958
1938–1945 774
Table 29.1 Political Realignment: Congressional Seats 949
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 30
Map 25.1 Cold War in Europe, 1955 808
Map 30.1 The Presidential Election of 1980 981
Map 25.2 The Korean War, 1950–1953 816
Map 30.2 U.S. Involvement in Latin America and the
Map 25.3 The Military-Industrial Complex 817 Caribbean, 1954–2000 994
Map 25.4 The Presidential Election of 1948 820 Map 30.3 The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Creation
Map 25.5 American Global Defense Treaties in the Cold War of Independent States, 1989–1991 997
Era 827 Figure 30.1 The Annual Federal Budget Deficit (or Surplus),
Map 25.6 The United States and Cuba, 1961–1962 831 1940–2009 984
Figure 25.1 National Defense Spending, 1940–1965 818
Table 25.1 Worldwide Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–1975 814 CHAPTER 31
Map 31.1 Growth of the European Community,
CHAPTER 26 1951–2005 1009
Map 26.1 Connecting the Nation: The Interstate Highway Map 31.2 Hispanic and Asian Populations, 2000 1014
System, 1930 and 1970 861 Map 31.3 The Presidential Election of 1992 1021
Map 26.2 Shifting Population Patterns, 1950–1980 862 Map 31.4 U.S. Involvement in the Middle East,
Figure 26.1 Gross Domestic Product, 1930–1972 843 1979–2010 1028
Figure 26.2 Labor Union Strength, 1900–1997 844 Figure 31.1 Productivity, Family Income, and Wages,
Figure 26.3 The American Birthrate, 1860–1980 850 1970–2004 1005
Figure 31.2 iPhone Global Supply Chain, 2011 1006
CHAPTER 27
Figure 31.3 Imports, 1960–2009 1008
Map 27.1 Internal Migrations 874 Figure 31.4 Exports, 1960–2009 1008
Map 27.2 Desegregation Court Cases 879 Figure 31.5 American Immigration, 1920–2000 1013
Map 27.3 The Civil Rights Struggle, 1954–1965 887 Figure 31.6 Gross Federal Debt as a Percentage of Gross
Map 27.4 Black Voter Registration in the South, 1964 and Domestic Product 1027
1975 891 Table 31.1 Impact of the Bush Tax Cuts, 2001–2003 1026
Map 27.5 Decolonization and the Third World,
1943–1990 895
Table 27.1 African American College Enrollment 872
xxxvi
Special Features
AMERICAN VOICES Labor Laws After Emancipation: Haiti and the United States 482
The Santa Fe Railroad in Mexico and the United States 514
The Spanish Conquest of Mexico 32 Emigrants and Destinations, 1881–1915 560
The Causes of Metacom’s War 68 Christianity in the United States and Japan 601
The Rise of Colonial Self-Government 108 The World’s Biggest Cities, 1800–2000 611
Evangelical Religion and Enlightenment Rationalism 130 A Progressive Reports from New Zealand 653
The Debate over Representation and Sovereignty 172 The Human Cost of World War I 689
The First National Debate over Slavery 208 Hollywood in Europe 727
Factional Politics and the War of 1812 238 The Great Depression in England and the United States 737
The Trials of Married Life 260 The Scales of War: Losses and Gains During World War II 774
A Debate over Catholic Immigration 308 Arming for the Cold War 814
The Character and Goals of Andrew Jackson 328 Hanoch Bartov: Everyone Has a Car 860
Saving the Nation from Drink 368 Freedom in the United States and Africa 876
The Debate over Free and Slave Labor 384 The Global Protests of 1968 920
The Mexican War: Expansion and Slavery 422 Economic Malaise in the Seventies 946
Gender, Class, and Sexual Terror in the Invaded South 472 Yoichi Funabashi: “Japan and America: Global Partners” 988
Freedom 488 Global Trade, 1960–2009 1008
Women’s Rights in the West 522
Jewish Immigrants in the Industrial Economy 562
Three Interpretations of Social Darwinism 596 THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
“These Dead Bodies Were the Answer”: The Triangle Fire 630
Colliding Cultures 26
Theodore Roosevelt: From Anti-Populist to New Nationalist 658
Who Was Pocahontas? 50
Debating the Philippines 680
Servitude and Slavery 98
Urban Writers Describe Small-Town America 722
Women’s Labor 118
Ordinary People Respond to the New Deal 742
Beyond the Proclamation Line 164
Women in the Wartime Workplace 778
The Black Soldier’s Dilemma 192
Hunting Communists and Liberals 822
The Social Life of Alcohol 220
Coming of Age in the Postwar Years 852
The Entrepreneur and the Community 252
Challenging White Supremacy 884
The Risks and Rewards of Technological Innovation 298
The Toll of War 912
Becoming Literate: Public Education and Democracy 336
Debating the Equal Rights Amendment 954
Dance and Social Identity in Antebellum America 358
Christianity and Public Life 978
Childhood in Black and White 398
Immigration After 1965: Its Defenders and Critics 1016
Biography as History 434
Military Deaths — and Lives Saved — During the Civil War 458
A M E R I C A C O M PA R E D The South’s “Lost Cause” 502
Representing Indians 530
Altered Landscapes 14 Poverty and Food 554
Plantation Colonies Versus Neo-Europes 57 America Picks Up the Telephone 578
Olaudah Equiano: The Brutal “Middle Passage” 95 Making Mass Media: Newspaper Empires 620
Transatlantic Migration, 1500–1760 121 Making Modern Presidents 640
Britain’s Atlantic and Asian Empires 153 German Americans in World War I 692
China’s Growing Empire 197 Who Joined the Ku Klux Klan? 716
The Haitian Revolution and the Problem of Race 224 The New Deal and Public Works 752
Frances Trollope: American Camp Meetings and English Church Mobilizing the Home Front 784
Hierarchies 272
The Global Cold War 810
The Fate of the American and Indian Textile Industries 289
The Suburban Landscape of Cold War America 858
Alexis de Tocqueville: Letter to Louis de Kergorlay, June 29,
Civil Rights and Black Power: Strategy and Ideology 888
1831 317
Debating the War in Vietnam 916
Women’s Rights in France and the United States, 1848 372
The Environmental Movement: Reimagining the Human-Earth
Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach: The Racial Complexities
Relationship 940
of Southern Society 387
Personal Computing: A Technological Revolution 990
The Gold Rush: California and Australia 426
Globalization: Its Proponents and Its Discontents 1006
War Debt: Britain and the United States, 1830–1900 461
xxxvii
Historical Thinking, Reading,
and Writing Skills for AP U.S. History
DAVE NEUMANN, Director
The History Project at California State University–Long Beach
Students and adults alike often grumble that history is to the fourth — interpretation and synthesis — in which
just a bunch of facts to memorize. While it’s true that you will bring what you have learned together.
studying history requires data, information, and yes,
facts, that’s not the essence of what history is. History is
a way of thinking about the world by looking at the
Chronological Reasoning
past. It is a reconstruction of the past, drawing on both “Chronological reasoning” means thinking logically
imagination and interpretation. In this effort historians about how and why the world changes — or, some-
use a number of skills. This skills primer will help you times, stays the same — over time. While all fields of
develop the Historical Thinking Skills you need to suc- knowledge offer arguments based on evidence or make
ceed in any Advanced Placement history course and on comparisons, historians are uniquely concerned about
the exams. It will also enable you to improve critical- the past and its relationship to the present. How is the
thinking, reading, and writing skills that will be useful world different now than it was 50 years ago, 500 years
in college or whatever endeavor you pursue after high ago, or 5,000 years ago? Why did the world change?
school. How have some aspects of the world remained rela-
tively the same over long periods of time? On what
basis do historians simplify the long and complicated
past by breaking it into smaller eras?
Historical Thinking Skills Historical Causation Causation has to do with
Historical thinking requires understanding and evalu- explanations about how or why changes take place in
ating change and continuity over time. It also involves history. Sometimes there is an obvious connection
making appropriate use of historical evidence in between an event and its consequence, like a cue ball
answering questions and developing arguments about striking the eight ball and making it move. And some
the past. Each historian would describe the various events are fairly straightforward: the attack on Pearl
skills needed for this complex task slightly differently, Harbor prompted President Roosevelt to ask Congress
but for AP history courses, they have been organized for a declaration of war against Japan. But even this
into four major skills that represent the ways historians seemingly simple example soon becomes more com-
study the past. These skills have been described as plicated. Why did Japan attack the United States? What
“habits of mind.” This useful phrase should remind you role did the American embargo on the sale of oil have
that a skill needs to be practiced repeatedly until it on Japan’s decision? Why did the United States enact
becomes second nature. Because practice is an integral this embargo? All of these other events took place just
part of learning to think historically, the sections below a few years before the Pearl Harbor attack. If we go
include exercises to help you develop these “habits of even further back, we’ll gain additional insight about
mind.” Like shooting free throws, rehearsing dance the larger context of the Japanese government’s deci-
moves, or playing scales, Historical Thinking Skills sion. A longer-term analysis might lead, for example,
need to be exercised regularly until you can use them to an understanding of Japanese imperial aggression as
easily and almost effortlessly. an outgrowth of their rapid industrialization during
As we discuss each skill separately below, keep in the Meiji Restoration of the late nineteenth century.
mind that these skills overlap in many ways. For Just as there were many factors behind the attack
example, you can’t make a historical argument without on Pearl Harbor, most examples of historical causation
also evaluating evidence. So as you develop one His- involve multiple causes and effects. Events and pro-
torical Thinking Skill, you will also be practicing other cesses often result from developments in many realms
skills. The first three skills are all necessary to move on of life, including social, political, economic, and cultural.
xxxviii
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Historians cannot test these in laboratories the way sci- time. Because continuity (such as a network of trade
entists can, but they can use historical evidence and that remains in existence for hundreds of years) is less
reasoning to determine which of these are probable dramatic than change, it can be harder to spot.
causes and effects. Historical causation also involves What counts as continuity depends on the scale of
large processes, complex causes, unintended conse- time you’re working with. The Soviet Union was con-
quences, and contingencies, as the chart above describes. tinuous throughout most of the twentieth century.
You can begin to develop the skill of determining However, in the time frame of Russia’s history since the
causation by asking yourself, whenever some signifi- formation of Kievan Rus in the ninth century, the
cant change in history is described, what reasons Soviet era looks more like a short-lived exception to
explain the development. If the answer seems simple, tsarist rule.
keep digging, because there’s bound to be a more com- When historians talk about continuity, they’re not
plicated (and longer-term) explanation. implying that a particular pattern applied to everyone
in the world or even in a particular country or region.
EXERCISE:0OFNBKPSDPOUSPWFSTZJO64 Nor are they claiming that absolutely nothing changed
history (and in European and world history as in the pattern they’re describing. For example, agricul-
XFMM
SFHBSEJOHDBVTBUJPOIBTUPEPXJUIXIZUIF tural production has been continuous for thousands of
(SFBU%FQSFTTJPOPGUIFTCFDBNFTPTFWFSF years. But there are exceptions to this broad statement:
BOEMBTUFETPMPOH)PXEPUIFBVUIPSTFYQMBJO on the one hand, some people have continued to be
UIFDBVTFTPGUIF(SFBU%FQSFTTJPOPOQBHFT foragers; on the other hand, methods of farming have
oJO$IBQUFS 8IJDIPGUIFUZQFTPG changed substantially with technology. So the continu-
FYQMBOBUJPOTGSPNUIFCPYBCPWFEPUIFZVTF ity of agriculture is a generalization but not a com-
JOUIFJSFYQMBOBUJPOBCPVUXIZUIJTQBSUJDVMBS pletely unchanging pattern or a pattern that applies to
FDPOPNJDEFQSFTTJPOCFDBNFTPCBEUIBUJUJT everyone on the planet.
TUJMMLOPXOBTUIFi(SFBU%FQSFTTJPOw To work on developing this skill, look for places in
your text where the authors directly indicate that a his-
Patterns of Continuity and Change over Time torical pattern persisted over time and explain why that
Historians are interested in both historical changes and pattern persisted. But even when an author focuses on
persisting patterns, or “continuities.” Change is easier change in history, you can still find continuity by infer-
to see: when one country conquers another one, that ence, since few things ever change completely. When
event often becomes part of the historical record. But the text describes a new development, ask yourself
some things stay relatively the same for long periods of what didn’t change. For example, employing the ideas
xl )*4503*$"-5)*/,*/(
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of the European Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson in As you develop this skill, pay attention to the labels
the Declaration of Independence proclaimed “that all for various periods that are used in the chapter you’re
men are created equal.” But many of the thinkers of the reading. Sometimes chapter titles themselves contain a
early republic used custom and biology to justify limit- period label, which can give you an idea of what the
ing suffrage to white men only. In this way, they contin- authors have decided is the main story for that era.
ued to defend traditional stereotypes about the Chapter 3, for example, is titled “The British Atlantic
inferiority of women and non-Europeans that had World,” and Chapter 25 is titled “Cold War America.”
existed for centuries.
EXERCISE:$IBQUFS
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EXERCISE:-PPLBUUIFBVUIPSTEJTDVTTJPOPG BOEDVMUVSFJOUIFQPTUXBSQFSJPE
JTUJUMFE
i/FP&VSPQFBO$PMPOJFTwPOQBHFToJO i5SJVNQIPGUIF.JEEMF$MBTTw3FBEUIFDIBQUFS
$IBQUFS)PXEJEUIFEJGGFSFOUDPMPOJFTPGUIF JOUSPEVDUJPOBOE#JH*EFBRVFTUJPOPOQBHF
/PSUI"NFSJDBO"UMBOUJDDPBTUTFFLUPSFQMJDBUF 8IBUXPSETEPUIFBVUIPSTVTFUPDPOWFZUIFJS
&VSPQFBOQBUUFSOTPGFDPOPNJDBOETPDJBM KVEHNFOUUIBUUIJTXBTBQFSJPEPGUSJVNQI
PSHBOJ[BUJPO 'SPNPUIFSIJTUPSZDPVSTFTZPVIBWFIBE
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Periodization Periodization refers to the ways that LOPXUIBUUIJTFSBPDDVSSFEJOUIFNJETUPGPUIFS
historians break the past into separate periods of time. QFSJPETUPXIJDIMBCFMTIBWFBMTPCFFOHJWFO
Historians look for major turning points in history — JODMVEJOHUIFi3FE4DBSFwBOEUIFi$PME8BSw
places where the world looked very different before $POTJEFSXIZUIFTFMBCFMTXFSFHJWFOUPUIFJS
some event than it did after — to decide how to break SFTQFDUJWFQFSJPET)PXEPUIFZDPNQMJDBUFUIF
the past into chunks. They then give a label to each JEFBUIBUUIJTXBTBOFSBPGiUSJVNQIw
period to convey the key characteristics and develop-
ments of that era.
Because the past is complex, any attempt to create Comparison and Contextualization
eras and give those eras labels can provoke disagree- People don’t learn things in isolation, but in relation-
ment. For example, the word Renaissance, which means ship. Historians are no different. The third category of
“rebirth,” was first used in the later sixteenth century by Historical Thinking Skills reflects the ways historians
the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari to describe art- make sense of the past by placing particulars in some
ists such as his contemporary Michelangelo whom larger framework. For example, they understand his-
Vasari regarded as geniuses even greater than those of torical events and processes by comparing them to
the ancient world. Over time, the word’s meaning was related events and processes to see how they’re simi-
broadened to include many aspects of life, expanded lar and different. Second, historians recognize that his-
geographically to include developments in many coun- torical evidence, including artifacts, photographs, and
tries, and extended chronologically to include several speeches, can only be adequately understood by know-
centuries. But scholars do not agree about when exactly ing something about their context, that is, the time and
the Renaissance began and when it ended, and they place when they came into existence.
debate whether certain artists and writers should be
considered “Renaissance” figures. Many note that Comparison Comparisons help historians under-
along with significant changes during the Renaissance, stand how a development in the past was similar to or
there were also striking continuities with the medieval different from another development and in this way
period that preceded it. Others have questioned whether determine what was distinctive. For example, some
the word Renaissance should be used at all to describe scholars have concluded that the reform spanning the
an era in which many social groups saw decline rather Progressive and New Deal eras shared key features that
than advance. These debates remind us that all peri- led to the development of a welfare state. Other schol-
odization is done by people after the fact, and it all ars have argued that the New Deal represented a radical
involves value judgments. No Delaware or Shawnee break from the progressive policies of the past. Through
soldier in the Ohio Valley in the mid-eighteenth cen- the tool of comparison we can see how leaders and
tury, for example, knew he was fighting what would ordinary people handled common problems in unique
later be called “The French and Indian War,” or that he ways.
was living in a period of time that would later be As you develop this skill, practice comparing two
referred to as “colonial America.” social justice movements, such as the African American
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and women’s suffrage movements — and also compare information in the colonies. Around the same time, in
the same movement at two different points in time. For 1695 the British government let the Licensing Act
example, how was the women’s suffrage movement of lapse, which had given it the right to censor all printed
the nineteenth century similar to that of the women’s materials, further opening the floodgates for the spread
suffrage movement of the early twentieth century? of books, newspapers, letters, and pamphlets. In 1704,
How was it different? What had happened to lead to the first colonial newspaper was founded. By 1776, the
these differences? thirteen colonies that united in declaring indepen-
dence had thirty-seven newspapers among them. The
EXERCISE:-PPLBUUIFBVUIPSTDPNQBSJTPOPG transportation and print revolution thus allowed revo-
TMBWFSZJOUIF$IFTBQFBLF
4PVUI$BSPMJOB
BOE lutionary ideas to be communicated far more widely
UIF8FTU*OEJFTJOUIFFJHIUFFOUIDFOUVSZJO and quickly than they would have without it.
$IBQUFS)PXXBTUIFJOTUJUVUJPOPGTMBWFSZ
TJNJMBSGSPNQMBDFUPQMBDF 8IZ 8IBULFZ EXERCISE:-PPLBUUIFiLJUDIFOEFCBUFw
GFBUVSFTEPUIFBVUIPSTTBZBSFEJGGFSFOU 8IZ CFUXFFO64WJDFQSFTJEFOU3JDIBSE/JYPOBOE
BSFUIFZEJGGFSFOU 4PWJFUQSFNJFS/JLJUB,ISVTIDIFWPOQBHF
JO$IBQUFS/PUFUIBUJUPDDVSSFEJO
JOB
Contextualization Just as historical events make NPEFMLJUDIFOUIF"NFSJDBOTTFUVQJO.PTDPXBT
more sense when they’re studied alongside similar QBSUPGUIF"NFSJDBO/BUJPOBM&YIJCJUJPO8IBU
events, historians know that any event can only be JNNFEJBUFEFWFMPQNFOUT JODMVEJOHUIFMPDBUJPO
understood in “context.” Context refers to the historical NJHIUIBWFTIBQFEUIFBSHVNFOUTQSFTFOUFECZ
circumstances surrounding a particular event. Histori- UIFUXPMFBEFSTGPSUIFNFSJUTPGUIFJSQPMJUJDBM
ans look for major developments in any era to help TZTUFNT )PXEPUIFCSPBEDPOUFYUPGUIF$PME
determine context. They typically think in terms of two 8BSBOEUIFFWFOCSPBEFSDPOUFYUPG644PWJFU
levels of context: an immediate (or short-term) context SFMBUJPOTJOUIFUXFOUJFUIDFOUVSZIFMQZPV
and a broad (or long-term) context. VOEFSTUBOEUIFEFCBUF
The easiest way to begin thinking about context is
to figure out when a particular event took place or Crafting Historical Arguments from
when a document was created. Then brainstorm the
major developments of the era. Ask yourself, “How Historical Evidence
might these larger events have shaped this event (or This Historical Thinking Skill focuses our attention on
document)?” using evidence to make historical arguments. The word
For example, European Enlightenment ideas — argument reminds us that any attempt to explain the
among them John Locke’s revolutionary idea that polit- past requires interpretation, since our understanding
ical authority was not given by God to monarchs and of the past is limited. Arguing means making a logical —
that the people should have the power to change gov- rather than an emotional — case for your interpreta-
ernment policies, or even their form of government — tion of a particular historical question or controversy.
had been carried over to the Americas by European To be convincing, your interpretation has to present
colonists. These ideas added a secular dimension to supporting evidence. This evidence consists of infor-
colonial cultural life, but it wouldn’t be until the Revo- mation you have gathered from primary sources,
lutionary era that these ideas would be embraced by which are materials produced during the period being
American intellectuals such as John Adams, James studied, as well as from existing historical studies,
Madison, and Thomas Jefferson in their formulation of which are called secondary sources.
republican political theory.
To understand why these ideas had such dramatic Historical Argumentation Historians make argu-
effects, you need to consider the larger context. That ments about what life was like in the past, how or why
context, as Chapter 4 indicates, includes both the things changed, and why those changes matter. Their
immediate context of the political and social situation arguments are informed by their deep knowledge
in the colonies in the eighteenth century and the long- about the subject and careful reading of primary and
term context of the print revolution. The context some- secondary sources. But because evidence from the past
times includes things that might at first seem unrelated. is often incomplete or difficult to understand, histori-
In this case, after 1700 improved transportation net- ans inevitably make inferences to fill the gaps in their
works facilitated the spread of people, goods, and knowledge. Not all historians make the same inferences,
xlii )*4503*$"-5)*/,*/(
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so there are often a variety of interpretations about the last few decades, however, historians have increas-
most historical events. ingly moved beyond relying exclusively on written pri-
For example, all scholars agree that the growth of mary sources by turning to visual sources — paintings,
industry first in England and then in America and else- photographs, architecture, artifacts, etc. — and evidence
where in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a from other fields of knowledge. They even use evidence
major historical development. It was so important, in contained within the human body, such as DNA. For
fact, that we call it a revolution: the Industrial Revolu- example, using scientific and medical information, his-
tion. But historians disagree about the most significant torians have come to see the role that disease has played
causes for the way industry developed. Some highlight in history, such as the Black Death, which killed about
the coal deposits located near English rivers, which one-third of the European population over just a few
provided a source of power far greater than human or years in the middle of the fourteenth century. Since no
animal power. Others point to a culture of innovation historian can be an expert in every field, historians
that developed in England, in which artisans and increasingly make use of the secondary sources pro-
inventors read scientific works and looked for solu- duced by scholars in other fields, including archaeol-
tions to practical problems. Still others emphasize the ogy, art history, biology, and chemistry.
role of England’s overseas colonies, which provided In assessing primary sources, you need to begin
raw materials and markets for manufactured products. with a careful examination of the source itself. But
To develop this Historical Thinking Skill, ask your- understanding evidence requires more. Primary sources
self how historians think they know what they know are creations from a particular time and place, so you
about a particular event. What evidence do they pro- also have to consider the information that you know or
vide? Does their language suggest hesitancy or uncer- can find out about the broader conditions in which the
tainty about their interpretation? Do they offer source was created — that is, the context of the source.
alternative explanations? Primary sources are created by a specific individual
or group, called the maker, or in the case of written
EXERCISE:0OQBHFPG$IBQUFSPGUIJTUFYU
sources, the author. Even if they are eyewitnesses,
IPXEPUIFBVUIPSTFYQMBJOUIFEFDMJOFPGUIF people construct different accounts of the same event,
.JTTJTTJQQJBOTFUUMFNFOUPG$BIPLJB 8IBU which are shaped by their ideas, attitudes, and beliefs —
JOGFSFODFTEPUIFZNBLF what is often termed their perspective or point of view.
Primary sources are also often created for someone
Appropriate Use of Relevant Historical Evidence else, so determining the purpose and intended audi-
Historians make arguments about the past based on ence of a source is essential to your understanding of it.
primary-source evidence. As mentioned earlier, a pri-
mary source is something produced in the era under EXERCISE:5BLFBMPPLBUUIF"NFSJDBO7PJDFT
investigation. In contrast, a secondary source, also GFBUVSFJO$IBQUFS
i5IF%FCBUFPWFS'SFF
called a secondary interpretation or a secondary work, BOE4MBWF-BCPS
wPOQBHF5IFOSFWJFXUIF
is something about the era under investigation made IFBEOPUFTBOEUIFDIBQUFSOBSSBUJWFUPEFUFS
after the fact. It is usually the result of scholarly research NJOFUIFDPOUFYUGPSUIFTFEPDVNFOUT
of primary sources, or a distillation of such research.
The narrative sections of this textbook, for example, are
secondary sources, as are most published works of his- Historical Interpretation and Synthesis
tory, biographies, and encyclopedias. Sometimes a You first learned about how historians make argu-
source can be both primary and secondary. Former ments; now you’ll practice evaluating those arguments
British prime minister Winston Churchill’s history of and making your own. Since history requires making
World War II is a primary source, because he was inferences about the past, it’s inevitable that scholars
directly involved in some of the events he describes, will come to different conclusions. It can be very help-
and also a secondary source, because he uses a variety ful, then, to study different historical interpretations
of historical sources to tell the story of events during about a particular event or movement over time, as
the war in which he was not directly involved. interpretations often change. The final skill compo-
Traditionally, primary sources have consisted over- nent, synthesis, is also related to argumentation. It is
whelmingly of written sources. In fact, some historians the culminating skill because it requires you to inte-
referred to any time before writing as “pre-historic.” In grate all the other skills in creating your own argument.
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Interpretation Historians interpret both primary arguments you anticipated. If you don’t find such evi-
and secondary sources, evaluating points of view and dence, discard your hunch.
considering context to create their own interpretations.
Through analyzing different historical interpretations, Synthesis Synthesis is a culminating skill that
you will see how historical interpretations change over reflects your ability to make persuasive arguments of
time. We have already established that formulating a your own from evidence. It draws on all of the other
historical argument requires making inferences from Historical Thinking Skills — historical argumentation,
evidence. The background of a particular historian appropriate use of relevant historical evidence, causa-
(age, gender, nationality, political philosophy, time of tion, continuity and change, periodization, compari-
writing, etc.) often shapes the way he or she under- son, contextualization, and interpretation — along with
stands or interprets the past. In many cases, knowing two other elements. First, you may need to draw on
something about the context of a historian can help evidence outside the field of history. This might come
you understand his or her argument better — in the from the social sciences, such as archaeology, anthro-
same way that understanding the context of the author pology, economics, or sociology; it might come from
of a primary source helps you understand the pri- the humanities, such as art history or literary studies;
mary source. Sometimes this information can help or it might even come from the natural sciences, such
you identify the prejudices or limitations of a particu- as biology or chemistry. The other element is the ability
lar interpretation. to apply insights from historical evidence to a new set-
For example, in the early 1960s the British historian ting. This is a creative form of comparison. You might
Hugh Trevor-Roper claimed that Africa had no history link some moment in the past to a more recent issue,
until Europeans took over the continent, an argument for example, the African civil rights movement of the
that built on the ideas of many earlier European think- 1960s and 1970s to Reconstruction, or compare how
ers, especially those of the nineteenth-century German the United States has tended to underestimate the
philosopher Georg Hegel. Subsequent scholarship has strength of nationalism in other people, as evidenced
shown this conclusion to be faulty, and we can assume by the Iraq and Vietnam wars. In so doing, you will be
that several aspects of Trevor-Roper’s situation influ- using the past to shed light on the present. You will
enced his point of view. For one, he was a historian of have taken a major step in historical thinking, as mak-
early modern and modern Europe who thought, as did ing connections is a key part of what historians do.
many historians of his generation, that history could
only be based on written documents. Because there
were fewer of these for Africa before colonization than
for Europe at the same time, he jumped to the con- Getting the Most Out
clusion that Africa had no history. Historians since
Trevor-Roper have broadened the source base that
of Reading History
they use in their research to incorporate many other Active reading means reading for meaning. The big
types of sources, and they have also demonstrated that challenges of reading are length and detail. If you
there are, in fact, many written documents relating understand the “big picture,” you can read much more
to Africa that Trevor-Roper did not know about or quickly and effectively, because you can “see the forest
chose to ignore with his comment. His choice to for the trees.” That is, you can see the main ideas and
ignore these may have been influenced by the fact that recognize how specific information is provided to illus-
he was a citizen of an imperial nation writing during trate those big ideas. The three stages of reading
decolonization. described below will help you understand the “big pic-
Be careful when analyzing historical interpreta- ture” when reading this text and others.
tions. You can’t simply assume that because a scholar
has x background he or she will make y argument.
There are far too many exceptions for such a rule. Before Reading (Prereading)
Instead, begin by finding out what you can about a When approaching a text such as this one, it is helpful
scholar’s background and then make a hunch about to spend a few minutes prereading the material of a
how his or her background might shape his or her chapter. During this stage, you are simply getting pre-
views. Then, as you read the arguments carefully, look pared for what you will be reading. This involves sev-
for evidence that the author actually makes the kinds of eral steps. First, determine the chronology and major
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theme(s) by looking at the chapter title and dates. The TVCIFBEJOHT :PVNJHIUOPUBMXBZTSFDPHOJ[F
title often gives you a clue as to what the authors see as BOJOEJWJEVBMOBNFEJOBTVCIFBEJOH
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the main point, theme, or development of that chapter. BMXBZTDPVOUPOIJTPSIFSIJTUPSJDBMJNQPSUBODF
Second, read the chapter headings and any focus ques- 8IBUDPNNPEJUJFTBSFNFOUJPOFEJOTVCIFBEJOHT
tions, such as the Identify the Big Idea questions in this PSTIPXOJOJMMVTUSBUJPOT
book, at the beginning of the chapter. The headings
and questions provide a sense of the major topics Remember, there’s no need to write this down. The
addressed in the chapter, and the questions may also point right now is just to get a clear idea of the “big
point toward the Historical Thinking Skills that are picture” developments covered in the chapter. You
especially emphasized in the chapter. Third, page haven’t read the chapter yet — and you haven’t taken a
through the chapter, scanning the titles of the subsec- single note. But by spending 5 to10 minutes prereading
tions and looking at the maps, timelines, illustrations, the chapter, you already have a good idea of what the
and primary sources. This will provide you with infor- chapter’s all about. You have recognized what parts of
mation about the major events, individuals, compari- the story you may have heard about before, and what
sons, and connections discussed in the chapter. parts are completely new. By taking this time, you’ll be
able to read with a clear focus, saving yourself a lot
EXERCISE:-FUTQSBDUJDFCZQSFSFBEJOH$IBQ of time later on. Now that you have a good idea of
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ow4DBOUIF the “big picture,” you’re ready to begin actually reading
DIBQUFSBOEBOTXFSUIFGPMMPXJOHRVFTUJPOT the text.
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of relevant historical evidence, including evidence gath- When a longer passage throws you off, usually
ered by scholars in other fields, such as archaeologists clearing up difficult vocabulary will help make the pas-
and anthropologists who study the remains of early sage clearer. If it doesn’t, simply reread the sentence a
native peoples; present a periodization of the thousands few times (slowly!). If you’re still unclear, back up —
of years before European contact, when the peoples of usually to the beginning of the paragraph — and try
the Western Hemisphere were largely isolated from the again. The most common way skilled readers get clari-
rest of the world; compare the trade networks and reli- fication is simply by rereading.
gious practices of Native American groups; contextu-
alize the different ways that societies developed within Summarizing A summary is a brief review of the
the processes of climate and geography; and develop an “big picture” of a particular section or chapter. After
interpretation about the development of diverse groups reading, briefly explain what each section is about in
across the Americas that synthesizes information from one sentence — being sure your summary considers all
different sources and fields of inquiry. five of the “reporter questions” from the Questioning
Asking questions is thus an essential way to develop section above. If you are summarizing a section, you
Historical Thinking Skills. For every section you read, might think of this as answering the main question
you might begin with the very basic “reporter ques- posed in the section. For example, a summary of the
tions”: Who? What? Where? When? Why? first section in Chapter 1, “How did landscape, climate,
and resources influence the development of Native
1. Who is the section about? History texts are almost
American societies?” might be: Native Americans
always about people. Is the focus an individual? A
(who) in present-day Mexico and Peru (where) began
social group? A political entity?
raising domesticated crops (what) around 6000 b.c.
2. What does the section say about this person or
(when), and as agriculture spread northward across
group? Texts usually describe some major event or
much of North America, agricultural surpluses led to
pattern. Did they do something important? Did
population growth and facilitated the growth of diverse
something happen to them?
urban societies (why).
3. Where did the subject being described take place?
Physical location is often crucial in history. Does
Predicting Based on your reading of an entire sec-
this location help make sense of the subject in some
tion or chapter, what do you think will come next in
way?
the text? How do you know? You may think predicting
4. When did the events take place? Like physical loca-
what’s coming next is a waste of time, but it’s a really
tion, chronology forms part of the historical con-
good test of how well you understand the flow of the
text that makes events understandable. Does the
text. If you’re in a car with your family going to visit
text describe something unfolding over a very short
your grandmother, you probably know the route to get
period — or a longer one? Are there crucial events
there. If your mother takes an unanticipated turn, it
that came before that make the description under-
alerts you that something is different from what you
standable?
were expecting — and prompts you to ask why. So if
5. Why did the event or pattern being described take
your prediction based on reading is wildly off, it may
place — and why does it matter? Whether talking
alert you to the fact that your previous idea of the “big
about a dramatic development or a continuity that
picture” of the section was off for some reason. You
endured for a long period of time, historians always
may need to back up and reread a section, or at least
attempt to understand what led to it. What reasons
move forward more alert to where the author is going.
does the text provide for the event or pattern? How
Again using the first section of Chapter 1 as an example,
is the significance of the development explained?
what do you imagine will happen to native peoples
after European contact?
Clarifying As you read, ask yourself if there are any
words you don’t understand. Some of these will be Note-Taking Of course, simply reading the text is
included as key terms defined in the margins, but not not sufficient. You’ll never remember everything that’s
all will. When it comes to vocabulary, use good judg- important unless you take notes. Students experience
ment. Is the word crucial for understanding the pas- many pitfalls when taking notes. You should only write
sage? If not, read right past it, as the meaning may notes after you understand what you have read. Actively
become clearer as you read further in the text. If it is a question, clarify, summarize, and predict in your head
crucial word, you may need to look it up in a dictionary. (or out loud) as you read each chapter, and then go
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back through the subsections and take brief notes rep- entire chapter using no more than fifty words that cap-
resenting the key ideas of that section. tures the key point of each section of the chapter as well
Brief is generally better — don’t wear yourself out in as the chapter as a whole.
the notes themselves. Find some consistent abbrevia-
tions for frequent words, and use symbols: an up arrow EXERCISE:8SJUFBNBTUFSTVNNBSZPG$IBQUFS
to indicate growth, a flat arrow to indicate cause/effect, OPX
an “=” to indicate a definition, and so on. Don’t write
everything; ask yourself if a particular point is a main
idea or just an example. If you own your textbook,
make annotations in the margins. If not, get a stack of
Writing About History
sticky notes and place them in the margins for your This skills primer began by introducing you to the pat-
comments. terns of thinking you need to really understand history.
The next section pointed out ways to be smart about
EXERCISE:-FUTQSBDUJDFUIFTFGPVSTLJMMTXJUIUIF reading your textbook. This third and final section
TFDUJPODBMMFEi4JYUFFOUI$FOUVSZ*ODVSTJPOTwPO turns to the writing skills you need to develop for AP
QBHFToJO$IBQUFS
i$PMMJEJOH8PSMET
history courses and exams. Our focus shifts away from
ow you receiving input toward you providing output: shar-
ing your understanding of Historical Thinking Skills
t Questioning:8IBUXFSFUIFTJYUFFOUI
through writing.
DFOUVSZJODVSTJPOT 8IPNEJEUIFZBGGFDU
There are different types of essays on AP history
8IFSFEJEUIFZIBQQFO 8IFOEJEUIFZ
exams, but two essential skills apply to all of the essays
IBQQFO 8IZBOEIPXEJEUIFZIBQQFO
you’ll encounter. First, to successfully demonstrate
)PXEJEQFPQMFSFTQPOE 8IBUXFSFUIFJS
what you know, you have to answer the question that
FGGFDUTBOEDPOTFRVFODFT
has been asked. Sounds simple, but many students get
t Clarifying:*NQPSUBOUXPSETMJLFreconquista in trouble on the exam by failing to address the ques-
BSFEFmOFEJOUIFUFYUJUTFMG
CVUBSFUIFSF tion in front of them, which is called the “prompt.”
BOZXPSETUIBUZPVEPOPUVOEFSTUBOE *G Every prompt contains three elements, and you
UIFSFXFSFBOZTFOUFODFTZPVEJEOUVOEFS need to pay attention to all of them as you plan your
TUBOE
EJEUIFZCFDPNFDMFBSFSBTZPVSFSFBE response. First, each prompt deals with a subject,
UIFNPSBTZPVSFBEPOJOUIFUFYU expressed in two important types of nouns. A proper
noun refers to a specific historical entity — Puritanism,
t Summarizing:#SJFnZFYQMBJOXIBUUIJT
the Confederacy, the New Deal. A common noun typi-
TFDUJPOJTBCPVUJOPOFTFOUFODF
cally refers to a historical concept: a key historical idea
t Predicting:#BTFEPOUIFTFDUJPOZPVWF (republicanism, liberalism) or process (industrializa-
KVTUSFBE
XIBUEPZPVUIJOLXJMMDPNFOFYU tion, western expansion). Sometimes this process is
JOUIFUFYU )PXEPZPVLOPX limited in time, but often it is a pattern that occurs over
a relatively long period. Your answer must deal with all
Now that you know what this section is about, what of the subjects of the prompt, not just some of them.
brief comments are worth writing down in your notes? Second, the prompt specifies a periodization or date
range expressed in years. Obviously, you need to be
sure your response addresses this era. One of the most
After Reading common problems in student essays is providing his-
Reflecting on what you’ve read places information torical information from the wrong era. Third, and
you’ve just learned into long-term memory. This most importantly, the prompt contains a task expressed
involves doing the same kind of summarizing you’ve as its main verb: compare, describe, explain, analyze,
done section by section, but now for the entire chapter. and so forth. Pay attention to this task verb, as these
In essence, it is a summary of your summaries. While it tasks are not the same, and your answer must do what
might seem enough to summarize the chapter verbally, the prompt asks you to do.
writing down key ideas helps place them into long- It doesn’t matter how strong your content knowl-
term memory. Read through the notes that you’ve edge and historical skills are if you can’t communicate
taken for the chapter, particularly the summary of each clearly what you know. Every essay needs to have a spe-
section. Then try to write a master summary of the cific, focused thesis in the introductory paragraph that
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makes an argument addressing the prompt. Your thesis To do well on a DBQ, you need to go beyond the
should be as brief as possible while still addressing the content of the documents in order to set the context,
complexity of the topic. If your thesis explicitly make a clear argument, and analyze the documents
responds to each of the three prompt elements clearly properly. Using documents as evidence requires the
and accurately — if it includes the subjects, the time sophisticated analysis skills we discussed in the section
period, and the task — you will have a strong thesis. “Appropriate Use of Relevant Historical Evidence.”
And you’ll be on your way to a persuasive essay. That means that you have to consider the perspective
Every essay needs to be organized into distinct or point of view of the documents. Every primary
paragraphs. The number of paragraphs depends on the source — textual, visual, or statistical — was created for
complexity of the prompt. Typically, however, two body a specific purpose. Even if the author is an eyewitness
paragraphs won’t be sufficient to address the topic or participant, people construct different accounts of
thoroughly. What’s most important is that you clearly the same event, which are shaped by their perspective.
announce the point you’re going to make in each para- That doesn’t necessarily mean the author intentionally
graph through a topic sentence that effectively covers wrote it to mislead or provide only part of the story, but
the subject of the paragraph. Any content in the para- every document is limited and imperfect in the infor-
graph that doesn’t support the topic sentence doesn’t mation it provides.
belong there. As with all essay questions, be sure your introduc-
Finally, every essay requires you to make use of evi- tory paragraph includes a clear and focused thesis
dence to support your claims. The type of evidence also statement that encapsulates your argument. Use the
differs depending on the type of essay. The document- “reporter questions” — Who? What? When? Where?
based question (DBQ) requires you to reference the Why? — to interrogate each document, and then con-
documents included with the question, while the other sider the limitations of each document before writing
essays require you to draw on information that you your DBQ. Then be sure to incorporate these insights
know. In every case, however, you need to both discuss about document limitations into the essay itself to make
relevant historical information you’ve learned during your essay more analytical — and therefore stronger.
the course and then explain how that information sup- Consider the photo of men from the Kansas Volun-
ports your claim. teer Infantry during the Civil War on page 454 in
While many of these writing suggestions would apply Chapter 14. Students tend to view a document like that
equally to essays in other academic subjects, the essay as a straightforward factual record. After all, we often
types on AP history exams are all geared to the con- hear that “pictures don’t lie.” But the picture was taken
cerns of historians. Each type of essay requires the use for a particular purpose by someone who decided to
of the Historical Thinking Skills discussed earlier, often arrange the shot so that the soldiers would appear in
in combination with one another. For example, every uniform posed with their rifles. So it’s worth asking
essay type requires you to discuss the historical context why the photographer took the picture in this way.
of the subject you’re writing about and to appropriately What purpose might this picture serve? What message
use relevant evidence to develop an interpretation and might it convey to someone who saw it at the time it
argument about the past. Every essay requires you to go was taken? How might it misrepresent — or represent
beyond simply listing factual information to analyze in a limited way — the realities of the soldier experience?
that information. In fact, “analyze” is commonly used Purposes can be stated explicitly by the maker of a
as a question prompt in all types of essays. source, or they can be determined later by those ana-
lyzing the source, including you as you write your
answer to a DBQ. Sometimes the purposes given by the
Document-Based Questions maker and by later historians are different from one
The document-based question, or DBQ, is a defining another. For example, during the Renaissance, Euro-
feature of all AP history exams. Of all the essays, this pean city governments issued laws limiting what
one tends to make students the most anxious. But people could spend on clothing or family celebrations
much of this anxiety is misplaced. Once you under- such as weddings. The governments stated that the
stand the DBQ, you will feel less worried about it — purpose of these laws was to restrict wasteful spending,
and may even come to find it your favorite essay type. but later historians studying these laws have deter-
Unlike the other essays, for which you have to call on mined that their purpose was also to sharpen distinc-
your memory to provide all the evidence, the documents tions between social classes. For many of the documents
in the DBQ form the basic evidence you need to use. you will be using to answer a DBQ, you will need to
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make your best judgment about the purpose, just as especially that in the section “The Problem of the West”
historians do. on pages 163–166, to provide broader context for your
You also need to corroborate your documents. That answer.
means bringing the documents into “conversation”
with each other. Since the documents in a DBQ don’t
directly refer to each other, you have to use your intu- Long-Essay Questions
ition to see connections. This relates to a distinctive Along with the DBQ, AP history exams contain other
task about the DBQ: you need to organize the evidence essay questions, called “thematic essays,” “free response
from the documents into several categories or groups — questions,” or simply “long essays.” This type of essay
usually at least three. The categories are sometimes question tests your ability to use information that you
stated or implied in the prompt, but you’ll often have already know to answer a specific question that draws
to call on your knowledge of history and the content on one or more Historical Thinking Skills. Like the
of the documents themselves to determine what cate- DBQ, essay questions have different task verbs that
gories (and how many) make sense. Please note that correspond to different Historical Thinking Skills.
because you can use the same document multiple Three of the most common of these involve change and
times, you often have flexibility in coming up with cat- continuity, causation, and comparison.
egories. You might choose to group the documents
according to geography, or the social status of their Change and Continuity Questions For questions
authors, or the type of document, or what they say that focus on change over time, you will have to iden-
about the issue discussed in the question, or according tify major changes and explain the significance of those
to any number of other lines of connection. changes — that is, why the changes matter — for the
In all of the American Voices and Thinking Like a topic described in the prompt. You will also have to
Historian features in this book, the authors have analyze why something changed. If the question prompt
included multiple primary sources that address the asks about both change and continuity, your thesis
same or related topics, along with questions that allow statement and the essay itself must clearly address both
you to bring the documents in conversation with each elements. A strong argument must do more than sim-
other just as you will for a DBQ. For example, in Chap- ply identify some continuities and changes. It has to
ter 5, the feature Thinking Like a Historian, “Beyond analyze why both the continuities and changes existed
the Proclamation Line” includes six brief primary and why they mattered. (The Making Connections ques-
sources of the types that you might encounter on a tions that appear at the end of each chapter often ask
DBQ that speak to life in “Indian country” between you to analyze continuity and change over time, so they
1763 and 1776. Voices range from the crown’s superin- are good practice for this type of essay.) It’s a good idea
tendent for Indian affairs in the northern colonies, to a to weigh the relative value of continuities and changes.
Baptist minister’s description of the trading communi- In other words, do you perceive continuities to have
ties of the Ohio Valley, to a list of grievances by a Dela- been more powerful than changes on the topic addressed
ware headman. Comparison is one of the Historical in the prompt, or vice versa? Why do you think so?
Thinking Skills identified for AP history exams, and it In terms of structure, avoid the temptation to orga-
is often a task word in essay questions, so use the docu- nize your essay into two large paragraphs, one for conti-
ment features and questions in this book to practice nuities and one for changes. Instead, identify important
the skills needed for the DBQ. topics or categories of comparison — governmental
Finally, you have to draw on your outside knowl- structure, immigration patterns, or gender relations —
edge. To do well, you need to position the DBQ doc- and use those topics as the body paragraphs. Then, in
uments within the broader context of the period, each body paragraph, address both continuities and
drawing on what you’ve learned from your textbook, changes, being clear to signal your transition from one
from your teacher, and from any outside reading or to the other.
research that you’ve done. Feel free to mention other In the same way that identifying change is an easier
sources that you may have encountered previously, Historical Thinking Skill than identifying continuity,
especially if they offer a perspective that is missing or if change is also easier to write about than continuity.
the addition of outside sources helps to support your U.S. history narratives devote a lot of time to, say,
argument. In the “Beyond the Proclamation Line” fea- how American Christianity changed as a result of the
ture, for example, if these were the sources provided for Great Awakening. So if you’re writing an essay about
a DBQ, you would use the information in the textbook, eighteenth-century religion, that information will
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come to mind more quickly. After brief reflection, you with a good way to structure your answer. Take a
however, you’ll realize that certain aspects of American question about the causes of Columbus’s voyages of
Christianity did not change with the Great Awakening. exploration, for example. After your thesis statement
Therefore, along with changes, you will want to iden- that directly addresses the prompt of the question, you
tify several major continuities, such as Martin Luther’s could begin with large-scale processes that developed
belief in the priesthood of all Christians or the influ- over centuries. These might include trading networks
ence of clergy. Then you will need to discuss why these through which Europeans became familiar with the
were significant and suggest some reasons why they products of Asia and Africa, such as spices, silk, and
did not change. ivory; conflicts between Christianity and Islam, which
Question prompts about change and continuity had especially shaped Spanish culture in the many
may not always be phrased in exactly those words. centuries when Christians fought Muslims for control
Often they might ask you to assess the impact of some- of the Iberian peninsula; and improvements in ship
thing (or someone) on something else, analyze the design and navigational instruments. Then you could
influence of something on something else, or analyze move to complex causes that were more immediate:
the extent to which something shaped something else. the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, which disrupted
Thinking a bit about such questions, you can recognize old trade routes and lessened the direct access of West-
that they are actually about change and continuity. To ern Europeans to exotic luxuries; the aims of the Span-
assess the impact or influence of A on B, you will need ish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella to compete with
to decide what changed in B as a result of A. To write a Portugal in the race for direct access to spices and to
good essay about this, you will also need to discuss continue the expansion of Christianity; the invention
what did not change, and why — in other words, conti- of the printing press, which allowed work by earlier
nuities. For example, a question might ask you to assess geographers and travelers to be cheap and accessible to
the impact of World War I on U.S. culture and society ship captains and merchants; and Columbus’s personal
in the 1920s and 1930s. You can see that this question ambition, desire for glory, and religious fervor.
is about change and continuity: what changed as a If the question prompt is about consequences as well
result of the war, and what did not change. As in the as causes, you can continue using the chart to discuss
example of the Great Awakening, it is often easier to the many consequences of Columbus’s voyages. Among
remember what changed than to recall what stayed the these were unintended consequences, which begin with
same, but a strong essay will consider both. A strong one that seems almost too obvious: Columbus’s voy-
essay might also go beyond the direct impact of World ages made Europeans aware that there were large land-
War I to include broader cultural changes that relate masses in the world other than the ones they already
more indirectly to the war. If you do this, however, be knew about. (This is what we mean by “discovering” —
sure to relate everything you include to the prompt, becoming aware of something that is already there.)
and do not use the question as an opportunity for a As you probably know, at first Columbus did not rec-
“data dump” of everything you can think of about the ognize what he had discovered, and even after he did,
1920s and 1930s. Throwing in a lot of extraneous infor- he spent most of his efforts trying to get around these
mation to pad your answer will not improve it. new lands to reach Asia, his intended destination.
Although Columbus claimed the lands that he explored
Causation Questions Questions about change, or for Spain, he (and the Spanish monarchs who backed
about impact or influence, are also about causation, for him) was primarily looking for trade connections, not
any good answer will go beyond what happened to lands to conquer. So you might even choose to argue
why. Asking why is at the heart of what historians — that colonization was an unintended consequence.
including the AP history text makers — mean by analy- Beyond this are a range of changes that were truly
sis. A quick way to see whether you have provided unintended, such as the widespread exchange of ani-
analysis in your answer is to see whether it includes the mals, plants, human populations, and diseases across
word because. There are many other ways to analyze, the Atlantic in both directions, later called the “Colum-
but most sentences containing the word because at bian Exchange.”
least attempt to analyze something. Again depending on the exact question prompt,
Some question prompts might also address causa- you might also want to discuss contingency, the fact
tion directly, asking you to explain the reasons for that things might have turned out differently. One of
something or analyze the causes for something. The the most common problems in analyzing cause and
historical causation chart on page xxxix will provide effect in the past is that we know the outcome, or at
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least the outcome up to now. It is thus very tempting to were those rights extended to men of African descent.
view developments teleologically, that is, as leading Just as with change and continuity, it’s often worth-
inevitably to the outcome that we know happened. while to indicate whether you think similarities are
Immediately after a game is over, for example, com- more significant than differences, or vice versa, and why.
mentators often explain why the team that won was You need to be careful about the structure of this
destined to win, although if the other team had won, essay. Many students fall into the trap of simply describ-
they would have a ready explanation for that as well. ing topic 1 in a body paragraph and topic 2 in a sepa-
Immediately after an election, the loser’s strategy is rate body paragraph. They assume that readers will
analyzed as faulty and misguided, although if the be able to recognize the similarities and differences
results had been different, the same strategy would between the two topics on their own. But you’ll never
have been praised as brilliant. In this example, all large- earn a high score that way.
scale processes and long- and short-term causes seem After your introductory paragraph and thesis state-
to lead to Columbus. It is easy to imagine the story ment, always begin each body paragraph with a topic
turning out differently, however. An Aztec conquest of sentence that introduces the category or topic you want
Europe would not have been a possibility, but Colum- to compare. Your comparisons need to be explicit and
bus’s ships could have easily sunk on the first voyage. concrete. Be sure to use clear signal words that iden-
Or Ferdinand and Isabella could have said no. Or John tify that you are shifting from similarity to difference
Cabot — like Columbus, an Italian trying to get back- (“Despite these similarities during times of financial
ing for voyages from a Western European monarch — crisis, the two presidents differed dramatically.”) In the
could have moved to England slightly earlier than he contrast portion of your essay, be clear about the par-
did and convinced Henry VII of England to support ticular difference, making use of contrast words such as
him in 1490 instead of 1496. Not every question about conversely, unlike, and however to signal your point to
causation will lend itself to thinking about possible the reader.
alternate scenarios so easily, but in every one there are In brainstorming similarities, try to step back and
some lines of causation that are coincidental. think in more abstract conceptual terms so you don’t
miss deep similarities that seem different on the sur-
Comparison Questions Another Historical Think- face. For example, students sometimes say that a king is
ing Skill often involved in essay questions is compari- different from an emperor, because they focus on the
son, with questions that might be phrased “compare different titles. But both are hereditary monarchs typi-
and contrast . . .” or “analyze similarities and differ- cally viewed as having divine authority to rule. That
ences . . .” Your thesis statement should focus on major makes them very similar in deep ways, despite the dif-
similarities and differences, but it cannot simply be ferent labels. They are much more similar to each other
“there were similarities and differences in A and B.” than they are to, say, a democracy or a communist
Instead it must include some information about how A regime.
and B were similar or different. When you place two Students sometimes wonder whether the first body
presidents, two ways of thinking, or two revolutions paragraph should focus on similarities or differences.
side by side, what do you notice? How are they similar? One approach is to deal with the less significant topic
How are they different? One good way to structure the first, get it out of the way, and then move on to the
thesis for a comparative question is: Although A and B more significant topic. But that is really a matter of
were different in C, they were similar in D. taste. What is important is that you provide a clear
Once you move beyond the most basic level of transition when you move from the compare to the
identifying broad similarities and differences, you need contrast portion of your essay (or vice versa): “These
to be more precise. You should begin by teasing out similarities [that you’ve just discussed], however, were
both categories in more detail, providing specific evi- much less crucial than differences in x, y, and z.” If this
dence to support your broad generalizations. For sounds like a repeat of your thesis statement, that’s
example, in broad terms the American, French, and because it is. In the body of your essay, you want to
Haitian revolutions all included demands for liberty echo the road map, your thesis, to help your reader
and equality, and all of them significantly expanded know that you are now making the transition that your
citizenship rights. In all three these rights were limited introductory paragraph said you would be making.
to men, another similarity among them. But only in You might be thinking that the suggestions here
the Haitian Revolution, when a massive revolt ended about answering comparative questions sound similar
slavery and won Haiti’s independence from France, to those about answering change-over-time questions,
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and you would be absolutely right. Embedded (and not Many students feel anxious about having to write
very deeply) in change-over-time questions are com- the AP history essays. But once you become familiar
parisons, for the only way that you can identify some- with the elements of each prompt and know how to
thing as a change or continuity, or assess the impact of address them effectively, you’ll realize that there’s no
something on something else, is to compare them. To reason to be stressed. In fact, you should feel confident
transform these comparisons into analysis, you will as you approach the writing portion of the test. Unlike
need to provide relevant historical evidence, contextu- the multiple-choice portion of the AP exam, the essay
alize the developments you are discussing, and evalu- section gives you a lot of freedom to demonstrate what
ate causes and effects. As we have said all along, all of you know in an open-ended way. And if you’ve been
the Historical Thinking Skills are related, which is why thinking historically, reading the text with that lens,
the final thinking skill is synthesis: “the ability to arrive and sharing your ideas in class, you may begin to look
at meaningful and persuasive understandings of the past forward to an opportunity to show just how developed
by applying all of the other Historical Thinking Skills.”* your Historical Thinking Skills are.
*http://advancesinap.collegeboard.org/historical-thinking
AMERICA’S
HISTORY
1
Transformations
of North America
1450–1700
P A R T
CHAPTER 1 In 1450, North America, Europe, and Africa were each home to complex
Colliding Worlds, societies with their own distinctive cultures. But their histories were
1450–1600
about to collide, bringing vast changes to all three continents. European
CHAPTER 2 voyagers sailing in the wake of Christopher Columbus set in motion one
American Experiments, of the most momentous developments in world history: sustained contact
1518–1700
among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in dozens of distinct
colonial settings. Before the arrival of Europeans, a wide range of com-
plex Native American societies claimed the continent as their own.
Although colonization brought profound change, it did not erase what
had come before because Native American societies interacted with colo-
nizers from the beginning. They shaped colonial enterprise in important
ways, enabling some forms of colonization while preventing others.
Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans were surprisingly similar
in many ways, though the differences among them were important as
well. Their distinctive ideas about gods and the spirit world informed
their political systems and animated their approaches to trade and
warfare. Whether they met in peace or war — or whether peaceful inter-
actions quickly turned violent — Native Americans, Europeans, and
Africans viewed one another through lenses that were shaped by these
ideas.
In Part 1, we compare Native American, European, and African soci-
eties on the eve of colonization and then explore how Europeans experi-
mented with various models of colonization in the first two centuries of
sustained transatlantic contacts. The story in Chapters 1 and 2 addresses
three main developments that are central to this period:
2
Native American Diversity Colonial Settlement and the
and Complexity Columbian Exchange
Popular culture can lead us to think of Native American European colonization triggered a series of sweeping
societies as being substantially the same everywhere in changes that historians have labeled the “Columbian
North America: they were organized into tribes, with Exchange.” At the same time that people crossed the
few material possessions and primitive beliefs and Atlantic in large numbers, so too did plants, animals,
cultures, and reliant mostly on hunting for their and germs. Old World grains like wheat and barley
subsistence. This impression distorts a much more were planted in the Americas for the first time, and
complicated picture. Native American political orga- weeds like dandelions were carried across the ocean
nization ran the gamut from vast, complex imperial as well. Potatoes, maize (corn), and tomatoes, among
states to kin-based bands of hunters and gatherers. other foods, crossed the Atlantic in the other direction
Patterns of political organization varied widely, and and transformed dietary practices in Asia as well as
the familiar label of tribe does more to obscure than Europe. Native Americans domesticated very few
to clarify their workings. Native Americans’ economic animals; the Columbian Exchange introduced horses,
and social systems were adapted to the ecosystems pigs, cattle, and a variety of other creatures to the
they inhabited. Many were extremely productive American landscape. Germs also made the voyage,
farmers, some hunted bison and deer, while others especially the deadly pathogens that had so disor-
were expert salmon fishermen who plied coastal dered life in Europe in the centuries prior to
waters in large oceangoing boats. Native American colonization. Smallpox, influenza, and bubonic
religions and cultures also varied widely, though they plague, among others, took an enormous toll
shared some broad characteristics. on Native American populations. Inanimate materi-
These variations in Native American societies shaped als made the voyage as well: enough gold and silver
colonial enterprise. Europeans conquered and coopted traveled from the Americas to Europe and Asia to
Native American empires with relative ease, but smaller transform the world’s economies, intensifying com-
and more decentralized polities were harder to exploit. petition and empire building in Europe.
Mobile hunter-gatherers appeared politically amor- Old World diseases devastated Native American
phous, but they became especially formidable peoples. On average, they lost ninety percent of their
opponents of colonial expansion. numbers over the first century of contact, forcing them
to cope with European and African newcomers in a
weakened and vulnerable state.
4
WORK, PEOPLING POLITICS & IDEAS, BELIEFS, IDENTITY
EXCHANGE, & POWER & CULTURE
TECHNOLOGY
1450 t Diversified economies t Christopher Columbus t Rise of monarchical t Protestant Reformation t Castile and Aragon
of Native America explores the Bahamas nation-states in Europe (1517) sparks century joined to create Spain;
and West Indies of religious warfare the Inquisition helps
t Rise of the Ottoman t Aztecs and Incas
(1492–1504) create a sense of
Empire blocks Asian consolidate their t Henry VIII creates Spanishness
trading routes of the t Pedro Alvares Cabral empires Church of England
Italian city-states makes landfall in Brazil (1534) t John Calvin establishes
t Probable founding
(1500) a Protestant
t Europeans fish off of the Iroquois t Founding of Jesuit order commonwealth in
North American coast t Spanish conquest Confederacy (1540) Geneva, Switzerland
of Mexico and Peru
t Portuguese traders t Rise of the Songhai
(1519–1535)
explore African coast Empire in Africa
1550 t Growth of the outwork t Castilians and Africans t Elizabeth’s “sea t Philip II defends the t English conquest and
system in English textile arrive in Spanish dogs” plague Spanish Roman Catholic Church persecution of native
industry America in large shipping against Protestantism Irish
numbers
t Spanish encomienda t English monarchs adopt t Elizabeth I adopts t Growing Protestant
system organizes native t English colonies in mercantilist policies Protestant Book of movement in England
labor in Mexico Newfoundland, Maine, Common Prayer (1559)
t Defeat of the Spanish
and Roanoke fail
t Inca mita system is Armada (1588)
co-opted by the Spanish
in the Andes
1600 t First staple exports from t First set of Anglo-Indian t James I claims divine t Persecuted English t Pilgrims and Puritans
the English mainland wars right to rule England Puritans and Catholics seek to create godly
colonies: furs and migrate to America commonwealths
t African servitude begins t Virginia’s House of
tobacco
in Virginia (1619) Burgesses (1619) t Established churches t Powhatan and
t Subsistence farms in set up in Puritan New Virginia Company
t Caribbean islands t English Puritan
New England England and Anglican representatives attempt
move from servitude to Revolution Virginia to extract tribute from
t Transition to sugar slavery
t Native Americans rise each other
plantation system in the t Dissenters settle in
up against English
Caribbean islands Rhode Island
invaders (1622, 1640s)
1700 t Tobacco trade stagnates t Growing gentry t Restoration of the t Metacom’s War in New t Social mobility for
immigration to Virginia English crown (1660) England (1675–1676) Africans ends with
t Maturing yeoman collapse of tobacco
economy and emerging t White indentured t English conquer New t Bacon’s Rebellion calls trade and increased
Atlantic trade in New servitude shapes Netherland (1664) for removal of Indians power of gentry
England Chesapeake society and end of elite rule
C H A P T E R
1 1450–1600
I
THE NATIVE AMERICAN n April 1493, a Genoese sailor of humble IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
EXPERIENCE origins appeared at the court of Queen How did the political, economic, and
The First Americans Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand religious systems of Native Ameri-
American Empires of Aragon along with six Caribbean natives, cans, Europeans, and Africans com-
Chiefdoms and Confederacies numerous colorful parrots, and “samples of pare, and how did things change as
Patterns of Trade finest gold, and many other things never a result of contacts among them?
Sacred Power before seen or heard tell of in Spain.” The
sailor was Christopher Columbus, just returned from his first voyage into the Atlantic.
WESTERN EUROPE: He and his party entered Barcelona’s fortress in a solemn procession. The monarchs
THE EDGE OF THE OLD stood to greet Columbus; he knelt to kiss their hands. They talked for an hour and then
WORLD
adjourned to the royal chapel for a ceremony of thanksgiving. Columbus, now bearing
Hierarchy and Authority
the official title Admiral of the Ocean Sea, remained at court for more than a month.
Peasant Society
The highlight of his stay was the baptism of the six natives, whom Columbus called
Expanding Trade Networks Indians because he mistakenly believed he had sailed westward all the way to Asia.
Myths, Religions, and Holy t
Warriors
In the spring of 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto met the Lady of
WEST AND CENTRAL Cofachiqui, ruler of a large Native American province in present-day South Carolina.
AFRICA: ORIGINS OF THE Though an epidemic had carried away many of her people, the lady of the province
ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE offered the Spanish expedition as much corn, and as many pearls, as it could carry. As
Empires, Kingdoms, and she spoke to de Soto, she unwound “a great rope of pearls as large as hazelnuts” and
Ministates handed them to the Spaniard; in return he gave her a gold ring set with a ruby. De Soto
Trans-Saharan and Coastal Trade and his men then visited the temples of Cofachiqui, which were guarded by carved
The Spirit World statues and held storehouses of weapons and chest upon chest of pearls. After loading
their horses with corn and pearls, they continued on their way.
EXPLORATION AND
CONQUEST t
A Portuguese traveler named Duarte Lopez visited the African kingdom of Kongo in
Portuguese Expansion
1578. “The men and women are black,” he reported, “some approaching olive colour,
The African Slave Trade
with black curly hair, and others with red. The men are of middle height, and, excepting
Sixteenth-Century Incursions
the black skin, are like the Portuguese.” The royal city of Kongo sat on a high plain that
was “entirely cultivated,” with a population of more than 100,000. The city included a
separate commercial district, a mile around, where Portuguese traders acquired ivory,
wax, honey, palm oil, and slaves from the Kongolese.
t
Three glimpses of three lost worlds. Soon these peoples would be transforming one
another’s societies, often through conflict and exploitation. But at the moment they first
met, Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans stood on roughly equal terms. Even a
hundred years after Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, no one could have foreseen
the shape that their interactions would take in the generations to come. To begin, we
need to understand the three worlds as distinct places, each home to unique societies
and cultures.
6
Village of Secoton, 1585 English colonist John White painted this view of an Algonquian village on
the outer banks of present-day North Carolina. Its cluster of houses surrounded by fields of crops closely
resembled European farming communities of the same era. White captured everyday details of the town’s
social life, including food preparation and a ceremony or celebration in progress (lower right). Service
Historique de la Marine Vincennes, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library. 7
8 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
A
I
Scandinavian
R
ice sheet
E
B
80°E
°E
40
°E E U R O P E
0
S I
JAPAN 12
A
KU
160°E
0°
Pack ice
F R
RI
L
°W
S.
I
16
40
25,000–12,000 B.C.
I C
0°
Greenland
W
Land bridge open 120°W 80°
ice sheet W
Evidence indicates that peoples came
A
40°N
BERINGIA
60°N
from Asia to the Americas during the
Bering Ice Age, when the sea level was much lower
Sea than today and a large land bridge-labeled
Beringia on the map-connected the continents. As scholars learn more about the
ALASKA
advances and retreats of the ice sheets,
the camping sites of the migrating
Co
N O R T H
20°N
n i
A M E R I C A
ce s
et
she
RO
ATL A N T I C
CKY
e
Current scholarship holds that the migrating
o a s tli n
peoples initially traveled on a narrow strip of O CEAN
ice-free land along the Pacific coast. As the
ec
MOU
a te ice-ag
0°
ice sheets lost its cover of ice, probably between
14,000 and 12,000 B.C., migrants may also have
used the inland routes from present-day
N TA I N
m
Alaska to the American interior.
i
rox
N
app
S
W FLORIDA
E
Gulf of
S Mexico
Ice sheets, c. 16,000 B.C. Caribbean Sea
SOUTH
Ice sheets, c. 12,000 B.C. AMERICA
Vegetation zones:
Many groups, accustomed to
Tundra living at the ocean’s edge,
Conifer forest probably continued along
this route, pushing ever
Deciduous forest southward into South America.
Prairie
Desert 0 500 1,000 miles
Migration route 0 500 1,000 kilometers
(after Tanner)
MAP 1.1
The Ice Age and the Settling of the Americas
Some sixteen thousand years ago, a sheet of ice covered much of Europe and North America. The
ice lowered the level of the world’s oceans, which created a broad bridge of land between Siberia
and Alaska. Using that land bridge, hunting peoples from Asia migrated to North America as they
pursued woolly mammoths and other large game animals and sought ice-free habitats. By 10,000
B.C., the descendants of these migrant peoples had moved south to present-day Florida and central
Mexico. In time, they would settle as far south as the tip of South America and as far east as the
Atlantic coast of North America.
10 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
ARCTIC O CEAN
INUIT
AL
EU INUIT
T
INUIT
DENE
TLINGIT INUIT
DOGRIB
CHIPEWYAN NASKAPI
HAIDA
TSIMSHIAN
MONTAGNAIS
CREE BEOTHUK
KWAKIUTL
BLACKFEET
SALISH MICMAC
NOOTKA KOOTENAI CREE
ASSINIBOINE ALGONQUIAN
CROW OJIBWA ABENAKI
NEZ PERCÉ HIDATSA PASSAMAQUODDY
PAC I F I C MANDAN IROQUOIS WAMPANOAG
CHEYENNE SIOUX MOHEGAN
OCEAN SAUK NARRAGANSETT
PAWNEE PEQUOT
NORTHERN POTAWATOMI SUSQUEHANNOCK
PAIUTE SHOSHONE IOWA MUNSEE
POMO LENNI
LENAPE DELAWARE
ILLINOIS POWHATAN
ARAPAHO
N SOUTHERN SHAWNEE TUSCARORA
UTE
YO
PAIUTE
W KIOWA
K
NAVAJO TE CHEROKEE
AT L A N T I C
BLO
UT
E ZU WAS CHICKASAW
CHUMASH AC ÑI CADDO
PUE
MAP 1.2
Native American Peoples, 1492
Having learned to live in many environments, Native Americans populated the entire Western
Hemisphere. They created cultures that ranged from centralized empires (the Incas and Aztecs),
to societies that combined farming with hunting, fishing, and gathering (the Iroquois and
Algonquians), to nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers (the Micmacs and Shoshones). The great
diversity of Native American peoples — in language, tribal identity, and ways of life — and the long-
standing rivalries among neighboring peoples usually prevented them from uniting to resist the
European invaders.
The Mississippi Valley The spread of maize to the shape, and function. Some contain extensive burials;
Mississippi River Valley around a.d. 1000 led to the others, known as platform mounds, were used as bases
development of a large-scale northern Native American for ceremonial buildings or rulers’ homes. Cahokia
culture. The older Adena and Hopewell cultures had had a powerful ruling class and a priesthood that wor-
already introduced moundbuilding and distinctive shipped the sun. After peaking in size around 1350, it
pottery styles to the region. Now residents of the declined rapidly. Scholars speculate that its decline was
Mississippi River Valley experienced the greater urban caused by an era of ruinous warfare, exacerbated by
density and more complex social organization that environmental factors that made the site less habitable.
agriculture encouraged. It had been abandoned by the time Europeans arrived
The city of Cahokia, in the fertile bottomlands in the area.
along the Mississippi River, emerged around 1000 as Mississippian culture endured, however, and was
the foremost center of the new Mississippian culture. still in evidence throughout much of the Southeast at
At its peak, Cahokia’s population exceeded 10,000; the time of first contact with Europeans. The Lady of
smaller satellite communities brought the region’s pop- Cofachiqui encountered by Hernando de Soto in 1540
ulation to 20,000 to 30,000. In an area of 6 square miles, ruled over a Mississippian community, and others dot-
archaeologists have found 120 mounds of varying size, ted the landscape between the Carolinas and the lower
12 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
Mississippi River. In Florida, sixteenth-century Spanish In this densely forested region, Indians regularly
explorers encountered the Apalachee Indians, who set fires — in New England, twice a year, in spring and
occupied a network of towns built around mounds and fall — to clear away underbrush, open fields, and make
fields of maize. it easier to hunt big game. The catastrophic population
decline accompanying European colonization quickly
Eastern Woodlands In the eastern woodlands, the put an end to seasonal burning, but in the years before
Mississippian-influenced peoples of the Southeast Europeans arrived in North America bison roamed
interacted with other groups, many of whom adopted east as far as modern-day New York and Georgia.
maize agriculture but did not otherwise display Mis- Early European colonists remarked upon landscapes
sissippian characteristics. To the north, Algonquian and that “resemble[d] a stately Parke,” where men could
Iroquoian speakers shared related languages and life- ride among widely spaced trees on horseback and even
ways but were divided into dozens of distinct societies. a “large army” could pass unimpeded (America
Most occupied villages built around fields of maize, Compared, p. 14).
beans, and squash during the summer months; at other Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples had no single
times of the year, they dispersed in smaller groups to style of political organization. Many were chiefdoms,
hunt, fish, and gather. Throughout the eastern wood- with one individual claiming preeminent power in a
lands, as in most of North America, women tended community. Some were paramount chiefdoms, in
crops, gathered plants, and oversaw affairs within the which numerous communities with their own local
community, while men were responsible for activities chiefs banded together under a single, more powerful
beyond it, especially hunting, fishing, and warfare. ruler. For example, the Powhatan Chiefdom, which
dominated the Chesapeake Bay region, embraced more drive many of these groups into oblivion and force sur-
than thirty subordinate chiefdoms, and some 20,000 vivors to coalesce into larger groups.
people, by the time Englishmen established the colony Some Native American groups were not chief-
of Virginia in Powhatan territory. Powhatan himself, doms at all, but instead granted political authority to
according to the English colonist John Smith, was councils of sachems, or leaders. This was the case with
attended by “a guard of 40 or 50 of the tallest men his the Iroquois Confederacy. Sometime shortly before
Country affords.” the arrival of Europeans, probably around 1500, five
Elsewhere, especially in the Mid-Atlantic region, nations occupying the region between the Hudson
the power of chiefs was strictly local. Along the River and Lake Erie — the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Delaware and Hudson rivers, Lenni Lenape (or Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas — banded together
Delaware) and Munsee Indians lived in small, inde- to form the Iroquois.
pendent communities without overarching political These groups had been fighting among themselves
organizations. Early European maps of this region for years, caught in a destructive cycle of wars of retri-
show a landscape dotted with a bewildering profusion bution. Then, according to Iroquois legend, a Mohawk
of Indian names. European colonization would soon man named Hiawatha lost his family in one of these
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
In the eastern woodlands, Native Americans set fires once or twice a year to clear
underbrush and open up landscapes that would otherwise have been densely
wooded. The burnings made it easier to plant corn, beans, and squash and drew
big game animals into the clearings, where hunters could fell them. As European
Altered Landscapes colonization displaced Indian populations, this practice ended. Some scholars
have even suggested that the decline in burning caused a drop of carbon in the
atmosphere large enough to account for the Little Ice Age, an episode of global
cooling that lasted from about 1550 to 1850, though the claim is controversial.
Thomas Morton, Of the Custome in burning the by this custome of theirs, have spoiled all the rest: for this
Country, and the reason thereof (1637) custome hath bin continued from the beginninge.
The Savages are accustomed to set fire of the Country in And least their firing of the Country in this manner
all places where they come, and to burne it twize a yeare, should be an occasion of damnifying us, and indaingering
viz: at the Spring, and the fall of the leafe. The reason that our habitations, wee our selves have used carefully about
mooves them to doe so, is because it would other wise be the same times to observe the winds, and fire the grounds
so overgrowne with underweedes that it would be all a about our owne habitations; to prevent the Dammage that
coppice wood, and the people would not be able in any might happen by any neglect thereof, if the fire should
wise to passe through the Country out of a beaten path. come neere those howses in our absence.
The meanes that they do it with, is with certaine min- For, when the fire is once kindled, it dilates and
erall stones, that they carry about them in baggs made spreads it selfe as well against, as with the winde; burning
for that purpose of the skinnes of little beastes, which continually night and day, untill a shower of raine falls to
they convert into good lether, carrying in the same a quench it.
peece of touch wood, very excellent for that purpose, And this custome of firing the Country is the meanes
of their owne making. These minerall stones they have to make it passable; and by that meanes the trees growe
from the Piquenteenes, (which is to the Southward of all here and there as in our parks: and makes the Country
the plantations in New England,) by trade and trafficke very beautifull and commodious.
with those people.
The burning of the grasse destroyes the underwoods, Source: Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan (Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1883
and so scorcheth the elder trees that it shrinkes them, and [orig. pub. 1637]), 172–173.
hinders their grouth very much: so that hee that will looke
to finde large trees and good tymber, must not depend
upon the help of a woodden prospect to finde them on
the uplandground; but must seeke for them, (as I and oth-
ers have done,) in the lower grounds, where the grounds QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
are wett, when the Country is fired, by reason of the snow 1. What benefits and dangers does Morton attribute to the
water that remaines there for a time, untill the Sunne by practice of Indian burning? How did he and his fellow
colonists respond to the practice?
continuance of that hath exhaled the vapoures of the earth,
2. Since Europeans did not practice widespread burning
and dried up those places where the fire, (by reason of the in the Indian manner, they achieved deforestation only
moisture,) can have no power to doe them any hurt: and slowly, through many years of backbreaking labor. Think-
if he would endevoure to finde out any goodly Cedars, ing comparatively about European and Native American
hee must not seeke for them on the higher grounds, but approaches to landscape management, how would you
assess the benefits and challenges of each approach?
make his inquest for them in the vallies, for the Savages,
14
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 15
wars. Stricken by grief, he met a spirit who taught him The Great Plains and Rockies Farther west lies the
a series of condolence rituals. He returned to his people vast, arid steppe region known as the Great Plains,
preaching a new gospel of peace and power, and the which was dominated by the hunting and gathering
condolence rituals he taught became the foundation activities of small, dispersed groups. The geopolitics of
for the Iroquois Confederacy. the Plains Indians was transformed by a European
Once bound by these rituals, the Five Nations import — the horse — long before Europeans them-
began acting together as a political confederacy. They selves arrived. Livestock was introduced in the Spanish
avoided violence among themselves and became one of colony of New Mexico in the late sixteenth century,
the most powerful Native American groups in the and from there horses gradually dispersed across the
Northeast. The Iroquois did not recognize chiefs; plains. Bison hunters who had previously relied on
instead, councils of sachems made decisions. These stealth became much more successful on horseback.
were matriarchal societies, with power inherited Indians on horseback were also more formidable
through female lines of authority. Women were influ- opponents than their counterparts on foot, and some
ential in local councils, though men served as sachems, Plains peoples leveraged their control of horses to
made war, and conducted diplomacy. gain power over their neigh-
Along the southern coast of the region that would bors. The Comanches were a EXPLAIN
soon be called New England, a dense network of small Shoshonean band on the CONSEQUENCES
powerful chiefdoms — including the Narragansetts, northern plains that migrated How did landscape,
Wampanoags, Mohegans, Pequots, and others — south in pursuit of horses. They climate, and resources
competed for resources and dominance. When the became expert raiders, captur- influence the develop-
Dutch and English arrived, they were able to exploit ing people and horses alike and ment of Native American
these rivalries and play Indian groups against one trading them for weapons, food, societies?
another. Farther north, in northern New England and clothing, and other necessities.
much of present-day Canada, the short growing season Eventually they controlled a vast territory. From their
and thin, rocky soil were inhospitable to maize agricul- humble origins, their skill in making war on horseback
ture. Here the native peoples were hunters and gather- made the Comanches one of the region’s most formi-
ers and therefore had smaller and more mobile com- dable peoples.
munities, though they were no less complex than their Similarly, horses allowed the Sioux, a confederation
agriculturally oriented cousins. of seven distinct peoples who originated in present-day
Minnesota, to move west and dominate a vast territory
The Great Lakes To the west, Algonquian-speaking ranging from the Mississippi River to the Black Hills.
peoples dominated the Great Lakes. The tribal groups The Crow Indians moved from the Missouri River to
recognized by Europeans in this region included the the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, where they
Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomis. But collectively became nomadic bison hunters. Beginning in the mid-
they thought of themselves as a single people: the eighteenth century, they became horse breeders and
Anishinaabe. Clan identities — beaver, otter, sturgeon, traders as well.
deer, and others — crosscut tribal affiliations and were In some places, farming communities were
in some ways more fundamental. The result was a embedded within the much wider geographical range
social landscape that could be bewildering to outsiders. of hunter-gatherers. Thus the Hidatsa and Mandan
Here lived, one French official remarked, “an infinity of Indians maintained settled agricultural villages along
undiscovered nations.” the Missouri River, while the more mobile Sioux dom-
The extensive network of lakes and rivers, and the inated the region around them. Similarly, the Caddo
use of birchbark canoes, made Great Lakes peoples Indians, who lived on the edge of the southern plains,
especially mobile. “They seem to have as many abodes inhabited agricultural communities that were like
as the year has seasons,” wrote one observer. They trav- islands in a sea of more mobile peoples.
eled long distances to hunt and fish, to trade, or to join Three broad swaths of Numic-speaking peoples
in important ceremonies or military alliances. Groups occupied the Great Basin that separated the Rockies
negotiated access to resources and travel routes. Instead from the Sierra Mountains: Bannocks and Northern
of a map with clearly delineated tribal territories, it is Paiutes in the north, Shoshones in the central basin,
best to imagine the Great Lakes as a porous region, and Utes and Southern Paiutes in the south. Resources
where “political power and social identity took on mul- were varied and spread thin on the land. Kin-based
tiple forms,” as one scholar has written. bands traveled great distances to hunt bison along the
16 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
Yellowstone River (where they shared territory with The Pacific Coast Hunter-gatherers inhabited the
the Crows) and bighorn sheep in high altitudes, to fish Pacific coast. Before the arrival of the Spanish,
for salmon, and to gather pine nuts when they were in California was home to more than 300,000 people,
season. Throughout the Great Basin, some groups subdivided into dozens of small, localized groups and
adopted horses and became relatively powerful, while speaking at least a hundred distinct languages. This
others remained foot-borne and impoverished in com- diversity of languages and cultures discouraged inter-
parison with their more mobile neighbors. marriage and kept these societies independent. Despite
these differences, many groups did share common
The Arid Southwest In the part of North America characteristics, including clearly defined social hierar-
that appears to be most hostile to agriculture — chies separating elites from commoners. They gathered
the canyon-laced country of the arid Southwest — acorns and other nuts and seeds, caught fish and shell-
surprisingly large farming settlements developed. fish, and hunted game.
Anasazi peoples were growing maize by the first cen- The Pacific Northwest also supported a dense pop-
tury a.d., earlier than anywhere else north of Mexico, ulation that was divided into many distinct groups who
and Pueblo cultures emerged around a.d. 600. By controlled small territories and spoke different lan-
a.d. 1000, the Hohokams, Mogollons, and Anasazis (all guages. Their stratified societies were ruled by wealthy
Pueblo peoples) had developed irrigation systems to families. To maintain control of their territories, the
manage scarce water, enabling them to build sizable more powerful nations, including the Chinooks, Coast
villages and towns of adobe and rock that were often Salishes, Haidas, and Tlingits, nurtured strong warrior
molded to sheer canyon walls. Chaco Canyon, in mod- traditions. They developed sophisticated fishing tech-
ern New Mexico, supported a dozen large Anasazi nologies and crafted oceangoing dugout canoes, made
towns, while beyond the canyon a network of roads from enormous cedar trees, that ranged up to 60 feet
tied these settlements together with hundreds of small in length. Their distinctive material culture included
Anasazi villages. large longhouses that were home to dozens of people
Extended droughts and soil exhaustion caused the and totem poles representing clan lineages or local
abandonment of Chaco Canyon and other large settle- legends.
ments in the Southwest after 1150, but smaller com-
munities still dotted the landscape when the first
Europeans arrived. It was the Spanish who called these Patterns of Trade
groups Pueblo Indians: pueblo means “town” in Expansive trade networks tied together regions and
Spanish, and the name refers to their distinctive build- carried valuable goods hundreds and even thousands
ing style. When Europeans arrived, Pueblo peoples, of miles. Trade goods included food and raw materials,
including the Acomas, Zuñis, Tewas, and Hopis, were tools, ritual artifacts, and decorative goods. Trade
found throughout much of modern New Mexico, enriched diets, enhanced economies, and allowed the
Arizona, and western Texas. powerful to set themselves apart with luxury items.
Anasazi Ladle
Crafted between A.D. 1300 and 1600 and
found in a site in central Arizona, this
Anasazi dipper was coiled and molded by
hand and painted with a geometric motif.
Anasazi pottery is abundant in archaeologi-
cal sites, thanks in part to the Southwest’s
dry climate. Clay vessels and ladles helped
Anasazi peoples handle water — one of
their most precious resources — with care.
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution.
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 17
In areas where Indians specialized in a particular essential. In chiefdoms, rulers filled the same role,
economic activity, regional trade networks allowed often collecting the wealth of a community and then
them to share resources. Thus nomadic hunters of the redistributing it to their followers. Powhatan, the
southern plains, including the Navajos and Apaches, powerful Chesapeake Bay chief, reportedly collected
conducted annual trade fairs with Pueblo farmers, nine-tenths of the produce of the communities he
exchanging hides and meat for maize, pottery, and cot- oversaw — “skins, beads, copper, pearls, deer, turkeys,
ton blankets. Similar patterns of exchange occurred wild beasts, and corn” — but then gave much of it back
throughout the Great Plains, wherever hunters and to his subordinates. His generosity was considered a
farmers coexisted. In some parts of North America, a mark of good leadership. In the Pacific Northwest, the
regional trade in war captives who were offered as Chinook word potlatch refers to periodic festivals in
slaves helped to sustain friendly relations among neigh- which wealthy residents gave away belongings to
boring groups. One such network developed in the friends, family, and followers.
Upper Mississippi River basin, where Plains Indian cap-
tives were traded, or given as diplomatic gifts, to Ottawas
and other Great Lakes and eastern woodlands peoples. Sacred Power
Across longer distances, rare and valuable objects Most Native North Americans were animists who
traveled through networks that spanned much of the believed that the natural world was suffused with spir-
continent. Great Lakes copper, Rocky Mountain mica, itual power. They sought to understand the world by
jasper from Pennsylvania, obsidian from New Mexico interpreting dreams and visions, and their rituals
and Wyoming, and pipestone from the Midwest have appeased guardian spirits that could ensure successful
all been found in archaeological sites hundreds of miles hunts and other forms of good fortune. Although their
from their points of origin. Seashells — often shaped views were subject to countless local variations, certain
and polished into beads and other artifacts — traveled patterns were widespread.
hundreds of miles inland. Grizzly bear claws and eagle Women and men interacted differently with these
feathers were prized, high-status objects. After spiritual forces. In agricultural communities, women
European contact, Indian hunters often traveled long grew crops and maintained hearth, home, and village.
distances to European trading posts to trade for cloth, Native American conceptions of female power linked
iron tools, and weapons. their bodies’ generative functions with the earth’s fertility,
Within Native American groups, powerful leaders and rituals like the Green Corn Ceremony — a summer
controlled a disproportionate share of wealth and ritual of purification and renewal — helped to sustain
redistributed it to prove their generosity and strengthen the life-giving properties of the world around them.
their authority. In small, kin-based bands, the strongest For men, spiritual power was invoked in hunting
hunters possessed the most food, and sharing it was and war. To ensure success in hunting, men took care
18 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
not to offend the spirits of the ani- conscripted men for military service, and lived off the
UNDERSTAND POINTS
mals they killed. They performed peasantry’s labor. Yet monarchs were far from supreme:
OF VIEW
How did Native Americans’
rituals before, during, and after a local nobles also owned large estates and controlled
conceptions of the spiritual hunt to acknowledge the power of hundreds of peasant families. Collectively, these nobles
world influence their daily those guardian spirits, and they challenged royal authority with both their military
lives? believed that, when an animal had power and their legislative institutions, such as the
been killed properly, its spirit French parlements and the English House of Lords.
would rise from the earth unharmed. Success in hunt- Just as kings and nobles ruled society, men gov-
ing and prowess in war were both interpreted as signs erned families. These were patriarchies, in which prop-
of sacred protection and power. erty and social identity descended in male family lines.
Ideas about war varied widely. War could be fought Rich or poor, the man was the head of the house, his
for geopolitical reasons — to gain ground against an power justified by the teachings of the Christian
enemy — but for many groups, warfare was a crucial Church. As one English clergyman put it, “The woman
rite of passage for young men, and raids were con- is a weak creature not embued with like strength and
ducted to allow warriors to prove themselves in battle. constancy of mind”; law and custom “subjected her to
Motives for war could be highly personal; war was the power of man.” Once married, an Englishwoman
often more like a blood feud between families than a assumed her husband’s surname, submitted to his
contest between nations. If a community lost warriors orders, and surrendered the right to her property.
in battle, it often retaliated by capturing or killing a like When he died, she received a dower, usually the use
number of warriors in response — a so-called mourn- during her lifetime of one-third of the family’s land and
ing war. Some captives were adopted into new commu- goods.
nities, while others were enslaved or tortured. Men also controlled the lives of their children, who
usually worked for their father into their middle or late
twenties. Then landowning peasants would give land
to their sons and dowries to their daughters and choose
Western Europe: The Edge marriage partners of appropriate wealth and status.
of the Old World In many regions, fathers bestowed all their land on
their eldest son — a practice known as primogeniture —
In 1450, Western Europe lay at the far fringe of the forcing many younger children to join the ranks of the
Eurasian and African continents. It had neither the roaming poor. Few men and even fewer women had
powerful centralized empires nor the hunter-gatherer much personal freedom.
bands and semisedentary societies of the Americas; it Hierarchy and authority prevailed in traditional
was, instead, a patchwork of roughly equivalent king- European society because of the power held by estab-
doms, duchies, and republics vying with one another lished institutions — nobility, church, and village — and
and struggling to reach out effectively to the rest of the because, in a violent and unpredictable world, they
world. No one would have predicted that Europeans offered ordinary people a measure of security. Carried
would soon become overlords of the Western by migrants to America, these security-conscious insti-
Hemisphere. A thousand years after the fall of the tutions would shape the character of family and society
Roman Empire, Europe’s populations still relied on well into the eighteenth century.
subsistence agriculture and were never far from the
specter of famine. Moreover, around 1350, a deadly
plague introduced from Central Asia — the Black Peasant Society
Death — had killed one-third of Europe’s population. In 1450, most Europeans were peasants, farmworkers
The lives of ordinary people were afflicted by poverty, who lived in small villages surrounded by fields farmed
disease, and uncertainty, and the future looked as diffi- cooperatively by different families. On manorial lands,
cult and dark as the past. farming rights were given in exchange for labor on the
lord’s estate, an arrangement that turned peasants into
serfs. Gradually, obligatory manorial services gave way
Hierarchy and Authority to paying rent, or, as in France, landownership. Once
In traditional hierarchical societies — American or freed from the obligation to labor for their farming
European — authority came from above. In Europe, rights, European farmers began to produce surpluses
kings and princes owned vast tracts of land, forcibly and created local market economies.
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 19
FIGURE 1.1
The Yearly Rhythm of Rural Life and Death Conceptions Deaths
The annual cycle of nature profoundly
affected life in the traditional agricul- Winter Spring Summer Fall
tural world. The death rate soared by 20
percent in February (from viruses) and
September (from fly-borne dysentery). 120
Summer was the healthiest season, with
the fewest deaths and the most successful
conceptions (as measured by births nine
months later). A value of 100 indicates an 100
equal number of deaths and conceptions.
80
Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov.
20 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
were governed by merchant coalitions. They celebrated with that of kings and nobles. In general, the rise of
civic humanism, an ideology that praised public virtue commerce favored the power of kings at the expense of
and service to the state and in time profoundly influ- the landed nobility. The kings of Western Europe estab-
enced European and American conceptions of govern- lished royal law courts that gradually eclipsed the
ment. They sponsored great artists — Michelangelo, manorial courts controlled by nobles; they also built
Leonardo da Vinci, and others — who produced an bureaucracies that helped them centralize power while
unprecedented flowering of genius. Historians have they forged alliances with merchants and urban arti-
labeled the arts and learning associated with this sans. Monarchs allowed merchants to trade through-
cultural transformation from 1300 to 1450 the out their realms; granted privileges to guilds, or artisan
Renaissance. organizations that regulated trades; and safeguarded
The economic revolution that began in Italy spread commercial transactions, thereby encouraging domes-
slowly to northern and western Europe. England’s tic manufacturing and foreign trade. In return, they
principal export was woolen cloth, which was prized in extracted taxes from towns and loans from merchants
the colder parts of the continent to support their armies and officials.
TRACE CHANGE but had less appeal in southern
OVER TIME Europe and beyond. Northern
How did the growth of Europe had its own trade system, Myths, Religions, and Holy Warriors
commerce shift the struc- controlled by an alliance of mer- The oldest European religious beliefs drew on a form of
ture of power in European chant communities called the animism similar to that of Native Americans, which
societies? Hanseatic League centered on the held that the natural world — the sun, wind, stones,
Baltic and North seas, which dealt animals — was animated by spiritual forces. As in
in timber, furs, wheat and rye, honey, wax, and amber. North America, such beliefs led ancient European
As trade picked up in Europe, merchants and arti- peoples to develop localized cults of knowledge and
sans came to dominate its growing cities and towns. spiritual practice. Wise men and women developed rit-
While the Italian city-states ruled themselves without uals to protect their communities, ensure abundant
having a powerful monarch to contend with, in much harvests, heal illnesses, and bring misfortunes to their
of Europe the power of merchants stood in tension enemies.
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 21
The pagan traditions of Greece and Rome overlaid converted to the new state religion. For centuries, the
animism with elaborate myths about gods interacting Roman Catholic Church was the great unifying institu-
directly with the affairs of human beings. As the Roman tion in Western Europe. The pope in Rome headed a
Empire expanded, it built temples to its gods wherever vast hierarchy of cardinals, bishops, and priests.
it planted new settlements. Thus peoples throughout Catholic theologians preserved Latin, the language of
Europe, North Africa, and the Near East were exposed classical scholarship, and imbued kingship with divine
to the Roman pantheon. Soon the teachings of power. Christian dogma provided a common under-
Christianity began to flow in these same channels. standing of God and human history, and the authority
of the Church buttressed state institutions. Every vil-
The Rise of Christianity Christianity, which grew lage had a church, and holy shrines served as points of
out of Jewish monotheism (the belief in one god), held contact with the sacred world. Often those shrines had
that Jesus Christ was himself divine. As an institution, their origins in older, animist practices, now largely
Christianity benefitted enormously from the conver- forgotten and replaced with Christian ritual.
sion of the Roman emperor Constantine in a.d. 312. Christian doctrine penetrated deeply into the every-
Prior to that time, Christians were an underground day lives of peasants. While animist traditions held that
sect at odds with the Roman Empire. After Constantine’s spiritual forces were alive in the natural world, Christian
conversion, Christianity became Rome’s official reli- priests taught that the natural world was flawed and
gion, temples were abandoned or remade into churches, fallen. Spiritual power came from outside nature, from
and noblemen who hoped to retain their influence a supernatural God who had sent his divine son, Jesus
Christ, into the world to save humanity from its sins. the centers of civilization in Eurasia and Africa, but the
The Christian Church devised a religious calendar that Crusades and the rise of Italian merchant houses had
transformed animist festivals into holy days. The win- introduced it to a wider world.
ter solstice, which had for millennia marked the return
of the sun, became the feast of Christmas. The Reformation In 1517, Martin Luther, a Ger-
The Church also taught that Satan, a wicked super- man monk and professor at the university in Witten-
natural being, was constantly challenging God by berg, took up the cause of reform in the Catholic
tempting people to sin. People who spread here- Church. Luther’s Ninety-five Theses condemned the
sies — doctrines that were inconsistent with the teach- Church for many corrupt practices. More radically,
ings of the Church — were seen as the tools of Satan, Luther downplayed the role of the clergy as mediators
and suppressing false doctrines became an obligation between God and believers and said that Christians
of Christian rulers. must look to the Bible, not to the Church, as the ulti-
mate authority in matters of faith. So that every literate
The Crusades In their work suppressing false German could read the Bible, previously available only
doctrines, Christian rulers were also obliged to com- in Latin, Luther translated it into German.
bat Islam, the religion whose followers considered Meanwhile, in Geneva, Switzerland, French theolo-
Muhammad to be God’s last prophet. Islam’s reach gian John Calvin established a rigorous Protestant
expanded until it threatened European Christendom. regime. Even more than Luther, Calvin stressed human
Following the death of Muhammad in a.d. 632, the weakness and God’s omnipotence. His Institutes of the
newly converted Arab peoples of North Africa used Christian Religion (1536) depicted God as an absolute
force and fervor to spread the Muslim faith into sub- sovereign. Calvin preached the doctrine of predestina-
Saharan Africa, India, and Indonesia, as well as deep tion, the idea that God chooses certain people for sal-
into Spain and the Balkan regions of Europe. Between vation before they are born and condemns the rest
a.d. 1096 and 1291, Christian armies undertook a to eternal damnation. In Geneva, he set up a model
series of Crusades to reverse the Muslim advance in Christian community and placed spiritual authority in
Europe and win back the holy lands where Christ had ministers who ruled the city, prohibiting frivolity and
lived. Under the banner of the pope and led by Europe’s luxury. “We know,” wrote Calvin, “that man is of so
Christian monarchs, crusading armies aroused great perverse and crooked a nature, that everyone would
waves of popular piety as they marched off to combat. scratch out his neighbor’s eyes if there were no bridle to
New orders of knights, like the Knights Templar and hold them in.” Calvin’s authoritarian doctrine won
the Teutonic Knights, were created to support them. converts all over Europe, including the Puritans in
The crusaders had some military successes, but Scotland and England.
their most profound impact was on European society. Luther’s criticisms triggered a war between the
Religious warfare intensified Europe’s Christian iden- Holy Roman Empire and the northern principalities
tity and prompted the persecution of Jews and their in Germany, and soon the controversy between the
expulsion from many European countries. The Roman Catholic Church and radical reformers like
Crusades also introduced Western European merchants Luther and Calvin spread throughout much of Western
to the trade routes that stretched from Constantinople Europe. The Protestant Reformation, as this move-
to China along the Silk Road and from the Medi- ment came to be called, triggered a Counter-
terranean Sea through the Persian Gulf to the Indian Reformation in the Catholic Church that sought
Ocean. And crusaders encountered sugar for the first change from within and created new monastic and
time. Returning soldiers brought it back from the missionary orders, including the Jesuits (founded in
Middle East, and as Europeans began to conquer terri- 1540), who saw themselves as soldiers of Christ. The
tory in the eastern Mediterranean, they experimented competition between these divergent Christian tradi-
with raising it themselves. These early experiments with tions did much to shape European colonization of the
sugar would have a profound Americas. Roman Catholic powers — Spain, Portugal,
TRACE CHANGE impact on European enterprise and France — sought to win souls in the Americas for
OVER TIME in the Americas — and European the Church, while Protestant nations — England and
How did the growing involvement with the African the Netherlands — viewed the Catholic Church as cor-
influence of the Christian
slave trade — in the centuries to rupt and exploitative and hoped instead to create
Church affect events in
come. By 1450, Western Europe godly communities attuned to the true gospel of
Europe?
remained relatively isolated from Christianity.
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 23
.
aR
London Amsterdam
lg
Vo
Rh
ine
N
R.
Paris Danube
R.
W E
Venice
S Genoa
Aral
Sea
Ca
Black Sea
sp
ATLANTIC Istanbul
ia n
Madrid
OCEAN
S ea
Lisbon
Pe
CANARY IS.
r si
n
a
Gu
Cape lf
Bojador
S A H A R A D E S E R T
Re
dS
ea
Senega Timbuktu Bilma Arabian Sea
l
DAURA KANEM
R.
CAPE Gao
TAKRUR Djenné from India
Ni
VERDE
Gambia R HAUSA
ge
IS.
e R.
Songhay
rR
.
Volta R .
BORNU
N il
MALI
GUINEA
OYO YORUBA KINGDOMS
BENIN
Elmina INDIAN OCEAN
o
Cong R.
Senega MOORS
l
WOLOF FULANI BERBERS
R.
Cape
Ni
.
rR
LOANGO
.
Volta R.
SUSU KONGO
FONS
KR ASHANTI YORUBA 0 250 500 miles
UM
EN AWIKAM EWE IBIBIO ANGOLA
Bight of IBO EFIK 0 250 500 kilometers
Benin
Grain Coast Gold Coast Bight of SEKE
Biafra Overland trade routes
Ivory Coast Slave Coast Sea trade routes
MAP 1.3
West Africa and the Mediterranean in the Fifteenth Century
Trade routes across the Sahara had long connected West Africa with the Mediterranean region.
Gold, ivory, and slaves moved north and east; fine textiles, spices, and the Muslim faith traveled
south. Beginning in the 1430s, the Portuguese opened up maritime trade with the coastal regions
of West Africa, which were home to many peoples and dozens of large and small states. Over the
next century, the movement of gold and slaves into the Atlantic would surpass that across the
Sahara.
along the West African coast, merchandise originating the mouths of the Senegal and Gambia rivers, numer-
in the world beyond the Sahara was scarce and expen- ous Mande-speaking states controlled access to the
sive, while markets for their own products were trade routes into the interior. Proceeding farther along
limited. the coast, they encountered the Akan states, a region
Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, a newly of several dozen independent but culturally linked
opening coastal trade with Europeans offered many peoples. The Akan states had goldfields of their own,
West African peoples a welcome alternative. As and this region soon became known to Europeans as
European sailors made their way along the coast of the Gold Coast. East of the Akan states lay the Bight of
West and then Central Africa, they encountered a Benin, which became an early center of the slave trade
bewilderingly complicated political landscape. Around and thus came to be called the Slave Coast. Bending
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 25
Carefully consider each of the objects or texts below. What meanings might
Colliding Cultures you — thinking like a historian — impart to them?
1. Mississippian warrior gorget (neck guard), A.D. does he miss what he shoots at. If the arrow does not find
1250–1350. armor, it penetrates as deeply as a crossbow. The bows are
very long and the arrows are made of certain reeds like
canes, very heavy and so tough that a sharpened cane
passes through a shield. Some are pointed with a fish
bone, as sharp as an awl, and others with a certain stone
like a diamond point.
26
4. Benin figurine of a Portuguese soldier from the 6. Sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Spanish silver
seventeenth century. This brass figure would have real. Spain minted enormous quantities of Ameri-
been kept on an altar or on the roof of the royal can silver; much of it was shipped to Manila, where
palace of Benin. it was exchanged for Asian luxury goods.
Sources: (2) John E. Worth, “Account of the Northern Conquest and Discovery of
Hernando de Soto by Rodrigo Rangel,” trans. John E. Worth, in Lawrence A. Clayton et
al., eds., The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America
in 1539–1543 (University of Alabama Press, 1993), 59; (3) Filippo Pigafetta, A Report of
Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY. the Kingdom of Congo, trans. Margarite Hutchinson (London: John Murray, 1881),
117–119.
27
28 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
Henry’s efforts were soon joined to those of Italian Madeira was producing 2,500 metric tons a year,
merchants, who were being forced out of eastern and Madeira sugar was available — in small, expensive
Mediterranean trade routes by the rising power of the quantities — in London, Paris, Rome, and Constan-
Ottoman Empire. Cut off from Asia, Genoese traders tinople. Most of the islands were unpopulated. The
sought an Atlantic route to the lucrative markets of the Canaries were the exception; it took Castilian adven-
Indian Ocean. They began to work with Portuguese turers decades to conquer the Guanches who lived
and Castilian mariners and monarchs to finance trad- there. Once defeated, they were enslaved to labor in the
ing voyages, and the African coast and its offshore Canaries or on Madeira, where they carved irrigation
islands opened to their efforts. European voyagers dis- canals into the island’s steep rock cliffs.
covered the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and São Europeans made no such inroads on the continent
Tomé; all of them became laboratories for the expan- of Africa itself. The coastal kingdoms were well
sion of Mediterranean agriculture. defended, and yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery
On these Atlantic islands, planters transformed quickly struck down Europeans who spent any time in
local ecosystems to experiment the interior of West Africa. Instead they maintained
IDENTIFY CAUSES with a variety of familiar cash small, fortified trading posts on offshore islands or
How did Europe’s desire crops: wheat, wine grapes, and along the coast, usually as guests of the local king.
for an ocean route to Asia woad, a blue dye plant; livestock Portuguese mariners continued to look for an
shape its contacts with
and honeybees; and, where the Atlantic route to Asia. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias
Africa?
climate permitted, sugar. By 1500, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 29
EUROPE
Novgorod
ENGLAND A S I A
CABOT (1497) Kiev
Bruges
MONGOLIA
Venice Kaffa
Genoa Ansi
Granada Constantinople Merv Kashgar Beijing
N O RTH AMERICA Antioch
Balkh JAPAN
ATLANTIC OCEAN Fez Tunis Mediterranean Sea Baghdad Hangzhou
Basra CHINA
DE SOTO (1539–42) Alexandria Aleppo PERSIA PACIFIC
AZTEC Ormuz
EMPIRE ARABIA INDIA Guangzhou OCEAN
COLUMBUS (1493–94) Surat
Mecca Cambay
Tenochtitlán Timbuktu
Aden Masulipatam PHILIPPINES
Bilma Calicut
) Jenne
01
AFRICA Ceylon
15
DI
AS
I(
Malacca
CC
(14 Mogadishu
MALABAR
SOUTH 87 MOLUCCAS
U
–8 COAST Sumatra
SP
8)
AMERICA
VE
Zanzibar Java
INCA Cuzco
EMPIRE Sofala INDIAN OCEAN
PACIFIC OCEAN AUSTRALIA
DA
GAM
A (1497–98)
Trade Routes European Explorations to 1500
Arab Dias (1487–88)
N Trans-Asian/Mongol Columbus (1493–94)
European Cabot (1497)
W E
Aztec/North American da Gama (1497–98)
S Inca/Andean Vespucci (1501)
0 2,000 4,000 miles
de Soto (1539–1542)
0 2,000 4,000 kilometers
MAP 1.4
The Eurasian Trade System and European Maritime Ventures, c. 1500
For centuries, the Mediterranean Sea was the meeting point for the commerce of Europe, North
Africa, and Asia — via the Silk Road from China and the Spice Route from India. Beginning in the
1490s, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch rulers and merchants subsidized Christian maritime explorers
who discovered new trade routes around Africa and new sources of wealth in the Americas. These
initiatives undermined the commercial primacy of the Arab Muslim–dominated Mediterranean.
30 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
the ruler of the powerful Songhai Empire, personally where they bought gold and slaves from African
owned twelve “tribes” of hereditary agricultural slaves, princes and warlords. First they enslaved a few thou-
many of them seized in raids against stateless peoples. sand Africans each year to work on sugar plantations
Slaves were also central to the trans-Saharan trade. on São Tomé, Cape Verde, the Azores, and Madeira;
When the renowned Tunisian adventurer Ibn Battuta they also sold slaves in Lisbon, which soon had an
crossed the Sahara from the Kingdom of Mali around African population of 9,000. After 1550, the Atlantic
1350, he traveled with a caravan of six hundred female slave trade, a forced diaspora of African peoples,
slaves, destined for domestic service or concubinage expanded enormously as Europeans set up sugar plan-
in North Africa, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire. tations in Brazil and the West Indies.
Between a.d. 700 and 1900, it is estimated that as many
as nine million Africans were sold in the trans-Saharan
slave trade. Sixteenth-Century Incursions
Europeans initially were much more interested in As Portuguese traders sailed south and east, the Spanish
trading for gold and other commodities than in trad- monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of
ing for human beings, but gradually they discovered Castile financed an explorer who looked to the west. As
the enormous value of human trafficking. To exploit Renaissance rulers, Ferdinand (r. 1474–1516) and
and redirect the existing African slave trade, Portuguese Isabella (r. 1474–1504) saw national unity and foreign
merchants established fortified trading posts like those commerce as the keys to power and prosperity. Married
in the Indian Ocean beginning at Elmina in 1482, in an arranged match to combine their Christian
kingdoms, the young rulers completed the centuries- Columbus set sail in three small ships in August
long reconquista, the campaign by Spanish Catholics 1492. Six weeks later, after a perilous voyage of 3,000
to drive Muslim Arabs from the European mainland, by miles, he disembarked on an island in the present-day
capturing Granada, the last Islamic territory in Western Bahamas. Believing that he had reached Asia — “the
Europe, in 1492. Using Catholicism to build a sense of Indies,” in fifteenth-century parlance — Columbus
“Spanishness,” they launched the brutal Inquisition called the native inhabitants Indians and the islands
against suspected Christian heretics and expelled or the West Indies. He was surprised by the crude living
forcibly converted thousands of Jews and Muslims. conditions but expected the native peoples “easily [to]
be made Christians.” He claimed the islands for Spain
Columbus and the Caribbean Simultaneously, and then explored the neighboring Caribbean islands
Ferdinand and Isabella sought trade and empire by and demanded tribute from the local Taino, Arawak,
subsidizing the voyages of Christopher Columbus, an and Carib peoples. Buoyed by stories of rivers of gold
ambitious and daring mariner from Genoa. Columbus lying “to the west,” Columbus left forty men on the
believed that the Atlantic Ocean, long feared by Arab island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the
merchants as a 10,000-mile-wide “green sea of darkness,” Dominican Republic) and returned triumphantly to
was a much narrower channel of water separating Spain (Map 1.5).
Europe from Asia. After cajoling and lobbying for six
years, Columbus persuaded Genoese investors in
Seville; influential courtiers; and, finally, Ferdinand To see a longer excerpt of Columbus’s views of the
and Isabella to accept his dubious theories and finance West Indies, along with other primary sources from
this period, see Sources for America’s History.
a western voyage to Asia.
W E
TRINIDAD
S
G 10N
G
PAC I F I C O C E A N
SOUTH
AMERICA
INCA
EMPIRE
G
Area of
main map SOUTH GALÁPAGOS IS.
0
AMERICA
Aztec Empire Mining area Columbus’s voyages Cortés’s conquest
1498–1500 1519–1521
Mayan Empire S Silver 1502–1504 Pizarro’s conquest
Inca Empire G Gold 1524–1535
MAP 1.5
The Spanish Conquest of America’s Great Empires
The Spanish first invaded the islands of the Caribbean, largely wiping out the native peoples.
Rumors of a gold-rich civilization led to Cortés’s invasion of the Aztec Empire in 1519. By 1535,
other Spanish conquistadors had conquered the Mayan temple cities and the Inca empire in Peru,
completing one of the great conquests in world history.
AMERICAN
VOICES
How could a Spanish force of 600 men take control of an empire of 20 million
people? That the Spanish had steel swords, armor, some guns, horses, and attack
dogs certainly gave them a military advantage. Still, concerted attack by the
armies of the Aztecs and their allies would have overwhelmed the invaders
before they reached the capital of Tenochtitlán. Why was there no such attack?
The Spanish Conquest One reason was that Cortés’s force was bolstered by a sizable army from Tlaxcala,
an independent kingdom hostile to the Aztecs. A later tradition also suggests
of Mexico that some Aztecs, including Moctezuma, thought that Cortés might be an emis-
sary of their god Quetzalcoatl.
These documents come from people who experienced the conquest. Consider
them first as sources: How trustworthy are they? Are they biased in any way?
Then think about their contents: Do their accounts agree? Do they explain why
the Spaniards reached the city unmolested?
Bernal Díaz del Castillo When Cortés was told that the Great Moctezuma was
Cortés and Moctezuma Meet approaching, and he saw him coming, he dismounted
from his horse, and when he was near Moctezuma, they
Bernal Díaz was an unlikely chronicler of great events. simultaneously paid great reverence to one another.
Born poor, he went to America as a common soldier in Moctezuma bade him welcome and our Cortés replied
1514 and served under conquistadors in Panama and Cuba. through Doña Marina [Malinali, also called Malinche,
In 1519, Bernal Díaz joined Cortés’s expedition, fought Cortés’s Indian interpreter who bore him a child] wish-
in many battles, and as a reward received an estate in ing him very good health. . . . And then Cortés brought
present-day Guatemala. In his old age, Díaz wrote The out a necklace which he had ready at hand, made of glass
True History of the Conquest of New Spain, a compelling stones, . . . which have within them many patterns of
memoir written from the perspective of a common soldier. diverse colours, these were strung on a cord of gold and
In fresh and straightforward prose, it depicts the conquest with musk so that it should have a sweet scent, and he
as a divinely blessed event that saved the non-Aztec placed it round the neck of the Great Moctezuma. . . .
peoples of Mexico from a barbarous regime. Then Cortés through the mouth of Doña Marina told him
The Great Moctezuma had sent these great Caciques in that now his heart rejoiced having seen such a great
advance to receive us, and when they came before Cortés Prince, and that he took it as a great honour that he had
they bade us welcome in their language, and as a sign of come in person to meet him. . . .
peace, they touched their hands against the ground. . . . Thus space was made for us to enter the streets of
When we arrived near to [Tenochtitlán], . . . the Great Mexico, without being so much crowded. But who could
Moctezuma got down from his litter, and those great now count the multitude of men and women and boys
Caciques [aristocrats] supported him with their arms who were in the streets and in canoes on the canals, who
beneath a marvelously rich canopy of green coloured had come out to see us. It was indeed wonderful. . . .
feathers with much gold and silver embroidery . . . which Coming to think it over it seems to be a great mercy that
was wonderful to look at. The Great Moctezuma was our Lord Jesus Christ was pleased to give us grace and
richly attired according to his usage, and he was shod courage to dare to enter into such a city; and for the many
with sandals, the soles were of gold and the upper part times He has saved me from danger of death . . . I give
adorned with precious stones. . . . Him sincere thanks. . . .
Many other Lords walked before the Great They took us to lodge in some large houses, where
Moctezuma, sweeping the ground where he would tread there were apartments for all of us, for they had belonged
and spreading cloths on it, so that he should not tread on to the father of the Great Moctezuma, who was named
the earth. Not one of these chieftains dared even to think Axayaca. . . .
of looking him in the face, but kept their eyes lowered Cortés thanked Moctezuma through our interpreters,
with great reverence. . . . and Moctezuma replied, “Malinche, you and your breth-
ren are in your own house, rest awhile,” and then he went
32
to his palaces, which were not far away, and we divided And their bodies were everywhere covered; only their
our lodgings by companies, and placed the artillery point- faces appeared. They were very white; they had chalky
ing in a convenient direction, and the order which we had faces; they had yellow hair, though the hair of some was
to keep was clearly explained to us, and that we were to be black. . . . And when Moctezuma so heard, he was much
much on the alert, both the cavalry and all of us soldiers. terrified. It was as if he fainted away. His heart saddened;
A sumptuous dinner was provided for us according to his heart failed him. . . . [but] he made himself resolute;
their use and custom, and we ate it at once. So this was he put forth great effort; he quieted, he controlled his
our lucky and daring entry into the great city of heart; he submitted himself entirely to whatsoever he was
Tenochtitlan Mexico on the 8th day of November to see, at which he was to marvel. . . . [He then greeted
the year of our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1519. Cortés, as described above.]
And when [the Spaniards] were well settled, they
Source: Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, trans. thereupon inquired of Moctezuma as to all the city’s trea-
A. P. Maudslay (1632; London: Routledge, 1928), 272–275.
sure . . . the devices, the shields. Much did they importune
him; with great zeal they sought gold. . . . Thereupon were
Friar Bernardino de Sahagún brought forth all the brilliant things; the shields, the
Aztec Elders Describe the Behavior of golden discs, the devils’ necklaces, the golden nose cres-
Moctezuma cents, the golden leg bands, the golden arm bands, the
golden forehead bands.
During the 1550s, Friar Bernardino de Sahagún published
General History of the Things of New Spain. His History Source: From Friar Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of New
Spain, translated by Arthur O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Copyright © 1975.
compiled the stories of Aztec elders who lived through the
Reprinted by permission of Utah Press.
conquest. They told their stories to Sahagún in a repetitive
style, according to the conventions of Aztec oral histories,
and he translated them into Spanish.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Moctezuma enjoyed no sleep, no food, no one spoke to 1. Both Díaz’s account and that of the Aztec elders were
him. Whatsoever he did, it was as if he were in torment. written in retrospect, and both reflect their authors’
Ofttimes it was as if he sighed, became weak, felt awareness of the impending conquest. Compare the
tone of these accounts. How does each reflect the
weak. . . . Wherefore he said, “What will now befall us? author’s knowledge of what is to come?
Who indeed stands [in charge]? Alas, until now, I. In 2. Why does Moctezuma pay “great reverence” to Cortés?
great torment is my heart; as if it were washed in chili Why does Cortés return the honor? What is the strategy
water it indeed burns.” And when he had so heard of each leader?
what the messengers reported, he was terrified, he was 3. What is Díaz’s explanation for the easy entry of the
Spanish into the city? What explanation is suggested by
astounded. . . . Especially did it cause him to faint away the elders’ account?
when he heard how the gun, at [the Spaniards’] com-
mand, discharged: how it resounded as if it thundered
when it went off. It indeed bereft one of strength; it shut
off one’s ears. And when it discharged, something like
a round pebble came forth from within. Fire went show-
ering forth; sparks went blazing forth. And its smoke
smelled very foul; it had a fetid odor which verily
wounded the head. And when [the shot] struck a
mountain, it was as if it were destroyed, dissolved . . .
as if someone blew it away.
All iron was their war array. In iron they clothed
themselves. With iron they covered their heads. Iron were
their swords. Iron were their crossbows. Iron were their
shields. Iron were their lances. And those which bore
them upon their backs, their deer [horses], were as tall as
roof terraces.
33
34 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
Although Columbus brought back no gold, the de León explored the coast of Florida and gave that
Spanish monarchs supported three more of his voy- peninsula its name. In the same year, Vasco Núñez de
ages. Columbus colonized the West Indies with more Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien (Panama) and
than 1,000 Spanish settlers — all men — and hundreds became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.
of domestic animals. But he failed to find either golden Rumors of rich Indian kingdoms encouraged other
treasures or great kingdoms, and his death in 1506 Spaniards, including hardened veterans of the recon-
went virtually unnoticed. quista, to invade the mainland. The Spanish monarchs
A German geographer soon labeled the newly offered successful conquistadors noble titles, vast
found continents America in honor of a Florentine estates, and Indian laborers.
explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci, who had With these inducements before him, in 1519
explored the coast of present-day South America Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) led an army of 600 men to
around 1500, denied that the region was part of Asia. the Yucatán Peninsula. Gathering allies among native
He called it a nuevo mundo, a “new world.” The Spanish peoples who chafed under Aztec rule, he marched on
crown called the two continents Las Indias (“the Indies”) Tenochtitlán and challenged its ruler, Moctezuma.
and wanted to make them a new Spanish world. Awed by the Spanish invaders, Moctezuma received
Cortés with great ceremony (American Voices, p. 32).
The Spanish Invasion After brutally subduing the However, Cortés soon took the emperor captive, and
Arawaks and Tainos on Hispaniola, the Spanish probed following a prolonged siege, he and his men captured
the mainland for gold and slaves. In 1513, Juan Ponce the city. The conquest took a devastating toll: the
Mexican Counterattack
This image, which comes from a history of the Aztecs written in 1570 by the Spanish Dominican monk Diego
Durán, illustrates a successful counterattack by Mexica warriors against Spanish soldiers prior to the final
conquest of Tenochtitlán. The Spaniards try to hold their position as the Mexicans prepare to strike. Institut
Amatller d’Art Hispanic/Arxiu Mas.
CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 35
conquerors cut off the city’s supply of food and water, continued on his way toward India. Others soon fol-
and the residents of Tenochtitlán suffered spectacu- lowed and changed the region’s name to Brazil after the
larly. By 1521, Cortés and his men had toppled the indigenous tree that yielded a valuable red dye; for sev-
Aztec Empire. eral decades, Portuguese sailors traded with the Tupi
The Spanish had a silent ally: disease. Having been Indians for brazilwood. Then in the 1530s, to secure
separated from Eurasia for thousands of years, the Portugal’s claim, King Dom João III sent settlers who
inhabitants of the Americas had no immunities to com- began the long, painstaking process of carving out
mon European diseases. After the Spaniards arrived, a sugar plantations in the coastal lowlands. For several
massive smallpox epidemic ravaged Tenochtitlán, decades, Native Americans supplied most of the labor
“striking everywhere in the city,” according to an Aztec for these operations, but African slaves gradually
source, and killing Moctezuma’s brother and thousands replaced them. Brazil would soon become the world’s
more. “They could not move, they could not leading producer of sugar; it would also devour African
stir. . . . Covered, mantled with pustules, very many lives. By introducing the plantation system to the
people died of them.” Subsequent outbreaks of small- Americas — a form of estate agriculture using slave
pox, influenza, and measles killed hundreds of thou- labor that was pioneered by Italian merchants and cru-
sands of Indians and sapped the survivors’ morale. sading knights in the twelfth century and transplanted
Exploiting this demographic weakness, Cortés quickly to the islands off the coast of Africa in the fifteenth
extended Spanish rule over the Aztec Empire. His lieu- century — the Portuguese set in motion one of the
tenants then moved against the Mayan city-states of the most significant developments of the early modern era.
Yucatán Peninsula, eventually conquering them as well. By the end of the sixteenth century, the European
In 1524, Francisco Pizarro set out to accomplish colonization of the Americas had barely begun. Yet
the same feat in Peru. By the time he and his small several of its most important elements were already
force of 168 men and 67 horses finally reached their taking shape. Spanish efforts demonstrated that densely
destination in 1532, half of the Inca population had populated empires were especially vulnerable to con-
already died from European diseases. Weakened mili- quest and were also especially valuable sources of
tarily and divided between rival claimants to the wealth. The Portuguese had discovered the viability of
throne, the Inca nobility was easy prey. Pizarro killed sugar plantations in the tropical regions of the Americas
Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, and seized his enor- and pioneered the transatlantic slave trade as a way of
mous wealth. Although Inca resistance continued for a manning them. And contacts with native peoples
generation, the conquest was complete by 1535, and revealed their devastating vulnerabilities to Eurasian
Spain was now the master of the wealthiest and most diseases — one part of the larger phenomenon of the
populous regions of the Western Hemisphere. Columbian Exchange (discussed in Chapter 2).
The Spanish invasion changed life forever in the
Americas. Disease and warfare wiped out virtually all
of the Indians of Hispaniola — at least 300,000 people.
In Peru, the population of 9 million in 1530 plum-
SUMMARY
meted to fewer than 500,000 a century later. Native American, European, and African societies de-
Mesoamerica suffered the greatest losses: In one of the veloped independently over thousands of years before
great demographic disasters in world history, its popu- they experienced direct contacts with one another. In
lation of 20 million Native Americans in 1500 had the Americas, residents of Mesoamerica and the Andes
dwindled to just 3 million in 1650. were fully sedentary (with individual ownership of
land and intensive agriculture), but elsewhere societies
Cabral and Brazil At the same time, Portuguese were semisedentary (with central fields and villages
efforts to find a sailing route around the southern tip of that were occupied seasonally) or nonsedentary
Africa led to a surprising find. As Vasco da Gama and (hunter-gatherers). West and Central Africa also had a
his contemporaries experimented with winds and cur- mix of sedentary, semisedentary, and nonsedentary
rents, their voyages carried them ever farther away settlements. Western Europe, by contrast, was predom-
from the African coast and into the Atlantic. On one inantly sedentary. All three continents had a complex
such voyage in 1500, the Portuguese commander Pedro patchwork of political organization, from empires, to
Alvares Cabral and his fleet were surprised to see land kingdoms and chiefdoms, to principalities, duchies,
loom up in the west. Cabral named his discovery Ihla and ministates; everywhere, rulership was imbued
da Vera Cruz — the Island of the True Cross — and with notions of spiritual power. Ruling classes relied on
36 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
warfare, trade, and tribute (or taxes) to dominate those exploration, conquest, and exploitation that no one
around them and accumulate precious goods that could have foretold or planned. In the tropical zones of
helped to set them apart from ordinary laborers, but the Caribbean and coastal Brazil, invading Europeans
they also bore responsibility for the well-being of their enslaved Native Americans and quickly drove them
subjects and offered them various forms of protection. into extinction or exile. The demands of plantation
As Portuguese and Castilian (later Spanish) seafar- agriculture soon led Europeans to import slaves from
ers pushed into the Atlantic, they set in motion a chain Africa, initiating a transatlantic trade that would
of events whose consequences they could scarcely destroy African lives on both sides of the ocean. And
imagine. From a coastal trade with Africa that was sec- two of the greatest empires in the world — the Aztec
ondary to their efforts to reach the Indian Ocean, from and Incan empires — collapsed in response to unseen
the miscalculations of Columbus and the happy acci- biological forces that acted in concert with small invad-
dent of Cabral, developed a pattern of transatlantic ing armies.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
Key People
Hiawatha (p. 13) Christopher Columbus (p. 31)
Martin Luther (p. 22) Hernán Cortés (p. 34)
Mansa Musa (p. 23) Moctezuma (p. 34)
Vasco da Gama (p. 29) Pedro Alvares Cabral (p. 35)
1. How did the rulers of Native American, European, 4. Compare the societies of the eastern woodlands of
and African empires and kingdoms secure and sus- North America with the kingdoms of Western
tain their power? How did ordinary people benefit Europe. What similarities do you see? Differences?
from, or suffer under, their rule? How do you weigh their relative importance?
2. What role did religious and spiritual ideas play in 5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
shaping the experience of ordinary people on the events listed under “Peopling” and “Work,
three continents? Exchange, and Technology” on the thematic time-
line on page 5. How did contacts among Europeans,
3. Why was long-distance trade in exotic goods such
Native Americans, and Africans alter the econo-
an important phenomenon in North America,
mies of the three continents?
Europe, and Africa?
38 PART 1 CHAPTER REVIEW
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE The century 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Return to the image of The
following the first contacts among Europe, sub- Last Judgment on page 21. How does the emphasis
Saharan Africa, and the Americas brought some of on universal truth and everlasting punishment and
the most momentous changes in world history: a reward make Christianity different from animism?
dramatic reconfiguration of human populations How might faith in such a religious system shape
across the globe, new patterns of trade and warfare, the values and priorities of believers?
and immense challenges to peoples’ worldviews.
Thinking about our contemporary world, what
monumental changes are currently affecting our
lives? How would you compare them with the
events described in this chapter?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe: 1450–
Complex, 2nd ed. (1998). Traces the long evolution of 1850, 2nd ed. (2008). European-African interactions
plantations and slavery in world history. from an African perspective.
Peter C. Mancall, ed., Travel Narratives from the Age of Timothy R. Pauketat, Cahokia (2009). An evocative
Discovery (2006). Travelers’ accounts from Asia, account of North America’s great city and archaeolo-
Africa, the Americas, and Europe. gists’ efforts to unearth it.
Charles C. Mann, 1491 (2005) and 1493 (2011). These “1492: An Ongoing Voyage” (loc.gov/exhibits/1492
two books explore the Americas before Columbus and /intro.html). Offers images and analysis of the native
the global changes unleashed by his voyages. cultures of the Western Hemisphere.
CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER REVIEW 39
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
c. 1350 t The Black Death sweeps Europe; Cahokia goes into rapid decline
1435 t Portuguese trade begins along West and Central African coasts
1540 t De Soto meets the Lady of Cofachiqui; founding of the Jesuit order
KEY TURNING POINTS: The domestication of maize (6000 b.c.), the founding of Tenochtit-
lán (1325), and the conquest of the Aztec empire (1519–1521). How did the domestication of
maize make the city of Tenochtitlán possible? What characteristics of the Aztec empire and its
capital city made it vulnerable to conquest?
American Experiments
2
C H A P T E R
1521–1700
B
SPAIN’S TRIBUTE eginning in the 1660s, legislators in IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
COLONIES Virginia and Maryland hammered In what ways did European
A New American World out the legal definition of chattel migrants transfer familiar patterns
The Columbian Exchange slavery: the ownership of human beings and institutions to their colonies in
The Protestant Challenge to as property. The institution of slavery — the Americas, and in what ways did
Spain which would profoundly affect African they create new American worlds?
Americans and shape much of American How did Native Americans adapt to
PLANTATION COLONIES
history — had been obsolete in England the growing presence of Europeans
Brazil’s Sugar Plantations
for centuries, and articulating its logic among them?
England’s Tobacco Colonies
required lawmakers to reverse some of the
The Caribbean Islands most basic presumptions of English law. For example, in 1662 a Virginia statute declared,
Plantation Life “all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condi-
NEO-EUROPEAN tion of the mother.” This idea — that a child’s legal status derived from the mother,
COLONIES rather than the father — ran contrary to the patriarchal foundations of English law. The
New France men who sat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses would not propose such a thing lightly.
New Netherland Why would they decide that the principle of patriarchal descent, which was so funda-
mental to their own worlds, was inappropriate for their slaves?
The Rise of the Iroquois
The question needed to be addressed, according to the statute’s preamble, since
New England
“doubts have arisen whether children got by an Englishman upon a negro woman
INSTABILITY, WAR, AND should be slave or free.” One such case involved Elizabeth Key, a woman whose father
REBELLION was a free Englishman and mother was an African slave. She petitioned for her freedom
New England’s Indian Wars in 1656, based on her father’s status. Her lawyer was an Englishman named William
Bacon’s Rebellion, 1675–1676 Greensted. He not only took Key’s case, but he also fathered two of her children and,
eventually, married her. Key won her case and her freedom from bondage. Elizabeth
Key escaped her mother’s fate — a life in slavery — because her father and her husband
were both free Englishmen. The 1662 statute aimed to close Key’s avenue to freedom.
The process by which the institution of chattel slavery was molded to the needs of
colonial planters is just one example of the way Europeans adapted the principles they
brought with them to the unfamiliar demands of their new surroundings. In the show-
down between people like Elizabeth Key and William Greensted, on the one hand, and
the members of Virginia’s House of Burgesses on the other, we see how people in dis-
orienting circumstances — some in positions in power, others in various states of sub-
jection to their social and political superiors — scrambled to make sense of their world
and bend its rules to their advantage. Through countless contests of power and author-
ity like this one, the outlines of a new world gradually began to emerge from the colli-
sion of cultures.
By 1700, three distinct types of colonies had developed in the Americas: the tribute
colonies created in Mexico and Peru, which relied initially on the wealth and labor of
indigenous peoples; plantation colonies, where sugar and other tropical and subtropical
crops could be produced with bound labor; and neo-Europes, where colonists sought to
replicate, or at least approximate, economies and social structures they knew at home.
40
Power and Race in the Chesapeake In this 1670 painting by Gerard Soest, proprietor Lord
Baltimore holds a map of Maryland, the colony he owned and which would soon belong to his grandson
Cecil Calvert, shown in the painting as already grasping his magnificent inheritance. The presence
of a young African servant foretells the importance of slave labor in the post-1700 economy of the
Chesapeake colonies. Enoch Pratt Free Library, Maryland’s State Library Resource Center. All Rights reserved. 41
42 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
1613
New Netherland
1542 1608 1628
Portuguese Brazil New France New Sweden
1636
1530 1607 Rhode Island
1520 Spanish Peru English Virginia 1620 1635
New Spain Plymouth Colony 1630 Connecticut
Massachusetts Bay 1634
Maryland
FIGURE 2.1
Chronology of European Colonies in the Americas
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 43
languages. However, Spanish priests suppressed reli- significantly increased agricultural yields and pop-
gious ceremonies and texts and converted natives to ulation growth in other continents. Maize and pota-
Christianity en masse. Catholicism was transformed in toes, for example, reached China
the process: Catholic parishes took their form from around 1700; in the follow- PLACE EVENTS
Indian communities; indigenous ideas and expecta- ing century, the Chinese popula- IN CONTEXT
tions reshaped Church practices; and new forms of tion tripled from 100 million to How did the ecological
Native American Christianity emerged in both regions. 300 million. At the same time, context of colonization
many animals, plants, and germs shape interactions be-
were carried to the Americas. tween Europeans and
The Columbian Exchange
European livestock transformed Native Americans?
The Spanish invasion permanently altered the natural American landscapes. While
as well as the human environment. Smallpox, influ- Native Americans domesticated very few animals —
enza, measles, yellow fever, and other silent killers dogs and llamas were the principal exceptions —
carried from Europe and Africa ravaged Indian com- Europeans brought an enormous Old World bestiary
munities, whose inhabitants had never encountered to the Americas, including cattle, swine, horses, oxen,
these diseases before and thus had no immunity to chickens, and honeybees. Eurasian grain crops — wheat,
them. In the densely populated core areas, populations barley, rye, and rice — made the transatlantic voyage
declined by 90 percent or more in the first century along with inadvertent imports like dandelions and
of contact with Europeans. On islands and in the trop- other weeds.
ical lowlands, the toll was even heavier; native popula-
tions were often wiped out altogether. Syphilis was the
only significant illness that traveled in the opposite The Protestant Challenge to Spain
direction: Columbus’s sailors carried a virulent strain Beyond the core regions of its empire, Spain claimed
of the sexually transmitted disease back to Europe vast American dominions but struggled to hold them.
with them. Controlling the Caribbean basin, which was essential
The movement of diseases and peoples across the for Spain’s transatlantic shipping routes, was especially
Atlantic was part of a larger pattern of biological trans- difficult, since the net of tiny islands spanning the east-
formation that historians call the Columbian Exchange ern Caribbean — the Lesser Antilles — provided many
(Map 2.1). Foods of the Western Hemisphere — especially safe harbors for pirates and privateers. Fortified out-
maize, potatoes, manioc, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes — posts in Havana and St. Augustine provided some
Smallpox Victims
Hans Staden, a German soldier who was
shipwrecked in Brazil in 1552, was captured
by a Tupinambá Indian named Jeppipo
Wasu. Shortly thereafter, Wasu and his
family traveled to a neighboring village as
smallpox ravaged the population; when
they returned, they were very sick. Wasu
recovered, but he lost his mother, two
brothers, and two children. This engrav-
ing, which depicts Wasu’s return amid his
townspeople’s grief, appeared in the third
volume of Theodor de Bry’s monumental
America, published in Frankfurt in 1593.
Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at
Brown University.
44 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
uts, bananas
squash, pepper , tobacco, beans,
s, cacao, syphi
r, cocon
ice
Tropic of Cancer Sugar, r Suga
r, pl
a g ue
, rice
w feve
, tea
Yello
fever
ia, yellow
Malar
AFRICA
Equator
oc, cacao
Cassava, mani
SOUTH
AMERICA
Tropic of Capricorn
AUSTRALIA
N
S u g a r , rice
W E
0 1,000 2,000 miles
S
0 1,000 2,000 kilometers
MAP 2.1
The Columbian Exchange
As European traders and adventurers traversed the world between 1430 and 1600, they began
what historians call the Columbian Exchange, a vast intercontinental movement of plants,
animals, and diseases that changed the course of historical development. The nutritious, high-
yielding American crops of corn and potatoes enriched the diets of Europeans, Africans, and
Asians. However, the Eurasian and African diseases of smallpox, diphtheria, malaria, and yellow
fever nearly wiped out the native inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere and virtually
ensured that they would lose control of their lands.
protection, but they were never sufficient to keep ene- 1566. After fifteen years of war, the seven northern
mies at bay. provinces declared their independence, becoming the
And Spain had powerful enemies, their animosity Dutch Republic (or Holland) in 1581.
sharpened by the Protestant Reformation and the The English king Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) ini-
resulting split in European Christendom (see p. 22). In tially opposed Protestantism. However, when the pope
the wake of Martin Luther’s attack on the Catholic refused to annul his marriage to the Spanish princess
Church, the Protestant critique of Catholicism broad- Catherine of Aragon in 1534, Henry broke with Rome
ened and deepened. Gold and silver from Mexico and and placed himself at the head of the new Church of
Peru made Spain the wealthiest nation in Europe, and England, which promptly granted an annulment.
King Philip II (r. 1556–1598) — an ardent Catholic — Although Henry’s new church maintained most
its most powerful ruler. Philip was determined to Catholic doctrines and practices, Protestant teachings
root out challenges to the Catholic Church wherever continued to spread. Faced with popular pressure for
they appeared. One such place was in the Spanish reform, Henry’s daughter and successor, Queen
Netherlands, a collection of Dutch- and Flemish- Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), approved a Protestant con-
speaking provinces that had grown wealthy from tex- fession of faith. At the same time, however, Elizabeth
tile manufacturing and trade with Portuguese outposts retained the Catholic ritual of Holy Communion and
in Africa and Asia. To protect their Calvinist faith and left the Church in the hands of Anglican bishops and
political liberties, they revolted against Spanish rule in archbishops. Elizabeth’s compromises angered radical
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 45
Protestants, but the independent Anglican Church was diverted workers and resources from Spain’s fledgling
anathema to the Spanish king, Philip II. industries. The gold was like a “shewer of Raine,” com-
Elizabeth supported a generation of English sea- plained one critic, that left “no benefite behind.”
farers who took increasingly aggressive actions against Oppressed by high taxes on agriculture and fearful of
Spanish control of American wealth. The most famous military service, more than 200,000 residents of Castile,
of these Elizabethan “sea dogs” was Francis Drake, a once the most prosperous region of Spain, migrated to
rough-hewn, devoutly Protestant farmer’s son from America. By the time of Philip’s death in 1598, Spain
Devon who took to the sea and became a scourge to was in serious economic decline.
Philip’s American interests. In 1577, he ventured into By contrast, England grew significantly during the
the Pacific to disrupt Spanish shipping to Manila. sixteenth century, its economy stimulated, as colonial
Drake’s fleet lost three ships and a hundred men, but advocate Richard Hakluyt noted, by a “wounderful
the survivors completed the first English circumnavi- increase of our people.” As England’s population soared
gation of the globe and captured two Spanish treasure from 3 million in 1500 to 5 million in 1630, its mon-
ships. When Drake’s flagship, the Golden Hind, archs supported the expansion of commerce and man-
returned to England in 1580, it brought enough silver, ufacturing. English merchants had long supplied
gold, silk, and spices to bring his investors a 4,700 per- European weavers with high-
cent return on their investment. quality wool; around 1500, they TRACE CHANGE
At the same time, Elizabeth supported military created their own outwork tex- OVER TIME
expeditions that imposed English rule over Gaelic- tile industry. Merchants bought Why did Spain’s economy
speaking Catholic Ireland. Calling the Irish “wild sav- wool from the owners of great deteriorate and England’s
ages” who were “more barbarous and more brutish in estates and sent it “out” to land- economy improve in the
their customs . . . than in any other part of the world,” less peasants in small cottages sixteenth century?
English soldiers brutally massacred thousands, pre- to spin and weave into cloth. The
figuring the treatment of Indians in North America. government aided textile entrepreneurs by setting low
To meet Elizabeth’s challenges, Philip sent a Spanish wage rates and helped merchants by giving them
Armada — 130 ships and 30,000 men — against England monopolies in foreign markets.
in 1588. Philip intended to restore the Roman Church This system of state-assisted manufacturing and
in England and then to wipe out Calvinism in Holland. trade became known as mercantilism. By encouraging
But he failed utterly: a fierce storm and English ships textile production, Elizabeth reduced imports and
destroyed the Spanish fleet. increased exports. The resulting favorable balance of
Philip continued to spend his American gold and trade caused gold and silver to flow into England and
silver on religious wars, an ill-advised policy that stimulated further economic expansion. Increased trade
46 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
with Turkey and India also boosted import duties, turn, to survive the present and carve out pathways to
which swelled the royal treasury and the monarch’s the future.
power. By 1600, Elizabeth’s mercantile policies had laid
the foundations for overseas colonization. Now the
English had the merchant fleet and wealth needed to Brazil’s Sugar Plantations
challenge Spain’s control of the Western Hemisphere. Portuguese colonists transformed the tropical low-
lands of coastal Brazil into a sugar plantation zone like
the ones they had recently created on Madeira, the
Plantation Colonies Azores, the Cape Verdes, and São Tomé. The work
proceeded slowly, but by 1590 more than a thousand
As Spain hammered out its American empire and sugar mills had been established in Pernambuco and
struggled against its Protestant rivals, Portugal, Bahia. Each large plantation had its own milling oper-
England, France, and the Netherlands created suc- ation: because sugarcane is extremely heavy and rots
cessful plantation settlements in Brazil, Jamestown, quickly, it must be processed on site. Thus sugar plan-
Maryland, and the Caribbean islands (Map 2.2). tations combined backbreaking agricultural labor with
Worldwide demand for sugar and tobacco fuelled the milling, extracting, and refining processes that made
growth of these new colonies, and the resulting influx sugar plantations look like Industrial Revolution–era
of colonists diminished Spain’s dominance in the New factories.
World. At the same time, they imposed dramatic new Initially, Portuguese planters hoped that Brazil’s
pressures on native populations, who scrambled, in indigenous peoples would supply the labor required to
EUROPE
NORTH AMERICA
Boston
PORTUGAL SPAIN
MARYLAND Lisbon
Jamestown AZORES Seville
VIRGINIA
MADEIRA IS.
MEXICO Havana
SAINT OCEAN AFRICA
CUBA DOMINGUE
Veracruz ST. KITTS
JAMAICA
Caribbean NEVIS MARTINIQUE CAPE VERDE IS. MANDE-
SP
Sea
Cartegena
BARBADOS S T A T EE A K I N G
S
GUYANA
AKAN STATES
Bight of
Benin
Quito SÃO TOMÉ
SOUTH AMERICA
PERNAMBUCO Recife
KONGO
PERU
BRAZIL Salvador ANGOLA
PAC I FI C BAHIA
MAP 2.2
The Plantation Colonies
The plantation zone in the Americas extended from the tropical coast of Brazil northwestward
through the West Indies and into the tropical and subtropical lowlands of southeastern North
America. Sugar was the most important plantation crop in the Americas, but where the soil or
climate could not support it planters experimented with a wide variety of other possibilities,
including tobacco, indigo, cotton, cacao, and rice.
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 47
operate their sugar plantations. But, beginning with a disaster when 117 settlers on Roanoke Island, left
wave of smallpox in 1559, unfamiliar diseases soon rav- unsupplied for several years, vanished. The fate of
aged the coastal Indian population. As a result, planters Roanoke — the “lost colony” — remains a compelling
turned to African slaves in ever-growing numbers; by puzzle for modern historians.
1620, the switch was complete. While Spanish colonies
in Mexico and Peru took shape with astonishing speed The Jamestown Settlement Merchants then took
following conquest, Brazil’s occupation and develop- charge of English expansion. In 1606, King James I
ment progressed more gradually; it required both trial (r. 1603–1625) granted to the Virginia Company of
and error and hard work to build a paying colony. London all the lands stretching from present-day
North Carolina to southern New York. To honor the
memory of Elizabeth I, the never-married “Virgin
England’s Tobacco Colonies Queen,” the company’s directors named the region
England was slow to embrace the prospect of planting Virginia (Map 2.3). Influenced by the Spanish example,
colonies in the Americas. There were fumbling attempts in 1607 the Virginia Company dispatched an all-male
in the 1580s in Newfoundland and Maine, privately group with no ability to support itself — no women,
organized and poorly funded. Sir Walter Raleigh’s three farmers, or ministers were among the first arrivals —
expeditions to North Carolina likewise ended in that expected to extract tribute from the region’s Indian
W E NEW FRANCE
Quebec
R.
S ce
Three Rivers ren
w ABENAKI
La
Montreal
St.
NEW
ABENAKI ENGLAND Pemaquid
Connecticut R.
Salem
Boston
Hudson R.
IROQUOIS Fort Plymouth
Orange
Providence
Hartford
New Haven
New Amsterdam
NS LENAPE/
DELAWARE
AI
om
Pot ac R ATLANTIC
NT
.
R. MARYLAND OCEAN
io
OU
Oh
Chesapeake Bay
AN
Jamestown
HI
AC
. TUSCARORA
eR
AL
PP
nn
va
CATAWBA
nn
Spain
France
England
John White’s Map of Virginia CREEK
Netherlands
This map, drawn by Roanoke colonist John White, may hold Key settlements
St. Augustine
a clue to the fate of the so-called lost colony. The island of Not yet explored
by Europeans
Roanoke is right of center, just off the mainland and within Explored but not
the barrier islands. Directly west, on the point where the TIMUCUAN settled by Europeans
CHIEFDOMS
Roanoke and Chowan rivers join, is a (barely visible) paper
patch. When lit from behind, a red fort is clearly visible
beneath the patch, suggesting that the Roanoke colonists MAP 2.3
may already have identified a settlement site there: when he Eastern North America, 1650
left the colony, John White wrote that the remaining colonists
“were prepared to remove from Roanoak 50 miles into the By 1650, four European nations had permanent
maine[land].” Archaeologists and historians plan to use this settlements along the eastern coast of North America,
discovery to guide further explorations in the area. The Art but only England had substantial numbers of settlers,
Archive at Art Resource, NY. some 25,000 in New England and another 15,000 in the
Chesapeake region. French, Dutch, Swedish, and English
colonists were also trading European manufactures to
Native Americans in exchange for animal furs and skins,
with far-reaching implications for Indian societies.
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 49
38 of the 120 men were alive nine months later. Death his daughter Pocahontas and John Rolfe, an English
rates remained high: by 1611, the Virginia Company colonist (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 50). But these
had dispatched 1,200 colonists to Jamestown, but fewer tactics failed. The inability to decide who would pay
than half remained alive. “Our men were destroyed with tribute to whom led to more than a decade of uneasy
cruell diseases, as Swellings, Fluxes, Burning Fevers, relations, followed by a long era of ruinous warfare.
and by warres,” reported one of the settlement’s leaders, The war was precipitated by the discovery of a cash
“but for the most part they died of meere famine.” crop that — like sugar in Brazil — offered colonists a
Their plan to dominate the local Indian population way to turn a profit but required steady expansion onto
ran up against the presence of Powhatan, the powerful Indian lands. Tobacco was a plant native to the
chief who oversaw some thirty tribal chiefdoms Americas, long used by Indians as a medicine and a
between the James and Potomac rivers. He was willing stimulant. John Rolfe found a West Indian strain that
to treat the English traders as potential allies who could could flourish in Virginia soil and produced a small
provide valuable goods, but — just as the Englishmen crop — “pleasant, sweet, and strong” — that fetched a
expected tribute from the Indians — Powhatan high price in England and spurred the migration of
expected tribute from the English. He provided the thousands of new settlers. The English soon came to
hungry English adventurers with corn; in return, he crave the nicotine that tobacco contained. James I ini-
demanded “hatchets . . . bells, beads, and copper” as tially condemned the plant as a “vile Weed” whose
well as “two great guns” and expected Jamestown to “black stinking fumes” were “baleful to the nose, harm-
become a dependent community within his chiefdom. ful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs.” But the
Subsequently, Powhatan arranged a marriage between king’s attitude changed as taxes on imported tobacco
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Matoaka — nicknamed Pocahontas — was born around 1596 in the region the
English would soon name Virginia. A daughter of Chief Powhatan, her interac-
tions with colonists were important at the time and have been mythologized
ever since. Pocahontas left no writings, so what we know of her comes from
Who Was Pocahontas? others. From these accounts, we know that she acted as a mediator with the
Jamestown settlers; she was the first Native American to marry an Englishman;
and she traveled to England with her husband and son. Pocahontas fell ill and
died in Gravesend, England, in June 1617.
1. John Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, 1624. 3. John Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, 1624.
Smith’s description of being a captive of Powhatan Pocahontas visited Jamestown regularly in the
in 1607. years following Smith’s capture. Smith returned to
Having feasted [Smith] after their best barbarous manner England in 1609; four years later Captain Samuel
they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclu- Argall kidnapped Pocahontas and held her captive
sion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: in Jamestown.
then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to [S]he too James towne [was brought.] A messenger
them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with forthwith was sent to her father, that his daughter
their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings Pocahontas he loved so dearely, he must ransome with
dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevaile, got his our men, swords, peeces, tooles, &c. he treacherously had
head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save stolen. . . . [H]e . . . sent us word, that when we would
him from death: whereat the Emperour was contented he deliver his daughter, he would make us satisfaction for all
should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, injuries done to us, and give us five hundred bushels of
and copper. Corne, and for ever be friends with us. . . . [W]e could
not believe the rest of our armes were either lost or stolen
2. Robert Vaughn’s engraving of Pocahontas saving from him, and therefore till he sent them, we would keep
Smith’s life, from John Smith’s Generall Historie of his daughter. . . . [W]e heard no more from him a long
Virginia, 1624. time after. . . . .
[Long before this, Master John Rolfe, an honest
Gentleman of good behavior had been in love with
Pocahontas, and she with him. . . . T]his marriage came
soone to the knowledge of Powhatan, a thing acceptable
to him, as appeared by his sudden consent, for within ten
daies he sent Opachisco, an old Uncle of hers, and two of
his sons, to see the manner of the marriage, and to do
in that behalf what they were requested . . . which was
accordingly done about the first of April: And ever since
we have had friendly trade and commerce.
bolstered the royal treasury. Powhatan, however, now also decreed the legal establishment of the Church of
accused the English of coming “not to trade but to England in the colony, which meant that residents had
invade my people and possess my country.” to pay taxes to support its clergy. These institutions —
To foster the flow of migrants, the Virginia an appointed governor, an elected assembly, a formal
Company allowed individual settlers to own land, legal system, and an established Anglican Church —
granting 100 acres to every freeman and more to those became the model for royal colonies throughout
who imported servants. The company also created a English America.
system of representative government: the House of
Burgesses, first convened in 1619, could make laws and Lord Baltimore Settles Catholics in Maryland A
levy taxes, although the governor and the company second tobacco-growing colony developed in neigh-
council in England could veto its acts. By 1622, land- boring Maryland. King Charles I (r. 1625–1649),
ownership, self-government, and a judicial system James’s successor, was secretly sympathetic toward
based on “the lawes of the realme of England” had Catholicism, and in 1632 he granted lands bordering
attracted some 4,500 new recruits. To encourage the the vast Chesapeake Bay to Catholic aristocrat Cecilius
transition to a settler colony, the Virginia Company Calvert, Lord Baltimore. Thus Maryland became a ref-
recruited dozens of “Maides young and uncorrupt to uge for Catholics, who were subject to persecution in
make wifes to the Inhabitants.” England. In 1634, twenty gentlemen, mostly Catholics,
and 200 artisans and laborers, mostly Protestants,
The Indian War of 1622 The influx of migrants established St. Mary’s City at the mouth of the Potomac
sparked an all-out conflict with the neighboring River. To minimize religious confrontations, the pro-
Indians. The struggle began with an assault led by prietor instructed the governor to allow “no scandall
Opechancanough, Powhatan’s younger brother and nor offence to be given to any of the Protestants” and to
successor. In 1607, Opechancanough had attacked “cause All Acts of Romane Catholicque Religion to be
some of the first English invaders; subsequently, he done as privately as may be.”
“stood aloof ” from the English settlers and “would not Maryland grew quickly because Baltimore
be drawn to any Treaty.” In particular, he resisted imported many artisans and offered ample lands to
English proposals to place Indian children in schools wealthy migrants. But political conflict threatened the
to be “brought upp in Christianytie.” Upon becoming colony’s stability. Disputing Baltimore’s powers, settlers
the paramount chief in 1621, Opechancanough told elected a representative assembly and insisted on the
the leader of the neighboring Potomack Indians: right to initiate legislation, which Baltimore grudg-
“Before the end of two moons, there should not be an ingly granted. Anti-Catholic agitation by Protestants
Englishman in all their Countries.” also threatened his religious goals. To protect his
Opechancanough almost succeeded. In 1622, he coreligionists, Lord Baltimore persuaded the assembly
coordinated a surprise attack by twelve Indian chief- to enact the Toleration Act (1649), which granted all
doms that killed 347 English settlers, nearly one-third Christians the right to follow their beliefs and hold
of the population. The English church services. In Maryland, as in Virginia, tobacco
EXPLAIN fought back by seizing the fields quickly became the main crop, and that similarity,
CONSEQUENCES and food of those they now rather than any religious difference, ultimately made
How did the proximity of called “naked, tanned, deformed the two colonies very much alike in their economic
the Powhatan Chiefdom Savages” and declared “a per- and social systems.
affect developments in petual war without peace or
early Virginia? truce” that lasted for a decade.
They sold captured warriors The Caribbean Islands
into slavery, “destroy[ing] them who sought to destroy Virginia’s experiment with a cash crop that created a
us” and taking control of “their cultivated places.” land-intensive plantation society ran parallel to develop-
Shocked by the Indian uprising, James I revoked ments in the Caribbean, where English, French, and
the Virginia Company’s charter and, in 1624, made Dutch sailors began looking for a permanent toehold.
Virginia a royal colony. Now the king and his ministers In 1624, a small English party under the command
appointed the governor and a small advisory council, of Sir Thomas Warner established a settlement on
retaining the locally elected House of Burgesses but St. Christopher (St. Kitts). A year later, Warner allowed a
stipulating that the king’s Privy Council (a committee French group to settle the other end of the island so they
of political advisors) must ratify all legislation. The king could better defend their position from the Spanish.
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 53
Within a few years, the English and French colonists on Colonists experimented with a wide variety of cash
St. Kitts had driven the native Caribs from the island, crops, including tobacco, indigo, cotton, cacao, and
weathered a Spanish attack, and created a common set ginger. Beginning in the 1640s — and drawing on the
of bylaws for mutual occupation of the island. example of Brazil — planters on many of the islands
After St. Kitts, a dozen or so colonies were founded shifted to sugar cultivation. Where conditions were
in the Lesser Antilles, including the French islands of right, as they were in Barbados, Jamaica, Nevis, and
Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Bart’s; the English Martinique, these colonies were soon producing sub-
outposts of Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Anguilla, stantial crops of sugar and, as a consequence, claimed
Tortola, and Barbados; and the Dutch colony of St. some of the world’s most valuable real estate.
Eustatius. In 1655, an English fleet captured the Spanish
island of Jamaica — one of the large islands of the
Greater Antilles — and opened it to settlement as well. Plantation Life
A few of these islands were unpopulated before In North America and the Caribbean, plantations were
Europeans settled there; elsewhere, native populations initially small freeholds, farms of 30 to 50 acres owned
were displaced, and often wiped out, within a decade and farmed by families or male partners. But the logic
or so. Only on the largest islands did native popula- of plantation agriculture soon encouraged consolida-
tions hold out longer. tion: large planters engrossed as much land as they
54 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
could and experimented with new forms of labor disci- formed a large segment of the society. Sixty percent of
pline that maximized their control over production. In the children born in Middlesex County, Virginia,
Virginia, the headright system guaranteed 50 acres of before 1680 lost one or both parents before they were
land to anyone who paid the passage of a new immi- thirteen. Death was pervasive. Although 15,000 English
grant to the colony; thus, by buying additional inden- migrants arrived in Virginia between 1622 and 1640,
tured servants and slaves, the colony’s largest planters the population rose only from 2,000 to 8,000. It was
also amassed ever-greater claims to land. even harsher in the islands, where yellow fever epi-
European demand for tobacco set off a forty-year demics killed indiscriminately. On Barbados, burials
economic boom in the Chesapeake. “All our riches for outnumbered baptisms in the second half of the seven-
the present do consist in tobacco,” a planter remarked teenth century by four to one.
in 1630. Exports rose from 3 million pounds in 1640
to 10 million pounds in 1660. After 1650, wealthy Indentured Servitude Still, the prospect of owning
migrants from gentry or noble families established land continued to lure settlers. By 1700, more than
large estates along the coastal rivers. Coming primarily 100,000 English migrants had come to Virginia and
from southern England, where tenants and wage labor- Maryland and over 200,000 had migrated to the islands
ers farmed large manors, they copied that hierarchical of the West Indies, principally to Barbados; the vast
system by buying English indentured servants and majority to both destinations traveled as indentured
enslaved Africans to work their lands. At about the servants (Figure 2.2). Shipping registers from the
same time, the switch to sugar production in Barbados English port of Bristol reveal the backgrounds of 5,000
caused the price of land there to quadruple, driving servants embarking for the Chesapeake. Three-quarters
small landowners out. were young men. They came to Bristol searching for
For rich and poor alike, life in the plantation colo- work; once there, merchants persuaded them to sign
nies of North America and the Caribbean was harsh. contracts to labor in America. Indentured servitude
The scarcity of towns deprived settlers of community contracts bound the men — and the quarter who were
(Map 2.4). Families were equally scarce because there women — to work for a master for four or five years,
were few women, and marriages often ended with the after which they would be free to marry and work for
early death of a spouse. Pregnant women were espe- themselves.
cially vulnerable to malaria, spread by mosquitoes that For merchants, servants were valuable cargo: their
flourished in tropical and subtropical climates. Many contracts fetched high prices from Chesapeake and
mothers died after bearing a first or second child, so West Indian planters. For the plantation owners, inden-
orphaned children (along with unmarried young men) tured servants were a bargain if they survived the
N
MAP 2.4
Why was Fort West located here
and what was its major function? River Plantations in Virginia, c. 1640
Pa Ra W E
The first migrants settled in widely
M
m pp
at
un ap a h Chesapeake
t
ke on
y i S dispersed plantations along the James
an
er
River, a settlement pattern promoted
ck
Ri
Arrohateck cka
Falling ho
min W Werowacomoco heavy hogsheads of tobacco onto
Creek y Riv H
Henrico
er
A oceangoing ships and offload supplies
T that they then sold to smallholding
Yo
Appamatuck
Flowerdew Smith‘s Hundred What does this suggest about the towns or trading centers developed in
Hundred Martin‘s James Jamestown nature of early Virginia society? the Chesapeake region.
Brandon Smith‘s
Fort Martin‘s Dale‘s Gift
Note the lack of roads and the Hundred
Cape Charles Smith Is.
Rive
The prospects for Europeans who traveled to tropical plantations like Barbados
Plantation Colonies differed dramatically from those traveling to neo-European colonies like Mas-
sachusetts Bay. In the former, planters employed small armies of servants and
Versus Neo-Europes slaves; in the latter, the first generation of colonists worked hard, often in cold
climates and rocky soils, to eke out a living.
Henry Whistler’s Journal, 1655 good store and better cheap to build warm houses and
This Island [Barbados] is one of the Richest Spots of make good fires, which makes the winter less tedious. . . .
ground in the world and fully inhabited. . . . The gentry [T]rue it is that some venturing too nakedly in extremity
here doth Hue [appear] far better than ours do in En- of cold, being more foolhardy than wise, have for a time
gland : they have most of them 100 or 2 or 3 of slaves[,] lost the use of their feet, others the use of their fingers;
apes who they command as they please. . . . This Island but time and surgery afterwards recovered them. Some
is inhabited with all sorts : with English, French, Dutch, have had their overgrown beards so frozen together that
Scots, Irish, Spaniards they being Jews : with Indians and they could not get their strong-water bottles into their
miserable Negroes borne to perpetual slavery they and mouths. . . . [W]hereas many do disparage the land, say-
their seed : these Negroes they do allow as many wives as ing a man cannot live without labor, in that they more
they will have, some will have 3 or 4, according as they disparage and discredit themselves in giving the world
find their body able : our English here doth think a negro occasion to take notice of their dronish disposition that
child the first day it is born to be worth £5, they cost them would live off the sweat of another man’s brows. . . .
nothing the bringing up, they go all ways naked : some For all in New England must be workers of some
planters will have 30 more or les about 4 or 5 years old : kind. . . . And howsoever they are accounted poor,
they sell them from one to the other as we do sheep. This they are well contented and look not so much at
Island is the Dunghill whereon England doth cast forth abundance as at competency.
its rubbish. . . . A rogue in England will hardly make a
cheater here : a Bawd brought over puts on a demure Source: William Wood, New England’s Prospect (Boston: The University of Massachu-
comportment, a whore if handsome makes a wife for setts Press, 1993), 28–29, 68.
some rich planter.
farming settlement. In 1662, King Louis XIV (r. 1643– discouraged migration. Louis XIV drafted tens of thou-
1714) turned New France into a royal colony and sands of men into military service and barred
subsidized the migration of indentured servants. Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) from migrat-
French servants labored under contract for three years, ing to New France, fearing they might win converts
received a salary, and could eventually lease a farm — far and take control of the colony. Moreover, the French
more generous terms than those for indentured ser- legal system gave peasants strong rights to their village
vants in the English colonies. lands, whereas migrants to New France faced an
Nonetheless, few people moved to New France, oppressive, aristocracy- and church-dominated feudal
a cold and forbidding country “at the end of the system. In the village of Saint Ours in Quebec, for
world,” as one migrant put it. And some state policies example, peasants paid 45 percent of their wheat crop 57
58 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
to nobles and the Catholic Church. By 1698, only (ruled by Spanish monarchs, 1580–1640), the Dutch
15,200 Europeans lived in New France, compared to seized Portuguese forts in Africa and Indonesia and
100,000 in England’s North American colonies. sugar plantations in Brazil. These conquests gave the
Despite this small population, France eventually Dutch control of the Atlantic trade in slaves and sugar
claimed a vast inland arc, from the St. Lawrence Valley and the Indian Ocean commerce in East Indian spices
through the Great Lakes and down the course of the and Chinese silks and ceramics (Map 2.5).
Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Explorers and fur traders In 1609, Dutch merchants dispatched the English
drove this expansion. In 1673, Jacques Marquette mariner Henry Hudson to locate a navigable route to
reached the Mississippi River in present-day Wisconsin; the riches of the East Indies. What he found as he
then, in 1681, Robert de La Salle traveled down the probed the rivers of northeast America was a fur
majestic river to the Gulf of Mexico. To honor Louis bonanza. Following Hudson’s exploration of the river
XIV, La Salle named the region Louisiana. By 1718, that now bears his name, the merchants built Fort
French merchants had founded the port of New Orange (Albany) in 1614 to trade for furs with the
Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi. Eventually a Munsee and Iroquois Indians. Then, in 1621, the Dutch
network of about two dozen forts grew up in the Great government chartered the West India Company, which
Lakes and Mississippi. Soldiers and missionaries used founded the colony of New Netherland, set up New
them as bases of operations, while Indians, traders, and Amsterdam (on Manhattan Island) as its capital, and
their métis (mixed-race) offspring created trading brought in farmers and artisans to make the enterprise
communities alongside them. self-sustaining. The new colony did not thrive. The
population of the Dutch Republic was too small to
support much emigration — just 1.5 million people,
New Netherland compared to 5 million in Britain and 20 million in
By 1600, Amsterdam had become the financial and France — and its migrants sought riches in Southeast
commercial hub of northern Europe, and Dutch finan- Asia rather than fur-trading profits in America. To
ciers dominated the European banking, insurance, and protect its colony from rival European nations, the
textile industries. Dutch merchants owned more ships West India Company granted huge estates along the
and employed more sailors than did the combined Hudson River to wealthy Dutchmen who promised to
fleets of England, France, and Spain. Indeed, the Dutch populate them. But by 1664, New Netherland had only
managed much of the world’s commerce. During their 5,000 residents, and fewer than half of them were
struggle for independence from Spain and Portugal Dutch.
ARCTIC OCE AN
O C EA N Tripoli
k
Red
ves Macao
City Sla ves GUJARAT Silver
Silver PUERTO RICO Slaves Sla
Sea
Veracruz CAPE Arabian
Sugar
Acapulco Curaçao JAMAICA Aden Goa Manila
VERDE Sea Slav
(Neth.)
Cartagena ves es PHILIPPINES
GOLD sla
Sil
MAIN GUIANA
COAST AF RIC A ry,
g
th Malacca
Ivo clo
NEW p er, hells Borneo MOLUCCAS
W E p s s
GRANADA Mombasa Pe ie lave Sumatra
lav
es wr S INDONESIA NEW
S BRAZIL S Luanda Co GUINEA
Lima Slaves ANGOLA Java
PERU Bahia
SOUTH Mozambique
PACIFIC OCEAN A M E RI C A MADAGASCAR
Sofala
MAURITIUS
Rio de Janeiro
pi (NETH.) AUSTRALIA
S
ce Cape
s
Town
Sp
ce
i
s INDIAN OCE AN
MAP 2.5
The Eurasian Trade System and European Spheres of Influence, 1650
Between 1550 and 1650, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch merchants took control of the maritime
trade routes between Europe and India, Indonesia, and China. They also created two new trading
connections. The South Atlantic System carried slaves, sugar, and manufactured goods between
Europe, Africa, and the valuable plantation settlements in Brazil and the Caribbean islands. And
a transpacific trade carried Spanish American silver to China in exchange for silks, ceramics, and
other manufactures. (To trace long-term changes in trade and empires, see Map 1.4 on p. 24 and
Map 5.1 on p. 154.)
Like New France, New Netherland flourished as a relations — an uneasy welcome, followed by rising ten-
fur-trading enterprise. Trade with the powerful Iroquois, sions and war — afflicted even the Dutch, who had few
though rocky at first, gradually improved. But Dutch designs on Indian lands or on their “unregenerate”
settlers had less respect for their Algonquian-speaking souls and were only looking to do business.
neighbors. They seized prime farming land from the After the crippling Indian war, the West India
Algonquian peoples and took over their trading net- Company ignored New Netherland and expanded
work, which exchanged corn and wampum from Long its profitable trade in African
Island for furs from Maine. In response, in 1643 the slaves and Brazilian sugar. In IDENTIFY CAUSES
Algonquians launched attacks that nearly destroyed New Amsterdam, Governor Why did New France and
the colony. “Almost every place is abandoned,” a settler Peter Stuyvesant ruled in an New Netherland struggle
lamented, “whilst the Indians daily threaten to over- authoritarian fashion, rejecting to attract colonists?
whelm us.” To defeat the Algonquians, the Dutch demands for a representative
waged vicious warfare — maiming, burning, and kill- system of government and alienating the colony’s
ing hundreds of men, women, and children — and diverse Dutch, English, and Swedish residents. Con-
formed an alliance with the Mohawks, who were no sequently, the residents of New Netherland offered
less brutal. The grim progression of Euro-Indian little resistance when England invaded the colony in
60 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
1664. New Netherland became New York and fell Colony. By 1640, the region had attracted more than
under English control. 20,000 migrants (Map 2.6). Unlike the early arrivals in
Virginia and Barbados, these were not parties of young
male adventurers seeking their fortunes or bound to
The Rise of the Iroquois labor for someone else. They came in family groups to
Like other native groups decimated by European dis- create communities like the ones they left behind,
eases and warfare, the Five Nations of the Iroquois suf- except that they intended to establish them according
fered as a result of colonization, but they were able to to Protestant principles, as John Calvin had done in
capitalize on their strategic location in central New Geneva. Their numbers were small compared to the
York to dominate the region between the French and Caribbean and the Chesapeake, but their balanced sex
Dutch colonies. Obtaining guns and goods from Dutch ratio and organized approach to community formation
merchants at Fort Orange, Iroquois warriors inflicted allowed them to multiply quickly. By distributing land
terror on their neighbors. Partly in response to a viru- broadly, they built a society of independent farm fami-
lent smallpox epidemic in 1633, which cut their lies. And by establishing a “holy commonwealth,” they
number by one-third, the Iroquois waged a series of gave a moral dimension to American history that sur-
devastating wars against the Hurons (1649), Neutrals vives today.
(1651), Eries (1657), and Susquehannocks (1660) — all
Iroquoian-speaking peoples. They razed villages, kill- The Pilgrims The Pilgrims were religious separat-
ing many residents and taking many more captive. The ists — Puritans who had left the Church of England.
conquered Hurons ceased to exist as a distinct people; When King James I threatened to drive Puritans “out of
survivors trekked westward with displaced Algonquian the land, or else do worse,” some Puritans chose to live
peoples and formed a new nation, the Wyandots. among Dutch Calvinists in Holland. Subsequently, 35
Iroquois warriors pressed still farther — eastward into of these exiles resolved to maintain their English iden-
New England, south to the Carolinas, north to Quebec, tity by moving to America. Led by William Bradford
and west via the Great Lakes to the Mississippi — and joined by 67 migrants from England, the Pilgrims
dominating Indian groups along the way. Collectively sailed to America aboard the Mayflower. Because they
known as the Beaver Wars, these Iroquois campaigns lacked a royal charter, they combined themselves
dramatically altered the map of northeastern North “together into a civill body politick,” as their leader
America. explained. This Mayflower Compact used the Puritans’
Many Iroquois raids came at the expense of French- self-governing religious congregation as the model for
allied Algonquian Indians, and in the 1660s New their political structure.
France committed to all-out war against the Iroquois. Only half of the first migrant group survived until
In 1667, the Mohawks were the last of the Five Nations spring, but thereafter Plymouth thrived; the cold cli-
to admit defeat. As part of the peace settlement, the mate inhibited the spread of mosquito-borne disease,
Five Nations accepted Jesuit missionaries into their and the Pilgrims’ religious discipline encouraged a
communities. A minority of Iroquois — perhaps 20 strong work ethic. Moreover, a smallpox epidemic in
percent of the population — converted to Catholicism 1618 devastated the local Wampanoags, minimizing
and moved to the St. Lawrence Valley, where they set- the danger they posed. By 1640, there were 3,000
tled in mission communities near Montreal (where settlers in Plymouth. To ensure political stability, they
their descendants still live today). established representative self-government, broad polit-
The Iroquois who remained in New York did not ical rights, property ownership, and religious freedom
collapse, however. Forging a new alliance with the of conscience.
Englishmen who had taken over New Netherland, they Meanwhile, England plunged deeper into religious
would continue to be a dominant force in the politics turmoil. When King Charles I repudiated certain
of the Northeast for generations to come. Protestant doctrines, including the role of grace in
salvation, English Puritans, now powerful in Parlia-
ment, accused the king of “popery” — of holding
New England Catholic beliefs. In 1629, Charles dissolved Parliament,
In 1620, 102 English Protestants landed at a place they claimed the authority to rule by “divine right,” and
called Plymouth, near Cape Cod. A decade later, a raised money through royal edicts and the sale of
much larger group began to arrive just north of monopolies. When Charles’s Archbishop William
Plymouth, in the newly chartered Massachusetts Bay Laud began to purge dissident ministers, thousands of
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 61
W E ENGLAND
S
0,000 0
ND 2 ,00
E NG L A 20
TO NEW
NEW ENGLAND DS
1620
LAN
0 IS
5,00
MARYLAND LONIES IA
N
1645 AKE
CO I ND
SAPE ST
VIRGINIA TO CHE W E
1635
TO
ATLANTIC OCEAN
BERMUDA
1642
WEST
Dartmouth COUNTRY
0 50 100 miles
0 250 500 miles
ENGLAND
0 50 100 kilometers
0 250 500 kilometers
MAP 2.6
The Puritan Migration to America, 1620–1640
Forty-five thousand Puritans left England for America and the West Indies between 1620 and 1640.
About half traveled to the New England colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut,
where they created durable societies with deep religious identities. Migrants from the three major
centers of Puritanism in England — Yorkshire, East Anglia, and the West Country — commonly
settled among those from their own region. Often they named American communities after their
English towns of origin and tried to live as they had in Old England. For example, settlers from
Rowley in Yorkshire transplanted their customary system of open-field agriculture to Rowley in
Massachusetts Bay.
Puritans — Protestants who did not separate from the corrupt and “overburdened with people,” Winthrop
Church of England but hoped to purify it of its cere- sought land for his children and a place in Christian
mony and hierarchy — fled to America. history for his people. “We must consider that we shall
be as a City upon a Hill,” Winthrop told the migrants.
John Winthrop and Massachusetts Bay The “The eyes of all people are upon us.” Like the Pilgrims,
Puritan exodus began in 1630 with the departure of
900 migrants led by John Winthrop, a well-educated To see a longer excerpt of Winthrop’s “City Upon
country squire who became the first governor of the a Hill” sermon, along with other primary sources
from this period, see Sources for America’s History.
Massachusetts Bay Colony. Calling England morally
62 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
the Puritans envisioned a reformed Christian society questioned the Puritans’ seizure of Indian lands. The
with “authority in magistrates, liberty in people, purity magistrates banished him from the colony in 1636.
in the church,” as minister John Cotton put it. By their Williams and his followers settled 50 miles south
example, they hoped to inspire religious reform of Boston, founding the town of Providence on land
throughout Christendom. purchased from the Narragansett Indians. Other reli-
Winthrop and his associates governed the gious dissidents settled nearby at Portsmouth and
Massachusetts Bay Colony from the town of Boston. Newport. In 1644, these settlers obtained a corporate
They transformed their joint-stock corporation — a charter from Parliament for a new colony — Rhode
commercial agreement that allows investors to pool Island — with full authority to rule themselves. In
their resources — into a representative political system Rhode Island, as in Plymouth, there was no legally
with a governor, council, and established church, and individuals could worship
COMPARE AND assembly. To ensure rule by the God as they pleased.
CONTRAST godly, the Puritans limited the
What made New England right to vote and hold office to Anne Hutchinson The Massachusetts Bay magis-
different from New France men who were church mem- trates saw a second threat to their authority in Anne
and New Netherland? bers. Rejecting the Plymouth Hutchinson. The wife of a merchant and mother of
Colony’s policy of religious tol- seven, Hutchinson held weekly prayer meetings for
erance, the Massachusetts Bay Colony established women and accused various Boston clergymen of plac-
Puritanism as the state-supported religion, barred ing undue emphasis on good behavior. Like Martin
other faiths from conducting services, and used the Luther, Hutchinson denied that salvation could be
Bible as a legal guide. “Where there is no Law,” they earned through good deeds. There was no “covenant
said, magistrates should rule “as near the law of God as of works” that would save the well-behaved; only a
they can.” Over the next decade, about 10,000 Puritans “covenant of grace” through which God saved those
migrated to the colony, along with 10,000 others flee- he predestined for salvation. Hutchinson likewise
ing hard times in England. declared that God “revealed” divine truth directly to
The New England Puritans sought to emulate the individual believers, a controversial doctrine that the
simplicity of the first Christians. Seeing bishops as Puritan magistrates denounced as heretical.
“traitours unto God,” they placed power in the congre- The magistrates also resented Hutchinson because
gation of members — hence the name Congregationalist of her sex. Like other Christians, Puritans believed
for their churches. Inspired by John Calvin, many that both men and women could be saved. But gender
Puritans embraced predestination, the idea that God equality stopped there. Women were inferior to men
saved only a few chosen people. Church members in earthly affairs, said leading Puritan divines, who
often lived in great anxiety, worried that God had not told married women: “Thy desires shall bee subject to
placed them among the “elect.” Some hoped for a con- thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Puritan
version experience, the intense sensation of receiving women could not be ministers or lay preachers, nor
God’s grace and being “born again.” Other Puritans could they vote in church affairs. In 1637, the magis-
relied on “preparation,” the confidence in salvation that trates accused Hutchinson of teaching that inward
came from spiritual guidance by their ministers. Still grace freed an individual from the rules of the Church
others believed that they were God’s chosen people, and found her guilty of holding heretical views.
the new Israelites, and would be saved if they obeyed Banished, she followed Roger Williams into exile in
his laws. Rhode Island.
Other Puritan groups moved out from Massa-
Roger Williams and Rhode Island To maintain chusetts Bay in the 1630s and settled on or near the
God’s favor, the Massachusetts Bay magistrates purged Connecticut River. For several decades, the colonies of
their society of religious dissidents. One target was Connecticut, New Haven, and Saybrook were inde-
Roger Williams, the Puritan minister in Salem, a pendent of one another; in 1660, they secured a charter
coastal town north of Boston. Williams opposed the from King Charles II (r. 1660–1685) for the self-
decision to establish an official religion and praised the governing colony of Connecticut. Like Massachusetts
Pilgrims’ separation of church and state. He advocated Bay, Connecticut had a legally established church and
toleration, arguing that political magistrates had an elected governor and assembly; however, it granted
authority over only the “bodies, goods, and outward voting rights to most property-owning men, not just to
estates of men,” not their spiritual lives. Williams also church members as in the original Puritan colony.
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 63
The Puritan Revolution in England Meanwhile, a The Puritan triumph in England was short-lived.
religious civil war engulfed England. Archbishop Laud Popular support for the Commonwealth ebbed after
had imposed the Church of England prayer book on Cromwell took dictatorial control in 1653. Following
Presbyterian Scotland in 1637; five years later, a rebel his death in 1658, moderate Protestants and a resur-
Scottish army invaded England. Thousands of English gent aristocracy restored the monarchy and the hierar-
Puritans (and hundreds of American Puritans) joined chy of bishops. With Charles II (r. 1660–1685) on the
the Scots, demanding religious reform and parliamen- throne, England’s experiment in radical Protestant
tary power. After years of civil war, parliamentary government came to an end.
forces led by Oliver Cromwell emerged victorious. In For the Puritans in America, the restoration of the
1649, Parliament beheaded King Charles I, proclaimed monarchy began a new phase of their “errand into the
a republican Commonwealth, and banished bishops wilderness.” They had come to New England expecting
and elaborate rituals from the Church of England. to return to Europe in triumph. When the failure of the
English Revolution dashed that sacred mission, min-
isters exhorted congregations to create a godly repub-
lican society in America. The Puritan colonies now
stood as outposts of Calvinism and the Atlantic repub-
lican tradition.
Puritan effort to subordinate women. Still others focus had “escaped out of the pollutions of the world,” the
on political instability in Massachusetts Bay in the early settlers of Watertown in Massachusetts Bay declared,
1690s and on fears raised by recent Indian attacks in and vowed to live “close togither” in self-governing
nearby Maine, which had killed the parents of some of communities. Accordingly, the General Courts of
the young accusers. It is likely that all of these causes Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut bestowed land on
played some role in the executions. groups of settlers, who then distributed it among the
Whatever the cause, the Salem episode marked a male heads of families.
major turning point. Shaken by the number of deaths, Widespread ownership of land did not mean
government officials now discouraged legal prosecu- equality of wealth or status. “God had Ordained differ-
tions for witchcraft. Moreover, many influential people ent degrees and orders of men,” proclaimed Boston
embraced the outlook of the European Enlightenment, merchant John Saffin, “some to be Masters and
a major intellectual movement that began around 1675 Commanders, others to be Subjects, and to be com-
and promoted a rational, scientific view of the world. manded.” Town proprietors normally awarded the
Increasingly, educated men and women explained largest plots to men of high social status who often
strange happenings and sudden deaths by reference to became selectmen and justices of the peace. However,
“natural causes,” not witchcraft. Unlike Cotton Mather all families received some land, and most adult men
(1663–1728), who believed that lightning was a super- had a vote in the town meeting, the main institution of
natural sign, Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and local government (Map 2.7).
other well-read men of his generation would investi- In this society of independent households and self-
gate it as a natural phenomenon. governing communities, ordinary farmers had much
more political power than Chesapeake yeomen and
A Yeoman Society, 1630–1700 In building their European peasants did. Although Nathaniel Fish was
communities, New England Puritans consciously one of the poorest men in the town of Barnstable — he
rejected the feudal practices of English society. Many owned just a two-room cottage, 8 acres of land, an
Puritans came from middling families in East Anglia, a ox, and a cow — he was a voting member of the town
region of pasture lands and few manors, and had no meeting. Each year, Fish and other Barnstable farmers
desire to live as tenants of wealthy aristocrats or submit levied taxes; enacted ordinances governing fencing,
to oppressive taxation by a distant government. They roadbuilding, and the use of common fields; and chose
River
0 10 20 miles
New houses
By 1650 ack 0 10 20 kilometers
rim
By 1692 er The key to the right indicates that
M
a central purpose of this map is to
Village types
Meeting House Meeting House
show the geographic distribution of Nucleated
nucleated and dispersed villages. Why Initially nucleated,
are there so many nucleated towns dispersed by 1700
in the Connecticut River Valley and
so many dispersed settlements in Dispersed
eastern Massachusetts? Indian settlements
Continuous English
KI
settlements by 1700
A
EN
Roads
AB
Field boundaries
Ipswich
OK
CO
MAH
A
Northfield NN Andover
Manchester
Greenfield
PE
S
ATLANTIC OCEAN
IN
Salem
TA
Deerfield
Sunderland
UN
Newton
Hatfield
Sudbury
MO
ET
US
M A S S A C H U S E T T S N
IRE
CH
NI
SH
Hadley Dedham
SA
PM Worcester W E
RK
Connecticut River
UC
AS
BE
K
M
Medfield S
Westfield Oxford
Plymouth
NAR
Woodstock RHODE
PE
WAMPANOAG
R
Windsor
Hartford ISLAND
AGA
QU
Barnstable
CONNECTICUT
OT
surrounding countryside.
sa t
Waterbury
H
on
EG
cR Wallingford
i
ive
AN
r
Newtown
Guilford
0 0.5 1 mile Wethersfield,
Derby
1640
Meeting House
MAP 2.7
Settlement Patterns in New England Towns, 1630–1700
Throughout New England, colonists pressed onto desirable Indian lands. Initially, most Puritan
towns were compact: families lived close to one another in village centers and traveled daily to
work in the surrounding fields. This 1640 map of Wethersfield, Connecticut, a town situated on the
broad plains of the Connecticut River Valley, shows this pattern clearly. The first settlers in Andover,
Massachusetts, also chose to live in the village center. However, the rugged topography of eastern
Massachusetts encouraged the townspeople to disperse. By 1692 (as the varied location of new
houses shows), many Andover residents were living on farms distant from the village center.
66 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
the selectmen who managed town affairs. The farmers New England’s Indian Wars
also selected the town’s representatives to the General
Relations between colonists and Indians in early New
Court, which gradually displaced the governor as the
England were bewilderingly complex. Many rival
center of political authority. For Fish and thousands of
Indian groups lived there before Europeans arrived; by
other ordinary settlers, New England had proved to be
the 1630s, these groups were bordered by the Dutch
a new world of opportunity.
colony of New Netherland to their west and the
various English settlements to the east: Plymouth,
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New
Instability, War, and Rebellion Haven, and Saybrook. The region’s Indian leaders cre-
ated various alliances for the purposes of trade and
Everywhere in the colonies, conflicts arose over the
defense: Wampanoags with Plymouth; Mohegans with
control of resources, the legitimacy of colonial leaders’
Massachusetts and Connecticut; Pequots with New
claims to power, and attempts to define social and cul-
Netherland; Narragansetts with Rhode Island.
tural norms. Periodically, these conflicts flared spec-
tacularly into episodes of violence. Each episode has its
own story — its own unique logic and narrative — but Puritan-Pequot War Because of their alliance
taken together, they also illustrate the way that, in their with the Dutch, the Pequots became a thorn in the
formative stages, colonial societies pressured people to side of English traders. A series of violent encounters
accept new patterns of authority and new claims to began in July 1636 with the killing of English trader
power. When these claims were contested, the results John Oldham and escalated until May 1637, when a
could quickly turn deadly. combined force of Massachusetts and Connecticut
The causes of — and responsibility for — every American war are much debated,
and the war of 1675–1676 between Puritans and Native Americans is no excep-
The Causes of tion. The English settlers called it King Philip’s War, suggesting that the Wampa-
noag chief Metacom (King Philip) instigated it. Was that the case? We have no
Metacom’s War firsthand Indian accounts of its origins, but three English accounts offer differ-
ent versions of events. Given the variation among the accounts and their frag-
mentary character, how can historians reconstruct what “really happened”?
John Easton endeavor that they might not . . . do wrong. They said that
A Relacion of the Indyan Warre was well; they had done no wrong; the English wronged
them. We said we knew the English said that the Indians
John Easton was the deputy governor of Rhode Island and wronged them, and the Indians said the English wronged
a Quaker. Like many Quakers, Easton was a pacifist and them, but our desire was the quarrel might rightly be
tried to prevent the war. He wrote this “Relacion” shortly decided in the best way, and not as dogs decide their
after the conflict ended. quarrels.
In [January 1675], an Indian was found dead; and by The Indians owned that fighting was the worst way;
a coroner inquest of Plymouth Colony judged mur- then they propounded how right might take place; we
dered. . . . The dead Indian was called Sassamon, and said by arbitration. They said all English agreed against
a Christian that could read and write. . . . them; and so by arbitration they had had much wrong,
The report came that . . . three Indians had confessed many square miles of land so taken from them, for the
and accused Philip [of employing them to kill Sassamon, English would have English arbitrators. . . .
and that consequently] . . . the English would hang Philip. Another grievance [of the Indians]: the English cattle
So the Indians were afraid, and reported that . . . Philip and horses still increased [and that] . . . they could not
[believed that the English] . . . might kill him to have his keep their corn from being spoiled [by the English
land. . . . So Philip kept his men in arms. livestock]. . . .
Plymouth governor [Josiah Winslow] required him to So we departed without any discourtesies; and sud-
disband his men, and informed him his jealousy [his denly [c. June 25] had [a] letter from [the] Plymouth
worry about land seizure] was false. Philip answered he governor, [that] they intended in arms to [subjugate]
would do no harm, and thanked the Governor for his Philip . . . and in a week’s time after we had been with
information. The three Indians were hung [on June 8, the Indians the war thus begun.
1675]. . . . And it was reported [that] Sassamon, before his
death had informed [the English] of the Indian plot, and Source: John Easton, “A Relacion of the Indyan Warre, by Mr. Easton, of Roade Isld.,
1675,” in Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699, ed. Charles H. Lincoln (New York:
that if the Indians knew it they would kill him, and that Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 7–17.
the heathen might destroy the English for their wicked-
ness as God had permitted the heathen to destroy the
Israelites of old. Edward Randolph
So the English were afraid and Philip was afraid and Short Narrative of My Proceedings
both increased in arms; but for forty years’ time reports
Edward Randolph, an English customs official in Boston,
and jealousies of war had been very frequent that we did
denounced the independent policies of the Puritan colo-
not think that now a war was breaking forth. But about a
nies and tried to subject them to English control. His “Short
week before it did we had cause to think it would; then to
Narrative,” written in 1675, was a report to his superiors in
endeavor to prevent it, we sent a man to Philip. . . .
London.
He called his council and agreed to come to us;
[Philip] came himself, unarmed, and about forty of his Various are the reports and conjectures of the causes of
men, armed. Then five of us went over [to speak to the the present Indian war. Some impute it to an impudent
Indians]. Three were magistrates. We sat very friendly zeal in the magistrates of Boston to Christianize those
together [June 14–18]. We told him our business was to heathen before they were civilized and enjoining them the
68
strict observation of their laws, which, to a people so rude where they lived]. . . . They plundered the nearest houses
and licentious, hath proved even intolerable. . . . While that the inhabitants had deserted [on the rumor of a war],
the magistrates, for their profit, put the laws severely but as yet offered no violence to the people, at least none
in execution against the Indians, the people, on the were killed. . . . However, the alarm was given by their
other side, for lucre and gain, entice and provoke the numbers, and hostile equipage, and by the prey they
Indians . . . to drunkenness, to which those people are made of what they could find in the forsaken houses.
so generally addicted that they will strip themselves to An express came the same day to the governor
their skin to have their fill of rum and brandy. . . . [c. June 25], who immediately gave orders to the captains
Some believe there have been vagrant and jesuitical of the towns to march the greatest part of their compa-
[French] priests, who have made it their business, for nies [of militia], and to rendezvous at Taunton. . . .
some years past, to go from Sachem to Sachem [chief to The enemy, who began their hostilities with plunder-
chief], to exasperate the Indians against the English and ing and destroying cattle, did not long content themselves
to bring them into a confederacy, and that they were with that game. They thirsted for English blood, and they
promised supplies from France and other parts to soon broached it; killing two men in the way not far from
extirpate the English nation out of the continent of Mr. Miles’s garrison. And soon after, eight more at Mat-
America. . . . Others impute the cause to some injuries tapoisett, upon whose bodies they exercised more than
offered to the Sachem Philip; for he being possessed of a brutish barbarities. . . .
tract of land called Mount Hope . . . some English had a These provocations drew out the resentment of some
mind to dispossess him thereof, who never wanting one of Capt. Prentice’s troop, who desired they might have
pretence or other to attain their end, complained of inju- liberty to go out and seek the enemy in their own quarters
ries done by Philip and his Indians to their stock and [c. June 26].
cattle, whereupon Philip was often summoned before the
magistrate, sometimes imprisoned, and never released Source: Benjamin Church, Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War Which Began in
the Month of June, 1675, ed. Thomas Church (Boston: B. Green, 1716).
but upon parting with a considerable part of his land.
But the government of the Massachusetts . . . do
declare [that because of the sins of the people] . . . God
hath given the heathen commission to rise against
them. . . . For men wearing long hair and periwigs made
of women’s hair; for women . . . cutting, curling and
laying out the hair. . . . For profaneness in the people
not frequenting their [church] meetings. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
1. Compare what these documents say about the causes of
Source: Albert B. Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries (New York:
the war. Where do the documents agree and disagree
Macmillan, 1897), 1: 458–460. about these causes?
2. According to Randolph, what did the magistrates of
Massachusetts Bay believe to be a major cause of the
Benjamin Church war? Could historians verify or disprove their explana-
tion? How? What additional sources of evidence might
Entertaining Passages be useful?
3. Drawing from these sources, who was the prime instiga-
Captain Benjamin Church fought in the war and helped tor of the war? Which documents provide the most
end it by capturing Metacom’s wife and son and leading compelling evidence for your conclusion? Why?
the expedition that killed the Indian chieftain. Forty years
later, in 1716, Church’s son Thomas wrote an account of
the war based on his father’s notes and recollections.
69
70 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
Massachusetts and Rhode Island and killed 1,000 set- holding yeomen retained their voting rights, they were
tlers, nearly 5 percent of the adult population; for a angered by falling tobacco prices, political corruption,
time the Puritan experiment hung in the balance. But and “grievous taxations” that threatened the “utter ruin
the natives’ losses — from famine and disease, death in of us the poor commonalty.” Berkeley and his allies
battle, and sale into slavery — were much larger: about were living on borrowed time.
4,500 Indians died, one-quarter of an already dimin-
ished population. Many of the surviving Wampanoag, Frontier War An Indian conflict ignited the flame of
Narragansett, and Nipmuck peoples moved west, inter- social rebellion. In 1607, when the English intruded,
marrying with Algonquian tribes allied to the French. 30,000 Native Americans resided in Virginia; by 1675,
Over the next century, these displaced Indian peoples the native population had dwindled to only 3,500. By
would take their revenge, joining with French Catholics then, Europeans numbered some 38,000 and Africans
to attack their Puritan enemies. Metacom’s War did not another 2,500. Most Indians lived on treaty-guaranteed
eliminate the presence of Native Americans in south- territory along the frontier, where poor freeholders
ern New England, but it effectively destroyed their and landless former servants now wanted to settle,
existence as independent peoples. demanding that the natives be expelled or extermi-
nated. Their demands were ignored by wealthy plant-
ers, who wanted a ready supply of tenants and laborers,
Bacon’s Rebellion and by Governor Berkeley and the planter-merchants,
At the same time that New England fought its war with who traded with the Occaneechee Indians for beaver
Metacom, Virginia was wracked by a rebellion that pelts and deerskins.
nearly toppled its government. It, too, grew out of a Fighting broke out late in 1675, when a vigilante
conflict with neighboring Indians, but this one inspired band of Virginia militiamen murdered thirty Indians.
a popular uprising against the colony’s royal governor. Defying Berkeley’s orders, a larger force then sur-
Like Metacom’s War, it highlighted the way that a land- rounded a fortified Susquehannock village and killed
intensive settler colony created friction with Native five leaders who came out to negotiate. The Susquehan-
American populations; in addition, it dramatized the nocks retaliated by attacking outlying plantations and
way that ordinary colonists could challenge the right of killing three hundred whites. In response, Berkeley
a new planter elite to rule over them. proposed a defensive strategy: a series of frontier forts
By the 1670s, economic and political power in to deter Indian intrusions. The settlers dismissed this
Virginia was in the hands of a small circle of men who scheme as a militarily useless plot by planter-merchants
amassed land, slaves, and political offices. Through to impose high taxes and take “all our tobacco into
headrights and royal grants, they controlled nearly half their own hands.”
of all the settled land in Virginia; what they could not
plant themselves, they leased to tenants. Freed inden- Challenging the Government Enter Nathaniel
tured servants found it ever harder to get land of their Bacon, a young, well-connected migrant from England
own; many were forced to lease lands, or even sign new who emerged as the leader of the rebels. Bacon held a
indentures, to make ends meet. To make matters worse, position on the governor’s council, but he was shut out
the price of tobacco fell until planters received only a of Berkeley’s inner circle and differed with Berkeley on
penny a pound for their crops in the 1670s. Indian policy. When the governor refused to grant him
At the top of Virginia’s narrow social pyramid was a military commission, Bacon mobilized his neighbors
William Berkeley, governor between 1642 and 1652 and attacked any Indians he could find. Condemning
and again after 1660. To consolidate power, Berkeley the frontiersmen as “rebels and mutineers,” Berkeley
bestowed large land grants on members of his council. expelled Bacon from the council and had him arrested.
The councilors exempted these lands from taxation But Bacon’s army forced the governor to release their
and appointed friends as justices of the peace and leader and hold legislative elections. The newly elected
county judges. To win support in the House of House of Burgesses enacted far-reaching reforms that
Burgesses, Berkeley bought off legislators with land curbed the powers of the governor and council and
grants and lucrative appointments as sheriffs and tax restored voting rights to landless freemen.
collectors. But social unrest erupted when the Burgesses These much-needed reforms came too late. Poor
took the vote away from landless freemen, who by now farmers and servants resented years of exploitation by
constituted half the adult white men. Although property- wealthy planters, arrogant justices of the peace, and
CHAPTER 2 American Experiments, 1521–1700 71
power and sway is got into the hands of the rich,” Bacon
proclaimed as his army burned Jamestown to the
ground and plundered the plantations of Berkeley’s
allies. When Bacon died suddenly of dysentery in
October 1676, the governor took revenge, dispersing
the rebel army, seizing the estates of well-to-do rebels,
and hanging 23 men.
In the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion, Virginia’s leaders
worked harder to appease their humble neighbors.
But the rebellion also coincided with the time when
Virginia planters were switch-
ing from indentured servants, PLACE EVENTS
who became free after four IN CONTEXT
years, to slaves, who labored for In what ways was Bacon’s
life. In the eighteenth century, Rebellion symptomatic
wealthy planters would make of social tensions in the
common cause with poorer colony of Virginia?
whites, while slaves became the
colony’s most exploited workers. That fateful change
eased tensions within the free population but commit-
ted subsequent generations of Americans to a labor
system based on racial exploitation. Bacon’s Rebellion,
like Metacom’s War, reminds us that these colonies
were unfinished worlds, still searching for viable
foundations.
SUMMARY
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, three
Nathaniel Bacon
types of colonies took shape in the Americas. In
Condemned as a rebel and a traitor in his own time,
Mesoamerica and the Andes, Spanish colonists made
Nathaniel Bacon emerged in the late nineteenth century as
a southern hero, a harbinger of the Confederate rebels of indigenous empires their own, capitalizing on pre-
1860–1865. The Association for the Preservation of Virginia existing labor systems and using tribute and the dis-
Antiquities, founded in 1888, commissioned this stained-glass covery of precious metals to generate enormous wealth,
window depicting Bacon in dual guises of a well-dressed
gentleman and a rebel in body armor. Installing Bacon’s por-
which Philip II used to defend the interests of the
trait in a window of the Powder Magazine in Williamsburg Catholic Church in Europe. In tropical and sub-
(built by Governor Alexander Spotswood in 1715), explained tropical regions, colonizers transferred the plantation
a leading member of the association, would connect “present complex — a centuries-old form of production and
Virginia with her great and noble past” and commemorate
those who shed their “blood for Virginia and the South.” labor discipline — to places suited to growing exotic
Preservation Virginia. crops like sugar, tobacco, and indigo. The rigors of
plantation agriculture demanded a large supply of
labor, which was first filled in English colonies by
indentured servitude and later supplemented and
“wicked & pernicious Counsellors.” As one yeoman eclipsed by African slavery. The third type of colony,
rebel complained, “A poor man who has only his labour neo-European settlement, developed in North Amer-
to maintain himself and his family pays as much [in ica’s temperate zone, where European migrants adapted
taxes] as a man who has 20,000 acres.” Backed by 400 familiar systems of social and economic organization
armed men, Bacon issued a “Manifesto and Declaration in new settings.
of the People” that demanded the removal of Indians Everywhere in the Americas, colonization was, first
and an end to the rule of wealthy “parasites.” “All the and foremost, a process of experimentation. As resources
72 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700
from the Americas flowed to Europe, monarchies were Columbian Exchange, and demanded radical adjust-
strengthened and the competition among them — ments. In the Chesapeake and New England — the two
sharpened by the schism between Protestants and earliest regions of English settlement on mainland
Catholics — gained new force and energy. Establish- North America — the adjustment to new circum-
ing colonies demanded political, social, and cultural stances sparked conflict with neighboring Indians and
innovations that threw Europeans, Native Americans, waves of instability within the colonies. These external
and Africans together in bewildering circumstances, and internal crises were products of the struggle to
triggered massive ecological change through the adapt to the rigors of colonization.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. How did Spain’s conquest of central Mexico and the 2. How did environmental and ecological factors
Andes shape European competition in the shape colonial enterprise, and how did the process
Americas? How did the Protestant Reformation of colonization impact American ecology and
affect this competition? environments?
CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER REVIEW 73
3. What “push factors” caused people to leave England Beliefs, and Culture” on the thematic timeline
for its colonies in the seventeenth century? What on page 5. How did political developments in
“pull factors” drew them to particular colonies or seventeenth-century England impact the develop-
regions? ment of its American colonies?
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
events listed under “Politics and Power” and “Ideas,
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE In Chapter 1, we 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Take another look at the
saw that there were many parallels between Native image of John Smith and Opechancanough on page
American, European, and African societies on the 49. It is taken from Smith’s Generall Historie of
eve of contact. Yet Europeans ended up dominating Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles,
both Native American and African populations in which was first published in 1624. What is the
colonial American settings. Based on what you dominant theme of the image? How might recent
learned in Chapter 2, what factors help to explain events in Virginia have colored the emphases in the
that dominance? book’s illustrations?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire “The Plymouth Colony Archive Project” (histarch
(2004). Explores the significance of animal domestica- .uiuc.edu/plymouth/). A rich array of fully searchable
tion in early New England and Chesapeake colonies. texts and material culture resources.
Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and “Salem Witch Trials” (etext.virginia.edu/salem
Anxious Patriarchs (1996). Examines the interrela- /witchcraft/home.html). Extensive materials on the
tionship of gender and race in early Virginia. Salem witchcraft trials, including a fascinating
interactive map feature.
Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism (1986).
Introduces the term neo-Europes and asks why there
are so many of them.
Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King
(2005). Considers the multifaceted contest for power
in seventeenth-century New England.
74 PART 1 CHAPTER REVIEW
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1577–1580 t Francis Drake’s Golden Hind circles the globe, captures Spanish treasure fleet
CHAPTER 3 By 1660, the patterns of colonial enterprise in the Americas were becom-
The British Atlantic ing clear. For the colonies of England — which became Britain after the
World, 1660–1750
1707 Act of Union with Scotland — the period from 1660 to 1763 was one
CHAPTER 4 of growth and diversification. Slave imports to plantation colonies
Growth, Diversity, and exploded, while a wide array of European peoples — coming from Ireland
Conflict, 1720–1763
and continental Europe as well as England, Wales, and Scotland — jostled
together in rapidly growing regions of neo-European settlement. Yet a
coherent imperial vision for these American holdings emerged slowly,
and the colonies remained largely independent of crown control.
After 1689, Europe plunged into a century of warfare that had an
enormous impact on the Americas. As wars spilled over into North
America, British, French, and Spanish colonies all engaged more deeply
with neighboring Indians, whom they often sought to employ as allies in
their struggles to control North American territory. Native American
polities were undergoing dramatic transformations in these same years,
reshaping themselves to function more effectively in relation to their
European neighbors. At the same time, warfare, immigration, and trade
laid the foundation for more intensive interactions across the Atlantic.
These interactions, and the cultural movements they supported, helped to
knit together the increasingly diverse colonies of British North America.
Part 2 addresses these developments, giving particular attention to
the following three main concepts:
76
The Diversification of Rise of the British Atlantic World
British North America
The American colonies of the various European nations These population movements were part of the larger
gradually diverged from each other in character. The growth and development of the Atlantic World, a
tribute-based societies at the core of Spain’s empire phrase historians use to refer to the quickening pace
developed into complex multiracial societies; Portu- of contacts and exchanges connecting Europe, Africa,
guese Brazil was dominated by its plantation and and the Americas. The rise of the British Atlantic was a
mining enterprises; the Dutch largely withdrew their layered phenomenon that began with the strength of
energies from the Americas, except for a few planta- Britain’s transatlantic shipping networks, which in turn
tion colonies; the French, too, developed several laid the foundation for large-scale population flows,
important plantation colonies in the West Indies but rising economic productivity, and dramatic cultural
struggled to populate their vast North American transformations. The growing power of its navy,
holdings. The population of Britain’s colonies, by merchant marine, and manufacturing sector allowed
contrast, grew and diversified after 1660. Britain came Britain to dominate the eighteenth-century Atlantic.
to dominate the Atlantic slave trade and brought more Much of the cultural impact of its maritime power
than two million slaves to its American colonies. The derived from two further developments: the print
great majority went to Jamaica, Barbados, and the revolution, which brought a vast array of ideas into
other sugar islands, but half a million found their way circulation; and the consumer revolution, which
to the mainland, where, by 1763, they constituted flooded the Atlantic World with a wide array of newly
nearly 20 percent of the mainland colonies’ popula- available merchandise.
tions. Slavery was a growing and thriving institution in The British Atlantic World gave rise to four critically
British North America. important cultural developments. It spread Enlight-
Non-English Europeans also crossed the Atlantic in enment ideas and helped to create a transatlantic
very large numbers. The ethnic landscape of Britain’s community of literati interested in science and rational-
mainland colonies was dramatically altered by 115,000 ism; it supported communities of Pietists who promoted
migrants from Ireland (most of them Scots-Irish Presby- the revival and expansion of Christianity; it gave well-
terians) and 100,000 Germans. Most immigrated to to-do colonists access to genteel values and the finery
Pennsylvania, which soon had the most ethnically needed to put them into action; and, by making such
diverse population of Europeans on the continent. an abundance of consumer goods available, it encour-
Relations among these groups were often divisive, as aged colonists to go further into debt than they ever
each struggled to maintain its identity and autonomy in had before.
a rapidly changing landscape.
Alongside the diversification of colonial populations This timeline organizes some of the important
and the rise of the British Atlantic, the eighteenth
developments of this period into themes.
century was shaped by contact and conflict: between
colonies and their Native American neighbors, and also How did the demographic changes outlined
among rival European empires. In Europe, the period under the theme “Peopling” impact the
after 1689 has sometimes been called the Second
developments that are listed under “Work,
Hundred Years’ War, when Britain, France, and their
European allies went to war against each other repeat- Exchange, and Technology”? >
edly. As these conflicts came to the North American
theater, they decisively influenced Indian relations.
Native American populations shrank dramatically or
disappeared altogether during the seventeenth century,
devastated by the effects of the Columbian Exchange
(Chapter 2). The rise of imperial warfare encouraged
the process of “tribalization,” whereby Indians
regrouped into political structures — called “tribes” by
Europeans — that could deal more effectively with their
colonial neighbors and strike alliances in times of war.
Europeans, in turn, employed Indian allies as proxy
warriors in their conflicts over North American territory.
This pattern culminated in the Great War for Empire,
which began in the North American backcountry,
engaged thousands of provincial soldiers and Native
American warriors, and reshaped the map of North
America. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 gave Britain
control of the entire continent east of the Mississippi.
Events would soon show what a mixed blessing that
outcome would turn out to be.
78
WORK, PEOPLING POLITICS & IDEAS, BELIEFS, IDENTITY
EXCHANGE, & POWER & CULTURE
TECHNOLOGY
1660 t South Atlantic System t The Middle Passage t Dominion of New t Collapse of the Puritan t Restoration makes
links plantation and shapes Africans’ England (1686–1689) Commonwealth leads England a monarchy
neo-European colonies experiences of arrival to toleration in England again; royalist revival
t Glorious Revolution
t Mercantilist legislation t Indian slave trade (1688–1689) t Isaac Newton publishes t The Glorious Revolution
in England: Navigation emerges in South Principia Mathematica makes England a
t War of the League of
Acts (1651, 1660, 1663) Carolina (1687) constitutional monarchy
Augsburg (1689–1697)
t New York inherits t First Mennonites arrive t Massachusetts loses
t Founding of the
Hudson River Valley in Pennsylvania (1683) its charter (1684) and
Restoration Colonies:
manors from the Dutch; gains a new one (1691)
the Carolinas (1663),
Carolina proprietors try
New York (1664),
but fail to institute a
Pennsylvania (1681)
manorial system
t Migrants to Pennsylvania
seek freehold lands
t Rapid expansion of
African slave imports
undergirds sugar,
tobacco, and rice
plantation systems
1690 t New England t Quakers emigrate to t Parliament creates t John Locke publishes t Colonists gain
shipbuilding industry Pennsylvania and New Board of Trade (1696) Two Treatises on autonomy in the post–
and merchant community Jersey Government (1690) Glorious Revolution era
t War of the Spanish
come to dominate the
t Second wave of Succession (1702–1713) t Rise of toleration t Tribalization developing
coastal trade
Germans arrives among colonial among Native American
t Agricultural labor and in Pennsylvania, Protestants peoples
artisanal skills in high Shenandoah Valley
t Print revolution begins
demand in the Middle
colonies
1720 t The price of wheat rises t Scots-Irish begin t Robert Walpole is prime t George Whitefield’s t African American
(doubles in Philadelphia, migrating to minister (1720–1742) visit to America sparks community forms in the
1720–1770) Pennsylvania (c. 1720) the Great Awakening Chesapeake
t Stono Rebellion (1739) (1739)
t British trade dominates t Parliament charters t Planter aristocracy
t War of Jenkins’s Ear
the Atlantic Georgia (1732) t Benjamin Franklin emerges in the
(1739–1741) founds American Chesapeake and South
t Opportunity and t Penns make Walking
t War of the Austrian Philosophical Society Carolina
inequality in the Middle Purchase from the
Succession (1740–1748) (1743)
colonies Delawares (1737) t Culture of gentility
t New colleges, spreads among well-
t Ohio Company of newspapers, magazines to-do
Virginia receives
200,000 acres (1749)
1750 t Freehold society in crisis t 40,000 Germans t French and Indian t At least twelve religious t Victory in the Great
in New England and Swiss emigrate War/Seven Years’ War denominations in War for Empire sparks
to Pennsylvania (1754–1763) Philadelphia pro-British pride in the
t Half of Middle colonies’ (1749–1756) colonies
white men landless t The Albany Congress t Neolin promotes
t Anglo-Americans (1754) nativist revival among t Desire for political
t Conflicts over western pushing onto Ohio Indians (1763) autonomy and
lands and political t The Treaty of Paris
backcountry lands economic independence
power (1750–1775) (1763) strong
t British industry being t Pontiac’s Rebellion
mechanized; colonial (1763)
debt crisis
3
C H A P T E R
1660–1750
F
COLONIES TO EMPIRE, or two weeks in June 1744, the IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
1660–1713 town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, How did the South Atlantic System
The Restoration Colonies and hosted more than 250 Iroquois men, create an interconnected Atlantic
Imperial Expansion women, and children for a diplomatic con- World, and how did this system
From Mercantilism to Imperial ference with representatives from Pennsyl- impact development in the British
Dominion vania, Maryland, and Virginia. Crowds of colonies?
The Glorious Revolution in curious observers thronged Lancaster’s
England and America
streets and courthouse. The conference grew out of a diplomatic system between the
IMPERIAL WARS AND colonies and the Iroquois designed to air grievances and resolve conflict: the Covenant
NATIVE PEOPLES Chain. Participants welcomed each other, exchanged speeches, and negotiated agree-
Tribalization ments in public ceremonies whose minutes became part of the official record of the
Indian Goals colonies.
At Lancaster, the colonies had much to ask of their Iroquois allies. For one thing,
THE IMPERIAL SLAVE they wanted them to confirm a land agreement. The Iroquois often began such confer-
ECONOMY
ences by resisting land deals; as the Cayuga orator Gachradodon said, “You know very
The South Atlantic System
well, when the White people came first here they were poor; but now they have got our
Africa, Africans, and the Slave Lands, and are by them become rich, and we are now poor; what little we have had for
Trade
the Land goes soon away, but the Land lasts forever.” In the end, however, they had
Slavery in the Chesapeake and
little choice but to accept merchandise in exchange for land, since colonial officials
South Carolina
were unwilling to take no for an answer. The colonists also announced that Britain was
An African American Community
once again going to war with France, and they requested military support from their
Emerges
Iroquois allies. Canassatego — a tall, commanding Onondaga orator, about sixty years
The Rise of the Southern Gentry
old, renowned for his eloquence — replied, “We shall never forget that you and we
THE NORTHERN have but one Heart, one Head, one Eye, one Ear, and one Hand. We shall have all your
MARITIME ECONOMY Country under our Eye, and
The Urban Economy take all the Care we can to To see a longer excerpt of the Canassatego
document, along with other primary sources from
Urban Society prevent any Enemy from this period, see Sources for America’s History.
coming into it.”
THE NEW POLITICS OF
The Lancaster conference — and dozens of others like it that occurred between
EMPIRE, 1713–1750
1660 and 1750 — demonstrates that the British colonies, like those of France and Spain,
The Rise of Colonial Assemblies
relied ever more heavily on alliances with Native Americans as they sought to extend
Salutary Neglect
their power in North America. Indian nations remade themselves in these same years,
Protecting the Mercantile System creating political structures — called “tribes” by Europeans — that allowed them to
Mercantilism and the American regroup in the face of population decline and function more effectively alongside neigh-
Colonies
boring colonies. The colonies, meanwhile, were drawn together into an integrated eco-
nomic sphere — the South Atlantic System — that brought prosperity to British North
America, while they achieved a measure of political autonomy that became essential to
their understanding of what it meant to be British subjects.
80
English Tobacco Label, c. 1700 This label, which was used to advertise Virginia tobacco to London consumers,
illustrates the growth of plantation economies in North America. Three well-to-do planters, bewigged and dressed
in fashionable, colorful coats, take their ease with pipes of tobacco and glasses of liquor while slaves labor for them
in the fields. The product’s name — London’s Virginia — highlights the relationship between production on colonial
plantations and consumption in the English metropolis. The Granger Collection, New York. 81
82 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
TABLE 3.1
English Colonies Established in North America, 1660–1750
Chief Export/
Original Economic
Colony Date Colony Type Religion Status in 1775 Activity
Carolina 1663 Proprietary Church of England Royal
Farming, naval
North 1691 stores
South 1691 Rice, indigo
New Jersey 1664 Proprietary Church of England Royal Wheat
New York 1664 Proprietary Church of England Royal Wheat
Pennsylvania 1681 Proprietary Quaker Proprietary Wheat
Georgia 1732 Trustees Church of England Royal Rice
New Hampshire Mixed farming,
(separated from lumber, naval
Massachusetts) 1741 Royal Congregationalist Royal stores
Fishing, mixed
farming, naval
Nova Scotia 1749 Royal Church of England Royal stores
himself had spent more than two years in jail in Cheered by these provisions, thousands of Quakers,
England for preaching his beliefs. mostly yeoman families from the northwest Midland
Like the Puritans, the Quakers sought to restore region of England, flocked to Pennsylvania. To attract
Christianity to its early simple spirituality. But they European Protestants, Penn published pamphlets in
rejected the Puritans’ pessimistic Calvinist doctrines, Germany promising cheap land and religious tolera-
which restricted salvation to a small elect. The Quakers tion. In 1683, migrants from Saxony founded German-
followed the teachings of two English visionaries, town (just outside Philadelphia), and thousands of other
George Fox and Margaret Fell, who argued that God Germans soon followed. Ethnic diversity, pacifism,
had imbued all men — and women — with an “inner and freedom of conscience made Pennsylvania the
light” of grace or understanding. Reflecting the sect’s most open and democratic of the Restoration Colonies.
emphasis on gender equality, 350 Quaker women
would serve as ministers in the colonies.
From Mercantilism to
Mindful of the catastrophic history of Indian rela-
tions in the Chesapeake and New England, Penn Imperial Dominion
exhorted colonists to “sit downe Lovingly” alongside As Charles II distributed American land, his ministers
the Native American inhabitants of the Delaware and devised policies to keep colonial trade in English
Susquehanna valleys. He wrote a letter to the leaders of hands. Since the 1560s, the English crown had pursued
the Iroquois Confederacy alerting them to his inten- mercantilist policies, using government subsidies and
tion to settle a colony, and in 1682 he arranged a public charters to stimulate English manufacturing and for-
treaty with the Delaware Indians to purchase the lands eign trade. Now it extended these mercantilist strategies
that Philadelphia and the surrounding settlements to the American settlements through the Navigation
would soon occupy. Acts (Table 3.2).
Penn’s Frame of Government (1681) applied the
Quakers’ radical beliefs to politics. It ensured reli- The Navigation Acts Believing they had to control
gious freedom by prohibiting a legally established trade with the colonies to reap their economic benefits,
church, and it promoted political equality by allowing English ministers wanted agricultural goods and raw
all property-owning men to vote and hold office. materials to be carried to English ports in English
84 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
vessels. In reality, Dutch and French shippers were The English government backed these policies with
often buying sugar and other colonial products from military force. In three wars between 1652 and 1674,
English colonies and carrying them directly into for- the English navy drove the Dutch from New Netherland
eign markets. To counter this practice, the Navigation and contested Holland’s control of the Atlantic slave
Act of 1651 required that goods be carried on ships trade by attacking Dutch forts and ships along the West
owned by English or colonial merchants. New parlia- African coast. Meanwhile, English merchants expanded
mentary acts in 1660 and 1663 strengthened the ban their fleets, which increased in capacity from 150,000
on foreign traders: colonists could export sugar and tons in 1640 to 340,000 tons in 1690. This growth
tobacco only to England and import European goods occurred on both sides of the Atlantic; by 1702, only
only through England; moreover, three-quarters of London and Bristol had more ships registered in port
the crew on English vessels had than did the town of Boston.
PLACE EVENTS IN to be English. To pay the cus- Though colonial ports benefitted from the growth
CONTEXT toms officials who enforced these of English shipping, many colonists violated the Nav-
How did the ambitions of laws, the Revenue Act of 1673 igation Acts. Planters continued to trade with Dutch
Charles II and James II imposed a “plantation duty” on shippers, and New England merchants imported sugar
remake English North
American exports of sugar and and molasses from the French West Indies. The Massa-
America?
tobacco. chusetts Bay assembly boldly declared: “The laws of
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 85
TABLE 3.2
Navigation Acts, 1651–1751
Purpose Compliance
Act of 1651 Cut Dutch trade Mostly ignored
Ban foreign shipping; enumerate goods that go only to
Act of 1660 England Partially obeyed
Act of 1663 Allow European imports only through England Partially obeyed
Staple Act (1673) Ensure enumerated goods go only to England Mostly obeyed
Act of 1696 Prevent frauds; create vice-admiralty courts Mostly obeyed
Woolen Act (1699) Prevent export or intercolonial sale of textiles Partially obeyed
Hat Act (1732) Prevent export or intercolonial sale of hats Partially obeyed
Molasses Act (1733) Cut American imports of molasses from French West Indies Extensively violated
Iron Act (1750) Prevent manufacture of finished iron products Extensively violated
Currency Act (1751) End use of paper currency as legal tender in New England Mostly obeyed
BAY
Then, in 1684, the Lords of Trade persuaded an English
Hudson R.
S
PLYMOUTH
R.I.
court to annul the Massachusetts Bay charter by charg- D
CONNECTICUT
ela
A T LA N T I C
igation Acts and virtually outlawing the Church of New York O C EA N
PENNSYLVANIA
England. EAST
JERSEY 0 50 100 miles
Philadelphia
0 50 100 kilometers
The Dominion of New England The Puritans’ MARYLAND
WEST
JERSEY
troubles had only begun, thanks to the accession of Dominion of New England
Royal colonies
King James II (r. 1685–1688), an aggressive and inflex-
Proprietary colonies
ible ruler. During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, James St. Mary’s
Political revolts in 1689
Boston: Overthrow of Governor Andros
had grown up in exile in France, and he admired its VIRGINIA
City
New York: Leisler’s Rebellion
authoritarian king, Louis XIV. James wanted stricter Maryland: Protestant Association
The Dominion extended to America the authori- its supporters. Whig politicians forced King William
tarian model of colonial rule that the English govern- and Queen Mary to accept the Declaration of Rights,
ment had imposed on Catholic Ireland. James II creating a constitutional monarchy that enhanced the
ordered Governor Andros to abolish the existing legis- powers of the House of Commons at the expense of the
lative assemblies. In Massachusetts, Andros banned crown. The Whigs wanted political power, especially
town meetings, angering villagers who prized local the power to levy taxes, to reside in the hands of the
self-rule, and advocated public worship in the Church gentry, merchants, and other substantial property
of England, offending Puritan Congregationalists. owners.
Even worse, from the colonists’ perspective, the gover- To justify their coup, the members of Parliament
nor invalidated all land titles granted under the origi- relied on political philosopher John Locke. In his Two
nal Massachusetts Bay charter. Andros offered to pro- Treatises on Government (1690), Locke rejected the
vide new deeds, but only if the colonists would pay an divine-right monarchy celebrated by James II, arguing
annual fee. that the legitimacy of government rests on the consent
of the governed and that individuals have inalienable
natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Locke’s cele-
The Glorious Revolution in
bration of individual rights and representative govern-
England and America ment had a lasting influence in America, where many
Fortunately for the colonists, James II angered English political leaders wanted to expand the powers of the
political leaders as much as Andros alienated colonists. colonial assemblies.
The king revoked the charters of English towns,
rejected the advice of Parliament, and aroused popular Rebellions in America The Glorious Revolution
opposition by openly practicing Roman Catholicism. sparked rebellions by Protestant colonists in Massa-
Then, in 1688, James’s Spanish Catholic wife gave birth chusetts, Maryland, and New York. When news of the
to a son. To forestall the outcome of having a Catholic coup reached Boston in April 1689, Puritan leaders
heir to the English throne, Protestant bishops and par- and 2,000 militiamen seized Governor Andros and
liamentary leaders in the Whig Party invited William shipped him back to England. Heeding American
of Orange, a staunchly Protestant Dutch prince who complaints of authoritarian rule, the new monarchs
was married to James’s Protestant daughter, Mary broke up the Dominion of New England. However,
Stuart, to come to England at the head of an invading they refused to restore the old Puritan-dominated gov-
army. With their support, William led a quick and ernment of Massachusetts Bay, instead creating in 1692
nearly bloodless coup, and King James II was over- a new royal colony (which included Plymouth and
thrown in an event dubbed the Glorious Revolution by Maine). The new charter empowered the king to
appoint the governor and customs officials, gave the Initially he enjoyed broad sup-
EXPLAIN
vote to all male property owners (not just Puritan port, but he soon alienated many CONSEQUENCES
church members), and eliminated Puritan restrictions English-speaking New Yorkers How did the Glorious
on the Church of England. and well-to-do Dutch residents. Revolution affect relations
In Maryland, the uprising had economic as well as Leisler’s heavy-handed tactics between England and its
religious causes. Since 1660, falling tobacco prices made him vulnerable; when colonies?
had hurt poorer farmers, who were overwhelmingly William and Mary appointed
Protestant, while taxes and fees paid to mostly Catholic Henry Sloughter as governor in 1691, Leisler was
proprietary officials continued to rise. When Parliament indicted for treason, hanged, and decapitated — an act
ousted James II, a Protestant association mustered 700 of ethnic vengeance that corrupted New York politics
men and forcibly removed the Catholic governor. The for a generation.
Lords of Trade supported this Protestant initiative: they The Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 began a new
suspended Lord Baltimore’s proprietorship, imposed era in the politics of both England and its American col-
royal government, and made the Church of England the onies. In England, William and Mary ruled as constitu-
legal religion in the colony. This arrangement lasted tional monarchs; overseas, they promoted an empire
until 1715, when Benedict Calvert, the fourth Lord based on commerce. They accepted the overthrow of
Baltimore, converted to the Anglican faith and the king James’s disastrous Dominion of New England and
restored the proprietorship to the Calvert family. allowed Massachusetts (under its new charter) and New
In New York, a Dutchman named Jacob Leisler led York to resume self-government. In 1696, Parliament
the rebellion against the Dominion of New England. created a new body, the Board of Trade, to oversee
colonial affairs. While the Board of Trade continued to alliances with neighboring Native Americans, who
pursue the mercantilist policies that made the colonies tried to turn the fighting to their own advantage.
economically beneficial, otherwise it permitted local Although war brought money to the American colo-
elites to maintain a strong hand in colonial affairs. As nies in the form of war contracts, it also placed new
England plunged into a new era of European warfare, demands on colonial governments to support the
its leaders had little choice but to allow its colonies increasingly militant British Empire. To win wars in
substantial autonomy. Western Europe, the Caribbean, and far-flung oceans,
British leaders created a powerful central state that
spent three-quarters of its revenue on military and
naval expenses.
Imperial Wars and
Native Peoples Tribalization
The price that England paid for bringing William of For Native Americans, the rise of war intersected with a
Orange to the throne was a new commitment to war- process scholars have called tribalization: the adapta-
fare on the continent. England wanted William because tion of stateless peoples to the demands imposed on
of his unambiguous Protestant commitments; William them by neighboring states. In North America, tribal-
wanted England because of the resources it could bring ization occurred in catastrophic circumstances.
to bear in European wars. Beginning with the War of Eurasian diseases rapidly killed off broad swaths of
the League of Augsburg in 1689, England embarked on native communities, disproportionately victimizing the
an era sometimes called the Second Hundred Years’ old and the very young. In oral cultures, old people
War, which lasted until the defeat of Napoleon at were irreplaceable repositories of knowledge, while the
Waterloo in 1815. In that time, England (Britain after young were quite literally the future. With populations
1707) fought in seven major wars; the longest era of in free fall, many polities disappeared altogether. By the
peace lasted only twenty-six years (Table 3.3). eighteenth century, the groups that survived had all
Imperial wars transformed North America. Prior been transformed. Many were polyglot peoples: Some
to 1689, American affairs were distant from those of new tribes, like the Catawbas, had not existed before
Europe, but the recurrent wars of the eighteenth cen- and were pieced together from remnants of formerly
tury spilled over repeatedly into the colonies. Govern- large groups. Other nations, like the Iroquois, declined
ments were forced to arm themselves and create new in numbers but sustained themselves by adopting many
TABLE 3.3
English Wars, 1650–1750
War Date Purpose Result
Control markets and
Anglo-Dutch 1652–1654 African slave trade Stalemate
Anglo-Dutch 1664 Markets; conquest England takes New Amsterdam
Anglo-Dutch 1673 Commercial markets England makes maritime gains
Maintain European balance
King William’s 1689–1697 of power Stalemate in North America
Maintain European balance British acquire Hudson Bay and
Queen Anne’s 1702–1713 of power Nova Scotia
Expand markets in English merchants expand
Jenkins’s Ear 1739–1741 Spanish America influence
Maintain European balance
King George’s 1740–1748 of power Capture and return of Louisbourg
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 89
war captives. In the Carolina borderlands, a large them. This did not mean that the Iroquois stayed on
number of Muskogean-speaking communities came the sideline: Iroquois warriors often participated in
together as a nation known to the British as the “Creek” raids during wartime, and Iroquois spokesmen met
Indians, so named because some of them lived on regularly with representatives of New York and New
Ochese Creek. Similarly, the Cherokees, the Delawares, France to affirm their alliances and receive diplomatic
and other groups that were culturally linked but politi- gifts that included guns, powder, lead, clothing, and
cally fragmented became coherent “tribes” to deal more rum (from the British) or brandy (from the French).
effectively with their European neighbors. Their neutrality, paradoxically, made them more
The rise of imperial warfare exposed Native Amer- sought after as allies. For example, their alliance with
ican communities to danger, but it also gave them New York, known as the Covenant Chain, soon became
newfound leverage. The Iroquois were radically endan- a model for relations between the British Empire and
gered by imperial conflict: a promised English alliance other Native American peoples.
failed them, and in 1693 a combined force of French Imperial warfare also reshaped Indian relations in
soldiers, militiamen, and their Indian allies burned all the Southeast. During the War of the Spanish Succes-
three Mohawk villages to the ground. Thereafter, the sion (1702–1713), which pitted Britain against France
Iroquois devised a strategy for playing French and and Spain, English settlers in the Carolinas armed the
English interests off against each other. In 1701, they Creeks, whose 15,000 members farmed the fertile lands
made alliances with both empires, declaring their along the present-day border of Georgia and Alabama.
intention to remain neutral in future conflicts between A joint English-Creek expedition attacked Spanish
Florida, burning the town of St. Augustine but failing of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean and
to capture the fort. To protect Havana in nearby Cuba, a thirty-year contract to supply slaves to Spanish Amer-
the Spanish reinforced St. Augustine and unsuccess- ica. These gains advanced Britain’s quest for commer-
fully attacked Charleston, South Carolina. cial supremacy and brought peace to eastern North
America for a generation (Map 3.2).
Indian Goals
The Creeks had their own agenda: to become the dom-
inant tribe in the region, they needed to vanquish their
The Imperial Slave Economy
longtime enemies, the pro-French Choctaws to the Britain’s focus on America reflected the growth of a new
west and the Spanish-allied Apalachees to the south. agricultural and commercial order — the South Atlantic
Beginning in 1704, a force of Creek and Yamasee war- System — that produced sugar, tobacco, rice, and other
riors destroyed the remaining Franciscan missions in tropical and subtropical products for an international
northern Florida, attacked the Spanish settlement at market. Its plantation societies were ruled by European
Pensacola, and captured a thousand Apalachees, whom planter-merchants and worked by hundreds of thou-
they sold to South Carolinian slave traders for sale in sands of enslaved Africans (Figure 3.1).
the West Indies. Simultaneously, a Carolina-supported
Creek expedition attacked the Iroquois-speaking
Tuscarora people of North Carolina, killing hundreds, The South Atlantic System
executing 160 male captives, and sending 400 women The South Atlantic System had its center in Brazil and
and children into slavery. The surviving Tuscaroras the West Indies, and sugar was its primary product.
joined the Iroquois in New York (who now became the Before 1500, there were few sweet foods in Europe —
Six Nations of the Iroquois). The Carolinians, having mostly honey and fruits — so when European planters
used the Creeks to kill Spaniards, now died at the hands developed vast sugarcane plantations in America, they
of their former allies: when English traders demanded found a ready market for their crop. (The craving for
payment for trade debts in 1715, the Creeks and the potent new sweet food was so intense that, by 1900,
Yamasees revolted, killing 400 colonists before being sugar accounted for an astonishing 20 percent of the
overwhelmed by the Carolinians and their new Indian calories consumed by the world’s people.)
allies, the Cherokees. European merchants, investors, and planters
Native Americans also joined garnered the profits of the South Atlantic System. Fol-
UNDERSTAND POINTS in the warfare between French lowing mercantilist principles, they provided the plan-
OF VIEW Catholics in Canada and English tations with tools and equipment to grow and process
What did Native Americans Protestants in New England. the sugarcane and ships to carry it to Europe. But it
have to gain by participat- With French aid, Catholic was the Atlantic slave trade that made the system run.
ing in imperial wars? Mohawk and Abenaki warriors Between 1520 and 1650, Portuguese traders carried
took revenge on their Puritan about 820,000 Africans across the Atlantic — about
enemies. They destroyed English settlements in Maine 4,000 slaves a year before 1600 and 10,000 annually
and, in 1704, attacked the western Massachusetts town thereafter. Over the next half century, the Dutch dom-
of Deerfield, where they killed 48 residents and carried inated the Atlantic slave trade; then, between 1700 and
112 into captivity. In response, New England militia 1800, the British transported about 2.5 million of the
attacked French settlements and, in 1710, joined with total of 6.1 million Africans carried to the Americas.
British naval forces to seize Port Royal in French
Acadia (Nova Scotia). However, a major British–New England and the West Indies England was a late-
England expedition against the French stronghold at comer to the plantation economy, but from the begin-
Quebec, inspired in part by the visit of four Indian ning the prospect of a lucrative cash crop drew large
“kings” to London, failed miserably. numbers of migrants. On St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat,
Stalemated militarily in America, Britain won and Barbados, most early settlers were small-scale
major territorial and commercial concessions through English farmers (and their indentured servants) who
its victories in Europe. In the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), exported tobacco and livestock hides; on this basis,
Britain obtained Newfoundland, Acadia, and the they created small but thriving colonies. In 1650, there
Hudson Bay region of northern Canada from France, were more English residents in the West Indies (some
as well as access through Albany to the western Indian 44,000) than in the Chesapeake (20,000) and New
trade. From Spain, Britain acquired the strategic fortress England (23,000) colonies combined.
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 91
ce
ran
dF
HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY
an
nd
g la
y En Newfoundland
db
me claimed by
clai
England
and France British Colonies: Comparisons
E
C Nova Royal Proprietary Corporate
Scotia
N S Population Average Annual Exports
A
E
R NI White Black Exports, per White
F 1698–1717 (shillings)*
LO
d
an *(20 shillings = £1 [1 English pound]; £1 in 1715 = about $400 in 2010)
nd
TI
gla
RI
n
b yE
B
ed
i m
cla This map has three main elements. First, it shows the
claimed by geographic extent of Britain’s American possessions.
England and Spain Next, it provides a table showing the racial composition
MEXICO
and value of exports of the three main regions. Third, it
FLORIDA
(Sp.) BA depicts the form of government in the various colonies. AT L A N T I C
H
A OCEAN
M
Gulf of Mexico
AS
(B
r.)
SANTO DOMINGO
(Sp.) N
CUBA Guadeloupe
(Sp.) (Fr.)
E
W
Martinique
ST. DOMINIQUE Puerto (Fr.)
BELIZE JAMAICA (Fr.) Rico S
(Br.) (Sp.) Barbados
(Br.)
Caribbean Sea Sugar and slavery are key to a full understanding of 0 250 500 miles
this map. They explain the high value of exports
produced by the tiny Caribbean islands. 0 250 500 kilometers
MAP 3.2
Britain’s American Empire, 1713
Many of Britain’s possessions in the West Indies were tiny islands, mere dots on the Caribbean Sea.
However, in 1713, these small pieces of land were by far the most valuable parts of the empire.
Their sugar crops brought wealth to English merchants, commerce to the northern colonies,
and a brutal life and early death to the hundreds of thousands of African slaves working on
the plantations.
After 1650, sugar transformed Barbados and the among workers and a commitment to “absolute coer-
other islands into slave-based plantation societies, a cive” force among masters. As social inequality and
change facilitated by English capital combined with the racial conflict increased, hundreds of English farmers
knowledge and experience of Dutch merchants. By fled to South Carolina and the large island of Jamaica.
1680, an elite group of 175 planters, described by one But the days of Caribbean smallholders were num-
antislavery writer of the time as “inhumane and barba- bered. English sugar merchants soon invested heavily
rous,” dominated Barbados’s economy; they owned in Jamaica; by 1750, it had seven hundred large sugar
more than half of the island, thousands of indentured plantations, worked by more than 105,000 slaves, and
servants, and half of its more than 50,000 slaves. In had become the wealthiest British colony.
1692, exploited Irish servants and island-born African Sugar was a rich man’s crop because it could be pro-
slaves staged a major uprising, which was brutally sup- duced most efficiently on large plantations. Scores of
pressed. The “leading principle” in a slave society, slaves planted and cut the sugarcane, which was then
declared one West Indian planter, was to instill “fear” processed by expensive equipment — crushing mills,
92 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
TRARZA Timbuktu
Senegal R. BRAKNA
Ni
St. Louis
WALO
ge
GHANA
rR
Cape Verde CAYOR WOLOF
.
BAOL JOLOF
110,000 SINE SERER R. Map
SALUM WULI ger White
Ni
B l ac k
Gorée (Dakar) Area
BUNDU
Vo
MANDING
lta R
Volta
MOSSI HAUSA
SIERRA FULA BORGU
.
Îles de Los
R.
LEONE HAUSA
R.
1.1 million Bance Is. MAHI nue
Be
ASANTE OLD OYO
SUSU
Sherbro MENDE EMPIRE Wh YORUBA
W Ca Kumasi DAHOMEY TIV
yd
IN GOLA pe A Allada
ah
c BENIN AROCHUKWU
DW
KRU Ax Elm Coa cra Lagos
110,000 AR
Little Sestos
i i
m na st SLA V E
BOBANGI
________
D
COAST Calabar i R.
CO
AS D ang
Y COAST GOL T Ub
do ss Bonny
s
T IVOR S Bight of a
COA c
Benin F or Bra
Numbers denote Bight of
R.
slaves shipped, 500,000 Biafra Congo
1700–1810
1.5 million + São Tomé
TEKE
.
o ngo R
________
LOANGO K as a
UNITED STATES 1.5 million + i R.
Loango
OF AMERICA 1.5 million + Bay C LUANDA
NEW Charleston Malemba
SPAIN
New
Cabinda
KONGO
_______
Orleans ATLANTIC
KASANJE
OCEAN Luanda
1.5 million + NDONGO
________
Mexico City
MBUNDU
NEW
GRANADA Benguela
OVIMBUNDU
PACIFIC
Recife Tropical rain forest
OCEAN
BRAZIL Savanna
PERU
Desert
N
Major slave depots
Rio de Janeiro GHANA Kingdoms
W E
RIO DE KONGO
_______ Important suppliers
LA PLATA S HAUSA Peoples
Slave importation
areas in the New 0 500 1,000 miles
0 300 600 miles
World, c. 1800 Buenos Aires
0 500 1,000 kilometers
0 300 600 kilometers
MAP 3.3
Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1700–1810
The tropical rain forest of West Africa was home to scores of peoples and dozens of kingdoms.
With the rise of the slave trade, some of these kingdoms became aggressive slavers. Dahomey’s
army, for example, seized tens of thousands of captives in wars with neighboring peoples and
sold them to European traders. About 14 percent of the captives died during the grueling Middle
Passage, the transatlantic voyage between Africa and the Americas. Most of the survivors labored
on sugar plantations in Brazil and the British and French West Indies.
ports of Allada and Whydah. The Asante kings likewise and carved ivory, prohibited for decades the export of
used slaving to conquer states along the Gold Coast as all slaves, male and female. Other Africans atoned for
well as Muslim kingdoms in the savanna. By the 1720s, their guilt for selling neighbors into slavery by building
they had created a prosperous empire of 3 to 5 million hidden shrines, often in the household granary.
people. Yet participation in the transatlantic slave trade The trade in humans produced untold misery.
remained a choice for Africans, not a necessity. The Hundreds of thousands of young Africans died, and
powerful kingdom of Benin, famous for its cast bronzes millions more endured a brutal life in the Americas. In
94 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
Africa itself, class divisions hardened as people of noble Africa, as in the Americas, slavery eroded the dignity
birth enslaved and sold those of lesser status. Gender of human life.
relations shifted as well. Two-thirds of the slaves sent
across the Atlantic were men, partly because European The Middle Passage and Beyond Africans sold
planters paid more for men and “stout men boys” and into the South Atlantic System suffered the bleakest
partly because Africans sold enslaved women locally fate. Torn from their villages, they were marched in
and across the Sahara as agricultural workers, house chains to coastal ports, their first passage in slavery.
servants, and concubines. The resulting sexual imbal- Then they endured the perilous Middle Passage to the
ance prompted African men to take several wives, New World in hideously overcrowded ships. The cap-
changing the meaning of marriage. Finally, the expan- tives had little to eat or drink, and some died from
sion of the Atlantic slave trade increased the extent of dehydration. The feces, urine, and vomit belowdecks
slavery in Africa. Sultan Mawlay Ismail of Morocco (r. prompted outbreaks of dysentery, which took more
1672–1727) owned 150,000 black slaves, obtained by lives. “I was so overcome by the heat, stench, and foul
trade in Timbuktu and in wars he waged in Senegal. In air that I nearly fainted,” reported a European doctor.
My father, besides many slaves, had a numerous fam- the side. . . . One day, when we had a smooth sea and
ily. . . . I was trained up from my earliest years in the art moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who
of war, . . . and my mother adorned me with emblems were chained together . . . , preferring death to such a
after the manner of our greatest warriors. One day, when life of misery, somehow made it through the nettings
all our people were gone out to their works as usual and and jumped into the sea. . . .
only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two At last we came in sight of the island of Barbados; the
men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify
seized us both. . . . us. They told us we were not to be eaten but to work, and
I was . . . sold and carried through a number of places were soon to go on land where we should see many of our
till . . . at the end of six or seven months after I had been country people. This report eased us much; and sure
kidnapped I arrived at the sea coast. enough soon after we were landed there came to us
. . . I now saw myself deprived of all chance of return- Africans of all languages.
ing to my native country. . . . I was soon put down under
the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my
Source: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that African, Written by Himself (London, 1789), 15, 22–23, 28–29.
with the loathsomeness of the stench and crying
together, I became so sick and low that I was not
able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; 1. What elements of Equiano’s account might explain the
but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me average slave mortality rate of about 14 percent during
the Atlantic crossing?
eatables, and on my refusing to eat, one of them held
2. Assuming that Carretta is correct, and Equiano was not
me fast by the hands and . . . tied my feet while the born in Africa, why do you think he composed this ficti-
other flogged me severely. I had never experienced tious narrative of his childhood instead of describing his
anything of this kind before, and . . . could I have own childhood in slavery?
got over the nettings, I would have jumped over
Some slaves jumped overboard to drown rather than exploitation. Slaves worked ten hours a day under the
endure more suffering. Others staged violent shipboard hot tropical sun; slept in flimsy huts; and lived on a
revolts. Slave uprisings occurred on two thousand voy- starchy diet of corn, yams, and dried fish. They were
ages, roughly one of every ten Atlantic passages. Nearly subjected to brutal discipline: “The fear of punishment
100,000 slaves died in these insurrections, and nearly is the principle [we use] . . . to keep them in awe and
1.5 million others — about 14 percent of those who order,” one planter declared. When punishments came,
were transported — died of disease or illness on the they were brutal. Flogging was commonplace; some
month-long journey (America Compared, above). planters rubbed salt, lemon juice, or urine into the
For those who survived the Atlantic crossing, resulting wounds.
things only got worse as they passed into endless Planters often took advantage of their power by
slavery. Life on the sugar plantations of northwest- raping enslaved women. Sexual exploitation was a
ern Brazil and the West Indies was one of relentless largely unacknowledged but ubiquitous feature of
95
96 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
master-slave relations: something that many slave mas- could not carry weapons or gather in large numbers.
ters considered to be an unquestioned privilege of their Slaveholders were especially concerned to discourage
position. “It was almost a constant practice with our slaves from running away. Punishments for runaways
clerks, and other whites,” Olaudah Equiano wrote, “to commonly included not only brutal whipping but also
commit violent depredations on the chastity of the branding or scarring to make recalcitrant slaves easier
female slaves.” Thomas Thistlewood was a Jamaica to identify. Virginia laws spelled out the procedures for
planter who kept an unusually detailed journal in capturing and returning runaway slaves in detail. If a
which he noted every act of sexual exploitation he runaway slave was killed in the process of recapturing
committed. In thirty-seven years as a Jamaica planter, him, the county would reimburse the slave’s owner for
Thistlewood recorded 3,852 sex acts with 138 enslaved his full value. In some cases, slave owners could choose
women. to put runaway slaves up for trial; if they were found
With sugar prices high and the cost of slaves low, guilty and executed, the owner would be compensated
many planters simply worked their slaves to death and for his loss (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 98).
then bought more. Between 1708 and 1735, British Despite the inherent brutality of the institution,
planters on Barbados imported about 85,000 Africans; slaves in Virginia and Maryland worked under better
however, in that same time the island’s black popula- conditions than those in the West Indies. Many lived
tion increased by only 4,000 (from 42,000 to 46,000). relatively long lives. Unlike sugar and rice, which were
The constant influx of new slaves kept the population “killer crops” that demanded strenuous labor in a trop-
thoroughly “African” in its languages, religions, and ical climate, tobacco cultivation required steadier and
culture. “Here,” wrote a Jamaican observer, “each dif- less demanding labor in a more temperate environ-
ferent nation of Africa meet and dance after the man- ment. Workers planted young tobacco seedlings in
ner of their own country . . . [and] retain most of their spring, hoed and weeded the crop in summer, and in
native customs.” fall picked and hung the leaves to cure over the winter.
Nor did diseases spread as easily in the Chesapeake,
because plantation quarters were less crowded and
Slavery in the Chesapeake
more dispersed than those in the West Indies. Finally,
and South Carolina because tobacco profits were lower than those from
West Indian–style slavery came to Virginia and sugar, planters treated their slaves less harshly than
Maryland following Bacon’s Rebellion. Taking advan- West Indian planters did.
tage of the expansion of the British slave trade (follow- Many tobacco planters increased their workforce
ing the end of the Royal African Company’s monopoly by buying female slaves and encouraging them to have
in 1698), elite planter-politicians led a “tobacco revolu- children. In 1720, women made up more than one-
tion” and bought more Africans, putting these slaves to third of the Africans in Maryland, and the black popu-
work on ever-larger plantations. By 1720, Africans lation had begun to increase naturally. “Be kind and
made up 20 percent of the Chesapeake population; by indulgent to the breeding wenches,” one slave owner
1740, nearly 40 percent. Slavery had become a core told his overseer, “[and do not] force them when with
institution, no longer just one of several forms of unfree child upon any service or hardship that will be injuri-
labor. Moreover, slavery was now defined in racial ous to them.” By midcentury, more than three-quarters
terms. Virginia legislators prohibited sexual inter- of the enslaved workers in the Chesapeake were
course between English and Africans and defined vir- American-born.
tually all resident Africans as slaves: “All servants Slaves in South Carolina labored under much more
imported or brought into this country by sea or land oppressive conditions. The colony grew slowly until
who were not Christians in their native country shall 1700, when planters began to plant and export rice to
be accounted and be slaves.” southern Europe, where it was in great demand.
On the mainland as in the islands, slavery was a Between 1720 and 1750, rice production increased
system of brutal exploitation. Violence was common, fivefold. To expand production, planters imported
and the threat of violence always hung over master- thousands of Africans, some of them from rice-growing
slave relationships. In 1669, Virginia’s House of societies. By 1710, Africans formed a majority of the
Burgesses decreed that a master who killed a slave in total population, eventually rising to 80 percent in rice-
the process of “correcting” him could not be charged growing areas (Figure 3.2).
with a felony, since it would be irrational to destroy his Most rice plantations lay in inland swamps, and the
own property. From that point forward, even the most work was dangerous and exhausting. Slaves planted,
extreme punishments were permitted by law. Slaves weeded, and harvested the rice in ankle-deep mud.
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 97
Britain’s American colonies relied heavily on bound labor. Two forms predomi-
nated: indentured servitude and African slavery. The idea of being bound to a
Servitude and Slavery master is alien to most of us today; the following texts allow us to glimpse some
aspects of the experience. In what ways were these two institutions similar, and
how did they differ?
1. Slave advertisement from Charlestown, Virginia, A Poor Unhappy Transported Felon’s Sorrowful
July 24, 1769. Account of His Fourteen Years’ Transportation
at Virginia, in America (1680).
At last to my new master’s house I came,
At the town of Wicocc[o]moco call’d by name,
Where my Europian clothes were took from me,
Which never after I again could see.
A canvas shirt and trowsers then they gave,
With a hop-sack frock in which I was to slave:
No shoes nor stockings had I for to wear,
Nor hat, nor cap, both head and feet were bare.
Thus dress’d into the Field I nex[t] must go,
Amongst tobacco plants all day to hoe,
At day break in the morn our work began,
And so held to the setting of the Sun.
My fellow slaves were just five Transports more,
With eighteen Negroes, which is twenty four . . .
We and the Negroes both alike did fare,
Of work and food we had an equal share.
99
100 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
brands or scars that identified them with their owners.) Resistance and Accommodation Slaves’ freedom
But other tangible markers of African heritage per- of action was always dramatically circumscribed. It
sisted, including hairstyles, motifs used in wood carv- became illegal to teach slaves to read and write, and
ings and pottery, the large wooden mortars and pestles most slaves owned no property of their own. Because
used to hull rice, and the design of houses, in which the institution of slavery rested on fear, planters had to
rooms were arranged from front to back in a distinc- learn a ferocious form of cruelty. Slaves might be
tive “I” pattern, not side by side as was common in whipped, restrained, or maimed for any infraction,
English dwellings. Musical instruments — especially large or small. A female cook in a Virginia household
drums, gourd rattles, and a stringed instrument called “was cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron
a “molo,” forerunner to the banjo — helped Africans machines; she had one particularly on her head, which
preserve cultural traditions and, eventually, shape locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak;
American musical styles. and could not eat nor drink.” Thomas Jefferson, who
African values also persisted. Some slaves passed witnessed such punishments on his father’s Virginia
down Muslim beliefs, and many more told their chil- plantation, noted that each generation of whites was
dren of the spiritual powers of conjurers, called obeah “nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny,” and
or ifa, who knew the ways of the African gods. Enslaved he concluded that the relationship “between master
Yorubas consulted Orunmila, the god of fate, and other and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most unremit-
Africans (a Jamaican planter noted) relied on obeah “to ting despotism on the one part, and degrading submis-
revenge injuries and insults, discover and punish sion on the other.” A fellow Virginian, planter George
thieves and adulterers; [and] to predict the future.” Mason, agreed: “Every Master is born a petty tyrant.”
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 101
The extent of white violence often depended on the Slave owners’ greatest fear
TRACE CHANGE OVER
size and density of the slave population. As Virginia was that their regime of terror TIME
planter William Byrd II complained of his slaves in would fail and slaves would rise How much autonomy
1736, “Numbers make them insolent.” In the northern up to murder them in their could slaves attain, and
colonies, where slaves were few, white violence was beds. Occasionally that fear was what did slave owners do
sporadic. But plantation owners and overseers in the realized. In the 1760s, in Amherst to control them?
sugar- and rice-growing areas, where Africans out- County, Virginia, a slave killed
numbered Europeans eight or more to one, routinely four whites; in Elizabeth City County, eight slaves
whipped assertive slaves. They also prohibited their strangled their master in bed. But the circumstances of
workers from leaving the plantation without special slavery made any larger-scale uprising all but impos-
passes and called on their poor white neighbors to sible. To rebel against their masters, slaves would have
patrol the countryside at night. to be able to communicate secretly but effectively
Despite the constant threat of violence, some slaves across long distances; choose leaders they could trust;
ran away, a very small number of them successfully. formulate and disseminate strategy; accumulate large
In some parts of the Americas — for example, in numbers of weapons; and ensure that no one betrayed
Jamaica — runaway slaves were able to form large, their plans. This was all but impossible: in plantation
independent Maroon communities. But on the main- slavery, the preponderance of force was on the side of
land, planters had the resources necessary to reclaim the slave owners, and blacks who chose to rise up did
runaways, and such communities were unusual and so at their peril.
precarious. More often, slaves who spoke English and
possessed artisanal skills fled to colonial towns, where The Stono Rebellion The largest slave uprising in
they tried to pass as free; occasionally they succeeded. the mainland colonies, South Carolina’s Stono Rebellion
Slaves who did not run away were engaged in a con- of 1739, illustrates the impossibility of success. The
stant tug-of-war with their owners over the terms of Catholic governor of Spanish Florida instigated the
their enslavement. Some blacks bartered extra work for revolt by promising freedom to fugitive slaves. By
better food and clothes; others seized a small privilege February 1739, at least 69 slaves had escaped to St.
and dared the master to revoke it. In this way, Sundays Augustine, and rumors circulated “that a Conspiracy
gradually became a day of rest — asserted as a right, was formed by Negroes in Carolina to rise and make
rather than granted as a privilege. When bargaining their way out of the province.” When war between
failed, slaves protested silently by working slowly or England and Spain broke out in September, 75 Africans
stealing. rose in revolt and killed a number of whites near the
102 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
Stono River. According to one account, some of the White Identity and Equality To prevent uprisings
rebels were Portuguese-speaking Catholics from the like Bacon’s Rebellion, the Chesapeake gentry found
Kingdom of Kongo who hoped to escape to Florida. ways to assist middling and poor whites. They gradu-
Displaying their skills as soldiers — decades of brutal ally lowered taxes; in Virginia, for example, the annual
slave raiding in Kongo had militarized the society head tax (on each adult man) fell from 45 pounds of
there — the rebels marched toward Florida “with tobacco in 1675 to just 5 pounds in 1750. They also
Colours displayed and two Drums beating.” encouraged smallholders to improve their economic
Though their numbers and organization were lot by using slave labor, and many did so. By 1770, 60
impressive, the Stono rebels were soon met by a well- percent of English families in the Chesapeake owned at
armed, mounted force of South Carolina militia. In the least one slave. On the political front, planters now
ensuing battle, 44 slaves were killed and the rebellion allowed poor yeomen and some tenants to vote. The
was suppressed, preventing any general uprising. In strategy of the leading families — the Carters, Lees,
response, frightened South Carolinians cut slave Randolphs, and Robinsons — was to bribe these voters
imports and tightened plantation discipline. with rum, money, and the promise of minor offices in
county governments. In return, they expected the yeo-
men and tenants to elect them to office and defer to
The Rise of the Southern Gentry their rule. This horse-trading solidified the authority of
As the southern colonies became full-fledged slave the planter elite, which used its control of the House of
societies, life changed for whites as well as for blacks. Burgesses to limit the power of the royal governor.
Consider the career of William Byrd II (1674–1744). Hundreds of yeomen farmers benefitted as well, tasting
Byrd’s father, a successful planter-merchant in Virginia, political power and garnering substantial fees and sala-
hoped to marry his children into the English gentry. To ries as deputy sheriffs, road surveyors, estate apprais-
smooth his son’s entry into landed society, Byrd sent ers, and grand jurymen.
him to England for his education. But his status- Even as wealthy Chesapeake gentlemen formed
conscious classmates shunned young Byrd, calling him political ties with smallholders, they took measures to
a “colonial,” a first bitter taste of the gradations of rank set themselves apart culturally. As late as the 1720s,
in English society. leading planters were boisterous, aggressive men who
Other English rejections fol- lived much like the common folk — hunting, drinking,
IDENTIFY CAUSES lowed. Lacking aristocratic con- gambling on horse races, and demonstrating their
How did the planter elite nections, Byrd was denied a manly prowess by forcing themselves on female ser-
maintain alliances with post with the Board of Trade, vants and slaves. As time passed, however, the planters
their smallholder passed over three times for the began, like William Byrd II, to model themselves on
neighbors? royal governorship of Virginia, the English aristocracy, remaining sexual predators but
and rejected as a suitor by a rich learning from advice books how to act like gentlemen
Englishwoman. In 1726, at age fifty-two, Byrd finally in other regards: “I must not sit in others’ places; Nor
gave up and moved back to Virginia, where he some- sneeze, nor cough in people’s faces. Nor with my fin-
times felt he was “being buried alive.” Accepting his gers pick my nose, Nor wipe my hands upon my
lesser destiny as a member of the colony’s elite, Byrd clothes.” Cultivating gentility — a refined but elaborate
built an elegant brick mansion on the family’s estate at lifestyle — they replaced their modest wooden houses
Westover, sat in “the best pew in the church,” and won with mansions of brick and mortar. Planters educated
an appointment to the governor’s council. their sons in London as lawyers and gentlemen. But
William Byrd II’s experience mirrored that of many unlike Byrd’s father, they expected them to return to
planter-merchants, trapped in Virginia and South America, marry local heiresses, and assume their
Carolina by their inferior colonial status. They used fathers’ roles: managing plantations, socializing with
their wealth to rule over white yeomen families and fellow gentry, and running the political system.
tenant farmers and relied on violence to exploit Wealthy Chesapeake and South Carolina women
enslaved blacks. Planters used Africans to grow food, likewise emulated the English elite. They read English
as well as tobacco; to build houses, wagons, and tobacco newspapers and fashionable magazines, wore the finest
casks; and to make shoes and clothes. By making their English clothes, and dined in the English fashion,
plantations self-sufficient, the Chesapeake elite sur- including an elaborate afternoon tea. To enhance their
vived the depressed tobacco market between 1670 daughters’ gentility (and improve their marriage pros-
and 1720. pects), parents hired English tutors. Once married,
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 103
planter women deferred to their husbands, reared port by developing a bustling export business in wheat,
pious children, and maintained elaborate social net- while traders in Charleston shipped deerskins, indigo,
works, in time creating a new ideal: the southern and rice to European markets (Map 3.4).
gentlewoman. Using the profits generated by enslaved As transatlantic commerce expanded — from five
Africans in the South Atlantic System of commerce, hundred voyages a year in the 1680s to fifteen hundred
wealthy planters formed an increasingly well-educated, annually in the 1730s — American port cities grew in
refined, and stable ruling class. size and complexity. By 1750, the populations of
Newport and Charleston were nearly 10,000; Boston
had 15,000 residents; and New York had almost 18,000.
The largest port was Philadelphia, whose population by
1776 had reached 30,000, the size of a large European
The Northern Maritime provincial city. Smaller coastal towns emerged as cen-
Economy ters of the lumber and shipbuilding industries. Seventy
sawmills lined the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire,
The South Atlantic System had a broad geographical providing low-cost wood for homes, warehouses, and
reach. As early as the 1640s, New England farmers sup- especially shipbuilding. Hundreds of shipwrights
plied the sugar islands with bread, lumber, fish, and turned out oceangoing vessels, while other artisans
meat. As a West Indian explained, planters “had rather made ropes, sails, and metal fittings for the new fleet.
buy foode at very deare rates than produce it by labour, By the 1770s, colonial-built ships made up one-third of
soe infinite is the profitt of sugar works.” By 1700, the the British merchant fleet.
economies of the West Indies and New England were The South Atlantic System
closely interwoven. Soon farmers and merchants in extended far into the interior. A EXPLAIN
New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were also fleet of small vessels sailed back CONSEQUENCES
shipping wheat, corn, and bread to the Caribbean. By and forth on the Hudson and How did the rise of the
the 1750s, about two-thirds of New England’s exports Delaware rivers, delivering car- South Atlantic System
and half of those from the Middle Atlantic colonies goes of European manufactures impact economic develop-
ment in the northern
went to the British and French sugar islands. and picking up barrels of flour
colonies?
The sugar economy linked Britain’s entire Atlantic and wheat to carry to New York
empire. In return for the sugar they sent to England, and Philadelphia for export to the
West Indian planters received credit, in the form of West Indies and Europe. By the 1750s, hundreds of
bills of exchange, from London merchants. The plant- professional teamsters in Maryland were transporting
ers used these bills to buy slaves from Africa and to pay 370,000 bushels of wheat and corn and 16,000 barrels
North American farmers and merchants for their pro- of flour to urban markets each year — more than 10,000
visions and shipping services. The mainland colonists wagon trips. To service this traffic, entrepreneurs and
then exchanged the bills for British manufactures, pri- artisans set up taverns, horse stables, and barrel-making
marily textiles and iron goods. shops in towns along the wagon roads. Lancaster (the
town that hosted the Iroquois conference described in
the chapter opening), in a prosperous wheat-growing
The Urban Economy area of Pennsylvania, boasted more than 200 German
The West Indian trade created the first American mer- and English artisans and a dozen merchants.
chant fortunes and the first urban industries. Merchants
in Boston, Newport, Providence, Philadelphia, and
New York invested their profits in new ships; some set Urban Society
up manufacturing enterprises, including twenty-six Wealthy merchants dominated the social life of seaport
refineries that processed raw sugar into finished loaves. cities. In 1750, about 40 merchants controlled more
Mainland distilleries turned West Indian molasses into than 50 percent of Philadelphia’s trade. Like the
rum, producing more than 2.5 million gallons in Chesapeake gentry, urban merchants imitated the
Massachusetts alone by the 1770s. Merchants in Salem, British upper classes, importing architectural design
Marblehead, and smaller New England ports built a books from England and building Georgian-style man-
major fishing industry by selling salted mackerel and sions to display their wealth. Their wives strove to
cod to the sugar islands and to southern Europe. Balti- create a genteel culture by buying fine furniture and
more merchants transformed their town into a major entertaining guests at elegant dinners.
104 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
rum, manufactu
nge ATLANTIC Think of the bold, straight arrows as
ha
f exc OC E A N a diagram rather than as routes that
flour, lumber, fish, ls o are accurate in a geographical sense.
molasses, sugar, bil
oods, The width of the arrows suggests the
manufactures,
e dg relative importance of each leg. Compare
red g
bills of exchange tur this diagram-type map with the accurately
ufac
an scaled widths of the arrows on Map 3.3.
ods o
m
rum
WEST
INDIES AFRICA
slaves
NEW James Fort
SPAIN
Sierra Leone
British-controlled trade Cape Coast Lagos
Accra
0 500 1,000 miles Castle
American-controlled trade
0 500 1,000 kilometers
MAP 3.4
The Growing Power of American Merchants, 1750
Throughout the colonial era, British merchant houses dominated the transatlantic trade in
manufactures, sugar, tobacco, and slaves. However, by 1750, American-born merchants in Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia had seized control of the commerce between the mainland and the
West Indies. In addition, Newport traders played a small role in the slave trade from Africa, and
Boston and Charleston merchants grew rich carrying fish and rice to southern Europe.
Artisan and shopkeeper families, the middle ranks Laboring men and women formed the lowest ranks
of seaport society, made up nearly half the population. of urban society. Merchants needed hundreds of dock-
Innkeepers, butchers, seamstresses, shoemakers, weav- workers to unload manufactured goods and molasses
ers, bakers, carpenters, masons, and dozens of other from inbound ships and reload them with barrels of
skilled workers toiled to gain an income sufficient to wheat, fish, and rice. For these demanding jobs, mer-
maintain their families in modest comfort. Wives and chants used enslaved blacks and indentured servants,
husbands often worked as a team and taught the “mys- who together made up 30 percent of the workforce in
teries of the craft” to their children. Some artisans Philadelphia and New York City until the 1750s; other-
aspired to wealth and status, an entrepreneurial ethic wise, they hired unskilled wageworkers. Poor white
that prompted them to hire apprentices and expand and black women eked out a living by washing clothes,
production. However, most artisans were not well-to- spinning wool, or working as servants or prostitutes.
do. During his working life, a tailor was lucky to accu- To make ends meet, laboring families sent their chil-
mulate £30 worth of property, far less than the £2,000 dren out to work.
owned at death by an ordinary merchant or the £300 Periods of stagnant commerce threatened the
listed in the probate inventory of a successful financial security of merchants and artisans alike.
blacksmith. For laborers, seamen, and seamstresses — whose
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 105
household budgets left no margin for sickness or New Jersey, and Pennsylvania did the same. Using such
unemployment — depressed trade meant hunger, tactics, the legislatures gradually took control of taxa-
dependence on public charity, and (for the most des- tion and appointments, angering imperial bureaucrats
perate) petty thievery or prostitution. The sugar- and and absentee proprietors. “The people in power in
slave-based South Atlantic System, and cycles of impe- America,” complained William Penn during a struggle
rial warfare, brought economic uncertainty as well as with the Pennsylvania assembly, “think nothing taller
opportunity to the people of the northern colonies. than themselves but the Trees.”
Leading the increasingly
powerful assemblies were mem- IDENTIFY CAUSES
bers of the colonial elite. Although What explains the increas-
The New Politics of Empire, most property-owning white men
ing political autonomy of
the colonies in the eigh-
1713–1750 had the right to vote, only men
of wealth and status stood for
teenth century?
The South Atlantic System also changed the politics of election. In New Jersey in 1750,
empire. British ministers, pleased with the wealth pro- 90 percent of assemblymen came from influential polit-
duced by the trade in slaves, sugar, rice, and tobacco, ical families (Figure 3.3). In Virginia, seven members
ruled the colonies with a gentle hand. The colonists of the wealthy Lee family sat in the House of Burgesses
took advantage of that leniency to strengthen their and, along with other powerful families, dominated its
political institutions and eventually to challenge the major committees. In New England, affluent descen-
rules of the mercantilist system. dants of the original Puritans formed a core of political
leaders. “Go into every village in New England,” John
Adams wrote in 1765, “and you will find that the office
The Rise of Colonial Assemblies of justice of the peace, and even the place of represen-
After the Glorious Revolution, representative assem- tative, have generally descended from generation to
blies in America copied the English Whigs and limited generation, in three or four families at most.”
the powers of crown officials. In Massachusetts during However, neither elitist assemblies nor wealthy
the 1720s, the assembly repeatedly ignored the king’s property owners could impose unpopular edicts on the
instructions to provide the royal governor with a people. Purposeful crowd actions were a fact of colo-
permanent salary, and legislatures in North Carolina, nial life. An uprising of ordinary citizens overthrew the
106 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
7+
Salutary Neglect
Number of relatives 3–6
per assemblyman: None 1–2 British colonial policy during the reigns of George I (r.
100% 1714–1727) and George II (r. 1727–1760) allowed for
this rise of American self-government as royal bureau-
crats, pleased by growing trade and import duties,
80
relaxed their supervision of internal colonial affairs. In
1775, British political philosopher Edmund Burke
60 would praise this strategy as salutary neglect.
Salutary neglect was a by-product of the political
system developed by Sir Robert Walpole, the Whig
40 leader in the House of Commons from 1720 to 1742.
By providing supporters with appointments and pen-
sions, Walpole won parliamentary approval for his pol-
20
icies. However, his patronage appointments filled the
British government, including the Board of Trade and
0 the colonial bureaucracy, with do-nothing political
1703 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1776 hacks. When Governor Gabriel Johnson arrived in
North Carolina in the 1730s, he vowed to curb the
powers of the assembly and “make a mighty change in
FIGURE 3.3
Family Connections and Political Power, New Jersey,
the face of affairs.” Receiving little support from the
1700–1776 Board of Trade, Johnson renounced reform and decided
As early as 1700, more than 50 percent of the members “to do nothing which can be reasonably blamed, and
of the New Jersey assembly came from families with leave the rest to time, and a new set of inhabitants.”
a history of political leadership. By 1750, the percent- Walpole’s tactics also weakened the empire by
age whose fathers or other relatives had served in the
undermining the legitimacy of the political system.
assembly reached 90 percent; indeed, some members
had seven relatives who were (or had been) political Radical Whigs protested that Walpole had betrayed the
leaders, clear testimony of the emergence of power- Glorious Revolution by using patronage — the prac-
ful political families and an experienced governing elite. tice of giving offices and salaries to political allies — and
However, as the conflict with Britain increased after
1765, voters in New Jersey and elsewhere ousted luke-
bribery to create a strong Court (or Kingly) Party. The
warm patriots, and new families entered the political Country Party, whose members were landed gentle-
ranks. men, likewise warned that Walpole’s policies of high
taxes and a bloated royal bureaucracy threatened
British liberties. Heeding these arguments, colonial
legislators complained that royal governors abused
Dominion of New England in 1689. In New York, their patronage powers. To preserve American liberty,
mobs closed houses of prostitution; in Salem, the colonists strengthened the powers of the represen-
Massachusetts, they ran people with infectious diseases tative assemblies, unintentionally laying the founda-
out of town; and in New Jersey in the 1730s and 1740s, tion for the American independence movement
mobs of farmers battled with proprietors who were (American Voices, p. 108).
forcing tenants off disputed lands. When officials in
Boston restricted the sale of farm produce to a single
public market, a crowd destroyed the building, and its Protecting the Mercantile System
members defied the authorities to arrest them. “If you In 1732, Walpole provided a parliamentary subsidy for
touch One you shall touch All,” an anonymous letter the new colony of Georgia. While Georgia’s reform-
warned the sheriff, “and we will show you a Hundred minded trustees envisioned the colony as a refuge for
Men where you can show one.” These expressions of Britain’s poor, Walpole had little interest in social
popular discontent, combined with the growing reform; he subsidized Georgia to protect the valuable
authority of the assemblies, created a political system rice-growing colony of South Carolina. The subsidy,
that was broadly responsive to popular pressure and however, did exactly the opposite. Britain’s expansion
increasingly resistant to British control. into Georgia outraged Spanish officials, who were
CHAPTER 3 The British Atlantic World, 1660–1750 107
108
feudal dues on land] and regulating the Acc’ts; his stirring that the Bill must pass as it comes from the Assembly, or
up ye humours of the people before the last election of all the Supplies granted for the support of Government, &
Burgesses; tampering with the most mutinous of that the most urgent services must be lost.
house, and betraying to them the measures resolved on in 2ndly, It appears that they take the Payment of the
Council for his Majesty’s Service, would have made me [military] Forces, passing of Muster Rolls into their own
likewise suspend him from ye Council, but I find by the hands by naming the Commissaries for those purposes in
late Instructions I have received from his Majesty that the Act.
Power is taken from ye Governor and transferred upon the 3rdly, They by granting the Saleries to the Officers
majority of that Board [of Councilors], and while there are personally by name & not to the Officer for the time
no less than seven of his Relations there, it is impossible to being, intimate that if any person be appointed to any
get a Majority to consent to the Suspension of him. Office his Salery must depend upon their approbation of
the Appointment. . . .
Sources: R. A. Brock, ed., The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood (Richmond: I must now refer it to Your Lordships’ consideration
Virginia Historical Society, 1885), 2: 1–2, 124, 154–155; H. R. MacIlwaine, ed.,
Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia (Richmond: Virginia State
whether it be not high time to put a stop to these usurpa-
Library, 1928), 3: 392. tions of the Assembly on His Majesty’s Authority in this
Province and for that purpose may it not be proper that
His Majesty signify his Disallowance of the Act at least for
George Clinton
the payment of Saleries.
A Plea for Assistance
Source: E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of
George Clinton served as governor of New York from 1744 New York (Albany, 1860 on), 2: 211.
to 1752. Like many governors during the era of salutary
neglect, Clinton owed his appointment to political connec-
tions in England. As the second son of the seventh Earl of
Lincoln, he would inherit neither the family’s estate nor his QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
father’s position in the House of Lords; those went to his 1. What policies does Spotswood wish to pursue? Why
elder brother. To provide an income for Clinton, his family can’t he persuade the House of Burgesses to implement
them? According to Spotswood, what is wrong with
traded its votes in Parliament for patronage appointments.
Virginia’s political system? How does he propose to
However, once Clinton was installed as governor of New reform it?
York, he found himself dependent on the assembly for the 2. Unlike the House of Burgesses, which was elected by
payment of his salary — and the salaries of all members of qualified voters, the members of the Governor’s Council
his administration. in Virginia were appointed by the king, usually on
the governor’s recommendation. What is the council’s
My Lords, response to the plan to reform the political system?
Given Spotswood’s description of the incident involving
I have in my former letters inform’d Your Lordships Philip Ludwell, where did the political sympathies of the
what Incroachments the Assemblys of this province have council lie?
from time to time made on His Majesty’s Prerogative & 3. What were Clinton’s complaints about the actions of
Authority in this Province in drawing an absolute depen- the New York assembly? Did these actions represent
dence of all the Officers upon them for their Saleries & a more or less serious threat to imperial power than
the activities of the Virginia Burgesses? Based on
Reward of their services, & by their taking in effect the their correspondence with the Board of Trade, which
Nomination to all Officers. . . . governor — Spotswood or Clinton — was the stronger
1stly, That the Assembly refuse to admit of any representative of the interests of the crown?
amendment to any money bill, in any part of the Bill; so
109
110 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
to farmers who pledged their land as collateral for the authority over its American colonies. Recognizing the
loans. Farmers used the currency to buy tools or live- threat self-government posed to the empire, British
stock or to pay creditors, thereby stimulating trade. officials in the late 1740s vowed to reassert their power
However, some assemblies, particularly the legislature in America — an initiative with disastrous results.
in Rhode Island, issued huge quantities of paper money
(which consequently decreased in value) and required
merchants to accept it as legal tender. English mer-
chants and other creditors rightly complained about
SUMMARY
being forced to accept devalued money. So in 1751, In this chapter, we examined processes of change in
Parliament passed the Currency Act, which barred the politics and society. The political story began in the
New England colonies from establishing new land 1660s as Britain imposed controls on its American
banks and prohibited the use of publicly issued paper possessions. Parliament passed the Acts of Trade and
money to pay private debts. Navigation to keep colonial products and trade in
These conflicts over trade and paper money angered English hands. Then King James II abolished repre-
a new generation of English political leaders. In 1749, sentative institutions in the northern colonies and cre-
Charles Townshend of the Board of Trade charged that ated the authoritarian Dominion of New England.
the American assemblies had assumed many of the Following the Glorious Revolution, the Navigation
“ancient and established prerogatives wisely preserved Acts remained in place and tied the American econ-
in the Crown,” and he vowed to replace salutary neglect omy to that of Britain. But the uprisings of 1688–1689
with more rigorous imperial control. overturned James II’s policy of strict imperial control,
The wheel of empire had come full circle. In the restored colonial self-government, and ushered in
1650s, England had set out to create a centrally man- an era of salutary political neglect. It also initiated
aged Atlantic empire and, over the course of a century, a long era of imperial warfare, in which Native
achieved the military and economic aspects of that American peoples allied themselves to the colonies
goal. Mercantilist legislation, maritime warfare, com- and often served as proxy warriors against French-
mercial expansion, and the forced labor of a million and Spanish-allied peoples, pursuing their own goals
African slaves brought prosperity to Britain. However, in the process.
internal unrest (the Glorious Revolution) and a policy The social story centers on the development of the
of salutary neglect had weakened Britain’s political South Atlantic System of production and trade, which
CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER REVIEW 111
involved an enormous expansion in African slave raid- merchants, and artisans on the North American main-
ing; the Atlantic slave trade; and the cultivation of land to prosper. How would the two stories play out? In
sugar, rice, and tobacco in America. This complex 1750, slavery and the South Atlantic System seemed
system created an exploited African American labor firmly entrenched, but the days of salutary neglect
force in the southern mainland and West Indian colo- appeared numbered.
nies, while it allowed European American farmers,
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What strategies did Charles II and James II employ 4. How did the institution of slavery develop, and why
to try to gain more centralized control over did it develop differently in the Chesapeake, the
England’s American colonies? What did James Carolina low country, and the West Indies?
hope to accomplish by creating the Dominion of
5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Trace the
New England?
developments outlined in the section entitled
2. How did the long era of imperial warfare beginning “Politics and Power” from 1660 to 1750 on the the-
in 1689 affect the colonies, Native Americans, and matic timeline on page 79. What pattern of political
relations between them? evolution do you see in colonial interactions with
Britain?
3. What was the South Atlantic System, and how did
it shape colonial society?
112 PART 2 CHAPTER REVIEW
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE In Chapter 2, we 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Consider the illustrations
traced the emergence of three distinct colonial of women hulling rice in West Africa and Georgia
types in the Americas during the sixteenth and sev- on page 100. Historians have long debated the role
enteenth centuries: tribute, plantation, and neo- Africans played in developing rice cultivation in
European colonies. In Chapter 3, we have seen how the South Carolina and Georgia low country. These
Britain’s plantation and neo-European colonies debates have focused primarily on methods of cul-
became more closely interconnected after 1700. tivation: Did Africans who had prior experience
What developments caused them to become more with rice teach English planters how to grow it?
closely tied to each other? How did they benefit How can these two images contribute to the debate
from these ties? Can you see any disadvantages to and expand our perspective on the question of
the colonies in a more fully integrated Atlantic African influences in American rice production?
system?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone (2000). Explores the Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed (2011). Tells
varieties of slave experience in North America. the story of the Glorious Revolution in the American
colonies.
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life
of Olaudah Equiano (1789; reprint 2006). A compel- Africans in America, Part 1: Terrible Transformation,
ling and influential eighteenth-century slave autobiog- 1450–1750 (PBS video, 1998) and the related Web site
raphy. (pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/title.html). Treats the early
African American experience.
Paul Mapp, The Elusive West and the Contest for
Empire, 1713–1763 (2011). Offers a continental “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the
perspective on the contest for European control of Americas: A Visual Record” (hitchcock.itc.virginia
North America. .edu/Slavery). An extensive collection of slave images.
CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER REVIEW 113
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1669 t Virginia law declares that the murder of a slave cannot be treated as a felony
1739–1748 t War with Spain in the Caribbean and France in Canada and Europe
KEY TURNING POINTS: The Glorious Revolution (1688–1689), salutary neglect and the rise
of the assemblies (1714–1750), and the Hat, Molasses, Iron, and Currency Acts (1732–1751).
How do these developments reflect Britain’s new attitude toward its colonies? In what matters
did Parliament seek to control the colonies, and in what did it grant them autonomy?
Growth, Diversity, and Conflict
4
C H A P T E R
1720–1763
I
NEW ENGLAND’S n 1736, Alexander MacAllister left the IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
FREEHOLD SOCIETY Highlands of Scotland for the back- In what ways were Britain’s Ameri-
Farm Families: Women in the country of North Carolina, where his can colonies affected by events
Household Economy wife and three sisters soon joined him. across the Atlantic, and how were
Farm Property: Inheritance MacAllister prospered as a landowner and their societies taking on a life of
Freehold Society in Crisis mill proprietor and had only praise for his their own?
new home. Carolina was “the best poor
DIVERSITY IN THE
MIDDLE COLONIES man’s country,” he wrote to his brother Hector, urging him to “advise all poor
people . . . to take courage and come.” In North Carolina, there were no landlords
Economic Growth, Opportunity,
and Conflict to keep “the face of the poor . . . to the grinding stone,” and so many Highlanders
Cultural Diversity were arriving that “it will soon be a new Scotland.” Here, on the far margins of the
British Empire, people could “breathe the air of liberty, and not want the necessarys of
Religion and Politics
life.” Some 300,000 European migrants — primarily Highland Scots, Scots-Irish, and
COMMERCE, CULTURE, Germans — heeded MacAllister’s advice and helped swell the population of Britain’s
AND IDENTITY North American settlements from 400,000 in 1720 to almost 2 million by 1765.
Transportation and the Print MacAllister’s “air of liberty” did not last forever, as the rapid increase in white set-
Revolution tlers and the arrival of nearly 300,000 enslaved Africans transformed life throughout
The Enlightenment in America mainland British North America. Long-settled towns in New England became over-
American Pietism and the Great crowded, and antagonistic ethnic and religious communities jostled uneasily with one
Awakening another in the Middle Atlantic colonies; in 1748, there were more than a hundred Ger-
Religious Upheaval in the North man Lutheran and Reformed congregations in Quaker-led Pennsylvania. By then, the
Social and Religious Conflict in MacAllisters and thousands of other Celtic and German migrants had altered the social
the South landscape and introduced religious conflict into the southern backcountry.
THE MIDCENTURY Everywhere, two European cultural movements, the Enlightenment and Pietism,
CHALLENGE: WAR, changed the tone of intellectual and spiritual life. Advocates of “rational thought”
TRADE, AND SOCIAL viewed human beings as agents of moral self-determination and urged Americans to
CONFLICT, 1750–1765 fashion a better social order. Religious Pietists outnumbered them and had more influ-
The French and Indian War ence. Convinced of the weakness of human nature, evangelical ministers told their fol-
The Great War for Empire lowers to seek regeneration through divine grace. Amidst this intellectual and religious
British Industrial Growth and the ferment, migrants and the landless children of long-settled families moved inland and
Consumer Revolution sparked wars with the native peoples and with France and Spain. A generation of
The Struggle for Land in the East dynamic growth produced a decade of deadly warfare that would set the stage for a
Western Rebels and Regulators new era in American history.
114
John Collet, George Whitefield Preaching No painting could capture English minister George
Whitefield’s charismatic appeal, although this image conveys his open demeanor and religious intensity.
When Whitefield spoke to a crowd near Philadelphia, an observer noted that his words were “sharper
than a two-edged sword. . . . Some of the people were pale as death; others were wringing their
hands . . . and most lifting their eyes to heaven and crying to God for mercy.” An astute businessman as
well as a charismatic preacher, Whitefield tirelessly promoted the sale of his sermons and books. © Private
Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.
115
116 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
Congregationalist minister, thinking him unconverted A father’s duty was to provide inheritances for his
and a “blind guide,” she sought out equality-minded children so that one day they could “be for themselves.”
Quaker and evangelist Baptist churches that welcomed Men who failed to do so lost status in the community.
questioning women such as herself and treated “saved” Some fathers willed the family farm to a single son and
women equally with men. However, by the 1760s, provided other children with money, an apprentice-
many evangelical congregations had reinstituted men’s ship, or uncleared frontier tracts. Other yeomen moved
dominance over women. “The government of Church their families to the frontier, where life was hard but
and State must be . . . family government” controlled land was cheap and abundant. “The Squire’s House
by its “king,” declared the Danbury (Connecticut) stands on the Bank of the Susquehannah,” traveler
Baptist Association. Philip Fithian reported from the Pennsylvania back-
country in the early 1760s. “He tells me that he will be
able to settle all his sons and his fair Daughter Betsy on
Farm Property: Inheritance the Fat of the Earth.”
By contrast, European men who migrated to the colo-
nies escaped many traditional constraints, including
the curse of landlessness. “The hope of having land of Freehold Society in Crisis
their own & becoming independent of Landlords is Because of rapid natural increase, New England’s
what chiefly induces people into America,” an official population doubled each generation, from 100,000 in
noted in the 1730s. Owning property gave formerly 1700, to nearly 200,000 in 1725, to almost 400,000 in
dependent peasants a new social identity. 1750. Farms had been divided and then subdivided,
Unlike the adventurers seeking riches in other parts making them so small — 50 acres or less — that parents
of the Americas, most New England migrants wanted could provide only one child with an adequate inheri-
farms that would provide a living for themselves and tance. In the 1740s, the Reverend Samuel Chandler
ample land for their children. In this way, they hoped of Andover, Massachusetts, was “much distressed for
to secure a competency for their families: the ability to land for his children,” seven of them young boys. A
keep their households solvent and independent and decade later, in nearby Concord, about 60 percent of
to pass that ability on to the next generation. Parents the farmers owned less land than their fathers had.
who could not give their offspring land placed these Because parents had less to give their sons and
children as indentured servants in more prosperous daughters, they had less control over their children’s
households. When the indentures ended at age eigh- lives. The traditional system of arranged marriages
teen or twenty-one, propertyless sons faced a decades- broke down, as young people engaged in premarital
long climb up the agricultural ladder, from laborer to sex and then used the urgency of pregnancy to win
tenant and finally to freeholder. permission to marry. Throughout New England, pre-
Sons and daughters in well-to-do farm families were marital conceptions rose dramatically, from about 10
luckier: they received a marriage portion when they percent of firstborn children in the 1710s to more than
were in their early twenties. That portion — land, live- 30 percent in the 1740s. Given another chance, young
stock, or farm equipment — repaid them for their past people “would do the same again,” an Anglican minis-
labor and allowed parents to choose their marriage ter observed, “because otherwise they could not obtain
partners. Parents’ security during old age depended on their parents’ consent to marry.”
a wise choice of son- or daughter-in-law. Although the Even as New England families changed, they main-
young people could refuse an unacceptable match, tained the freeholder ideal. Some parents chose to
they did not have the luxury of falling in love with and have smaller families and used
marrying whomever they pleased. birth control to do so: abstention, IDENTIFY CAUSES
Marriage under eighteenth-century English com- coitus interruptus, or primitive What factors threatened
mon law was not a contract between equals. A bride condoms. Other families peti- the freeholder ideal in
relinquished to her husband the legal ownership of all tioned the provincial government midcentury New England,
her property. After his death, she received a dower for frontier land grants and hacked and what strategies did
right, the right to use (though not sell) one-third of new farms out of the forests of farming families use to
the family’s property. On the widow’s death or remar- central Massachusetts, western preserve this ideal?
riage, her portion was divided among the children. Connecticut, and eventually New
Thus the widow’s property rights were subordinate to Hampshire and Vermont. Still others improved their
those of the family line, which stretched across the farms’ productivity by replacing the traditional English
generations. crops of wheat and barley with high-yielding potatoes
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
As these documents show, women bore the responsibility for a wide variety of
Women’s Labor work, from keeping up households to supporting themselves independently.
1. Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Hus- father gives me the land or not; and therefore I design
bandrie, 1557. Advice manuals like Tusser’s circulated many years hence when oaks are more valueable than
for generations and offered guidance on household they are now — which you know they will be when we
management. In this couplet, Tusser stresses the vir- come to build fleets.”
tues of a wife’s economy and hard work. [c. June 1742]
Wife, make thine own candle, “I am engaged with the rudiments of the law to which
Spare penny to handle. I am yet but a stranger. . . . If You will not laugh too
Provide for thy tallow ere frost cometh in, immoderately at me I’ll Trust you with a secrett. I have
And make thine own candle ere winter begin. made two wills already.”
2. Eliza Lucas, letters, 1740–1742. George Lucas 3. Mary Vial Holyoke, diary excerpts, 1761. Mary Vial
owned three South Carolina plantations, but, as Holyoke, wife of a prominent physician in Salem,
lieutenant governor of Antigua, he was frequently Massachusetts, kept a diary that offers a glimpse
absent. When his daughter was sixteen, he gave of the range of household tasks women faced.
her responsibility for managing them. She intro- [1761]
duced indigo cultivation in South Carolina, and it Jan. 16: Began upon the firkin of butter of 40 lb. . . .
soon became the colony’s second-leading cash 22: Bo’t hog, weighed 182 pounds, at 2/5. Salted hog with
crop. These letters were written when she was half Lisbon & half saltertudas [Tortugas] salt. . . .
between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Mar. 4: Ironing. . . .
May 2, 1740 7: Scower’d pewter. . . .
“I have the business of 3 plantations to transact, which 17: Made the Dr. six Cravats marked H. . . .
requires much writing and more business and fatigue of Apr. 17: Made soap. . . .
other sorts than you can imagine. But least you should 23: Dressed a Calves Head turtle fashion. . . .
imagine it too burthensom to a girl at my early time of life, May 20: Began to whitewash. . . .
give me leave to answer you: I assure you I think myself 28: Ironed. . . .
happy that I can be useful to so good a father, and by rising 30: Scower’d pewter. . . .
very early I find I can go through much business.” July 7: Scowered rooms. . . .
July 1740
4. Colonial house interiors in Germantown, Pennsyl-
“Wrote my Father a very long letter on his plantation
vania, and Augusta, Maine. These images show
affairs and on . . . the pains I had taken to bring the
the dining room of Benjamin Chew, a wealthy
Indigo, Ginger, Cotton and Lucerne and Casada to per-
Philadelphia lawyer (below), and the kitchen of
fection, and had greater hopes from the Indigo . . . than
the Howards, an extended family of soldiers and
any of the rest of the things I tried.”
merchants on the Maine frontier (opposite).
February 6, 1741
“. . . I have a Sister to instruct and a parcel of little
Negroes whom I have undertaken to teach to read.”
April 23, 1741
“Wrote to my Father informing him of the loss of a
Negro man — also the boat being overset in Santilina
[Saint Helena] Sound and 20 barrels of Rice lost.”
[1742]
“Wont you laugh at me if I tell you I am so busey in
providing for Posterity I hardly allow my self time to Eat
or sleep. . . . I am making a large plantation of Oaks
which I look upon as my own property, whether my
Source: Photo by Ron Blunt, Courtesy of Cliveden, a
118 National Trust Historic Site, Philadelphia, PA.
MOLL PLACKET-HOLE was born in a Bawdy House in
a Lane in the City of Brotherly Love. . . . [A]t the Age of
twelve (Shocking to consider!) . . . [her] Mother sold her
Virginity — sold it for the Trifling Consideration of Ten
Pounds. Her Purchaser was soon cloyed and abandoned
her. Virtue lost and good Reputation (if ever she had it)
gone, she commenced open Prostitute and dealt out her
Favours to the highest Bidder. . . . [S]he understood the
Trade and set up a Bawdy-House. . . . It was necessary,
however, that a Man should live with her, that they might
appear to the Publick, as honest Housekeepers. . . . The
Trade became at last so publick, that it gave Offence to her
sober Neighbours. . . . [T]he Town tired out with her Inso-
lence, and her Escape from Justice in a regular Manner,
set a Mob (many of whom had been her Beneficiaries)
Source: Old Fort Western, Augusta, Maine.
upon her. They pulled down her House, and destroyed
her Furniture &c. She stormed and raged and swore if her
5. Business advertisement in the Pennsylvania
Customers would not build her a better House, she would
Gazette, 1758. Not all women’s work was done
expose them. . . . They opened a Subscription, and a hun-
in the home. Hannah Breintnall, a Philadelphia
dred Pounds were subscribed in one Day.
widow, ran a tavern before opening a shop Sources: (1) Alice Morse Earle, Home Life in the Colonial Days (New York: The
specializing in eyeglasses. Macmillan Company, 1898), 35; (2) From The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney,
1739–1762, edited by Elise Pinckney, University of North Carolina Press, 1972. Based
on original documents from the South Carolina Historical Society. Courtesy of the
South Carolina Historical Society; (3) George Francis Dow, ed., The Holyoke Diaries,
1709–1856 (Salem, MA: The Essex Institute, 1911), 49–51; (6) Hilliad Magna: Being the
Life and Adventures of Moll Placket-Hole ([Philadelphia]: Printed [by Anthony
Armbruster], 1765).
and maize (Indian corn). Corn was an especially wise Tenancy in New York In New York’s fertile Hudson
choice: good for human consumption, as well as for River Valley, wealthy Dutch and English families pre-
feeding cattle and pigs, which provided milk and meat. sided over the huge manors created by the Dutch West
Gradually, New England changed from a grain to a live- India Company and English governors (Map 4.1). Like
stock economy, becoming a major exporter of salted Chesapeake planters, the New York landlords aspired
meat to the plantations of the West Indies. to live in the manner of the European gentry but found
As the population swelled, New England farmers that few migrants wanted to labor as peasants. To
developed the full potential of what one historian has
called the “household mode of production,” in which
families swapped labor and goods. Women and chil- 0 10 20 miles
R.
New Hampshire)
and grazing land. Farmers plowed fields owned by arti- ⓦ
Schenectady
sans and shopkeepers, who repaid them with shoes,
ⓦ Troy
furniture, or store credit. Partly because currency was
Albany ⓦ
S
IN
in short supply, no cash changed hands. Instead, farm- N
TA
Rensselaerswyck
ers, artisans, and shopkeepers recorded debits and Manor
UN
W E
MO
credits and “balanced” the books every few years. This S
system helped New Englanders to maximize agricul-
IRE
tural output and preserve the freehold ideal. MASSACHUSETTS
KSH
ⓦ Hudson
BER
NEW YORK
Livingston
Manor
Little Nine
Partners
Middle Colonies
Hudson R.
Great Nine
Partners
t R.
The Middle colonies — New York, New Jersey, and
c t icu
Poughkeepsie ⓦ
Beekman
Ho
Pennsylvania — became home to peoples of differing
e
Patent CONNECTICUT
Conn
us a
origins, languages, and religions. Scots-Irish Presby- ton
Newburgh ⓦ ic R
terians, English and Welsh Quakers, German Lutherans
.
Philipse
Oblong
and Moravians, Dutch Reformed Protestants, and Patent
Patent
others all sought to preserve their cultural and reli- Cortlandt
Manor
gious identities as they pursued economic opportunity.
At the same time, rapid population growth throughout
the region strained public institutions, pressured Indian Philipsburg
Manor White Plains Long Island Sound
ⓦ
lands, and created a dynamic but unstable society. NEW JERSEY
The following graph compares the number of European and African migrants
who arrived in the American colonies of Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the
Transatlantic Migration, Netherlands. It also charts change over time: while immigrants in the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries went predominantly to the colonies of Spain
1500–1760 and Portugal, Britain’s colonies became the principal destination for both Euro-
peans and Africans between 1640 and 1760.
2,000,000
FIGURE 4.1
1,910,000 Transatlantic Migration
Source of data: Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, “Factor
Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New
World Economies: A View from Economic Historians of the United States,”
1,500,000
in How Latin America Fell Behind: Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico,
1,313,000 1800–1914, ed. Stephen Haber (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press,
1997), 264.
1,000,000
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
763,000
661,000 1. What relationship do you see between the number of
547,000 European emigrants and the importation of African
500,000 slaves? Which nation’s colonies had the highest percent-
397,000
age of Africans relative to Europeans? Which had the
190,000
lowest? Which time periods had the highest and lowest
130,000 percentages of Africans?
0
3,000 10,000 2. Compare France and the Netherlands to Spain, Portu-
Spain Portugal Britain France Netherlands gal, and Britain. Why do you suppose that the ratio of
Africans to Europeans is so much higher in French and
Dutch colonies than in the other nations? Which type of
1500–1640 Africans colony — tribute, plantation, or neo-European — was likely
1641–1760 Europeans
to have been most important to the French and Dutch?
attract tenants, the manorial lords granted long leases, but the proprietors of each colony, like the manor
with the right to sell improvements such as houses and lords of New York, had enormous land claims. The
barns to the next tenant. They nevertheless struggled to first migrants lived simply in small, one- or two-room
populate their estates. houses with a sleeping loft, a few benches or stools, and
Most tenant families hoped that with hard work some wooden platters and cups. Economic growth
and ample sales they could eventually buy their own brought greater prosperity, along with conflicts between
farmsteads. But preindustrial technology limited out- ordinary settlers and the proprietors who tried to con-
put. A worker with a hand sickle could reap only half trol their access to land, resources, and political power.
an acre of wheat, rye, or oats a day. The cradle scythe, a William Penn’s early appeals to British Quakers and
tool introduced during the 1750s, doubled or tripled continental Protestants led to a boom in immigrants.
the amount of grain one worker could cut. Even so, a When these first arrivals reported that Pennsylvania
family with two adult workers could reap only about and New Jersey were “the best poor man’s country in
12 acres of grain, or roughly 150 to 180 bushels of the world,” thousands more followed. Soon the propri-
wheat. After saving enough grain for food and seed, the etors of both colonies were overwhelmed by the demand
surplus might be worth £15 — enough to buy salt and for land. By the 1720s, many new migrants were forced
sugar, tools, and cloth, but little else. The road to land- to become squatters, settling illegally on land they
ownership was not an easy one. hoped eventually to be able to acquire on legal terms.
Frustration over the lack of land led the Penn family
Conflict in the Quaker Colonies In Quaker- to perpetrate one of the most infamous land frauds of
dominated Pennsylvania and New Jersey, wealth was the eighteenth century, the so-called Walking Purchase
initially distributed more evenly than in New York, of 1737, in which they exploited an old (and probably 121
122 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
fraudulent) Indian deed to claim more than a million manufactured goods or ran mills. These large-scale
acres of prime farmland north of Philadelphia. This farmers, rural landlords, speculators, storekeepers, and
purchase, while opening new lands to settlement, poi- gristmill operators formed a distinct class of agricul-
soned Indian relations in the colony. Delaware and tural capitalists. They built large stone houses for their
Shawnee migration to western Pennsylvania and the families, furnishing them with four-poster beds and
Ohio Valley, which was already under way, accelerated expensive mahogany tables, on which they laid elegant
rapidly in response. linen and imported Dutch dinnerware.
Immigrants flooded into Philadelphia, which grew By contrast, one-half of the Middle colonies’ white
from 2,000 people in 1700 to 25,000 by 1760. Many men owned no land and little personal property. Some
families came in search of land; were the sons of smallholding farmers and would even-
EXPLAIN for them, Philadelphia was only tually inherit some land. But many were Scots-Irish or
CONSEQUENCES a temporary way station. Other German “inmates” — single men or families, explained
How did rapid immigration migrants came as laborers, includ- a tax assessor, “such as live in small cottages and have
and economic growth trig- ing a large number of indentured no taxable property, except a cow.” In the predomi-
ger conflict in the Middle servants. Some were young, nantly German township of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a
colonies? unskilled men, but the colony’s merchant noted an “abundance of Poor people” who
explosive growth also created a “maintain their Families with great difficulty by day
strong demand for all kinds of skilled laborers, espe- Labour.” Although these workers hoped eventually to
cially in the construction trades. become landowners, rising land prices prevented many
Pennsylvania and New Jersey grew prosperous but from realizing their dreams.
contentious. New Jersey was plagued by contested land
titles, and ordinary settlers rioted against the propri-
etors in the 1740s and the 1760s. By the 1760s, eastern Cultural Diversity
Pennsylvania landowners with large farms were using The Middle Atlantic colonies were not a melting pot.
slaves and poor Scots-Irish migrants to grow wheat. Most European migrants held tightly to their traditions,
Other ambitious men were buying up land and divid- creating a patchwork of ethnically and religiously diverse
ing it into small tenancies, which they lent out on prof- communities (Figure 4.2). In 1748, a Swedish traveler
itable leases. Still others sold farming equipment and counted no fewer than twelve religious denominations
FIGURE 4.2
Estimated European Migration to the
British Mainland Colonies, 1700–1780
After 1720, European migration to British
North America increased dramatically,
peaking between 1740 and 1780, when
more than 264,000 settlers arrived in the
mainland colonies. Emigration from
Germany peaked in the 1740s, but the
number of migrants from Ireland, Scotland,
England, and Wales continued to increase
during the 1760s and early 1770s. Most
1700– 1720– 1740– 1760– Total
migrants, including those from Ireland,
1719 1739 1759 1779 (1700–1780) were Protestants.
Germany 4,000 17,900 52,700 23,700 98,300
N. Ireland 2,000 6,900 25,400 36,200 70,500
S. Ireland 2,500 10,400 18,200 13,400 44,500
England 1,700 7,100 16,300 19,000 44,100
Scotland 700 2,800 6,800 25,000 35,300
Wales 1,200 4,700 10,700 12,400 29,000
Other 300 1,000 2,300 2,300 5,900
in Philadelphia, including Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers, traditions of local village governance, popular partici-
Swedish and German Lutherans, Mennonites, Scots- pation in politics, and social equality. But after 1720,
Irish Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics. the growth of German and Scots-Irish populations
Migrants preserved their cultural identity by mar- challenged their dominance.
rying within their ethnic groups. A major exception
was the Huguenots, Calvinists who had been expelled The German Influx The Quaker vision of a “peace-
from Catholic France in the 1680s and resettled in able kingdom” attracted 100,000 German migrants
Holland, England, and the British colonies. Huguenots who had fled their homelands because of military con-
in American port cities such as Boston, New York, and scription, religious persecution, and high taxes. First
Charleston quickly lost their French identities by inter- to arrive, in 1683, were the Mennonites, religious
marrying with other Protestants. More typical were the dissenters drawn by the promise of freedom of wor-
Welsh Quakers in Chester County, Pennsylvania: 70 ship. In the 1720s, a larger wave of German migrants
percent of the children of the original Welsh migrants arrived from the overcrowded villages of southwestern
married other Welsh Quakers, as did 60 percent of the Germany and Switzerland. “Wages were far better” in
third generation. Pennsylvania, Heinrich Schneebeli reported to his
In Pennsylvania and western New Jersey, Quakers friends in Zurich, and “one also enjoyed there a free
shaped the culture because of their numbers, wealth, unhindered exercise of religion.” A third wave of
and social cohesion. Most Quakers came from English Germans and Swiss — nearly 40,000 strong — landed
counties with few landlords and brought with them in Philadelphia between 1749 and 1756. To help pay
the costs of the expensive trip from the Rhine Valley, seventeenth century to solidify English rule there.
German immigrants pioneered the redemptioner sys- Once in Ireland, the Scots faced hostility from both
tem, a flexible form of indentured servitude that Irish Catholics and English officials and landlords. The
allowed families to negotiate their own terms upon Irish Test Act of 1704 restricted voting and office hold-
arrival. Families often indentured one or more children ing to members of the Church of England, English
while their parents set up a household of their own. mercantilist regulations placed heavy import duties on
Germans soon dominated many districts in eastern linens made by Scots-Irish weavers, and farmers paid
Pennsylvania, and thousands more moved down the heavy taxes. This persecution made America seem
fertile Shenandoah Valley into the western backcoun- desirable. “Read this letter, Rev. Baptist Boyd,” a
try of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas (Map 4.2). migrant to New York wrote back to his minister, “and
Many migrants preserved their tell all the poor folk of ye place that God has opened a
IDENTIFY CAUSES cultural identity by settling in door for their deliverance . . . all that a man works for
What attracted German German-speaking Lutheran and is his own; there are no revenue hounds to take it from
and Scots-Irish migrants to Reformed communities that us here.”
Pennsylvania in such large endured well beyond 1800. A Lured by such reports, thousands of Scots-Irish
numbers? minister in North Carolina families sailed for the colonies. By 1720, most migrated
admonished young people “not to to Philadelphia, attracted by the religious tolerance
contract any marriages with the English or Irish,” argu- there. Seeking cheap land, they moved to central
ing that “we owe it to our native country to do our part Pennsylvania and to the fertile Shenandoah Valley to
that German blood and the German language be pre- the south. Governor William Gooch of Virginia wel-
served in America.” comed the Scots-Irish presence to secure “the Country
These settlers were willing colonial subjects of against the Indians.” An Anglican planter, however,
Britain’s German-born and German-speaking Protes- thought them as dangerous as “the Goths and Vandals
tant monarchs, George I (r. 1714–1727) and George II of old” had been to the Roman Empire. Like the
(r. 1727–1760). They generally avoided politics except Germans, the Scots-Irish retained their culture, living
to protect their cultural practices; for example, they in ethnic communities and holding firm to the
insisted that married women have the legal right to Presbyterian Church.
hold property and write wills, as they did in Germany.
MAP 4.2
QUEBEC
Ethnic and Racial Diversity in the ALGONQUIN ME.
VT. (MASS.)
British Colonies, 1775 (part of
Scots and Scots Irish made up
N.Y.) N.H.
In 1700, most colonists in British 15 percent of the population.
N.Y.
North America were of English origin;
L. H
ABENAKI
by 1775, settlers of English descent
L. Michigan
o
L. Ontari
uron
constituted only about 50 percent IROQUOIS MASS.
of the total population. African R.I.
CONN.
Americans now accounted for one- OTTAWA
r ie
third of the residents of the South, L. E PENN.
S
N
while tens of thousands of German
IN
and Scots-Irish migrants added ethnic DELAWARE
TA
E
MIAMI W
and religious diversity in the Middle
N
N.J.
U
S
colonies, the southern backcountry, Those of German ancestry
O
MD.
made up about 7 percent of
M
and northern New England (see the population. DEL. ATLANTIC OCEAN
Figure 4.2).
N
IA
VA.
CH
People of African origin
LA
accounted for 20 percent of the
PA
SHAWNEE
total population and were
AP
particularly numerous in the South.
CHEROKEE N.C.
CATAWBA
S.C.
CHICKASAW
GA.
officials carried such sentiments to Pennsylvania. “The children of well-to-do Friends usually married within
preachers do not have the power to punish anyone, or the sect, while poor Quakers remained unmarried,
to force anyone to go to church,” complained Gottlieb wed later in life, or married without permission — in
Mittelberger, an influential German minister. As a which case they were often ousted from the meeting.
result, “Sunday is very badly kept. Many people plough, These marriage rules helped the Quakers build a self-
reap, thresh, hew or split wood and the like.” He con- contained and prosperous community.
cluded: “Liberty in Pennsylvania does more harm than In the 1740s, the flood of new migrants reduced
good to many people, both in soul and body.” Quakers to a minority — a mere 30 percent of Penn-
Mittelberger was mistaken. Although ministers in sylvanians. Moreover, Scots-Irish settlers in central
Pennsylvania could not invoke government authority Pennsylvania demanded an aggressive Indian policy,
to uphold religious values, the result was not social challenging the pacifism of the
anarchy. Instead, religious sects enforced moral behav- assembly. To retain power, UNDERSTAND
ior through communal self-discipline. Quaker families Quaker politicians sought an alli- POINTS OF VIEW
attended a weekly meeting for worship and a monthly ance with those German religious What issues divided the
meeting for business; every three months, a committee groups that also embraced paci- various ethnic and reli-
reminded parents to provide proper religious instruc- fism and voluntary (not compul- gious groups of the Middle
tion. The committee also supervised adult behavior; a sory) militia service. In response, colonies? What core values
Chester County meeting, for example, disciplined a German leaders demanded more did they agree upon?
member “to reclaim him from drinking to excess and seats in the assembly and laws
keeping vain company.” Significantly, Quaker meetings that respected their inheritance customs. Other
allowed couples to marry only if they had land and Germans — Lutherans and Baptists — tried to gain con-
livestock sufficient to support a family. As a result, the trol of the assembly by forming a “general confederacy”
126 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
L. Ontario
Transportation and the
NEW YORK
MASS.
Print Revolution
ie CONN.
L.
Er In the eighteenth century, improved transportation
R.I.
networks opened Britain’s colonies in new ways, and
British shipping came to dominate the north Atlantic.
PENNSYLVANIA
N
In 1700, Britain had 40,000 sailors; by 1750, the num-
N.J.
W
E ber had grown to 60,000, while many more hailed from
S the colonies. An enormous number of vessels plied
MD.
DEL. Atlantic waters: in the late 1730s, more than 550 ships
ATLANTIC OCEAN
arrived in Boston annually. About a tenth came directly
from Britain or Ireland; the rest came mostly from
VIRGINIA
other British colonies, either on the mainland or in the
West Indies.
Anglican A road network slowly took shape as well, though
Congregational roadbuilding was expensive and difficult. In 1704,
NORTH Lutheran
CAROLINA Presbyterian
Sarah Kemble Knight traveled from Boston to New
Baptist York on horseback. The road was “smooth and even” in
Roman Catholic some places, treacherous in others; it took eight days of
SOUTH Jewish
CAROLINA hard riding to cover 200 miles. Forty years later, a phy-
Reformed Churches
Dutch
sician from Annapolis, Maryland, traveled along much
German better roads to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and
0 100 200 miles French back — more than 1,600 miles in all. He spent four
GA. Quaker
0 100 200 kilometers months on the road, stopping frequently to meet the
locals and satisfy his curiosity. By the mid-eighteenth
MAP 4.3
century, the “Great Wagon Road” carried migrating
Religious Diversity in 1750
families down the Shenandoah Valley as far as the
By 1750, religious diversity was on the rise, not only
in the multiethnic Middle colonies but also in all of Carolina backcountry.
British North America. Baptists had increased their All of these water and land routes carried people,
numbers in New England, long the stronghold of produce, and finished merchandise. They also carried
Congregationalists, and would soon become important
information, as letters, newspapers, pamphlets, and
in Virginia. Already there were considerable numbers of
Presbyterians, Lutherans, and German Reformed in the crates of books began to circulate widely. The trip across
South, where Anglicanism was the established religion. the Atlantic took seven to eight weeks on average, so
CHAPTER 4 Growth, Diversity, and Conflict, 1720–1763 127
the news arriving in colonial ports was not fresh by our undermined the traditional Christian understanding
standard, but compared to earlier years, the colonies of the cosmos.
were awash in information. In the century between the Principia Mathematica
Until 1695, the British government had the power and the French Revolution of 1789, the philosophers of
to censor all printed materials. In that year, Parliament the European Enlightenment used empirical research
let the Licensing Act lapse, and the floodgates opened. and scientific reasoning to study all aspects of life,
Dozens of new printshops opened in London and including social institutions and human behavior.
Britain’s provincial cities. They printed newspapers and Enlightenment thinkers advanced four fundamental
pamphlets; poetry, ballads, and sermons; and hand- principles: the lawlike order of the natural world, the
bills, tradesman’s cards, and advertisements. Larger power of human reason, the “natural rights” of individ-
booksellers also printed scientific treatises, histories, uals (including the right to self-government), and the
travelers’ accounts, and novels. The result was a print progressive improvement of society.
revolution. In Britain and throughout Europe, print English philosopher John Locke was a major
was essential to the transmission of new ideas, and contributor to the Enlightenment. In his Essay Con-
both the Enlightenment and Pietism took shape in part cerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke stressed
through its growing influence. the impact of environment and experience on human
All this material crossed the Atlantic and filled the behavior and beliefs, arguing
shops of colonial booksellers. The colonies also began that the character of individuals PLACE EVENTS
printing their own newspapers. In 1704, the Boston and societies was not fixed but IN CONTEXT
Newsletter was founded; by 1720, Boston had five print- could be changed through edu- What conditions and ideas
ing presses and three newspapers; and by 1776, the cation, rational thought, and lay behind the emergence
thirteen colonies that united in declaring indepen- purposeful action. Locke’s Two of the Enlightenment in
dence had thirty-seven newspapers among them. This Treatises of Government (1690) America?
world of print was essential to their ability to share advanced the revolutionary the-
grievances and join in common cause. ory that political authority was not given by God to
monarchs, as James II had insisted (see Chapter 3).
Instead, it derived from social compacts that people
The Enlightenment in America made to preserve their natural rights to life, liberty,
To explain the workings of the natural world, some col- and property. In Locke’s view, the people should have
onists relied on folk wisdom. Swedish migrants in the power to change government policies — or even
Pennsylvania attributed magical powers to the great their form of government.
white mullein, a common wildflower, and treated Some clergymen responded to these developments
fevers by tying the plant’s leaves around their feet and by devising a rational form of Christianity. Rejecting
arms. Traditionally, Christians believed that the earth supernatural interventions and a vengeful Calvinist
stood at the center of the universe, and God (and Satan) God, Congregationalist minister Andrew Eliot main-
intervened directly and continuously in human affairs. tained that “there is nothing in Christianity that is
The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seven- contrary to reason.” The Reverend John Wise of
teenth centuries challenged these ideas, and educated Ipswich, Massachusetts, used Locke’s philosophy to
people — most of them Christians — began to modify defend giving power to ordinary church members. Just
their views accordingly. as the social compact formed the basis of political soci-
ety, Wise argued, so the religious covenant among the
The European Enlightenment In 1543, the Polish lay members of a congregation made them — not the
astronomer Copernicus published his observation bishops of the Church of England or even ministers
that the earth traveled around the sun, not vice like himself — the proper interpreters of religious
versa. Copernicus’s discovery suggested that humans truth. The Enlightenment influenced Puritan minister
occupied a more modest place in the universe than Cotton Mather as well. When a measles epidemic
Christian theology assumed. In the next century, Isaac ravaged Boston in the 1710s, Mather thought that
Newton, in his Principia Mathematica (1687), used only God could end it; but when smallpox struck a
the sciences of mathematics and physics to explain decade later, he used his newly acquired knowledge of
the movement of the planets around the sun (and inoculation — gained in part from a slave, who told
invented calculus in the process). Though Newton was him of the practice’s success in Africa — to advocate
himself profoundly religious, in the long run his work this scientific preventive for the disease.
128 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
Franklin’s Contributions Benjamin Franklin was myself,” added Thomas Jefferson. Influenced by Enlight-
the exemplar of the American Enlightenment. Born in enment science, deists such as Jefferson believed that a
Boston in 1706 to devout Calvinists, he grew to man- Supreme Being (or Grand Architect) created the world
hood during the print revolution. Apprenticed to his and then allowed it to operate by natural laws but did
brother, a Boston printer, Franklin educated himself not intervene in people’s lives. Rejecting the divinity of
through voracious reading. At seventeen, he fled to Christ and the authority of the Bible, deists relied on
Philadelphia, where he became a prominent printer, “natural reason,” their innate moral sense, to define
and in 1729 he founded the Pennsylvania Gazette, right and wrong. Thus Franklin, a onetime slave owner,
which became one of the colonies’ most influential came to question the morality of slavery, repudiating it
newspapers. Franklin also formed a “club of mutual once he recognized the parallels between racial bond-
improvement” that met weekly to discuss “Morals, age and the colonies’ political bondage to Britain.
Politics, or Natural Philosophy.” These discussions, as Franklin popularized the practical outlook of the
well as Enlightenment literature, shaped his thinking. Enlightenment in Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732–
As Franklin explained in his Autobiography (1771), 1757), an annual publication that was read by thou-
“From the different books I read, I began to doubt of sands. He also founded the American Philosophical
Revelation [God-revealed truth].” Society (1743–present) to promote “useful knowledge.”
Like a small number of urban artisans, wealthy Adopting this goal in his own life, Franklin invented
Virginia planters, and affluent seaport merchants, bifocal lenses for eyeglasses, the Franklin stove, and the
Franklin became a deist. Deism was a way of thinking, lightning rod. His book on electricity, published in
not an established religion. “My own mind is my own England in 1751, won praise as the greatest contribu-
church,” said deist Thomas Paine. “I am of a sect by tion to science since Newton’s discoveries. Inspired by
CHAPTER 4 Growth, Diversity, and Conflict, 1720–1763 129
Sarah Lippet Poor Me — Miserable me. . . . I was loaded with the guilt
Death as a Passage to Life of Sin. . . .
Hell fire was most always in my mind; and I have
Sarah Lippet was a longtime member of the Baptist church hundreds of times put my fingers into my pipe when I
of Middletown in eastern New Jersey. She died in October have been smoaking to feel how fire felt: And to see how
1767 at the age of sixty-one; fellow parishioners reported my Body could bear to lye in Hell fire for ever and
her sentiments as she lay, for four days, on her deathbed. ever. . . . And while these thoughts were in my mind
All my lifetime I have been in fears and doubts, but now God appeared unto me and made me Skringe: before
am delivered. He hath delivered them who through fear whose face the heavens and the earth fled away; and I
of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For was Shrinked into nothing; I knew not whether I was in
the love I have for Christ I am willing to part with all the body or out, I seemed to hang in open Air before
my friends to be with Him, for I love Him above all; yet God, and he seemed to Speak to me in an angry and
it is nothing in me, for I know if I had my desert I should Sovereign way[:] What? Won’t you trust your Soul with
be in Hell. I believe in Christ, and I know that I put my God?; My heart answered O yes, yes, yes. . . .
whole trust in Him, and he that believeth in Him shall When God disappeared or in some measure with-
not be ashamed nor be confounded. . . . drew, every thing was in its place again and I was on my
Why do you mourn when I rejoice? You should not; it Bed. . . . I was set free, my distress was gone, and I was
is no more for me to die and leave my friends for the great filled with a pineing desire to see Christs own words in
love I have for Christ than for me to go to sleep. I have no the bible; . . . I got the bible up under my Chin and
fears of death in my mind. Christ has the keys of death hugged it; it was sweet and lovely; the word was nigh
and hell, and blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. [near] me in my hand, then I began to pray and to
I can’t bear to see a tear shed. You should not mourn. praise God.
Source: “The Triumphant Christian,” in Historical and Genealogical Miscellany, ed. Source: “The Spiritual Travels of Nathan Cole, 1741” in The Great Awakening:
John E. Stillwell (New York, 1964), 3: 465–466. Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740–1745, ed. Richard L. Bushman (New York:
Atheneum, 1970), 68–70.
Nathan Cole
The Struggle for Salvation Benjamin Franklin
The Importance of a Virtuous Life
Connecticut farmer Nathan Cole found God after listening
to a sermon by George Whitefield, the great English evan- Franklin stood at the center of the American Enlighten-
gelist. But Cole’s spiritual quest was not easy. He struggled ment. In his Autobiography, he outlined his religious views
for two years before coming to believe that he was saved. and his human-centered moral principles.
[After hearing Whitefield] I began to think I was not My Parents had early given me religious Impressions,
Elected, and that God made some for heaven and me for and brought me through my Childhood piously in the
hell. And I thought God was not Just in so doing. . . . My Dissenting Way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting
heart then rose against God exceedingly, for his making by turns of several Points as I found them disputed in
me for hell; Now this distress lasted Almost two years — the different Books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation
130
itself. Some Books against Deism fell into my Hands. . . . and Government. . . . I shall consider Man in a state of
It happened that they wrought an Effect on me quite con- Natural Being, as a Free-Born Subject under the Crown
trary to what was intended by them: For the Arguments of Heaven, and owing Homage to none but God himself.
of the Deists [that were quoted in those books] appeared It is certain Civil Government in General, is a very
to me much Stronger than the Refutations. In short I soon Admirable Result of Providence, and an Incomparable
became a thorough Deist. . . . Benefit to Mankind, yet must needs be acknowledged
I grew convinc’d that Truth, Sincerity & Integrity to be the Effect of Humane Free-Compacts and not
in Dealings between Man & Man, were of the utmost of Divine Institution; it is the Produce of Mans Reason,
Importance to the Felicity of Life, and I form’d written of Humane and Rational Combinations, and not from
Resolutions, (which still remain in my Journal Book) to any direct Orders of Infinite Wisdom. . . .
practice them ever while I lived. . . . The Prime Immunity in Mans State, is that he is
About the Year 1734. There arrived among us from most properly the Subject of the Law of Nature. He is
Ireland, a young Presbyterian Preacher named Hemphill, the Favourite Animal on Earth; in that this Part of Gods
who delivered with a good Voice, & apparently extem- Image, viz. Reason is Congenate with his Nature, wherein
pore, most excellent Discourses, which drew together by a Law Immutable, Instampt upon his Frame, God has
considerable Numbers of different Persuasions, who provided a Rule for Men in all their Actions; obliging
join’d in admiring them. Among the rest I became one each one to the performance of that which is Right,
of his constant Hearers, his Sermons pleasing me as they not only as to Justice, but likewise as to all other Moral
had little of the dogmatical kind, but inculcated strongly Vertues, which is nothing but the Dictate of Right Reason
the Practice of Virtue, or what in the religious Stile are founded in the Soul of Man. . . .
called Good Works. Those however, of our Congregation, The Second Great Immunity of Man is an Original
who considered themselves as orthodox Presbyterians, Liberty Instampt upon his Rational Nature. He that
disapprov’d his Doctrine, and were join’d by most of the intrudes upon this Liberty, Violates the Law of Nature. . . .
old Clergy, who arraign’d him of Heterodoxy before the The Third Capital Immunity belonging to Mans
Synod, in order to have him silenc’d. I became his zealous Nature, is an equality amongst Men; Which is not to be
Partisan. . . . denyed by the Law of Nature, till Man has Resigned him-
I never was without some religious Principles; I never self with all his Rights for the sake of a Civil State; and
doubted, for instance, the Existance of the Deity, that he then his Personal Liberty and Equality is to be cherished,
made the World, & govern’d it by his Providence; that the and preserved to the highest degree.
most acceptable Service of God was the doing Good to
Man; that our Souls are immortal; and that all Crime will Source: John Wise, A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches (Boston:
J. Allen, for N. Boone, 1717), 32–40.
be punished & Virtue rewarded either here or hereafter;
these I esteem’d the Essentials of every Religion.
Source: Louis P. Masur, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, with Related
Documents, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), 73–74, 93–94, 108.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
John Wise 1. All of these writers declare a belief in God. How do their
beliefs and outlooks differ?
The Primacy of Human Reason 2. These writers were variously influenced by the Great
and Natural Laws Awakening, the Enlightenment, and rational Christian-
ity. How are these movements reflected in the passages
Reverend John Wise (1652–1725) served for many years as above?
a pastor in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard 3. What roles do fear and anxiety play in the experiences
College, Wise used the Enlightenment doctrines of John of Sarah Lippet and Nathan Cole? What difference does
Locke and Samuel von Pufendorf to justify the democratic it make that neither Franklin nor Wise expresses fear,
either of God or of his own sinfulness?
structure of New England Congregational churches.
4. Benjamin Franklin and John Wise stress the importance
I Shall disclose several Principles of Natural Knowledge; of reason and virtue as guides to human conduct. How
would Nathan Cole and Sarah Lippet react to that
plainly discovering the Law of Nature; or the true senti- emphasis?
ments of Natural Reason, with Respect to Mans Being
131
132 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
if I had a new soul & body both.” Strengthened and for allowing women to speak in public: it was “a plain
self-confident, these converts, the so-called New breach of that commandment of the lord, where it is
Lights, were eager to spread Whitefield’s message. said, Let your women keep silence in the churches.” In
The rise of print intersected with this enthusiasm. Connecticut, Old Lights persuaded the legislature to
“Religion is become the Subject of most Conversations,” prohibit evangelists from speaking to a congregation
the Pennsylvania Gazette reported. “No books are in without the minister’s permission. But the New Lights
Request but those of Piety and Devotion.” Whitefield refused to be silenced. Dozens of farmers, women, and
and his circle did their best to answer the demand for artisans roamed the countryside, condemning the Old
devotional reading. As he traveled, Whitefield regu- Lights as “unconverted” and willingly accepting impris-
larly sent excerpts of his journal to be printed in news- onment: “I shall bring glory to God in my bonds,” a dis-
papers. Franklin printed Whitefield’s sermons and sident preacher wrote from jail.
journals by subscription and found them to be among The Great Awakening undermined legally estab-
his best-selling titles. Printed accounts of Whitefield’s lished churches and their tax-supported ministers. In
travels, conversion narratives, sermons, and other New England, New Lights left the Congregational
devotional literature helped to confirm Pietists in their Church and founded 125 “separatist” churches that
faith and strengthen the communication networks that supported their ministers through voluntary contribu-
sustained them. tions (Figure 4.3). Other religious dissidents joined
Baptist congregations, which also condemned govern-
ment support of churches: “God never allowed any
Religious Upheaval in the North civil state upon earth to impose religious taxes,”
Like all cultural explosions, the Great Awakening declared Baptist preacher Isaac Backus. In New York
was controversial. Conservative ministers — passionless and New Jersey, the Dutch Reformed Church split in
Old Lights, according to the evan- two as New Lights refused to accept doctrines imposed
COMPARE AND gelists — condemned the “cryings by conservative church authorities in Holland.
CONTRAST out, faintings and convulsions” The Great Awakening also appealed to Christians
In what ways was the in revivalist meetings and the New whose established churches could not serve their
spread of ideas during the Lights’ claims of “working Miracles needs. By 1740, Pennsylvania’s German Reformed and
Enlightenment and the Lutheran congregations suffered from a severe lack of
or speaking with Tongues.” Bos-
Great Awakening similar,
ton minister Charles Chauncy university-trained pastors. In the colony’s Dutch
and how did it differ?
attacked the Pietist New Lights Reformed, Dutch and Swedish Lutheran, and even its
CHAPTER 4 Growth, Diversity, and Conflict, 1720–1763 133
FIGURE 4.3
Church Growth by Denomination, 1700–1780
In 1700, and again in 1740, the Congregationalist and Anglican churches had the most members. By
1780, however, largely because of their enthusiastic evangelical message, Presbyterian and Baptist
congregations outnumbered those of the Anglicans. The growth of immigrant denominations, such
as the German Reformed and Lutheran, was equally impressive.
Anglican congregations, half the pulpits were empty. In advance his opinion, in religious as well as political
this circumstance, itinerant preachers who stressed the matters, with as much freedom as the gentleman.”
power of “heart religion” and downplayed the impor-
tance of formal ministerial training found a ready
Social and Religious Conflict
audience.
The Great Awakening challenged the authority of in the South
all ministers, whose status rested on respect for their In the southern colonies, where the Church of England
education and knowledge of the Bible. In an influential was legally established, religious enthusiasm triggered
pamphlet, The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry social conflict. Anglican ministers generally ignored
(1740), Gilbert Tennent asserted that ministers’ author- the spiritual needs of African Americans and landless
ity should come not from theological knowledge but whites, who numbered 40 percent and 20 percent of
from the conversion experience. Reaffirming Martin the population, respectively. Middling white freehold-
Luther’s belief in the priesthood of all Christians, ers (35 percent of the residents) formed the core of
Tennent suggested that anyone who had felt God’s most Church of England congregations. But promi-
redeeming grace could speak with ministerial author- nent planters (just 5 percent) held the real power, using
ity. Sarah Harrah Osborn, a New Light “exhorter” in their control of parish finances to discipline ministers.
Rhode Island, refused “to shut up my mouth . . . and One clergyman complained that dismissal awaited any
creep into obscurity” when silenced by her minister. minister who “had the courage to preach against any
As religious enthusiasm spread, churches founded Vices taken into favor by the leading Men of his Parish.”
new colleges to educate their young men and to train
ministers. New Light Presbyterians established the The Presbyterian Revival Soon, a democratization
College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1746, and New of religion challenged the dominance of both the
York Anglicans founded King’s College (Columbia) Anglican Church and the planter elite. In 1743, brick-
in 1754. Baptists set up the College of Rhode Island layer Samuel Morris, inspired by reading George
(Brown) in 1764; two years later, the Dutch Reformed Whitefield’s sermons, led a group of Virginia Anglicans
Church subsidized Queen’s College (Rutgers) in New out of their congregation. Seeking a deeper religious
Jersey. However, the main intellectual legacy of the experience, Morris invited New Light Presbyterian
Great Awakening was not education for the privileged Samuel Davies to lead their prayer meetings. Davies’s
few but a new sense of authority among the many. A sermons, filled with erotic devotional imagery and
European visitor to Philadelphia remarked in surprise, urging Christians to feel “ardent Passion,” sparked
“The poorest day-laborer . . . holds it his right to Presbyterian revivals across the Tidewater region,
134 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
threatening the social authority of the Virginia gentry. to bring their slaves into the Christian fold, but white
Traditionally, planters and their well-dressed families opposition and the Africans’ commitment to their
arrived at Anglican services in fancy carriages drawn ancestral religions kept the number of converts low.
by well-bred horses and flaunted their power by sitting However, in the 1760s, native-born African Americans
in the front pews. Such ritual displays of the gentry’s in Virginia welcomed the Baptists’ message that all
superiority were meaningless if freeholders attended people were equal in God’s eyes. Sensing a threat to
other churches. Moreover, religious pluralism threat- the system of racial slavery, the House of Burgesses
ened the tax-supported status of the Anglican Church. imposed heavy fines on Baptists who preached to slaves
To halt the spread of New Light ideas, Virginia without their owners’ permission.
governor William Gooch denounced them as “false Baptists threatened gentry authority because they
teachings,” and Anglican justices of the peace closed repudiated social distinctions and urged followers to
Presbyterian churches. This harassment kept most call one another “brother” and “sister.” They also con-
white yeomen and poor tenant families in the Church demned the planters’ decadent lifestyle. As planter
of England. Landon Carter complained, the Baptists were “destroy-
ing pleasure in the Country; for they encourage ardent
The Baptist Insurgency During the 1760s, the vig- Prayer . . . & an intire Banishment of Gaming, Dancing,
orous preaching and democratic message of New Light & Sabbath-Day Diversions.” The gentry responded
Baptist ministers converted thousands of white farm with violence. In Caroline County, an Anglican posse
families. The Baptists were radical Protestants whose attacked Brother John Waller at a prayer meeting.
central ritual was adult (rather than infant) baptism. Waller “was violently jerked off the stage; they caught
Once men and women had experienced the infusion of him by the back part of his neck, beat his head against
grace — had been “born again” — they were baptized in the ground, and a gentleman gave him twenty lashes
an emotional public ceremony, often involving com- with his horsewhip.”
plete immersion in water. Despite these attacks, Baptist congregations multi-
Slaves were welcome at Baptist revivals. During the plied. By 1775, about 15 percent of Virginia’s whites
1740s, George Whitefield had urged Carolina planters and hundreds of enslaved blacks had joined Baptist
churches. To signify their state of grace, some Baptist River. They traded with Delawares and Shawnees in the
men “cut off their hair, like Cromwell’s round-headed upper valley and began to draw French-allied Indians
chaplains.” Others forged a new evangelical masculin- into their orbit and away from French posts. Then, in
ity, “crying, weeping, lifting up the eyes, groaning” 1748, the Ohio Company of Virginia, a partnership of
when touched by the Holy Spirit. prominent colonial planters and London merchants,
The Baptist revival in the Chesapeake challenged received a 200,000-acre grant from the crown to estab-
customary authority in families and society but did not lish a new settlement on the upper Ohio, threatening
overturn it. Rejecting the pleas of evangelical women, French claims to the region.
Baptist men kept church authority in the hands of “free
born male members”; and Anglican slaveholders re- Conflict in the Ohio Valley By midcentury, Britain
tained control of the political system. Still, the Baptist relied on the Iroquois Confederacy as its partner in
insurgency infused the lives of poor tenant families Indian relations throughout the Northeast. By extend-
with spiritual meaning and empowered yeomen to ing the Covenant Chain, the Iroquois had become a
defend their economic interests. Moreover, as Baptist kind of Indian empire in their own right, claiming to
ministers spread Christianity among slaves, the cul- speak for other groups throughout the region based on
tural gulf between blacks and whites shrank, under- their seventeenth-century conquests. The Delawares,
mining one justification for slavery and giving some Shawnees, and other groups who repopulated the Ohio
blacks a new religious identity. Within a generation, Valley did so in part to escape the Iroquois yoke. To
African Americans would develop distinctive versions maintain influence on the Ohio, the Iroquois sent two
of Protestant Christianity. “half-kings,” Tanaghrisson (an adopted Seneca) and
Scarouady (an Oneida), to the native settlement of
Logstown, a trading town on the upper Ohio, where
Britain recognized them as leaders.
The Midcentury Challenge: French authorities, alarmed by British inroads,
War, Trade, and Social built a string of forts from Lake Erie to the headwaters
of the Ohio, culminating with Fort Duquesne on the
Conflict, 1750–1763 site of present-day Pittsburgh. To reassert British
Between 1750 and 1763, three significant events trans- claims, Governor Dinwiddie dispatched an expedition
formed colonial life. First, Britain went to war against led by Colonel George Washington, a twenty-two-
the French in America, sparking a worldwide conflict: year-old Virginian whose half-brothers were Ohio
the Great War for Empire. Second, a surge in trade Company stockholders. Washington discovered that
boosted colonial consumption but caused Americans most of the Ohio Indians had decided to side with the
to become deeply indebted to British creditors. Third, French; only the Iroquois half-kings and a few of their
westward migration sparked warfare with Indian followers supported his efforts. After Washington’s
peoples, violent disputes between settlers and land party fired on a French detachment, Tanaghrisson
speculators, and backcountry rebellions against eastern- rushed in and killed a French officer to ensure war — a
controlled governments. prospect that would force British arms to support
Iroquois interests in the valley.
Washington’s party was soon defeated by a larger
The French and Indian War French force. The result was an international incident
In 1754, overlapping French and British claims in that prompted Virginian and British expansionists to
North America came to a head (Map 4.4). The French demand war. But war in North America was a worri-
maintained their vast claims through a network of forts some prospect: the colonies were notoriously incapable
and trading posts that sustained alliances with neigh- of cooperating in their own defense, and the Covenant
boring Indians. The soft underbelly of this sprawling Chain was badly in need of repair.
empire was the Ohio Valley, where French claims were
tenuous. Native peoples were driven out of the valley by The Albany Congress The Iroquois Confederacy
Iroquois attacks in the seventeenth century, but after was unhappy with its British alliance and believed that
1720 displaced Indian populations — especially Dela- the British were neglecting the Iroquois while settlers
wares and Shawnees from Pennsylvania — resettled from New York pressed onto their lands. Moreover, the
there in large numbers. In the 1740s, British traders Ohio Indians, France, and Britain were all acting in
from Pennsylvania began traveling down the Ohio the Ohio Valley without consulting them. To mend
Labrador
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MAP 4.4
European Spheres of Influence in North America, 1754
In the mid-eighteenth century, France, Spain, and the British-owned Hudson Bay Company laid
claim to the vast areas of North America still inhabited primarily by Indian peoples. British settlers
had already occupied much of the land east of the Appalachian Mountains. To safeguard their
lands west of the mountains, Native Americans played off one European power against another.
As a British official remarked: “To preserve the Ballance between us and the French is the great
ruling Principle of Modern Indian Politics.” When Britain expelled France from North America in
1763, Indians had to face encroaching Anglo-American settlers on their own.
136
CHAPTER 4 Growth, Diversity, and Conflict, 1720–1763 137
When Britain mounted major offensives in India, West Beginning in 1758, the powerful Anglo-American
Africa, and the West Indies as well as in North America, forces moved from one triumph to the next, in part
the conflict became the Great War for Empire. because they brought Indian allies back into the fold.
William Pitt emerged as the architect of the British They forced the French to abandon Fort Duquesne
war effort. Pitt was a committed expansionist with a (renamed Fort Pitt) and then captured Fort Louisbourg,
touch of arrogance. “I know that I can save this country a stronghold at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. In 1759,
and that I alone can,” he boasted. A master strategist, an armada led by British general James Wolfe sailed
he planned to cripple France by seizing its colonies. In down the St. Lawrence and took Quebec, the heart of
North America, he enjoyed a decisive demographic France’s American empire. The Royal Navy prevented
advantage, since George II’s 2 million subjects out- French reinforcements from crossing the Atlantic,
numbered the French 14 to 1. To mobilize the colo- allowing British forces to complete the conquest of
nists, Pitt paid half the cost of their troops and supplied Canada in 1760 by capturing Montreal (Map 4.5).
them with arms and equipment, at a cost of £1 million Elsewhere, the British likewise had great success.
a year. He also committed a fleet of British ships and From Spain, the British won Cuba and the Philippine
30,000 British soldiers to the conflict in America. Islands. Fulfilling Pitt’s dream, the East India Company
CHAPTER 4 Growth, Diversity, and Conflict, 1720–1763 139
758
e, 1
olf
W
Gulf of
St. Lawrence
NEW FRANCE Cape
Quebec Breton
Sept. 13, 1759 Island
Ft. Louisbourg
. July 26, 1758
Otta ce R
wa ren St. John
R Ft. Beauséjour
ALGONQUIN Law
R.
.
.
t MICMAC
ia
S
Montreal c ot
Sept. 8, 1760 S
60 Port
Lak
a N
17 Royal Halifax
v
No
e Hur
st, 1760
Aug. 27, 1758 July 8, 1758 E
W
.
on
cut R
S
Connecti
Amher
Lake Ontario Mo
ABENAKI
75
8
Ft. Oswego haw Portsmouth t, 1
Ft. Niagara 1759
k R. hers
July 25, 1759 IROQUOIS Am
Albany
Boston ATLANTIC OCEAN
Erie R.
Hudson R.
e ny
Lak he IES
ON
leg
Al
DELAWARE L
D ela w are R
RI
Ohio
MAP 4.5
The Anglo-American Conquest of New France
After full-scale war with France began in 1756, it took almost three years for the British ministry to
equip colonial forces and dispatch a sizable army to far-off America. In 1758, British and colonial
troops attacked the heartland of New France, capturing Quebec in 1759 and Montreal in 1760.
This conquest both united and divided the allies. Colonists celebrated the great victory: “The
Illuminations and Fireworks exceeded any that had been exhibited before,” reported the South
Carolina Gazette. However, British officers had little respect for colonial soldiers. Said one, “[They
are] the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs you can conceive.”
ousted French traders from India, and British forces preferred the presence of a few French traders to an
seized French Senegal in West Africa. They also cap- influx of thousands of Anglo-American settlers. To
tured the rich sugar islands of Martinique and encourage the French to return, the Ottawa chief
Guadeloupe in the French West Indies, but at the insis- Pontiac declared, “I am French, and I want to die
tence of the West Indian sugar lobby (which wanted to French.” Neolin, a Delaware
protect its monopoly), the ministry returned the prophet, went further, calling for EXPLAIN
islands to France in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. Despite the expulsion of all white-skinned CONSEQUENCES
that controversial decision, the treaty confirmed invaders: “If you suffer the English How did the Seven Years’
Britain’s triumph. It granted Britain sovereignty over among you, you are dead men. War reshape Britain’s
half of North America, including French Canada, all Sickness, smallpox, and their empire in North America
French territory east of the Mississippi River, Spanish poison [rum] will destroy you and affect native peoples?
Florida, and the recent conquests in Africa and India. entirely.” In 1763, inspired by
Britain had forged a commercial and colonial empire Neolin’s nativist vision, Pontiac led a major uprising at
that was nearly worldwide. Detroit. Following his example, Indians throughout
Though Britain had won cautious support from the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley seized nearly every
some Native American groups in the late stages of British military garrison west of Fort Niagara, besieged
the war, its territorial acquisitions alarmed many Fort Pitt, and killed or captured more than 2,000
native peoples from New York to the Mississippi, who settlers.
140 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
Although Britain’s consumer revolution raised basis of Connecticut’s “sea-to-sea” royal charter of
living standards, it landed many consumers — and 1662. However, Charles II had also granted the
the colonies as a whole — in debt (Figure 4.4). Even Wyoming Valley to William Penn, and the Penn family
during the wartime boom of the 1750s, exports paid had sold farms there to Pennsylvania residents. By the
for only 80 percent of British imports. Britain financed late 1750s, settlers from Connecticut and Pennsylvania
the remaining 20 percent — the Americans’ trade were at war, burning down their rivals’ houses and
deficit — through the extension of credit and Pitt’s barns. Delawares with their own claim to the valley
military expenditures. When the military subsidies were caught in the crossfire. In April 1763, the Delaware
ended in 1763, the colonies fell into an economic reces- headman Teedyuscung was burned to death in his
sion. Merchants looked anxiously at their overstocked cabin; in retaliation, Teedyuscung’s son Captain Bull
warehouses and feared bankruptcy. “I think we have a led a war party that destroyed a community of
gloomy prospect before us,” a Philadelphia trader Connecticut settlers.
noted in 1765. The increase in transatlantic trade had Simultaneously, three distinct but related land dis-
made Americans more dependent on overseas credit putes broke out in the Hudson River Valley (Map 4.6).
and markets. Dutch tenant farmers, Wappinger Indians, and migrants
from Massachusetts asserted ownership rights to lands
long claimed by manorial families such as the Van
The Struggle for Land in the East Rensselaers and the Livingstons. When the manor
In good times and bad, the population continued to lords turned to the legal system to uphold their claims,
grow, intensifying the demand for arable land. Consider Dutch and English farmers in Westchester, Dutchess,
the experience of Kent, Connecticut. Like earlier gen- and Albany counties rioted to close the courts. In
erations, Kent’s residents had moved inland to establish response, New York’s royal governor ordered British
new farms, but Kent stood at the colony’s western troops to assist local sheriffs and manorial bailiffs: they
boundary. To provide for the next generation, many suppressed the tenant uprisings, intimidated the
Kent families joined the Susquehanna Company Wappingers, and evicted the Massachusetts squatters.
(1749), which speculated in lands in the Wyoming Other land disputes erupted in New Jersey and the
Valley in present-day northeastern Pennsylvania. As southern colonies, where landlords and English aris-
settlers took up farmsteads there, the company urged tocrats had successfully revived legal claims based
the Connecticut legislature to claim the region on the on long-dormant seventeenth-century charters. One
FIGURE 4.4
Mainland Population and British Imports
Around 1750, British imports were growing at a faster rate than the American population, indicat-
ing that the colonists were consuming more per capita. But Americans went into debt to pay for
these goods, running an annual trade deficit with their British suppliers that by 1772 had created a
cumulative debt of £2 million.
142 PART 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1660–1763
MAINE
(MASS.)
Western Rebels and Regulators
ALGONQUIN Massachusetts settlers
in New York VT. ABENAKI N As would-be landowners moved west, they sparked
(N.Y.) conflicts over Indian policy, political representation,
NEW E
HAMP. W
OIS and debts. During the war with France, Delaware and
L. H
ario QU S
L. Ont O
IR NEW YORK MASS.
Shawnee warriors had exacted revenge for Thomas
uron
New England migrants vs. Penn’s land swindle of 1737 by destroying frontier farms
Hudson Valley manor lords CONN.
RHODE
ISLAND in Pennsylvania and killing hundreds of residents.
ie
Er Scots-Irish settlers demanded the expulsion of all
L. PENNSYLVANIA
S
Connecticut settlers
I N in Wyoming Valley Indians, but Quaker leaders refused. So in 1763, a
DELAWARE NEW
A
land riots
LLE U N
Paxton Boys
MARYLAND
DEL.
Boys massacred twenty Conestoga Indians, an assimi-
Y
SHAWNEE
VA
Virginia speculators: VIRGINIA Revival of charter neighbors peacefully for many years. When Governor
Ohio Company claims in Virginia
DO
EE
A
ERO NORTH
A
CH CAROLINA
the militia. Prosecution of the Paxton Boys failed for
P
P
North Carolina
lack of witnesses, and the episode gave their defenders
A
CATAWBA Regulators
SOUTH the opportunity to excoriate Pennsylvania’s govern-
CAROLINA Area of Settlement
CREEK Up to 1700
ment for protecting Indians while it neglected the
South Carolina Up to 1750 interests of backcountry colonists.
GEORGIA Regulators Up to 1775
To save their farms, North Carolina’s debtors play a crucial role in determining the direction the
defied the government’s authority. Disciplined mobs maturing colonies would take.
intimidated judges, closed courts, and freed their
comrades from jail. The Regulators proposed a series
of reforms, including lower legal fees and tax pay-
ments in the “produce of the country” rather than in
SUMMARY
cash. They also demanded greater representation in In this chapter, we observed dramatic changes in Brit-
the assembly and a just revenue system that would ish North America between 1720 and 1765. An aston-
tax each person “in proportion to the profits arising ishing surge in population — from 400,000 to almost
from his estate.” All to no avail. In May 1771, Royal 2 million — was the combined result of natural increase,
Governor William Tryon mobilized British troops European migration, and the African slave trade. The
and the eastern militia, which defeated a large print revolution and the rise of the British Atlantic
Regulator force at the Alamance River. When the brought important new influences: the European
fighting ended, thirty men lay dead, and Tryon sum- Enlightenment and European Pietism transformed the
marily executed seven insurgent leaders. Not since world of ideas, while a flood of British consumer goods
Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1675 and the colonial and the genteel aspirations of wealthy colonists
uprisings during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (see reshaped the colonies’ material culture.
Chapter 2) had a colonial dispute caused so much Colonists confronted three major regional
political agitation. challenges. In New England, crowded towns and ever-
In 1771, as in 1675 and 1688, colonial conflicts smaller farms threatened the yeoman ideal of indepen-
became linked with imperial politics. In Connecticut, dent farming, prompting families to limit births, move
the Reverend Ezra Stiles defended the North Carolina to the frontier, or participate in an “exchange” econ-
Regulators. “What shall an injured & oppressed omy. In the Middle Atlantic colonies, Dutch, English,
people do,” he asked, “[when faced with] Oppression German, and Scots-Irish residents maintained their
and tyranny?” Stiles’s remarks reflected growing resis- religious and cultural identities while they competed
tance to recently imposed British policies of taxation for access to land and political power. Across the back-
and control. The American colonies still depended country, new interest in western lands triggered con-
primarily on Britain for their trade and military flicts with Indian peoples, civil unrest among whites,
defense. However, by the 1760s, the mainland settle- and, ultimately, the Great War for Empire. In the after-
ments had evolved into complex societies with the math of the fighting, Britain stood triumphant in
potential to exist independently. British policies would Europe and America.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Compare colonists’ “pursuits of happiness” in New 3. The Great War for Empire delivered the eastern
England, the Middle colonies, the backcountry, half of North America into British hands. How did
and the South. How did poorer colonists in each of that massive territorial acquisition affect ordinary
these regions seek to maintain their autonomy colonists? What impact did it have on Native
from powerful landlords and institutions, and how Americans’ strategies for coexisting with their
did this effort shape the formation of regional European neighbors?
identities?
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
2. How did the print and transportation revolutions events listed under “Work, Exchange, and Tech-
transform colonial culture and the economy in the nology” and “Identity” for the period 1720–1750
eighteenth century? on the thematic timeline on page 79. How did eco-
nomic developments in the colonies influence the
formation of new cultural identities in this era?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE In Chapter 3 we 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Return to the John Collet
saw the rise of the South Atlantic System, an engine painting of George Whitefield that opened the
of economic growth that tied Britain’s colonies chapter (p. 115). How does Collet portray
more closely together and generated prosperity Whitefield’s audience? Consider the postures and
throughout the British Atlantic world. What conse- facial expressions of individual members of the
quences of that integration and prosperity are evi- crowd and imagine what might have been running
dent in the topics discussed in this chapter? How through their minds as they listened. What do the
was the Great War for Empire grounded in earlier various elements of this painting (the crowd, tan-
economic developments? And how did the postwar kard of ale, sleeping dog, setting) suggest about the
debt crisis grow out of the South Atlantic System? Great Awakening’s appeal? About Collet’s attitude
toward evangelical preaching?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Fred Anderson, The War That Made America Patrick Griffin, The People with No Name (2001).
(2005). A compelling narrative of the Seven Years’ Treats the experience of the Scots-Irish in Ireland
War in America. Also see The War That Made and America.
America (PBS video) and its Web site:
Susan E. Klepp and Billy G. Smith, eds., The Infortu-
thewarthatmadeamerica.org.
nate (1992). A compelling narrative of one indentured
Colin G. Calloway, White People, Indians, and servant immigrant’s experience in the Middle
Highlanders (2008). Makes suggestive comparisons colonies.
between Britain’s encounters in Scotland and
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale (1990). A
America.
vivid account of one woman’s experiences on the
Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys (1996). Maine frontier. See also A Midwife’s Tale (PBS video)
Covers German migrations to America. and two related Web sites: pbs.org/wgbh/amex
/midwife and DoHistory.org.
CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER REVIEW 145
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1720s–1730s t William and Gilbert Tennent lead Presbyterian revivals among Scots-Irish
1748 t Ohio Company receives grant of 200,000 acres from the crown
1760s t Land conflict along New York and New England border
KEY TURNING POINTS: The Ohio Company grant (1748), the formation of the Susquehanna
Company (1749), land conflict along New York and New England border (1760s), and the
defeat of the North Carolina Regulators (1771). How do these events reveal tensions over the
question of who would control the development of frontier lands in Britain’s mainland North
American colonies? What were the effects of these conflicts on Native American populations?
3
Revolution and
Republican Culture
1763–1820
P A R T
CHAPTER 5 “The American war is over,” Philadelphia Patriot Benjamin Rush declared
The Problem of in 1787, “but this is far from being the case with the American Revolu-
Empire, 1763–1776
tion. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed.
CHAPTER 6 It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government.” The
Making War changes that had already unfolded since 1763 were revolutionary in them-
and Republican
selves: Britain had triumphed in the Great War for Empire, only to see its
Governments,
American empire unravel and descend into war. Against all odds, the thir-
1776–1789
teen rebelling colonies had pulled together and won their independence;
CHAPTER 7
now they were forming a federal republic that would take its place among
Hammering Out a
the nations of the world.
Federal Republic,
1787–1820 The republican revolution extended far beyond politics. It challenged
many of the values and institutions that had prevailed for centuries in
CHAPTER 8
Europe and the Atlantic World. After 1776, Americans reconsidered basic
Creating a Republican
Culture, 1790–1820 assumptions that structured their societies, cultures, families, and com-
munities. Here, in summary, are the three principal developments dis-
cussed in Part 3:
146
From British North America to Challenges to the Social Order
the United States of America
After violently rejecting attempts to reform the British As Patriots articulated values they associated with
Empire, the Patriots won independence and began independence, they aligned their movement with
constructing republican governments. Their experi- currents of reform eddying through the Atlantic World:
ments extended across an entire generation, and it antislavery; women’s rights; religious liberty; social
took still longer to decide how much power the equality. Each of these ideas was controversial, and
federal republic should wield over the states. The the American Revolution endorsed none of them in an
political culture spawned by the Revolution was unqualified way. But its idealism — the sense that the
similarly unformed and slow to develop. Political Revolution marked “a memorable epoch in the annals
parties, for example, were unanticipated by the of the human race,” as John Adams put it — made the
founders and, at first, widely regarded as illegitimate. era malleable and full of possibility.
However, by 1820, they had become central to the Legislatures abolished slavery in the North,
adjudication of political conflict, heightening some broadened religious liberty by allowing freedom of
forms of competition while blunting others. The United conscience, and, except in New England, ended the
States also fought wars with Native Americans in the system of legally established churches. Postwar evan-
trans-Appalachian west to gain new territory, and with gelicalism gave enormous energy to a new wave of
Great Britain to ensure its independence. Across three innovative religious developments. However, Americans
generations, American political culture was trans- continued to argue over social equality, in part because
formed, national borders were secured, and republican their republican creed placed family authority in the
national and state governments commanded the hands of men and political power in the hands of
allegiance of their citizens. propertied individuals: this arrangement denied power
and status not only to slaves but also to free blacks,
women, and middling and poor white men. Though
the Revolution’s legacy was mixed, its meaning would
be debated for decades in American public life.
148
WORK, PEOPLING POLITICS & IDEAS, BELIEFS, IDENTITY
EXCHANGE, & POWER & CULTURE
TECHNOLOGY
1763 t Merchants defy Sugar t Migration into the Ohio t Stamp Act Congress t Patriots call for t Concept of popular
and Stamp Acts Valley after Pontiac’s (1765) American unity sovereignty gains force
Rebellion in the colonies
t Patriots mount three t First Continental t The idea of natural
boycotts of British t Quebec Act (1774) Congress (1774) rights poses a challenge t Colonists lay claim to
goods, in 1765, 1767, allows Catholicism to the institution of rights of Englishmen
t Second Continental
and 1774 chattel slavery
Congress (1775)
t Boycotts spur Patriot
women to make textiles
1776 t Manufacturing expands t Declining immigration t The Declaration of t Judith Sargent Murray t Thomas Paine’s
during the war from Europe Independence (1776) publishes “On the Common Sense (1776)
(1775–1820) enhances Equality of the Sexes” causes colonists
t Cutoff of trade and t States adopt republican
American identity (1779) to rethink political
severe inflation constitutions (1776 on) loyalties
threaten economy t African American slaves t Emancipation of slaves
t Articles of
seek freedom through begins in the North t States rely on property
t War debt grows Confederation ratified
military service qualifications to define
(1781) t Virginia enacts religious citizenship rights in
freedom (1786)
t Treaty of Paris (1783) their new constitutions
1787 t Bank of North America t State cessions, land t U.S. Constitution t Politicians and ministers t Indians form Western
founded (1781) ordinances, and Indian drafted (1787) deny vote to women; Confederacy (1790)
wars create national praise republican
t Land speculation t Conflict over Alexander t Second Great
domain in the West motherhood
increases in the West Hamilton’s economic Awakening (1790–
t The Alien Act makes it policies t Bill of Rights ratified 1860)
harder for immigrants (1791)
t First national parties: t Emerging political
to become citizens and
Federalists and t Sedition Act limits divide between South
allow for deporting
Republicans freedom of the press and North
aliens (1798)
(1798)
1800 t Cotton output and t Suffrage for white men t Jefferson reduces t Free blacks enhance t Tenskwatawa and
demand for African expands; New Jersey activism of national sense of African Tecumseh revive
labor expands retracts suffrage for government American identity Western Indian
propertied women Confederacy
t Farm productivity t Chief Justice Marshall t Religious benevolence
(1807)
improves asserts federal judicial engenders social reform t War of 1812 tests
t Atlantic slave trade powers movements national unity
t Embargo encourages ends (1808)
U.S. manufacturing t Triumph of Republican t State constitutions
t American Colonization Party and end of democratized
t Second Bank of the Society founded (1817) Federalist Party
United States chartered
(1816–1836)
5
C H A P T E R
1763–1776
I
AN EMPIRE n June 1775, the city of New York IDENTIF Y THE BIG IDEA
TRANSFORMED faced a perplexing dilemma. Word Consider whether the collapse of
The Costs of Empire arrived that George Washington, who British authority in the thirteen
George Grenville and the Reform had just been named commander in chief rebellious colonies might have
Impulse of the newly formed Continental army, been avoided through compromise
An Open Challenge: The was coming to town. But on the same measures and more astute leader-
Stamp Act day, William Tryon, the colony’s crown- ship. Was colonial independence
THE DYNAMICS OF appointed governor, was scheduled to inevitable, and was war the only
REBELLION, 1765–1770 return from Britain. Local leaders orches- way to achieve it?
Formal Protests and the Politics trated a delicate dance. Though the Pro-
of the Crowd vincial Congress was operating illegally in the eyes of the crown, it did not wish to
The Ideological Roots of offend Governor Tryon. It instructed the city’s newly raised volunteer battalion to divide
Resistance in two. One company awaited Washington’s arrival, while another prepared to greet the
Another Kind of Freedom governor. The “residue of the Battalion” was to be “ready to receive either the General
Parliament and Patriots Square or Governour Tryon, which ever shall first arrive.” Washington arrived first. He was met
Off Again by nine companies of the volunteer battalion and a throng of well-wishers, who escorted
The Problem of the West him to his rooms in a local tavern. Many of this same crowd then crossed town to join
Parliament Wavers the large group assembled to greet the governor, whose ship was just landing. The
crowd met him with “universal shouts of applause” and accompanied him home.
THE ROAD TO This awkward moment in the history of one American city reflects a larger crisis of
INDEPENDENCE,
loyalty that plagued colonists throughout British North America in the years between
1771–1776
1763 and 1776. The outcome of the Great War for Empire left Great Britain the undis-
A Compromise Repudiated
puted master of eastern North America. But that success pointed the way to catastro-
The Continental Congress
phe. Convinced of the need to reform the empire and tighten its administration, British
Responds
policymakers imposed a series of new administrative measures on the colonies. Accus-
The Rising of the Countryside
tomed as they were to governing their own affairs, colonists could not accept these
Loyalists and Neutrals
changes. Yet the bonds of loyalty were strong, and the unraveling of British authority
VIOLENCE EAST was tortuous and complex. Only gradually — as militancy slowly mounted on both
AND WEST sides — were the ties of empire broken and independence declared.
Lord Dunmore’s War
Armed Resistance in
Massachusetts
The Second Continental
Congress Organizes for War
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
Independence Declared
150
The Great New York Fire of 1776 In the wake of the Declaration of Independence, General William
Howe’s first objective was to capture New York, with its strategic location and excellent harbor. Patriot
forces under George Washington’s command attempted to defend the city but were forced into retreat
and abandoned it to the British in September 1776. Early in the morning of September 21, a fire broke
out near the southern tip of Manhattan and burned northwestward, driven by a strong wind. As many
as a quarter of the town’s buildings were destroyed; residents, already distressed by the fighting, fled
into the streets with whatever possessions they could carry. Each side accused the other of arson, but that
charge was never proven. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox
and Tilden Foundations.
151
152 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Britain’s Atlantic and The following table enumerates the economic benefits derived by Great Britain
from its various colonies, which sent a wide variety of goods to Britain and also
Asian Empires served as markets for British exports.
TABLE 5.1
English/British Imports and Exports (annual averages in pounds sterling)
England* Britain*
1700–01 1750–51 1772–73 1789–90
Imports from Asia, Africa, and America
North America 372,000 877,000 1,997,000 1,351,000
The Fisheries** 0 7,000 27,000 188,000
West Indies 785,000 1,484,000 3,222,000 4,045,000
Africa 24,000 43,000 80,000 87,000
East Indies 775,000 1,101,000 2,203,000 3,256,000
Total 1,956,000 3,512,000 7,529,000 8,927,000
Exports to America, Asia, and Africa
North America 362,000 1,355,000 3,254,000 3,763,000
West Indies 336,000 589,000 1,402,000 1,892,000
Africa 145,000 188,000 777,000 799,000
East India 125,000 653,000 893,000 2,173,000
Total 968,000 2,785,000 6,326,000 8,627,000
*The “England” column shows data for England and Wales; “Britain” includes Scotland as well.
**Includes Massachusetts Bay, Maine, and Newfoundland; by the 1760s more than £500,000 worth of fish was being sent
annually to the West Indies and southern Europe.
Source: Adapted from The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998), 101.
America. The ministers who served under George III Britain’s frontier forts. Moreover, only a substantial
(r. 1760–1820) feared a possible rebellion by the 60,000 military force would deter land-hungry whites from
French residents of Canada, Britain’s newly conquered defying the Proclamation of 1763 and settling west of
colony (Map 5.2). Native Americans were also a the Appalachian Mountains (see Chapter 4). Finally,
concern: Pontiac’s Rebellion had nearly overwhelmed British politicians worried about the colonists’ loyalty
153
154
Greenland
(Den.)
Iceland
(Den.)
PART 3
L
CANADA Newfoundland St. Malo
O
Quebec FRANCE
Montreal St. Pierre, Bordeaux
UIS
Philadelphia Boston Miquelon PORTUGAL SPAIN
New York OTTOMAN
Lisbon Seville
IAN
Jamestown EMPIRE JAPAN
Cádiz
A
GEORGIA CANARY
New Orleans CHINA
FLORIDA ATLANTIC IS. PERSIA PACIFIC
NEW (Br. 1763–83)
SPAIN OCEAN BENGAL Canton
BAHAMAS Formosa
OCEAN
Calcutta Macau
Veracruz CUBA Santo Domingo Diu Daman
Acapulco Jamaica LESSER ANTILLES St. Louis Bombay INDIA Rangoon Da Nang PHILIPPINES
HAITI (Fr. & Br.) Manila
Gorée Goa
BELIZE Curaçao Fort Madras ANNAM
NEW Trinidad James
BENIN ETHIOPIA
Porto Bello Accra
GRANADA Lagos Ceylon
SURINAM Cayenne Mogadishu
DUTCH Sumatra MOLUCCAS
BRAZIL Mombasa INDONESIA
(1630–54)
NEW
PERU ANGOLA Java GUINEA
Recife Timor
BRAZIL
Bahia Mozambique
Spanish
transcontinental Beira Madagascar Mauritius
route Rio de Janeiro Réunion
Fort Dauphin NEW HOLLAND
REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
W E FALKLAND ISLANDS
(Fr. 1763–65, Br. 1765–70, Sp. 1770) British control, c. 1770 Portuguese control
S French control, c. 1770 Spanish control
0 1,000 2,000 miles
Dutch control, c. 1770 Russian empire in 1763
0 1,000 2,000 kilometers
MAP 5.1
Eurasian Trade and European Colonies, c. 1770
By 1770, the Western European nations that had long dominated maritime trade had created vast colonial empires
and spheres of influence. Spain controlled the western halves of North and South America, Portugal owned Brazil,
and Holland ruled Indonesia. Britain, a newer imperial power, boasted settler societies in North America, rich sugar
islands in the West Indies, slave ports in West Africa, and a growing presence on the Indian subcontinent. Only France
had failed to acquire and hold on to a significant colonial empire. (To trace changes in empire and trade routes, see
Map 1.4 on p. 24 and Map 2.2 on p. 46.)
CHAPTER 5 The Problem of Empire, 1763–1776 155
FIGURE 5.1
The Cost of Empire, 1690–1790 Military spending Net tax income
American War
It cost money to build and maintain an empire. As Civil spending (£ sterling, millions) of Independence,
Britain built a great navy, subsidized the armies of 30 1775–1783
European allies, and fought four wars against France
and Spain between 1702 and 1783, military expendi- War of the Seven
Spanish Years’ War,
tures soared. Tax revenues did not keep pace, so the
Succession, 1756–1763
government created a large national debt by issuing 1702–1713
bonds for millions of pounds. This policy created a 20
class of wealthy financiers, led to political protests, War of the
and eventually prompted attempts to tax the Austrian
American colonists. Succession,
1740–1748
10
0
1690 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790
now that they no longer faced a threat from French The Sugar Act Grenville also won parliamentary
Canada. approval of the Sugar Act of 1764 to replace the widely
The cost of stationing these troops, estimated at ignored Molasses Act of 1733 (see Chapter 3). The ear-
£225,000 per year, compounded Britain’s fiscal crisis, lier act had set a tax rate of 6 pence per gallon on French
and it seemed clear that the burden had to be shared by molasses — a rate so high that it made the trade unprof-
the colonies. They had always managed their own itable. Rather than pay it, colonial merchants bribed
finances, but the king’s ministers agreed that Parliament customs officials at the going rate of 1.5 pence per gal-
could no longer let them off the hook for the costs of lon. Grenville settled on a duty of 3 pence per gallon,
empire. The greatest gains from the war had come in which merchants could pay and still turn a profit, and
North America, where the specter of French encircle- then tightened customs enforcement so that it could
ment had finally been lifted, and the greatest new post- actually be collected.
war expenses were being incurred in North America This carefully crafted policy garnered little support
as well. in America. New England merchants, among them John
Hancock of Boston, had made their fortunes smug-
George Grenville and the gling French molasses. In 1754, Boston merchants paid
customs duties on a mere 400 hogsheads of molasses,
Reform Impulse yet they imported 40,000 hogsheads for use by 63
The challenge of raising revenue from the colonies fell Massachusetts rum distilleries. Publicly, the merchants
first to George Grenville. Widely regarded as “one of claimed that the Sugar Act would ruin the distilling
the ablest men in Great Britain,” Grenville understood industry; privately, they vowed to evade the duty by
the need for far-reaching imperial reform. He first smuggling or by bribing officials.
passed the Currency Act of 1764, which banned the
American colonies from using paper money as legal The End of Salutary Neglect More important, col-
tender. Colonial shopkeepers, planters, and farmers onists raised constitutional objections to the Sugar Act.
had used local currency, which was worth less than In Massachusetts, the leader of the assembly argued
British pounds sterling, to pay their debts to British that the new legislation was “contrary to a fundamental
merchants. The Currency Act ensured that merchants Principall of our Constitution: That all Taxes ought to
would no longer be paid in money printed in the colo- originate with the people.” In Rhode Island, Governor
nies, boosting their profits and British wealth. Stephen Hopkins warned: “They who are taxed at
156 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Newfoundland
QUEBEC MAINE
(part of Nova
Mass.) Scotia
M
N.H.
MASS. AT L A N T I C
N.Y.
R.I.
OCEAN
S PA N I S H PENN. CONN.
N.J.
ine
LOUISIANA MD.
DEL.
n L
tio
VA.
British Colonies: Comparisons
Royal Proprietary Corporate
ma
o
American territory from Pr Population Average Annual Exports
the Treaty of Paris (1763) S.C. White Black Exports per White
than it had from the Treaty GA. (in 1770) (in 1770) (shillings)*
of Utrecht (1713). The new West Indian islands 40,000 330,000 £1,856,000 928s.
treaty gave Britain control FLOR Southern mainland 600,000 394,000 £1,703,776 57s.
of Spanish Florida and all of IDA
Northern mainland 1,092,000 45,000 £1,105,376 21s.
New France east of the BA
Mississippi River. H
A *20 shillings = £1 (one English pound); £1 = about $400 in 2010 prices.
M
AS
Gulf of Mexico
(B
r.)
SANTO DOMINGO N
(Sp.)
CUBA Guadeloupe
(Fr.) E
(Sp.) W
Puerto Martinique
ST. DOMINIQUE Rico (Fr.) S
BELIZE JAMAICA (Fr.) (Sp.)
(Br.) Barbados
Caribbean Sea (Br.) 0 250 500 miles
In 1763, West Indian sugar was still Britain’s primary colonial 0 250 500 kilometers
export crop, but its value was now less than the combined worth of
the tobacco, rice, and flour exported from the mainland colonies.
MAP 5.2
Britain’s American Empire in 1763
The Treaty of Paris gave Britain control of the eastern half of North America and returned a
few captured sugar islands in the West Indies to France. To protect the empire’s new mainland
territories, British ministers dispatched troops to Florida and Quebec. They also sent troops to
uphold the terms of the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited Anglo-American settlement
west of the Appalachian Mountains.
pleasure by others cannot possibly have any property, The Sugar Act revived old American fears. The
and they who have no property, can have no freedom.” influential Virginia planter Richard Bland emphasized
The Sugar Act raised other constitutional issues as well. that the American colonists “were not sent out to be
Merchants prosecuted under the act would be tried in the Slaves but to be the Equals of those that remained
vice-admiralty courts, tribunals governing the high behind.” John Adams, the young Massachusetts lawyer
seas and run by British-appointed judges. Previously, defending John Hancock on a charge of smuggling,
merchants accused of Navigation Acts violations were
tried by local common-law courts, where friendly
juries often acquitted them. The Sugar Act closed this To see a longer excerpt of the Richard Bland
legal loophole by extending the jurisdiction of the vice- document, along with other primary sources from
admiralty courts to all customs offenses. this period, see Sources for America’s History.
CHAPTER 5 The Problem of Empire, 1763–1776 157
argued that the vice-admiralty courts diminished this assembly declared, and therefore “cannot participate in
equality by “degrad[ing] every American . . . below the the general Legislature of the Nation.”
rank of an Englishman.” Asserting “the Right of Parliament to lay an inter-
In fact, accused smugglers in Britain were also tried nal Tax upon the Colonies,” the House of Commons
in vice-admiralty courts, so there was no discrimina- ignored American opposition and
tion against Americans. The real issue was the growing passed the act by an overwhelm- UNDERSTAND
power of the British state. Americans had lived for ing majority of 205 to 49. At POINTS OF VIEW
decades under an administrative policy of salutary the request of General Thomas Why did most British and
neglect. Now they saw that the new imperial regime Gage, the British military com- colonial leaders reject
would deprive them “of some of their most essential mander in America, Parliament the idea that the colonies
Rights as British subjects,” as a committee of the Mass- also passed the Quartering Act should be represented in
achusetts assembly put it. In response, Royal Governor of 1765, which required colonial Parliament?
Francis Bernard replied: “The rule that a British subject governments to provide barracks
shall not be bound by laws or liable to taxes, but what and food for British troops. Finally, Parliament approved
he has consented to by his representatives must be Grenville’s proposal that violations of the Stamp Act be
confined to the inhabitants of Great Britain only.” To tried in vice-admiralty courts.
Bernard, Grenville, and other imperial reformers, Using the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy,
Americans were second-class subjects of the king, with Grenville had begun to fashion a centralized imperial
rights limited by the Navigation Acts, parliamentary system in America much like that already in place in
laws, and British interests. Ireland: British officials would govern the colonies with
little regard for the local assemblies. Consequently, the
prime minister’s plan provoked a constitutional con-
An Open Challenge: The Stamp Act frontation on the specific issues of taxation, jury trials,
Another new tax, the Stamp Act of 1765, sparked and military quartering as well as on the general ques-
the first great imperial crisis. The new levy was to tion of representative self-government.
cover part of the cost of keeping British troops in
America — which turned out to be £385,000 a year
(about $150 million today), 70 percent more than the
initial estimate. Grenville hoped the Stamp Act would The Dynamics of Rebellion,
raise £60,000 per year. The act would require a tax 1765–1770
stamp on all printed items, from college diplomas,
court documents, land titles, and contracts to news- In the name of reform, Grenville had thrown down the
papers, almanacs, and playing cards. It was ingeniously gauntlet to the Americans. The colonists had often
designed. Like its counterpart in England, it bore more resisted unpopular laws and aggressive governors, but
heavily on the rich, since it charged only a penny a they had faced an all-out attack on their institutions
sheet for newspapers and other common items but up only once before — in 1686, when James II had unilat-
to £10 for a lawyer’s license. It also required no new erally imposed the Dominion of New England. Now
bureaucracy; stamped paper would be delivered to the danger to colonial autonomy was even greater
colonial ports and sold to printers in lieu of unstamped because both the king and Parliament backed reform.
stock. But the Patriots, as the defenders of American rights
Benjamin Franklin, agent of the Pennsylvania came to be called, met the challenge posed by Grenville
assembly, proposed a different solution: American and his successor, Charles Townshend. They organized
representation in Parliament. “If you chuse to tax us,” protests — formal and informal, violent as well as
he wrote, “give us Members in your Legislature, and let peaceful — and fashioned a compelling ideology of
us be one People.” With the exception of William Pitt, resistance.
British politicians rejected Franklin’s idea as too radi-
cal. They argued that the colonists already had virtual
Formal Protests and the Politics
representation in Parliament because some of its
members were transatlantic merchants and West Indian of the Crowd
sugar planters. Colonial leaders were equally skeptical Virginia’s House of Burgesses was the first formal body
of Franklin’s plan. Americans were “situate at a great to complain. In May 1765, hotheaded young Patrick
Distance from their Mother Country,” the Connecticut Henry denounced Grenville’s legislation and attacked
158 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
George III for supporting it. He compared the king to Oliver and then destroyed Oliver’s new brick ware-
Charles I, whose tyranny had led to his overthrow and house. Two weeks later, Bostonians attacked the house
execution in the 1640s. These remarks, which bordered of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Oliver’s
on treason, frightened the Burgesses; nonetheless, they brother-in-law and a prominent defender of imperial
condemned the Stamp Act’s “manifest Tendency to authority, breaking his furniture, looting his wine cel-
Destroy American freedom.” In Massachusetts, James lar, and setting fire to his library.
Otis, another republican-minded firebrand, persuaded Wealthy merchants and Patriot lawyers, such as
the House of Representatives to call a meeting of all the John Hancock and John Adams, encouraged the
mainland colonies “to implore Relief ” from the act. mobs, which were usually led by middling artisans
and minor merchants. In New York City, nearly three
The Stamp Act Congress Nine assemblies sent del- thousand shopkeepers, artisans, laborers, and seamen
egates to the Stamp Act Congress, which met in New marched through the streets breaking windows and
York City in October 1765. The congress protested the crying “Liberty!” Resistance to the Stamp Act spread
loss of American “rights and liberties,” especially the far beyond the port cities: in nearly every colony,
right to trial by jury. And it challenged the constitu- angry crowds — the “rabble,” their detractors called
tionality of both the Stamp and Sugar Acts by declaring them — intimidated royal officials. Near Wethersfield,
that only the colonists’ elected representatives could Connecticut, five hundred farmers seized tax collector
tax them. Still, moderate-minded delegates wanted com- Jared Ingersoll and forced him to resign his office in
promise, not confrontation. They assured Parliament “the Cause of the People.”
that Americans “glory in being subjects of the best
of Kings” and humbly petitioned for repeal of the The Motives of the Crowd Such crowd actions
Stamp Act. Other influential Americans favored active were common in both Britain and America, and pro-
(but peaceful) resistance; they organized a boycott of testers had many motives. Roused by the Great
British goods. Awakening, evangelical Protestants resented arrogant
British military officers and corrupt royal bureaucrats.
Crowd Actions Popular opposition also took a In New England, where rioters invoked the anti-
violent form, however. When the Stamp Act went monarchy sentiments of their great-grandparents, an
into effect on November 1, 1765, anonymous letter sent to a Boston newspaper promis-
COMPARE AND disciplined mobs demanded the ing to save “all the Freeborn Sons of America” was
CONTRAST resignation of stamp-tax collec- signed “Oliver Cromwell,” the English republican revo-
Why did the Stamp Act
tors. In Boston, a group calling lutionary of the 1650s. In New York City, Sons of
arouse so much more resis-
itself the Sons of Liberty burned Liberty leaders Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall
tance than the Sugar Act?
an effigy of collector Andrew were minor merchants and Radical Whigs who feared
CHAPTER 5 The Problem of Empire, 1763–1776 159
that imperial reform would undermine political lib- French philosopher Montesquieu, who had main-
erty. The mobs also included apprentices, day laborers, tained that a “separation of powers” among govern-
and unemployed sailors: young men with their own ment departments prevented arbitrary rule.
notions of liberty who — especially if they had been The republican and Whig strands of the English
drinking — were quick to resort to violence. political tradition provided a third ideological source
Nearly everywhere popular resistance nullified the for American Patriots. Puritan New England had long
Stamp Act. Fearing an assault on Fort George, New venerated the Commonwealth era (1649–1660), when
York lieutenant governor Cadwallader Colden called England had been a republic (see Chapter 2). After the
on General Gage to use his small military force to Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, many colonists
protect the stamps. Gage refused. “Fire from the Fort praised the English Whigs for creating a constitutional
might disperse the Mob, but it would not quell monarchy that prevented the king from imposing taxes
them,” he told Colden, and the result would be “an and other measures. Joseph Warren, a physician and a
Insurrection, the Commencement of Civil War.” The Radical Whig Patriot, suggested that the Stamp Act
tax was collected in Barbados and Jamaica, but fright- was part of a ministerial plot “to force the colonies into
ened collectors resigned their offices in all thirteen rebellion” and justify the use of “military power to
colonies that would eventually join in the Declaration reduce them to servitude.” John Dickinson’s Letters
of Independence. This popular insurrection gave a from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768) urged colonists
democratic cast to the emerging Patriot movement. to “remember your ancestors and your posterity” and
“Nothing is wanting but your own Resolution,” declared oppose parliamentary taxes. The letters circulated
a New York rioter, “for great is the Authority and Power widely and served as an early call to resistance. If
of the People.” Parliament could tax the colonies without their con-
sent, he wrote, “our boasted liberty is but A sound and
nothing else.”
The Ideological Roots of Resistance Such arguments, widely publicized in newspapers
Some Americans couched their resistance in consti- and pamphlets, gave intellectual substance to the
tutional terms. Many were lawyers or well-educated Patriot movement and turned a series of impromptu
merchants and planters. Composing pamphlets of riots, tax protests, and boycotts of British manufactures
remarkable political sophistication, they gave the resis- into a formidable political force.
tance movement its rationale, its political agenda, and
its leaders.
Patriot writers drew on three intellectual traditions. Another Kind of Freedom
The first was English common law, the centuries-old “We are taxed without our own consent,” Dickinson
body of legal rules and procedures that protected the wrote in one of his Letters. “We are therefore —
lives and property of the monarch’s subjects. In the SLAVES.” As Patriot writers argued that taxation
famous Writs of Assistance case of 1761, Boston lawyer without representation made colonists the slaves of
James Otis invoked English legal precedents to chal- Parliament, many, including Benjamin Franklin in
lenge open-ended search warrants. In demanding a Philadelphia and James Otis in
jury trial for John Hancock in the late 1760s, John Massachusetts, also began to con- COMPARE AND
Adams appealed to the Magna Carta (1215), the demn the institution of chattel CONTRAST
ancient document that, said Adams, “has for many slavery itself as a violation of Why were southerners
Centuries been esteemed by Englishmen, as one of slaves’ natural rights. African more threatened by chal-
the . . . firmest Bulwarks of their Liberties.” Other Americans made the connection lenges to the institution of
lawyers protested that new strictures violated specific as well. In Massachusetts, slaves slavery than northerners?
“liberties and privileges” granted in colonial charters or submitted at least four petitions to
embodied in Britain’s “ancient constitution.” the legislature asking that slavery be abolished. As one
Enlightenment rationalism provided Patriots with petition noted, slaves “have in common with other
a second important intellectual resource. Virginia men, a natural right to be free, and without molesta-
planter Thomas Jefferson and other Patriots drew on tion, to enjoy such property, as they may acquire by
the writings of John Locke, who had argued that all their industry.”
individuals possessed certain “natural rights” — life, In the southern colonies, where slaves constituted
liberty, and property — that governments must protect half or more of the population and the economy
(see Chapter 4). And they turned to the works of depended on their servitude, the quest for freedom
160 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Celebrating Repeal
This British cartoon mocking
supporters of the Stamp
Act — “The Repeal, or the
Funeral Procession of Miss
Americ-Stamp” — was probably
commissioned by merchants
trading with America. Preceded
by two flag bearers, George
Grenville, the author of the
legislation, carries a miniature
coffin (representing the act) to a
tomb, as a dog urinates on the
leader of the procession. Two
bales on the wharf, labeled
“Stamps from America” and
“Black cloth return’d from
America,” testify to the failure
of the act. The Granger Collection,
New York.
from parliamentary debates, left chancellor of the Townshend thought this distinction was “perfect non-
exchequer Charles Townshend in command. Pitt was sense,” but he indulged the Americans and laid duties
sympathetic toward America; Townshend was not. only on trade.
As a member of the Board of Trade, Townshend had
sought restrictions on the colonial assemblies and A Second Boycott and the Daughters of
strongly supported the Stamp Act. In 1767, he prom- Liberty Even so, most colonial leaders rejected
ised to find a new source of revenue in America. the legitimacy of Townshend’s measures. In February
The new tax legislation, the Townshend Act of 1768, the Massachusetts assembly condemned the
1767, had both fiscal and political goals. It imposed Townshend Act, and Boston and New York merchants
duties on colonial imports of paper, paint, glass, and began a new boycott of British goods. Throughout
tea that were expected to raise about £40,000 a year. Puritan New England, ministers and public officials
Though Townshend did allocate some of this revenue discouraged the purchase of “foreign superfluities” and
for American military expenses, he earmarked most of promoted the domestic manufacture of cloth and other
it to pay the salaries of royal governors, judges, and necessities.
other imperial officials, who had always previously American women, ordinarily excluded from public
been paid by colonial assemblies. Now, he hoped, royal affairs, became crucial to the nonimportation move-
appointees could better enforce parliamentary laws ment. They reduced their households’ consumption of
and carry out the king’s instructions. Townshend next imported goods and produced large quantities of
devised the Revenue Act of 1767, which created a homespun cloth. Pious farmwives spun yarn at their
board of customs commissioners in Boston and vice- ministers’ homes. In Berwick, Maine, “true Daughters
admiralty courts in Halifax, Boston, Philadelphia, and of Liberty” celebrated American products by “drinking
Charleston. By using parliamentary taxes to finance rye coffee and dining on bear venison.” Other women’s
imperial administration, Townshend intended to groups supported the boycott with charitable work,
undermine American political institutions. spinning flax and wool for the needy. Just as Patriot
The Townshend duties revived the constitutional men followed tradition by joining crowd actions, so
debate over taxation. During the Stamp Act crisis, women’s protests reflected their customary concern for
some Americans, including Benjamin Franklin, distin- the well-being of the community.
guished between external and internal taxes. They sug- Newspapers celebrated these exploits of the
gested that external duties on trade (such as those long Daughters of Liberty. One Massachusetts town proudly
mandated by the Navigation Acts) were acceptable to claimed an annual output of 30,000 yards of cloth; East
Americans, but that direct, or internal, taxes were not. Hartford, Connecticut, reported 17,000 yards. This
162 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
1763 1775
Louisbourg
QUEBEC QUEBEC
Quebec Quebec
Trois Rivières Trois Rivières Halifax
Halifax
Montreal Annapolis
Nova Royal Montreal Nova
Michilimackinac
Michilimackinac
Crown Point Scotia Crown Point Scotia
Ft. Frontenac Ft. Frontenac
Ticonderoga Ticonderoga
(11 Battalions)
Boston
Albany Albany Boston
Ft. Detroit Ft. Niagara N Ft. Detroit Ft. Niagara N
New York New York
E E
Philadelphia Philadelphia
Ft. Pitt W Ft. Pitt W
S S
MAP 5.3
British Troop Deployments, 1763 and 1775
As the imperial crisis deepened, British military priorities changed. In 1763, most British battalions
were stationed in Canada to deter Indian uprisings and French Canadian revolts. After the Stamp
Act riots of 1765, the British placed large garrisons in New York and Philadelphia. By 1775, eleven
battalions of British regulars occupied Boston, the center of the Patriot movement.
advised the ministry to “Quash this Spirit at a Blow.” In interested in westward expansion. First, gentlemen
1765, American resistance to the Stamp Act had who had invested in numerous land speculation com-
sparked a parliamentary debate; in 1768, it provoked a panies were petitioning the crown for large land grants
plan for military coercion. in the Ohio country. Second, officers who served in
the Seven Years’ War were paid in
land warrants — up to 5,000 acres IDENTIFY CAUSES
The Problem of the West for field officers — and some, led What groups were most
At the same time that successive ministries addressed by George Washington, were interested in western
the problem of raising a colonial revenue, they quarreled exploring possible sites beyond lands, and why did
over how to manage the vast new inland territory — the Appalachians. Third, Indian Hillsborough oppose
about half a billion acres — acquired in the Treaty of traders who had received large them?
Paris in 1763 (see Chapter 4). The Proclamation Line grants from the Ohio Indians
had drawn a boundary between the colonies and hoped to sell land titles. And fourth, thousands of
Indian country. The line was originally intended squatters were following the roads cut to the Ohio by
as a temporary barrier. It prohibited settlement “for the Braddock and Forbes campaigns during the Seven
the present, and until our further Pleasure be known.” Years’ War to take up lands in the hope that they could
The Proclamation also created three new mainland later receive a title to them. “The roads are . . . alive
colonies — Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida — with Men, Women, Children, and Cattle from Jersey,
and thus opened new opportunities at the northern Pennsylvania, and Maryland,” wrote one astonished
and southern extremities of British North America. observer (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 164).
But many colonists looked west rather than north All of this activity antagonized the Ohio Indians. In
or south. Four groups in the colonies were especially 1770, Shawnees invited hundreds of Indian leaders to
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Though the Royal Proclamation of 1763 called the territory between the Appa-
Beyond the lachian Mountains and the Mississippi River “Indian country,” the reality was
more complex than this phrase indicates. The following documents illustrate
Proclamation Line some of the patterns that shaped life beyond the Proclamation Line between
1763 and 1776.
1. Colonel John Bradstreet’s Thoughts on Indian 3. “Indians Giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquet,”
Affairs, 1764. Colonel John Bradstreet led a force 1766. Based on a painting by Benjamin West, this
of British redcoats to Fort Niagara in response to engraving from a book about Bouquet’s campaign
Pontiac’s Rebellion. He drafted these remarks to the Ohio following Pontiac’s Rebellion depicts
shortly afterward. a meeting with Delaware, Seneca, and Shawnee
Of all the Savages upon the continent, the most knowing, representatives in October 1764.
the most intriguing, the less useful, and the greatest Vil-
lains, are those most conversant with the Europeans, and
deserve most the attention of Govern[men]t by way of
correction, and these are the Six Nations, Shawanese and
Delawares; they are well acquainted with the defenceless
state of the Inhabitants, who live on the Frontiers, and
think they will ever have it in their power to distress and
plunder them, and never cease raising the jealousy of the
Upper Nations against us, by propagating amongst them
such stories, as make them believe the English have noth-
ing so much at heart as the extirpation of all Savages. The
apparent design of the Six Nations, is to keep us at war
with all Savages, but themselves, that they may be
employed as mediators between us and them.
2. William Johnson to the British Lords of Trade, 1763.
William Johnson, a New Yorker with extensive
experience in Indian relations, was the crown’s
superintendent for Indian affairs in the northern Source: The Granger Collection, New York.
colonies.
[T]he Colonies, had all along neglected to cultivate a 4. David Jones’s journal, 1773. David Jones was a Bap-
proper understanding with the Indians, and from a tist minister who traveled down the Ohio River in
mistaken notion, have greatly dispised them, without 1772 and 1773. His journal offers a compelling
considering, that it is in their power at pleasure to lay glimpse of life in the valley’s trading communities.
waste and destroy the Frontiers. . . . Without any exag- FRIDAY [January] 22, in company with Mr. Irwine, set
eration, I look upon the Northern Indians to be the out for Chillicaathee. . . . Here Mr. Irwine kept an assort-
most formidable of any uncivilized body of people in ment of goods, and for that purpose rented an house from
the World. Hunting and War are their sole occupations, an Indian whose name is Waappee Monneeto, often called
and the one qualifies them for the other, they have few the White Devil. . . . Went to see Mr. Moses Henry a gun-
wants, and those are easily supplied, their properties smith and trader from Lancaster. This gentleman has
of little value, consequently, expeditions against them lived for some years in this town, and is lawfully married
however successful, cannot distress them, and they to a white woman, who was captivated so young that she
have courage sufficient for their manner of fighting, speaks the language as well as any Indian. . . . Mr. Henry
the nature and situation of their Countrys, require lives in a comfortable manner, having plenty of good beef,
not more. pork, milk, &c. … Chillicaathee is the chief town of the
Shawannee Indians — it is situated north of a large plain
164
adjacent to a branch of Paint Creek. This plain is their of the militia in Pittsburgh, was at the center of
corn-field, which supplies great part of their town. Their the controversy.
houses are made of logs. . . . Since the return of the Celebrated Doctor Connelly from
WEDNESDAY [February] 10. . . . This is a small town Virginia last to this place, which he did on the 28th of
consisting of Delawares and Shawanees. The chief is a March, our village is become the scene of anarchy and
Shawanee woman, who is esteemed very rich — she enter- Confusion. . . .
tains travelers — there were four of us in company, and for The Doctor now is in actual possession of the Fort,
our use, her negro quarter was evacuated this night, which with a Body Guard of Militia about him, Invested, as we
had a fire in the middle without any chimney. This woman are told, with both Civil & military power, to put the Vir-
has a large stock, and supplied us with milk. Here we also ginia Law in Force in these parts, and a considerable
got corn for our horses at a very expensive price. . . . Number of the Inhabitants of these back Parts of this
FRIDAY [February] 12 . . . We passed [the Delaware Country, Ready to join him on any emergency, every arti-
chief] Captain White Eye’s Town. . . . He told me that he fice are used to seduce the people, some by being promoted
intended to be religious, and have his children educated. to Civil or military employments, and others with the
He saw that their way of living would not answer much promises of grants of Lands, on easy Terms, & the giddy
longer — game grew scarce — they could not much longer headed mobs are so Infatuated as to suffer themselves to
pretend to live by hunting, but must farm, &c. — But said, be carried away by these Insinuating Delusions. . . .
he could not attend to matters of religion now, for he in- The Indians are greatly alarmed at seeing parties of
tended to make a great hunt down Ohio, and take the armed men patrolling through our streets Daily, not
skins himself to Philadelphia. knowing but there is hostility intended against them and
their country.
5. Killbuck to the governors of Pennsylvania, Mary-
land, and Virginia, December 1771. John Killbuck
Jr., or Gelelemend, a Delaware headman, aired Sources: (1, 2) E. B. O’Callaghan and Berthold Fernow, eds., Documents Relative to the
Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, 1856–1887), 7: 690–694, 574;
grievances on behalf of Ohio Delaware, Munsie, (4) David Jones, A Journal of Two Visits Made to Some Nations of Indians on the West
and Mahican Indians. Side of the River Ohio, in the Years 1772 and 1773 (Burlington, 1774 [rep. NY, 1971]);
(5) K. G. Davies, ed., Documents of the American Revolution, 1770–1783, 19 vols.
Great numbers more of your people have come over the (Shannon and Dublin, 1972–1981), 3: 254–255; (6) Samuel Hazard, ed., Pennsylvania
Great Mountains and settled throughout this country, and Archives, series 1, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: Joseph Severns & Co., 1856), 4: 484–486.
we are sorry to tell you, that several quarrels have hap-
pened between your people and ours, in which people
have been killed on both sides, and that we now see the ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
nations round us and your people ready to embroil in a 1. John Bradstreet, a career British army officer, based his
quarrel, which gives our nations great concerns, as we, on observations (source 1) on his wartime experiences in
the West. William Johnson (source 2) had lived in close
our parts, want to live in friendship with you. As you have proximity to Iroquois Indians for many years. Compare
always told us, you have laws to govern your people by, their views: what do they agree upon, and where do
-- but we do not see that you have; therefore, brethren, they differ?
unless you can fall upon some method of governing your 2. Charles Grignion’s engraving (source 3) appeared in print
a short time after Pontiac’s Rebellion. How does it por-
people who live between the Great Mountains and the
tray the Ohio Indians? Compare Grignion’s image with
Ohio River and who are now very numerous, it will be the descriptions in sources 1 and 2 and John Killbuck’s
out of the Indians’ power to govern their young men, for speech (source 5). What parallels or differences do you
we assure you the black clouds begin to gather fast in this see?
country. . . . We find your people are very fond of our rich 3. What do you find most surprising about source 4? What
evidence of European influence do you see in the Indian
land. We see them quarrelling every day about land and towns Jones describes?
burning one another’s houses, so that we do not know 4. Sources 5 and 6 describe the state of affairs on the upper
how soon they may come over the river Ohio and drive us Ohio shortly before the outbreak of Dunmore’s War.
from our villages, nor do we see you, brothers, take any What concerns does Killbuck express? Why was Virginia’s
willingness to organize a militia so important to the
care to stop them. residents of the region?
165
166 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
gather at the town of Chillicothe on the Scioto River. duties. However, North retained the tax on tea as a
There they formed the Scioto Confederacy, which symbol of Parliament’s supremacy (Figure 5.2).
pledged to oppose any further expansion into the Ohio
country. The Boston Massacre Even as Parliament was
Meanwhile, in London, the idea that the Procla- debating North’s repeal, events in Boston guaranteed
mation Line was only temporary gave way to the that reconciliation between Patriots and Parliament
view that it should be permanent. Hillsborough, who would be hard to achieve. Between 1,200 and 2,000
became colonial secretary in 1768, adamantly opposed troops had been stationed in Boston for a year and
westward expansion, believing it would antagonize a half. Soldiers were also stationed in New York,
the Indians without benefitting the empire. Moreover, Philadelphia, several towns in New Jersey, and various
he owned vast Irish estates, and he was alarmed by frontier outposts in these years, with a minimum of
the number of tenants who were leaving Ireland for conflict or violence. But in Boston — a small port town
America. To preserve Britain’s laboring class, as well on a tiny peninsula — the troops numbered 10 percent
as control costs, Hillsborough wanted to make the of the local population, and their presence wore on the
Proclamation Line permanent. locals. On the night of March 5, 1770, a group of nine
For colonists who were already moving west to British redcoats fired into a crowd and killed five
settle in large numbers, this shift in policy caused con- townspeople. A subsequent trial exonerated the sol-
fusion and frustration. Eventually, like the Patriots diers, but Boston’s Radical Whigs, convinced of a min-
along the seaboard, they would take matters into their isterial conspiracy against liberty, labeled the incident a
own hands. “massacre” and used it to rally sentiment against impe-
rial power.
FIGURE 5.2
Imports from Britain Exports to Britain (£, millions) Trade as a Political Weapon, 1763–1776
Boycott periods Political upheaval did not affect the
Credit crisis
4.5 mainland colonies’ exports to Britain,
4.0
Repeal of which rose slightly over the period, but
Townshend Act Tea Act imports fluctuated greatly. The American
3.5 Townshend Act boycott of 1765–1766 prompted a dip
3.0 Colonial in imports, but the second boycott of
Stamp Act
2.5 trade 1768–1770 led to a sharp drop in imports
deficit of British textiles, metal goods, and cer-
2.0 amics. Imports of manufactures soared
1.5 after the repeal of the Townshend duties,
only to plummet when the First Continen-
1.0
tal Congress proclaimed a third boycott
0.5 in 1774.
Patriot Propaganda
Silversmith Paul Revere issued this engraving of the confrontation between British redcoats and snowball-
throwing Bostonians in the days after it occurred. To whip up opposition to the military occupation of their
town, Revere and other Patriots labeled the incident “The Boston Massacre.” The shooting confirmed their
Radical Whig belief that “standing armies” were instruments of tyranny. Library of Congress.
were now “distinct and separate states” with “the same insisted on a policy of constitutional absolutism by
Head, or Sovereign, the King.” imposing taxes a third time, some Americans were
Franklin’s suggestion outraged Thomas Hutchin- prepared to pursue violent resistance. Nor did they
son, the American-born royal governor of Massa- flinch when reminded that George III condemned
chusetts. Hutchinson emphatically rejected the idea of their agitation. As the Massachusetts House replied to
“two independent legislatures in one and the same Hutchinson, “There is more rea-
state.” He told the Massachusetts assembly, “I know of son to dread the consequences TRACE CHANGE
no line that can be drawn between the supreme author- of absolute uncontrolled supreme OVER TIME
ity of Parliament and the total independence of the power, whether of a nation or a What was Benjamin
colonies.” monarch, than those of total inde- Franklin’s position on
colonial representation
There the matter rested. The British had twice pendence.” Fearful of civil war,
in 1765, and why had his
imposed revenue acts on the colonies, and American Lord North’s ministry hesitated to
view changed by 1770?
Patriots had twice forced a retreat. If Parliament force the issue.
168 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
In 1774, Parliament also passed the Quebec Act, British domination, were even more fearful of revolts
which allowed the practice of Roman Catholicism in by their predominantly African populations and there-
Quebec. This concession to Quebec’s predominantly fore declined to attend.
Catholic population reignited religious passions in The delegates who met in Philadelphia in September
New England, where Protestants associated Catholi- 1774 had different agendas. Southern representatives,
cism with arbitrary royal government. Because the act fearing a British plot “to overturn the constitution and
extended Quebec’s boundaries into the Ohio River introduce a system of arbitrary government,” advocated
Valley, it likewise angered influential land speculators a new economic boycott. Independence-minded repre-
in Virginia and Pennsylvania and ordinary settlers by sentatives from New England demanded political union
the thousands (Map 5.4). Although the ministry did and defensive military preparations. Many delegates
not intend the Quebec Act as a coercive measure, many from the Middle Atlantic colonies favored compromise.
colonists saw it as further proof of Parliament’s inten- Led by Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, these
tion to control American affairs. men of “loyal principles” proposed a new political sys-
tem similar to Benjamin Franklin’s proposal at the
Albany Congress of 1754: each colony would retain
The Continental Congress Responds its assembly to legislate on local matters, and a new
In response to the Coercive Acts, Patriot leaders con- continent-wide body would handle general American
vened a new continent-wide body, the Continental affairs. The king would appoint a president-general to
Congress. Twelve mainland colonies sent representa- preside over a legislative council selected by the colonial
tives. Four recently acquired colonies — Florida, Quebec, assemblies. Galloway’s plan failed by a single vote; a bare
Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland — refused to send majority thought it was too conciliatory (American
delegates, as did Georgia, where the royal governor Voices, p. 172).
controlled the legislature. The assemblies of Barbados, Instead, the delegates demanded the repeal of the
Jamaica, and the other sugar islands, although wary of Coercive Acts and stipulated that British control
170 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
MAP 5.4
50°
N
British Western Policy, 1763–1774
Gulf of The Proclamation of 1763 prohibited white
St. Lawrence
NY settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.
HUDSO
N ' S B AY C O M PA Louisbourg Nonetheless, Anglo-American settlers and
land speculators proposed the new colonies
Quebec of Vandalia and Transylvania to the west of
Virginia and North Carolina. The Quebec
(MASS.)
R.
ke Superior Montreal Port Royal Act of 1774 designated most western lands
ce
La
ren
as Indian reserves and vastly enlarged the
aw
N
L
La
k St.
E
boundaries of Quebec, dashing speculators’
gan
N.H.
hopes and eliminating the old sea-to-sea land
eH
(VIRGINIA) NEW
ichi
Boston W
uro
S
Albany CONN.
R.I. especially angered New England Protestants,
rie who condemned it for allowing French resi-
S PA N
MD. DEL.
(VIRGINIA) provide Quebec with a representative assembly.
0 150 300 miles
LOUIS
NORTH CAROLINA
British trading company
i R.
sipp
13 Colonies
SOUTH
s is
Charleston Spain
GEORGIA Quebec in 1763 30°N
Quebec in 1774
(CLAIMED BY SPAIN
AND GEORGIA) Proclamation Line of 1763
State boundaries including
western claims
Proposed western colonies
Gulf of Mexico 80°W 70°W
90°W
be limited to matters of trade. It also approved a pro- Lord Dartmouth’s proposal to send commissioners to
gram of economic retaliation: Americans would stop negotiate a settlement. Instead, Lord North set strin-
importing British goods in gent terms: Americans must pay for their own defense
COMPARE AND December 1774. If Parliament did and administration and acknowledge Parliament’s
CONTRAST not repeal the Coercive Acts by authority to tax them. To put teeth in these demands,
Why did Parliament prefer September 1775, the Congress North imposed a naval blockade on American trade
North’s solution to the vowed to cut off virtually all colo- with foreign nations and ordered General Gage to sup-
Boston Tea Party to nial exports to Britain, Ireland, press dissent in Massachusetts. “Now the case seemed
William Pitt’s? and the British West Indies. Ten desperate,” the prime minister told Thomas Hutchinson,
years of constitutional conflict whom the Patriots had forced into exile in London.
had culminated in a threat of all-out commercial “Parliament would not — could not — concede. For
warfare. aught he could see it must come to violence.”
A few British leaders still hoped for compromise. In
January 1775, William Pitt, now sitting in the House of
Lords as the Earl of Chatham, asked Parliament to The Rising of the Countryside
renounce its power to tax the colonies and to recog- The fate of the urban-led Patriot movement would
nize the Continental Congress as a lawful body. In depend on the colonies’ large rural population. Most
return, he suggested, the Congress should acknowledge farmers had little interest in imperial affairs. Their lives
parliamentary supremacy and provide a permanent were deeply rooted in the soil, and their prime alle-
source of revenue to help defray the national debt. giance was to family and community. But imperial pol-
The British ministry rejected Pitt’s plan. Twice it icies had increasingly intruded into the lives of farm
had backed down in the face of colonial resistance; a families by sending their sons to war and raising their
third retreat was impossible. Branding the Continental taxes. In 1754, farmers on Long Island, New York, had
Congress an illegal assembly, the ministry rejected paid an average tax of 10 shillings; by 1756, thanks to
CHAPTER 5 The Problem of Empire, 1763–1776 171
the Great War for Empire, their taxes had jumped to debts. By the 1770s, many northern yeomen felt per-
30 shillings. sonally threatened by British policies, which, a Patriot
pamphlet warned, were “paving the way for reducing
The Continental Association The boycotts of 1765 the country to lordships” (Table 5.3).
and 1768 raised the political consciousness of rural
Americans. When the First Continental Congress Southern Planters Fear Dependency Despite
established the Continental Association in 1774 to their higher standard of living, southern slave owners
enforce a third boycott of British goods, it quickly set had similar fears. Many Chesapeake planters were
up a rural network of committees to do its work. In deeply in debt to British merchants. Accustomed to
Concord, Massachusetts, 80 percent of the male heads being absolute masters on their slave-labor plantations
of families and a number of single women signed a and seeing themselves as guardians of English liberties,
“Solemn League and Covenant” supporting nonim- planters resented their financial dependence on British
portation. In other farm towns, men blacked their creditors and dreaded the prospect of political subser-
faces, disguised themselves in blankets “like Indians,” vience to British officials.
and threatened violence against shopkeepers who That danger now seemed real. If Parliament used
traded “in rum, molasses, & Sugar, &c.” in violation of the Coercive Acts to subdue Massachusetts, then it
the boycott. might turn next to Virginia, dissolving its representa-
Patriots likewise warned that British measures tive assembly and assisting British merchants to seize
threatened the yeoman tradition of landownership. In debt-burdened properties. Consequently, the Virginia
Petersham, Massachusetts, the town meeting worried gentry supported demands by indebted yeomen farm-
that new British taxes would drain “this People of the ers to close the law courts so that they could bargain
Fruits of their Toil.” Arable land was now scarce and with merchants over debts without the threat of legal
expensive in older communities, and in new settlements action. “The spark of liberty is not yet extinct among
merchants were seizing farmsteads for delinquent our people,” declared one planter, “and if properly
TABLE 5.3
Patriot Resistance, 1762–1776
Date British Action Patriot Response
1762 Revenue Act Merchants complain privately
1763 Proclamation Line Land speculators voice discontent
1764 Sugar Act Merchants and Massachusetts legislature
protest
1765 Stamp Act Sons of Liberty riot; Stamp Act Congress;
first boycott of British goods
1765 Quartering Act New York assembly refuses to fund
until 1767
1767–1768 Townshend Act; military occupation of Boston Second boycott of British goods; harassment
of pro-British merchants
1772 Royal commission to investigate Gaspée affair Committees of correspondence form
1773 Tea Act Widespread resistance; Boston Tea Party
1774 Coercive Acts; Quebec Act First Continental Congress; third boycott of
British goods
1775 British raids near Boston; king’s Proclamation Armed resistance; Second Continental
for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition Congress; invasion of Canada; cutoff of
colonial exports
1776 Military attacks led by royal governors in South Paine’s Common Sense; Declaration of
Independence
AMERICAN
VOICES
Speaking before the House of Commons, Benjamin Franklin declared that before
1763 Americans had paid little attention to the question of Parliament’s “right
The Debate over to lay taxes and duties” in the colonies. The reason was simple, Franklin said: “A
right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not
Representation and represented there.” Franklin recognized that representation was central to the
imperial debate. As the following selections show, the failure to solve the prob-
Sovereignty lem of representation, and the closely related issue of parliamentary sovereignty,
led to the American rebellion.
Jared Ingersoll British Empire are all represented in and by the house of
Report on the Debates in Parliament (1765) Commons, but this representation is confessedly on all
hands by Construction and Virtual [because most British
Connecticut lawyer Jared Ingersoll (1722–1781) served as subjects] . . . have no hand in choosing the
his colony’s agent, or lobbyist, in Britain. In this 1765 letter representatives. . . .
to the governor of Connecticut, Ingersoll summarizes the [They say further] that the Effects of this implied
debate then under way in Parliament over the Stamp Act. Representation here and in America must be infinitely
When the act passed, he returned home to become the different in the Article of Taxation. . . . By any Mistake an
stamp distributor in Connecticut. A mob forced him to act of Parliament is made that prove injurious and hard
resign that post. Ingersoll later served as a vice-admiralty the Member of Parliament here [in Britain] sees with
judge in Philadelphia and, during the Revolution, remained his own Eyes and is moreover very accessible to the
loyal to Britain. people. . . . [Also,] the taxes are laid equally by one Rule
The principal Attention has been to the Stamp bill that and fall as well on the Member himself as on the people.
has been preparing to Lay before Parliament for taxing But as to America, from the great distance in point of
America. The Point of the Authority of Parliament to Situation [they are not represented in the same way]. . . .
impose such Tax I found on my Arrival here was so fully [Finally, the opponents of the Act say] we already
and Universally yielded [accepted], that there was not the by the Regulations upon their trade draw from the
least hopes of making any impressions that way. . . . Americans all that they can spare. . . . This Step [of taxa-
I beg leave to give you a Summary of the Arguments tion] should not take place until or unless the Americans
which are made use of in favour of such Authority. The are allowed to send Members to Parliament.
House of Commons, say they, is a branch of the supreme Thus I have given you, I think, the Substance of the
legislature of the Nation, and which in its Nature is sup- Arguments on both sides of that great and important
posed to represent, or rather to stand in the place of, the Question of the right and also of the Expediency of taxing
Commons, that is, of the great body of the people. . . . America by Authority of Parliament. . . . [But] upon a
That this house of Commons, therefore, is now . . . a Division of the house upon the Question, there was about
part of the Supreme unlimited power of the Nation, as in 250 to about 50 in favour of the Bill.
every State there must be some unlimited Power and
Authority. . . . Source: New Haven Colony Historical Society, Papers (1918), 9: 306–315.
172
on Galloway’s plan and suppressed mention of it in the The Plan
records. Galloway remained loyal to the crown, fought on That the several [colonial] assemblies shall [form an
the British side in the War for Independence, and moved American union and] choose members for the grand
to England in 1778. council. . . .
If we sincerely mean to accommodate the difference That the Grand Council . . . shall hold and exercise
between the two countries, . . . we must take into consid- all the like rights, liberties and privileges, as are held and
eration a number of facts which led the Parliament to pass exercised by and in the House of Commons of
the acts complained of. . . . [You will recall] the dangerous Great-Britain. . . .
situation of the Colonies from the intrigues of France, and That the President-General shall hold his office during
the incursions of the Canadians and their Indian allies, at the pleasure of the King, and his assent shall be requisite
the commencement of the last war. . . . Great-Britain sent to all acts of the Grand Council, and it shall be his office
over her fleets and armies for their protection. . . . and duty to cause them to be carried into execution. . . .
In this state of the Colonies, it was not unreasonable That the President-General, by and with the advice
to expect that Parliament would have levied a tax on them and consent of the Grand-Council, hold and exercise all
proportionate to their wealth, . . . Parliament was natu- the legislative rights, powers, and authorities, necessary
rally led to exercise the power which had been, by its for regulating and administering all the general police
predecessors, so often exercised over the Colonies, and to and affairs of the colonies. . . .
pass the Stamp Act. Against this act, the Colonies peti- That the said President-General and the Grand
tioned Parliament, and denied its authority . . . [declaring] Council, be an inferior and distinct branch of the British
that the Colonies could not be represented in that body. legislature, united and incorporated with it, . . . and that
This justly alarmed the British Senate. It was thought and the assent of both [Parliament and the Grand Council]
called by the ablest men [in] Britain, a clear and explicit shall be requisite to the validity of all such general acts or
declaration of the American Independence, and com- statutes [that affect the colonies].
pelled the Parliament to pass the Declaratory Act, in
Source: Joseph Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of
order to save its ancient and incontrovertible right of the American Rebellion (London, 1780), 70.
supremacy over all the parts of the empire. . . .
Having thus briefly stated the arguments in favour
of parliamentary authority, . . . I am free to confess that
the exercise of that authority is not perfectly constitu-
tional in respect to the Colonies. We know that the
whole landed interest of Britain is represented in that
body, while neither the land nor the people of America
hold the least participation in the legislative authority of QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
the State. . . . Representation, or a participation in the 1. According to Ingersoll, what were the main arguments
supreme councils of the State, is the great principle upon of those in Parliament who opposed the Stamp Act?
which the freedom of the British Government is estab- Did those opposing the Stamp Act agree with the act’s
supporters that Parliament had the right to tax the
lished and secured. colonies?
I wish to see . . . the right to participate in the 2. How did Galloway’s plan solve the problem of colonial
supreme councils of the State extended, in some representation in Parliament? How would the British
form . . . to America . . . [and therefore] have prepared ministers who advocated parliamentary supremacy have
reacted to the plan?
the draught of a plan for uniting America more inti-
3. The framers of the U.S. Constitution addressed the prob-
mately, in constitutional policy, with Great-Britain. . . . lem of dividing authority between state governments
I am certain when dispassionately considered, it will be and the national government by allowing the states to
found to be the most perfect union in power and lib- retain legal authority over most matters and delegating
erty with the Parent State, next to a representation in limited powers to the national government. Could such
a solution have been implemented in the British Empire?
Parliament, and I trust it will be approved of by both Why or why not?
countries.
173
174 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
fanned by the Gentlemen of influence will, I make no colonists — were loyal to the crown. Some managed to
doubt, burst out again into a flame.” avoid persecution, but many were pressured by their
neighbors to join the boycotts and subjected to vio-
lence and humiliation if they refused. As Patriots took
Loyalists and Neutrals over the reins of local government throughout the
Yet in many places, the Patriot movement was a colonies, Loyalists were driven out of their homes or
hard sell. In Virginia, Patriot leaders were nearly all forced into silence. At this crucial juncture, Patriots
wealthy planters, and many of their poorer neighbors commanded the allegiance, or at least the acquies-
regarded the movement with suspicion. In regions cence, of the majority of white Americans.
where great landowners became Patriots — the Hudson
River Valley of New York, for example — many tenant
farmers supported the king because they hated their
landlords. Similar social conflicts prompted some
Violence East and West
Regulators in the North Carolina backcountry and By 1774, British authority was wavering. At the head-
many farmers in eastern Maryland to oppose the waters of the Ohio, the abandonment of Fort Pitt left a
Patriots there. power vacuum that was filled by opportunistic men,
There were many reasons to resist the Patriot move- led by a royally appointed governor acting in defiance
ment. Skeptics believed that Patriot leaders were sub- of his commission. In Massachusetts, the attempt to
verting British rule only to advance their own selfish isolate and punish Boston and the surrounding coun-
interests. Peter Oliver wrote of Samuel Adams, for tryside backfired as Patriots resisted military coercion.
example, “He was so thorough a Machiavilian, that he Violence resulted in both places, and with it the col-
divested himself of every worthy Principle, & would lapse of imperial control.
stick at no Crime to accomplish his Ends.” Some
“Gentlemen of influence” worried that resistance to
Britain would undermine all political institutions and Lord Dunmore’s War
“introduce Anarchy and disorder and render life and In the years since the end of Pontiac’s Rebellion, at least
property here precarious.” Their fears increased when 10,000 people had traveled along Braddock’s and
the Sons of Liberty used intimidation and violence to Forbes’s Roads to the headwaters of the Ohio River,
uphold the boycotts. One well-to-do New Yorker com- where Fort Pitt had replaced Fort Duquesne during the
plained, “No man can be in a more abject state of bond- Great War for Empire, and staked claims to land
age than he whose Reputation, Property and Life are around Pittsburgh (Map 5.5). They relied for protec-
exposed to the discretionary violence . . . of the com- tion on Fort Pitt, which remained one of Britain’s most
munity.” As the crisis deepened, such men became important frontier outposts. But the revenue crisis
Loyalists — so called because they remained loyal to forced General Gage to cut expenses, and in October
the British crown. 1772, the army pulled down the fort’s log walls and left
Many other colonists simply hoped to stay out of the site to the local population. Settler relations with
the fray. Some did so on principle: in New Jersey and the neighboring Ohio Indians were tenuous and ill-
Pennsylvania, thousands of pacifist Quakers and defined, and the fort’s abandonment left them exposed
Germans resisted conscription and violence out of reli- and vulnerable.
gious conviction. Others were ambivalent or confused In the ensuing power vacuum, Pennsylvania and
about the political crisis unfolding around them. The Virginia both claimed the region. Pennsylvania had the
delegate elected to New York’s Provincial Congress better claim on paper. It had organized county govern-
from Queen’s County, on Long Island, chose not to ments, established courts, and collected taxes there.
attend since “the people [he represented] seemed to be But — in keeping with its pacifist Quaker roots — it did
much inclined to remain peaceable and quiet.” More not organize a militia. In this decision, Virginia’s royal
than three-fourths of Queen’s County voters, in fact, governor, the Earl of Dunmore, recognized an oppor-
opposed sending any delegate at all. Many loyal or tunity. Appointed to his post in 1771, Dunmore was an
neutral colonists hoped, above all, to preserve their irascible and unscrupulous man who clashed repeat-
families’ property and independence, whatever the edly with the House of Burgesses. But when it suited
outcome of the imperial crisis. him, he was just as willing to defy the crown. In 1773,
Historians estimate that some 15 to 20 percent of he traveled to Pittsburgh, where, he later wrote, “the
the white population — perhaps as many as 400,000 people flocked about me and beseeched me . . . to
CHAPTER 5 The Problem of Empire, 1763–1776 175
De
Fort
surrounding countryside, while the
la
Presque Isle
wa
Fort Detroit ie
Er
Indian communities on the upper CA
re R.
ke Fort
La NE
.
yR
Le Boeuf
Ohio increasingly feared colonist POTAWATOMI SE
Allegh n
e
aggression. Their fears were realized Fort Venango
.
in the summer of 1774, when Lord eR
Susqueh
E
me WYA Fort Sandusky
AR
u
Dunmore led a force of Virginia mili- Ma NDO
W
T
LA
Fort Pitt an Philadelphia
tia into the valley. After defeating a na
DE
Fort Miami R.
Shawnee force in the Battle of Point
GO
Mu
IN
Pleasant, many Virginians began sur- Po
a R.
M
o R.
Delaware
ski
MIAMI to
veying and staking claims to land in m
Scio
Bay
ng
ahel
mi R.
ac
Ohi
um
R
the Kentucky bluegrass. In the summer
to
.
Monong
.
R.
R
Mia
of 1775, perhaps a dozen new towns SHAWNEE
Che
were settled there, in violation of the
sap
Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the
eak
Braddock’s Road
e
Quebec Act of 1774. Forbes’ Road
Bay
Ohio R.
0 50 100 miles
Lexington
0 50 100 kilometers
Boonesborough
appoint magistrates and officers of militia.” He orga- in nearby Charlestown and Cambridge. An army of
nized a local militia; soon, men armed by Virginia were 20,000 militiamen quickly mobilized to safeguard
drilling near the ruins of Fort Pitt. other Massachusetts military depots. The Concord
In the summer of 1774, Dunmore took the next town meeting raised a defensive force, the famous
step. In defiance of both his royal instructions and the Minutemen, to “Stand at a minutes warning in Case
House of Burgesses, he called out Virginia’s militia and of alarm.” Increasingly, Gage’s authority was limited to
led a force of 2,400 men against the Ohio Shawnees, Boston, where it rested on the bayonets of his 3,500
who had a long-standing claim to Kentucky as a hunt- troops. Meanwhile, the Patriot-controlled Massachu-
ing ground. They fought a single battle, at Point Pleasant; setts assembly met in nearby Salem in open defiance of
the Shawnees were defeated, and Dunmore and his mili- Parliament, collecting taxes, bolstering the militia, and
tia forces claimed Kentucky as their own. A participant assuming the responsibilities of government.
justified his actions shortly afterward: “When without a In London, the colonial secretary, Lord Dartmouth,
king,” he wrote, “[one] doeth according to the freedom proclaimed Massachusetts to be in “open rebellion”
of his own will.” Years of neglect left many colonists in and ordered Gage to march
the backcountry feeling abandoned by the crown. against the “rude rabble.” On the PLACE EVENTS
Dunmore’s War was their declaration of independence. night of April 18, 1775, Gage dis- IN CONTEXT
patched 700 soldiers to capture What led to Dunmore’s
colonial leaders and supplies at War, and why did western
Armed Resistance in Massachusetts Concord. However, Paul Revere settlers support it?
Meanwhile, as the Continental Congress gathered in and a series of other riders warned
Philadelphia in September 1774, Massachusetts was Patriots in many towns, and at dawn, militiamen con-
also defying British authority. In August, a Middlesex fronted the British regulars first at Lexington and then
County Congress had urged Patriots to close the exist- at Concord. Those first skirmishes took a handful of
ing royal courts and to transfer their political allegiance lives, but as the British retreated to Boston, militia from
to the popularly elected House of Representatives. neighboring towns repeatedly ambushed them. By the
Subsequently, armed crowds harassed Loyalists and end of the day, 73 British soldiers were dead, 174
ensured Patriot rule in most of New England. wounded, and 26 missing. British fire had killed 49
In response, General Thomas Gage, now the mili- Massachusetts militiamen and wounded 39. Twelve
tary governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops years of economic and constitutional conflict had
in Boston in September 1774 to seize Patriot armories ended in violence.
176 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Sedition.
Before the king’s proclamation reached America,
the radicals in the Congress had won support for an Queen’s Own Loyal Virginians; and one black, the
invasion of Canada to prevent a British attack from the Ethiopian Regiment, which enlisted 1,000 slaves who
north. Patriot forces easily defeated the British at had fled their Patriot owners. In November 1775,
Montreal; but in December 1775, Dunmore issued a controversial proclamation promis-
EXPLAIN they failed to capture Quebec ing freedom to black slaves and white indentured
CONSEQUENCES City and withdrew. Meanwhile, servants who joined the Loyalist cause. White plant-
How did the violence American merchants waged the ers denounced this “Diabolical scheme,” claiming it
around Boston in the financial warfare promised at the “point[ed] a dagger to their Throats.” A new rising
spring of 1775 affect First Continental Congress by cut- of the black and white underclasses, as in Bacon’s
proceedings in the Second ting off exports to Britain and its Rebellion in the 1670s, seemed a possibility. In Fincastle
Continental Congress? West Indian sugar islands. Parlia- County in southwestern Virginia, Loyalist planter John
ment retaliated with the Prohib- Hiell urged workers to support the king, promising “a
itory Act, which outlawed all trade with the rebellious Servant man” that soon “he and all the negroes would
colonies. get their freedom.” Frightened by Dunmore’s aggres-
sive tactics, Patriot yeomen and tenants called for a
Fighting in the South Skirmishes between Patriot final break with Britain.
and Loyalist forces now broke out in the southern col- In North Carolina, too, military clashes prompted
onies. In Virginia, Patriots ousted Governor Dunmore demands for independence. Early in 1776, Josiah
and forced him to take refuge on a British warship in Martin, the colony’s royal governor, raised a Loyalist
Chesapeake Bay. Branding the rebels “traitors,” the force of 1,500 Scottish Highlanders in the backcountry.
governor organized two military forces: one white, the In response, Patriots mobilized the lowcountry militia
CHAPTER 5 The Problem of Empire, 1763–1776 177
and, in February, defeated Martin’s army at the Battle would include the Kentucky settlements. They had
of Moore’s Creek Bridge, capturing more than 800 “Fought and bled” for the land in Dunmore’s War and
Highlanders. Following this victory, radical Patriots in now wanted to fight against the crown and its Indian
the North Carolina assembly told its representatives to allies in the Ohio country. Virginia agreed: in 1776, it
the Continental Congress to join with “other Colonies organized six new frontier counties and sent arms
in declaring Independence, and forming foreign alli- and ammunition to Kentucky. In July, the Continental
ances.” In May, the Virginia gentry followed suit: led Congress followed suit, dispatching troops and arms to
by James Madison, Edmund Pendleton, and Patrick the Ohio River as well.
Henry, the Patriots met in convention and resolved
unanimously to support independence.
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
Occupying Kentucky Beginning in the spring of As military conflicts escalated, Americans were divided
1775, in the wake of Dunmore’s War, independent par- in their opinions of King George III. Many blamed
ties of adventurers began to occupy the newly won him for supporting oppressive legislation and ordering
lands of Kentucky. Daniel Boone led one group to the armed retaliation, but other influential colonists held
banks of the Kentucky River, where they established out the hope that he might mediate their conflict with
the town of Boonesborough; nearby was Lexington, Parliament. John Dickinson, whose Letters did so
named in honor of the Massachusetts town that much to arouse Patriot resistance in 1768, nevertheless
had resisted the redcoats a few months earlier. The believed that war with Great Britain would be folly. In
Shawnees and other Ohio Indians opposed the settlers, July 1775, he persuaded Congress to send George III
and colonists built their tiny towns in the form of the Olive Branch Petition, which pleaded with the
stations to protect themselves — groups of cabins con- king to negotiate. John Adams, a staunch supporter
nected by palisades to form small forts. of independence, was infuriated by Dickinson’s
These western settlers had confused political loyal- waffling. But Dickinson had many supporters, both
ties. Many had marched under Dunmore and hoped to inside and outside of Congress. For example, many of
receive recognition for their claims from the crown. Philadelphia’s Quaker and Anglican merchants were
But as the rebellion unfolded, most recognized that the neutrals or Loyalists. In response to their passivity,
Patriots’ emphasis on liberty and equality squared with Patriot artisans in the city organized a Mechanics’
their view of the world. They soon petitioned Virginia’s Association to protect America’s “just Rights and
rebel government, asking it to create a new county that Privileges.”
With popular sentiment in flux, a single brief pam- thousands.” Paine urged Americans to create indepen-
phlet helped tip the balance. In January 1776, Thomas dent republican states: “A government of our own is
Paine published Common Sense, a rousing call for inde- our natural right, ’tis time to part.”
pendence and a republican form of government. Paine
had served as a minor customs official in England until
he was fired for joining a protest against low wages. In Independence Declared
1774, Paine migrated to Philadelphia, where he met Inspired by Paine’s arguments and beset by armed
Benjamin Rush and other Patriots who shared his Loyalists, Patriot conventions urged a break from
republican sentiments. Britain. In June 1776, Richard Henry Lee presented
In Common Sense, Paine assaulted the traditional Virginia’s resolution to the Continental Congress:
monarchical order in stirring language. “Monarchy “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to
and hereditary succession have laid the world in blood be, free and independent states.” Faced with certain
and ashes,” Paine proclaimed, leveling a personal attack defeat, staunch Loyalists and anti-independence mod-
at George III, “the hard hearted sullen Pharaoh of erates withdrew from the Congress, leaving committed
England.” Mixing insults with biblical quotations, Patriots to take the fateful step. On July 4, 1776, the
Paine blasted the British system of “mixed govern- Congress approved the Declaration of Independence
ment” that balanced power among the three estates of (see Documents, p. D-1).
king, lords, and commoners. Paine granted that the The Declaration’s main author, Thomas Jefferson
system “was noble for the dark and slavish times” of the of Virginia, had mobilized resistance to the Coercive
past, but now it yielded only “monarchical tyranny Acts with the pamphlet A Summary View of the Rights
in the person of the king” and “aristocratical tyranny in of British America (1774). Now, in the Declaration, he
the persons of the peers.” justified independence and republicanism to Ameri-
Paine argued for American independence by turn- cans and the world by vilifying George III: “He has
ing the traditional metaphor of patriarchal authority plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our
on its head: “Is it the interest of a man to be a boy all his towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” Such a
life?” he asked. Within six months, Common Sense prince was a “tyrant,” Jefferson concluded, and “is unfit
had gone through twenty-five editions and reached to be the ruler of a free people.”
hundreds of thousands of people. “There is great talk of Employing the ideas of the European Enlighten-
independence,” a worried New York Loyalist noted, ment, Jefferson proclaimed a series of “self-evident”
“the unthinking multitude are mad for it. . . . A truths: “that all men are created equal”; that they possess
pamphlet called Common Sense has carried off . . . the “unalienable rights” of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit
Independence Declared
In this painting by John Trumbull,
Thomas Jefferson and the other
drafters of the Declaration (John
Adams of Massachusetts, Roger
Sherman of Connecticut, Robert
Livingston of New York, and
Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania)
present the document to John
Hancock, the president of the Second
Continental Congress. One Patriot
observer reported that when the
Declaration was read at a public
meeting in New York City on July 10,
a massive statue of George III was
“pulled down by the Populace” and
its 4,000 pounds of lead melted
down to make “Musquet balls” for
use against the British troops massed
on Staten Island. Yale University Art
Gallery/Art Resource, NY.
CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER REVIEW 179
of Happiness”; that government derives its “just powers for Empire discussed in Chapter 4, prompted British
from the consent of the governed” and can rightly be political leaders to implement a program of imperial
overthrown if it “becomes destructive of these ends.” By reform and taxation. Act II, discussed in this chapter, is
linking these doctrines of individual liberty, popular full of dramatic action, as colonial mobs riot, colonists
sovereignty (the principle that ultimate power lies in chafe against restrictions on western lands, Patriot
the hands of the electorate), and republican government pamphleteers articulate ideologies of resistance, and
with American independence, Jefferson established British ministers search for compromise between
them as the defining political values of the new nation. claims of parliamentary sovereignty and assertions of
For Jefferson, as for Paine, the pen proved mightier colonial autonomy. Act III takes the form of tragedy:
than the sword. The Declaration won wide support in the once-proud British Empire dissolves into civil war,
France and Germany; at home, it sparked celebrations an imminent nightmare of death and destruction.
in rural hamlets and seaport cities, as crowds burned Why did this happen? More than two centuries
effigies and toppled statues of the king. On July 8, 1776, later, the answers still are not clear. Certainly, the lack
in Easton, Pennsylvania, a “great number of spectators” of astute leadership in Britain was a major factor. But
heard a reading of the Declaration, “gave their hearty British leaders faced circumstances that limited their
assent with three loud huzzahs, and cried out, ‘May actions: a huge national debt and deep commitments
God long preserve and unite the Free and Independent to both a powerful fiscal-military state and the abso-
States of America.’ ” lute supremacy of Parliament. Moreover, in America,
decades of salutary neglect strengthened Patriots’
demands for political autonomy and economic oppor-
SUMMARY tunity. Artisans, farmers, and aspiring western settlers
all feared an oppressive new era in imperial relations.
Chapters 4 and 5 have focused on a short span of The trajectories of their conflicting intentions and
time — a mere two decades — and outlined the plot of ideas placed Britain and its American possessions on
a political drama. Act I of that drama, the Great War course for a disastrous and fatal collision.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. As British administrators sought to increase colo- 3. What compromises were proposed in the colonies
nial revenues and tighten administrative control, as alternatives to independence? Why did Patriots
what might have led them to pursue a less confron- reject them?
tational course with the colonies? What factors do
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Consider the
you think are most important in explaining the fail-
events listed under “Work, Exchange, and Technol-
ure of compromise?
ogy” and “Politics and Power” for the period 1763–
2. What kinds of provocation caused colonists to riot 1776 on the thematic timeline on page 149. How
or otherwise act directly, even violently, in defense important were the linkages between economic
of their interests? How did common law, developments and political ones in these years?
Enlightenment, and republican ideas shape their
thinking as they took action?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Chapter 4 pre- 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Return to the Paul Revere
sented a turbulent era, marked by social and cul- engraving of the Boston Massacre on page 167.
tural conflict and imperial warfare, during which This image was an instrument of political propa-
the regions of British North America were dispa- ganda. What features of the image are most impor-
rate and without unity. Yet by 1776 — only thirteen tant to its political purpose? Consider his depiction
years after the Treaty of Paris ending the Great War of both the soldiers and the townspeople. Look,
for Empire — thirteen of Britain’s mainland colo- too, at the buildings surrounding the crowd, espe-
nies were prepared to unite in a Declaration of cially the Custom House on the right. List the ways
Independence. What happened in that intervening in which Revere invokes the idea of tyranny in this
time to strengthen and deepen colonists’ sense of image.
common cause? As they drew together to resist
imperial authority, what political and cultural
resources did they have in common?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles (2011). A compelling
Global History (2007). Traces the international impact narrative of Loyalist experiences in the Revolution.
of the Declaration.
Andrew O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America
Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole, eds., A Companion to the (2013). A British view of the crisis.
American Revolution (2000). A useful compendium of
Liberty! The American Revolution (PBS video) and its
short essays on topics related to the Revolution.
companion Web site: pbs.org/ktca/liberty/. A useful
Woody Holton, Forced Founders (1999). Considers the overview of the Revolutionary movement.
coming of the Revolution in Virginia.
CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER REVIEW 181
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t Boston Massacre
t Declaration of Independence
KEY TURNING POINTS: The Boston Tea Party (1773), the Coercive Acts (1774), and the first
Continental Congress (1774). What did Parliament hope to achieve with the Coercive Acts?
How did the decision to convene a continent-wide congress demonstrate the failure of Parlia-
ment’s efforts?
Making War and
6
C H A P T E R
Republican Governments
1776–1789
W
THE TRIALS OF WAR, hen Patriots in Frederick
1776–1778 County, Maryland, demanded IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
War in the North his allegiance to their cause in How revolutionary was the Amer-
Armies and Strategies 1776, Robert Gassaway would have none ican Revolution? What political,
Victory at Saratoga of it. “It was better for the poor people to social, and economic changes did it
The Perils of War lay down their arms and pay the duties produce, and what stayed the same?
Financial Crisis and taxes laid upon them by King and Par-
Valley Forge liament than to be brought into slavery and commanded and ordered about [by you],”
he told them. The story was much the same in Farmington, Connecticut, where Patriot
THE PATH TO VICTORY, officials imprisoned Nathaniel Jones and seventeen other men for “remaining neutral.”
1778–1783 In Pennsylvania, Quakers accused of Loyalism were rounded up, jailed, and charged
The French Alliance with treason, and some were hanged for aiding the British cause. Everywhere, the out-
War in the South break of fighting in 1776 forced families to choose the Loyalist or the Patriot side.
The Patriot Advantage The Patriots’ control of most local governments gave them an edge in this battle.
Diplomatic Triumph Patriot leaders organized militia units and recruited volunteers for the Continental army,
a ragtag force that surprisingly held its own on the battlefield. “I admire the American
CREATING REPUBLICAN
troops tremendously!” exclaimed a French officer. “It is incredible that soldiers com-
INSTITUTIONS,
1776–1787 posed of every age, even children of fifteen, of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid,
The State Constitutions: How and rather poorly fed, can march so well and withstand fire so steadfastly.”
Much Democracy? Military service created political commitment, and vice versa. Many Patriot leaders
Women Seek a Public Voice encouraged Americans not only to support the war but also to take an active role in
The War’s Losers: Loyalists, government. As more people did so, their political identities changed. Previously, Ameri-
Native Americans, and Slaves cans had lived within a social world dominated by the links of family, kinship, and locality.
The Articles of Confederation Now, the abstract bonds of citizenship connected them directly to more distant institu-
Shays’s Rebellion tions of government. “From subjects to citizens the difference is immense,” remarked
South Carolina Patriot David Ramsay. By repudiating monarchical rule and raising a
THE CONSTITUTION democratic army, the Patriots launched the age of republican revolutions.
OF 1787 Soon republicanism would throw France into turmoil and inspire revolutionaries in
The Rise of a Nationalist Faction Spain’s American colonies. The independence of the Anglo-American colonies, remarked
The Philadelphia Convention the Venezuelan political leader Francisco de Miranda, who had been in New York and
The People Debate Ratification Philadelphia at the end of the American Revolution, “was bound to be . . . the infallible
preliminary to our own [independence movement].” The Patriot uprising of 1776 set in
motion a process that gradually replaced an Atlantic colonial system that spanned the
Americas with an American system of new nations.
182
General Washington, 1780 By war’s end, George Washington was a hero on both sides of the
Atlantic. This engraving, printed in Paris in 1780, shows him with various British bills and declarations in
tatters at his feet while he holds copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Alliance
with France. In the background of this vaguely Orientalized scene, a black slave — presumably William
Lee, Washington’s valet and constant companion during the Revolution — saddles his horse. Anne S. K. Brown
Military Collection, Brown University Library.
183
184 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
American forces
Montreal
1777
British forces
Fort St. John
American victory
Lake BR ITIS H CANADA nce R.
Burgoyne
British victory re r VERMONT MAINE
Huron aw ge
t . L t. Le
S S
R.
Fort Ticonderoga
ut
Connectic
Lake Ontario Fort Burgoyne NEW
Fort
Stanwix surrenders
Oswego
Saratoga HAMPSHIRE
Oct. 17
Oriskany Bennington
0 15 30 miles
1776 Aug. 6
Albany
Aug.15
n R.
Fort
0 MASS.
c R.
15 30 kilometers Herkimer
Hu ds o
NEW YORK
Housatoni
Kingston
Oct. 15
CONN. R.I.
Hudso n R.
Fort Montgomery
Oct. 6
NEW YORK CONN. West
R. Point
R.
a
nn
Delaware
a
eh
PENNSYLVANIA Su s
qu NEW New York
JERSEY
Germantown
Oct. 4 N
Brandywine Creek
R.
Sept. 11 Philadelphia
E
re
W
wa
e NEW
D Oct. 28–Nov. 1 S
JERSEY Fort Lee
DEL.
Harlem
Morristown Heights
Long Island
ATLANTIC
we
OCEAN
Ho
Aug. 27–30
Chesapeake
Bay
Princeton
Jan. 3, 1777
ATLANTIC
Trenton OCEAN 0 50 100 miles
Dec. 26, 1776
0 50 100 kilometers
MAP 6.2
The War in the North, 1776–1777
In 1776, the British army drove Washington’s forces across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. The
Americans counterattacked successfully at Trenton and Princeton and then set up winter
headquarters in Morristown. In 1777, British forces stayed on the offensive. General Howe
attacked the Patriot capital, Philadelphia, from the south and captured it in early October.
Meanwhile, General Burgoyne and Colonel St. Leger launched simultaneous invasions from
Canada. With the help of thousands of New England militiamen, American troops commanded
by General Horatio Gates defeated Burgoyne in August at Bennington, Vermont, and in October
at Saratoga, New York, the military turning point in the war.
not mask British military superiority. “These are the Congress to give up the struggle. Howe’s restrained tac-
times,” wrote Thomas Paine, “that try men’s souls.” tics cost Britain the opportunity to nip the rebellion in
the bud. For his part, Washington acted cautiously to
avoid a major defeat: “On our Side the War should be
Armies and Strategies defensive,” he told Congress. His strategy was to draw
Thanks in part to General Howe, the rebellion sur- the British away from the seacoast, extend their lines of
vived. Howe had opposed the Coercive Acts of 1774 supply, and sap their morale.
and still hoped for a political compromise. So he did Congress had promised Washington a regular force
not try to destroy the American army but instead tried of 75,000 men, but the Continental army never reached
to show its weakness and persuade the Continental even a third of that number. Yeomen, refusing to be
186 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
“Haras’d with callouts” that took them away from their their officers had for the “camp followers,” the women
families and farms, would serve only in local militias. who made do with the meager supplies provided to
When the Virginia gentry imposed a military draft and feed and care for the troops. General Philip Schuyler of
three years of service on propertyless men — the “Lazy New York complained that his troops were “destitute of
fellows who lurk about and are pests to Society” — they provisions, without camp equipage, with little ammu-
resisted so fiercely that the legislature had to pay them nition, and not a single piece of cannon.”
substantial bounties and agree to The Continental army was not only poorly sup-
IDENTIFY CAUSES shorter terms of service. The plied but was also held in suspicion by Radical Whig
What factors made it dif- Continental soldiers recruited in Patriots, who believed that a standing army was a threat
ficult for the Continental Maryland by General William to liberty. Even in wartime, they preferred militias to a
Congress to create an Smallwood were poor American professional fighting force. Given these handicaps,
effective army? youths and older foreign-born Washington and his army were fortunate to have
men, often British ex-convicts escaped an overwhelming defeat.
and former indentured servants. Most enlisted for the
$20 cash bonus (about $2,000 today) and the promise
of 100 acres of land. Victory at Saratoga
Molding such recruits into an effective fighting After Howe failed to achieve an overwhelming victory,
force was nearly impossible. Inexperienced soldiers Lord North and his colonial secretary, Lord George
panicked in the face of British attacks; thousands Germain, launched another major military campaign
deserted, unwilling to submit to the discipline of mili- in 1777. Isolating New England remained the primary
tary life. The soldiers who stayed resented the contempt goal. To achieve it, Germain planned a three-pronged
CHAPTER 6 Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789 187
Paper Currency
Testifying to their independent status, the new state
governments printed their own currencies. Rejecting the
English system of pounds and shillings, Virginia used the
Spanish gold dollar as its basic unit of currency, although
the equivalent in English pounds is also shown. Initially,
$1,200 was equal to £360 — a ratio of 3.3 to 1. By
1781, Virginia had printed so much paper money to
pay its soldiers and wartime expenses that the value
of its currency had depreciated. It now took $40 in
Virginia currency to buy the same amount of goods as
£1 sterling. The American Numismatic Society.
1779, 100 to 1 in 1780, and 146 to 1 in 1781 — it sparked Continental army, he instituted a strict drill system and
social upheaval. In Boston, a mob of women accosted encouraged officers to become more professional.
merchant Thomas Boyleston, “seazd him by his Neck,” Thanks to von Steuben, the smaller army that emerged
and forced him to sell his wares at traditional prices. In from Valley Forge in the spring of 1778 was a much
rural Ulster County, New York, women told the com- tougher and better-disciplined force.
mittee of safety to lower food prices or “their husbands
and sons shall fight no more.” As morale crumbled,
Patriot leaders feared the rebellion would collapse.
The Path to Victory,
Valley Forge 1778–1783
Fears reached their peak during the winter of 1777. Wars are often won by astute diplomacy, and so it was
While Howe’s army lived comfortably in Philadelphia, with the War of Independence. The Patriots’ prospects
Washington’s army retreated 20 miles to Valley Forge, improved dramatically in 1778, when the Continental
where 12,000 soldiers and hundreds of camp follow- Congress concluded a military alliance with France,
ers suffered horribly. “The army . . . now begins to the most powerful nation in Europe. The alliance gave
grow sickly,” a surgeon confided to his diary. “Poor the Americans desperately needed money, supplies,
food — hard lodging — cold weather — fatigue — nasty and, eventually, troops. And it confronted Britain with
clothes — nasty cookery. . . . Why are we sent here to an international war that challenged its domination of
starve and freeze?” Nearby farmers refused to help. the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Some were pacifists, Quakers and German sectarians
unwilling to support either side. Others looked out for
their own families, selling grain for gold from British The French Alliance
quartermasters but refusing depreciated Continental France and America were unlikely partners. France was
currency. “Such a dearth of public spirit, and want of Catholic and a monarchy; the United States was Protes-
public virtue,” lamented Washington. By spring, more tant and a federation of republics. From 1689 to 1763,
than 200 officers had resigned, 1,000 hungry soldiers the two peoples had been enemies: New Englanders
had deserted, and another 3,000 had died from malnu- had brutally uprooted the French population from
trition and disease. That winter at Valley Forge took as Acadia (Nova Scotia) in 1755, and the French and their
many American lives as had two years of fighting. Indian allies had raided British settlements. But the
In this dark hour, Baron von Steuben raised the Comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister, was
readiness of the American army. A former Prussian determined to avenge the loss of Canada during the
military officer, von Steuben was one of a handful of Great War for Empire (see Chapter 4) and persuaded
republican-minded foreign aristocrats who joined the King Louis XVI to provide the rebellious colonies with
American cause. Appointed as inspector general of the a secret loan and much-needed gunpowder. When
190 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
news of the rebel victory at Saratoga reached Paris in which joined the war against Britain in 1779, aimed to
December 1777, Vergennes sought a formal alliance. regain Florida and the fortress of Gibraltar at the
Benjamin Franklin and other American diplomats entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.
craftily exploited France’s rivalry with Britain to win an
explicit commitment to American independence. The Britain’s Southern Strategy For its part, the British
Treaty of Alliance of February 1778 specified that once government revised its military strategy to defend the
France entered the war, neither partner would sign a West Indies and capture the rich tobacco- and rice-
separate peace without the “liberty, sovereignty, and growing colonies: Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.
independence” of the United States. In return, the Once conquered, the ministry planned to use the Scott-
Continental Congress agreed to recognize any French ish Highlanders in the Carolinas and other Loyalists
conquests in the West Indies. “France and America,” to hold them. It had already mobilized the Cherokees
warned Britain’s Lord Stormont, “were indissolubly and Delawares against the land-hungry Americans and
leagued for our destruction.” knew that the Patriots’ fears of slave uprisings weak-
The alliance gave new life to the Patriots’ cause. ened them militarily (Map 6.3). As South Carolina
“There has been a great change in this state since Patriots admitted to the Continental Congress, they
the news from France,” a Patriot soldier reported could raise only a few recruits “by reason of the great
from Pennsylvania. Farmers — “mercenary wretches,” proportion of citizens necessary to remain at home to
he called them — “were as eager for Continental Money prevent insurrection among the Negroes.”
now as they were a few weeks ago for British gold.” The large number of slaves in the South made
Its confidence bolstered, the Continental Congress the Revolution a “triangular war,” in which African
addressed the demands of the officer corps. Most offi- Americans constituted a strategic problem for Patriots
cers were gentlemen who equipped themselves and and a tempting, if dangerous, opportunity for the
raised volunteers; in return, they insisted on lifetime British. Britain actively recruited slaves to its cause. The
military pensions at half pay. John Adams condemned effort began with Dunmore’s controversial proclama-
the officers for “scrambling for rank and pay like apes tion in November 1775 recruiting slaves to his
for nuts,” but General Washington urged the Congress Ethiopian Regiment (see Chapter 5). In 1779, the
to grant the pensions: “The salvation of the cause Philipsburg Proclamation declared that any slave who
depends upon it.” The Congress reluctantly granted the deserted a rebel master would receive protection, free-
officers half pay, but only for seven years. dom, and land from Great Britain. Together, these
Meanwhile, the war had become unpopular in proclamations led some 30,000 African Americans to
Britain. At first, George III was determined to crush the take refuge behind British lines. George Washington
rebellion. If America won independence, he warned initially barred blacks from the Continental army, but
Lord North, “the West Indies must follow them. Ireland he relented in 1777. By war’s end, African Americans
would soon follow the same plan and be a separate state, could enlist in every state but South Carolina and
then this island would be reduced to itself, and soon Georgia, and some 5,000 — slave and free — fought for
would be a poor island indeed.” the Patriot cause (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 192).
EXPLAIN Stunned by the defeat at Saratoga, It fell to Sir Henry Clinton — acutely aware of the
CONSEQUENCES however, the king changed his role slaves might play — to implement Britain’s south-
What were the most mind. To thwart an American alli- ern strategy. From the British army’s main base in New
important results of the ance with France, he authorized York City, Clinton launched a seaborne attack on
Patriot victory at Saratoga? North to seek a negotiated settle- Savannah, Georgia. Troops commanded by Colonel
ment. In February 1778, North Archibald Campbell captured the town in December
persuaded Parliament to repeal the Tea and Prohibitory 1778. Mobilizing hundreds of blacks to transport sup-
Acts and, amazingly, to renounce its power to tax the plies, Campbell moved inland and captured Augusta
colonies. But the Patriots, now allied with France and early in 1779. By year’s end, Clinton’s forces and local
committed to independence, rejected North’s overture. Loyalists controlled coastal Georgia and had 10,000
troops poised for an assault on South Carolina.
In 1780, British forces marched from victory to vic-
War in the South tory (Map 6.4). In May, Clinton forced the surrender of
The French alliance did not bring a rapid end to the Charleston, South Carolina, and its garrison of 5,000
war. When France entered the conflict in June 1778, it troops. Then Lord Charles Cornwallis assumed control
hoped to seize all of Britain’s sugar islands. Spain, of the British forces and, at Camden, defeated an
CHAPTER 6 Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789 191
MAP 6.3
Native Americans and the American forces OTTAWA
War in the West, 1778–1779 British forces
American victory
Lake Ft. Detroit
Er
ie
R.
Many Indian peoples remained Michigan
ke
ny
hR
osep . La
ghe
neutral, but others, fearing N .J
ll e
St
land-hungry Patriot farmers, Ft. St. Joseph
A
E
AR
77
8 PENNSYLVANIA
used British-supplied guns to E
LAW
W 1
. e c. R. HURON
raid American settlements. ke eR t.–D u mee Ft. McIntosh
DE
S Ka n k
a
n,
O
c
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Ft. Miami
Pittsburgh
To thwart attacks by militant Ham
i l to Oct. 24, 1778
Mu
Shawnees, Cherokees, and MIAMI Ft. Henry Redstone
ski
Sci o
Old Fort
ng u
C l a i m e d b y V i r g i n i a
.
Delawares, a Patriot militia
R
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i R.
led by George Rogers Clark R 78
Monongah
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is 17
.
R
.
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o
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captured the British fort and
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ip
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the Wabash River in February C l ar k
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1779. To the north, Patriot aw
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Dec. 17, 1778
ha
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Feb. 25, 1779
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LE
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July 4, 1778
0 50 100 miles
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Ft. Massac
systematically destroyed villages Ft. Jefferson 0 50 100 kilometers
and crops throughout the lands
of the Iroquois.
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0 25 50 kilometers
Lake Ontario
Ft. Oswego Ft. Stanwix
Ft. Dayton
ohawk R. Schenectady
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W E NEW YORK
79
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Su s
Ft. Kittanning
y R.
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Indian village
hen
han
British forts
le g
na R
Al
Pittsburgh
American force commanded by General Horatio to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780. There, they threat-
Gates, the hero of Saratoga. Only 1,200 Patriot militia- ened the British forces holding New York City.
men joined Gates at Camden, a fifth of the number at
Saratoga. Cornwallis took control of South Carolina, Guerrilla Warfare in the Carolinas Meanwhile,
and hundreds of African Americans fled to freedom Washington dispatched General Nathanael Greene to
behind British lines. The southern strategy was recapture the Carolinas, where he found “a country
working. that has been ravaged and plundered by both friends
Then the tide of battle turned. Thanks to another and enemies.” Greene put local militiamen, who had
republican-minded European aristocrat, the Marquis been “without discipline and addicted to plundering,”
de Lafayette, France finally dispatched troops to the under strong leaders and unleashed them on less
American mainland. A longtime supporter of the mobile British forces. In October 1780, Patriot militia
American cause, Lafayette persuaded King Louis XVI defeated a regiment of Loyalists at King’s Mountain,
to send General Comte de Rochambeau and 5,500 men South Carolina, taking about one thousand prisoners.
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
For African American slaves, the Revolution offered no clear path to freedom.
Some slaves agreed to fight for Britain because of its promise to liberate slaves
The Black who fought against their masters. While some were freed, many others died
fighting, were forced into servitude in the army, or even sold into slavery in the
Soldier’s Dilemma West Indies. Patriots at first refused the service of black soldiers, then enlisted
them in small numbers, but always upheld the property rights of masters.
1. Dunmore’s Proclamation, 1775. Virginia’s Governor farther earnestly recommend it to all humane and benev-
Dunmore issued this proclamation in response to olent persons in this colony to explain and make known
the emerging rebellion and formed his recruits this our offer of mercy to those unfortunate people.
into the so-called Ethiopian Regiment.
3. Runaway advertisement, 1775. Titus — or, as he
To defeat such unreasonable Purposes . . . that the
was later known, Captain Tye of the Ethiopian
Peace, and good Order of this Colony may be again
Regiment — abandoned his Delaware master in
restored . . . I have thought fit to issue this my Procla-
response to Dunmore’s Proclamation.
mation, hereby declaring, that until the aforesaid good
Purposes can be obtained, I do in Virtue of the Power
and Authority to me given, by His majesty, determine to
execute Martial Law, and cause the same to be executed
throughout this Colony: and to the end that Peace and
good Order may the sooner be [effected], I do require
every Person capable of bearing Arms, to [resort] to His
majesty’s standard, or be looked upon as Traitors to His
[majesty] . . . I do hereby further declare all indentured
Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,)
free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining
His majesty’s Troops as soon as may be, for the more
speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of
their Duty. Source: Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.
192
parties except us, who had escaped slavery and taken companies of colored people enlisted, it added to my
refuge in the English army; for a report prevailed at New- fears and dread of being sold to the British. These con-
York that all the slaves, in number two thousand, were to siderations induced me to enlist into the American army,
be delivered up to their masters, altho’ some of them had where I served faithful about ten months, when my mas-
been three or four years among the English. This dreadful ter found and took me home. Had I been taught to read
rumour filled us with inexpressible anguish and terror, or understand the precepts of the Gospel, “Servants obey
especially when we saw our old masters coming from your master,” I might have done otherwise, notwithstand-
Virginia, North-Carolina and other parts and seizing ing the songs of liberty that saluted my ear, thrilled
upon slaves in the streets of New-York, or even dragging through my heart.
them out of their beds. Many of the slaves had very cruel
masters, so that the thought of returning home with them
Sources: (1) Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, Learn NC, North Carolina Digital History
embittered life to us. For some days we lost our appetite “Revolutionary North Carolina,” www.learnnc.org; (2) J. N. Brenaman, A History of
for food, and sleep departed from our eyes. The English Virginia Conventions (Richmond: J. L. Hill Printing Company, 1902), p. 30; (4)
Thomas Truxtun Moebs, Black Soldiers-Black Sailors-Black Ink: Research Guide on
had compassion upon us in the day of our distress, and African-Americans in U. S. Military History, 1526–1900 (Chesapeake Bay, Paris: Moebs
issued out a Proclamation importing “That all slaves Publishing Company, 1994), 1125; (5) Boston King, Book of Negroes (New York, 1783),
should be free who had taken refuge in the British lines in Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 107, 150; (6) Jehu Grant, To Hon. J. L. Edwards,
and claimed the sanction and privileges of the Proclama- Commissioner of Pension, 1836, in The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts
tions respecting the security and protection of Negroes.” of the War for Independence, ed. John C. Dann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980), 27–28.
In consequence of this, each of us received a certificate
from the commanding officer at New-York, which dis-
pelled our fears and filled us with joy and gratitude.
193
194 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
.
NEW
American forces aR YORK
ann
.
ueh
Delaware R
British forces
sq New York
Su
French forces
American victory
PENNSYLVANIA
British victory
Philadelphia
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0 50 100 miles York 8
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SOUTH CAROLINA 80
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Dec. 1778
MAP 6.4
The War in the South, 1778–1781
Britain’s southern military strategy started well. British forces captured Savannah in December
1778, took control of Georgia during 1779, and vanquished Charleston in May 1780. Over the next
eighteen months, brutal warfare between the British troops and Loyalist units and the Continental
army and militia raged in the interior of the Carolinas and ended in a stalemate. Hoping to break
the deadlock, British general Charles Cornwallis carried the battle into Virginia in 1781. A Franco-
American army led by Washington and Lafayette, with the help of the French fleet under Admiral
de Grasse, surrounded Cornwallis’s forces on the Yorktown Peninsula and forced their surrender.
American guerrillas commanded by the “Swamp Fox,” war of attrition, the British general decided to concede
General Francis Marion, also won a series of small but the Carolinas to Greene and seek a decisive victory in
fierce battles. Then, in January 1781, General Daniel Virginia. There, many Patriot militiamen had refused
Morgan led an American force to a bloody victory at to take up arms, claiming that “the Rich wanted the
Cowpens, South Carolina. In March, Greene’s soldiers Poor to fight for them.”
fought Cornwallis’s seasoned army to a draw at North Exploiting these social divisions, Cornwallis moved
Carolina’s Guilford Court House. Weakened by this easily through the Tidewater region of Virginia in the
CHAPTER 6 Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789 195
early summer of 1781. Reinforcements sent from New North exclaimed. Isolated diplo-
York and commanded by General Benedict Arnold, matically in Europe, stymied mil- IDENTIFY CAUSES
the infamous Patriot traitor, bolstered his ranks. As itarily in America, and lacking What were the keys to
Arnold and Cornwallis sparred with an American force public support at home, the the Patriot victory in the
led by Lafayette near the York Peninsula, Washington British ministry gave up active South?
was informed that France had finally sent its powerful prosecution of the war on the
West Indian fleet to North America, and he devised an American mainland.
audacious plan. Feigning an assault on New York City,
he secretly marched General Rochambeau’s army from
Rhode Island to Virginia. Simultaneously, the French The Patriot Advantage
fleet took control of Chesapeake Bay. By the time the How could mighty Britain, victorious in the Great War
British discovered Washington’s scheme, Cornwallis for Empire, lose to a motley rebel army? The British
was surrounded, his 9,500-man army outnumbered ministry pointed to a series of blunders by the military
2 to 1 on land and cut off from reinforcement or retreat leadership. Why had Howe not ruthlessly pursued
by sea. In a hopeless position, Cornwallis surrendered Washington’s army in 1776? Why had Howe and
at Yorktown in October 1781. Burgoyne failed to coordinate their attacks in 1777?
The Franco-American victory broke the resolve of Why had Cornwallis marched deep into the Patriot-
the British government. “Oh God! It is all over!” Lord dominated state of Virginia in 1781?
196 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Historians acknowledge British mistakes, but they acres — three-quarters of their territory — in treaties
also attribute the rebels’ victory to French aid and the with Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, while New
inspired leadership of George Washington. Astutely York and the Continental Congress pressed the Iroquois
deferring to elected officials, Washington won the sup- and Ohio Indians to cede much of their land as well.
port of the Continental Congress and the state govern- British officials, like those of other early modern empires,
ments. Confident of his military found it easy to abandon allies they had never really
TRACE CHANGE abilities, he pursued a defensive understood (America Compared, p. 197).
OVER TIME strategy that minimized casualties The Paris treaty also granted Americans fishing
Despite being at a clear and maintained the morale of his rights off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, prohibited
disadvantage at the start officers and soldiers through five the British from “carrying away any negroes or other
of the war, the American difficult years of war. Moreover, the property,” and guaranteed freedom of navigation on
Patriots won. Why? Patriots’ control of local govern- the Mississippi to American citizens “forever.” In
ments gave Washington a greater return, the American government allowed British mer-
margin for error than the British generals had. Local chants to pursue legal claims for prewar debts and
militiamen provided the edge in the 1777 victory at Sara- encouraged the state legislatures to return confiscated
toga and forced Cornwallis from the Carolinas in 1781. property to Loyalists and grant them citizenship.
In the end, it was the American people who decided In the Treaty of Versailles, signed simultaneously,
the outcome, especially the one-third of the white colo- Britain made peace with France and Spain. Neither
nists who were zealous Patriots. Tens of thousands American ally gained very much. Spain reclaimed
of these farmers and artisans accepted Continental bills Florida from Britain, but not the strategic fortress at
in payment for supplies, and thousands of soldiers took Gibraltar. France received the Caribbean island of
them as pay, even as the currency literally depreciated in Tobago, small consolation for a war that had sharply
their pockets. Rampant inflation meant that every paper raised taxes and quadrupled France’s national debt. Just
dollar held for a week lost value, imposing a hidden “cur- six years later, cries for tax relief and political liberty
rency tax” on those who accepted the paper currency. would spark the French Revolution. Only Americans
Each individual tax was small — a few pennies on each profited handsomely; the treaties gave them indepen-
dollar. But as millions of dollars changed hands multiple dence and access to the trans-Appalachian west.
times, the currency taxes paid by ordinary citizens
financed the American military victory.
Creating Republican
Diplomatic Triumph
Institutions, 1776–1787
After Yorktown, diplomats took two years to conclude
a peace treaty. Talks began in Paris in April 1782, but When the Patriots declared independence, they con-
the French and Spanish, still hoping to seize a West fronted the issue of political authority. “Which of us
Indian island or Gibraltar, stalled for time. Their tactics shall be the rulers?” asked a Philadelphia newspaper.
infuriated American diplomats Benjamin Franklin, The question was multifaceted. Would power reside in
John Adams, and John Jay. So the Americans negoti- the national government or the states? Who would
ated secretly with the British, prepared if necessary to control the new republican institutions: traditional
ignore the Treaty of Alliance and sign a separate peace. elites or average citizens? Would women have greater
British ministers were equally eager: Parliament wanted political and legal rights? What would be the status of
peace, and they feared the loss of a rich sugar island. slaves in the new republic?
Consequently, the American diplomats secured
extremely favorable terms. In the Treaty of Paris, signed
The State Constitutions:
in September 1783, Great Britain formally recognized
American independence and relinquished its claims How Much Democracy?
to lands south of the Great Lakes and east of the Miss- In May 1776, the Second Continental Congress urged
issippi River. The British negotiators did not insist on a Americans to reject royal authority and establish
separate territory for their Indian allies. “In endeavouring republican governments. Most states quickly complied.
to assist you,” a Wea Indian complained to a British “Constitutions employ every pen,” an observer noted.
general, “it seems we have wrought our own ruin.” The Within six months, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina,
Cherokees were forced to relinquish claims to 5 million New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania had all ratified
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
As Britain was losing control of its multiethnic empire in North America, China’s
Qing [pronounced Ching] dynasty was consolidating its authority over border-
lands peoples during the eighteenth century. And just as Europeans relied on
China’s Growing ethnographic descriptions of Native Americans to understand the peoples and
territories they hoped to control, Chinese authorities used ethnographic manu-
Empire als that included prose, poetry, and illustrations to make sense of their new sub-
jects. These excerpts from a set of “Miao albums” illustrate the cultural
characteristics they observed in, or ascribed to, one such group of these non-
Chinese (or non-Han) peoples.
new constitutions, and Connecticut and Rhode Island everything that leans to aristocracy or power in the
had revised their colonial charters to delete references hands of the rich.” In Virginia, voters elected a new
to the king. assembly in 1776 that, an eyewitness remarked, “was
Republicanism meant more than ousting the king. composed of men not quite so well dressed, nor so
The Declaration of Independence stated the principle politely educated, nor so highly born” as colonial-era
of popular sovereignty: governments derive “their just legislatures (Figure 6.1).
powers from the consent of the governed.” In the heat
of revolution, many Patriots gave this clause a further
democratic twist. In North Carolina, the backcountry To see a longer excerpt of the Mecklenburg dele-
farmers of Mecklenburg County told their delegates gates’ document, along with other primary sources
from this period, see Sources for America’s History.
to the state’s constitutional convention to “oppose
197
198 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
FIGURE 6.1
North Middling Men Enter the Halls of Government,
36% 47% 17%
1765–1790
1765–1775
Before the Revolution, wealthy men (with assets of
1783–1790 12% 26% 62% £2,000 or more, as measured by tax lists and probate
records) dominated most colonial assemblies. The
power of money was especially apparent in the
southern colonies, where representatives worth at
South
least £5,000 formed a majority of the legislators.
1765–1775 52% 36% 12% However, in the new American republic, the propor-
tion of middling legislators (yeomen farmers and
1783–1790 28% 42% 30% others worth less than £2,000) increased dramati-
cally, especially in the northern states. Adapted from
Jackson T. Main, “Government by the People: The American
Over £5,000 £2,000– £5,000 Under £2,000 Revolution and the Democratization of the Legislatures,” by
Jackson T. Main in William and Mary Quarterly, series 3, 23
(1966). Used by permission of William and Mary Quarterly,
Omohundro Institute of Early History and Culture.
Pennsylvania’s Controversial Constitution This enforce them. Adams also demanded a bicameral (two-
democratic impulse flowered in Pennsylvania, thanks house) legislature with an upper house of substantial
to a coalition of Scots-Irish farmers, Philadelphia arti- property owners to offset the popular majorities in the
sans, and Enlightenment-influenced intellectuals. In lower one. As further curbs on democracy, he pro-
1776, these insurgents ousted every officeholder of the posed an elected governor with veto power and an
Penn family’s proprietary government, abolished prop- appointed — not elected — judiciary.
erty ownership as a qualification for voting, and granted Conservative Patriots endorsed Adams’s govern-
all taxpaying men the right to vote and hold office. The mental system. In New York’s constitution of 1777,
Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 also created a uni- property qualifications for voting excluded 20 percent
cameral (one-house) legislature with complete power; of white men from assembly elections and 60 percent
there was no governor to exercise a veto. Other provi- from casting ballots for the governor and the upper
sions mandated a system of elementary education and house. In South Carolina, elite planters used property
protected citizens from imprisonment for debt. rules to disqualify about 90 percent of white men from
Pennsylvania’s democratic constitution alarmed office holding. The 1778 constitution required candi-
many leading Patriots. From Boston, John Adams dates for governor to have a debt-free estate of £10,000
denounced the unicameral legislature as “so demo- (about $700,000 today), senators to be worth £2,000,
cratical that it must produce and assemblymen to own property valued at £1,000.
COMPARE AND confusion and every evil work.” Even in traditionally democratic Massachusetts, the
CONTRAST Along with other conservative 1780 constitution, authored primarily by Adams, raised
What aspects of the Patriots, Adams wanted to restrict property qualifications for voting and office holding
Pennsylvania constitution office holding to “men of learning, and skewed the lower house toward eastern, mercantile
were most objectionable leisure and easy circumstances” interests.
to Adams, and what did he and warned of oppression under The political legacy of the Revolution was complex.
advocate instead? majority rule: “If you give [ordi- Only in Pennsylvania and Vermont were radical
nary citizens] the command or Patriots able to create truly democratic institutions. Yet
preponderance in the . . . legislature, they will vote all in all the new states, representative legislatures had
property out of the hands of you aristocrats.” acquired more power, and average citizens now had
greater power at the polls and greater influence in the
Tempering Democracy To counter the appeal of the halls of government.
Pennsylvania constitution, Adams published Thoughts
on Government (1776). In that treatise, he adapted the
British Whig theory of mixed government (a sharing Women Seek a Public Voice
of power among the monarch, the House of Lords, and The extraordinary excitement of the Revolutionary
the Commons) to a republican society. To disperse era tested the dictum that only men could engage
authority and preserve liberty, he insisted on separate in politics. Men controlled all public institutions —
institutions: legislatures would make laws, the execu- legislatures, juries, government offices — but upper-
tive would administer them, and the judiciary would class women engaged in political debate and, defying
CHAPTER 6 Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789 199
Though the Revolution did not result in wide- At war’s end, George Washington commented on the
spread property redistribution, it did encourage yeo- “rage for speculating” in Ohio Valley lands. “Men in
men, middling planters, and these times, talk with as much facility of fifty, a hun-
EXPLAIN small-time entrepreneurs to dred, and even 500,000 Acres as a Gentleman formerly
CONSEQUENCES believe that their new republican would do of 1000 acres.” “If we make a right use of our
How did the Revolutionary governments would protect their natural advantages,” a Fourth of July orator observed,
commitment to liberty and property and ensure widespread “we soon must be a truly great and happy people.”
the protection of property access to land. In western coun- Native American land claims stood as a conspicuous
affect enslaved African ties, former Regulators demanded barrier to the “natural advantages” he imagined.
Americans and western that the new governments be For southern slaveholders, the Revolution was
Indians? more responsive to their needs; fought to protect property rights, and any sentiment
beyond the Appalachians, thou- favoring slave emancipation met with violent objections.
sands of squatters who had occupied lands in Kentucky When Virginia Methodists called for general emancipa-
and Tennessee expected their claims to be recognized tion in 1785, slaveholders used Revolutionary principles
and lands to be made available on easy terms. If the to defend their right to human property. They “risked
United States were to secure the loyalty of westerners, it [their] Lives and Fortunes, and waded through Seas of
would have to meet their needs more effectively than Blood” to secure “the Possession of [their] Rights of
the British Empire had. Liberty and Property,” only to hear of “a very subtle and
This meant, among other things, extinguishing daring Attempt” to “dispossess us of a very important
Native American claims to land as quickly as possible. Part of our Property.” Emancipation would bring “Want,
Poverty, Distress, and Ruin to the Free Citizen.” The lib-
erties coveted by ordinary white Americans bore hard
on the interests of Native Americans and slaves.
Although the Congress exercised authority from 1787, it issued three important ordinances organizing
1776 — raising the Continental army, negotiating the the “Old Northwest.” The Ordinance of 1784, written
treaty with France, and financing the war — the Articles by Thomas Jefferson, established
won formal ratification only in 1781. The delay the principle that territories could COMPARE AND
stemmed from conflicts over western lands. The royal become states as their populations CONTRAST
charters of Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and grew. The Land Ordinance of In what ways did the
other states set boundaries stretching to the Pacific 1785 mandated a rectangular- Confederation function
Ocean. States without western lands — Maryland and grid system of surveying and effectively, and what were
Pennsylvania — refused to accept the Articles until the specified a minimum price of $1 its greatest failings?
land-rich states relinquished these claims to the an acre. It also required that half
Confederation. Threatened by Cornwallis’s army in of the townships be sold in single blocks of 23,040
1781, Virginia gave up its claims, and Maryland, the acres each, which only large-scale speculators could
last holdout, finally ratified the Articles (Map 6.5). afford, and the rest in parcels of 640 acres each,
which restricted their sale to well-to-do farmers
Continuing Fiscal Crisis By 1780, the central gov- (Map 6.6).
ernment was nearly bankrupt, and General Washington Finally, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 created
called urgently for a national tax system; without the territories that would eventually become the states
one, he warned, “our cause is lost.” Led by Robert of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Morris, who became superintendent of finance in The ordinance prohibited slavery and earmarked funds
1781, nationalist-minded Patriots tried to expand the from land sales for the support of schools. It also spec-
Confederation’s authority. They persuaded Congress to ified that Congress would appoint a governor and
charter the Bank of North America, a private institu- judges to administer each new territory until the pop-
tion in Philadelphia, arguing that its notes would ulation reached 5,000 free adult men, at which point
stabilize the inflated Continental currency. Morris also the citizens could elect a territorial legislature. When
created a central bureaucracy to manage the Con- the population reached 60,000, the legislature could
federation’s finances and urged Congress to enact a devise a republican constitution and apply to join the
5 percent import tax. Rhode Island and New York Confederation.
rejected the tax proposal. His state had opposed British The land ordinances of the 1780s were a great
import duties, New York’s representative declared, and and enduring achievement of the Confederation
it would not accept them from Congress. To raise reve- Congress. They provided for orderly settlement and
nue, Congress looked to the sale of western lands. In the admission of new states on the basis of equality;
1783, it asserted that the recently signed Treaty of Paris there would be no politically dependent “colonies” in
had extinguished the Indians’ rights to those lands and the West. But they also extended the geographical divi-
made them the property of the United States. sion between slave and free areas that would haunt the
nation in the coming decades. And they implicitly
The Northwest Ordinance By 1784, more than invalidated Native American claims to an enormous
thirty thousand settlers had already moved to Kentucky swath of territory — a corollary that would soon lead
and Tennessee, despite the uncertainties of frontier the newly independent nation, once again, into war.
warfare, and after the war their numbers grew rapidly.
In that year, the residents of what is now eastern
Tennessee organized a new state, called it Franklin, and Shays’s Rebellion
sought admission to the Confederation. To preserve its Though many national leaders were optimistic about
authority over the West, Congress refused to recognize the long-term prospects of the United States, postwar
Franklin. Subsequently, Congress created the South- economic conditions were grim. The Revolution had
west and Mississippi Territories (the future states of crippled American shipping and cut exports of tobacco,
Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi) from lands rice, and wheat. The British Navigation Acts, which
ceded by North Carolina and Georgia. Because these had nurtured colonial commerce, now barred Ameri-
cessions carried the stipulation that “no regulation . . . cans from legal trade with the British West Indies.
shall tend to emancipate slaves,” these states and all Moreover, low-priced British manufactures (and some
those south of the Ohio River allowed human bondage. from India as well) were flooding American markets,
However, the Confederation Congress banned driving urban artisans and wartime textile firms out of
slavery north of the Ohio River. Between 1784 and business.
202 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Claimed by U.S.
& Great Britain
C A N A D A .
eR
upe nc
L. S rior
e
wr
MAINE
La
VERMONT (part of
St.
(Claimed by MASS.)
N.H. & N.Y.
Ceded 1791)
N O R T H W E S T
L.
Hu
Claimed by Virginia
ron
Ceded 1784
n
NEW YORK NEW HAMPSHIRE
L. Michig a
o
L. Ontari Susquehanna R. MASSACHUSETTS
Claimed by
MASS.
Ceded to N.Y.,
Claimed by 1786
MASS. and VA. rie Claimed by RHODE ISLAND
Ceded 1784–1785 L. E CONN.
CONNECTICUT
Claimed by PENNSYLVANIA
CONN. and VA. T E R R I T O R Y Western Reserve
Ceded 1784–1786 NEW JERSEY
Claimed by CONN. N
Ceded 1800
Claimed by Virginia
Ceded 1784 DELAWARE E
W
Missour MARYLAND S
iR
. .
oR
O hi VIRGINIA
LOUISIANA
Ceded by Virginia 1789
(KENTUCKY)
Cumberland ATLANTIC
Gap
Ceded by Spain OCEAN
to France 1800
Arkans
(TENNESSEE)
p pi
as R
.
i s si
iss
Gulf of Mexico
MAP 6.5
The Confederation and Western Land Claims, 1781–1802
The Congress formed by the Articles of Confederation had to resolve conflicting state claims
to western lands. For example, the territories claimed by New York and Virginia on the basis of
their royal charters overlapped extensively. Beginning in 1781, the Confederation Congress and,
after 1789, the U.S. Congress persuaded all of the states to cede their western claims, creating a
“national domain” open to all citizens. In the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the Congress divided
the domain north of the Ohio River into territories and set up democratic procedures by which
they could eventually join the Union as states. South of the Ohio River, the Congress allowed the
existing southern states to play a substantial role in settling the ceded lands.
The fiscal condition of the state governments was creditors and speculators demanded that the state
dire, primarily because of war debts. Well-to-do mer- governments redeem the bonds and certificates quickly
chants and landowners (including Abigail Adams) had and at full value, a policy that would require tax increases
invested in state bonds during the war; others had and a decrease in the amount of paper currency. Most
speculated in debt certificates, buying them on the legislatures — now including substantial numbers of
cheap from hard-pressed farmers and soldiers. Now middling farmers and artisans — refused. Instead they
CHAPTER 6 Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789 203
Northwest Ordinance, 1787, with final state boundaries Land Ordinance, 1785, with final sectional division
The Seven Ranges
First Area Survey
Baseline
2nd Range
3rd Range
7th Range
6th Range
5th Range
4th Range
1st Range
CANADA
per
MINNESOTA L. Su ior
PENNSYLVANIA
VIRGINIA
Ft. Michilimackinac
L.
Hu
Mi
ron
ss iss L. Michigan
ip
pi WISCONSIN
R.
MICHIGAN 6 miles
6 miles
NORTHWEST rie
Ft. Detroit L. E
6 5 4 3 2 1
TERRITORY 1 mile
1 mile
7 8 9 10 11 12
OHIO
ILLINOIS INDIANA
18 17 16 15 14 13
schools
Mi
s s o u r i R. 1/2 section
(320 acres) 19 20 21 22 23 24
o R. 30 29 28 27 26 25
O hi 1/4 section
80 acres
40 acres each
(160 acres)
31 32 33 34 35 36
Detail of Section Detail of Township
1 sq. mile (640 acres) 36 sq. miles
Farms in a rectangular survey area: Muskingum County, Ohio Farms in an old eastern survey area: Baltimore County, Md.
0 1 2 miles 0 1 2 miles
0 1 2 kilometers 0 1 2 kilometers
MAP 6.6
Land Division in the Northwest Territory
Throughout the Northwest Territory, government surveyors imposed a rectangular grid on the
landscape, regardless of the local topography, so that farmers bought neatly defined tracts of land.
The right-angled property lines in Muskingum County, Ohio (lower left), contrasted sharply with
those in Baltimore County, Maryland (lower right), where — as in most of the eastern and southern
states — boundaries followed the contours of the land.
204 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
authorized new issues of paper currency and allowed oppressors had replaced British tyrants. Massachusetts
debtors to pay private creditors in installments. voters turned Governor Bowdoin out of office, and
Although wealthy men deplored these measures as debt-ridden farmers in New York, northern Pennsyl-
“intoxicating Draughts of Liberty” that destroyed “the vania, Connecticut, and New Hampshire closed court-
just rights of creditors,” such political intervention pre- houses and forced their governments to provide
vented social upheaval. economic relief. British officials in Canada predicted
In Massachusetts, however, the new constitution the imminent demise of the United States; and Ameri-
placed power in the hands of a mercantile elite that can leaders urged purposeful action to save their
owned the bulk of the state’s war bonds. Ignoring the republican experiment. Events in Massachusetts,
interests of ordinary citizens, the legislature increased declared nationalist Henry Knox, formed “the stron-
taxes fivefold to pay off wartime debts — and it stipu- gest arguments possible” for the creation of “a strong
lated that they be paid in hard currency. Even for sub- general government.”
stantial farmers, this was a crushing burden. When
cash-strapped farmers could not pay both their taxes
and their debts, creditors threatened lawsuits. Debtor
Ephraim Wetmore heard a rumor that merchant The Constitution of 1787
Stephan Salisbury “would have my Body Dead or Alive These issues ultimately led to the drafting of a national
in case I did not pay.” To protect their livelihoods, farm- constitution. From its creation, the U.S. Constitution
ers called extralegal conventions to protest high taxes was a controversial document, both acclaimed for solv-
and property seizures. Then mobs of angry farmers, ing the nation’s woes and condemned for perverting its
including men of high status, closed the courts by republican principles. Critics charged that republican
force. “[I] had no Intensions to Destroy the Publick institutions worked only in small political units — the
Government,” declared Captain Adam Wheeler, a for- states. Advocates replied that the Constitution extended
mer town selectman; his goal was simply to prevent republicanism by adding another level of government
“Valuable and Industrious members of Society [being] elected by the people. In the new two-level political
dragged from their families to prison” because of their federation created by the Constitution, the national
debts. These crowd actions grew into a full-scale revolt government would exercise limited, delegated powers,
led by Captain Daniel Shays, a Continental army and the existing state governments would retain
veteran. authority over all other matters.
As a revolt against taxes imposed by an unrespon-
sive government, Shays’s Rebellion resembled American
resistance to the British Stamp Act. Consciously link- The Rise of a Nationalist Faction
ing themselves to the Patriot movement, Shays’s men Money questions — debts, taxes, and tariffs — dominated
placed pine twigs in their hats just as Continental the postwar political agenda. Americans who had served
troops had done. “The people have turned against their the Confederation as military officers, officials, and
teachers the doctrines which were inculcated to effect diplomats viewed these issues from a national perspec-
the late revolution,” complained Fisher Ames, a con- tive and advocated a stronger central government.
servative Massachusetts lawmaker. Some of the radical George Washington, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin,
Patriots of 1776 likewise condemned the Shaysites: John Jay, and John Adams wanted Congress to control
“[Men who] would lessen the foreign and interstate commerce and tariff policy.
PLACE EVENTS Weight of Government lawfully However, lawmakers in Massachusetts, New York, and
IN CONTEXT exercised must be Enemies to our Pennsylvania — states with strong commercial tradi-
How did the Shaysites happy Revolution and Common tions — insisted on controlling their own tariffs, both
draw on the Revolution for Liberty,” charged Samuel Adams. to protect their artisans from low-cost imports and to
inspiration? To put down the rebellion, the assist their merchants. Most southern states opposed
Massachusetts legislature passed tariffs because planters wanted to import British tex-
the Riot Act, and wealthy bondholders equipped a for- tiles and ironware at the lowest possible prices.
midable fighting force, which Governor James Bowdoin Nonetheless, some southern leaders became nation-
used to disperse Shays’s ragtag army during the winter alists because their state legislatures had cut taxes and
of 1786–1787. refused to redeem state war bonds. Such policies,
Although Shays’s Rebellion failed, it showed that lamented wealthy bondholder Charles Lee of Virginia,
many middling Patriot families felt that American led taxpayers to believe they would “never be compelled
CHAPTER 6 Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789 205
to pay” the public debt. Creditors also condemned modern political theory and served in both the
state laws that “stayed” (delayed) the payment of mort- Confederation Congress and the Virginia assembly.
gages and other private debts. “While men are madly Once an optimistic Patriot, Madison had grown dis-
accumulating enormous debts, their legislators are couraged because of the “narrow ambition” and out-
making provisions for their nonpayment,” complained look of state legislators.
a South Carolina merchant. To undercut the democratic Madison’s Virginia Plan differed from the Articles of
majorities in the state legislatures, creditors joined the Confederation in three crucial respects. First, the plan
movement for a stronger central government. rejected state sovereignty in favor of the “supremacy of
Spurred on by Shays’s Rebellion, nationalists in national authority,” including the power to overturn
Congress secured a resolution calling for a convention state laws. Second, it called for the national government
to revise the Articles of Confederation. Only an “effi- to be established by the people (not the states) and for
cient plan from the Convention,” a fellow nationalist national laws to operate directly on citizens of the vari-
wrote to James Madison, “can prevent anarchy first & ous states. Third, the plan proposed a three-tier election
civil convulsions afterwards.” system in which ordinary voters would elect only the
lower house of the national legislature. This lower house
would then select the upper house, and both houses
The Philadelphia Convention would appoint the executive and judiciary.
In May 1787, fifty-five delegates arrived in Philadelphia. From a political perspective, Madison’s plan
They came from every state except Rhode Island, where had two fatal flaws. First, most state politicians and
the legislature opposed increasing central authority.
Most were strong nationalists; forty-two had served in
the Confederation Congress. They were also educated
and propertied: merchants, slaveholding planters, and
“monied men.” There were no artisans, backcountry
settlers, or tenants, and only a single yeoman farmer.
Some influential Patriots missed the convention.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were serving as
American ministers to Britain and France, respec-
tively. The Massachusetts General Court rejected Sam
Adams as a delegate because he opposed a stronger
national government, and his fellow firebrand from
Virginia, Patrick Henry, refused to attend because he
“smelt a rat.”
The absence of experienced leaders and contrary-
minded delegates allowed capable younger national-
ists to set the agenda. Declaring that the convention
would “decide for ever the fate of Republican
Government,” James Madison insisted on increased
national authority. Alexander Hamilton of New York
likewise demanded a strong central government to pro-
tect the republic from “the imprudence of democracy.”
citizens resolutely opposed allowing the national gov- This danger led the convention to vest the judicial
ernment to veto state laws. Second, the plan based rep- power “in one supreme Court” and allow the new
resentation in the lower house on population; this national legislature to decide whether to establish
provision, a Delaware delegate warned, would allow lower courts within the states. The convention also
the populous states to “crush the small ones whenever refused to set a property requirement for voting in
they stand in the way of their ambitious or interested national elections. “Eight or nine states have extended
views.” the right of suffrage beyond the freeholders,” George
So delegates from Delaware and other small states Mason of Virginia pointed out. “What will people
rallied behind a plan devised by William Paterson of there say if they should be disfranchised?” Finally, the
New Jersey. The New Jersey Plan gave the Confedera- convention specified that state legislatures would elect
tion the power to raise revenue, control commerce, members of the upper house, or Senate, and the states
and make binding requisitions on the states. But it would select the electors who would choose the presi-
preserved the states’ control of their own laws and dent. By allowing states to have important roles in the
guaranteed their equality: as in the Confederation new constitutional system, the delegates hoped that
Congress, each state would have one vote in a unicam- their citizens would accept limits on state sovereignty.
eral legislature. Delegates from the more populous
states vigorously opposed this provision. After a Negotiations over Slavery The shadow of slav-
month-long debate on the two plans, a bare majority of ery hovered over many debates, and Gouverneur
the states agreed to use Madison’s Virginia Plan as the Morris of New York brought it into view. To safe-
basis of discussion. guard property rights, Morris wanted life terms for
This decision raised the odds that the convention senators, a property qualification for voting in national
would create a more powerful national government. elections, and a strong president with veto power.
Outraged by this prospect, two New York delegates, Nonetheless, he rejected the legitimacy of two tradi-
Robert Yates and John Lansing, accused their col- tional types of property: the feudal dues claimed by
leagues of exceeding their mandate to revise the aristocratic landowners and the ownership of slaves.
Articles and left the convention. The remaining dele- An advocate of free markets and personal liberty,
gates met six days a week during the summer of 1787, Morris condemned slavery as “a nefarious institution.”
debating both high principles and practical details. Many slave-owning delegates from the Chesapeake
Experienced politicians, they looked for a plan that region, including Madison and George Mason, recog-
would be acceptable to most citizens and existing polit- nized that slavery contradicted republican principles
ical interests. Pierce Butler of South Carolina invoked and hoped for its eventual demise. They supported an
a classical Greek precedent: “We must follow the end to American participation in the Atlantic slave
example of Solon, who gave the Athenians not the best trade, a proposal the South Carolina and Georgia dele-
government he could devise but the best they would gates angrily rejected. Unless the importation of
receive.” African slaves continued, these rice planters and mer-
chants declared, their states “shall not be parties to the
The Great Compromise As the convention grappled Union.” At their insistence, the convention denied
with the central problem of the representation of large Congress the power to regulate immigration — and
and small states, the Connecticut delegates suggested a so the slave trade — until 1808 (American Voices,
possible solution. They proposed that the national leg- p. 208).
islature’s upper chamber (the Senate) have two mem- The delegates devised other slavery-related com-
bers from each state, while seats in the lower chamber promises. To mollify southern planters, they wrote a
(the House of Representatives) be apportioned by pop- “fugitive clause” that allowed masters to reclaim
ulation (determined every ten years by a national cen- enslaved blacks (or white indentured servants) who
sus). After bitter debate, delegates from the populous fled to other states. But in acknowledgment of the anti-
states reluctantly accepted this “Great Compromise.” slavery sentiments of Morris and other northerners,
Other state-related issues were quickly settled by the delegates excluded the words slavery and slave
restricting (or leaving ambiguous) the extent of cen- from the Constitution; it spoke only of citizens and
tral authority. Some delegates opposed a national “all other Persons.” Because slaves lacked the vote,
system of courts, predicting that “the states will revolt antislavery delegates wanted their census numbers
at such encroachments” on their judicial authority. excluded when apportioning seats in Congress.
CHAPTER 6 Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789 207
Southerners — ironically, given that they considered The Antifederalists The opponents of the Consti-
slaves property — demanded that slaves be counted in tution, called by default the Antifederalists, had diverse
the census the same as full citizens, to increase the backgrounds and motives. Some,
South’s representation. Ultimately, the delegates agreed like Governor George Clinton COMPARE AND
that each slave would count as three-fifths of a free per- of New York, feared that state gov- CONTRAST
son for purposes of representation and taxation, a com- ernments would lose power. Rural How did the Constitu-
promise that helped southern planters dominate the democrats protested that the pro- tion, in its final form,
national government until 1860. posed document, unlike most differ from the plan that
state constitutions, lacked a decla- James Madison originally
National Authority Having addressed the concerns ration of individual rights; they proposed?
of small states and slave states, the convention created also feared that the central gov-
a powerful national government. The Constitution ernment would be run by wealthy men. “Lawyers and
declared that congressional legislation was the “supreme” men of learning and monied men expect to be manag-
law of the land. It gave the new government the power ers of this Constitution,” worried a Massachusetts
to tax, raise an army and a navy, and regulate foreign farmer. “[T]hey will swallow up all of us little
and interstate commerce, with the authority to make folks . . . just as the whale swallowed up Jonah.” Giving
all laws “necessary and proper” to implement those political substance to these fears, Melancton Smith of
and other provisions. To assist creditors and establish New York argued that the large electoral districts pre-
the new government’s fiscal integrity, the Constitution scribed by the Constitution would restrict office hold-
required the United States to honor the existing ing to wealthy men, whereas the smaller districts used
national debt and prohibited the states from issuing in state elections usually produced legislatures “com-
paper money or enacting “any Law impairing the posed principally of respectable yeomanry.” John
Obligation of Contracts.” Quincy Adams agreed: if only “eight men” would repre-
The proposed constitution was not a “perfect pro- sent Massachusetts, “they will infallibly be chosen from
duction,” Benjamin Franklin admitted, as he urged the the aristocratic part of the community.”
delegates to sign it in September 1787. But the great Smith summed up the views of Americans who
statesman confessed his astonishment at finding “this held traditional republican values. To keep govern-
system approaching so near to perfection.” His col- ment “close to the people,” they wanted the states to
leagues apparently agreed; all but three signed the remain small sovereign republics tied together only for
document. trade and defense — not the “United States” but the
“States United.” Citing the French political philosopher
Montesquieu, Antifederalists argued that republican
The People Debate Ratification institutions were best suited to small polities. “No
The procedure for ratifying the new constitution was extensive empire can be governed on republican prin-
as controversial as its contents. Knowing that Rhode ciples,” declared James Winthrop of Massachusetts.
Island (and perhaps other states) would reject it, the Patrick Henry worried that the Constitution would re-
delegates did not submit the Constitution to the state create British rule: high taxes, an oppressive bureau-
legislatures for their unanimous consent, as required cracy, a standing army, and a “great and mighty
by the Articles of Confederation. Instead, they arbi- President . . . supported in extravagant munificence.”
trarily — and cleverly — declared that it would take As another Antifederalist put it, “I had rather be a free
effect when ratified by conventions in nine of the thir- citizen of the small republic of Massachusetts than an
teen states. oppressed subject of the great American empire.”
As the constitutional debate began in early 1788,
the nationalists seized the initiative with two bold Federalists Respond In New York, where ratifica-
moves. First, they called themselves Federalists, sug- tion was hotly contested, James Madison, John Jay,
gesting that they supported a federal union — a loose, and Alexander Hamilton defended the proposed con-
decentralized system — and obscuring their commit- stitution in a series of eighty-five essays written in 1787
ment to a strong national government. Second, they and 1788, collectively titled The Federalist. This work
launched a coordinated campaign in pamphlets and influenced political leaders throughout the country
newspapers to explain and justify the Philadelphia and subsequently won acclaim as an important treatise
constitution. of practical republicanism. Its authors denied that a
AMERICAN
VOICES
In this part of the text, we trace the impact of republican ideology on American
politics and society. What happened when republicanism collided head-on with
the well-established practice of slavery? After the Revolution, the Massachusetts
The First National courts abolished slavery, but in 1787, slavery was legal in the rest of the Union
and was the bedrock of social order and agricultural production in the southern
Debate over Slavery states. A look at the debates on the issue of the African slave trade at the Phila-
delphia convention and in a state ratifying convention shows that slavery was an
extremely divisive issue at the birth of the nation — a dark cloud threatening the
bright future of the young republic.
208
Virginia, she will gain by stopping the importations. Her Mr. Heath (Federalist): . . . I apprehend that it is not in
slaves will rise in value, and she has more than she wants. our power to do any thing for or against those who are in
It would be unequal to require South Carolina and slavery in the southern states. No gentleman within these
Georgia to confederate on such unequal terms. . . . He walls detests every idea of slavery more than I do: it is
contended that the importation of slaves would be for the generally detested by the people of this commonwealth,
interest of the whole Union. The more slaves, the more and I ardently hope that the time will soon come, when
produce to employ the carrying trade; the more con- our brethren in the southern states will view it as we do,
sumption also; and the more of this, the more revenue for and put a stop to it; but to this we have no right to compel
the common treasury. . . . [He] should consider a rejec- them.
tion of the [present] clause as an exclusion of South Two questions naturally arise: if we ratify the
Carolina from the Union. Constitution, shall we do any thing by our act to hold the
blacks in slavery or shall we become the partakers of
Source: Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: other men’s sins? I think neither of them: each state is
Yale University Press, 1911), 2: 364–365, 369–372.
sovereign and independent to a certain degree, and they
have a right, and will regulate their own internal affairs, as
The Massachusetts Ratifying Convention to themselves appears proper. . . . We are not in this case
partakers of other men’s sins. . . .
In Philadelphia, the delegates agreed on a compromise:
The federal convention went as far as they could; the
they gave Congress the power to tax or prohibit slave
migration or immigration &c. is confined to the states,
imports, as Luther Martin had proposed, but withheld that
now existing only, new states cannot claim it. Congress,
power for twenty years. In the Massachusetts convention,
by their ordnance for erecting new states, some time
the delegates split on this issue and on many others. They
since, declared that there shall be no slavery in them. But
ratified the Constitution by a narrow margin, 187 to 168.
whether those in slavery in the southern states, will be
Mr. Neal (from Kittery) [an Antifederalist] went over the emancipated after the year 1808, I do not pretend to
ground of objection to . . . the idea that slave trade was determine: I rather doubt it.
allowed to be continued for 20 years. His profession, he
said, obliged him to bear witness against any thing that Source: Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates . . . on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1836), 1: 103–105, 107, 112, 117.
should favor the making merchandize of the bodies of
men, and unless his objection was removed, he could not
put his hand to the constitution. Other gentlemen said,
in addition to this idea, that there was not even a prop-
osition that the negroes ever shall be free: and Gen.
Thompson exclaimed — “Mr. President, shall it be
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
said, that after we have established our own indepen-
1. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, what
dence and freedom, we make slaves of others? Oh! were the main arguments for and against federal restric-
Washington . . . he has immortalized himself! but tions on the Atlantic slave trade? How do you explain
he holds those in slavery who have a good right to the position taken by the Connecticut delegates in Phila-
be free as he is. . . .” delphia and Mr. Heath in the Massachusetts debate?
2. What argument does George Mason, a Virginia slave
On the other side, gentlemen said, that the step taken
owner, make in favor of prohibiting the Atlantic slave
in this article, towards the abolition of slavery, was one of trade?
the beauties of the constitution. They observed, that in the 3. What evidence of regional tensions appears in the docu-
confederation there was no provision whatever for its ever ments? Several men from different states — Mason from
being abolished; but this constitution provides, that Virginia, Ellsworth from Connecticut, and Heath from
Massachusetts — offered predictions about the future of
Congress may after twenty years, totally annihilate the slavery. How accurate were they?
slave trade. . . .
209
210 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
centralized government would lead to domestic tyr- The Constitution Ratified The delegates debating
anny. Drawing on Montesquieu’s theories and John these issues in the state ratification conventions
Adams’s Thoughts on Government, Madison, Jay, and included untutored farmers and middling artisans as
Hamilton pointed out that authority would be divided well as educated gentlemen. Generally, backcountry
among the president, a bicameral legislature, and a delegates were Antifederalists, while those from coastal
judiciary. Each branch of government would “check areas were Federalists. In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
and balance” the others and so preserve liberty. merchants and artisans joined commercial farmers
In “Federalist No. 10,” Madison challenged the view to ratify the Constitution. Other early Federalist suc-
that republican governments only worked in small poli- cesses came in four less populous states — Delaware,
ties, arguing that a large state would better protect repub- New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut — where dele-
lican liberty. It was “sown in the nature of man,” Madison gates hoped that a strong national government would
wrote, for individuals to seek power and form factions. offset the power of large neighboring states (Map 6.7).
Indeed, “a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a The Constitution’s first real test came in January
mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser 1788 in Massachusetts, a hotbed of Antifederalist sen-
interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations.” A timent. Influential Patriots, including Samuel Adams
free society should welcome all factions but keep any and Governor John Hancock, opposed the new consti-
one of them from becoming dominant — something tution, as did many followers of Daniel Shays. But
best achieved in a large republic. “Extend the sphere and Boston artisans, who wanted tariff protection from
you take in a greater variety of parties and interests,” British imports, supported ratification. To win over
Madison concluded, inhibiting the formation of a major- other delegates, Federalist leaders assured the conven-
ity eager “to invade the rights of other citizens.” tion that they would recommend a national bill of
MAP 6.7
Ratifying the Constitution
of 1787
L. Superior
In 1907, geographer Owen
MAINE Libby mapped the votes
(part of MASS.)
of members of the state
conventions that ratified
the Constitution. His map
NEW HAMPSHIRE
L.
District
South Carolina and in
.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
KEY TERMS Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What were the principal reasons that Great Britain, 3. Federalists and Antifederalists both claimed to rep-
despite its enormous military advantages, lost the resent the true spirit of the American Revolution.
War for Independence? Which of these competing visions of national iden-
tity do you think was right? Why?
2. The war had wrenching effects on the American
economy. What economic problems became espe- 4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Consider the
cially acute during wartime? How did the states events listed under “Work, Exchange, and Technol-
and the Second Continental Congress attempt to ogy” and “Politics and Power” for the period 1776–
address them? 1787 on the thematic timeline on page 149. How
did war debt and inflation influence the develop-
ment of political institutions during these years?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE In Chapter 5, we 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Look again at Map 6.5 on
saw the way that protests against imperial policy page 202 showing western land claims in the 1780s.
grew until colonists chose to declare their indepen- If these claims had not been ceded to the
dence rather than submit to Parliament’s authority. Continental Congress, what would have been the
By 1787, the problems created by the Revolutionary likely result? Why was it so important to the sur-
War forced leaders of the newly independent states vival of the Confederation that individual states
to consider plans for their own powerful central give up their claims to these western lands?
government. What problems led nationalists to
believe such a step was necessary? How did
Antifederalists draw on Revolutionary ideas to
make their case against the Constitution? What
claims did nationalists make in response to dampen
Antifederalist fears?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Pauline Maier, Ratification (2010). A compelling
Country (1995). Tracks the experiences of numerous narrative of the debate over the Constitution.
Native American communities in the Revolution.
Michael McDonnell, The Politics of War (2007). A
Saul Cornell, The Other Founders (1999). Explores the penetrating account of Virginia’s mobilization for war.
ideas and legacy of the Antifederalists.
Leonard Richards, Shays’s Rebellion (2003). A persua-
John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered sive interpretation of the rebellion’s participants and
(1980). Contains vivid eyewitness accounts of the motives.
Revolution.
CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER REVIEW 213
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t Howe forces Washington to retreat from New York and New Jersey
1784–1785 t Congress enacts political and land ordinances for new states
KEY TURNING POINTS: Gates defeats Burgoyne at Saratoga (1777), the Franco-American
alliance (1778), and Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown (1781). How were these three events
linked? How important was the French alliance to the Patriot victory?
Hammering Out a
7
C H A P T E R
Federal Republic
1787–1820
L
THE POLITICAL CRISIS ike an earthquake, the American IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
OF THE 1790S Revolution shook the European What was required to make the
The Federalists Implement the monarchical order, and its after- United States a strong, viable, inde-
Constitution shocks reverberated for decades. By “cre- pendent republic in its early years,
Hamilton’s Financial Program ating a new republic based on the rights of and how did debates over the Con-
Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision the individual, the North Americans intro- stitution shape relations between
The French Revolution Divides duced a new force into the world,” the the national government and the
Americans eminent German historian Leopold von states?
The Rise of Political Parties Ranke warned the king of Bavaria in 1854,
a force that might cost the monarch his throne. Before 1776, “a king who ruled by the
A REPUBLICAN EMPIRE
IS BORN grace of God had been the center around which everything turned. Now the idea
emerged that power should come from below [from the people].”
Sham Treaties and Indian Lands
Other republican-inspired upheavals — England’s Puritan Revolution of the 1640s
Migration and the Changing
Farm Economy and the French Revolution of 1789 — ended in political chaos and military rule. Similar
fates befell many Latin American republics that won independence from Spain in the
The Jefferson Presidency
early nineteenth century. But the American states escaped both anarchy and dictator-
Jefferson and the West
ship. Having been raised in a Radical Whig political culture that viewed standing armies
THE WAR OF 1812 AND and powerful generals as instruments of tyranny, General George Washington left pub-
THE TRANSFORMATION lic life in 1783 to manage his plantation, astonishing European observers but bolstering
OF POLITICS the authority of elected Patriot leaders. “’Tis a Conduct so novel,” American painter
Conflict in the Atlantic and John Trumbull reported from London, that it is “inconceivable to People [here].”
the West
The great task of fashioning representative republican governments absorbed the
The War of 1812 energy and intellect of an entire generation and was rife with conflict. Seeking to per-
The Federalist Legacy petuate the elite-led polity of the colonial era, Federalists celebrated “natural aristo-
crats” such as Washington and condemned the radical republicanism of the French
Revolution. In response, Jefferson and his Republican followers claimed the Fourth of
July as their holiday and “we the people” as their political language. “There was a
grand democrat procession in Town on the 4th of July,” came a report from Baltimore:
“All the farmers, tanners, black-smiths, shoemakers, etc. were there . . . and afterwards
they went to a grand feast.”
Many people of high status worried that the new state governments were too
attentive to the demands of such ordinary workers and their families. When considering
a bill, Connecticut conservative Ezra Stiles grumbled, every elected official “instantly
thinks how it will affect his constituents” rather than how it would enhance the general
welfare. What Stiles criticized as irresponsible, however, most Americans welcomed.
The concerns of ordinary citizens were now paramount, and traditional elites trembled.
214
An Emblem of America, 1800 In the first years of independence, citizens of the United States
searched for a symbolic representation of their new nation. This engraving shows many of the choices:
Should the symbol of “America” have an ideological meaning, as in the Goddess of Liberty? Or should it
enshrine national heroes, as in the stone Memorial to Washington? Or should America’s symbol be found
among its unique features, such as Niagara Falls (pictured in the background) or the presence of Africans
and Indians (as represented by the black youth to the right and the spear-brandishing figure in front of
the falls)? Or, finally, should its symbol be the national flag? Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
215
216 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Customs
revenue
FIGURE 7.1
Hamilton’s Fiscal Structure, 1792
As treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton established a national debt by issuing government bonds
and using the proceeds to redeem Confederation securities and assume the war debts of the states.
To pay the annual interest due on the bonds, he used the revenue from excise taxes and customs
duties. Hamilton deliberately did not attempt to redeem the bonds because he wanted to tie the
interests of the wealthy Americans who owned them to the new national government.
British financiers. However, Hamilton’s redemption Hamilton then proposed that the national govern-
plan would give enormous profits to speculators, who ment further enhance public credit by assuming the
had bought up depreciated securities. For example, war debts of the states. This
the Massachusetts firm of Burrell & Burrell had paid assumption plan, costing $22 mil- UNDERSTAND POINTS
$600 for Confederation notes with a face value of lion, also favored well-to-do cred- OF VIEW
$2,500; it stood to reap a profit of $1,900. Such windfall itors such as Abigail Adams, who Why did Hamilton believe
gains offended a majority of Americans, who con- had bought depreciated Massa- a national debt would
demned the speculative practices of capitalist finan- chusetts government bonds with strengthen the United
ciers. Equally controversial was Hamilton’s proposal a face value of $2,400 for only a States and help to ensure
to pay the Burrells and other note holders with new few hundred dollars and would its survival?
interest-bearing securities, thereby creating a perma- reap a windfall profit. Still, Adams
nent national debt. was a long-term investor, not a speculator like Assistant
Patrick Henry condemned this plan “to erect, and Secretary of the Treasury William Duer. Knowing
concentrate, and perpetuate a large monied interest” Hamilton’s intentions in advance, Duer and his associ-
and warned that it would prove “fatal to the existence ates secretly bought up $4.6 million of the war bonds of
of American liberty.” James Madison demanded that southern states at bargain rates. Congressional critics
Congress recompense those who originally owned condemned Duer’s speculation. They also pointed out
Confederation securities: the thousands of shopkeep- that some states had already paid off their war debts; in
ers, farmers, and soldiers who had bought or accepted response, Hamilton promised to reimburse those
them during the dark days of the war. However, it states. To win the votes of congressmen from Virginia
would have been difficult to trace the original owners; and Maryland, the treasury chief arranged another
moreover, nearly half the members of the House of deal: he agreed that the permanent national capital
Representatives owned Confederation securities and would be built along the Potomac River, where suspi-
would profit personally from Hamilton’s plan. Melding cious southerners could easily watch its operations.
practicality with self-interest, the House rejected Such astute bargaining gave Hamilton the votes he
Madison’s suggestion. needed to enact his redemption and assumption plans.
218 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Creating a National Bank In December 1790, urged the expansion of American manufacturing, he
Hamilton asked Congress to charter the Bank of the did not support high protective tariffs that would
United States, which would be jointly owned by private exclude foreign products. Rather, he advocated moder-
stockholders and the national government. Hamilton ate revenue tariffs that would pay the interest on the
argued that the bank would provide stability to the debt and other government expenses.
specie-starved American economy by making loans to Hamilton’s scheme worked brilliantly. As American
merchants, handling government funds, and issuing trade increased, customs revenue rose steadily and
bills of credit — much as the Bank of England had done paid down the national debt. Controversies notwith-
in Great Britain. These potential benefits persuaded standing, the treasury secretary had devised a strikingly
Congress to grant Hamilton’s bank a twenty-year char- modern and successful fiscal system; as entrepreneur
ter and to send the legislation to the president for his Samuel Blodget Jr. declared in 1801, “the country pros-
approval. pered beyond all former example.”
At this critical juncture, Secretary of State Thomas
Jefferson joined with James Madison to oppose
Hamilton’s financial initiatives. Jefferson charged that Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision
Hamilton’s national bank was unconstitutional. “The Hamilton paid a high political price for his success. As
incorporation of a Bank,” Jefferson told President Washington began his second four-year term in 1793,
Washington, was not a power expressly “delegated to Hamilton’s financial measures had split the Federalists
the United States by the Constitution.” Jefferson’s argu- into bitterly opposed factions. Most northern Federal-
ment rested on a strict interpretation of the Constitu- ists supported the treasury secretary, while most south-
tion. Hamilton preferred a loose interpretation; he ern Federalists joined a group headed by Madison
told Washington that Article 1, Section 8, empowered and Jefferson. By 1794, the two factions had acquired
Congress to make “all Laws which shall be necessary names. Hamiltonians remained Federalists; the allies
and proper” to carry out the provisions of the of Madison and Jefferson called themselves Democratic
Constitution. Agreeing with Hamilton, the president Republicans or simply Republicans.
signed the legislation. Thomas Jefferson spoke for southern planters and
western farmers. Well-read in architecture, natural his-
Raising Revenue Through Tariffs Hamilton now tory, agricultural science, and political theory, Jefferson
sought revenue to pay the annual interest on the national embraced the optimism of the Enlightenment. He
debt. At his insistence, Congress imposed excise taxes, believed in the “improvability of the human race” and
including a duty on whiskey distilled in the United deplored the corruption and social divisions that
States. These taxes would yield $1 million a year. To threatened its progress. Having seen the poverty of
raise another $4 million to $5 million, the treasury sec- laborers in British factories, Jefferson doubted that
retary proposed higher tariffs on foreign imports. wageworkers had the economic and political indepen-
Although Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” (1791) dence needed to sustain a republican polity.
Jefferson therefore set his democratic vision of and fashionable “Federal-style” town houses for newly
America in a society of independent yeomen farm affluent merchants.
families. “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen
people of God,” he wrote. The grain and meat from Ideological Politics As Americans profited from
their homesteads would feed European nations, which Europe’s struggles, they argued passionately over its
“would manufacture and send us in exchange our ideologies. Most Americans had welcomed the French
clothes and other comforts.” Jefferson’s notion of an Revolution (1789–1799) because it abolished feudal-
international division of labor resembled that pro- ism and established a constitutional monarchy. The
posed by Scottish economist Adam Smith in The creation of the First French Republic was more contro-
Wealth of Nations (1776). versial. Many applauded the end of the monarchy
and embraced the democratic ideology of the radical
To see a longer excerpt of Jefferson’s Notes on the Jacobins. Like the Jacobins, they formed political clubs
State of Virginia, along with other primary sources and began to address one another as “citizen.” However,
from this period, see Sources for America’s History. Americans with strong religious beliefs condemned
the new French government for closing Christian
Turmoil in Europe brought Jefferson’s vision closer churches and promoting a rational religion based on
to reality. The French Revolution began in 1789; four “natural morality.” Fearing social revolution at home,
years later, the First French Republic (1792–1804) wealthy Americans condemned revolutionary leader
went to war against a British-led coalition of monar- Robespierre and his followers for executing King
chies. As fighting disrupted European farming, wheat Louis XVI and three thousand aristocrats.
prices leaped from 5 to 8 shillings a bushel and Their fears were well founded,
remained high for twenty years, bringing substantial because Hamilton’s economic COMPARE AND
profits to Chesapeake and Middle Atlantic farmers. policies quickly sparked a domes- CONTRAST
“Our farmers have never experienced such prosper- tic insurgency. In 1794, western How did Jefferson’s idea of
ity,” remarked one observer. Simultaneously, a boom Pennsylvania farmers mounted an agrarian republic differ
in the export of raw cotton, fueled by the invention the so-called Whiskey Rebellion from the economic vision
of the cotton gin and the mechanization of cloth to protest Hamilton’s excise tax on put forward by Alexander
Hamilton?
production in Britain, boosted the economies of spirits (Thinking Like a Historian,
Georgia and South Carolina. As Jefferson had hoped, p. 220). This tax had cut demand
European markets brought prosperity to American for the corn whiskey the farmers distilled and bartered
agriculture. for eastern manufactures. Like the Sons of Liberty in
1765 and the Shaysites in 1786, the Whiskey Rebels
assailed the tax collectors who sent the farmers’ hard-
The French Revolution
earned money to a distant government. Protesters
Divides Americans waved banners proclaiming the French revolutionary
American merchants profited even more handsomely slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” To deter popular
from the European war. In 1793, President Washington rebellion and uphold national authority, President
issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, allowing U.S. citi- Washington raised a militia force of 12,000 troops and
zens to trade with all belligerents. As neutral carriers, dispersed the Whiskey Rebels.
American merchant ships claimed a right to pass
through Britain’s naval blockade of French ports, and Jay’s Treaty Britain’s maritime strategy intensified
American firms quickly took over the lucrative sugar political divisions in America. Beginning in late 1793,
trade between France and its West Indian islands. the British navy seized 250 American ships carrying
Commercial earnings rose spectacularly, averaging French sugar and other goods. Hoping to protect mer-
$20 million annually in the 1790s — twice the value of chant property through diplomacy, Washington dis-
cotton and tobacco exports. As the American mer- patched John Jay to Britain. But Jay returned with a
chant fleet increased from 355,000 tons in 1790 to controversial treaty that ignored the American claim
1.1 million tons in 1808, northern shipbuilders and mer- that “free ships make free goods” and accepted Britain’s
chants provided work for thousands of shipwrights, right to stop neutral ships. The treaty also required the
sailmakers, dockhands, and seamen. Carpenters, U.S. government to make “full and complete compen-
masons, and cabinetmakers in Boston, New York, and sation” to British merchants for pre–Revolutionary
Philadelphia easily found work building warehouses War debts owed by American citizens. In return, the
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
1. James Newport’s ad in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 2. Benjamin Chew on providing alcohol to his slaves,
1790. 1794. The instructions of a prominent Philadelphia
JAMES NEWPORT, At his Wine, Spirit and Cordial lawyer and landowner to his overseer about giving
Stores, in Second street, at the upper corner of Carter’s rum to his slaves during the harvest.
alley, has, by Wholesale and Retail, I have written . . . to let you have [illegible] Rum & other
MADEIRA, Sherry, Lisbon, Teneriffe, Malaga, Fayal, necessaries for the Harvest. But as these articles are so
and Port Wines, Jamaica spirits, Antigua rum, Philadel- [illegible] dear I must recommend it to you to be as spar-
phia ditto, Holland gin, Philadelphia ditto, very excellent, ing of them as possible. . . . I must rely on you good man
in cases, Coniac [sic] brandy, American ditto, good flavor, [to conduct] the Business. . . . I would have you let the
choice shrub. CORDIALS, &c. Anniseed water, clove People have a little Rum — let them be cautious in using
water, all-fours, Cinnamon water, prime wine and rum too much Spirits during Harvest — it will be well to mix
colouring, wine bitters. Spirits of wine. Retail Stores and some molasses with water to drink — it is very wholesome
Tavern-keepers will in particular, find their interest in & much recommended. . . . I need not caution you that a
buying here, the articles being all the best in their kind, great deal depends upon your own proper attention to
and selling at the most reduced prices. Philadelphia, yourself and that you are careful of good Conduct dur-
April 30, 1790. ing Harvest.
220
4. John Lewis Krimmel, Village Tavern, 1814. This execution and obtaining a repeal of the excise law, he or
painting of a postman arriving at a Pennsylvania they will be deemed as enemies and stand opposed to vir-
tavern with letters and newspapers reminds us tuous principles of republican liberty, and shall receive
that taverns were not merely places to drink. punishment according to the nature of the offense.
And whereas, a certain John Reed, now resident in
Washington, and being at his place near Pittsburgh, called
Reedsburgh, and having a set of stills employed at said
Reedsburgh, entered on the excise docket, contrary to the
will and good pleasure of his fellow citizens, and came not
forth to assist in the suppression of the execution of said
law, by aiding and assisting in the late expedition, have, by
delinquency, manifested his approbation to the execution
of the aforesaid law, is hereby charged forthwith to cause
the contents of this paper, without adding or diminishing,
to be published in the Pittsburgh Gazette, the ensuing
week, under the no less penalty than the consumption
of his distillery.
Given under my hand, this 19th day of July, one thou-
sand seven hundred and ninety-four.
agreement allowed Americans to submit claims for between, some 28,000 gens de couleur — free men of
illegal seizures and required the British to remove their color — were excluded from most professions, forbid-
troops and Indian agents from the Northwest Territory. den from taking the names of their white relatives, and
Despite Republican charges that Jay’s Treaty was too prevented from dressing and carrying themselves like
conciliatory, the Senate ratified it in 1795, but only by whites. The French Revolution intensified conflict
the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution. between planters and free blacks, giving way to a mas-
As long as the Federalists were in power, the United sive slave uprising in 1791 that aimed to abolish slav-
States would have a pro-British foreign policy. ery. The uprising touched off years of civil war, along
with Spanish and British invasions. In 1798, black
The Haitian Revolution The French Revolution Haitians led by Toussaint L’Ouverture — himself a
inspired a revolution closer to home that would also former slave-owning planter — seized control of the
impact the United States. The wealthy French planta- country. After five more years of fighting, in 1803 Saint-
tion colony of Saint-Domingue Domingue became the independent nation of Haiti:
IDENTIFY CAUSES in the West Indies was deeply the first black republic in the Atlantic World.
How did events abroad divided: a small class of elite plant- The Haitian Revolution profoundly impacted the
during the 1790s sharpen ers stood atop the population of United States. In 1793, thousands of refugees —
political divisions in the
40,000 free whites and dominated planters, slaves, and free blacks alike — fled the island
United States?
the island’s half million slaves. In and traveled to Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore,
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 223
The Haitian Revolution The slave uprising on the French island of Saint-Domingue triggered inter-
national war, created a refugee crisis, and ended with the creation of a new
and the Problem republic. The American Revolution did all these things as well, yet the United
States did not support either the rebellion or the republic of Haiti.
of Race
Savannah City Council’s Resolution in Response to the Excerpts from the Constitution of 1801 Established by
Haitian Uprising, 1795 the Central Assembly of Saint-Domingue
Whereas, from the mischiefs which the people of St. Article 1. – Saint-Domingue in its entire expanse, and
Domingo, and other French islands, have experienced, Samana, La Tortue, La Gonave, Les Cayemites, L’Ile-a-
from the insurrection of their Negroes and People of Vache, La Saone and other adjacent islands form the
Colour, the precautions taken by the people of South territory of a single colony, which is part of the French
Carolina . . . to prevent the importation or landing of Empire, but ruled under particular laws. . . .
any such Negroes or Mulattoes amongst them, and the Article 3. – There cannot exist slaves on this territory,
information the Citizens now assembled have received, servitude is therein forever abolished. All men are born,
that a vessel is now lying at Cockspur, recently from live and die free and French.
Kingston, with near one hundred Negroes on board, Article 4. – All men, regardless of color, are eligible to
whose landing may be dangerous to the inhabitants all employment.
of this state, with the daily expectation of many more; Article 5. – There shall exist no distinction other than
therefore, to prevent the evils that may arise from suf- those based on virtue and talent, and other superiority
fering people of this description, under any pretense afforded by law in the exercise of a public function.
whatever, from being introduced amongst us, the Citi- The law is the same for all whether in punishment
zens pledge themselves unanimously to support the City or in protection.
Council in any salutary measures they may adopt[.]
Source: Haitian Constitution of 1801 (English), The Louverture Project,
thelouvertureproject.org.
Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and
Rare Books Division, Image ID 1243998, digitalgallery.nypl.org.
immigrants from Ireland vehemently attacked Adams’s or members of Congress. “He that is not for us is
policies, a Federalist pamphleteer responded in kind: against us,” thundered the Federalist Gazette of the
“Were I president, I would hang them for otherwise United States. Using the Sedition Act, Federalist prose-
they would murder me.” To silence the critics, the cutors arrested more than twenty Republican newspa-
Federalists enacted three coercive laws limiting indi- per editors and politicians, accused them of sedition,
vidual rights and threatening the fledgling party sys- and convicted and jailed a number of them.
tem. The Naturalization Act lengthened the residency This repression sparked a constitutional crisis.
requirement for American citizenship from five to Republicans charged that the Sedition Act violated the
fourteen years, the Alien Act authorized the deportation First Amendment’s prohibition against “abridging the
of foreigners, and the Sedition Act prohibited the pub- freedom of speech, or of the press.” However, they did
lication of insults or malicious attacks on the president not appeal to the Supreme Court because the Court’s
224
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 225
SPA
and of no force.” The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions NORTHWEST
NISH
TERRITORY
set forth a states’ rights interpretation of the Consti-
tution, asserting that the states had a “right to judge”
TERRITORY
Electoral
the legitimacy of national laws. Candidate Vote
The conflict over the Sedition Act set the stage for TERR. SOUTH
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the presidential election of 1800. Jefferson, once OF THE
OHIO RIVER 7KRPDV-HIIHUVRQ
opposed on principle to political parties, now asserted 'HPRFUDW5HSXEOLFDQ
FL
OR
that they could “watch and relate to the people” the
ID
A
activities of an oppressive government. Meanwhile,
John Adams reevaluated his foreign policy. Rejecting Presidential election maps usually show the strength of each state in the
electoral college. The number of electoral votes cast by a state is the sum
Hamilton’s advice to declare war against France (and of the number of its senators (two) and its representatives in the U.S.
benefit from the resulting upsurge in patriotism), Congress. States gain or lose representatives depending on their
population, as determined each decade by the U.S. census. Consequently,
Adams put country ahead of party and used diplomacy the number of a state’s electoral votes may change over time.
to end the maritime conflict.
NORTHWEST Electoral
thought.” Both parties changed state election laws to
NISH T
INDIANA TERR.
TERR. Candidate Vote
favor their candidates, and rumors circulated of a 7KRPDV-HIIHUVRQ
5HSXEOLFDQ
ERRITORY
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votes in the southern states), Jefferson won a narrow
OR
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However, the Republican electors also gave 73 votes to
Aaron Burr of New York, who was Jefferson’s vice- States may cast their electoral votes either by district (as, for example,
presidential running mate (Map 7.1). The Constitution in North Carolina) or as a single statewide total. When Thomas Jefferson
and Aaron Burr both received 73 electoral votes, the House of
specified that in the case of a tie vote, the House of Representatives decided which one would be president.
Representatives would choose between the candi-
dates. For thirty-five rounds of balloting, Federalists in MAP 7.1
the House blocked Jefferson’s election, prompting The Presidential Elections of 1796 and 1800
rumors that Virginia would raise a military force to Both elections pitted Federalist John Adams of
put him into office. Massachusetts against Republican Thomas Jefferson of
Virginia, and both saw voters split along regional lines.
Ironically, arch-Federalist Alexander Hamilton Adams carried every New England state and, reflecting
ushered in a more democratic era by supporting Federalist strength in maritime and commercial areas,
Jefferson. Calling Burr an “embryo Caesar” and the the eastern districts of the Middle Atlantic states;
“most unfit man in the United States for the office of Jefferson won most of the agricultural-based states of
the South and West (Kentucky and Tennessee). New
president,” Hamilton persuaded key Federalists to York was the pivotal swing state. It gave its 12 electoral
allow Jefferson’s election. The Federalists’ concern for votes to Adams in 1796 and, thanks to the presence of
political stability also played a role. As Senator James Aaron Burr on the Republican ticket, bestowed them on
Jefferson in 1800.
Bayard of Delaware explained, “It was admitted on all
226 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
hands that we must risk the peoples — Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, and
UNDERSTAND
Constitution and a Civil War or Senecas — to cede huge tracts in New York and
POINTS OF VIEW
Why did Jefferson consider
take Mr. Jefferson.” Pennsylvania in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784). New
his election in 1800 to be Jefferson called the election York land speculators used liquor and bribes to take a
revolutionary? the “Revolution of 1800,” and so it million more acres, confining the once powerful
was. The bloodless transfer of Iroquois to reservations — essentially colonies of sub-
power showed that popularly elected governments ordinate peoples.
could be changed in an orderly way, even in times of American negotiators used similar tactics to grab
bitter partisan conflict. In his inaugural address in Ohio Valley lands. At the Treaties of Fort McIntosh
1801, Jefferson praised this achievement, declaring, (1785) and Fort Finney (1786), they pushed the Chip-
“We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” pewas, Delawares, Ottawas, Wyandots, and Shawnees
to cede most of the future state of Ohio. The tribes
quickly repudiated the agreements, justifiably claiming
A Republican Empire Is Born they were made under duress. Recognizing the failure
of these agreements, American negotiators arranged
In the Treaty of Paris of 1783, Great Britain gave up its for a comprehensive agreement at Fort Harmar (1789),
claims to the trans-Appalachian region and, said one but it, too, failed. To defend their lands, these tribes
British diplomat, left the Indian nations “to the care of joined with the Miami and Potawatomi Indians to
their [American] neighbours.” Care was hardly the form the Western Confederacy. Led by Miami chief
right word: many white Americans wanted to destroy Little Turtle, confederacy warriors crushed American
native communities. “Cut up every Indian Cornfield expeditionary forces sent by President Washington in
and burn every Indian town,” proclaimed Congressman 1790 and 1791.
William Henry Drayton of South Carolina, so that
their “nation be extirpated and the lands become the The Treaty of Greenville Fearing an alliance
property of the public.” Other leaders, including Henry between the Western Confederacy and the British in
Knox, Washington’s first secretary of war, favored Canada, Washington doubled the size of the U.S. Army
assimilating native peoples into Euro-American soci- and ordered General “Mad Anthony” Wayne to lead a
ety. Knox proposed the division of tribal lands among new expedition. In August 1794, Wayne defeated the
individual Indian families, who would become citizens confederacy in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near
of the various states. Indians resisted both forms of present-day Toledo, Ohio). However, continuing
domination and fought to retain control of their lands Indian resistance forced a compromise. In the Treaty
and cultures. In the ensuing struggle, the United States of Greenville (1795), American negotiators acknowl-
emerged as an expansive power, determined to control edged Indian ownership of the land, and, in return for
the future of the continent. various payments, the Western Confederacy ceded
most of Ohio (Map 7.2). The Indian peoples also agreed
to accept American sovereignty, placing themselves
Sham Treaties and Indian Lands “under the protection of the United States, and no
As in the past, the major struggle between natives other Power whatever.” These American advances caused
and Europeans centered on land rights. Invoking the Britain to agree, in Jay’s Treaty (1795), to reduce its trade
Paris treaty and regarding Britain’s Indian allies as and military aid to Indians in the trans-Appalachian
conquered peoples, the U.S. government asserted region.
both sovereignty over and ownership of the trans- The Greenville treaty sparked a wave of white
Appalachian west. Indian nations rejected both claims, migration. Kentucky already had a population of
pointing out they had not been conquered and had 73,000 in 1790, and in 1792 it was admitted to the
not signed the Paris treaty. “Our lands are our life Union as the fifteenth state (Vermont entered a year
and our breath,” declared Creek earlier). By 1800, more than 375,000 people had moved
PLACE EVENTS chief Hallowing King; “if we part into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys; in 1805, the new
IN CONTEXT with them, we part with our state of Ohio alone had more than 100,000 residents.
Why did the United States blood.” Brushing aside such Thousands more farm families moved into the future
go to war against western objections and threatening mili- states of Indiana and Illinois, sparking new conflicts
Indians so quickly after the
tary action, U.S. commissioners with native peoples over land and hunting rights.
Revolution?
forced the pro-British Iroquois Between 1790 and 1810, farm families settled as much
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 227
MAP 7.2
Indian Cessions and State Formation, To U.S. from Britain
by Treaty of 1818
1776–1840 CANADA
MAINE
By virtue of the Treaty of Paris L. Superior
1820
Hu
SAUK o Ft. Stanwix
n t a ri
ron
L. O
L. Michigan
MASS.
The Western Confederacy contested FOX MICH.
Ft. Niagara
NEBAGO
1837 N.Y.
DAKOTA CONN.
this claim, but the U.S. government (SIOUX) KICKAPOO POTAWATOMI
R.I.
Ft. Detroit ie
upheld it with military force. By 1840, L.
Er
WIN
Misso
armed diplomacy had forced most PA.
ur
Fallen Timbers
N
i R.
IOWA 1794 N.J.
Harmar's Defeat
Native American peoples to move 1790
OHIO
1803 ERIE MD. E
I
DEL.
AM
west of the Mississippi River. White Tippecanoe St. Clair's W
PAWNEE
MI
1811 Defeat
settlers occupied their lands, formed ILLINOIS 1791
IND. S
ILL. 1816
territorial governments, and eventu- 1818 oR
.
Lexington
VA.
St. Louis O hi
ally entered the Union as members ARAPAHO KY.
1792
L
MO. SH
of separate — and equal — states. By 1821 AWN
EE HI E N.C.
.
O
OSAGE E
e R Y U OK ATLANTIC
C
1860, the trans-Appalachian region TENN. R
se
E
U
OCEAN
es
constituted an important economic 1796
i R.
CH
nn
QUAPAW
Te
sip p
S.C.
and political force in American
I
ARK. CHICKASAW
s sis
1836
S
Mi
WICHITA ALA.
1819 1817 CREEK
I
Horseshoe
CHOCTAW Bend
A
LA. Natchez
1812 MOBILE Before 1784
A
TIMUCUA
1784–1820
New Orleans
After 1820
Battle
Gulf of Mexico Fort
SEMINOLE Treaty of Paris,
1783
0 250 500 miles Greenville Treaty,
1795
MEXICO 0 250 500 kilometers
land as they had during the entire colonial period. The A few Indian leaders sought a middle path in which
United States “is a country in flux,” a visiting French new beliefs overlapped with old practices. Among
aristocrat observed in 1799, and “that which is true the Senecas, the prophet Handsome Lake encouraged
today as regards its population, its establishments, traditional animistic rituals that gave thanks to the
its prices, its commerce will not be true six months sun, the earth, water, plants, and animals. But he included
from now.” Christian elements in his teachings — the concepts of
heaven and hell and an emphasis on personal moral-
Assimilation Rejected To dampen further con- ity — to deter his followers from alcohol, gambling, and
flicts, the U.S. government encouraged Native Amer- witchcraft. Handsome Lake’s teachings divided the
icans to assimilate into white society. The goal, as one Senecas into hostile factions. Led by Chief Red Jacket,
Kentucky Protestant minister put it, was to make the traditionalists condemned European culture as evil and
Indian “a farmer, a citizen of the United States, and a demanded a complete return to ancestral ways.
Christian.” Most Indians rejected wholesale assimila- Most Indians also rejected the efforts of American
tion; even those who joined Christian churches missionaries to turn warriors into farmers and women
retained many ancestral values and religious beliefs. To into domestic helpmates. Among eastern woodland
think of themselves as individuals or members of a peoples, women grew corn, beans, and squash — the
nuclear family, as white Americans were demanding, mainstays of the Indians’ diet — and land cultivation
meant repudiating the clan, the very essence of Indian rights passed through the female line. Consequently,
life. To preserve “the old Indian way,” many native women exercised considerable political influence,
communities expelled white missionaries and forced which they were eager to retain. Nor were Indian men
Christianized Indians to participate in tribal rites. As interested in becoming farmers. When war raiding and
a Munsee prophet declared, “There are two ways to hunting were no longer possible, many turned to graz-
God, one for the whites and one for the Indians.” ing cattle and sheep.
228 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Migration and the Changing Kentucky and Tennessee. “Boundless settlements open
a door for our citizens to run off and leave us,” a wor-
Farm Economy ried Maryland landlord lamented, “depreciating all our
Native American resistance slowed the advance of landed property and disabling us from paying taxes.”
white settlers but did not stop it. Nothing “short of In fact, many migrants were fleeing from this planter-
a Chinese Wall, or a line of Troops,” Washington controlled society. They wanted more freedom and
declared, “will restrain . . . the Incroachment of Settlers, hoped to prosper by growing cotton and hemp, which
upon the Indian Territory.” During the 1790s, two great were in great demand.
streams of migrants moved out of the southern states Many settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee lacked
(Map 7.3). ready cash to buy land. Like the North Carolina
Regulators in the 1770s, poorer migrants claimed a
Southern Migrants One stream, composed primar- customary right to occupy “back waste vacant Lands”
ily of white tenant farmers and struggling yeomen sufficient “to provide a subsistence to themselves and
families, flocked through the Cumberland Gap into their Posterity.” Virginia legislators, who administered
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 229
MAP 7.3
Regional Cultures Move West,
.
eR
c
1790–1820 CANADA en
wr
L. Superior
a
L
ME.
By 1790, four core cultures had
St.
1820
developed in the long-settled states
L. VT.
along the Atlantic seaboard. Between n
1791
a
M
hig
Hu
iss
1790 and 1820, migrants from these iss N.H.
L. Mic
ron
Hu
ip
ntar i o
dson
four regions carried their cultures L. O N.Y.
pi
MASS.
R.
MICHIGAN TERRITORY
into the trans-Appalachian west. New
R.
MISSOURI 1818–1834 CONN.
England customs and institutions were TERRITORY r ie R.I.
L. E
a dominant influence in upstate New PA.
N.J.
York and along the Great Lakes, while INDIANA OHIO
NS
ILLINOIS 1816 1803 Po MD.
the Lower South’s hierarchical system
AI
1818 t
DEL.
om
N
NT
R.
of slavery and heavy concentration
ac
Mi
U
of African Americans shaped the ss R.
E
O
ou r o VA.
i R. O hi W
M
character of the new states along the KENTUCKY
1792 S
Gulf of Mexico. The pattern of cultural
N
Cumberland
IA
diffusion was more complex in the TENNESSEE
Gap
N.C.
H
Ohio and Tennessee river valleys, which
C
Arkansas 1796
AT L A N T I C
LA
R.
were settled by migrants from various ARKANSAS
PA
Te n
nessee S.C. OCEAN
R.
core regions. TERRITORY
P
1819–1824
A
GA.
MISS.
Chat
1817 ALABAMA
1819 0 100 200 miles
tahoochee R.
0 100 200 kilometers
LOUISIANA
1812 Cultural Core Areas
FLORIDA New England
TERRITORY
1819–1845 Mid-Atlantic
Gulf of Mexico Chesapeake
Lower South
Direction of cultural diffusion
the Kentucky Territory, had a more elitist vision. estates in the interior of Georgia and South Carolina,
Although they allowed poor settlers to buy up to 1,400 while others moved into the future states of Alabama,
acres of land at reduced prices, they sold or granted Mississippi, and Louisiana. “The Alabama Feaver rages
huge tracts of 100,000 acres to twenty-one groups of here with great violence,” a North Carolina planter
speculators and leading men. In 1792, this landed elite remarked, “and has carried off vast numbers of our
owned one-fourth of the state, while half the white Citizens.”
men owned no land and lived as quasi-legal squatters Cotton was the key to this migratory surge. Around
or tenant farmers. 1750, the demand for raw wool and cotton increased
Widespread landlessness — and opposition to dramatically as water-powered spinning jennies, weav-
slavery — prompted a new migration across the Ohio ing mules, and other technologi-
River into the future states of Ohio, Indiana, and cal innovations of the Industrial IDENTIFY CAUSES
Illinois. In a free community, thought Peter Cartwright, Revolution boosted textile pro- Why were westward
a Methodist lay preacher from southwestern Kentucky duction in England. South Caro- migration and agricul-
who moved to Illinois, “I would be entirely clear of the lina and Georgia planters began tural improvement so
evil of slavery . . . [and] could raise my children to growing cotton, and American widespread in the late
work where work was not thought a degradation.” Yet inventors, including Connecticut- eighteenth and early nine-
land distribution in Ohio was almost exactly as unequal born Eli Whitney, built machines teenth centuries?
as in Kentucky: in 1810, a quarter of its real estate was (called gins) that efficiently
owned by 1 percent of the population, while more than extracted seeds from its strands. To grow more cotton,
half of its white men were landless. white planters imported about 115,000 Africans
Meanwhile, a second stream of southern planters between 1776 and 1808, when Congress cut off the
and slaves from the Carolinas moved along the coastal Atlantic slave trade. The cotton boom financed the
plain toward the Gulf of Mexico. Some set up new rapid settlement of Mississippi and Alabama — in a
230 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
single year, a government land office in Huntsville, preferred to buy farms. They signed contracts with the
Alabama, sold $7 million of uncleared land — and the Holland Land Company, a Dutch-owned syndicate of
two states entered the Union in 1817 and 1819, speculators, that allowed settlers to pay for their farms
respectively. as they worked them, or moved west again in an elusive
search for land on easy terms.
Exodus from New England As southerners moved
across the Appalachians and along the Gulf Coast, a Innovation on Eastern Farms The new farm econ-
third stream of migrants flowed out of the overcrowded omy in New York, Ohio, and Kentucky forced major
communities of New England. Previous generations changes in eastern agriculture. Unable to compete with
of Massachusetts and Connecticut farm families had lower-priced western grains, farmers in New England
moved north and east, settling New Hampshire, switched to potatoes, which were high yielding and
Vermont, and Maine. Now New England farmers nutritious. To make up for the labor of sons and daugh-
moved west. Seeking land for their children, thousands ters who had moved inland, Middle Atlantic farmers
of parents migrated to New York. “The town of bought more efficient farm equipment. They replaced
Herkimer,” noted one traveler, “is entirely populated by metal-tipped wooden plows with cast-iron models that
families come from Connecticut.” By 1820, almost dug deeper and required a single yoke of oxen instead
800,000 New Englanders lived in a string of settle- of two. Such changes in crop mix and technology kept
ments stretching from Albany to Buffalo, and many production high.
others had traveled on to Ohio and Indiana. Soon, Easterners also adopted the progressive farming
much of the Northwest Territory consisted of New methods touted by British agricultural reformers.
England communities that had moved inland. “Improvers” in Pennsylvania doubled their average
In New York, as in Kentucky and Ohio, well- yield per acre by rotating their crops. Yeomen farmers
connected speculators snapped up much of the best raised sheep and sold the wool to textile manufactur-
land, leasing farms to tenants for a fee. Imbued with ers. Many farmers adopted a year-round planting cycle,
the “homestead” ethic, many New England families sowing corn in the spring for animal fodder and then
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 231
planting winter wheat in September for market sale. Marshall declared that only the Supreme Court held
Women and girls milked the family cows and made the power of constitutional review. The Court claimed
butter and cheese to sell in the growing towns and this authority for itself when James Madison, the new
cities. secretary of state, refused to deliver the commission of
Whether hacking fields out of western forests or William Marbury, one of Adams’s midnight appoin-
carting manure to replenish eastern soils, farmers now tees. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Marshall asserted
worked harder and longer, but their increased produc- that Marbury had the right to the appointment but that
tivity brought them a better standard of living. the Court did not have the constitutional power to
European demand for American produce was high in enforce it. In defining the Court’s powers, Marshall
these years, and westward migration — the settlement voided a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, in effect
and exploitation of Indian lands — boosted the farm- asserting the Court’s authority to review congressional
ing economy throughout the country. legislation and interpret the Constitution. “It is emphat-
ically the province and duty of the judicial department
to say what the law is,” the chief justice declared,
The Jefferson Presidency directly challenging the Republican view that the state
From 1801 to 1825, three Republicans from Virginia — legislatures had that power.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe — Ignoring this setback, Jefferson and the Republicans
each served two terms as president. Supported by reversed other Federalist policies. When the Alien and
farmers in the South and West and strong Republican Sedition Acts expired in 1801, Congress branded them
majorities in Congress, this “Virginia Dynasty” com- unconstitutional and refused to extend them. It also
pleted what Jefferson had called the Revolution of amended the Naturalization Act, restoring the original
1800. It reversed many Federalist policies and actively waiting period of five years for resident aliens to
supported westward expansion. become citizens. Charging the Federalists with grossly
When Jefferson took office in 1801, he inherited an expanding the national government’s size and power,
old international conflict. Beginning in the 1780s, the Jefferson had the Republican Congress shrink it. He
Barbary States of North Africa had raided merchant abolished all internal taxes, including the excise tax
ships in the Mediterranean, and like many European that had sparked the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. To
nations, the United States had paid an annual bribe — quiet Republican fears of a military coup, Jefferson
massive in relation to the size of the federal budget — to reduced the size of the permanent army. He also
protect its vessels. Initially Jefferson refused to pay this secured repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, ousting
“tribute” and ordered the U.S. Navy to attack the pirates’ forty of Adams’s midnight appointees. Still, Jefferson
home ports. After four years of intermittent fighting, in retained competent Federalist officeholders, removing
which the United States bombarded Tripoli and cap- only 69 of 433 properly appointed Federalists during
tured the city of Derna, the Jefferson administration his eight years as president.
cut its costs. It signed a peace treaty that included a Jefferson likewise governed tactfully in fiscal affairs.
ransom for returned prisoners, and Algerian ships He tolerated the economically important Bank of the
were soon taking American sailors hostage again. United States, which he had once condemned as
At home, Jefferson inherited a national judiciary unconstitutional. But he chose as his secretary of the
filled with Federalist appointees, including the formi- treasury Albert Gallatin, a fiscal conservative who
dable John Marshall of Virginia, the new chief justice believed that the national debt was “an evil of the first
of the Supreme Court. To add more Federalist judges, magnitude.” By limiting expenditures and using cus-
the outgoing Federalist Congress had passed the toms revenue to redeem government bonds, Gallatin
Judiciary Act of 1801. The act created sixteen new reduced the debt from $83 million in 1801 to $45 mil-
judgeships and various other positions, which President lion in 1812. With Jefferson and Gallatin at the helm,
Adams filled at the last moment with “midnight the nation’s fiscal affairs were no longer run in the
appointees.” The Federalists “have retired into the judi- interests of northeastern creditors and merchants.
ciary as a stronghold,” Jefferson complained, “and from
that battery all the works of Republicanism are to be
beaten down and destroyed.” Jefferson and the West
Jefferson’s fears were soon realized. When Repub- Jefferson had long championed settlement of the West.
lican legislatures in Kentucky and Virginia repudiated He celebrated the yeoman farmer in Notes on the State
the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional, of Virginia (1785); wrote one of the Confederation’s
232 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
western land ordinances; and supported Pinckney’s 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France and
Treaty (1795), the agreement between the United States sought to reestablish France’s American empire. In
and Spain that reopened the Mississippi River to 1801, he coerced Spain into signing a secret treaty that
American trade and allowed settlers to export crops via returned Louisiana to France and restricted American
the Spanish-held port of New Orleans. access to New Orleans, violating Pinckney’s Treaty.
As president, Jefferson pursued policies that made it Napoleon also launched an invasion to restore French
easier for farm families to acquire land. In 1796, a rule in Saint-Domingue. It was once the richest sugar
Federalist-dominated Congress had set the price of colony in the Americas, but its civil war had ruined the
land in the national domain at $2 per acre; by the 1830s, economy and cost France a fortune. Napoleon wanted
Jefferson-inspired Republican Congresses had enacted to crush the rebellion, restore its planter class, and
more than three hundred laws that cut the cost to $1.25, “destroy the new Algiers that has been growing up in
eased credit terms, and allowed illegal squatters to buy the middle of America.”
their farms. Eventually, in the Homestead Act of 1862, Napoleon’s actions in Haiti and Louisiana prompted
Congress gave farmsteads to settlers for free. Jefferson to question his pro-French foreign policy.
“The day that France takes possession of New Orleans,
The Louisiana Purchase International events chal- we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation,”
lenged Jefferson’s vision of westward expansion. In the president warned, dispatching James Monroe to
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 233
A Mandan Village
This Mandan settlement in
North Dakota, painted by
George Catlin around 1837,
resembled those in which the
Lewis and Clark expedition
spent the winter of 1804–
1805. Note the palisade of
logs that surrounds the village,
as protection from the Sioux
and other marauding Plains
peoples, and the solidly built
mud lodges that provided warm
shelter from the bitter cold of
winter. Smithsonian American Art
Museum, Washington, D.C./Art
Resource, NY.
In 1806, Lewis and Clark capped off their pathbreaking known as impressment. Between 1802 and 1811,
expedition by providing Jefferson with the first maps of British naval officers impressed nearly 8,000 sailors,
the immense wilderness and a detailed account of its including many U.S. citizens. In 1807, American anger
natural resources and inhabitants (Map 7.4). Their boiled over when a British warship attacked the U.S.
report prompted some Americans to envision a nation Navy vessel Chesapeake, killing three, wounding eigh-
that would span the continent. teen, and seizing four alleged deserters. “Never since
the battle of Lexington have I seen this country in such
a state of exasperation as at present,” Jefferson declared.
The War of 1812 and the The Embargo of 1807 To protect American inter-
Transformation of Politics ests, Jefferson pursued a policy of peaceful coercion.
The Embargo Act of 1807 prohibited American ships
The Napoleonic Wars that ravaged Europe after 1802 from leaving their home ports until Britain and France
brought new attacks on American merchant ships. stopped restricting U.S. trade. A drastic maneuver, the
American leaders struggled desperately to protect the embargo overestimated the reliance of Britain and
nation’s commerce while avoiding war. When this effort France on American shipping and underestimated the
finally failed, it sparked dramatic political changes that resistance of merchants, who feared the embargo
destroyed the Federalist Party and split the Republicans would ruin them. In fact, the embargo cut the American
into National and Jeffersonian factions. gross national product by 5 percent and weakened the
entire economy. Exports plunged from $108 million in
1806 to $22 million in 1808, hurting farmers as well as
Conflict in the Atlantic and the West merchants. “All was noise and bustle” in New York City
As Napoleon conquered European countries, he cut off before the embargo, one visitor remarked; afterward,
their commerce with Britain and seized American everything was closed up as if “a malignant fever was
merchant ships that stopped in British ports. The raging in the place.”
British ministry responded with a naval blockade and Despite popular discontent over the embargo,
seized American vessels carrying sugar and molasses voters elected Republican James Madison to the
from the French West Indies. The British navy also presidency in 1808. A powerful advocate for the
searched American merchant ships for British deserters Constitution, the architect of the Bill of Rights, and a
and used these raids to replenish its crews, a practice prominent congressman and party leader, Madison
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 235
BRITISH CANADA
GROS VENTRE ME.
(MASS.)
pe
L. Su rior
Colum
bia R. CROW VT.
L.
OREGON N.H.
MASS.
Hu
SAUK io
(Claimed by Britain, Spain, ntar
L. Michigan
ron
L. O
WINNEBAGO
and the United States) M FOX N.Y.
CHEYENNE is
POTAWATOMI
R. R.I.
so
Snake SANTEE KICKAPOO
uri
ie
SIOUX R. IOWA Er CONN.
L. PA.
LOUISIANA PURCHASE N.J.
INDIANA ERIE
MD. DEL.
I
MISSOURI TERRITORY OHIO
AM
ARAPAHO
MI
KANSA ILLINOIS
San Francisco St. Louis
VA. N
R. oR
.
N
ALTA do Ohi
CALIFORNIA ra SH KY. E
lo
E
AW
Co NE I EE N.C.
W
San Luis Obispo OSAGE CH OK
W
.
E
ppi R
Taos KIOWA Ar YU ER
Santa Barbara kan TENN. S
Santa Fe s as CH
sissi
R.
Los Angeles CHICKASAW
S.C.
Mis
Red R. GA.
S
MISSISSIPPI
PACIFIC San Diego TERRITORY CREEK A TLANTI C
P
El Paso Nacogdoches
NATCHEZ
I
2 to 18 Over 45 Chihuahua A
e
COAHUILA
Explorers’ Routes Gulf of Mexico SEMINOLE
Lewis and Clark, 1804–1806
Pike, 1805–1806
Pike, 1806–1807 0 250 500 miles
MAP 7.4
U.S. Population Density in 1803 and the Louisiana Purchase
When the United States purchased Louisiana from France in 1803, much of the land to its east — the
vast territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River — remained in Indian
hands. The equally vast lands beyond the Mississippi were virtually unknown to Anglo-Americans,
even after the epic explorations of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Still, President Jefferson
predicted quite accurately that the huge Mississippi River Valley “from its fertility . . . will ere long
yield half of our whole produce, and contain half of our whole population.”
had served the nation well. But John Beckley, a loyal Americans, “the children of the Evil Spirit . . . who
Republican, worried that Madison would be “too timid have taken away your lands”; renounce alcohol; and
and indecisive as a statesman,” and events proved him return to traditional ways. The Shawnee leaders found
right. Acknowledging the embargo’s failure, Madison their greatest support among Kickapoo, Potawatomi,
replaced it with new economic restrictions, which also Winnebago, Ottawa, and Chippewa warriors: Indians
failed to protect American commerce. of the western Great Lakes who had so far been largely
shielded from the direct effects of U.S. westward expan-
Western War Hawks Republican congressmen from sion. They flocked to Tenskwatawa’s holy village,
the West were certain that Britain was the primary Prophetstown, in the Indiana Territory.
offender. They pointed to its trade with Indians in the As Tecumseh mobilized the western Indian peoples
Ohio River Valley in violation of the Treaty of Paris for war, William Henry Harrison, the governor of
and Jay’s Treaty. Bolstered by British guns and sup- the Indiana Territory, decided on a preemptive strike.
plies, the Shawnee war chief Tecumseh revived the In November 1811, when Tecumseh went south to
Western Confederacy in 1809. His brother, the prophet seek support from the Chickasaws, Choctaws, and
Tenskwatawa, provided the confederacy with a power- Creeks, Harrison took advantage of his absence and
ful nativist ideology. He urged Indian peoples to shun attacked Prophetstown. The governor’s 1,000 troops
236 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
and militiamen traded heavy casualties with the con- neutral nation. But the Federalists in Congress who
federacy’s warriors at the Battle of Tippecanoe and represented the New England and Middle Atlantic
then destroyed the holy village. merchants voted against the war; and in the election of
With Britain assisting Indians in the western terri- 1812, those regions cast their 89 electoral votes for the
tories and seizing American ships in the Atlantic, Federalist presidential candidate, De Witt Clinton of
Henry Clay of Kentucky, the new Speaker of the House New York. Madison amassed most of his 128 electoral
of Representatives, and John C. Calhoun, a rising votes in the South and West, where voters and con-
young congressman from South Carolina, pushed gressmen strongly supported the war. Many historians
Madison toward war. Like other Republican “war therefore argue that the conflict was actually “a western
hawks” from the West and South, they wanted to seize war with eastern labels” (American Voices, p. 238).
territory in British Canada and Spanish Florida. With
national elections approaching, Madison issued an
ultimatum to Britain. When Britain failed to respond The War of 1812
quickly, the president asked Congress for a declaration The War of 1812 was a near disaster for the United
of war. In June 1812, a sharply divided Senate voted 19 States. An invasion of British Canada in 1812 quickly
to 13 for war, and the House of Representatives con- ended in a retreat to Detroit. Nonetheless, the United
curred, 79 to 49. States stayed on the offensive in the West. In 1813,
The causes of the War of 1812 have been much American raiders burned the Canadian capital of York
debated. Officially, the United States went to war (present-day Toronto), Commodore Oliver Hazard
because Britain had violated its commercial rights as a Perry defeated a small British flotilla on Lake Erie, and
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 237
Counting Scalps
Effective propaganda usually contains a grain of truth, in this case the Indian warriors’ practice of
scalping their wartime victims. Entitled “A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the humane British
and their worthy allies!”, this cartoon by Philadelphia artist William Charles accuses the British of
paying Indians to kill — and then mutilate — American soldiers. “Bring me the scalps, and the King
our master will reward you,” says the British officer in the cartoon. The verse at the bottom urges
“Columbia’s Sons” to press forward their attacks; otherwise, “The Savage Indian with his Scalping
knife, / Or Tomahawk may seek to take your life.” Library of Congress.
General William Henry Harrison overcame a British stalemated along the Canadian
IDENTIFY CAUSES
and Indian force at the Battle of the Thames, taking the frontier and on the defensive in What do you think is the
life of Tecumseh, now a British general. the Atlantic, and its new capital most persuasive explana-
In the East, political divisions prevented a wider city lay in ruins. The only U.S. tion for the United States’s
war. New England Federalists opposed the war and victories came in the Southwest. decision to declare war on
prohibited their states’ militias from attacking Canada. There, a rugged slave-owning Great Britain in 1812?
Boston merchants and banks refused to lend money to planter named Andrew Jackson
the federal government, making the war difficult to and a force of Tennessee militiamen defeated British-
finance. In Congress, Daniel Webster, a dynamic young and Spanish-supported Creek Indians in the Battle of
politician from New Hampshire, led Federalists Horseshoe Bend (1814) and forced the Indians to cede
opposed to higher tariffs and national conscription of 23 million acres of land (Map 7.5).
state militiamen.
Gradually, the tide of battle turned in Britain’s favor. Federalists Oppose the War American military
When the war began, American privateers had cap- setbacks increased opposition to the war in New
tured scores of British merchant vessels, but by 1813 England. In 1814, Massachusetts Federalists called for
British warships were disrupting American commerce a convention “to lay the foundation for a radical reform
and threatening seaports along the Atlantic coast. in the National Compact.” When New England
In 1814, a British fleet sailed up the Chesapeake Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, some dele-
Bay, and troops stormed ashore to attack Washington gates proposed secession, but most wanted to revise
City. Retaliating for the destruction of York, the invad- the Constitution. To end Virginia’s domination of the
ers burned the U.S. Capitol and government build- presidency, the Hartford Convention proposed a con-
ings. After two years of fighting, the United States was stitutional amendment limiting the office to a single
AMERICAN
VOICES
238
There is . . . a headlong rushing into difficulties, with separation of the states and a civil war — to refuse to bring
little calculation about the means, and little concern about forth the resources of the country against him? . . . I did
the consequences. With a navy comparatively [small], we think that in a defensive war — a struggle for all that is
are about to enter into the lists against the greatest marine valuable — that all parties would have united. But it is
[power] on the globe. With a commerce unprotected and not so — every measure calculated to replenish the trea-
spread over every ocean, we propose to make a profit by sury or raise men is opposed [by Federalists] as though it
privateering, and for this endanger the wealth of which were determined to strike the “star spangled banner” and
we are honest proprietors. An invasion is threatened of exalt the bloody cross. Look at the votes and proceedings
the [British colonies in Canada, but Britain] . . . without of congress — and mark the late spirit [to secede from the
putting a new ship into commission, or taking another Union] . . . that existed in Massachusetts, and see with
soldier into pay, can spread alarm or desolation along what unity of action every thing has been done [by New
the extensive range of our seaboard. . . . England Federalists] to harass and embarrass the govern-
What are the United States to gain by this war? Will ment. Our loans have failed; and our soldiers have wanted
the gratification of some privateersmen compensate the their pay, because those [New England merchants] who
nation for that sweep of our legitimate commerce by the had the greater part of the monied capital covenanted
extended marine of our enemy which this desperate act with each other to refuse its aid to the country. They had a
invites? Will Canada compensate the Middle states for right, legally, to do this; and perhaps, also, by all the arti-
[the loss of] New York; or the Western states for [the fices of trade or power that money gave them, to oppress
loss of] New Orleans? others not of their “stamp” and depress the national
Let us not be deceived. A war of invasion may invite a credit — but history will shock posterity by detailing the
retort of invasion. When we visit the peaceable, and as to length to which they went to bankrupt the republic. . . .
us innocent, colonies of Great Britain with the horrors of To conclude — why does the war continue? It is not
war, can we be assured that our own coast will not be vis- the fault of the government — we demand no extravagant
ited with like horrors? thing. I answer the question, and say — it lasts because
Great Britain depends on the exertions of her “party” in this
Source: Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2, cols. 2219–2221. country to destroy our resources, and compel “uncondi-
tional submission.”
Hezekiah Niles Thus the war began, and is continued, by our
A Republican Defends the War divisions.
In 1814, what the Federalists feared had come to pass: Source: Niles’ Weekly Register, January 28, 1815.
British ships blockaded American ports, and British troops
invaded American territory. In January 1815, Republican
editor Hezekiah Niles used the pages of his influential QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Baltimore newspaper, Niles’ Weekly Register, to explain 1. According to Washington, what is the ultimate cause
of political factionalism? Why does Washington believe
current Republican policies and blame the Federalists for
that factionalism is most dangerous in “popular” — that
American reverses. is, republican — governments?
It is universally known that the causes for which we 2. Compare and contrast the Quincy and Niles documents.
What specific dangers did Josiah Quincy and the Feder-
declared war are no obstruction to peace. The practice alists foresee with regard to Republican war policies?
of blockade and impressment having ceased by the gen- According to Hezekiah Niles, what were the war goals
eral pacification of Europe, our government is content of the Republican administration?
to leave the principle as it was. . . . 3. Read the section on the War of 1812 on pages 236–
241, and then discuss the accuracy of the Federalists’
We have no further business in hostility, than such predictions.
as is purely defensive; while that of Great Britain is to 4. How had Republican war goals changed since the start
humble or subdue us. The war, on our part, has become of the war? Niles charged the Federalists and their sup-
a contest for life, liberty and property — on the part of porters with impeding the American war effort. What
were his specific charges? Did they have any merit?
our enemy, of revenge or ambition. . . .
How might the Federalists have defended their stance
What then are we to do? Are we to encourage him with respect to the war?
by divisions among ourselves — to hold out the hope of a
239
240 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Quebec
CANADA R.
e
nc
re
MAINE
aw
(part of Mass.)
St. L
perior
e Su Montreal
L ak
Chrysler’s Farm
2. Americans burn Nov. 11, 1813
York (Toronto), VT. N.H.
Ft. Mackinac
La
ke April 27, 1813
Hu Lake 6. British invasion stopped at Plattsburgh
Ontario on Lake Champlain, Sept. 11, 1814
ro
an
n
rn Boston
rb o
Lake Michig
Pe
Fort
Sept. 13–14, 1814
Dearborn Philadelphia
n
Godly Wood
Put-In-Bay, Sept. 10, 1813 Sept. 12, 1814 Baltimore
UNORGANIZED TERRITORY
Tippecanoe 4
Nov. 7, 1811 OHIO
DEL. 18
1
Ft. McHenry
Washington, D.C.
ILLINOIS INDIANA
TERRITORY MD.
TERRITORY 5. British burn
Washington, D.C., Chesapeake
Aug. 24–28, 1814 Bay
St. Louis R.
Oh
io VIRGINIA
ATLANTIC
KENTUCKY OCEAN
NORTH
CAROLINA
N
TENNESSEE E
W
i R.
SOUTH S
ipp
CAROLINA
siss
M is
American victories
IS
H
MAP 7.5
The War of 1812
Unlike the War of Independence, the War of 1812 had few large-scale military campaigns. In 1812
and 1813, most of the fighting took place along the Canadian border, as small American military
forces attacked British targets with mixed success (nos. 1–4). The British took the offensive in 1814,
launching a successful raid on Washington, but their attack on Baltimore failed, and they suffered
heavy losses when they invaded the United States along Lake Champlain (nos. 5–7). Near the Gulf
of Mexico, American forces moved from one success to another: General Andrew Jackson defeated
the pro-British Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, won a victory in Pensacola, and, in
the single major battle of the war, routed an invading British army at New Orleans (nos. 8–10).
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 241
four-year term and rotating it among citizens from dif- The Federalist Legacy
ferent states. The convention also suggested amend-
The War of 1812 ushered in a new phase of the Repub-
ments restricting commercial embargoes to sixty days
lican political revolution. Before the conflict, Federalists
and requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress to
had strongly supported Alexander Hamilton’s program
declare war, prohibit trade, or admit a new state to the
of national mercantilism — a funded debt, a central
Union.
bank, and tariffs — while Jeffersonian Republicans had
As a minority party, the Federalists could prevail
opposed it. After the war, the Republicans split into
only if the war continued to go badly — a very real
two camps. Led by Henry Clay, National Republicans
prospect. The war had cost $88 million, raising the
pursued Federalist-like policies. In 1816, Clay pushed
national debt to $127 million. And now, as Albert
legislation through Congress creating the Second Bank
Gallatin warned Henry Clay in May 1814, Britain’s tri-
of the United States and persuaded President Madison
umph over Napoleon in Europe meant that a “well
to sign it. In 1817, Clay won passage of the Bonus Bill,
organized and large army is [now ready] . . . to act
which created a national fund for roads and other
immediately against us.” When an attack from Canada
internal improvements. Madison vetoed it. Reaffirm-
came in the late summer of 1814, only an American
ing traditional Jeffersonian Republican principles, he
naval victory on Lake Champlain stopped the British
argued that the national government lacked the consti-
from marching down the Hudson River Valley. A few
tutional authority to fund internal improvements.
months later, thousands of seasoned British troops
Meanwhile, the Federalist Party crumbled. As one
landed outside New Orleans, threatening American
supporter explained, the National Republicans in the
control of the Mississippi River. With the nation politi-
eastern states had “destroyed the Federalist party by the
cally divided and under attack from north and south,
adoption of its principles” while the favorable farm
Gallatin feared that “the war might prove vitally fatal to
policies of Jeffersonians maintained the Republican
the United States.”
Party’s dominance in the South and West. “No Federal
character can run with success,” Gouverneur Morris of
Peace Overtures and a Final Victory Fortunately
New York lamented, and the election of 1818 proved
for the young American republic, by 1815 Britain
him right: Republicans outnumbered Federalists 37 to
wanted peace. The twenty-year war with France had
7 in the Senate and 156 to 27 in the House. Westward
sapped its wealth and energy, so it began negotiations
expansion and the success of Jefferson’s Revolution of
with the United States in Ghent, Belgium. At first,
1800 had shattered the First Party System.
the American commissioners — John Quincy Adams,
Gallatin, and Clay — demanded territory in Canada
and Florida, while British diplomats sought an Indian Marshall’s Federalist Law However, Federalist
buffer state between the United States and Canada. policies lived on thanks to John Marshall’s long tenure
Both sides quickly realized that these objectives were on the Supreme Court. Appointed chief justice by
not worth the cost of prolonged warfare. The Treaty of President John Adams in January 1801, Marshall had a
Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814, retained the personality and intellect that allowed him to dominate
prewar borders of the United States. the Court until 1822 and strongly influence its deci-
That result hardly justified three years of war, but sions until his death in 1835.
before news of the treaty reached the United States, a Three principles informed Marshall’s jurispru-
final military victory lifted Americans’ morale. On dence: judicial authority, the supremacy of national
January 8, 1815, General Jackson’s troops crushed the laws, and traditional property rights (Table 7.1).
British forces attacking New Orleans. Fighting from Marshall claimed the right of judicial review for the
carefully constructed breastworks, the Americans Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803), and the
rained “grapeshot and cannister bombs” on the massed Court frequently used that power to overturn state
British formations. The British lost 700 men, and laws that, in its judgment, violated the Constitution.
2,000 more were wounded or taken prisoner; just 13
Americans died, and only 58 suffered wounds. A news- Asserting National Supremacy The important
paper headline proclaimed: “Almost Incredible case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) involved one
Victory!! Glorious News.” The victory made Jackson a such law. When Congress created the Second Bank of
national hero, redeemed the nation’s battered pride, the United States in 1816, it allowed the bank to set up
and undercut the Hartford Convention’s demands for state branches that competed with state-chartered
constitutional revision. banks. In response, the Maryland legislature imposed a
242 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
TABLE 7.1
Major Decisions of the Marshall Court
Date Case Significance of Decision
Judicial Authority 1803 Marbury v. Madison Asserts principle of judicial review
Property Rights 1810 Fletcher v. Peck Protects property rights through broad
reading of Constitution’s contract clause
1819 Dartmouth College v. Safeguards property rights, especially of
Woodward chartered corporations
Supremacy of National Law 1819 McCulloch v. Maryland Interprets Constitution to give broad
powers to national government
1824 Gibbons v. Ogden Gives national government jurisdiction
over interstate commerce
tax on notes issued by the Baltimore branch of the state legislatures enacted statutes infringing on the
Second Bank. The Second Bank refused to pay, claim- property rights of wealthy citizens, Federalist judges
ing that the tax infringed on national powers and was vowed to void them.
therefore unconstitutional. The state’s lawyers then Marshall was no exception. Determined to protect
invoked Jefferson’s argument: that Congress lacked the individual property rights, he invoked the contract
constitutional authority to charter a national bank. clause of the Constitution to do it. The contract clause
Even if a national bank was legitimate, the lawyers (in Article I, Section 10) prohibits the states from pass-
argued, Maryland could tax its activities within the ing any law “impairing the obligation of contracts.”
state. Economic conservatives at the Philadelphia convention
Marshall and the nationalist-minded Republicans had inserted the clause to prevent “stay” laws, which
on the Court firmly rejected both arguments. The kept creditors from seizing the lands and goods of
Second Bank was constitutional, said the chief justice, delinquent debtors. In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Marshall
because it was “necessary and greatly expanded its scope. The Georgia legislature had
UNDERSTAND proper,” given the national gov- granted a huge tract of land to the Yazoo Land Com-
POINTS OF VIEW ernment’s control over currency pany. When a new legislature cancelled the grant, alleg-
Why do historians think and credit, and Maryland did not ing fraud and bribery, speculators who had purchased
the decisions of the Mar- have the power to tax it. Yazoo lands appealed to the Supreme Court to uphold
shall Court constitute a The Marshall Court again their titles. Marshall did so by ruling that the legislative
Federalist legacy? asserted the dominance of grant was a contract that could not be revoked. His
national over state statutes in decision was controversial and far-reaching. It limited
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). The decision struck down a state power; bolstered vested property rights; and, by
New York law granting a monopoly to Aaron Ogden protecting out-of-state investors, promoted the devel-
for steamboat passenger service across the Hudson opment of a national capitalist economy.
River to New Jersey. Asserting that the Constitution The Court extended its defense of vested property
gave the federal government authority over interstate rights in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819).
commerce, the chief justice sided with Thomas Dartmouth College was a private institution created by
Gibbons, who held a federal license to run steamboats a royal charter issued by King George III. In 1816, New
between the two states. Hampshire’s Republican legislature enacted a statute
converting the school into a public university. The
Upholding Vested Property Rights Finally, Dartmouth trustees opposed the legislation and hired
Marshall used the Constitution to uphold Federalist Daniel Webster to plead their case. A renowned consti-
notions of property rights. During the 1790s, Jefferson tutional lawyer and a leading Federalist, Webster cited
Republicans had celebrated “the will of the people,” the Court’s decision in Fletcher v. Peck and argued that
prompting Federalists to worry that popular sover- the royal charter was an unalterable contract. The
eignty would result in a “tyranny of the majority.” If Marshall Court agreed and upheld Dartmouth’s claims.
CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 243
The Diplomacy of John Quincy Adams Even as in 1817 Adams negotiated the Rush-Bagot Treaty,
John Marshall incorporated important Federalist prin- which limited American and British naval forces on
ciples into the American legal system, voting citizens the Great Lakes. In 1818, he concluded another agree-
and political leaders embraced the outlook of the ment with Britain setting the forty-ninth parallel as the
Republican Party. The political career of John Quincy border between Canada and the lands of the Louisiana
Adams was a case in point. Although he was the son of Purchase. Then, in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819,
Federalist president John Adams, John Quincy Adams Adams persuaded Spain to cede the Florida territory to
had joined the Republican Party before the War of the United States (Map 7.6). In return, the American
1812. He came to national attention for his role in government accepted Spain’s claim to Texas and agreed
negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war. to a compromise on the western boundary for the state
Adams then served brilliantly as secretary of state of Louisiana, which had entered the Union in 1812.
for two terms under James Monroe (1817–1825). Finally, Adams persuaded President Monroe to
Ignoring Republican antagonism toward Great Britain, declare American national policy with respect to the
244 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
N. E
BRITISH CANADA W
MAINE
S
OREGON
AT L A N T I C
COUNTRY OCEAN
Treaty Lines
LOUISIANA U.S. and Britain, 1818
Adams-Onís Treaty, 1819
PURCHASE, 1803 U.S. and British Territory
U N I T E D S TAT E S , 1 7 8 3
A LT
Cessions
FO
Ceded by U.S.
R
IA NUEVO
N
VIZCAYA COAHUILA
Gulf of Mexico
FO
SANTANDER 1819
IA
MAP 7.6
Defining the National Boundaries, 1800–1820
After the War of 1812, American diplomats negotiated treaties with Great Britain and Spain that
defined the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase, with British Canada to the north and New Spain
(which in 1821 became the independent nation of Mexico) to the south and west. These treaties
eliminated the threat of border wars with neighboring states for a generation, giving the United
States a much-needed period of peace and security.
Western Hemisphere. At Adams’s behest, Monroe Buren and Andrew Jackson. The two groups differed
warned Spain and other European powers to keep their sharply over federal support for roads and canals and
hands off the newly independent republics in Latin many other issues. As the aging Jefferson himself com-
America. The American continents were not “subject plained, “You see so many of these new [National]
for further colonization,” the president declared in republicans maintaining in Congress the rankest doc-
1823 — a policy that thirty years later became known trines of the old federalists.” This division in the
as the Monroe Doctrine. In return, Monroe pledged Republican Party would soon produce the Second
that the United States would not “interfere in the inter- Party System, in which national-minded Whigs and
nal concerns” of European nations. Thanks to John state-focused Democrats would confront each other.
Quincy Adams, the United States had successfully By the early 1820s, one cycle of American politics and
asserted its diplomatic leadership in the Western economic debate had ended, and another was about to
Hemisphere and won international acceptance of its begin.
northern and western boundaries.
The appearance of political consensus after two
decades of bitter party conflict prompted observers to
dub James Monroe’s presidency (1817–1825) the “Era
SUMMARY
of Good Feeling.” This harmony was real but transitory. In this chapter, we traced three interrelated themes:
The Republican Party was now split between the public policy, westward expansion, and party politics.
National faction, led by Clay and Adams, and the We began by examining the contrasting public poli-
Jeffersonian faction, soon to be led by Martin Van cies advocated by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas
CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER REVIEW 245
Jefferson. A Federalist, Hamilton supported a strong the War of 1812, and the treaties negotiated by John
national government and created a fiscal infrastructure Quincy Adams.
(the national debt, tariffs, and a national bank) to spur Finally, there was the unexpected rise of the First
trade and manufacturing. By contrast, Jefferson wanted Party System. As Hamilton’s policies split the political
to preserve the authority of state governments, and he elite, the French Revolution divided Americans into
envisioned an America enriched by farming rather hostile ideological groups. The result was two decades
than industry. of bitter conflict and controversial measures: the
Jefferson and the Republicans promoted a west- Federalists’ Sedition Act, the Republicans’ Embargo
ward movement that transformed the agricultural Act, and Madison’s decision to go to war with Britain.
economy and sparked new wars with Indian peoples. Although the Federalist Party faded away, it left as its
Expansion westward also shaped American diplomatic enduring legacy Hamilton’s financial innovations and
and military policy, leading to the Louisiana Purchase, John Marshall’s constitutional jurisprudence.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Why did Alexander Hamilton, as Washington’s first 2. What were the principal effects of the French and
secretary of the treasury, advocate the creation of a Haitian Revolutions in the United States? How
permanent national debt and a national bank? did they influence the development of the Ameri-
What fears did his economic plans arouse in his can economy, American politics, and westward
Republican opponents? development?
246 PART 3 CHAPTER REVIEW
3. What forces — ideological, political, and eco- 5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Look at the
nomic — led the United States to gain dominance events listed under “Work, Exchange, and Technol-
over eastern North America in these years? ogy” and “Politics and Power” for the period 1800–
1820 on the thematic timeline on page 149. What
4. Explain the rise and fall of the First Party System.
was the relationship in these years between the
How did the policies implemented by Republican
activism of the national government and develop-
presidents between 1801 and 1825 differ from
ments in the American economy?
those implemented during the 1790s? Why did the
Federalists fall out of favor? What legacy did the
Federalists leave?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE In Chapter 6, international relations force the United States to
thirteen former British colonies cooperated in war modify its Revolutionary republican ideals?
and established new republican institutions of self-
2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Return to the Currier &
government. After 1789, unforeseen divisions
Ives print depicting the bombardment of Tripoli
developed in American politics. Why did Ham-
on page 232. What message does it convey about
iltonians and Jeffersonians disagree so sharply
America’s position in the world? How well does
on key questions of national policy? Which of the
that message square with the actual outcome of the
factions in the First Party System — Federalists or
First Barbary War? What does this suggest about
Republicans — best embodied the principles of the
the artist’s purpose?
Revolution? How did westward expansion and
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance (1993). A Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812 (2010). Presents
penetrating account of Indian resistance to American the contest for Canada as a multiethnic civil war.
expansion.
Ashli White, Encountering Revolution (2012). Con-
Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor (2002). A cultural siders the impact of the Haitian Revolution on the
analysis of the politics of the 1790s. United States.
Jon Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense (2004). A The War of 1812 (PBS video, 2011) and its accompa-
sweeping account of the contexts for the Louisiana nying Web site (pbs.org/wned/war-of-1812/home/)
Purchase. offer reenactments, animations, interpretive essays,
and historical site analyses.
CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER REVIEW 247
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1784–1789 t Contested Indian treaties: Fort Stanwix (1784), Fort McIntosh (1785), Fort Finney (1786), and
Fort Harmar (1789)
KEY TURNING POINTS: The Northwest Ordinance (1787; Chapter 6), Kentucky and Tennes-
see join the Union (1792, 1796), and Jefferson is elected president (1800). How were develop-
ments in the West tied into national politics in the 1790s? Why did the Federalists steadily lose
ground to the Republicans?
Creating a Republican Culture
8
C H A P T E R
1790–1820
B
THE CAPITALIST y the 1820s, America’s white citi- IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
COMMONWEALTH zenry had embraced the republican In eighteenth-century Europe, the
Banks, Manufacturing, and political order. Their nation stood leading principles were aristocracy,
Markets forth as a “promised land of civil liberty, patriarchy, mercantilism, arranged
Public Enterprise: The and of institutions designed to liberate marriages, legal privilege, and
Commonwealth System and exalt the human race,” declared a established churches. What prin-
TOWARD A Kentucky judge. White Americans were ciples would replace those societal
DEMOCRATIC indeed fortunate. They lived under a repre- rules in America’s new republican
REPUBLICAN CULTURE sentative republican government, free society?
Opportunity and Equality — for from arbitrary taxation and from domina-
White Men tion by an established church. The timing of the deaths of aging political leaders John
Toward Republican Families Adams and Thomas Jefferson seemed to many Americans to confirm that God looked
Raising Republican Children with favor on their experiment in self-government. What other than divine intervention
could explain their nearly simultaneous deaths on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary
ARISTOCRATIC
of the Declaration of Independence?
REPUBLICANISM AND
SLAVERY Inspired by their political freedom, many citizens sought to extend republican principles
The Revolution and Slavery, throughout their society. But what were those principles? For entrepreneurial-minded
1776–1800 merchants, farmers, and political leaders, republicanism meant a dynamic market econ-
The North and South Grow omy based on the private ownership of property and capital. However, they welcomed
Apart legislative policies that assisted private business and, they claimed, enhanced the “com-
The Missouri Crisis, 1819–1821 mon wealth” of the society. Other Americans in the northern states championed demo-
cratic republican cultural values, such as equality in the family and in social relationships.
PROTESTANT In the southern states, sharply divided by class and race, politicians and pamphleteers
CHRISTIANITY AS A
endorsed aristocratic republicanism. It stressed liberty for whites rather than equality
SOCIAL FORCE
for all.
A Republican Religious Order
Yet another vision of American republicanism emerged from the Second Great
The Second Great Awakening
Awakening, religious revivals that swept the nation between 1790 and 1850. As Alexis
Religion and Reform
de Tocqueville reported in Democracy in America (1835), the Second Great Awakening
Women’s New Religious Roles gave “the Christian religion . . . a greater influence over the souls of men” than in any
other country. Moreover, religious enthusiasm — what Methodist bishop McIlvaine
praised as “the quickening of the people of God to a spirit and walk becoming the
gospel” — prompted social reform on many fronts. For those who embraced the Awak-
ening, the United States was both a great experiment in republican government and a
Christian civilization destined to redeem the world — a moral mission that would inform
American diplomacy in the centuries to come.
248
Mrs. Hugh McCurdy and Her Daughters This 1806 portrait of Grace Allison McCurdy and her
daughters, Mary Jane and Letitia Grace, excludes her husband, the Baltimore merchant Hugh McCurdy,
suggesting the increased cultural focus on mothers and children in the early republic. A few years earlier,
the artist, Joshua Johnson (or Johnston, c. 1763–c. 1824), had painted a solo portrait of Letitia Grace. Here
Johnson links Mrs. McCurdy and her elder daughter visually with a splash of vibrant red fruit near their
laps, which probably also serves as a symbol of their fertility. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA/Museum
Purchase through the gifts of William Wilson Corcoran, Elizabeth Donner Norment, Francis Biddle, Erich Cohn, Hardinge Scholle and the William A.
Clark Fund/The Bridgeman Art Library.
249
250 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Merchants, artisans, and farmers quickly persuaded prices. The price of raw cotton in South Carolina fell
state legislatures to charter banks — in Pennsylvania, from 34 to 15 cents a pound, and as Britain closed the
no fewer than 41. By 1816, when Congress (now run by West Indies to American trade, wheat prices plum-
National Republicans) chartered a new national bank meted as well. As farmers’ income declined, they could
(known as the Second Bank of the United States), there not pay debts owed to stores and banks, many of which
were 246 state-chartered banks with tens of thousands went bankrupt. “A deep shadow has passed over our
of stockholders and $68 million in banknotes in circu- land,” lamented one New Yorker, as land prices dropped
lation. These state banks were often shady operations by 50 percent. The panic gave Americans their first
that issued notes without adequate specie reserves, taste of a business cycle, the periodic boom and bust
made loans to insiders, and lent generously to farmers inherent to an unregulated market economy.
buying overpriced land.
Dubious banking policies helped bring on the Panic Rural Manufacturing The Panic of 1819 devastated
of 1819 (just as they caused the financial crisis of 2008), artisans and farmers who sold goods in regional or
but broader forces were equally important. As the national markets. Before 1800, many artisans worked
Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, Americans sharply part-time and bartered their handicrafts locally. A
increased their consumption of English woolen and French traveler in Massachusetts found many “men
cotton goods. However, in 1818, farmers and planters who are both cultivators and artisans,” while in Lan-
faced an abrupt 30 percent drop in world agricultural caster, Pennsylvania, clockmaker John Hoff exchanged
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Americans of the early republic believed that with hard work and virtue, even
the lowliest of white men might rise to economic and political respectability, if
The Entrepreneur and not prominence. In the Revolutionary generation, Benjamin Franklin, born into
a large and impoverished Boston family, had become a successful businessman
the Community and an international celebrity. Franklin’s success reflected the optimism that
laboring men felt when contemplating the new nation’s seemingly boundless
opportunity.
1. Banner of the Society of Pewterers of the City of Franklin’s aphorism “Early to bed and early to rise,
New York, carried in the Federal Procession, July makes a man healthy wealthy and wise,” Astor
23, 1788, celebrating the ratification of the U.S. wrote:
Constitution. The ribbon at top right reads “The The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at
Federal Plan Most Solid & Secure/Americans Their nine o’clock, usually gets rich and is always reliable. Of
Freedom Will Endure/All Art Shall Flourish in course, going to bed does not make him rich — I merely
Columbia’s Land/And All her Sons Join as One mean that such a man will in all probability be up early
Social Band.” in the morning and do a big day’s work . . . good habits
in America make any man rich.
252
Hone’s marvelous diary (1828–1851) records the bought forty, twenty and ten and five years ago, have
changing character of New York City, as well as all increased in value entirely by the industry of the
his contempt for Jacksonian Democracy and its citizens of New York . . . half of his immense estate,
Irish immigrant supporters. in its actual value, has accrued to him by the industry
John Jacob Astor died this morning, at nine o’clock, in of the community.
the eighty-fifth year of his age . . . and left reluctantly
his unbounded wealth. His property is estimated at Sources: (2) Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Business Men (New
$20,000,000, some judicious persons say $30,000,000; York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1916), 201; (3) Knight’s Penny Magazine, Vol. 1 (London:
but, at any rate, he was the richest man in the United Charles Knight & Co., 1846), 97, 107, 108; (4) Philip Hone, The Diary of Philip
Hone, 1828–1851, Vol. 2 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1889), 347–348;
States in productive and valuable property; and this (5) Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. 1 (Chicago:
immense, gigantic fortune was the fruit of his own Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1910), 199–200.
253
254 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
his clocks for a dining table, a bedstead, and labor on acquired repute as hard-bargaining “Yankees,” sold
his small farm. Then various artisans — shipbuilders in them throughout the rural South.
seacoast towns, ironworkers in Pennsylvania and New technology initially played only a minor role
Maryland, clockmakers in Connecticut, and shoemak- in producing this boom in consumer goods. Take the
ers in Massachusetts — expanded their output and sold case of textile production. During the 1780s, New
their products in wider markets. England and Middle Atlantic merchants built water-
American entrepreneurs drove this expansion of powered mills to run machines that combed wool —
rural manufacturing. Beginning in the 1790s, enter- and later cotton — into long strands. However, until the
prising merchants bought raw 1810s, they used the household-based outwork system
TRACE CHANGE materials, hired farm families to for the next steps: farm women and children spun the
OVER TIME process them, and distributed machine-combed strands into thread and yarn on
How did govern- the finished manufactures. “Straw foot-driven spinning wheels, and men in other house-
ments, banks, and hats and Bonnets are manufac- holds used foot-powered looms to weave the yarn into
merchants expand tured by many families,” a Maine cloth. In 1820, more than 12,000 household workers
American commerce and census-taker noted in the 1810s. labored full-time weaving woolen cloth, which water-
manufacturing between Merchants shipped rural manu- powered fulling mills then pounded flat, giving the
1780 and 1820? factures — shoes, brooms, and cloth a smooth finish. By then, the transfer of textile
palm-leaf hats as well as cups, production to factories was gaining speed; the number
baking pans, and other tin utensils — to stores in of water-driven cotton spindles soared from 8,000 in
seaport cities. New England peddlers, who quickly 1809 to 333,000 in 1817.
The growth of manufacturing offered farm families Turnpike Company, which built a 65-mile graded and
new opportunities — and new risks. Ambitious New graveled toll road to Philadelphia. The road quickly
England farmers switched from subsistence crops of boosted the regional economy. Although turnpike
wheat and potatoes to raising livestock. They sold meat, investors received only about “three percent annually,”
butter, and cheese to city markets and cattle hides to Henry Clay estimated, society as a whole “actually
the booming shoe industry. “Along the whole road reap[ed] fifteen or twenty percent.” A farm woman
from Boston, we saw women engaged in making agreed: “The turnpike is finished and we can now go to
cheese,” a Polish traveler reported. Other families town at all times and in all weather.” New turnpikes
raised sheep and sold raw wool to textile manufactur- soon connected dozens of inland market centers to
ers. Processing these raw materials brought new jobs seaport cities.
and income to stagnating farming towns. In 1792, Water transport was even quicker and cheaper, so
Concord, Massachusetts, had one slaughterhouse and state governments and private entrepreneurs dredged
five small tanneries; a decade later, the town boasted shallow rivers and constructed canals to bypass water-
eleven slaughterhouses and six large tanneries. falls and rapids. For their part, farmers in Kentucky and
As the rural economy churned out more goods, it Tennessee and in southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
altered the environment. Foul odors from stockyards settled near the Ohio River and its many tributaries, so
and tanning pits wafted over Concord and other they could easily get goods to market. Similarly, specu-
leather-producing towns. Nor was that all. Tanners cut lators hoping to capitalize on the expansion of com-
down thousands of acres of hemlock trees, using the merce bought up property in the cities along the banks
bark to process stiff cow hides into pliable leather. More of major rivers: Cincinnati, Louisville, Chattanooga,
trees fell to the ax to create pasturelands for huge herds and St. Louis. Farmers and merchants built barges to
of livestock — dairy cows, cattle, and especially sheep. carry cotton, grain, and meat downstream to New
By 1850, most of the ancient forests in southern New Orleans, which by 1815 was exporting about $5 million
England and eastern New York were gone: “The hills in agricultural products yearly.
had been stripped of their timber,” New York’s Catskill
Messenger reported, “so as to present their huge, rocky
Public Enterprise:
projections.” Moreover, scores of textile milldams dot-
ted New England’s rivers, altering their flow and pre- The Commonwealth System
venting fish — already severely depleted from decades Legislative charters for banks, turnpikes, and canal
of overfishing — from reaching upriver spawning companies reflected the ideology of mercantilism:
grounds. Even as the income of farmers rose, the qual- government-assisted economic development. Just as
ity of their natural environment declined. Parliament had used the Navigation Acts to spur
In the new capitalist-driven market economy, rural British prosperity, so American legislatures enacted
parents and their children worked longer and harder. laws “of great public utility” to increase the “common
They made yarn, hats, and brooms during the winter wealth.” These statutes generally took the form of
and returned to their regular farming chores during special charters that bestowed legal privileges, such as
the warmer seasons. More important, these farm fami- the power of eminent domain, that allowed turnpike,
lies now depended on their wage labor or market bridge, and canal corporations to force the sale of pri-
sales to purchase the textiles, shoes, and hats they had vately owned land along their routes. State legislatures
once made for themselves. The new productive system also aided capital-intensive flour millers and textile
made families and communities more efficient and manufacturers, who flooded adjacent farmland as they
prosperous — and more dependent on a market they built dams to power their water-driven machinery. In
could not control. Massachusetts, the Mill Dam Act of 1795 deprived
farmers of their traditional common-law right to stop
New Transportation Systems The expansion of the flooding and forced them to accept “fair com-
the market depended on improvements in transporta- pensation” for their lost acreage. Judges approved this
tion, where governments also played a crucial role. state-ordered shift in property
Between 1793 and 1812, the Massachusetts legislature rights. “The establishment of a UNDERSTAND
granted charters to more than one hundred private great mill-power for manufactur- POINTS OF VIEW
Did state mercantilism (the
turnpike corporations. These charters gave the compa- ing purposes,” Justice Lemuel
grant of privileges and
nies special legal status and often included monopoly Shaw intoned, was “one of the
charters) embody repub-
rights to a transportation route. Pennsylvania issued great industrial pursuits of the lican ideology or violate it?
fifty-five charters, including one to the Lancaster commonwealth.”
256 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Critics condemned the legal privileges given to states awarded charters to two hundred iron-mining,
private enterprises as “Scheme[s] of an evident anti- textile-manufacturing, and banking companies, while
republican tendency,” as some “freeholder citizens” in Pennsylvania granted more than eleven hundred. By
Putney, Vermont, put it. Such grants to business cor- 1820, state governments had created a republican polit-
porations, they argued, violated the “equal rights” of ical economy: a Commonwealth System that funneled
citizens and infringed on the sovereignty of the gov- state aid to private businesses whose projects would
ernments. “Whatever power is given to a corporation, improve the general welfare.
is just so much power taken from the State,” argued a
Pennsylvanian. Nonetheless, judges in state courts, fol-
lowing the lead of John Marshall’s Supreme Court
(Chapter 7), consistently upheld corporate charters Toward a Democratic
and grants of eminent domain to private transporta-
tion companies. “The opening of good and easy inter-
Republican Culture
nal communications is one of the highest duties of After independence, many Americans in the northern
government,” declared a New Jersey judge. states embraced a democratic republicanism that cele-
State mercantilism soon spread beyond transporta- brated political equality and social mobility. These citi-
tion. Following Jefferson’s embargo of 1807, which cut zens, primarily members of the emerging middle class,
off goods and credit from Europe, the New England redefined the nature of the family and of education by
CHAPTER 8 Creating a Republican Culture, 1790–1820 257
seeking egalitarian marriages and affectionate ways of reproach,” remarked a Polish aris-
IDENTIFY CAUSES
rearing their children. tocrat. “It is the opposite here. To What factors encouraged —
be the architect of your own for- and inhibited — equality
tune is honorable. It is the highest and democracy in early-
Opportunity and Equality —
recommendation.” nineteenth-century
for White Men Some Americans from long- American life?
Between 1780 and 1820, hundreds of well-educated distinguished families felt threat-
visitors agreed that the American social order was dif- ened by the ideology of wealth-driven social mobility.
ferent from that of Europe. In his famous Letters from “Man is estimated by dollars,” complained Nathaniel
an American Farmer (1782), French-born essayist Booth, whose high-status family had once dominated
J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur wrote that European the small Hudson River port town of Kingston, New
society was composed “of great lords who possess York. However, for most white men, a merit-based sys-
everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing.” tem meant the chance to better themselves (Map 8.1).
By contrast, the United States had “no aristocratical Old cultural rules — and new laws — denied such
families, no courts, no kings, no bishops.” chances to most women and African American men.
The absence of a hereditary aristocracy encouraged When women and free blacks asked for voting rights,
Americans to condemn inherited social privilege and male legislators wrote explicit race and gender restric-
to extol legal equality. “The law is the same for every- tions into the law. In 1802, Ohio disenfranchised
one,” noted one European traveler. Yet citizens of the African Americans, and the New York constitution of
new republic willingly accepted social divisions that 1821 imposed a property-holding requirement on
reflected personal achievement, a phenomenon that black voters. A striking case of sexual discrimination
astounded many Europeans. “In Europe to say of some- occurred in New Jersey, where the state constitution of
one that he rose from nothing is a disgrace and a 1776 had granted the voting franchise to all property
1800 1830
C A N A D A C A N A D A
MAINE
MAINE
(MASS.)
VT. VT.
N.H. N.H.
NEW NEW
YORK MASS. YORK MASS.
CT. R.I. MICHIGAN TERRITORY CT. R.I.
PA. PA.
NORTHWEST N.J. N.J.
INDIANA TERRITORY OHIO
MD. MD.
TERRITORY DEL. ILL. IND. DEL.
VA. N VA.
MO. N
KY. E KY.
W E
N.C. N.C.
TENN. TENN. W
S
ARK. S
S.C. TERR. S.C.
MAP 8.1
The Expansion of Voting Rights for White Men, 1800 and 1830
Between 1800 and 1830, the United States moved steadily toward political equality for white
men. Many existing states revised their constitutions and replaced a property qualification for
voting with less restrictive criteria, such as paying taxes or serving in the militia. Some new states
in the West extended the suffrage to all adult white men. As parties sought votes from a broader
electorate, the tone of politics became more open and competitive — swayed by the interests and
values of ordinary people.
258 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
holders. As Federalists and Republicans competed for As the passions of the heart overwhelmed the logic
power, they ignored customary gender rules and urged of the mind, magazines praised companionate mar-
property-owning single women and widows to vote. riages: marriages “contracted from motives of affec-
Sensing a threat to men’s monopoly on politics, the tion, rather than of interest.” Many young people
New Jersey legislature in 1807 invoked both biology looked for a relationship based on intimacy and a
and custom to limit voting to men only: “Women, gen- spouse who was, as Eliza Southgate of Maine put
erally, are neither by nature, nor habit, nor education, it, “calculated to promote my happiness.” As young
nor by their necessary condition in society fitted to people “fell in love” and married, many fathers changed
perform this duty with credit to themselves or advan- from authoritarian patriarchs to watchful paternalists.
tage to the public.” To guard against free-spending sons-in-law, wealthy
fathers often placed their daughters’ inheritance in a
legal trust. One Virginia planter told his lawyer “to see
Toward Republican Families the property settlement properly drawn before the
The controversy over women’s political rights mirrored marriage, for I by no means consent that Polly shall be
a debate over authority within the household. British left to the Vicissitudes of Life.”
and American husbands had long claimed patriarchal As voluntary contracts between individuals, love
power and legal control of the family’s property. How- marriages conformed more closely to republican
ever, as John Adams lamented in 1776, the republican principles than did arranged matches. In theory, such
principle of equality had “spread where it was not marriages would be companionate, giving wives and
intended,” encouraging his wife and other women to husbands “true equality,” as one Boston man suggested.
demand legal and financial rights. Patriot author and In practice, husbands dominated most marriages,
historian Mercy Otis Warren argued that patriarchy was because male authority was deeply ingrained in cul-
not a “natural” rule but a social contrivance and could tural mores and because American common law gave
be justified only “for the sake of order in families.” husbands control of the family’s property. Moreover,
the new love-based marriage system discouraged par-
To see a longer excerpt of the Mercy Otis Warren ents from protecting young wives, and governments
document, along with other primary sources from refused to prevent domestic tyranny. The marriage
this period, see Sources for America’s History.
contract “is so much more important in its conse-
quences to females than to males,” a young man at the
Republican Marriages Economic and cultural Litchfield Law School in Connecticut astutely observed
changes also eroded customary paternal authority. In in 1820, for “they subject themselves to his authority.
colonial America, most property-owning parents had He is their all — their only relative — their only hope”
arranged their children’s marriages. They looked for a (American Voices, p. 260).
morally upright son- or daughter-in-law with financial Young adults who chose partners unwisely were
resources; physical attraction and emotional compati- severely disappointed when their spouses failed as pro-
bility between the young people were secondary con- viders or faithful companions. Before 1800, unhappy
siderations. As landholdings shrank in long-settled wives and husbands could do little; officials granted
communities, many yeomen fathers has less control divorces infrequently and then only in cases of neglect,
over their children’s marriages because they had fewer abandonment, or adultery — serious offenses against
resources to give them. the moral order of society. After 1800, most divorce
Increasingly, young men and women chose their petitions cited emotional issues. One woman com-
own partners, influenced by a new cultural attitude: plained that her husband had “ceased to cherish her,”
sentimentalism. Sentimentalism originated in Europe while a man grieved that his wife had “almost broke his
as part of the Romantic movement and, after 1800, heart.” Responding to changing cultural values, several
spread quickly through all classes of American society. states expanded the legal grounds for divorce to include
Rejecting the Enlightenment’s emphasis on rational drunkenness and personal cruelty.
thought, sentimentalism celebrated the importance of
“feeling” — a physical, sensuous appreciation of God, Republican Motherhood Traditionally, most Amer-
nature, and fellow humans. This new emphasis on ican women had spent their active adult years working
deeply felt emotions pervaded literary works, popular as farmwives and bearing and nurturing children.
theatrical melodramas, and the passionate rhetoric of However, after 1800, the birthrate in the northern
revivalist preachers. states dropped significantly. In the farming village of
CHAPTER 8 Creating a Republican Culture, 1790–1820 259
Sturbridge in central Massachusetts, women now bore physician Benjamin Rush argued that young women
an average of six children; their grandmothers had should ensure their husbands’ “perseverance in the
usually given birth to eight or nine. In the growing sea- paths of rectitude” and called for loyal “republican
port cities, native-born white women now bore an mothers” who would instruct “their sons in the prin-
average of only four children. ciples of liberty and government.”
The United States was among the first nations to
experience this sharp decline in the birthrate — what
To see a longer excerpt of Thoughts on Female
historians call the demographic transition. There were
Education, along with other primary sources from
several causes. Beginning in the 1790s, thousands of this period, see Sources for America’s History.
young men migrated to the trans-Appalachian west,
which increased the number of never-married women
in the East and delayed marriage for many more. Christian ministers readily embraced this idea
Women who married in their late twenties had fewer of republican motherhood. “Preserving virtue and
children. In addition, white urban middle-class couples instructing the young are not the fancied, but the real
deliberately limited the size of their families. Fathers ‘Rights of Women,’ ” the Reverend Thomas Bernard
wanted to leave children an adequate inheritance, told the Female Charitable Society of Salem, Massa-
while mothers, influenced by new ideas of individual- chusetts. He urged his audience to dismiss public roles
ism and self-achievement, refused to spend their entire for women, such as voting or serv-
adulthood rearing children. After having four or five ing on juries, that English femi- IDENTIFY CAUSES
children, these couples used birth control or abstained nist Mary Wollstonecraft had How did republican ideals,
new economic circum-
from sexual intercourse. advocated in A Vindication of the
stances, and changing
Even as women bore fewer children, they accepted Rights of Woman (1792). Instead,
cultural values affect mar-
greater responsibility for the welfare of the family. In women should care for their chil- riage practices?
his Thoughts on Female Education (1787), Philadelphia dren, a responsibility that gave
AMERICAN
VOICES
As the text explains, the ideal American marriage of the early nineteenth
century was republican (a contract between equals) and romantic (a match in
which mutual love was foremost). Were these ideals attainable, given the social
The Trials of authority of men and the volatility of human passions? Letters, memoirs, and
diaries are excellent sources for answering these questions. These selections
Married Life from the personal writings of a variety of American women offer insights into
the new system of marriage and how changes in cultural values intersected with
individual lives.
Born in Connecticut in 1787, Emma Hart married John The planter’s bride, who leaves a numerous and cheerful
Willard in 1809. An early proponent of advanced education family in her paternal home, little imagines the change
for women, she founded female academies in Middlebury, which awaits her in her own retired residence. She dreams
Vermont (1814), and Waterford and Troy, New York (1821). of an independent sway over her household, devoted love
She wrote this letter to her sister, Almira Hart, in 1815. and unbroken intercourse with her husband, and indeed
longs to be released from the eyes of others, that she may
You think it strange that I should consider a period of dwell only beneath the sunbeam of his. And so it was
happiness as more likely than any other to produce future with me. . . .
misery. I know I did not sufficiently explain myself. Those There we were together, asking for nothing but
tender and delicious sensations which accompany suc- each other’s presence and love. At length it was neces-
cessful love, while they soothe and soften the mind, sary for him to tear himself away to superintend his
diminish its strength to bear or to conquer difficulties. interests. . . . But the period of absence was gradually
It is the luxury of the soul; and luxury always ener- protracted; then a friend sometimes came home with him,
vates. . . . This life is a life of vicissitude. . . . and their talk was of crops and politics, draining the fields
[Suppose] you are secured to each other for life. It and draining the revenue. . . . A growing discomfort began
will be natural that, at first, he should be much devoted to work upon my mind. I had undefined forebodings; I
to you; but, after a while, his business must occupy his mused about past days; my views of life became slowly
attention. While absorbed in that he will perhaps neglect disorganized; my physical powers enfeebled; a nervous
some of those little tokens of affection which have become excitement followed: I nursed a moody discontent. . . .
necessary to your happiness. His affairs will sometimes go If the reign of romance was really waning, I resolved
wrong, . . . and he may sometimes hastily give you a harsh not to chill his noble confidence, but to make a steadier
word or a frown. light rise on his affections. . . . This task of self-government
But where is the use, say you, of diminishing my was not easy. To repress a harsh answer, to confess a
present enjoyment by such gloomy apprehensions? Its fault . . . in gentle submission, sometimes requires
use is this, that, if you enter the marriage state believ- a struggle like life and death; but these . . . efforts are
ing such things to be absolutely impossible, if you the golden threads with which domestic happiness
should meet them, they would come upon you with is woven. . . . How clear is it, then, that woman loses
double force. by petulance and recrimination! Her first study must
be self-control, almost to hypocrisy. A good wife must
Caroline Howard Gilman smile amid a thousand perplexities.
Female Submission in Marriage
Martha Hunter Hitchcock
Born in Boston in 1794, Caroline Howard married in 1819
Isolation, Unmentionable Sorrows,
and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, with her
and Suffering
husband, Samuel Gilman, a Unitarian minister. A novelist,
she published Recollections of a Housekeeper (1835), a Martha Hunter Hitchcock married a doctor in the U.S.
portrait of domestic life in New England, and Recollections Army. These excerpts from letters, in the Virginia Historical
260
Society, to her cousins Martha and Sarah Hunter describe wives and husbands in understanding each other’s inner
her emotional dependence on her husband and her lives.
unhappy life.
It has now been almost eight years since I became a mar-
To Martha Hunter, 1840: ried woman. Eight years of checkered good and ill, and
If I had never married how much of pain, and dissat- yet thro’ all it seems the most of the ill has fallen to my lot,
isfaction, should I have escaped — at all events I should until now my poor weak cowardly heart sighs only for its
never have known what jealousy is. You must not betray final resting place, where sorrow grief nor pain can never
me, dear cousin, for despite all my good resolutions, I reach it more.
find it impossible always to struggle against my nature — I feel that I have faithfully discharged my duty towards
the school of indulgence, in which I was educated, was you and my children, but for this I know that I deserve no
little calculated to teach me, those lessons of forbearance, credit nor aspire to none; my affection has been my
which I have had to practice so frequently, since my mar- prompter, and the task has proven a labor of love. You
riage — it is ungrateful in me to murmur, if perchance a have not rightly understood me at all times, and being
little bitter is mingled in my cup of life. naturally very hopeful you could in no measure sympa-
thize with me during my seasons of gloom and
To Sarah Hunter, 1841: despondency. . . . But marriage is a lottery and that your
I have lived so long among strangers since my mar- draw proved an unfortunate one on your part is not less a
riage, that when I contrast it with the old warm affection, subject of regret with me than you. . . .
in which I was nurtured, the contrast is so terrible, that I It is useless to say that during these eight years I have
cannot refrain from weeping at the thought of it — I hope suffered ten times more than you have and ten times
my dear cousin, that yours, will be a happier destiny than more than I can begin to make you conceive of, but of
mine, in that respect — only think of it! Nearly a year course you can not help the past, nor by knowing my suf-
and a half have passed away, since I have seen, a single fering relieve it, but it might induce you to look with
relation! more kindness upon [my] faults. . . . The 17th of this
month I was 27 years old and I think my face looks older
To Martha Hunter, 1845: than that, perhaps I’ll never see an other birth day and I
Uneasiness about [my daughter] Lillie, and very great don’t grieve at the idea.
sorrows of my own, which I cannot commit to paper,
have almost weighed me down to the grave; and indeed, Source: These selections are abridged versions of materials in Anya Jabour, ed., Major
Problems in the History of American Families and Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
without any affectation, I look forward to that, as the only 2005), 108–113.
real rest, I shall ever know.
261
262 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
them “an extensive power over the fortunes of man in speculated that American parents encouraged such
every generation.” independence to prepare youth to “go their own way”
in the world.
Permissive child rearing was not universal. Foreign
Raising Republican Children visitors interacted primarily with well-to-do Episco-
Republican values changed assumptions about inheri- palians and Presbyterians who held an Enlightenment
tance and child rearing. English common law en- conception of children. This outlook, transmitted by
couraged primogeniture, the bequest of the family’s religious authors influenced by John Locke, viewed chil-
property to the eldest son (Chapter 1). After the Rev- dren as “rational creatures” best trained by means of
olution, most state legislatures enacted statutes speci- advice and praise. The parents’ role was to develop their
fying equal division of the estate among all children, child’s conscience, self-discipline, and sense of responsi-
when there was no will. Most American parents bility. Families in the rapidly expanding middle class
applauded these statutes because they were already widely adopted this rationalist method of child rearing.
treating their children equally and with respect. By contrast, many yeomen and tenant farmers,
influenced by the Second Great Awakening, raised
Two Modes of Parenting Indeed, many European their children in an authoritarian fashion. Evangelical
visitors believed that republican parents gave their Baptist and Methodist writers insisted that children
children too much respect and freedom. Because of were “full of the stains and pollution of sin” and needed
the “general ideas of Liberty and Equality engraved strict rules and harsh discipline. Fear was a “useful and
on their hearts,” a Polish aristocrat suggested around necessary principle in family government,” minister
1800, American children had “scant respect” for John Abbott advised parents; a child “should submit to
their parents. Several decades later, a British traveler your authority, not to your arguments or persuasions.”
stood dumbfounded when an American father Abbott told parents to instill humility in children and
excused his son’s “resolute disobedience” with a smile to teach them to subordinate their personal desires to
and the remark, “A sturdy republican, sir.” The traveler God’s will.
Women’s Education
Even in education-conscious New England,
before 1800 few girls attended free public
primary schools for more than a few years.
Subsequently, as this detail from Scenes
from a Seminary for Young Ladies (c. 1810–
1820) indicates, some girls stayed in school
into their teenage years and studied a wide
variety of subjects, including geography.
Many graduates of these female acade-
mies became teachers, a new field of
employment for women. The St. Louis Art
Museum, Missouri, USA/The Bridgeman Art
Library.
Debates over Education Although families pro- reformers, influenced by merchants and manufac-
vided most moral and intellectual training, republican turers, raised standards by certifying qualified teach-
ideology encouraged publicly supported schooling. ers and appointing statewide superintendents of
Bostonian Caleb Bingham, an influential textbook schools. To encourage students,
author, called for “an equal distribution of knowledge the reformers chose textbooks UNDERSTAND
to make us emphatically a ‘republic of letters.’ ” Both such as Parson Mason Weems’s POINTS OF VIEW
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush proposed ambi- The Life of George Washington Which form of child
tious schemes for a comprehensive system of primary (c. 1800), which praised honesty rearing — the rationalist
and secondary schooling, followed by college training and hard work and condemned or the authoritarian — was
for bright young men. They also envisioned a univer- gambling, drinking, and laziness. the most compatible with
sity in which distinguished scholars would lecture on To bolster patriotism and shared republican values and
law, medicine, theology, and political economy. cultural ideals, reformers required why?
To ordinary citizens, whose teenage children had to the study of American history. As
labor in the fields or workshops, talk of secondary and a New Hampshire schoolboy, Thomas Low recalled:
college education smacked of elitism. Farmers, artisans, “We were taught every day and in every way that ours
and laborers wanted elementary schools that would was the freest, the happiest, and soon to be the greatest
instruct their children in the “three Rs” — reading, and most powerful country of the world.”
’riting, and ’rithmetic — and make them literate enough
to read the Bible. In New England, locally funded pub- Promoting Cultural Independence Like Caleb
lic schools offered basic instruction to most boys and Bingham, writer Noah Webster wanted to raise the
some girls. In other regions, there were few publicly nation’s intellectual prowess. Asserting that “America
supported schools, and only 25 percent of the boys and must be as independent in literature as she is in poli-
perhaps 10 percent of the girls attended private institu- tics,” he called on his fellow citizens to free themselves
tions or had personal tutors. Even in New England, “from the dependence on foreign opinions and man-
only a few young men and almost no young women ners, which is fatal to the efforts of genius in this coun-
went on to grammar school (high school), and less than try.” Webster’s Dissertation on the English Language
1 percent of men attended college. “Let anybody show (1789) celebrated language as a marker of national
what advantage the poor man receives from colleges,” identity by defining words according to American
an anonymous “Old Soldier” wrote to the Maryland usage. With less success, it proposed that words be
Gazette. “Why should they support them, unless it is to spelled as they were pronounced, that labour (British
serve those who are in affluent circumstances, whose spelling), for example, be spelled labur. Still, Webster’s
children can be spared from labor, and receive the famous “blue-back speller,” a compact textbook first
benefits?” published in 1783, sold 60 million copies over the next
Although many state constitutions encouraged half century and served the needs of Americans of all
support for education, few legislatures acted until backgrounds. “None of us was ’lowed to see a book,” an
the 1820s. Then a new generation of educational enslaved African American recalled, “but we gits hold
264 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
of that Webster’s old blue-back speller and we . . . prompted by Royal Governor Lord Dunmore’s procla-
studies [it].” mation of 1775 (Chapter 5), circulated among slaves in
Despite Webster’s efforts, a republican literary cul- Virginia and the Carolinas, prompting thousands of
ture developed slowly. Ironically, the most successful African Americans to flee behind British lines. Two
writer in the new republic was Washington Irving, an neighbors of Virginia Patriot Richard Henry Lee lost
elitist-minded Federalist. His whimsical essay and “every slave they had in the world,” as did many other
story collections — which included the tales of “Rip planters. In 1781, when the British army evacuated
Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” — sold Charleston, more than 6,000 former slaves went with
well in America and won praise abroad. Frustrated by them; another 4,000 left from Savannah. All told,
the immaturity of American cultural life, Irving lived 30,000 blacks may have fled their owners. Hundreds of
for seventeen years in Europe, reveling in its aristo- freed black Loyalists settled permanently in Canada.
cratic culture and intense intellectuality. More than 1,000 others, poorly treated in British
Apart from Irving, no American author was well Nova Scotia, sought a better life in Sierra Leone, West
known in Europe or, indeed, in the United States. “Lit-
erature is not yet a distinct profession with us,” Thomas
Jefferson told an English friend. “Now and then a
strong mind arises, and at its intervals from business
emits a flash of light. But the first object of young soci-
eties is bread and covering.” Not until the 1830s and
1840s would American authors achieve a professional
identity and make a significant contribution to Western
literature (Chapter 11).
Aristocratic Republicanism
and Slavery
Republicanism in the South differed significantly from
that in the North. Enslaved Africans constituted one-
third of the South’s population; their bondage contra-
dicted the new nation’s professed ideology of freedom
and equality. “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps
for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” British
author Samuel Johnson had chided the American reb-
els in 1775, a point that some Patriots took to heart. “I
wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the prov-
ince,” Abigail Adams confessed to her husband, John.
“It always appeared a most iniquitous Scheme to
me — to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing
and plundering from those who have as good a right to
freedom as we have.”
Republican Families . . . and Servants
Around 1828, an unidentified artist painted this York,
The Revolution and Slavery, Pennsylvania, family with an African American servant.
The artist gives equal emphasis to the wife and the hus-
1776–1800 band, suggesting they enjoyed a companionate-style
marriage. Reflecting the outlook of republican mother-
In fact, the whites’ struggle for independence had hood, the mother takes the leading role in educating the
raised the prospect of freedom for blacks. As the Revo- children. The family, probably of upper-middle-class status
lutionary War began, a black preacher in Georgia told given their attire and furnishings, employs an African
American woman as a domestic servant and nanny —
his fellow slaves that King George III “came up with
common occupations among free black women of the
the Book [the Bible], and was about to alter the World, time. The Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri, USA/The Bridgeman
and set the Negroes free.” Similar rumors, probably Art Library.
CHAPTER 8 Creating a Republican Culture, 1790–1820 265
Africa, a settlement founded by English antislavery that slavery was “contrary to the
IDENTIFY CAUSES
organizations. Golden Law of God on which Why did aristocratic repub-
hang all the Law and Prophets.” licanism develop in the
Manumission and Gradual Emancipation Yet Meanwhile, Enlightenment South, and what were its
thousands of African Americans supported the Patriot philosophy challenged the wide- defining features?
cause. Eager to raise their social status, free blacks in spread belief among whites that
New England volunteered for military service in the Africans were inherently inferior to Europeans.
First Rhode Island Company and the Massachusetts According to John Locke, ideas were not innate but
“Bucks.” In Maryland, some slaves took up arms for the stemmed from a person’s experiences in the world.
rebels in return for the promise of freedom. Enslaved Pointing out the obvious — “A state of slavery has a
Virginians struck informal bargains with their Patriot mighty tendency to shrink and contract the minds
owners, trading loyalty in wartime for the hope of lib- of men” — Enlightenment-influenced Americans sug-
erty. Following the Virginia legislature’s passage of a gested that the debased condition of blacks reflected
manumission act in 1782, allowing owners to free their their oppressive captivity. Quaker philanthropist
slaves, 10,000 slaves won their freedom. Anthony Benezet declared that African Americans
Two other developments — one religious, the other were “as capable of improvement as White People” and
intellectual — encouraged manumission. Beginning in funded a Philadelphia school for their education.
the 1750s, Quaker evangelist John Woolman urged Swept along by these religious and intellectual cur-
Friends to free their slaves, and many did so. Rapidly rents, legislators in northern states enacted gradual
growing evangelical churches, especially Methodists emancipation statutes (Map 8.2). These laws recog-
and Baptists, initially advocated slave emancipation; in nized white property rights by requiring slaves to buy
1784, a conference of Virginia Methodists declared their freedom by years — even decades — of additional
N.H.
L. Michigan
(1783)
ron
Gradual abolition
DA
Gulf of Me x i co Slave
When Congress outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in Society in 1817. According to Henry Clay — a society
1808, some northern representatives demanded an end member, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and
to the trade in slaves between states. Southern leaders a slave owner — racial bondage hindered economic
responded with a forceful defense of their labor system. progress. It had placed his state of Kentucky “in the
“A large majority of people in the Southern states do rear of our neighbors . . . in the state of agriculture, the
not consider slavery as even an evil,” declared one con- progress of manufactures, the advance of improve-
gressman. The South’s political clout — its domination ment, and the general prosperity of society.” Clay and
of the presidency and the Senate — ensured that the other colonizationists argued that slaves had to be
national government would protect slavery. American freed and then resettled, in Africa or elsewhere; eman-
diplomats vigorously demanded compensation for cipation without removal would lead to chaos — “a
slaves freed by British troops during the War of 1812, civil war that would end in the extermination or subju-
and Congress enacted legislation upholding slavery in gation of the one race or the other.” Given the cotton
the District of Columbia. boom, few planters responded to the society’s plea. It
resettled only about 6,000 African Americans in
African Americans Speak Out Heartened by the Liberia, its colony on the west coast of Africa.
end of the Atlantic slave trade, black abolitionists Most free blacks strongly opposed such colo-
spoke out. In speeches and pamphlets, Henry Sipkins nization schemes because they saw themselves as
and Henry Johnson pointed out that slavery — “relent- Americans. As Bishop Richard Allen of the African
less tyranny,” they called it — was a central legacy of Methodist Episcopal Church put it, “[T]his land which
America’s colonial history. For inspiration, they looked we have watered with our tears
to the Haitian Revolution; for collective support, they and our blood is now our mother EXPLAIN
joined in secret societies, such as Prince Hall’s African country.” Allen spoke from expe- CONSEQUENCES
Lodge of Freemasons in Boston. Initially, black (and rience. Born into slavery in Why did the colonization
white) antislavery advocates hoped that slavery would Philadelphia in 1760 and sold to a movement of the 1810s
die out naturally as the tobacco economy declined. farmer in Delaware, Allen grew fail?
However, a boom in cotton planting dramatically up in bondage. In 1777, Freeborn
increased the demand for slaves, and Louisiana (1812), Garretson, an itinerant preacher, converted Allen to
Mississippi (1817), and Alabama (1819) joined the Methodism and convinced Allen’s owner that on
Union with state constitutions permitting slavery. Judgment Day, slaveholders would be “weighted in the
As some Americans redefined slavery as a problem balance, and . . . found wanting.” Allowed to buy his
rather than a centuries-old social condition, a group of freedom, Allen enlisted in the Methodist cause, becom-
prominent citizens founded the American Colonization ing a “licensed exhorter” and then a regular minister in
268 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
The Reverend Richard Allen and the African Methodist Episcopal Church
One of the best-known African Americans in the early republic, Richard Allen founded a separate congrega-
tion for Philadelphia’s black Methodists, the Bethel Church. Working with other ministers in 1816, he created
the first independent black religious domination in the United States — the African Methodist Episcopal
(AME) Church — and became its first bishop. Library of Congress / Picture Research Consultants & Archives.
Philadelphia. In 1795, Allen formed a separate black Walker reported from Washington, that Tallmadge’s
congregation, the Bethel Church; in 1816, he became amendment was “merely the entering wedge and that it
the first bishop of a new denomination: the African points already to a total emancipation of the blacks.”
Methodist Episcopal Church. Two years later, 3,000 Mississippi congressman Christopher Rankin accused
African Americans met in Allen’s church to condemn his northern colleagues of brinksmanship: “You con-
colonization and to claim American citizenship. duct us to an awful precipice, and hold us over it.”
Sounding the principles of democratic republicanism, Underlining their commitment to slavery, southerners
they vowed to defy racial prejudice and advance in used their power in the Senate — where they held half
American society using “those opportunities . . . which the seats — to withhold statehood from Maine, which
the Constitution and the laws allow to all.” was seeking to separate itself from Massachusetts.
wish someone would just put his finger on the place in enslaved blacks, and the Union
PLACE EVENTS
Holy Writ.” itself were now intertwined, rais- IN CONTEXT
Controversy raged in Congress and the press for ing the specter of civil war and the What compromises over
two years before Henry Clay devised a series of politi- end of the American republican slavery did Congress make
cal agreements known collectively as the Missouri experiment. As the aging Thomas to settle the Missouri
Compromise. Faced with unwavering southern opposi- Jefferson exclaimed during the crisis?
tion to Tallmadge’s amendment, a group of northern Missouri crisis, “This momentous
congressmen deserted the antislavery coalition. They question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and
accepted a deal that allowed Maine to enter the Union filled me with terror.”
as a free state in 1820 and Missouri to follow as a slave
state in 1821. This bargain preserved a balance in the
Senate between North and South and set a precedent
for future admissions to the Union. For their part, Protestant Christianity
southern senators accepted the prohibition of slavery
in most of the Louisiana Purchase, all the lands north
as a Social Force
of latitude 36°30' except for the state of Missouri Throughout the colonial era, religion played a signifi-
(Map 8.3). cant role in American life but not an overwhelming
As they had in the Philadelphia convention of 1787, one. Then, beginning around 1790, religious revivals
white politicians preserved the Union by compromis- planted the values of Protestant Christianity deep in
ing over slavery. However, the delegates in Philadelphia the national character and gave a spiritual dimension
had resolved their sectional differences in two months; to American republicanism. These revivals especially
it took Congress two years to work out the Missouri changed the lives of blacks and of women. Thousands
Compromise, which even then did not command uni- of African Americans became Baptists and Methodists
versal support. “[B]eware,” the Richmond Enquirer pro- and created a powerful institution: the black Christian
tested sharply as southern representatives agreed to Church. Evangelical Christianity also gave rise to new
exclude slavery from most of the Louisiana Purchase: public roles for white women, especially in the North,
“What is a territorial restriction to-day becomes a state and set in motion long-lasting movements for social
restriction tomorrow.” The fate of the western lands, reform.
MAP 8.3
The Missouri Compromise, 1820–1821 CANADA ME.
(Admitted as
The Missouri Compromise resolved for free state, 1820)
a generation the issue of slavery in the VT.
MI
lands of the Louisiana Purchase. The CH
IG N.H.
agreement prohibited slavery north of AN
N.Y. MASS.
N
the Missouri Compromise line (36°30’ UNORGANIZED
CT. R.I.
north latitude), with the exception of TERRITORY PA.
E
N.J. W
the state of Missouri. To maintain an
S
equal number of senators from free OHIO MD. DEL.
IND.
and slave states in the U.S. Congress, ILL.
VA.
the compromise provided for the MO. ATLANTIC
nearly simultaneous admission to (Admitted as
slave state, 1821)
KY. OCEAN
the Union of Missouri and Maine. N.C.
TENN. 0 200 400 miles
ARKANSAS S.C. 0 400 kilometers
200
TERRITORY
GA. Free
MISS. ALA.
Slave
MEXICAN LA.
Closed to slavery by the
POSSESSIONS Missouri Compromise
FLORIDA Opened to slavery by the
TERRITORY Missouri Compromise
Gulf of Mexico
270 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
Share of all
congregations (%)
1780 1860 1780 1860
Anglican/
Episcopalian 406 2,100 17 4
Catholic 57 2,500 2 5
FIGURE 8.1
Number of Church Congregations by Denomination, 1780 and 1860
The growth of evangelical churches, Methodist and Baptist, transformed American Christianity
during the first half of the nineteenth century. Also noteworthy was the surge in the number
of Roman Catholic congregations, the result of Catholic immigration from Ireland and Germany
after 1830.
great number of irreligious Americans. The Baptists A New Religious Landscape The Second Great
boasted a thoroughly republican church organization, Awakening transformed the denominational makeup
with self-governing congregations. Also, Baptists (and of American religion. The main colonial-period
Methodists as well) developed an egalitarian religious churches — the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and
culture marked by communal singing and emotional Quakers — grew slowly through natural increase, while
services. These denominations formed a dynamic new Methodist and Baptist churches expanded spectacu-
force in American religion. larly by winning converts. In rural areas, their preach-
ers followed a regular circuit, “riding a hardy pony or
horse” with their “Bible, hymn-book, and Discipline”
The Second Great Awakening to visit existing congregations. They began new
As Americans adopted new religious principles, a churches by searching out devout families, bringing
decades-long series of religious revivals — the Second them together for worship, and then appointing lay
Great Awakening — made the United States a genuinely elders to lead the congregation and enforce moral dis-
Christian society. Evangelical denominations began the cipline. Soon, Baptists and Methodists were the largest
revival in the 1790s, as they spread their message in denominations.
seacoast cities and the backcountry of New England. A To attract converts, evangelical ministers copied
new sect of Universalists, who repudiated Calvinism the “practical preaching” techniques of George
and preached universal salvation, also gained tens of Whitefield and other eighteenth-century revivalists
thousands of converts, especially in Massachusetts and (Chapter 4). They spoke from memory in plain lan-
northern New England. After 1800, enthusiastic camp guage, raised their voice to make important points, and
meetings swept the frontier regions of South Carolina, punctuated their words with theatrical gestures.
Tennessee, Ohio, and Kentucky. The largest gathering, at “Preach without papers,” advised one minister. “[S]eem
Cane Ridge in Kentucky in 1801, lasted for nine electri- earnest & serious; & you will be listened to with
fying days and nights and attracted almost 20,000 Patience, & Wonder.”
people (Map 8.4). With these revivals, Baptist and In the South, evangelical religion was initially a dis-
Methodist preachers reshaped the spiritual landscape ruptive force because many ministers spoke of spiritual
throughout the South. Offering a powerful emotional equality and criticized slavery. Husbands and planters
message and the promise of religious fellowship, revival- grew angry when their wives became more assertive
ists attracted both unchurched individuals and pious and when blacks joined evangelical congregations. To
families searching for social ties as they migrated to new retain white men in their churches, Methodist and
communities (America Compared, p. 272). Baptist preachers gradually adapted their religious
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
Frances Trollope
American Camp Frances Trollope, a successful English author and the mother of novelist Anthony
Trollope, lived for a time in Cincinnati. She won great acclaim as the author of a
critical-minded study, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), a best-seller in
Meetings and English Europe and the United States.
Church Hierarchies
I found the opportunity I had long wished for, of attend- The critics who have from time to time reproached
ing a camp-meeting, . . . in a wild district on the confines me with undue severity in my strictures on the domestic
of Indiana. . . . manners of the Americans have said that a candid exami-
One of the preachers began in a low nasal tone, and, nation of matters at home would have shown me that
like all other Methodist preachers, assured us of the enor- what I reprobated might be found in England, as well
mous depravity of man as he comes from the hands of as in the United States. In most cases I have felt that this
his Maker, and of his perfect sanctification after he had might be rebutted . . . by showing that what I complained
wrestled sufficiently with the Lord. . . . The admiration of in the Union as indicative of imperfect civilisation,
of the crowd was evinced by almost constant cries of [whereas] if existing at all with us, could only be met
“Amen! Amen!” “Jesus! Jesus!” “Glory! Glory!” and the with among persons in a much lower station of life. . . .
like. . . . [T]he preacher told them that “this night was But on the subject treated in the present chapter, jus-
the time fixed upon for anxious sinners to wrestle with tice compels me to avow that no such pleading can avail
the Lord” . . . and that such as needed their help were to me. That such fearful profanation of the holy name of reli-
come forward. . . . gion has rapidly increased among us since the year 1827,
[A]bove a hundred persons, nearly all females, came in which I quitted England for America, is most sadly
forward, uttering howlings and groans, so terrible that certain. . . . [Yet, the bishops of the Church of England
I shall never cease to shudder when I recall them. They protect us from many excesses, while in America the lack
appeared to drag each other forward, and on the word of an established] national church, and of that guardian
being given, “let us pray,” they all fell on their knees; but protection which its episcopal authority seems to promise
this posture was soon changed for others that permitted against its desecration by the ever-varying innovations of
greater scope for the convulsive movements of their sectarian licence, appeared to account for all the profana-
limbs. . . . tions I witnessed.
Many of these wretched creatures were beautiful
young females. The preachers moved about among them, Source: Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London: Whittaker,
at once exciting and soothing their agonies. . . . I watched Treacher, 1832), 139, 142–144; the material following the asterisks comes from ibid.,
5th ed. (London: R. Bentley, 1839), chapter 8.
their tormentors breathing into their ears consolations
that tinged the pale cheek with red. Had I been a man,
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
I am sure I should have been guilty of some rash act of
1. According to Trollope, what accounts for the frequency of
interference; nor do I believe that such a scene could have
“profane” religious services in America and their relative
been acted in the presence of Englishmen, without instant absence in England?
punishment being inflicted . . . to check so turbulent and 2. How does Trollope use “social class” to analyze the differ-
vicious a scene. ences between England and America?
** ** **
message to justify the authority of yeomen patriarchs Black Christianity Other evangelists persuaded
and slave-owning planters. Man was naturally at “the planters to spread Protestant Christianity among their
head of the woman,” declared one Baptist minister, African American slaves. During the eighteenth cen-
while a Methodist conference told Christian slaves to tury, most blacks had maintained the religious prac-
be “submissive, faithful, and obedient.” tices of their African homelands, giving homage to
272
CHAPTER 8 Creating a Republican Culture, 1790–1820 273
MAP 8.4 N
The Second Great Awakening, CANADA
E
1790–1860 W
In the 1820s an intense wave of revivals MAINE
The Second Great Awakening lasted S ignited religious fervor in communities VT. (1820)
for decades and invigorated churches uperior along the Erie Canal, and this region became (1791)
L .S known as the “burned-over district.”
in every part of the nation. The
revivals in Kentucky and New York L. N.Y. Andover
State were particularly influential. As N.H. Andover
Hu
Seminary
thousands of farm families migrated
ro n
MICHIGAN MASS.
L. Michigan
TERRITORY
to the West, they carried with them M e Canal
iss Eri
the religious excitement generated by iss New
Haven R.I.
ippi
Yale
the Cane Ridge revival in Kentucky in rie College CONN.
R.
E
1801. And, between 1825 and 1835, L.
PA. N.J.
the area along the Erie Canal in New
As devout farmers moved west,
York witnessed such fervor that it they established new Protestant Student revivals at Yale College and
came to be known as the Burned- churches throughout the Upper Andover Seminary around 1800 led
R.
South and Midwest. OHIO io to the expansion of Protestant missions
over District. (1803) h in the West and also in Africa, India,
O
ILLINOIS INDIANA and Hawaii. Societies supporting the
(1818) (1816) Cane VA. missions combined into the American
Mi Ridge Home Missionary Society in 1826.
ssouri R.
KY.
Muddy (1792)
River Gasper
Red River River NORTH
CAROLINA
ATLANTIC
TENNESSEE
OCEAN
(1796)
African gods and spirits or practicing Islam. “At the themselves spiritually for emanci-
COMPARE AND
time I first went to Carolina,” remembered former slave pation, the first step in their jour- CONTRAST
Charles Ball, “there were a great many African slaves in ney to the Promised Land. How did evangelical and
the country. . . . Many of them believed there were African American churches
several gods [and] I knew several . . . Mohamedans.” differ from other Protes-
Beginning in the mid-1780s, Baptist and Methodist Religion and Reform tant denominations?
preachers converted hundreds of African Americans Many whites also rejected the
along the James River in Virginia and throughout the Calvinists’ emphasis on human depravity and weak-
Chesapeake and the Carolinas. ness; instead, they celebrated human reason and free
Subsequently, black Christians adapted Protestant will. In New England, educated Congregationalists dis-
teachings to their own needs. They generally ignored carded the mysterious concept of the Trinity — Father,
the doctrines of original sin and Calvinist predestina- Son, and Holy Spirit — and, taking the name Unitarians,
tion as well as biblical passages that prescribed unthink- worshipped a “united” God and promoted rational
ing obedience to authority. Some African American thought. “The ultimate reliance of a human being is,
converts envisioned the Christian God as a warrior and must be, on his own mind,” argued William Ellery
who had liberated the Jews. Their own “cause was sim- Channing, a famous Unitarian minister. A children’s
ilar to the Israelites,” preacher Martin Prosser told his catechism conveyed the denomination’s optimistic
fellow slaves as he and his brother Gabriel plotted message: “If I am good, God will love me, and make me
rebellion in Virginia in 1800. “I have read in my Bible happy.”
where God says, if we worship him, . . . five of you Other New England Congregationalists softened
shall conquer a hundred and a hundred of you a Calvinist doctrines. Lyman Beecher, the preeminent
hundred thousand of our enemies.” Confident of a spe- Congregationalist clergyman, accepted the traditional
cial relationship with God, Christian slaves prepared Christian belief that people had a natural tendency to
274 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1763–1820
sin; but, rejecting predestination, he affirmed the merchants in New York City founded the Humane
capacity of all men and women to choose God. By Society and other charitable organizations. Devout
embracing the doctrine of free will, Beecher — along women aided their ministers by holding prayer meet-
with “Free Will” Baptists — testified to the growing ings and distributing charity. By the 1820s, so many
belief that people could shape their destiny. Protestant men and women had embraced benevolent
Reflecting this optimism, the Reverend Samuel reform that conservative church leaders warned them
Hopkins linked individual salvation to religious benev- not to neglect spiritual matters. Still, improving society
olence — the practice of disinterested virtue. As the was a key element of the new religious sensibility. The
Presbyterian minister John Rodgers explained, fortu- mark of a true church, declared the devout Christian
nate individuals who had received God’s grace or social reformer Lydia Maria Child, is when members’
bounty had a duty “to dole out charity to their poorer “heads and hearts unite in working for the welfare of
brothers and sisters.” Heeding this message, pious the human-race.”
CHAPTER 8 Creating a Republican Culture, 1790–1820 275
By the 1820s, many Protestant Christians had she had died and been reincar-
COMPARE AND
embraced that goal. Unlike the First Great Awakening, nated as Christ, Wilkinson CONTRAST
which split churches into warring factions, the Second declared herself the “Publick How was the Second Great
Great Awakening fostered cooperation among denom- Universal Friend,” dressed in Awakening similar to, and
inations. Religious leaders founded five interdenomi- masculine attire, and preached different from, the First
national societies: the American Education Society a new gospel. Her teachings Great Awakening of the
(1815), the Bible Society (1816), the Sunday School blended the Calvinist warning 1740s (Chapter 4)?
Union (1824), the Tract Society (1825), and the Home of “a lost and guilty, gossiping,
Missionary Society (1826). Based in eastern cities — dying World’’ with Quaker-inspired plain dress,
New York, Boston, and Philadelphia — these societies pacifism, and abolitionism. Wilkinson’s charisma ini-
dispatched hundreds of missionaries to the West and tially won scores of converts, but her radical lifestyle
distributed thousands of religious pamphlets. and ambiguous gender aroused hostility, and her sect
Increasingly, American Protestants saw themselves dwindled away.
as a movement that could change the course of history.
“I want to see our state evangelized,” declared a church- A Growing Public Presence Female-led sects had
goer near the Erie Canal: “Suppose the great State of far less impact than thousands of women in main-
New York in all its physical, political, moral, commer- stream churches. For example, women in New
cial, and pecuniary resources should come over to the Hampshire churches managed more than fifty local
Lord’s side. Why it would turn the scale and could con-
vert the world. I shall have no rest until it is done.”
Because the Second Great Awakening aroused such
enthusiasm, religion became an important new force
in political life. On July 4, 1827, the Reverend Ezra
Stiles Ely called on the Philadelphia Presbyterians to
begin a “Christian party in politics.” Ely’s sermon, “The
Duty of Christian Freemen to Elect Christian Rulers,”
proclaimed a religious agenda for the American repub-
lic that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would have
found strange and troubling. The two founders had
gone to their graves the previous year believing that
America’s mission was to spread political republican-
ism. In contrast, Ely urged the United States to become
an evangelical Christian nation dedicated to religious
conversion at home and abroad: “All our rulers ought
in their official capacity to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Evangelical Christians would issue similar calls during
the Third (1880–1900) and Fourth (1970–present)
Great Awakenings.
“cent” societies to raise funds for the Society for towns and villages, were giving women a sense of
Promoting Christian Knowledge, New York City shared identity and purpose.
women founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Religious activism also advanced female education,
Widows, and young Quaker women in Philadelphia as churches sponsored academies where girls from the
ran the Society for the Free Instruction of African middling classes received intellectual and moral
Females. instruction. Emma Willard, the first American advo-
Women took charge of religious and charitable cate of higher education for women, opened the
enterprises because of their exclusion from other pub- Middlebury Female Seminary in Vermont in 1814 and
lic roles and because of their numbers. After 1800, later founded girls’ academies in Waterford and Troy,
more than 70 percent of the members of New England New York. Beginning in the 1820s, women educated in
Congregational churches were women. The predomi- these seminaries and academies displaced men as
nance of women prompted Congregational ministers public-school teachers, in part because they accepted
to end traditional gender-segregated prayer meetings, lower pay than men would. Female schoolteachers
and evangelical Methodist and Baptist preachers earned from $12 to $14 a month with room and
actively promoted mixed-sex praying. “Our prayer board — less than a farm laborer. However, as school-
meetings have been one of the greatest means of the teachers, women had an acknowledged place in public
conversion of souls,” a minister in central New York life — a status that previously had been beyond their
reported in the 1820s, “especially those in which broth- reach. Just as the ideology of democratic republicanism
ers and sisters have prayed together.” had expanded voting rights and the political influence
Far from leading to sexual promiscuity, as critics of ordinary white men in the North, so the values of
feared, mixing men and women in religious activities Christian republicanism had bolstered the public
promoted greater self-discipline. Believing in female authority of middling women.
virtue, young women and the The Second Great Awakening made Americans a
IDENTIFY CAUSES men who courted them post- fervently Protestant people. Along with the values of
Why did Protestant Chris- poned sexual intercourse until republicanism and capitalism, this religious impulse
tianity and Protestant after marriage — previously a formed the core of an emerging national identity.
women emerge as forces much rarer form of self-restraint.
for social change? In Hingham, Massachusetts, and
many other New England towns,
more than 30 percent of the women who married
SUMMARY
between 1750 and 1800 bore a child within eight Like all important ideologies, republicanism has many
months of their wedding day; by the 1820s, the rate had facets. We have explored three of them in this chapter.
dropped to 15 percent. We saw how state legislatures used government-
As women claimed spiritual authority, men tried to granted charters and monopolies to support private
curb their power. In both the North and the South, businesses, with the goal of enhancing the common-
evangelical Baptist churches that had once advocated wealth of society. This republican-inspired “common-
spiritual equality now prevented women from voting wealth” policy of state mercantilism remained
on church matters or offering public testimonies of dominant until the 1840s, when classical liberal doc-
faith. Testimonies by women, one layman declared, trines partially replaced it.
were “directly opposite to the apostolic command in We also saw how republicanism influenced social
[Corinthians] xiv, 34, 35, ‘Let your women learn to and family values. The principle of legal equality
keep silence in the churches.’ ” Another man claimed, encouraged social mobility among white men and
“Women have a different calling. That they be chaste, prompted men and women to seek companionate mar-
keepers at home is the Apostle’s direction.” Such injunc- riages. Republicanism likewise encouraged parents to
tions merely changed the focus of women’s religious provide their children with equal inheritances and to
activism. Embracing the idea of republican mother- allow them to choose their marriage partners. In the
hood, Christian women throughout the United States South, republican doctrines of liberty and equality
founded maternal associations to encourage proper coexisted uneasily with racial slavery and class divi-
child rearing. By the 1820s, Mother’s Magazine and sions, and ultimately they benefitted only a minority of
other newsletters, widely read in hundreds of small the white population.
CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER REVIEW 277
Finally, we observed the complex interaction of many women devoted their energies to religious pur-
republicanism and religion. Stirred by republican prin- poses and social reform organizations. The result of all
ciples, many citizens joined democratic and egalitarian these initiatives — in economic policy, social relations,
denominations, particularly Methodist and Baptist and religious institutions — was the creation of a dis-
churches. Inspired by “benevolent” ideas and the tinctive American republican culture.
enthusiastic preachers of the Second Great Awakening,
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. How important were the regional differences in and what were the motive forces behind those
the social aspects of republicanism, given the changes?
national scope of other republican-inspired devel-
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
opments such as state mercantilism and religious
events listed under “Work, Exchange, and
revivalism?
Technology,” “Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture,” and
2. Trace the relationship between America’s republi- “Identity” on the thematic timeline on page 149.
can culture and the surge of evangelism called the How did the emerging economic and social order
Second Great Awakening. In what ways are the of early-nineteenth-century America represent an
goals of the two movements similar? How are they advance upon, or a retreat from, the republican ide-
different? ology articulated during the decades of the inde-
pendence struggle?
3. In what ways did women’s private and public lives
change during the years between 1790 and 1820,
278 PART 3 CHAPTER REVIEW
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE The text argues 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE The painting of “Repub-
that a distinct American identity had begun to lican Families . . . and Servants” (p. 264) addresses
emerge by 1820. How would you describe this many of the themes of this chapter. What are those
identity, and how did it differ from the sense of themes, and what position does the artist take in
identity in the American mainland colonies in 1750 presenting them?
(Chapter 4)? What forces might account for the
changes?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and Randolph Ferguson Scully, Religion and the Making of
the Nation (2000). Analyzes the cultural and legal Nat Turner’s Virginia (2008). Links the rise of evan-
aspects of marriage. gelical Christianity in the South to the slave revolt led
by Nat Turner.
Jan Lewis, The Pursuit of Happiness (1983). Discusses
the paternalistic slave-owning gentry of the Upper Bernard Weisberger, They Gathered at the River
South. (1958). A classic study of the revivalists who led
America’s Great Awakenings.
Jeffrey L. Pasley et al., eds., Beyond the Founders
(2004). Shows how ordinary citizens promoted a Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash (2007).
democratic polity. Demonstrates the limited inclusion of women in
politics.
CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER REVIEW 279
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
KEY TURNING POINTS: The timeline mentions books by four authors (Crèvecoeur, Webster,
Rush, and Wollstonecraft) and two other entries relating to education. Based on the materials
in Chapter 8, what might account for this blossoming of American literary and educational
life?
4
Overlapping
Revolutions
1800–1860
P A R T
CHAPTER 9 “The procession was nearly a mile long . . . [and] the democrats marched
Transforming the in good order to the glare of torches,” a French visitor remarked in amaze-
Economy, 1800–1860
ment during the U.S. presidential election of 1832. “These scenes belong
C H A P T E R 10 to history . . . the wondrous epic of the coming of democracy.” As Part 4
A Democratic shows, Americans were making history in many ways between 1800 and
Revolution, 1800–1844
1860. Indeed, these decades constitute a distinct period precisely because
C H A P T E R 11 the pace of historical change accelerated, especially between 1820 and
Religion and Reform, 1860, as overlapping revolutions transformed American life. One revolu-
1800–1860
tion was political: the creation of a genuinely democratic polity. A second
C H A P T E R 12 was economic: in 1800, the United States was predominantly an agri-
The South Expands: cultural nation; by 1860, the northern states boasted one of the world’s
Slavery and Society,
foremost industrial economies. Third, these years witnessed far-reaching
1800–1860
cultural changes. Beginning about 1800, the Second Great Awakening
swept across the nation, sparking great movements of social reform and
intellectual ferment that revolutionized the culture of the North and Mid-
west. Finally, sectionalism increased in intensity, as the South extended its
slave-labor system and the North developed a free-labor society. The
overall result by 1860 was striking and alarming: now more politically
democratic, economically prosperous, and deeply religious, the United
States stood divided into antagonistic sections. Here, in brief, are the key
aspects of those transformations.
280
Transforming the Economy, Creating a Democratic Polity
Society, and Culture
Impressive advances in industrial production, trans- Beginning in the 1810s, the rapid expansion of white
portation, and commerce transformed the nation’s male suffrage and political parties created a competi-
economy. Factory owners used water- and steam- tive and responsive democratic polity. Pressure came
powered machines and a new system of labor discipline from ordinary citizens who organized political move-
to boost the output of goods. Manufacturers produced ments, such as the Anti-Masonic, Working Men’s, and
5 percent of the country’s wealth in 1820 but nearly 25 Liberty parties, to advance their interests and beliefs.
percent by 1860. As enterprising merchants, entrepre- Farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs persuaded state
neurs, and government officials developed a network legislatures to improve transportation, shorten work-
of canals and markets, manufacturers sold these days, and award valuable charters to banks and
products throughout an expanding nation. The new business corporations. Catholic immigrants from
economy created a class-based, urban society in the Ireland and Germany entered the political arena to
North and Midwest. A wealthy elite of merchants, protect their cultural habits and religious institutions
manufacturers, bankers, and entrepreneurs rose to from restrictive legislation advocated by Protestant
the top of the society. To preserve social stability, nativists and reformers. Then, during the 1830s,
this elite embraced benevolent reform, preaching Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party led a
the gospel of temperance, Sunday observance, and political and constitutional revolution that cut
universal elementary education. Simultaneously, an federal and state government aid to financiers,
expanding urban middle class created a distinct mate- merchants, and corporations. To contend with the
rial and religious culture and promoted its ideology Democrats, the Whig Party devised a competing
of individual responsibility and social mobility. Some program that stressed state-sponsored economic
middle-class Americans advocated radical causes: development, moral reform, and individual social
joining utopian socialist communities and demanding mobility. This party competition engaged the ener-
equal rights for women and the immediate end of gies of the electorate, helped to unify a fragmented
racial slavery. A mass of propertyless wage-earning social order, and, during the 1830s and 1840s, less-
workers, including poor immigrants from Germany ened sectional tensions. Chapters 10 and 12 analyze
and Ireland, devised a vibrant popular culture of their this story of political change and party politics.
own. This complex story of economic change and
social fragmentation is the focus of Chapter 9 and
Chapter 11.
However, the party system could not overcome the This timeline arranges some of the impor-
increasingly sharp sectional divisions. As the North
tant events of this period into themes. Look at
developed into an urban industrial society based on
free labor, the South increasingly defended white the entries under “Identity”: what identities
supremacy and slavery as a “positive good” and emerged in this period, and which issues
expanded its plantation-based agricultural society.
shaped these developments? In the “Work,
Beginning in the 1820s, the two sections had differed
over economic issues and Indian policy. Georgia and Exchange, and Technology” theme, how did
other southeastern states demanded and won — over industrial output and the transportation
the objections of northeastern reformers — the Indian
system change over time? >
Removal Act of 1830, which resettled native peoples
west of the Mississippi River. Concurrently, between
1816 and 1832, northern manufacturers, workers,
and farmers won high protective tariffs, which
southern planters bitterly opposed. Eventually, party
politicians negotiated a compromise, with the North
accepting tariff reductions. The sections had clashed
again over the expansion of slavery, into Missouri and
the Louisiana Purchase in the 1820s and into Texas
and the Southwest in the 1840s, and political leaders
again devised compromises. However, by the 1850s,
slavery — and the social system it symbolized —
increasingly divided the nation. Moreover, because
the democratic political revolution had engaged the
passions of millions of ordinary Americans, the politi-
cal system had become more volatile and resistant to
compromise. Chapters 10 and 12 explain how national
expansion led to increasing sectional struggle.
282
WORK, PEOPLING POLITICS & IDEAS, BELIEFS, IDENTITY
EXCHANGE, & POWER & CULTURE
TECHNOLOGY
1810 t Congress approves t Congress outlaws t Struggle to expand the t In rural areas, people of t American Colonization
funds for a National Atlantic slave trade suffrage begins with different ranks share a Society (1817)
Road (1806) (1776–1809) Maryland reformers common culture
t Benjamin Franklin’s
t First American t Andrew Jackson forces t Martin Van Buren t Upper-class women Autobiography (1818)
textile factory Creeks to relinquish creates first statewide sponsor charitable spreads notion of the
opens in Waltham, millions of acres during political machine organizations self-made man
Massachusetts (1814) War of 1812 (1817–1821)
1820 t New England shoe t Slave trade moves t Rise of Andrew Jackson t Benevolent reform t David Walker’s
industry expands African Americans west and Democratic Party movements Appeal . . . to the
Colored Citizens (1829)
t Erie Canal completed t Rural women take t Anti-Masonic Party and t Emerson champions attacks slavery
(1825) factory work, alter Working Men’s Party transcendentalism
gender roles rise and decline t Rise of southern
t Henry Clay’s t Charles Finney and sectionalism
“American System” of others advance
government-assisted revivalist religion
development
t Industrialism fragments
t Market economy society into more
expands nationwide distinct classes and
cultures
1830 t U.S. textiles compete t Indian Removal Act t Tariff battles (1828, t Temperance crusade t W. L. Garrison’s
with British goods (1830) forces native 1832) and nullification expands American Anti-Slavery
peoples west Society (1833)
t Canal systems expand t Whig Party forms t Joseph Smith and
trade in eastern U.S. t Cherokees’ “Trail of (1834) Mormonism t Female Moral Reform
Tears” (1838) Society (1834) defines
t Financial panic of t Jackson destroys t Middle-class culture gender identity
1837 begins six-year Second Bank, expands spreads
depression executive power t Texas gains
t Slavery defended as a independence (1836)
t Boom in cotton output “positive good”
1840 t American machine tool t Working-class districts t Log cabin campaign t Fourierist and other t Antislavery Liberty Party
industry expands emerge in cities (1840) communal settlements (1840)
t Walker Tariff moves U.S. t German and Irish t Second Party System t Seneca Falls Convention t New African American
toward “free trade” immigrants spark flourishes (1848) calls for culture develops in
system and principles of nativist movement women’s rights Mississippi Valley
t Lawyers emerge as
“classical liberalism”
t Mormons resettle in political leaders
Utah
1850 t Severe recession cuts t Immigrants replace t Reform becomes t American Renaissance: t Black and white
industrial jobs (1858) native-born women in political: states enact Melville, Whitman, and preachers promote
textile mills Maine-style temperance Hawthorne Christianity among
t Railroads connect laws (1851 on) slaves
Midwest and eastern t White farm families t Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
ports settle trans-Mississippi t ”Mormon War” over Uncle Tom’s Cabin t Free blacks in North
west polygamy (1858) (1852) become politically
t Cotton production and active
prices rise, as does
the cost of enslaved
laborers
9
C H A P T E R
1800–1860
I
THE AMERICAN n 1804, life turned grim for eleven- IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
INDUSTRIAL year-old Chauncey Jerome. His father What were the causes and conse-
REVOLUTION died suddenly, and Jerome became an quences of the Industrial and Mar-
The Division of Labor and the indentured servant on a Connecticut farm. ket revolutions, and how did they
Factory
Quickly learning that few farmers “would change the way ordinary Americans
The Textile Industry and British treat a poor boy like a human being,” lived?
Competition
Jerome bought out his indenture by mak-
American Mechanics and
ing dials for clocks and then found a job with clockmaker Eli Terry. A manufacturing
Technological Innovation
wizard, Terry used water power to drive precision saws and woodworking lathes. Soon
Wageworkers and the Labor
his shop, and dozens of outworkers, were turning out thousands of tall clocks with
Movement
wooden works. Then, in 1816, Terry patented an enormously popular desk clock with
THE MARKET brass parts, an innovation that turned Waterbury, Connecticut, into the clockmaking
REVOLUTION center of the United States.
The Transportation Revolution In 1822, Chauncey Jerome set up his own clock factory. By organizing work more
Forges Regional Ties efficiently and using new machines that stamped out interchangeable metal parts, he
The Growth of Cities and Towns drove down the price of a simple clock from $20 to $5 and then to less than $2. By the
NEW SOCIAL CLASSES 1840s, Jerome was selling his clocks in England, the hub of the Industrial Revolution; a
AND CULTURES decade later, his workers were turning out 400,000 clocks a year, clear testimony to
The Business Elite American industrial enterprise. By 1860, the United States was not only the world’s
The Middle Class leading exporter of cotton and wheat but also the third-ranked manufacturing nation
behind Britain and France.
Urban Workers and the Poor
“Business is the very soul of an American: the fountain of all human felicity,” author
The Benevolent Empire
Francis Grund observed shortly after arriving from Europe. “It is as if all America were
Charles Grandison Finney:
but one gigantic workshop, over the entrance of which there is the blazing inscription,
Revivalism and Reform
‘No admission here, except on business.’ ” Stimulated by the entrepreneurial culture of
Immigration and Cultural
Conflict early-nineteenth-century America, thousands of artisan-inventors like Chauncey Jerome
propelled the country into the Industrial Revolution, a new system of production based
on water and steam power and machine technology. Simultaneously, thousands of trad-
ers fashioned a second great economic advance, a Market Revolution that exploited
advances in transportation and business organization to expand trade in farm products
and manufactured goods.
Not all Americans embraced the new business-dominated society, and many failed
to share in the new prosperity. Moreover, the increase in manufacturing, commerce,
and finance created class divisions that challenged the founders’ vision of an agricultural
republic with few distinctions of wealth. As the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson
warned in 1839: “The invasion of Nature by Trade with its Money, its Credit, its Steam,
[and] its Railroad threatens to . . . establish a new, universal Monarchy.”
284
Women Weavers from Maine, c. 1860 Nineteenth-century workers were proud of their skills
and, like these textiles operatives from Winthrop, Maine, often posed for photographs with the tools of
their craft. This small tintype, 3 by 4 inches and printed on thin metal, dates from the mid-nineteenth
century. Beginning in the 1830s, cotton textile entrepreneurs built factories in rural Maine, attracted by
its abundant water power and the inexpensive labor of young farm women. The women wear striped
dresses of cotton fabric, which they probably helped to manufacture. American Textile History Museum. 285
286 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
FIGURE 9.1
Leading Branches of Manufacture, 1860
This chart shows clearly that in 1860, three industries — boots and shoes, cotton textiles, and
men’s clothing — each employed more than 100,000 workers. However, the workers in three
other industries had the highest productivity, with each worker adding more than $1,000 in
value to the finished goods. What were these industries? Why were their workers more pro-
ductive? Adapted from Douglass C. North, Growth and Welfare in the American Past, Second Edition. Copyright
© 1974. Reprinted with permission of the author.
CHAPTER 9 Transforming the Economy, 1800–1860 287
converted into commercial pork. . . . Plump falls the disguised themselves as laborers and sailed to the
hog upon the table, chop, chop; chop, chop; chop, United States. By 1812, at least three hundred British
chop, fall the cleavers. . . . We took out our watches mechanics worked in the Philadelphia area alone.
and counted thirty-five seconds, from the moment
Samuel Slater, the most important émigré
when one hog touched the table until the next
mechanic, came to America in 1789 after working for
occupied its place.
Richard Arkwright, who had invented the most
The Cincinnati system was so efficient — processing advanced British machinery for spinning cotton. A
sixty hogs an hour — that by the 1840s the city was year later, Slater reproduced Arkwright’s innovations
known as “Porkopolis.” By 1850, factories were slaugh- in merchant Moses Brown’s cotton mill in Providence,
tering 334,000 hogs a year, and 400,000 by 1860. Rhode Island.
Other factories boasted impressive new technol- In competing with British mills, American manu-
ogy. In 1782, Oliver Evans, a prolific Delaware inven- facturers had the advantage of an abundance of natural
tor, built a highly automated flour mill driven by water resources. The nation’s farmers produced huge amounts
power. His machinery lifted the wheat to the top of the of cotton and wool, and the fast-flowing rivers that cas-
mill, cleaned the grain as it fell into hoppers, ground it caded down from the Appalachian foothills to the
into flour, and then cooled the flour as it was funneled Atlantic coastal plain provided a cheap source of
into barrels. Evans’s factory, remarked one observer, energy. From Massachusetts to Delaware, these water-
“was as full of machinery as the case of a watch.” It ways were soon lined with industrial villages and tex-
needed only six men to mill 100,000 bushels of wheat a tile mills as large as 150 feet long, 40 feet wide, and four
year — perhaps ten times as much as they could grind stories high (Map 9.1).
in a traditional mill.
By the 1830s, a new “mineral-based economy” of American and British Advantages Still, British
coal and metal began to emerge. Manufacturers producers easily undersold their American competi-
increasingly ran their machinery with coal-burning tors. Thanks to cheap transatlantic shipping and low
stationary steam engines rather than with water power. interest rates in Britain, they could import raw cotton
And they now fabricated metal products — iron, brass, from the United States, manufacture it into cloth, and
copper, and tinplate (tin-coated rolled iron) — as well sell it in America at a bargain price. (As they did in
as pork, leather, wool, cotton, and other agricultural India; see America Compared p. 289.) The most impor-
goods. In Chicago, Cyrus McCormick used steam- tant British advantage was cheap labor: Britain had a
driven machines to make parts for farm reapers, which larger population — about 12.6 million in 1810 com-
workers assembled on a conveyor belt. In Hartford, pared to 7.3 million Americans — and thousands of
Connecticut, Samuel Colt built an assembly line to landless laborers prepared to accept low-paying factory
produce his invention, the six-shooter revolver. Other jobs. To offset these advantages, American entrepre-
New England artisans designed machines that fabri- neurs relied on help from the federal government: in
cated tinplate into pails, pans, pots, and dozens of other 1816, 1824, and 1828, Congress passed tariff bills that
inexpensive and useful household items. These taxed imported cotton and woolen cloth. However, in
advances in technology and factory organization the 1830s, Congress reduced tariffs because southern
alarmed British observers: “The contriving and mak- planters, western farmers, and urban consumers
ing of machinery has become so common in this demanded inexpensive imports.
country . . . [that] it is to be feared that American man-
ufacturers will become exporters not only to foreign Better Machines, Cheaper Workers American
countries, but even to England.” producers used two other strategies to compete with
their British rivals. First, they improved on British
technology. In 1811, Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy
The Textile Industry and
Boston merchant, toured British textile mills, secretly
British Competition making detailed drawings of their
To protect the British textile industry from American power machinery. Paul Moody, an COMPARE AND
competition, the British government prohibited the experienced American mechanic, CONTRAST
What were the advantages
export of textile machinery and the emigration of then copied the machines and
and strategies of British
mechanics (skilled craftsmen who invented and improved their design. In 1814,
and American textile
improved tools for industry). Lured by the prospect of Lowell joined with merchants manufacturers?
higher wages, though, thousands of British mechanics Nathan Appleton and Patrick
288 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
MAP 9.1
New England’s Dominance in Cotton
CANADA Spinning, 1840
L. Superior
MAINE Although the South grew the nation’s
VT. cotton, it did not process it. Prior to the
L.
WISCONSIN N.H. Civil War, entrepreneurs in Massachu-
Hu
L. Michigan
TERRITORY N.Y.
ron
ntar i
o MASS. setts and Rhode Island built most of the
L. O
IOWA MICHIGAN factories that spun and wove raw cotton
TERRITORY
r ie R.I. into cloth. Their factories made use of
L. E CONN.
PA. the abundant water power available in
IND. OHIO N.J.
N
New England and the region’s surplus
ILLINOIS DEL. E labor force. Initially, factory managers
W
hired young farm women to work the
UNORG. S
TERR. VIRGINIA MD. machines; later, they relied on immigrants
MISSOURI KY. from Ireland and the French-speaking
ATLANTIC Canadian province of Quebec.
N.C. OCEAN
TENN.
ARKANSAS S.C.
Tracy Jackson to form the Boston Manufacturing Lucy Larcom became a Lowell textile operative at age
Company. Having raised the staggering sum of eleven to avoid being “a trouble or burden or expense”
$400,000, they built a textile plant in Waltham, to her widowed mother. Other women operatives used
Massachusetts — the first American factory to perform wages to pay off their father’s farm mortgages, send
all clothmaking operations under one roof. Thanks to brothers to school, or accumulate a marriage dowry for
Moody’s improvements, Waltham’s power looms oper- themselves.
ated at higher speeds than British looms and needed
fewer workers. To see a longer excerpt of the Lucy Larcom
The second strategy was to tap a cheaper source document, along with other primary sources from
of labor. In the 1820s, the Boston Manufacturing this period, see Sources for America’s History.
Company recruited thousands of young women from
farm families, providing them with rooms in boarding- Some operatives just had a good time. Susan Brown,
houses and with evening lectures and other cultural who worked as a Lowell weaver for eight months, spent
activities. To reassure parents about their daughters’ half her earnings on food and lodging and the rest on
moral welfare, the mill owners enforced strict curfews, plays, concerts, lectures, and a two-day excursion to
prohibited alcoholic beverages, and required regular Boston. Like most textile workers, Brown soon tired of
church attendance. At Lowell (1822), Chicopee (1823), the rigors of factory work and the never-ceasing clatter
and other sites in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, of the machinery, which ran twelve hours a day, six
the company built new factories that used this labor days a week. After she quit, she lived at home for a time
system, known as the Waltham-Lowell System. and then moved to another mill. Whatever the hard-
By the early 1830s, more than 40,000 New England ships, waged work gave young women a sense of free-
women were working in textile mills. As an observer dom. “Don’t I feel independent!” a woman mill worker
noted, the wages were “more than could be obtained by wrote to her sister. “The thought that I am living on no
the hitherto ordinary occupation of housework,” the one is a happy one indeed to me.” The owners of the
living conditions were better than those in crowded Boston Manufacturing Company were even happier. By
farmhouses, and the women had greater independence. combining tariff protection with improved technology
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
In 1776, the United States declared its independence from the British Empire.
About the same time, Britain began to create in India what historians call the
The Fate of the Second British Empire. By 1860, Britain had become the world’s leading indus-
trial economy and dominated the princely states and peoples of the Indian sub-
American and Indian continent. The following tables trace the impact of political decisions on the
American and Indian textile industries. As the legislature of an independent
Textile Industries republic, the U.S. Congress could impose tariffs (taxes on imported goods) on
British textiles; as colonies, Indian governments could not do so.
TABLE 9.1
Cotton Textile Production and Consumption in India
Population Imports from Britain Production for Domestic Exports to Britain
Year (millions) (mill. yds.) Consumption (mill. yds.) (pieces, ave./year)
1751 190 0 1,598 632,000 (1750–1754)
1801 207 0 1,741 1,355,304 (1800–1804)
1821 205 20 1,704 542,117 (1820–1824)
1841 212 141 1,642 192,965 (1830–1834)
1861 242 514 1,538 Data not available
TABLE 9.2
Textile Production in the United States
Number of Cotton Number of Spindles Imports from Britain Average U.S. Tariff
Year Mill Workers (ave./decade)1 (mill. yds.) (as % of item’s value)
1810 215,000
1815 70.81 25.0%
1820 12,000 936,000
1827 52.86 53.8%
1830 55,000 1,038,000
1835 74.96 40.4%
1840 72,000 1,243,000
1850 92,000 1,709,000 104.23 27.1%
1859 225.15 19.6%
1860 122,000
1
Entries in Spindle column are the average per year across the decade; i.e., there were perhaps 100,000 spindles in 1810 and 350,000 in 1820,
yielding an average of 215,000 between 1810 and 1819.
289
290 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
The leading inventor was Richard Garsed: he nearly on liberty and equality. They saw themselves as
doubled the speed of the power looms in his father’s small-scale producers, equal to one another and free to
Delaware factory and patented a cam-and-harness work for themselves. The poet Walt Whitman summed
device that allowed damask and other elaborately up their outlook: “Men must be masters, under
designed fabrics to be machine-woven. Meanwhile, the themselves.”
mechanics employed by Samuel W. Collins built a
machine for pressing and hammering hot metal into Free Workers Form Unions However, as the out-
dies (cutting forms). Using this machine, a worker work and factory systems spread, more and more
could make three hundred ax heads a day — compared workers became wage earners who labored under the
to twelve using traditional methods. In Richmond, control of an employer. Unlike young women, who
Virginia, Welsh- and American-born mechanics at the embraced factory work because it freed them from
Tredegar Iron Works produced great quantities of low- parental control and domestic service, men bridled at
cost parts for complicated manufacturing equipment. their status as supervised wageworkers. To assert their
As a group of British observers noted admiringly, many independent status, male wageworkers rejected the
American products were made “with machinery traditional terms of master and servant and used the
applied to almost every process . . . all reduced to an Dutch word boss to refer to their
almost perfect system of manufacture.” employer. Likewise, lowly appren- UNDERSTAND
As mass production spread, the American tices refused to allow masters to POINTS OF VIEW
Industrial Revolution came of age. Reasonably priced control their private (nonwork) How did the capitalist-run
products such as Remington rifles, Singer sewing lives and joined their mates in industrial economy conflict
machines, and Yale locks became household names in building a robust plebeian cul- with artisan republican-
the United States and abroad. After winning praise at ture. Still, as hired hands, they ism, and how did workers
the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851 — the received meager wages and had respond?
first major international display of industrial goods — little job security. The artisan-
Remington, Singer, and other American firms became republican ideal of “self-ownership” confronted the
multinational businesses, building factories in Great harsh reality of waged work in an industrializing capi-
Britain and selling goods throughout Europe. By 1877, talist society. Labor had become a commodity, to be
the Singer Manufacturing Company controlled 75 per- bought and sold.
cent of the world market for sewing machines. Some wage earners worked in carpentry, stonecut-
ting, masonry, and cabinetmaking — traditional crafts
that required specialized skills. Their strong sense of
Wageworkers and the
identity, or trade consciousness, enabled these workers
Labor Movement to form unions and bargain with their master-artisan
As the Industrial Revolution gathered momentum, it employers. They resented low wages and long hours,
changed the nature of workers’ lives. Following the which restricted their family life and educational
American Revolution, many craft workers espoused opportunities. In Boston, six hundred carpenters went
artisan republicanism, an ideology of production based on strike in 1825. That protest failed, but in 1840, craft
Ezra Stiles Ely. Union activists agreed, organizing The Transportation Revolution
nearly fifty strikes for higher wages in 1836. Appealing
to the spirit of the American Revolution, which had
Forges Regional Ties
destroyed the aristocracy of birth, they called for a new With the Indian peoples in retreat, slave-owning plant-
revolution to demolish the aristocracy of capital. ers from the Lower South settled in Missouri (admitted
Women textile operatives were equally active. to the Union in 1821) and pushed on to Arkansas
Competition in the woolen and cotton textile indus- (admitted in 1836). Simultaneously, yeomen families
tries was fierce because mechanization caused output from the Upper South joined migrants from New
to grow faster than consumer demand. As textile prices England and New York in farming the fertile lands
fell, manufacturers’ revenues declined. To maintain near the Great Lakes. Once Indiana and Illinois were
profits, employers reduced workers’ wages and imposed settled, land-hungry farmers poured into Michigan
tougher work rules. In 1828 and again in 1834, women (1837), Iowa (1846), and Wisconsin (1848) — where
mill workers in Dover, New Hampshire, went on strike they resided among tens of thousands of hardworking
and won some relief. In Lowell, two thousand women immigrants from Germany. To meet the demand for
operatives backed a strike by withdrawing their savings cheap farmsteads, Congress in 1820 reduced the price
from an employer-owned bank. “One of the leaders of federal land from $2.00 an acre to $1.25. For $100, a
mounted a pump,” the Boston Transcript reported, “and farmer could buy 80 acres, the minimum required
made a flaming . . . speech on the rights of women and under federal law. By the 1840s, this generous policy
the iniquities of the ‘monied aristocracy.’ ” Increasingly, had enticed about 5 million people to states and terri-
young New England women refused to enter the mills, tories west of the Appalachians (Map 9.2).
and impoverished Irish (and later French Canadian) To link the midwestern settlers to the seaboard
immigrants took their places. states, Congress approved funds for a National Road
In 1857, the new economic system faltered, as over- constructed of compacted gravel. The project began in
production and a financial panic sparked by the bank- 1811 at Cumberland in western Maryland, at the head
ruptcies of several railroads pushed the economy into a of navigation of the Potomac River; reached Wheeling,
recession. Urban unemployment soared to 10 percent Virginia (now West Virginia), on the Ohio River in
and reminded Americans of the social costs of indus- 1818; and ended in Vandalia, Illinois, in 1839. The
trial production. National Road and other interregional highways car-
ried migrants and their heavily loaded wagons west-
ward; these migrants passed livestock herds heading in
the opposite direction, destined for eastern markets. To
The Market Revolution link the settler communities with each other, state leg-
As American factories and farms churned out more islatures chartered private companies to build toll
goods, legislators and businessmen created faster and roads, or turnpikes.
cheaper ways to get those products to consumers.
Around 1820, they began constructing a massive sys- Canals and Steamboats Shrink Distance Even on
tem of canals and roads linking states along the Atlantic well-built gravel roads, overland travel was slow and
coast with new states in the trans-Appalachian west. expensive. To carry people, crops, and manufactures to
This transportation system set in motion both a crucial and from the great Mississippi River basin, public
Market Revolution and a massive migration of people money and private businesses developed a water-borne
to the Greater Mississippi River basin. This huge area, transportation system of unprecedented size, complex-
drained by six river systems (the Missouri, Arkansas, ity, and cost. The key event was the New York legisla-
Red, Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi), contains the ture’s 1817 financing of the Erie Canal, a 364-mile
largest and most productive contiguous acreage of waterway connecting the Hudson River and Lake Erie.
arable land in the world. By 1860, nearly one-third of Previously, the longest canal in the United States was
the nation’s citizens lived in eight of its states — the just 28 miles long — reflecting the huge capital cost of
“Midwest,” consisting of the five states carved out of the canals and the lack of American engineering expertise.
Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, New York’s ambitious project had three things working
and Wisconsin) along with Missouri, Iowa, and in its favor: the vigorous support of New York City’s
Minnesota. There they created a rich agricultural econ- merchants, who wanted access to western markets; the
omy and an industrializing society similar to that of the backing of New York’s governor, De Witt Clinton, who
Northeast. proposed to finance the waterway from tax revenues,
294 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Mis
Mis
PA. PA.
OHIO
souri
souri
R.
R.
TERR.
IND.
VA. VA.
UNORG. . KAN. KY.
io R KY. o R.
TERR. MO. Oh MO. Ohi
N.C. N.C.
TENN. TENN.
R.
UNORG.
R.
ppi
ppi
S.C. TERR. S.C.
issi
issi
ALA.
Miss
ARK.
Miss
ALA.
ARK. GA. GA.
MISS.
REPUBLIC TEXAS
OF TEXAS LA. MISS. LA.
MAP 9.2
Western Land Sales, 1830–1839 and 1850–1862
The federal government set up local offices to sell land in the national domain to settlers. Dur-
ing the 1830s, the offices sold huge amounts of land in the corn and wheat belt of the Midwest
(Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan) and the cotton belt to the south (especially Alabama and
Mississippi). As settlers moved westward in the 1850s, most sales were in the Upper Mississippi
River Valley (particularly Iowa and Wisconsin). Each circle indicates the relative amount of land
sold at a local office.
tolls, and bond sales to foreign investors; and the rela- was an instant economic success. The first 75-mile sec-
tively gentle terrain west of Albany. Even so, the task tion opened in 1819 and quickly yielded enough reve-
was enormous. Workers — many of them Irish immi- nue to repay its construction cost. When workers
grants — dug out millions of cubic yards of soil, quar- finished the canal in 1825, a 40-foot-wide ribbon of
ried thousands of tons of rock for the huge locks that water stretched from Buffalo, on the eastern shore of
raised and lowered the boats, and constructed vast Lake Erie, to Albany, where it joined the Hudson River
reservoirs to ensure a steady supply of water. for the 150-mile trip to New York City. The canal’s
The first great engineering project in American his- water “must be the most fertilizing of all fluids,” sug-
tory, the Erie Canal altered the ecology of an entire gested novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, “for it causes
region. As farming communities and market towns towns with their masses of brick and stone, their
sprang up along the waterway, settlers cut down mil- churches and theaters, their business and hubbub, their
lions of trees to provide wood for houses and barns and luxury and refinement, their gay dames and polished
to open the land for growing crops and grazing ani- citizens, to spring up.”
mals. Cows and sheep foraged The Erie Canal brought prosperity to the farmers of
IDENTIFY CAUSES in pastures that had recently central and western New York and the entire Great
Which was more important been forests occupied by deer Lakes region. Northeastern manufacturers shipped
in the Market Revolution, and bears, and spring rains clothing, boots, and agricultural equipment to farm
government support for caused massive erosion of the families; in return, farmers sent grain, cattle, and hogs
transportation or techno- denuded landscape. as well as raw materials (leather, wool, and hemp, for
logical innovations, and
Whatever its environmental example) to eastern cities and foreign markets. One-
why was that the case?
consequences, the Erie Canal hundred-ton freight barges, each pulled by two horses,
CHAPTER 9 Transforming the Economy, 1800–1860 295
moved along the canal at a steady 30 miles a day, cut- Orleans, the two most important port cities in North
ting transportation costs and accelerating the flow of America (Map 9.3).
goods. In 1818, the mills in Rochester, New York, pro- The steamboat, another product of the industrial
cessed 26,000 barrels of flour for export east (and north age, added crucial flexibility to the Mississippi basin’s
to Montreal, for sale as “Canadian” produce to the West river-based transportation system. In 1807, engineer-
Indies); ten years later, their output soared to 200,000 inventor Robert Fulton built the first American steam-
barrels; and by 1840, it was at 500,000 barrels. boat, the Clermont, which he piloted up the Hudson
The spectacular benefits of the Erie Canal prompted River. To navigate shallow western rivers, engineers
a national canal boom. Civic and business leaders in broadened steamboats’ hulls to reduce their draft and
Philadelphia and Baltimore proposed waterways to enlarge their cargo capacity. These improved vessels
link their cities to the Midwest. Copying New York’s halved the cost of upstream river transport along the
fiscal innovations, they persuaded their state legisla- Mississippi River and its tributaries and dramatically
tures to invest directly in canal companies or to force increased the flow of goods, people, and news. In 1830,
state-chartered banks to do so. They also won state a traveler or a letter from New York could reach Buffalo
guarantees that encouraged British and Dutch inves- or Pittsburgh by water in less than a week and Detroit,
tors; as one observer noted in 1844, “The prosperity of Chicago, or St. Louis in two weeks. In 1800, the same
America, her railroads, canals, steam navigation, and journeys had taken twice as long.
banks, are the fruit of English capital.” Soon, artificial The state and national governments played key
waterways connected Philadelphia and Baltimore, via roles in developing this interregional network of trade
the Pennsylvania Canal and the Chesapeake and Ohio and travel. State legislatures subsidized canals, while
Canal, to the Great Lakes region. the national government created a vast postal system,
Equally important was the vast network of navi- the first network for the exchange of information.
gable rivers that drained into the Mississippi. Every Thanks to the Post Office Act of 1792, there were more
year, 25,000 farmer-built flatboats used these water- than eight thousand post offices by 1830, and they
ways to carry produce to New Orleans. In 1848, the safely delivered thousands of letters and banknotes
completion of the Michigan and Illinois Canal, which worth millions of dollars. The U.S. Supreme Court,
linked Chicago to the Mississippi River, completed an headed by John Marshall, likewise encouraged inter-
inland all-water route from New York City to New state trade by firmly establishing federal authority over
296 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
ak
eH
n
Hu
efficient system of water-borne
Lake Michiga
WIS. N.H.
dso
uron
N.Y.
tario
L. On transportation with three distinct
n R.
Boston
Albany
Buffalo MASS.
MICH. parts. Short canals and navigable
r ie R.I. rivers carried cotton, tobacco, and
L. E CONN.
IOWA Chicago
Cleveland PA. New York other products from the countryside
IND. OHIO Pittsburgh N.J. of the southern seaboard states
R.
Wheeling Philadelphia
into the Atlantic commercial system.
ois
Cumberland
in
D
ILL. Indianapolis ROA Columbus Baltimore
I ll
M NA
L MD.
DEL. N
A second system, centered on the
i IO Potomac R.
R.
Cincinnati
ou Vandalia NA
T
Erie, Chesapeake and Ohio, and
ss
io
r i R.
Oh
Louisville VA. James R.
St. Louis Wabash R. W
E Pennsylvania Mainline canals, linked
MO. KY.
Richmond
S
northeastern seaports to the vast
land R. trans-Appalachian region. Finally, a
ber
um
set of regional canals in the Midwest
C
. Sa
.
ARK. Tenn e s s e e R va
n S.C. rivers and the port of New Orleans.
R.
na
Mississippi
hR
Canals
am
Savannah
ab Roads
Al Montgomery
.
interstate commerce (Chapter 7). In Gibbons v. Ogden return journey, the trains moved millions of bushels of
(1824), the Court voided a New York law that created a wheat to Chicago for transport to eastern markets.
monopoly on steamboat travel into New York City. Increasingly, they also carried livestock to Chicago’s
That decision prevented local or state monopolies — or slaughterhouses. In Jacksonville, Illinois, a farmer
tariffs — from impeding the flow of goods, people, and decided to feed his entire corn crop of 1,500 bushels “to
news across the nation. hogs & cattle, as we think it is more profitable than to
sell the corn.” A Chicago newspaper boasted, “In
Railroads Link the North and Midwest In the ancient times all roads led to Rome; in modern times
1850s, railroads, another technological innovation, all roads lead to Chicago.”
joined canals as the core of the national transportation Initially, midwestern settlers relied on manufac-
system (Map 9.4). In 1852, canals carried twice the ton- tured goods imported from the Northeast. They bought
nage transported by railroads. Then, capitalists in high-quality shovels and spades fabricated at the
Boston, New York, and London secured state charters Delaware Iron Works and the Oliver Ames Company
for railroads and invested heavily in new lines, which in Easton, Massachusetts; axes forged in Connecticut
by 1860 had become the main carriers of wheat and factories; and steel horseshoes manufactured in Troy,
freight from the Midwest to the Northeast. Serviced by New York. However, by the 1840s, midwestern entre-
a vast network of locomotive and freight-car repair preneurs were also producing machine tools, hard-
shops, the Erie, Pennsylvania, New York Central, and ware, furniture, and especially agricultural implements.
the Baltimore and Ohio railroads connected the Atlan- Working as a blacksmith in Grand Detour, Illinois,
tic ports — New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore — John Deere made his first steel plow out of old saws in
with the rapidly expanding Great Lakes cities of Cleve- 1837; ten years later, he opened a factory in Moline,
land and Chicago (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 298). Illinois, that mass-produced the plows. Stronger than
The railroad boom also linked these western cities the existing cast-iron models built in New York, Deere’s
to adjacent states. Chicago-based railroads carried steel plows allowed farmers to cut through the thick
huge quantities of lumber from Michigan to the tree- sod of the prairies. Other midwestern companies —
less prairies of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, such as McCormick and Hussey — mass-produced
where settlers built 250,000 new farms (covering 19 self-raking reapers that harvested 12 acres of grain a
million acres) and hundreds of small towns. On their day (rather than the 2 acres that an adult worker could
CHAPTER 9 Transforming the Economy, 1800–1860 297
MINNESOTA
CANADA
MAINE
Although the railroads seem to form Even in 1860 it was impossible to go from
an integrated system, companies used New York City to Chicago without changing
different gauges of track and two lines trains because of nonconnecting railroad lines.
VT.
ending in the same city often did not N.H.
connect with one another. NEW
YORK
WISCONSIN Boston
MASS.
Rochester
Milwaukee MICHIGAN Buffalo
Providence
CONN. N
Detroit
R.I. E
IOWA Chicago
Cleveland New York W
Des Moines PENNSYLVANIA
N.J. S
NEBR. OHIO Pittsburgh Philadelphia
TERR. ILLINOIS INDIANA
MD. Baltimore
Indianapolis DEL.
Washington, D.C.
Independence Cincinnati
VIRGINIA
St. Louis Richmond In 1852 President Fillmore and Lord
KANSAS Elgin, the viceroy for British North
Louisville
MISSOURI America, met at a jubilee in Boston to
KENTUCKY celebrate its rail connection to Canada.
Nashville Raleigh
TENNESSEE NORTH CAROLINA
UNORG. Memphis
TERR.
ARKANSAS
Atlanta
SOUTH A T L A NT I C O C E A N
CAROLINA
ALABAMA
MISSISSIPPI Charleston
GEORGIA In the South, Atlanta emerged
Montgomery
Jackson as the key railway hub.
LOUISIANA
TEXAS 0 150 300 miles
New Orleans
Railroads in operation, 1850
FLORIDA
Railroads added by 1861
Gulf o f Me xi c o
MAP 9.4
Railroads of the North and South, 1850 and 1861
In the decade before the Civil War, entrepreneurs in the Northeast and the Midwest financed
thousands of miles of new railroad lines, creating an extensive and dense transportation system
that stimulated economic development. The South built a more limited railroad system. In all
regions, railroad companies used different track gauges, which prevented the efficient flow
of traffic.
cut by hand). With the harvest bottleneck removed, profits in manufacturing. Lacking cities, factories, and
farmers planted more acres and grew even more wheat. highly trained workers, the South remained tied to
Flour soon accounted for 10 percent of all American agriculture, even as the commerce in wheat, corn,
exports to foreign markets. and livestock promoted diversified economies in the
Interregional trade also linked southern cotton Northeast and Midwest.
planters to northeastern textile plants and foreign
markets. This commerce in raw cotton bolstered the
wealth of white southerners but did not transform The Growth of Cities and Towns
their economic and social order as it did in the Midwest. The expansion of industry and trade dramatically
With the exception of Richmond, Virginia, and a few increased America’s urban population. In 1820, there
other places, southern planters did not invest their were 58 towns with more than 2,500 inhabitants; by
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
The nineteenth century was the Age of Progress, and improved transportation
The Risks and Rewards was one of its hallmarks. Between the 1830s and the 1860s, American capitalists
and workers, aided by state governments, built steam-powered railroads that
of Technological stretched across the nation and reduced the cost of moving goods and people by
more than 90 percent. Yet, like all major technological changes, the railroad
Innovation revolution was controversial, expensive, and politically explosive.
1. Speech by John B. Morris, a director of the 3. Poster protesting the laying of tracks through the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, July 4, 1828, at “most Beautiful Streets” of Philadelphia, 1839.
the dedication of the first steam railway in the
United States.
Fellow-Citizens. . . . We have met to celebrate the laying of
the first stone of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. . . . The
result of our labors will be felt, not only by ourselves, but
also by posterity, — not only by Baltimore, but also by
Maryland and by the United States. We are about opening
the channel through which the commerce of the mighty
country beyond the Alleghany must seek the [Atlantic]
ocean. . . . We are in fact commencing a new era in our
history; for there are none present who even doubt the
beneficial influence which the intended Road will have
in promoting the Agriculture, Manufactures and Inland
Commerce of our country.
298
before? . . . The true issue is that Gov. Johnston and on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars
his friends created the [huge state] debt. . . . run smoothly over them . . . ; so that, if some have the
The people remember that Gov. Johnston voted pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune
$405,000 to the Gettysburg railroad. . . . to be ridden upon.
They remember that he voted $150,000 to the Dan-
ville and Pottsville railroad. 7. Senator L. J. Rose, from Testimony Taken by the
They remember that he voted $140,000 to the United States Pacific Railway Commission, 1887.
Laughlintown and Pittsburg railroad, that never was The railroads have made Southern California what it is
incorporated. to-day. Before the completion of the . . . Union and Cen-
They remember that he voted $120,000 to the tral Pacific roads the southern half of California, which
Norristown railroad. is now famous the world over as the most favored quarter
They remember that he voted for a bill appropriating in America in point of climate and soil conditions, was
over THREE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to State and no more nor less than a barren sheep pasture. . . . Our
company improvements in one year, and that Gov. Ritner redemption came in 1869, when the railroad people
said that such appropriations would increase the State completed that gigantic and wonderful work . . . ,
debt, in four years, to $45,000,000. giving California a direct rail connection with the
East. The effect was marvelous and immediate. . . .
5. Lyrics to “The Waggoner’s Curse,” c. 1850. We beheld ourselves in a day, as it were, surrounded
Come all ye bold wagoners turn out man by man by possibilities which made us a new and different
That’s opposed to the railroad or any such a plan; people, in a new and completely changed land.
’Tis once I made money by driving my team
But the goods are now hauled on the railroad by steam. . . .
Sources: (1) Eli Bowen, Rambles in the Path of the Steam-Horse (Philadelphia: Wm.
Bromwell and Wm. White Smith, 1855), 37; (4) Adapted from ExplorePAhistory.com;
If we go to Philadelphia, inquiring for a load, (5) George Korson, ed., Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1949), 255–257; (6) Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or, Life in the
They’ll tell us quite directly it’s gone out on the railroad. Woods, 1854 (Boston, 1910), 102; (7) Testimony Taken by the United States Pacific Railway
The rich folks, the plan they may justly admire, Commission, Vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1887), 2505.
But it ruins us poor wag’ners and it makes our taxes
higher . . .
ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
1. What does source 1 tell us about the hopes of steam rail-
It ruins wheelwrights, blacksmiths, and every other trade, road pioneers? Do the other sources suggest their hopes
So damned be all the railroads that ever was made. were achieved?
It ruins our mechanics, what think you of it, then? 2. What does source 2 suggest about early railroad design
And it fills our country full of just a lot of great rich men. and marketing? How does this image contrast with
source 3? What threats does source 3 highlight? What
audiences were the targets of these illustrations, and
The ships they will be coming with Irishmen by loads, how successful are their respective messages?
All with their picks and shovels, to work on the railroads; 3. According to source 4, how did Pennsylvania raise the
When they get on the railroad, it is then that they are fixed money for these subsidies? Who was left holding the bag?
Why would governments fund such private enterprises?
They’ll fight just like the devil with their cudgels and their
4. What social tensions do the lyrics to source 5 reveal?
sticks. What other conflicts are manifest in the documents
presented here?
The American with safety can scarcely ever pass, 5. Who are the “sleepers” in source 6? How does Thoreau
For they will blacken both his eyes for one word of his sass calculate the cost of progress? How are these costs simi-
If it wasn’t for the torment I as life would be in hell, lar to or different from the ones described by the author
of source 5?
As upon the cursed railroad, or upon the canal.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
6. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or, Life in the
After re-reading the section in this chapter on the transpor-
Woods, 1854. The workers who built and ran tation revolution, answer the following questions: Why did
the railroads suffered high rates of injury and the transportation revolution take place? What roles in the
death — facts noted by Henry David Thoreau, spread of the railway, canals, and turnpikes were played by
entrepreneurs and capitalists? By governments, taxpayers,
a critic of the market, transportation, and indus-
and various groups of workers? What were some of the
trial revolutions of his day. unintended consequences? Who won? Lost? Using these
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did documents and your answers, write an essay assessing the
benefits and costs of the transition to new transportation
you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie technologies.
the railroad? Each one is a man. . . . The rails are laid
299
300 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
1840, there were 126 such towns, located mostly in the be no two places in the world,” journalist Margaret
Northeast and Midwest. During those two decades, the Fuller wrote from Chicago in 1843, “more completely
total number of city dwellers grew more than fourfold, thoroughfares than this place and Buffalo. . . . The life-
from 443,000 to 1,844,000. blood [of commerce] rushes from east to west, and
The fastest growth occurred in the new industrial back again from west to east.” To a German visitor,
towns that sprouted along the “fall line,” where rivers Chicago seemed “for the most part to consist of
descended rapidly from the Appalachian Mountains to shops . . . [as if] people came here merely to trade, to
the coastal plain. In 1822, the Boston Manufacturing make money, and not to live.” Chicago’s merchants and
Company built a complex of mills bankers developed the marketing, provisioning, and
COMPARE AND in a sleepy Merrimack River vil- financial services essential to farmers and small-town
CONTRAST lage that quickly became the shopkeepers in its vast hinterland. “There can be no
What different types of bustling textile factory town of better [market] any where in the Union,” declared a
cities emerged between Lowell, Massachusetts. The towns farmer in Paw Paw, Illinois.
1820 and 1860, and what of Hartford, Connecticut; Trenton, These midwestern hubs quickly became manufac-
caused their growth? New Jersey; and Wilmington, turing centers. Capitalizing on the cities’ links to rivers,
Delaware, also became urban cen- canals, and railroads, entrepreneurs built warehouses,
ters as mill owners exploited the water power of their flour mills, packing plants, and machine shops, creat-
rivers and recruited workers from the countryside. ing work for hundreds of artisans and factory laborers.
Western commercial cities such as Pittsburgh, In 1846, Cyrus McCormick moved his reaper factory
Cincinnati, and New Orleans grew almost as rapidly. from western Virginia to Chicago to be closer to his
These cities expanded initially as transit centers, where midwestern customers. By 1860, St. Louis and Chicago
workers transferred goods from farmers’ rafts and wag- had become the nation’s eighth- and ninth-largest cit-
ons to steamboats or railroads. As the midwestern pop- ies; by 1870, they were the fourth and fifth, behind New
ulation grew during the 1830s and 1840s, St. Louis, York, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn (Map 9.5).
Detroit, and especially Buffalo and Chicago also The old Atlantic seaports — Boston, Philadelphia,
emerged as dynamic centers of commerce. “There can Baltimore, Charleston, and especially New York City —
um
C
b e r l an
Nashville
NORTH of Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago, as
CAROLINA
ARK. TENNESSEE ATL A N T I C well as the manufacturing center
SOUTH OCEAN of Cleveland. A third urban system
.
iR
remained important for their foreign commerce and, rural areas, people of different ranks often shared a
increasingly, as centers of finance and small-scale man- common culture. Gentlemen farmers talked easily
ufacturing. New York City and nearby Brooklyn grew with yeomen about crop yields, while their wives con-
at a phenomenal rate: between 1820 and 1860, their versed about the art of quilting. In the South, humble
combined populations increased nearly tenfold to 1 tenants and aristocratic slave owners enjoyed the same
million people, thanks to the arrival of hundreds of amusements: gambling, cockfighting, and horse rac-
thousands of German and Irish immigrants. Drawing ing. Rich and poor attended the same Quaker meeting-
on these workers, New York became a center of the house or Presbyterian church. “Almost everyone eats,
ready-made clothing industry, which relied on thou- drinks, and dresses in the same way,” a European visi-
sands of low-paid seamstresses. “The wholesale cloth- tor to Hartford, Connecticut, reported in 1798, “and
ing establishments are . . . absorbing the business of one can see the most obvious inequality only in the
the country,” a “Country Tailor” complained to the dwellings.”
New York Tribune, “casting many an honest and hard- The Industrial Revolution shattered this agrarian
working man out of employment [and helping] . . . the social order and fragmented society into distinct
large cities to swallow up the small towns.” classes and cultures. The urban economy made a few
New York City’s growth stemmed primarily from city residents — the merchants, manufacturers, bank-
its dominant position in foreign and domestic trade. It ers, and landlords who made up the business
had the best harbor in the United States and, thanks to elite — very rich. In 1800, the richest 10 percent of the
the Erie Canal, was the best gateway to the Midwest nation’s families owned about 40 percent of the wealth;
and the best outlet for western grain. Recognizing the by 1860, they held nearly 70 percent. In New York,
city’s advantages, in 1818 four English Quaker mer- Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans, the super-
chants founded the Black Ball Line to carry cargo, rich — the top 1 percent — owned more than 40 per-
people, and mail between New York and London, cent of the land, buildings, and other tangible property
Liverpool, and Le Havre, establishing the first regularly and an even higher share of intangible property, such
scheduled transatlantic shipping service. By 1840, its as stocks and bonds.
port handled almost two-thirds of foreign imports into Government tax policies facilitated the accumula-
the United States, almost half of all foreign trade, and tion of wealth. There were no federal taxes on individ-
much of the immigrant traffic. New York likewise ual and corporate income. Rather, the U.S. Treasury
monopolized trade with the newly independent South raised most of its revenue from tariffs: regressive taxes
American nations of Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela, and on textiles and other imported goods purchased mostly
its merchants took over the trade in cotton by offering by ordinary citizens. State and local governments also
finance, insurance, and shipping to southern planters favored the wealthy. They taxed real estate (farms, city
and merchants. lots, and buildings) and tangible personal property
(furniture, tools, and machinery), but almost never
taxed stocks and bonds or the inheritances the rich
New Social Classes passed on to their children.
As cities expanded in size and wealth, affluent fam-
and Cultures ilies consciously set themselves apart. They dressed in
well-tailored clothes, rode in fancy carriages, and
The Industrial Revolution and the Market Revolution
bought expensively furnished houses tended by but-
improved the lives of many Americans, who now lived
lers, cooks, and other servants. The women no longer
in larger houses, cooked on iron stoves, and wore
socialized with those of lesser wealth, and the men no
better-made clothes. Yet in the booming cities, the new
longer labored side by side with their employees.
economic order spawned distinct social classes: a small
Instead, they became managers and directors and
but wealthy business elite, a substantial middle class,
relied on trusted subordinates to supervise hundreds of
and a mass of propertyless wage earners. By creating a
factory operatives. Increasingly, merchants, manufac-
class-divided society, industrialization posed a momen-
turers, and bankers placed a premium on privacy and
tous challenge to America’s republican ideals.
lived in separate neighborhoods,
often in exclusive central areas or TRACE CHANGE
The Business Elite at the city’s edge. The geographic
OVER TIME
How and why did elite
Before industrialization, white Americans thought of isolation of privileged families
families change between
their society in terms of rank: “notable” families had and the massive flow of immi- 1800 and 1860?
higher status than those from the “lower orders.” Yet in grants into separate districts
302 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Hartford Family
Completely at home in their elegant drawing room, this elite family in Hartford, Connecticut, enjoys the
fruits of the father’s business success. As the father lounges in his silk robe, his eldest son (and presumptive
heir) adopts an air of studied nonchalance, and his daughter fingers a piano, signaling her musical accom-
plishments and the family’s gentility. A diminutive African American servant (her size suggesting her status)
serves fruit to the lavishly attired woman of the house. The sumptuously appointed drawing room reflects
the owners’ prosperity and their aesthetic and cultural interests. © White House Historical Association/Photo by
National Geographic Society.
divided cities spatially along lines of class, race, and surveyors, and so on — were suddenly in great demand
ethnicity. and well compensated, as were middling business own-
ers and white-collar clerks. In the Northeast, men with
these qualifications numbered about 30 percent of the
The Middle Class population in the 1840s. But they also could be found
Standing between wealthy owners and propertyless in small towns of the agrarian Midwest and South. In
wage earners was a growing middle class — the social 1854, the cotton boomtown of Oglethorpe, Georgia
product of increased commerce. The “middling class,” (population 2,500), boasted eighty “business houses”
a Boston printer explained, was made up of “the farm- and eight hotels.
ers, the mechanics, the manufacturers, the traders, The emergence of the middle class reflected a dra-
who carry on professionally the ordinary operations of matic rise in prosperity. Between 1830 and 1857, the
buying, selling, and exchanging merchandize.” Profes- per capita income of Americans increased by about 2.5
sionals with other skills — building contractors, lawyers, percent a year, a remarkable rate that has never since
CHAPTER 9 Transforming the Economy, 1800–1860 303
been matched. This surge in income, along with an ice-company wagons periodically
UNDERSTAND
abundance of inexpensive mass-produced goods, fos- refilled, and bought many varie- POINTS OF VIEW
tered a distinct middle-class urban culture. Middle- ties of packaged goods. As early as What were the moral
class husbands earned enough to save about 15 percent 1825, the Underwood Company values and material culture
of their income, which they used to buy well-built of Boston was marketing jars of the urban middle class?
houses in a “respectable part of town.” They purchased of well-preserved Atlantic salmon.
handsome clothes and drove to work and play in smart If material comfort was one distinguishing mark of
carriages. Middle-class wives became purveyors of the middle class, moral and mental discipline was
genteel culture, buying books, pianos, lithographs, and another. Middle-class writers denounced raucous car-
comfortable furniture for their front parlors. Upper- nivals and festivals as a “chaos of sin and folly, of mis-
middle-class families hired Irish or African American ery and fun” and, by the 1830s, had largely suppressed
domestic servants, while less prosperous folk enjoyed them. Ambitious parents were equally concerned with
the comforts provided by new industrial goods. The their children’s moral and intellectual development. To
middle class outfitted their residences with furnaces help their offspring succeed in life, middle-class par-
(to warm the entire house and heat water for bath- ents often provided them with a high school education
ing), cooking stoves with ovens, and Singer’s treadle- (in an era when most white children received only five
operated sewing machines. Some urban families years of schooling) and stressed the importance of dis-
now kept their perishable food in iceboxes, which cipline and hard work. American Protestants had long
304 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
as much. A journeyman carpenter in Philadelphia individuals had regulated their own behavior; now
reported that he was about “even with the World” after they tried to control the lives of working people — by
several years of work but that many of his coworkers persuasion if possible, by law if necessary.
were in debt. The 18,000 women who sewed men’s The Benevolent Empire targeted age-old evils such
ready-made clothing in New York City in the 1850s as drunkenness, adultery, prostitution, and crime,
earned just a few pennies a day, less than $100 a year but its methods were new. Instead
(about $3,000 today). Such meager wages barely paid of relying on church sermons and IDENTIFY CAUSES
for food and rent, so poorer workers could not take admonitions from community What was the Benevolent
advantage of the rapidly falling prices of manufactured leaders to combat evil, the reform- Empire, and why did it
goods. Only the most fortunate working-class families ers created large-scale organiza- emerge at this specific
could afford to educate their children, buy apprentice- tions: the Prison Discipline Society historical moment?
ships for their sons, or accumulate small dowries for and the American Society for the
their daughters. Most families sent ten-year-old chil- Promotion of Temperance, among many others. Each
dren out to work, and the death of a parent often threw organization had a managing staff, a network of hun-
the survivors into dire poverty. As a charity worker dreds of chapters, thousands of volunteer members,
noted, “What can a bereaved widow do, with 5 or 6 and a newspaper.
little children, destitute of every means of support but Often acting in concert, these benevolent groups
what her own hands can furnish (which in a general worked to improve society. First, they encouraged
way does not amount to more than 25 cents a day)?” people to lead disciplined lives and acquire “regular
Impoverished workers congregated in dilapidated habits.” They persuaded local governments to ban car-
housing in bad neighborhoods. Single men and women nivals of drink and dancing, such as Negro Election
lived in crowded boardinghouses, while families Day (festivities in which African Americans symboli-
jammed themselves into tiny apartments in the base- cally took control of the government), which had been
ments and attics of small houses. As immigrants enjoyed by whites as well as blacks. Second, they
poured in after 1840, urban populations soared, and devised new institutions to help the needy and control
developers squeezed more and more dwellings and the unruly. Reformers provided homes of refuge for
foul-smelling outhouses onto a single lot. Venturing abandoned children and asylums for the insane, who
into the New York City slums in the 1850s, shocked previously had been confined by their families in attics
state legislators found gaunt, shivering people with and cellars. They campaigned to end corporal punish-
“wild ghastly faces” living amid “hideous squalor and ment of criminals and to rehabilitate them in specially
deadly effluvia, the dim, undrained courts oozing with designed penitentiaries.
pollution, the dark, narrow stairways, decayed with Women formed a crucial part of the Benevolent
age, reeking with filth, overrun with vermin.” Many Empire. Since the 1790s, upper-class women had spon-
wage earners sought solace in alcohol, leading to fist- sored charitable organizations such as the Society for
fights, brawls, and robberies. The urban police, mostly the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children,
low-paid watchmen and untrained constables, were founded in 1797 in New York by Isabella Graham, a
unable to contain the lawlessness. devout Presbyterian widow. Her daughter Joanna
Bethune set up other charitable institutions, including
the Orphan Asylum Society and the Society for the
The Benevolent Empire Promotion of Industry, which found jobs for hundreds
The disorder among wage earners alarmed the rising of poor women as spinners and seamstresses.
middle classes, who wanted safe cities and a disciplined Some reformers believed that declining observance
workforce. To improve the world around them, many by Christians of the Sabbath (Sunday) as a day devoted
upwardly mobile men and women embraced religious to religion was the greatest threat to the “moral gov-
benevolence. Led by Congregational and Presbyterian ernment of God.” As the Market Revolution spread,
ministers, they created organizations of conservative merchants and storekeepers conducted business on
social reform that historians call the Benevolent Sundays, and urban saloons provided drink and enter-
Empire, which became prominent in the 1820s. The tainment. To halt these profane activities, Lyman
reformers’ goal was to restore “the moral government Beecher and other ministers founded the General
of God” by reducing the consumption of alcohol and Union for Promoting the Observance of the Christian
other vices that resulted in poverty, explained Sabbath in 1828. General Union chapters, replete
Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher. Reform-minded with women’s auxiliaries, sprang up from Maine to
306 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Lydia, and other middle-class women carried the except upon religion.” The success
EXPLAIN
Christian message to the wives of the unconverted, set of the revivals “has been so gen- CONSEQUENCES
up Sunday schools for poor children, and formed the eral and thorough,” concluded a What was Finney’s central
Female Charitable Society to assist the unemployed. Presbyterian general assembly, message, and how did
Finney’s efforts to create a spiritual Christian com- “that the whole customs of society it influence the work of
munity were not completely successful. Skilled workers have changed.” reform movements?
in strong craft organizations — boot makers, carpen-
ters, stonemasons, and boatbuilders — protested that Temperance The temperance movement was the
they needed higher wages and better schools more most successful social reform. Beer and rum had long
urgently than sermons and prayers. Poor people been standard fare in American rituals: patriotic cere-
ignored Finney’s revival, as did Irish Catholic immi- monies, work breaks, barn raisings, and games. Long
grants, many of whom hated Protestants as religious before the arrival of spirit-drinking Irish and beer-
heretics and political oppressors. drinking German immigrants, grogshops dotted
Nonetheless, revivalists from New England to the almost every block in working-class districts and were
Midwest copied Finney’s evangelical message and tech- centers of disorder. During the 1820s and 1830s, alco-
niques. In New York City, wealthy silk merchants Arthur hol consumption reached new heights, even among the
and Lewis Tappan founded a magazine, The Christian elite; alcoholism killed Daniel Tompkins, vice presi-
Evangelist, that promoted Finney’s ideas. The revivals dent under James Monroe, and undermined Henry
swept through Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennes- Clay’s bid for the presidency. Heavy drinking was espe-
see, and Indiana, where, a convert reported, “you could cially devastating for wage earners, who could ill afford
not go upon the street and hear any conversation, its costs. Although Methodist artisans and ambitious
Between 1776 and 1830, few immigrants came to the United States. Then,
increasing population and poverty in Europe prompted the migration of hun-
dreds of thousands of Germans (both Catholics and Protestants) and Irish Catho-
A Debate over Catholic lics. The sudden arrival of foreign Catholics amidst the intense Protestantism of
the Second Great Awakening led to religious riots, the formation of the nativist
Immigration American Party, and sharp debates in the public press. Contemporary pamphlets
and books offer historians access to the public rhetoric (and the private passions)
of the time.
Lyman Beecher liberty — they are chosen by the people who have been
Catholicism Is Incompatible with educated as freemen, and they are dependent on them
Republicanism for patronage and support. The Catholic system is adverse
to liberty, and the clergy to a great extent are dependent
Lyman Beecher (1775–1863) was a leading Protestant min- on foreigners [the pope and European bishops] opposed
ister and the father of a remarkable family: the influential to the principles of our government.
minister Henry Ward Beecher and authors Harriet Beecher Nor is this all. . . . How many mechanics, merchants,
Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and Catharine Beecher (A lawyers, physicians, in any political crisis, might [the
Treatise on Domestic Economy). In A Plea for the West priests] reach and render timid . . . ? A tenth part of the
(1835), Lyman Beecher warned Protestants of the power- suffrage of the nation, thus condensed and wielded by the
ful priestly hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and its Catholic powers of Europe, might decide our elections,
opposition to republicanism. Papal encyclicals issued by perplex our policy, inflame and divide the nation, break
Pope Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos, 1832) and Pope Pius IX the bond of our union, and throw down our free
(Quanta Cura, 1864) condemned republicanism, freedom institutions. . . .
of conscience, and the separation of church and state as [Catholicism is] a religion which never prospered but
false political ideologies. in alliance with despotic governments, has always been
Since the irruption of the northern barbarians, the and still is the inflexible enemy of Liberty of conscience
world has never witnessed such a rush of dark-minded and free inquiry, and at this moment is the main stay of
population from one country to another, as is now leav- the battle against republican institutions.
ing Europe, and dashing upon our shores. . . . They
come, also, not undirected. . . . [They] are led or fol- Source: Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (Cincinnati: Truman & Smith, 1835), 72–73,
126, 59–63, 85–86, 59.
lowed quickly by a Catholic priesthood, who maintain
over them in the land of strangers and unknown
tongues an [absolute] ascendancy. . . . Orestes Brownson
The ministers of no Protestant sect could or would
Catholicism as a Necessity for Popular
dare to attempt to regulate the votes of their people as the
Government
Catholic priests can do, who . . . have almost unlimited
power over the conscience as it respects the performance Like Lyman Beecher, Orestes Brownson was born into the
of every civil or social duty. Presbyterian Church, but he quickly grew dissatisfied with
There is another point of dissimilarity. . . . The its doctrines. After experimenting with Unitarianism, com-
opinions of the Protestant clergy are congenial with munalism, socialism, and transcendentalism, Brownson
308
converted to Catholicism in 1844. A zealous convert, to take care of the people; not to be governed by them,
Brownson defended Catholicism with rigorous, provoca- but to govern them. The word is harsh in democratic
tive arguments in this article, “Catholicity Necessary to ears, we admit; but it is not the office of religion to say
Sustain Popular Liberty” (1845). soft or pleasing words. . . . The people need governing,
Without the Roman Catholic religion it is impossible to and must be governed, or nothing but anarchy and
preserve a democratic government, and secure its free, destruction await them. They must have a master. . . .
orderly, and wholesome action. . . . The theory of democ- Quote our expression, the people must have a
racy is, Construct your government and commit it to the master, as you doubtless will; hold it up in glaring
people to be taken care of . . . as they shall think proper. capitals, to excite the unthinking and unreasoning
It is a beautiful theory, and would work admirably, if multitude, and to doubly fortify their prejudices
it were not for one little difficulty, namely, the people are against Catholicity . . . [even as you] seek to bring
fallible, both individually and collectively, and governed the people into subjection to your banks or moneyed
by their passions and interests, which not unfrequently corporations. . . .
lead them far astray, and produce much mischief. The Roman Catholic religion, then, is necessary to
We know of but one solution of the difficulty, and sustain popular liberty, because popular liberty can be
that is in religion. There is no foundation for virtue but sustained only by a religion free from popular control,
in religion, and it is only religion that can command the above the people, speaking from above and able to
degree of popular virtue and intelligence requisite to command them.
insure to popular government the right direction. . . .
Source: Orestes A. Brownson, Essays and Reviews, Chiefly on Theology, Politics, and
But what religion? It must be a religion which is above Socialism (New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1852), 368–370, 372–373, 376, 379–381.
the people and controls them, or it will not answer the
purpose. It cannot be Protestantism, [because] . . . the
faith and discipline of a [Protestant] sect take any and
every direction the public opinion of that sect demands.
All is loose, floating, — is here to-day, is there tomorrow, QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
and, next day, may be nowhere . . . according to the 1. According to Beecher, what specific dangers does Cathol-
prejudices, interests, or habits of the people. . . . icism pose to American republican institutions? Why do
Here, then, is the reason why Protestantism, though Protestant churches not pose the same dangers?
it may institute, cannot sustain popular liberty. It is itself 2. Compare and contrast Brownson’s and Beecher’s views
of the social and political impact of Catholicism. How
subject to popular control, and must follow in all things does Brownson defend the values and practices of the
the popular will, passion, interest, ignorance, prejudice, Catholic Church?
or caprice. 3. Given Brownson’s statement that “the people must have
If Protestantism will not answer the purpose, what a master,” what would be his view of popular demo-
cratic government? Would the leaders of the Protestant
religion will? The Roman Catholic, or none. The Roman
Benevolent Empire agree with any aspects of Brownson’s
Catholic religion assumes, as its point of departure, that social and political philosophy?
it is instituted not to be taken care of by the people, but
309
310 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
craft workers swore off liquor to protect their work destroyed much of the Irish potato crop. They settled
skills, health, and finances, other workers drank mostly in the cities of New England and New York. The
heavily on the job — and not just during the traditional men took low-paying jobs as factory hands, construc-
11 a.m. and 4 p.m. “refreshers.” A baker recalled how tion workers, and canal diggers, while the women
“one man was stationed at the window to watch, while became washerwomen and domestic servants. Irish
the rest drank.” families crowded into cheap tenement buildings with
The evangelical Protestants who took over the primitive sanitation systems and were the first to die
American Temperance Society in 1832 set out to curb when disease struck a city. In the summer of 1849,
the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The society cholera epidemics took the lives of thousands of poor
grew quickly to two thousand chapters and more than immigrants in St. Louis and New York City.
200,000 members. Its nationwide campaign employed In times of hardship and sorrow, immigrants
revivalist methods — group confession and prayer, turned to their churches. Many Germans and virtually
using women as spiritual guides, and sudden emo- all the Irish were Catholics, and they fueled the growth
tional conversion — and was a stunning success. On of the American Catholic Church. In 1840, there were
one day in New York City in 1841, more than 4,000 16 Catholic dioceses and 700 churches; by 1860, there
people took the temperance “pledge.” The annual con- were 45 dioceses and 2,500 churches. Guided by their
sumption of spirits fell dramatically, from an average of priests and bishops, Catholics built an impressive net-
5 gallons per person in 1830 to 2 gallons in 1845. work of institutions — charitable societies, orphanages,
Evangelical reformers celebrated religion as the key militia companies, parochial schools, and political
to moral improvement. Laziness and drinking might organizations — that maintained both their religion
be cured by self-discipline, as Benjamin Franklin had and their German or Irish identity.
argued, but religious conversion would ensure a pro-
found change of heart. Religious discipline and the ide- Nativism Confronted by Catholic and German-
ology of social mobility thus served as powerful speaking immigrants, some American-born citizens
cements, bonding middle-class Americans and wage- formed nativist movements that condemned immi-
earning citizens as they grappled with the economic gration and asserted the superiority of Protestant reli-
divisions created by industrialization, market expan- gious and cultural values. In 1834, artist and inventor
sion, and increasing cultural diversity. Samuel F. B. Morse published Foreign Conspiracy
Against the Liberties of the United States, which warned
of a Catholic threat to American republican institutions.
Immigration and Cultural Conflict Morse argued that Catholic immigrants would obey the
Cultural diversity was the result of a vast wave of immi- dictates of Pope Gregory XVI (1831–1846), who urged
gration. Between 1840 and 1860, about 2 million Irish, Catholics to repudiate republicanism and acknowledge
1.5 million Germans, and 750,000 Britons poured into the “submission due to princes” and to the papacy.
the United States. The British migrants were primarily Republican-minded Protestants of many denomina-
Protestants and relatively prosperous — trained pro- tions shared Morse’s fears of papal interference in
fessionals, propertied farmers, and skilled workers. American life and politics, and Foreign Conspiracy
Many German immigrants also came from propertied became their handbook (American Voices, p. 308).
farming and artisan families and had sufficient The social tensions stemming from industrializa-
resources to move to the midwestern states of Wis- tion intensified nativist and anti-Catholic attitudes.
consin, Iowa, and Missouri. Poorer Germans and Unemployed Protestant mechanics and factory work-
most of the Irish settled in the Northeast, where by ers joined mobs that attacked Catholic immigrants,
1860 they numbered nearly one-third of white adults. accusing them of taking jobs and driving down wages.
Most immigrants avoided the South because they These cultural conflicts undercut trade unionism,
feared competition from enslaved because many Protestant wage earners sided more with
UNDERSTAND workers. their Protestant employers than with their Catholic
POINTS OF VIEW coworkers. Benevolent-minded Protestants supported
Why did the Catholic Irish Poverty The poorest the anti-Catholic movement for reasons of public pol-
hierarchy consider repub- migrants, Irish peasants and icy. As crusaders for public education, they opposed
licanism a threat? Why did
laborers, were fleeing a famine the use of tax resources for Catholic schools; as advo-
Morse think the same of
caused by severe overpopulation cates of temperance and civilized manners, they con-
Catholicism?
and a devastating blight that demned the rowdyism of drunken Irish men.
CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER REVIEW 311
Religious and cultural tensions led to violence. In expansion of commerce — the Market Revolution.
1834, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, a quarrel between Water, steam, and minerals such as coal and iron were
Catholic laborers repairing a convent and Protestant crucial ingredients in both revolutions — driving factory
workers in a neighboring brickyard led to a full-scale machinery, carrying goods to market on canals and
riot and the convent’s destruction. In 1844, in Phila- rivers, and propelling steamboats and railroad engines.
delphia, riots erupted when the Catholic bishop per- We also explored the consequences of that trans-
suaded public-school officials to use both Catholic and formation: the rise of an urban society, the increasing
Protestant versions of the Bible. Anti-Irish violence similarity between the Northeast and Midwest and
incited by the city’s nativist clubs eventually escalated their growing difference from the South, and the cre-
into open warfare between Protestants and the Pennsyl- ation of a society divided by class and ethnicity. To
vania militia. Thus even as the American economic shape this emerging society, benevolent reformers and
revolution attracted millions of European immigrants, evangelical revivalists worked to instill moral discipline
it divided society along lines of ethnicity and religion and Christian values. However, artisan republicans,
as well as class. unionized workers, and Irish and German immigrants
had their own cultural values and economic interests.
The result was a fragmented society. As the next chap-
SUMMARY ter suggests, Americans looked to their political system,
which was becoming increasingly democratic, to address
This chapter examined the causes of the economic these social divisions. In fact, the tensions among
transformation of the first half of the nineteenth century. economic inequality, cultural diversity, and political
That transformation had two facets: a major increase democracy became a troubling — and enduring — part
in production — the Industrial Revolution — and the of American life.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What was the impact of the economic revolution 4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
on the various social groups and classes? events listed under “Work, Exchange, and Tech-
nology” on the thematic timeline on page 283. In
2. What different types of reform movements arose
what ways was the economy different in 1860 from
during this period, and what types of change did
what it had been in 1800? Which factors listed in
they advocate? What strategies did they use, and
the thematic timeline best explain the changes?
how successful were they in their efforts?
3. Did the Industrial and Market revolutions make
America a more “republican” society? Or did they
undermine republicanism? Defend your interpre-
tation by reference to specific events and
developments.
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE How did the 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Look again at three
economic revolution described in Chapter 9 affect images, the women weavers from Maine (p. 285),
the lives of women in various social groups, and the woodworker (p. 292), and the Hartford family
how did it make their experiences different from (p. 302). Taken together, what insights do they pro-
those of their mothers, whose political and social vide into the different aspects and social conse-
lives were explored in Chapter 6 on the American quences of the Economic Revolution?
Revolution, and their grandmothers, whose work
lives and cultural experiences were considered in
Chapter 4?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class Charles G. Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian
(1989). Discusses urban class formation during the America, 1815–1846 (1991). Explores the social
nineteeth century. impact of economic change.
Stephen P. Rice, Minding the Machine (2004). Ana- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun (2001).
lyzes the ways in which language reflects and under- Uses objects of early craft production to tell absorbing
girds changing social and cultural relationships. stories that reveal broad historical developments.
Scott A. Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in For a textile operative’s account of mill life, see
America (2005). Focuses on failed entrepreneurs and fordham.edu/halsall/mod/robinson-lowell.html.
the changing cultural meaning of failure. For religion and benevolent societies, consult loc.gov
/exhibits/religion/rel07.html.
CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER REVIEW 313
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1820–1840 t Urban population surges in Northeast and Midwest; shoe entrepreneurs adopt division of
labor
KEY TURNING POINT: Many of the early timeline entries concern economic matters, while
later entries refer to other subjects. Based on your reading of the chapter, when and why does
this change in emphasis occur?
A Democratic Revolution
10
C H A P T E R
1800–1844
E
THE RISE OF POPULAR uropeans who visited the United IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
POLITICS, 1810–1828 States in the 1830s mostly praised What were the main features of the
The Decline of the Notables and its republican society but not its Democratic Revolution, and what
the Rise of Parties political parties and politicians. “The role did Andrew Jackson play in its
The Election of 1824 gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the outcome?
The Last Notable President: John price of produce, and spit again,” Frances
Quincy Adams Trollope reported in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832). In her view, American
“The Democracy” and the politics was the sport of self-serving party politicians who reeked of “whiskey and
Election of 1828 onions.” Other Europeans lamented the low intellectual level of American political
THE JACKSONIAN debate. The “clap-trap of praise and pathos” from a Massachusetts politician “deeply
PRESIDENCY, 1829–1837 disgusted” Harriet Martineau, while the shallow arguments advanced by the inept
Jackson’s Agenda: Rotation and “farmers, shopkeepers, and country lawyers” who sat in the New York assembly aston-
Decentralization ished Basil Hall.
The Tariff and Nullification The negative verdict was nearly unanimous. “The most able men in the United
The Bank War States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs,” French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville
Indian Removal concluded in Democracy in America (1835). The reason, said Tocqueville, lay in the char-
The Jacksonian Impact acter of democracy itself. Most citizens ignored important policy issues, jealously refused
to elect their intellectual superiors, and listened in awe to “the clamor of a mountebank
CLASS, CULTURE, AND [a charismatic fraud] who knows the secret of stimulating their tastes.”
THE SECOND PARTY These Europeans were witnessing the American Democratic Revolution. Before
SYSTEM
1815, men of ability had sat in the seats of government, and the prevailing ideology had
The Whig Worldview
been republicanism, or rule by “men of TALENTS and VIRTUE,” as a newspaper put it. Many
Labor Politics and the of those leaders feared popular rule, so they wrote constitutions with Bills of Rights,
Depression of 1837–1843
bicameral legislatures, and independent judiciaries, and they censured overambitious
“Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!”
men who campaigned for public office. But history took a different course. By the
1820s and 1830s, the watchwords were democracy and party politics, a system run by
men who avidly sought office and rallied supporters through newspapers, broadsides,
and great public processions. Politics became a sport — a competitive contest for the
votes of ordinary men. “That the majority should govern was a fundamental maxim in
all free governments,” declared Martin Van Buren, the most talented of the new breed
of professional politicians. A republican-minded Virginian condemned Van Buren as
“too great an intriguer,” but by encouraging ordinary Americans to burn with “election
fever” and support party principles, he and other politicians redefined the meaning of
democratic government and made it work.
314
The Politics of Democracy As ordinary American men asserted a claim to a voice in government
affairs, politicians catered to their preferences and prejudices. Aspiring candidates took their messages to
voters, in rural hamlets as well as large towns. This detail from George Caleb Bingham’s Stump Speaking
(1855) shows a swanky, tail-coated politician on an improvised stage seeking the votes of an audience
of well-dressed gentlemen and local farmers — identified by their broad-brimmed hats and casual attire.
Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.
315
316 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Alexis de Tocqueville In 1831, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) came to the
United States to report on its innovative penal system. Instead, he produced a
Letter to Louis de brilliant analysis of the new republican society and politics, Democracy in Amer-
ica (1835, 1840). This letter to a French friend reveals his thinking and insights.
Kergorlay, June 29, 1831
Do you know what, in this country’s political realm, so vigorous that it was bound before long to destroy the
makes the most vivid impression on me? The effect of foundations of the edifice it raised. . . . We are moving
laws governing inheritance. . . . The English had exported toward an unrestricted democracy . . . that . . . would not
their laws of primogeniture, according to which the eld- suit France at all. . . . [However,] there is no human power
est acquired three-quarters of the father’s fortune. This capable of changing the law of inheritance, and with this
resulted in a host of vast territorial domains passing change our families will disappear, possessions will pass
from father to son and wealth remaining in families. My into other hands, wealth will be increasingly equalized,
American informants tell me that there was no aristoc- the upper class will melt into the middle, the latter will
racy but, instead, a class of great landowners leading a become immense and shape everything to its level. . . .
simple, rather intellectual life characterized by its air of What I see in America leaves me doubting that gov-
good breeding, its manners, and a strong sense of family ernment by the multitude, even under the most favorable
pride. . . . Since then, inheritance laws have been revised. circumstances — and they exist here — is a good thing.
Primogeniture gave way to equal division, with almost There is general agreement that in the early days of the
magical results. Domains split up, passing into other hands. republic, statesmen and members of the two legislative
Family spirit disappeared. The aristocratic bias that marked houses were much more distinguished than they are
the republic’s early years was replaced by a democratic today. They almost all belonged to that class of land-
thrust of irresistible force. . . . I’ve seen several members owners I mentioned above. The populace no longer
of these old families. . . . They regret the loss of everything chooses with such a sure hand. It generally favors those
aristocratic: patronage, family pride, high tone. . . . who flatter its passions and descend to its level.
There can be no doubt that the inheritance law is
responsible in some considerable measure for this com-
Source: From Letters from America: Alexis de Tocqueville, edited, translated, and with
plete triumph of democratic principles. The Americans . . . an introduction by Frederick Brown, Yale University Press, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by
agree that “it has made us what we are, it is the founda- Frederick Brown. Used by permission of Yale University Press.
tion of our republic.” . . .
When I apply these ideas to France, I cannot resist
the thought that Louis XVIII’s charter [of 1814 sought to QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
restore the pre-Revolutionary regime by creating] . . . 1. According to Tocqueville, what is the legal basis of Ameri-
aristocratic institutions in political law, but [by mandating can social equality and political democracy? What is the
equality before the law and retaining the Revolutionary- comparable situation in France?
era inheritance laws giving all children, irrespective of 2. Why does Tocqueville doubt that democratic rule is a
good thing, even in the United States, and “would not
sex, an equal share of the parental estate] within the
suit France at all”?
domain of civil law gave shelter to a democratic principle
and national constitutions made no mention of politi- efficiently wove together the interests of diverse social
cal parties. However, as the power of notables waned in and economic groups.
the 1820s, disciplined political parties appeared in a Martin Van Buren of New York was the chief archi-
number of states. Usually they were run by professional tect of the emerging system of party government. The
politicians, often middle-class lawyers and journalists. ambitious son of a Jeffersonian tavern keeper, Van
One observer called the new parties political machines Buren grew up in the landlord-dominated society of
because, like the new power-driven textile looms, they the Hudson River Valley. To get training as a lawyer, he
317
318 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
FL
2
A.
relied on rivers to market its cotton and had few
TE
RR
manufacturing industries to protect. William Crawford
.
of Georgia, an ideological heir of Thomas Jefferson, Electoral Popular Percent of
denounced Clay’s American System as a scheme to Candidate Vote* Vote Popular Vote
“consolidate” political power in Washington. Recog- John Quincy Adams 84 108,740 30.5
Andrew Jackson 99 153,544 43.1
nizing Crawford’s appeal in the South, John C. Calhoun Henry Clay 37 47,136 13.2
of South Carolina withdrew from the race and endorsed William H. Crawford 41 46,618 13.1
The Fate of Adams’s Policies Manufacturers, Carolina and an advocate of free trade. “[B]y some
entrepreneurs, and farmers in the Northeast and Mid- strange mechanical contrivance [it has become] . . . a
west welcomed Adams’s proposals. However, his poli- machine for manufacturing Presidents, instead of
cies won little support in the South, where planters broadcloths, and bed blankets.” Disregarding southern
opposed protective tariffs because these taxes raised protests, northern Jacksonians joined with supporters
the price of manufactures. South- of Adams and Clay to enact the Tariff of 1828, which
EXPLAIN CAUSES ern smallholders also feared pow- raised duties significantly on raw materials, textiles,
What were the suc- erful banks that could force them and iron goods.
cesses and failures of into bankruptcy. From his death- The new tariff enraged the South, which produced
John Adams’s presidency, bed, Thomas Jefferson condemned the world’s cheapest raw cotton and did not need to
and what accounted for Adams for promoting “a single protect its main industry. Moreover, the tariff cost
those outcomes? and splendid government of southern planters about $100 million a year. Planters
[a monied] aristocracy . . . riding had to buy either higher-cost American textiles and
and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beg- iron goods, thus enriching northeastern businesses
gared yeomanry.” and workers, or highly dutied British imports, thus
Other politicians objected to the American System paying the expenses of the national government. The
on constitutional grounds. In 1817, President Madison new tariff was “little less than legalized pillage,” an
had vetoed the Bonus Bill, which proposed using the Alabama legislator declared, calling it a Tariff of
national government’s income from the Second Bank Abominations. Ignoring the Jacksonians’ support for
of the United States to fund improvement projects in the Tariff of 1828, most southerners heaped blame on
the states. Such projects, Madison argued, were the sole President Adams.
responsibility of the states, a sentiment shared by the Southern governments also criticized Adams’s
Republican followers of Thomas Jefferson. In 1824, Indian policy. A deeply moral man, the president sup-
Martin Van Buren likewise declared his allegiance to ported the treaty-guaranteed land rights of Native
the constitutional “doctrines of the Jefferson School”
and his opposition to “consolidated government,” a
powerful and potentially oppressive national adminis-
tration. Now a member of the U.S. Senate, Van Buren
helped to defeat most of Adams’s proposed subsidies
for roads and canals.
Americans against expansion-minded whites. In 1825, praised “Old Hickory” as a “natural” aristocrat, a self-
U.S. commissioners had secured a treaty from one made man.
faction of Creeks ceding its lands in Georgia to the The Jacksonians called themselves Democrats or
United States for eventual sale to the state’s citizens. “the Democracy” to convey their egalitarian message.
When the Creek National Council repudiated the As Thomas Morris told the Ohio legislature, Democrats
treaty, claiming that it was fraudulent, Adams called were fighting for equality: the republic had been cor-
for new negotiations. In response, Georgia governor rupted by legislative charters that gave “a few indi-
George M. Troup attacked the president as a “public viduals rights and privileges not enjoyed by the citizens
enemy . . . the unblushing ally of the savages.” Mobil- at large.” Morris promised that the Democracy would
izing Georgia’s congressional delegation, Troup per- destroy such “artificial distinction.” Jackson himself
suaded Congress to extinguish the Creeks’ land titles, declared that “equality among the people in the rights
forcing most Creeks to leave the state. conferred by government” was the “great radical prin-
Elsewhere, Adams’s primary weakness was his out- ciple of freedom.”
of-date political style. The last notable to serve in the Jackson’s message appealed to many social groups.
White House, he acted the part: aloof, inflexible, and His hostility to corporations and to Clay’s American
paternalistic. When Congress rejected his activist eco- System won support from north-
nomic policies, Adams accused its members of follow- eastern artisans and workers who TRACE CHANGE
ing the whims of public opinion and told them not to felt threatened by industrializa- OVER TIME
be enfeebled “by the will of our constituents.” Ignoring tion. Jackson also captured the Jackson lost the presi-
his waning popularity, the president refused to dismiss votes of Pennsylvania ironwork- dential election of 1824
hostile federal bureaucrats or to award offices to his ers and New York farmers who and won in 1828: what
supporters. Rather than “run” for reelection in 1828, had benefitted from the contro- changes explain these
Adams “stood” for it, telling friends, “If my country versial Tariff of Abominations. different outcomes?
wants my services, she must ask for them.” Yet, by astutely declaring his sup-
port for a “judicious” tariff that would balance regional
interests, Jackson remained popular in the South. Old
“The Democracy” and the
Hickory likewise garnered votes in the Southeast and
Election of 1828 Midwest, where his well-known hostility toward Native
Martin Van Buren and the politicians handling Andrew Americans reassured white farmers seeking Indian
Jackson’s campaign for the presidency had no reserva- removal.
tions about running for office. To put Jackson in the The Democrats’ celebration of popular rule carried
White House, Van Buren revived the political coalition Jackson into office. In 1824, about one-quarter of the
created by Thomas Jefferson, championing policies electorate had voted; in 1828, more than one-half went
that appealed to both southern planters and northern to the polls, and 56 percent voted for the Tennessee
farmers and artisans, the “plain Republicans of the senator (Figure 10.1 and Map 10.2). The first president
North.” John C. Calhoun, Jackson’s running mate, from a trans-Appalachian state, Jackson cut a dignified
brought his South Carolina allies into Van Buren’s party, figure as he traveled to Washington. He “wore his hair
and Jackson’s close friends in Tennessee rallied voters carelessly but not ungracefully arranged,” an English
throughout the Old Southwest. The Little Magician observer noted, “and in spite of his harsh, gaunt fea-
hoped that a national party would reconcile the diverse tures looked like a gentleman and a soldier.” Still,
“interests” that, as James Madison suggested in “Fed- Jackson’s popularity and sharp temper frightened men
eralist No. 10” (Chapter 6), inevitably existed in a large of wealth. Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a
republic. Equally important, added Jackson’s ally Duff former Federalist and now a corporate lawyer, warned
Green, it would put the “anti-slave party in the his clients that the new president would “bring a breeze
North . . . to sleep for twenty years to come.” with him. Which way it will blow, I cannot tell
At Van Buren’s direction, the Jacksonians orches- [but] . . . my fear is stronger than my hope.” Supreme
trated a massive publicity campaign. In New York, fifty Court justice Joseph Story shared Webster’s apprehen-
Democrat-funded newspapers declared their support sions. Watching an unruly Inauguration Day crowd
for Jackson. Elsewhere, Jacksonians used mass meet- climb over the elegant White House furniture to con-
ings, torchlight parades, and barbecues to celebrate gratulate Jackson, Story lamented that “the reign of
the candidate’s frontier origin and rise to fame. They King ‘Mob’ seemed triumphant.”
322 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
FIGURE 10.1
All eligible voters Winner Democratic votes The Rise of Voter Turnout, 1824–1844
Republican/Whig votes As the shrinking white sections of these
Nonparticipating
voters Votes for other parties pie graphs indicate, the proportion of
eligible voters who cast ballots in presi-
1824 1828 1832 dential elections increased dramatically
over time. In 1824, 27 percent voted; in
1840 and thereafter, about 80 percent
went to the polls. Voter participation
soared first in 1828, when Andrew
Jackson and John Quincy Adams con-
John Quincy Adams Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson tested for the White House, and again
Andrew Jackson John Quincy Adams Henry Clay in 1840, as competition heated up
Henry Clay William Wirt between Democrats and Whigs, who
William H. Crawford John Floyd advocated different policies and phi-
losophies of government. Democrats
1836 1840 1844 won most of these contests because
their policies had greater appeal to
ordinary citizens.
8 1
The Jacksonian Presidency,
7
8
15
1829–1837
16
MICH. TERR. 20 8
4 American-style political democracy — a broad fran-
UNORGANIZED 28
TERRITORY 16 5
8 chise, a disciplined political party, and policies favor-
3
5
3
24
6 ing specific interests — ushered Andrew Jackson into
3 14 office. Jackson used his popular mandate to transform
15
11 the policies of the national government and the defini-
ARK. 11
TERR. tion of the presidency. During his two terms, he
5 9
3
enhanced presidential authority, destroyed the mer-
5
cantilist and nationalist American System, and estab-
FL
A.
prohibited the collection of those resolutions asserted that, because state-based conven-
UNDERSTAND
duties in South Carolina after tions had ratified the Constitution, sovereignty lay
POINTS OF VIEW
February 1, 1833, and threatened in the states, not in the people. Beginning from this
How did South Carolina
justify nullification on secession if federal officials tried premise, Calhoun argued that a state convention could
constitutional grounds? to collect them. declare a congressional law to be void within the state’s
South Carolina’s act of nullifi- borders. Replying to this states’ rights interpretation of
cation — the argument that a state has the right to void, the Constitution, which had little support in the text of
within its borders, a law passed by Congress — rested the document, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts
on the constitutional arguments developed in The presented a nationalist interpretation that celebrated
South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828). Written popular sovereignty and Congress’s responsibility to
anonymously by Vice President John C. Calhoun, the secure the “general welfare.”
Exposition gave a localist (or sectional) interpretation Jackson hoped to find a middle path between
to the federal union. Because each state or geographic Webster’s strident nationalism and Calhoun’s radical
region had distinct interests, localists argued, protec- doctrine of localist federalism. The Constitution clearly
tive tariffs and other national legislation that operated gave the federal government the authority to establish
unequally on the various states lacked fairness and tariffs, and Jackson vowed to enforce it. He declared
legitimacy — in fact, they were unconstitutional. An that South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification vio-
obsessive defender of the interests of southern slave lated the letter of the Constitution and was “destructive
owners, Calhoun exaggerated the frequency and sever- of the great object for which it was formed.” More
ity of such legislation, declaring, “Constitutional gov- pointedly, he warned, “Disunion by armed force is
ernment and the government of a majority are utterly treason.” At Jackson’s request, Congress in early 1833
incompatible.” passed a military Force Bill, authorizing the president
Calhoun’s constitutional doctrines reflected the to compel South Carolina’s obedience to national laws.
arguments advanced by Jefferson and Madison in Simultaneously, Jackson addressed the South’s objec-
the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. Those tions to high import duties with a new tariff act that,
CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 325
over the course of a decade, reduced rates to the mod- 1816 (Chapter 7), the bank was privately managed and
est levels of 1816. Subsequently, export-hungry mid- operated under a twenty-year charter from the federal
western wheat farmers joined southern planters in government, which owned 20 percent of its stock. The
advocating low duties to avoid retaliatory tariffs by for- bank’s most important role was to stabilize the nation’s
eign nations. “Illinois wants a market for her agricul- money supply, which consisted primarily of notes and
tural products,” declared Senator Sidney Breese in bills of credit — in effect, paper money — issued by
1846. “[S]he wants the market of the world.” state-chartered banks. Those banks promised to
Having won the political battle by securing a tariff redeem the notes on demand with “hard” money (or
reduction, the South Carolina convention did not press “specie”) — that is, gold or silver coins minted by the
its constitutional stance on nullification. Jackson was U.S. or foreign governments — but there were few coins
satisfied. He had assisted the South economically while in circulation. By collecting those notes and regularly
upholding the constitutional principle of national demanding specie, the Second Bank kept the state
authority — a principle that Abraham Lincoln would banks from issuing too much paper money and depre-
embrace to defend the Union during the secession cri- ciating its value.
sis of 1861. This cautious monetary policy pleased creditors —
the bankers and entrepreneurs in Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia, whose capital investments were under-
The Bank War writing economic development. However, expansion-
In the midst of the tariff crisis, Jackson faced a major minded bankers, including friends of Jackson’s in
challenge from politicians who supported the Second Nashville, demanded an end to central oversight.
Bank of the United States. Founded in Philadelphia in Moreover, many ordinary Americans worried that the
326 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Second Bank would force weak banks to close, leaving the Treasury Department. Taney promptly transferred
them holding worthless paper notes. Many politicians the federal government’s gold and silver from the
resented the arrogance of the bank’s president, Nicholas Second Bank to various state banks, which critics
Biddle. “As to mere power,” Biddle boasted, “I have labeled Jackson’s “pet banks.” To justify this abrupt
been for years in the daily exercise of more personal (and probably illegal) transfer, Jackson declared that
authority than any President habitually enjoys.” his reelection represented “the decision of the people
against the bank” and gave him a mandate to destroy it.
Jackson’s Bank Veto Although the Second Bank This sweeping claim of presidential power was new and
had many enemies, a political miscalculation by its radical. Never before had a president claimed that vic-
friends brought its downfall. In 1832, Henry Clay and tory at the polls allowed him to pursue a controversial
Daniel Webster persuaded Biddle to seek an early policy or to act independently of Congress (American
extension of the bank’s charter (which still had four Voices, p. 328).
years to run). They had the votes in Congress to enact The “bank war” escalated into an all-out political
the required legislation and hoped to lure Jackson into battle. In March 1834, Jackson’s opponents in the
a veto that would split the Democrats just before the Senate passed a resolution composed by Henry Clay
1832 elections. that censured the president and warned of executive
Jackson turned the tables on Clay and Webster. He tyranny: “We are in the midst of a revolution, hitherto
vetoed the rechartering bill with a masterful message bloodless, but rapidly descending towards a total change
that blended constitutional arguments with class rhet- of the pure republican character of the Government,
oric and patriotic fervor. Adopting the position taken and the concentration of all power in the hands of one
by Thomas Jefferson in 1793, Jackson declared that man.” Clay’s charges and Congress’s censure did not
Congress had no constitutional authority to charter a deter Jackson. “The Bank is trying to kill me but I will
national bank. He condemned the bank as “subversive kill it,” he vowed to Van Buren. And so he did. When
of the rights of the States,” “dangerous to the liberties of the Second Bank’s national charter expired in 1836,
the people,” and a privileged monopoly that promoted Jackson prevented its renewal.
“the advancement of the few at the expense of . . . farm- Jackson had destroyed both national banking — the
ers, mechanics, and laborers.” Finally, the president handiwork of Alexander Hamilton — and the American
noted that British aristocrats owned much of the bank’s System of protective tariffs and public works created by
stock. Such a powerful institution should be “purely Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. The result was a
American,” Jackson declared with patriotic zeal. profound check on economic activism and innovative
Jackson’s attack on the bank carried him to victory policymaking by the national government. “All is
in 1832. Old Hickory and Martin Van Buren, his gone,” observed a Washington newspaper correspon-
new running mate, overwhelmed Henry Clay, who dent. “All is gone, which the General Government was
headed the National Republican ticket, by 219 to instituted to create and preserve.”
49 electoral votes. Jackson’s most fervent supporters
were eastern workers and western farmers, who blamed
the Second Bank for high urban prices and stagnant Indian Removal
farm income. “All the flourishing cities of the West are The status of Native American peoples posed an equally
mortgaged to this money power,” charged Senator complex political problem. By the late 1820s, white
Thomas Hart Benton, a Jacksonian from Missouri. voices throughout the South and Midwest demanded
Still, many of Jackson’s supporters had prospered dur- the resettlement of Indian peoples west of the Mis-
ing a decade of strong economic growth. Thousands of sissippi River. Many whites who were sympathetic to
middle-class Americans — lawyers, clerks, shopkeep- Native Americans also favored resettlement. Removal
ers, and artisans — had used the opportunity to rise in to the West seemed the only way to protect Indians
the world and cheered Jackson’s attack on privileged from alcoholism, financial exploitation, and cultural
corporations. decline.
However, most Indians did not want to leave their
PLACE EVENTS The Bank Destroyed Early ancestral lands. For centuries, Cherokees and Creeks
IN CONTEXT in 1833, Jackson met their had lived in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama; Chick-
Why — and how — did
wishes by appointing Roger B. asaws and Choctaws in Mississippi and Alabama; and
Jackson destroy the
Taney, a strong opponent of Seminoles in Florida. During the War of 1812, Andrew
Second National Bank?
corporate privilege, as head of Jackson had forced the Creeks to relinquish millions of
CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 327
acres, but Indian tribes still controlled vast tracts and Congress over the determined opposition of evangeli-
wanted to keep them. cal Protestant men — and women. To block removal,
Catharine Beecher and Lydia Sigourney composed a
Cherokee Resistance But on what terms? Some Ladies Circular, which urged “benevolent ladies” to use
Indians had adopted white ways. An 1825 census “prayers and exertions to avert the calamity of removal.”
revealed that various Cherokees owned 33 gristmills, Women from across the nation flooded Congress with
13 sawmills, 2,400 spinning wheels, 760 looms, and petitions. Nonetheless, Jackson’s bill squeaked through
2,900 plows. Many of these owners were mixed-race, the House of Representatives by a vote of 102 to 97.
the offspring of white traders and Indian women. They The Removal Act created the Indian Territory on
had grown up in a bicultural world, knew the political national lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and
and economic ways of whites, and often favored assim- located in present-day Oklahoma and Kansas. It prom-
ilation into white society. Indeed, some of these mixed- ised money and reserved land to Native American
race people were indistinguishable from southern peoples who would give up their ancestral holdings
planters. At his death in 1809, Georgia Cherokee James east of the Mississippi River. Government officials
Vann owned one hundred black slaves, two trading promised the Indians that they could live on their new
posts, and a gristmill. Three decades later, forty other land, “they and all their children, as long as grass grows
mixed-blood Cherokee families each owned ten or and water runs.” However, as one Indian leader noted,
more African American workers. on the Great Plains “water and timber are scarcely to be
Prominent mixed-race Cherokees believed that seen.” When Chief Black Hawk and his Sauk and Fox
integration into American life was the best way to pro-
tect their property and the lands of their people. In
1821, Sequoyah, a part-Cherokee silversmith, per-
fected a system of writing for the Cherokee language;
six years later, mixed-race Cherokees devised a new
charter of Cherokee government modeled directly on
the U.S. Constitution. “You asked us to throw off the
hunter and warrior state,” Cherokee John Ridge told a
Philadelphia audience in 1832. “We did so. You asked
us to form a republican government: We did so. . . . You
asked us to learn to read: We did so. You asked us to
cast away our idols, and worship your God: We did so.”
Full-blood Cherokees, who made up 90 percent of the
population, resisted many of these cultural and politi-
cal innovations but were equally determined to retain
their ancestral lands. “We would not receive money for
land in which our fathers and friends are buried,” one
full-blood chief declared. “We love our land; it is our
mother.”
What the Cherokees did or wanted carried no
weight with the Georgia legislature. In 1802, Georgia
had given up its western land claims in return for a fed-
eral promise to extinguish Indian landholdings in the
state. Now it demanded fulfillment of that pledge.
Having spent his military career fighting Indians and
seizing their lands, Andrew Jackson gave full support Blackhawk
to Georgia. On assuming the presidency, he withdrew This portrait of Black Hawk (1767–1838), by George Catlin,
shows the Indian leader holding his namesake, a black hawk
the federal troops that had protected Indian enclaves and its feathers. When Congress approved Andrew Jackson’s
there and in Alabama and Mississippi. The states, he Indian Removal Act in 1830, Black Hawk mobilized Sauk and
declared, were sovereign within their borders. Fox warriors to protect their ancestral lands in Illinois. “It was
here, that I was born — and here lie the bones of many
friends and relatives,” the aging chief declared. “I . . . never
The Removal Act and Its Aftermath Jackson then could consent to leave it.” Courtesy Warner Collection of Gulf
pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, AL.
AMERICAN
VOICES
From the start of his career, Andrew Jackson was a controversial figure. “Hot-
tempered,” “Indian-hater,” “military despot,” said his critics, while his friends
praised him as a forthright statesman. His contemporary biographer, the jour-
The Character and nalist James Parton, found him a man of many faces, an enigma. Others thought
they understood his personality and policies: James Hamilton, a loyal Jacksonian
Goals of Andrew congressman, recalled Jackson’s volatile temper. Henry Clay, his archrival, warned
that Jackson’s quest for power threatened American republicanism, while
Jackson wealthy New York Whig Philip Hone accused him of inciting class warfare. After
talking with dozens of Americans, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville offered a
balanced interpretation of the man and his goals.
328
concentration of all power in the hands of one man. The been imagined that General Jackson is bent on establish-
powers of Congress are paralyzed, except when exerted ing a dictatorship in America, introducing a military
in conformity with his will, by frequent and an extraordi- spirit, and giving a degree of influence to the central
nary exercise of the executive veto, not anticipated by the authority that cannot but be dangerous to provincial
founders of our Constitution, and not practiced by any [state] liberties. . . .
of the predecessors of the present chief magistrate. . . . Far from wishing to extend the Federal power, the
The judiciary has not been exempt from the pre- President belongs to the party which is desirous of
vailing rage for innovation. Decisions of the tribunals, limiting that power to the clear and precise letter of
deliberately pronounced, have been contemptuously the Constitution and which never puts a construction
disregarded. . . . Our Indian relations, coeval with upon that act favorable to the government of the Union;
the existence of the government, and recognized and far from standing forth as the champion of centralization,
established by numerous laws and treaties, have been General Jackson is the agent of the state jealousies; and
subverted. . . . The system of protection of improvement he was placed in his lofty station by the passions that are
lies crushed beneath the veto. The system of protection of most opposed to the central government.
American industry [will soon meet a similar fate]. . . . In a
term of eight years, a little more than equal to that which Sources: James Parton, The Life of Andrew Jackson. In Three Volumes (New York: Mason
Brothers, 1860), vol. 1, vii–viii; Sean Wilentz, ed., Major Problems in the Early Republic,
was required to establish our liberties [as an independent 1787–1848 (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1991), 374 (Hamilton) and 392–393 (Hone);
republic between 1776 and 1783], the government will Calvin Colton, ed., The Life . . . of Henry Clay, 6 vols. (New York: A. Barnes, 1857),
576–580; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, abr. by Thomas Bender (New
have been transformed into an elective monarchy — the
York: Modern Library, 1981), 271–273.
worst of all forms of government.
329
330 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
followers refused to leave rich, they claimed the status of a “foreign nation.” In
COMPARE AND
well-watered farmland in western Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), Chief Justice John
CONTRAST
How did the views of
Illinois in 1832, Jackson sent Marshall denied that claim and declared that Indian
Jackson and John Marshall troops to expel them by force. peoples were “domestic dependent nations.” However,
differ regarding the sta- Eventually, the U.S. Army pur- in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall and the Court
tus and rights of Indian sued Black Hawk into the sided with the Cherokees against Georgia. Voiding
peoples? Wisconsin Territory and, in the Georgia’s extension of state law over the Cherokees, the
brutal eight-hour Bad Axe Court held that Indian nations were “distinct political
Massacre, killed 850 of his 1,000 warriors. Over the communities, having territorial boundaries, within
next five years, American diplomatic pressure and mil- which their authority is exclusive [and is] guaranteed
itary power forced seventy Indian peoples to sign trea- by the United States.”
ties and move west of the Mississippi (Map 10.3). Instead of guaranteeing the Cherokees’ territory,
In the meantime, the Cherokees had carried the the U.S. government took it from them. In 1835,
defense of their lands to the Supreme Court, where American officials and a minority Cherokee faction
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0 200 400 miles
State and territory
boundaries in 1846 0 200 400 kilometers (after Tanner)
MAP 10.3
The Removal of Native Americans, 1820–1846
As white settlers moved west, the U.S. government forced scores of Native American peoples to
leave their ancestral lands. Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 formalized this policy.
Subsequently, scores of Indian peoples signed treaties that exchanged their lands in the East,
Midwest, and Southeast for money and designated reservations in an Indian Territory west of
the Mississippi River. When the Sauk, Fox, Cherokees, and Seminoles resisted resettlement, the
government used the U.S. Army to enforce the removal policy.
CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 331
negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which specified The Jacksonian Impact
that Cherokees would resettle in Indian Territory.
Jackson’s legacy, like that of every other great president,
When only 2,000 of 17,000 Cherokees had moved by
is complex and rich. On the institutional level, he
the May 1838 deadline, President Martin Van Buren
expanded the authority of the nation’s chief executive.
ordered General Winfield Scott to enforce the treaty.
As Jackson put it, “The President is the direct represen-
Scott’s army rounded up 14,000 Cherokees (including
tative of the American people.” Assuming that role
mixed-race African Cherokees) and marched them
during the nullification crisis, he upheld national
1,200 miles, an arduous journey that became known as
authority by threatening the use of military force, lay-
the Trail of Tears. Along the way, 3,000 Indians died of
ing the foundation for Lincoln’s defense of the Union a
starvation and exposure. Once in Oklahoma, the
generation later. At the same time (and somewhat con-
Cherokees excluded anyone of “negro or mulatto par-
tradictorily), Jackson curbed the reach of the national
entage” from governmental office, thereby affirming
government. By undermining Henry Clay’s American
that full citizenship in their nation was racially defined.
System of national banking, protective tariffs, and
Just as the United States was a “white man’s country,” so
internal improvements, Jackson reinvigorated the
Indian Territory would be defined as a “red man’s
Jeffersonian tradition of a limited and frugal central
country.”
government.
Encouraged by generous gifts of land, the Creeks,
Chickasaws, and Choctaws moved west of the
Mississippi, leaving the Seminoles in Florida as the The Taney Court Jackson also undermined the con-
only numerically significant Indian people remaining stitutional jurisprudence of John Marshall by appoint-
in the Southeast. Government pressure persuaded ing Roger B. Taney as his successor in 1835. During
about half of the Seminoles to migrate to Indian his long tenure as chief justice (1835–1864), Taney
Territory, but families whose ancestors had intermar- partially reversed the nationalist and vested-property-
ried with runaway slaves feared the emphasis on “blood rights decisions of the Marshall Court and gave consti-
purity” there. During the 1840s, they fought a success- tutional legitimacy to Jackson’s policies of states’ rights
ful guerrilla war against the U.S. Army and retained and free enterprise. In the landmark case Charles River
their lands in central Florida. These Seminoles were Bridge Co. v. Warren Bridge Co. (1837), Taney declared
the exception: the Jacksonians had forced the removal that a legislative charter — in this case, to build and
of most eastern Indian peoples. operate a toll bridge — did not necessarily bestow a
332 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
monopoly, and that a legislature could charter a com- in . . . government,” declared a New Jersey Democrat,
peting bridge to promote the general welfare: “While “it is the danger of associated wealth, with special
the rights of private property are sacredly guarded, we privileges.” The revised constitutions also protected
must not forget that the community also has rights.” taxpayers by setting strict limits on state debt and
This decision directly challenged Marshall’s interpreta- encouraging judges to enforce them. Said New York
tion of the contract clause of the Constitution in reformer Michael Hoffman, “We will not trust the leg-
Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), which had islature with the power of creating indefinite mort-
stressed the binding nature of public charters and the gages on the people’s property.”
sanctity of “vested rights” (Chapter 7). By limiting the “The world is governed too much,” the Jacksonians
property claims of existing canal and turnpike compa- proclaimed as they embraced a small-government,
nies, Taney’s decision allowed legislatures to charter laissez-faire outlook and celebrated the power of ordi-
competing railroads that would provide cheaper and nary people to make decisions in the voting booth and
more efficient transportation. the marketplace.
The Taney Court also limited Marshall’s nationalis-
tic interpretation of the commerce clause by enhancing
the regulatory role of state governments. For example,
in Mayor of New York v. Miln (1837), the Taney Court Class, Culture, and the
ruled that New York State could
use its “police power” to inspect
Second Party System
EXPLAIN
CONSEQUENCES the health of arriving immigrants. The rise of the Democracy and Jackson’s tumultuous
How did the Taney Court The Court also restored to the presidency sparked the creation in the mid-1830s of a
and the Jacksonian state states some of the economic pow- second national party: the Whigs. For the next two
constitutions alter the ers they had exercised prior to the decades, Whigs and Democrats competed fiercely for
American legal and consti- Constitution of 1787. In Briscoe v. votes and appealed to different cultural groups. Many
tutional system? Bank of Kentucky (1837), the jus- evangelical Protestants became Whigs, while most
tices allowed a bank owned by the Catholic immigrants and traditional Protestants joined
state of Kentucky to issue currency, despite the word- the Democrats. By debating issues of economic policy,
ing of Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, which class power, and moral reform, party politicians offered
prohibits states from issuing “bills of credit.” Americans a choice between competing programs and
political leaders. “Of the two great parties,” remarked
States Revise Their Constitutions Inspired by philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, “[the Democracy]
Jackson and Taney, Democrats in the various states has the best cause . . . for free trade, for wide suffrage,
mounted their own constitutional revolutions. Between [but the Whig Party] has the best men.”
1830 and 1860, twenty states called conventions that
furthered democratic principles by reapportioning
state legislatures on the basis of population and giving The Whig Worldview
the vote to all white men. Voters also had more power The Whig Party arose in 1834, when a group of con-
because the new documents mandated the election, gressmen contested Andrew Jackson’s policies and his
rather than the appointment, of most public officials, high-handed, “kinglike” conduct. They took the name
including sheriffs, justices of the peace, and judges. Whigs to identify themselves with the pre-Revolutionary
The new constitutions also embodied the principles American and British parties — also called Whigs —
of classical liberalism, or laissez-faire, by limiting the that had opposed the arbitrary actions of British mon-
government’s role in the economy. (Twentieth-century archs. The Whigs accused “King Andrew I” of violating
social-welfare liberalism endorses the opposite prin- the Constitution by creating a spoils system and under-
ciple: that government should intervene in economic mining elected legislators, whom they saw as the true
and social life.) As president, Jackson had destroyed representatives of the sovereign people. One Whig
the American System, and his disciples now attacked accused Jackson of ruling in a manner “more absolute
the state-based Commonwealth System, which used than that of any absolute monarchy of Europe.”
chartered corporations and state funds to promote eco- Initially, the Whigs consisted of political factions
nomic development. Most Jackson-era constitutions with distinct points of view. However, guided by
prohibited states from granting special charters to cor- Senators Webster of Massachusetts, Clay of Kentucky,
porations and extending loans and credit guarantees to and Calhoun of South Carolina, they gradually coalesced
private businesses. “If there is any danger to be feared into a party with a distinctive stance and coherent
CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 333
York State alone by the mid-1820s, there were more states formed Working Men’s Parties. “Past experience
than 20,000 Masons, organized into 450 local lodges. teaches us that we have nothing to hope from the aris-
However, after the kidnapping and murder in 1826 of tocratic orders of society,” declared the New York
William Morgan, a New York Mason who had threat- Working Men’s Party. It vowed “to send men of our
ened to reveal the Order’s secrets, the Freemasons fell own description, if we can, to the Legislature at Albany.”
into disrepute. Thurlow Weed, a newspaper editor in The new parties’ agenda reflected the values and
Rochester, New York, spearheaded an Anti-Masonic interests of ordinary urban workers. The Philadelphia
Party, which condemned the Order as a secret aris- Working Men’s Party set out to secure “a just balance of
tocratic fraternity. The new party quickly ousted power . . . between all the various classes.” It called for
Freemasons from local and state offices, and just as the abolition of private banks, chartered monopolies,
quickly ran out of political steam. and debtors’ prisons, and it demanded universal public
Because many Anti-Masons espoused temperance, education and a fair system of taxation (Thinking Like
equality of opportunity, and evangelical morality, they a Historian, p. 336). It won some victories, electing a
gravitated to the Whig Party. Throughout the Northeast number of assemblymen and persuading the Pennsyl-
and Midwest, Whig politicians won election by pro- vania legislature in 1834 to authorize tax-supported
posing legal curbs on the sale of alcohol and local ordi- schools. Elsewhere, Working Men’s candidates won
nances that preserved Sunday as a day of worship. The office in many cities, but their parties’ weakness in
Whigs also secured the votes of farmers, bankers, and statewide contests soon took a toll. By the mid-1830s,
shopkeepers, who favored Henry Clay’s American most politically active workers had joined the Demo-
System. For these citizens of the growing Midwest, the cratic Party.
Whigs’ program of government subsidies for roads, The Working Men’s Parties left a mixed legacy. They
canals, and bridges was as important as their moral mobilized craft workers and gave political expression
agenda. to their ideology of artisan republicanism. As labor
In the election of 1836, the Whig Party faced Martin intellectual Orestes Brownson defined their distinctive
Van Buren, the architect of the Democratic Party and vision, “All men will be independent proprietors, work-
Jackson’s handpicked successor. Like Jackson, Van ing on their own capitals, on their own farms, or in
Buren denounced the American System and warned their own shops.” However, this emphasis on propri-
that its revival would create a “consolidated govern- etorship inhibited alliances between the artisan-based
ment.” Positioning himself as a defender of individual Working Men’s Parties and the rapidly increasing class
rights, Van Buren also condemned the efforts of Whigs of dependent wage earners. As Joseph Weydemeyer, a
and moral reformers to enact state laws imposing tem- close friend of Karl Marx, reported from New York in
perance and national laws abolishing slavery. “The gov- the early 1850s, many American craft workers “are
ernment is best which governs least” became his motto incipient bourgeois, and feel themselves to be such.”
in economic, cultural, and racial matters. Moreover, the Panic of 1837 threw the American
To oppose Van Buren, the Whigs ran four candi- economy — and the workers’ movement — into disar-
dates, each with a strong regional reputation. They ray. The panic began when the Bank of England tried to
hoped to garner enough electoral votes to throw the boost the faltering British economy by sharply curtail-
contest into the House of Representatives. However, ing the flow of money and credit to the United States.
the Whig tally — 73 electoral votes collected by William Since 1822, British manufacturers had extended credit
Henry Harrison of Ohio, 26 by Hugh L. White of to southern planters to expand cotton production, and
Tennessee, 14 by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and British investors had purchased millions of dollars of
11 by W. P. Mangum of Georgia — fell far short of Van the canal bonds from the northern states. Suddenly
Buren’s 170 votes. Still, the four Whigs won 49 percent deprived of British funds, American planters, mer-
of the popular vote, showing that the party’s message of chants, and canal corporations had to withdraw gold
economic and moral improvement had broad appeal. from domestic banks to pay their foreign debts.
Moreover, British textile mills drastically reduced their
purchases of raw cotton, causing its price to plummet
Labor Politics and the Depression
from 20 cents a pound to 10 cents or less.
of 1837–1843 Falling cotton prices and the drain of specie to
As the Democrats battled Whigs on the national level, Britain set off a financial panic. On May 8, the Dry
they faced challenges from urban artisans and workers. Dock Bank of New York City ran out of specie, prompt-
Between 1828 and 1833, artisans and laborers in fifteen ing worried depositors to withdraw gold and silver
CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 335
coins from other banks. Within two weeks, every pushing hundreds of planters
IDENTIFY CAUSES
American bank had stopped trading specie and called and merchants into bankruptcy. What factors led to the
in its loans, turning a financial panic into an economic Minister Henry Ward Beecher demise of the Anti-
crisis. “This sudden overthrow of the commercial described a land “filled with lam- Masonic and Working
credit” had a “stunning effect,” observed Henry Fox, entation . . . its inhabitants wan- Men’s political parties?
the British minister in Washington. “The conquest of dering like bereaved citizens
the land by a foreign power could hardly have pro- among the ruins of an earthquake, mourning for chil-
duced a more general sense of humiliation and grief.” dren, for houses crushed, and property buried forever.”
To stimulate the economy, state governments By creating a surplus of unemployed workers,
increased their investments in canals and railroads. the depression completed the decline of the union
However, as governments issued (or guaranteed) more movement and the Working Men’s Parties. In 1837, six
and more bonds to finance these ventures, they were thousand masons, carpenters, and other building-
unable to pay the interest charges, sparking a severe trades workers lost their jobs in New York City, destroy-
financial crisis on both sides of the Atlantic in 1839. ing their unions’ bargaining power. By 1843, most local
Nine state governments defaulted on their debts, and unions, all the national labor organizations, and all the
hard-pressed European lenders cut the flow of new workers’ parties had disappeared.
capital to the United States.
The American economy fell into a deep depression.
By 1843, canal construction had dropped by 90 percent, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!”
prices and wages had fallen by 50 percent, and unem- Many Americans blamed the Democrats for the
ployment in seaports and industrial centers had reached depression of 1837–1843. They criticized Jackson for
20 percent. Bumper crops drove down cotton prices, destroying the Second Bank and directing the Treasury
Hard Times
The Panic of 1837 struck hard at Americans of all social ranks. This anti-Democratic cartoon shows
unemployed workers turning to drink; women and children begging in the streets; and fearful deposi-
tors withdrawing funds as their banks collapse. As the plummeting hot-air balloon in the background
symbolizes, the rising “Glory” of an independent America was crashing to earth. © Museum of the City
of New York, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library.
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
1. Editorial from the Philadelphia National Gazette, then, the permanency of our government depends upon
1830. Pennsylvania was one of the first states to such knowledge, it is the duty of government to see that
debate legislation regarding universal free public the means of information be diffused to every citizen.
education. This is a sufficient answer to those who deem education
The scheme of Universal Equal Education . . . is virtually a private and not a public duty — who argue that they are
“Agrarianism” [redistribution of land from rich to poor]. willing to educate their own children, but not their neigh-
It would be a compulsory application of the means of the bor’s children.
richer, for the direct use of the poorer classes. . . . One of
3. “Letter from a Teacher” in Catharine E. Beecher,
the chief excitements to industry . . . is the hope of earn-
The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women, 1851.
ing the means of educating their children respectably . . .
The public school movement created new oppor-
that incentive would be removed, and the scheme of state
tunities not just for children of middle and lower
and equal education be a premium for comparative idle-
classes but also for the young Protestant women
ness, to be taken out of the pockets of the laborious and
who contributed to the “Benevolent Empire” as
conscientious.
professional educators. Beecher’s academy (see
2. Thaddeus Stevens, speech before the Pennsylvania p. 369) in Hartford, Connecticut, sent out dozens
General Assembly, February 1835. Pennsylvania’s of young women to establish schools.
Free Public School Act of 1834 was the handiwork I am now located in this place, which is the county-town
of the Working Men’s Party of Philadelphia (see of a newly organized county [in a midwestern state]. . . .
p. 334). When over half of Pennsylvania’s school The Sabbath is little regarded, and is more a day for diver-
districts refused to implement the law, the legisla- sion than devotion. . . . My school embraces both sexes
ture threatened to repeal it. Thaddeus Stevens, and all ages from five to seventeen, and not one can read
later a leading antislavery advocate, turned back intelligibly.
that threat through this speech to the Pennsylva-
nia General Assembly. 4. “Popular Education,” 1833. This piece appeared in
the North American Review, the nation’s first liter-
It would seem to be humiliating to be under the necessity,
ary and cultural journal and the mouthpiece of
in the nineteenth century, of entering into a formal argu-
New England’s intellectual elite.
ment to prove the utility, and to free governments, the
absolute necessity of education. . . . Such necessity would [T]he mind of a people, in proportion as it is educated,
be degrading to a Christian age and a free republic. If an will not only feel its own value, but will also perceive its
elective republic is to endure for any great length of time, rights. We speak now of those palpable rights which are
every elector must have sufficient information, not only recognised by all free states. . . . [T]he palpable rights of
to accumulate wealth and take care of his pecuniary men, those of personal security, of property and of the
concerns, but to direct wisely the Legislatures, the free and unembarrassed pursuit of individual welfare,
Ambassadors, and the Executive of the nation; for it is obviously impossible to conceal from an educated
some part of all these things, some agency in approv- and reading people. Such a people rises at once above the
ing or disapproving of them, falls to every freeman. If, condition of feudal tenants. . . . It directs its attention to
336
the laws and institutions that govern it. It compels public 6. Working Men’s Party poster for immigrant voters,
office to give an account of itself. It strips off the veil of New York, 1830.
secrecy from the machinery of power. . . . And when all
this is spread abroad in newspaper details . . . of a people
that can read; when the estimate is freely made, of what
the government tax levies upon the daily hoard, and upon
apparel, and upon every comfort of life, can it be doubted
that such a people will demand and obtain an influence in
affairs that so vitally concern it? This would be freedom.
337
338 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Department in 1836 to issue the Specie Circular, an first national convention and nominated William
executive order that required the Treasury Department Henry Harrison of Ohio for president and John Tyler
to accept only gold and silver in payment for lands in of Virginia for vice president. A military hero of the
the national domain. Critics charged — mistakenly — Battle of Tippecanoe and the War of 1812, Harrison
that the Circular drained so much specie from the was well advanced in age (sixty-eight) and had little
economy that it sparked the Panic of 1837. In fact (as political experience. However, the Whig leaders in
noted above), the curtailing of credit by the Bank of Congress, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, wanted a
England was the main cause of the panic. president who would rubber-stamp their program for
Nonetheless, the public turned its anger on Van protective tariffs and a national bank. An unpreten-
Buren, who took office just before the panic struck. tious, amiable man, Harrison told voters that Whig
Ignoring the pleas of influential bankers, the new policies were “the only means, under Heaven, by which
president refused to revoke the Specie Circular or a poor industrious man may become a rich man with-
take actions to stimulate the economy. Holding to his out bowing to colossal wealth.”
philosophy of limited government, Van Buren advised The depression stacked the political cards against
Congress that “the less government interferes with Van Buren, but the election turned as much on style as
private pursuits the better for the general prosper- on substance. It became the great “log cabin cam-
ity.” As the depression deepened in 1839, this laissez- paign” — the first time two well-organized parties com-
faire outlook commanded less and less political peted for votes through a new style of campaigning.
support. Worse, Van Buren’s major piece of fiscal Whig songfests, parades, and well-orchestrated mass
legislation, the Independent Treasury Act of 1840, meetings drew new voters into politics. Whig speakers
delayed recovery by pulling federal specie out of assailed “Martin Van Ruin” as a manipulative politician
Jackson’s pet banks (where it had backed loans) and with aristocratic tastes — a devotee of fancy wines, ele-
placing it in government vaults, where it had little eco- gant clothes, and polite refinement, as indeed he was.
nomic impact. Less truthfully, they portrayed Harrison as a self-made
man who lived contentedly in a log cabin and quaffed
The Log Cabin Campaign The Whigs exploited hard cider, a drink of the common people. In fact,
Van Buren’s weakness. In 1840, they organized their Harrison’s father was a wealthy Virginia planter who
had signed the Declaration of Independence, and Tyler Subverts the Whig Agenda Led by Clay and
Harrison himself lived in a series of elegant mansions. Webster, the Whigs in Congress prepared to reverse
The Whigs boosted their electoral hopes by wel- the Jacksonian revolution. Their hopes were short-
coming women to campaign festivities — a “first” for lived; barely a month after his inauguration in 1841,
American politics. Many Jacksonian Democrats had Harrison died of pneumonia, and the nation got “Tyler
long embraced an ideology of aggressive manhood, lik- Too.” But in what capacity: as acting president or as
ening politically minded females to “public” women, president? The Constitution was vague on the issue.
prostitutes who plied their trade in theaters and other Ignoring his Whig associates in Congress, who wanted
public places. Whigs took a more restrained view of a weak chief executive, Tyler took
masculinity and recognized that Christian women had the presidential oath of office and UNDERSTAND
already entered American public life through the tem- declared his intention to govern POINTS OF VIEW
perance movement and other benevolent activities. In as he pleased. As it turned out, How did Whigs and
October 1840, Daniel Webster celebrated moral reform that would not be like a Whig. Democrats view women
to an audience of twelve hundred women and urged Tyler had served in the House in politics, and why did
them to back Whig candidates. “This way of making and the Senate as a Jeffersonian they hold those views?
politicians of their women is something new under the Democrat, firmly committed to
sun,” exclaimed one Democrat, worried that it would slavery and states’ rights. He had joined the Whigs only
bring more Whig men to the polls. And it did: more to protest Jackson’s stance against nullification. On eco-
than 80 percent of the eligible male voters cast ballots nomic issues, Tyler shared Jackson’s hostility to the
in 1840, up from fewer than 60 percent in 1832 and Second Bank and the American System. He therefore
1836 (see Figure 10.1). Heeding the Whigs’ campaign vetoed Whig bills that would have raised tariffs and
slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” they voted created a new national bank. Outraged by this betrayal,
Harrison into the White House with 53 percent of the most of Tyler’s cabinet resigned in 1842, and the Whigs
popular vote and gave the party a majority in Congress. expelled Tyler from their party. “His Accidency,” as he
340 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
was called by his critics, was now a president without a encouraged the transfer of power to professional
party. politicians — men like Martin Van Buren, who were
The split between Tyler and the Whigs allowed the mostly of middle-class origin.
Democrats to regroup. The party vigorously recruited We also witnessed a revolution in government
subsistence farmers in the North, smallholding plant- policy, as Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party
ers in the South, and former members of the Working dismantled the mercantilist economic system of
Men’s Parties in the cities. It also won support among government-supported economic development. On
Irish and German Catholic immigrants — whose num- the national level, Jackson destroyed Henry Clay’s
bers had increased during the 1830s — by backing their American System; on the state level, Democrats wrote
demands for religious and cultural liberty, such as the new constitutions that ended the Commonwealth
freedom to drink beer and whiskey. A pattern of eth- System of government charters and subsidies to private
nocultural politics, as historians refer to the practice of businesses. Jackson’s treatment of Native Americans
voting along ethnic and religious lines, now became a was equally revolutionary; the Removal Act of 1830
prominent feature of American life. Thanks to these forcefully resettled eastern Indian peoples west of the
urban and rural recruits, the Democrats remained the Mississippi River, opening their ancestral lands to
majority party in most parts of the nation. Their pro- white settlement.
gram of equal rights, states’ rights, and cultural liberty Finally, we watched the emergence of the Second
was attractive to more white Americans than the Whig Party System. Following the split in the Republican
platform of economic nationalism, moral reform, tem- Party during the election of 1824, two new parties — the
perance laws, and individual mobility. Democrats and the Whigs — developed on the national
level and eventually absorbed the members of the Anti-
Masonic and Working Men’s parties. The new party
SUMMARY system established universal suffrage for white men
and a mode of representative government that was
In this chapter, we examined the causes and the conse- responsive to ordinary citizens. In their scope and sig-
quences of the democratic political revolution. We nificance, these political innovations matched the eco-
saw that the expansion of the franchise weakened the nomic advances of both the Industrial Revolution and
political system run by notables of high status and the Market Revolution.
CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER REVIEW 341
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. How did Andrew Jackson and the Democratic 1850s, and what were the reactions of Indian
Party fundamentally change public policy? Illus- peoples to those policies?
trate your argument with specific examples.
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
2. What were the various constitutional arguments events listed under “Politics and Power” on the the-
underlying the debates over internal improve- matic timeline on page 283. As the timeline indi-
ments, the tariff, and nullification? cates, the Working Men’s and Anti-Masonic parties
rose and declined between 1827 and 1834, and then
3. How and why did the policies of the federal and
the Whig Party emerged. How do you explain the
state governments toward Native Americans
timing of these events?
change between the 1790s (Chapter 7) and the
342 PART 4 CHAPTER REVIEW
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE The chapter 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Look again at the political
argues that a democratic revolution swept America cartoons on the tariff (p. 320) and the vice-
in the decades after 1820 and uprooted the old sys- presidency (p. 324). What point of view does the
tem of politics. After reviewing the discussions of cartoonist support, and how effective are the car-
politics in Chapters 6 and 7, explain how party sys- toons in championing that view? How are today’s
tems and political alignments changed over time negative political advertisements on television sim-
and then assess the strength of this argument. ilar or different?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Robert J. Conley, Mountain Windsongs: A Novel of the Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson (1988).
Trail of Tears (1992). Captures the human impact of Highlights Jackson’s triumphs and shortcomings.
Jackson’s removal policy.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835).
Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System (1969). A classic that is still worth dipping into; also available
Lucidly explains the triumph of party politics. at xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/home.html.
Thomas N. Ingersoll, To Intermix with Our White Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic (1986). Covers the
Brothers (2005). Argues that fear of racial intermixture ideology of working men.
shaped popular thought and government policy
toward Indians.
CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER REVIEW 343
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1831 t Cherokee Nation v. Georgia denies Indians’ independence, but Worcester v. Georgia (1832)
upholds their political autonomy
1839–1843 t Defaults on bonds by state governments spark international financial crisis and depression
KEY TURNING POINTS: Based on the events in the timeline (and your reading in Chapter 10),
which five-year period brought more significant changes to American political and economic
life: 1829–1833, Andrew Jackson’s first term as president, or 1837–1842, the years of panic and
depression? Explain and defend your choice.
Religion and Reform
11
C H A P T E R
1800–1860
T
INDIVIDUALISM: he spirit of reform is in every place,” IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
THE ETHIC OF THE declared the children of legal re- To what extent did individualism,
MIDDLE CLASS former David Dudley Field in their new religious sects, abolitionism,
Ralph Waldo Emerson and handwritten monthly Gazette in 1842: and women’s rights (as the move-
Transcendentalism
ment was called in the nineteenth
Emerson’s Literary Influence The labourer with a family says “reform century) change American culture
RURAL COMMUNALISM the common schools,” the merchant between 1820 and 1860?
AND URBAN POPULAR and the planter say, “reform the tar-
CULTURE iff,” the lawyer “reform the laws,” the politician “reform the government,” the
The Utopian Impulse abolitionist “reform the slave laws,” the moralist “reform intemperance,” . . . the
Joseph Smith and the Mormon ladies wish their legal privileges extended, and in short, the whole country is
Experience wanting reform.
Urban Popular Culture
Like many Americans, the Field children sensed that the political whirlwind of the
ABOLITIONISM
1830s had transformed the way people thought about themselves and about society.
Black Social Thought: Uplift,
Suddenly, thousands of men and women took inspiration from the economic progress
Race Equality, and Rebellion
and democratic spirit of the age. Drawing on the religious optimism of the Second
Evangelical Abolitionism
Great Awakening, they felt that they could improve their personal lives and society as
Opposition and Internal Conflict
a whole. Some activists dedicated themselves to the cause of reform. William Lloyd
THE WOMEN’S RIGHTS Garrison began as an antislavery advocate and foe of Indian removal and then went on
MOVEMENT to campaign for women’s rights, pacifism, and the abolition of prisons. Susan B. Anthony
Origins of the Women’s embraced antislavery, temperance, and female suffrage. Such obsessively reform-
Movement minded individuals, warned Unitarian minister Henry W. Bellows, were pursuing “an
From Black Rights to Women’s object, which in its very nature is unattainable — the perpetual improvement of [people’s]
Rights outward condition.” In Bellows’s view, human progress depended on inner character,
the “regeneration of man” through Christian precepts.
Such debates reveal the multifaceted character of the reform impulse. Like Bellows,
the first wave of American reformers, the benevolent religious improvers of the 1820s,
hoped to promote morality and enforce social discipline. They championed regular
church attendance, temperance, and a strict moral code. Their zeal offended many
upright citizens: “A peaceable man can hardly venture to eat or drink, . . . to correct his
child or kiss his wife, without obtaining the permission . . . of some moral or other
reform society,” said one.
A second wave of reformers — Garrison, Anthony, and other activists of the 1830s
and 1840s — undertook to liberate people from archaic customs and traditional life-
styles. Mostly middle-class northerners and midwesterners, these activists promoted a
bewildering assortment of radical ideals: extreme individualism, common ownership of
property, the immediate emancipation of slaves, and sexual equality. Although their
numbers were small, second-wave reformers challenged deeply rooted cultural prac-
tices and elicited horrified opposition among the majority of Americans. As one fearful
southerner saw it, radical reformers favored a chaotic world with “No-Marriage, No-
Religion, No-Private Property, No-Law and No-Government.”
344
A Middle-Class Marriage During the 1830s, Joseph H. Davis used bright watercolors to paint scores
of family portraits — 150 still survive — that capture the comfortable lives of New England’s middle classes.
This double portrait commemorates the marriage of Hannah Roberts and Lewis Tebbets of Berwick,
Maine. To emphasize their romantic love, Davis shows them gazing into each other’s eyes, their hands
linked by a prayer book, a symbol of their education and piety. Such respectable couples — Lewis Tebbets
became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church — flocked to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson and other
lecturers on the lyceum circuit. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago/Art Resource, NY. 345
346 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
spreading information and fostering discussion among accepted the brute reality of the
UNDERSTAND
the middle classes. Beginning in 1826, the lyceum emergent commercial and indus-
POINTS OF VIEW
movement — modeled on the public forum of the trial order and tried to reform it, What were the main
ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle — arranged lec- especially through the education principles of transcenden-
ture tours by hundreds of poets, preachers, scientists, of workers and the movement to talism, and how did they
and reformers. The lyceum became an important cul- abolish slavery. differ from the beliefs of
tural institution in the North and Midwest, but not in most Protestant Christians?
the South, where the middle class was smaller and pop-
ular education had a lower priority. In 1839, nearly 150 Emerson’s Literary
lyceums in Massachusetts invited lecturers to address Influence
more than 33,000 subscribers. Emerson was the most Even as Emerson urged his fellow citizens to break free
popular speaker, eventually delivering fifteen hundred from tradition and expand their spiritual awareness, he
lectures in more than three hundred towns in twenty issued a declaration of literary independence. In “The
states. American Scholar” (1837), Emerson urged American
Emerson celebrated those who rejected tradition authors to free themselves from the “courtly muse” of
and practiced self-discipline and civic responsibility. Old Europe and find inspiration in the experiences of
His individualistic ethos spoke directly to the experi- ordinary Americans: “the ballad in the street; the news
ences of many middle-class Americans, who had left of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and gait of
family farms to make their way in the urban world. the body.”
His pantheistic view of nature — that it was saturated
with the presence of God — encouraged Unitarians in Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman One young New
Boston to create the Mount Auburn Cemetery, a beau- England intellectual, Henry David Thoreau (1817–
tiful planned landscape of trees and bushes and burial 1862), heeded Emerson’s call and sought inspiration
markers for the dead of all faiths; soon there were from the natural world. In 1845, depressed by his
similar rural cemeteries in many American cities. beloved brother’s death, Thoreau built a cabin near
Emerson’s optimism also inspired many religious Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, and lived
preachers of the Second Great Awakening, such as alone there for two years. In 1854, he published Walden,
Finney, who told believers to transcend old doctrines or Life in the Woods, an account of his search for mean-
and constraints. “God has made man a moral free ing beyond the artificiality of civilized society:
agent,” Finney declared.
Emerson worried that the new market society — the I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
focus on work, profits, and consumption — was debas-
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and
ing Americans’ spiritual lives. “Things are in the
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
saddle,” he wrote, “and ride mankind.” Seeking to
revive intellectual life, transcendentalists created com- Walden’s most famous metaphor provides an
munal experiments. The most important was Brook enduring justification for independent thinking: “If a
Farm, just outside Boston, where Emerson, Henry man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps
David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller were residents or it is because he hears a different drummer.” Beginning
frequent visitors. Members recalled that they “inspired from this premise, Thoreau advocated a thorough-
the young with a passion for study, and the middle- going individuality, urging readers to avoid unthink-
aged with deference and admiration.” Whatever its ing conformity to social norms and peacefully to resist
intellectual excitement and spiritual rewards, Brook unjust laws.
Farm was an economic failure. The residents planned As Thoreau was seeking self-realization for men,
to produce their own food and exchange their surplus Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) was exploring the possi-
milk, vegetables, and hay for manufactures. However, bilities of freedom for women. Born into a wealthy
most members were ministers, teachers, writers, and Boston family, Fuller mastered six languages and read
students who had few farming skills; only the cash of broadly in classic literature. Embracing Emerson’s
affluent residents kept the enterprise afloat for five ideas, she started a transcendental “conversation,” or
years. After a devastating fire in 1846, the organizers discussion group, for educated Boston women in 1839.
disbanded the community and sold the farm. While editing The Dial, the leading transcendentalist
With the failure of Brook Farm, the Emersonians journal, Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth
abandoned their quest for new social institutions. They Century (1844).
348 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Fuller embraced the transcendental principle that Darker Visions Emerson’s writings also influenced
all people could develop a life-affirming mystical rela- two great novelists, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman
tionship with God. Every woman therefore deserved Melville, who had more pessimistic worldviews. Both
psychological and social independence: the ability “to sounded powerful warnings that unfettered egoism
grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely could destroy individuals and those around them.
and unimpeded.” She wrote: “We would have every Hawthorne brilliantly explored the theme of excessive
arbitrary barrier thrown down [and] every path laid individualism in his novel The Scarlet Letter (1850).
open to Woman as freely as to Man.” Fuller became the The two main characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur
literary critic of the New York Dimmesdale, blatantly challenge their seventeenth-
EXPLAIN Tribune and traveled to Italy to century New England community by committing adul-
CONSEQUENCES report on the Revolution of 1848, tery and producing a child. Their decision to ignore
How did authors of the only to drown in a shipwreck en social restraints results not in liberation but in degra-
American Renaissance route home to the United States. dation: a profound sense of guilt and condemnation by
incorporate transcen- the community.
Fuller’s life and writings inspired a
dentalist ideas into their
rising generation of women writ- Herman Melville explored the limits of individual-
work?
ers and reformers. ism in even more extreme and tragic terms and emerged
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 349
as a scathing critic of transcendentalism. His most cities of the United States. There, they created a popu-
powerful statement was Moby Dick (1851), the story of lar culture that challenged some sexual norms, rein-
Captain Ahab’s obsessive hunt for a mysterious white forced traditional racist feelings, and encouraged new
whale that ends in death for Ahab and all but one mem- styles of dress and behavior.
ber of his crew. Here, the quest for spiritual meaning in
nature brings death, not transcendence, because Ahab,
The Utopian Impulse
the liberated individual, lacks inner discipline and
self-restraint. Many rural communalists were farmers and artisans
Moby Dick was a commercial failure. The middle- seeking refuge from the economic depression of 1837–
class audience that devoured sentimental American 1843. Others were religious idealists. Whatever their
fiction refused to follow Melville into the dark, danger- origins, these rural utopias were symbols of social pro-
ous realm of individualism gone mad. What middle- test and experimentation. By advocating the common
class readers emphatically preferred were the more ownership of property (socialism) and unconventional
modest examples of individualism offered by Emerson forms of marriage and family life, the communalists
and Finney: personal improvement and religious piety challenged traditional property rights and gender
through spiritual awareness and self-discipline. roles.
Shakers at Prayer
Most Americans viewed the Shakers with a mixture of fascination and suspicion. They feared the sect’s
radical aspects, such as a commitment to celibacy and communal property, and considered the Shakers’
dancing more an invitation to debauchery than a form of prayer. Those apprehensions surfaced in this
engraving, The Shakers of New Lebanon (New York), which expresses both the powerful intensity and
the menacing character of this Shaker spiritual ritual. The work of the journalist-engraver Joseph Becker,
the picture appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1873. © Bettmann.
religious communities. Members embraced the com- Shakers founded twenty communities, mostly in
mon ownership of property; accepted strict oversight New England, New York, and Ohio. Their agriculture
by church leaders; and pledged to abstain from alcohol, and crafts, especially furniture making, acquired a rep-
tobacco, politics, and war. Shakers also repudiated sex- utation for quality that made most Shaker communi-
ual pleasure and marriage. Their commitment to celi- ties self-sustaining and even comfortable. Because the
bacy followed Mother Ann’s testimony against “the Shakers disdained sexual intercourse, they relied on
lustful gratifications of the flesh as the source and foun- conversions and the adoption of thousands of young
dation of human corruption.” The Shakers’ theology orphans to increase their numbers. During the 1830s,
was as radical as their social thought. They held that three thousand adults, mostly women, joined the
God was “a dual person, male and Shakers, attracted by their communal intimacy and
IDENTIFY CAUSES female.” This doctrine prompted sexual equality. To Rebecca Cox Jackson, an African
What factors led to the Shakers to repudiate male leader- American seamstress from Philadelphia, the Shakers
proliferation of rural ship and to place community gov- seemed to be “loving to live forever.” However, with the
utopian communities
ernance in the hands of both proliferation of public and private orphanages during
in nineteenth-century
women and men — the Eldresses the 1840s and 1850s, Shaker communities began to
America?
and the Elders. decline and, by 1900, had virtually disappeared. They
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 351
left as a material legacy a plain but elegant style of wood Associated households,” men would share women’s
furniture. domestic labor and thereby increase sexual equality.
Brisbane skillfully promoted Fourier’s ideas in his
Albert Brisbane and Fourierism As the Shakers’ influential book The Social Destiny of Man (1840), a
growth slowed during the 1840s, the American regular column in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune,
Fourierist movement mushroomed. Charles Fourier and hundreds of lectures. Fourierist ideas found a
(1777–1837) was a French reformer who devised an receptive audience among educated farmers and crafts-
eight-stage theory of social evolution that predicted the men, who yearned for economic stability and commu-
imminent decline of individual property rights and nal solidarity following the Panic of 1837. During the
capitalist values. Fourier’s leading disciple in America 1840s, Fourierists started nearly one hundred coopera-
was Albert Brisbane. Just as republicanism had freed tive communities, mostly in western New York and the
Americans from slavish monarchical government, Midwest. Most communities quickly collapsed as mem-
Brisbane argued, so Fourierist socialism would liberate bers fought over work responsibilities and social poli-
workers from capitalist employers and the “menial and cies. Fourierism’s rapid decline revealed the difficulty
slavish system of Hired Labor or Labor for Wages.” of maintaining a utopian community in the absence of
Members would work for the community, in coopera- a charismatic leader or a compelling religious vision.
tive groups called phalanxes; they would own its prop-
erty in common, including stores and a bank, a school, John Humphrey Noyes and Oneida John Humphrey
and a library. Noyes (1811–1886) was both charismatic and reli-
Fourier and Brisbane saw the phalanx as a humane gious. He ascribed the Fourierists’ failure to their secu-
system that would liberate women as well as men. “In lar outlook and embraced the pious Shakers as the
society as it is now constituted,” Brisbane wrote, indi- true “pioneers of modern Socialism.” The Shakers’
vidual freedom was possible only for men, while marriageless society also inspired Noyes to create a
“woman is subjected to unremitting and slavish domes- community that defined sexuality and gender roles in
tic duties.” In the “new Social Order . . . based upon radically new ways.
Noyes was a well-to-do graduate of Dartmouth By the mid-1850s, the Oneida settlement had two
College who joined the ministry after hearing a ser- hundred residents and became self-sustaining when
mon by Charles Grandison Finney. Dismissed as the the inventor of a highly successful steel animal trap
pastor of a Congregational church for holding unor- joined the community. With the profits from trap mak-
thodox beliefs, Noyes turned to perfectionism, an ing, the Oneidians diversified into the production of
evangelical Protestant movement of the 1830s that silverware. When Noyes fled to Canada in 1879 to
attracted thousands of New Englanders who had avoid prosecution for adultery, the community aban-
migrated to New York and Ohio. Perfectionists believed doned complex marriage but retained its cooperative
that Christ had already returned to earth (the Second spirit. The Oneida Community, Ltd., a jointly owned
Coming) and therefore people could aspire to sinless silverware-manufacturing company, remained a suc-
perfection in their earthly lives. Unlike most perfec- cessful communal venture until the middle of the
tionists, who lived conventional personal lives, Noyes twentieth century.
rejected marriage, calling it a major barrier to perfec- The historical significance of the Oneidians, Shak-
tion. “Exclusiveness, jealousy, quarreling have no place ers, and Fourierists does not lie in their numbers,
at the marriage supper of the Lamb,” Noyes wrote. which were small, or in their fine crafts. Rather, it stems
Instead of the Shakers’ celibacy, Noyes embraced “com- from their radical questioning of traditional sexual
plex marriage,” in which all members of the commu- norms and of the capitalist values and class divisions of
nity were married to one another. He rejected monog- the emerging market society. Their utopian communi-
amy partly to free women from their status as the ties stood as countercultural blueprints of a more egal-
property of their husbands, as they were by custom and itarian social and economic order.
by common law. Symbolizing the quest for equality,
Noyes’s women followers cut their hair short and wore
Joseph Smith and the
pantaloons under calf-length skirts.
In 1839, Noyes set up a perfectionist community Mormon Experience
near his hometown of Putney, Vermont. However, The Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ
local outrage over the practice of complex marriage of Latter-day Saints, were religious utopians with a
forced Noyes to relocate the community in 1848 to an conservative social agenda: to perpetuate close-knit
isolated area near Oneida, New York, where the mem- communities and patriarchal power. Because of their
bers could follow his precepts. To give women the time cohesiveness, authoritarian leadership, and size, the
and energy to participate fully in community affairs, Mormons provoked more animosity than the radical
Noyes urged them to avoid multiple pregnancies. He utopians did.
asked men to help by avoiding orgasm during inter-
course. Less positively, he encouraged sexual relations Joseph Smith Like many social movements of the
at a very early age and used his position of power to era, Mormonism emerged from religious ferment
manipulate the sexual lives of his followers. among families of Puritan descent who lived along the
Erie Canal and who were heirs to a religious tradition one point, he identified Jackson
COMPARE AND
that believed in a world of wonders, supernatural pow- County in Missouri as the site
CONTRAST
ers, and visions of the divine. of the sacred “City of Zion,” and In what ways were
The founder of the Latter-day Church, Joseph his followers began to settle there. Mormons similar to,
Smith Jr. (1805–1844), was born in Vermont to a poor Agitation led by Protestant minis- and different from, other
farming and shop-keeping family that migrated to ters quickly forced them out: communal movements of
Palmyra in central New York. In 1820, Smith began to “Mormons were the common the era?
have religious experiences similar to those described in enemies of mankind and ought to
conversion narratives: “[A] pillar of light above the be destroyed,” said one cleric. Smith and his growing
brightness of the sun at noonday came down from congregation eventually settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, a
above and rested upon me and I was filled with the town they founded on the Mississippi River (Map 11.2).
spirit of God.” Smith came to believe that God had By the early 1840s, Nauvoo had 30,000 residents. The
singled him out to receive a special revelation of divine Mormons’ rigid discipline and secret rituals — along
truth. In 1830, he published The Book of Mormon, with their prosperity, hostility toward other sects, and
which he claimed to have translated from ancient bloc voting in Illinois elections — fueled resentment
hieroglyphics on gold plates shown to him by an angel among their neighbors. That resentment increased
named Moroni. The Book of Mormon told the story of when Smith refused to accept Illinois laws of which he
an ancient Jewish civilization from the Middle East disapproved, asked Congress to make Nauvoo a sepa-
that had migrated to the Western Hemisphere and of rate federal territory, and declared himself a candidate
the visit of Jesus Christ, soon after his Resurrection, to for president of the United States.
those descendants of Israel. Smith’s account explained Moreover, Smith claimed to have received a new
the presence of native peoples in the Americas and revelation justifying polygamy, the practice of a man
integrated them into the Judeo-Christian tradition. having multiple wives. When leading Mormon men
Smith proceeded to organize the Church of Jesus took several wives — “plural celestial marriage” — they
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Seeing himself as a prophet threw the Mormon community into turmoil and
in a sinful, excessively individualistic society, Smith enraged nearby Christians. In 1844, Illinois officials
revived traditional social doctrines, including patriar- arrested Smith and charged him with treason for alleg-
chal authority. Like many Protestant ministers, he edly conspiring to create a Mormon colony in Mexican
encouraged practices that led to individual success in territory. An anti-Mormon mob stormed the jail in
the age of capitalist markets and factories: frugality, hard Carthage, Illinois, where Smith and his brother were
work, and enterprise. Smith also stressed communal being held and murdered them.
discipline to safeguard the Mormon “New Jerusalem.”
His goal was a church-directed society that would restore Brigham Young and Utah Led by Brigham Young,
primitive Christianity and encourage moral perfection. Smith’s leading disciple and now the sect’s “prophet,
Constantly harassed by anti-Mormons, Smith seer and revelator,” about 6,500 Mormons fled the
struggled to find a secure home for his new religion. At United States. Beginning in 1846, they crossed the
MAP 11.2
C A N A D A
The Mormon Trek, 1830–1848
Because of their unorthodox religious views and
communal solidarity, Mormons faced hostility first Fayette
N
Winter 1830
in New York and then in Missouri and Illinois. After Quarters
(Omaha) E
founder Joseph Smith Jr. was murdered, Brigham Nauvoo Kirtland W
W A RA N G E
S
City
into lands claimed by Mexico and thinly populated ATLANTIC
H
Independence OCEAN
by Native Americans. From Omaha, the migrants 1831–1839
followed the path of the Oregon Trail to Fort Bridger
and then struck off to the southwest. They settled PACIFIC
OCEAN Mormon Trail
along the Wasatch Range in the basin of the Great
Salt Lake in present-day Utah. Proposed state of Deseret
Great Plains into Mexican territory and settled in the church that now claims a worldwide membership of
Great Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah. Using about 12 million people.
cooperative labor and an irrigation system based on
communal water rights, the Mormon pioneers quickly
spread agricultural communities along the base of the Urban Popular Culture
Wasatch Range. Many Mormons who rejected polyg- As utopians organized communities in the country-
amy remained in the United States. Led by Smith’s son, side, rural migrants and foreign immigrants created a
Joseph Smith III, they formed the Reorganized Church new urban culture. In 1800, American cities were over-
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and settled through- grown towns with rising death rates: New York had
out the Midwest. only 60,000 residents, Philadelphia had 41,000, and life
When the United States acquired Mexico’s north- expectancy at birth was a mere twenty-five years. Then
ern territories in 1848, the Salt Lake Mormons peti- urban growth accelerated as a huge in-migration out-
tioned Congress to create a vast new state, Deseret, weighed the high death rates. By 1840, New York’s
stretching from Utah to the Pacific coast. Instead, population had ballooned to 312,000; Philadelphia
Congress set up the much smaller Utah Territory in and its suburbs had 150,000 residents; and three other
1850 and named Brigham Young its governor. Young cities — New Orleans, Boston, and Baltimore — each
and his associates ruled in an authoritarian fashion, had about 100,000. By 1860, New York had become a
determined to ensure the ascendancy of the Mormon metropolis with more than 1 million residents: 813,000
Church and its practices. By 1856, Young and the Utah in Manhattan and another 266,000 in the adjacent
territorial legislature were openly vowing to resist fed- community of Brooklyn.
eral laws. Pressed by Protestant church leaders to end
polygamy and considering the Mormons’ threat of Sex in the City These newly populous cities, partic-
nullification “a declaration of war,” President James ularly New York, generated a new urban culture.
Buchanan dispatched a small army to Utah. As the Thousands of young men and women flocked to the
“Nauvoo Legion” resisted the army’s advance, aggres- city searching for adventure and fortune, but many
sive Mormon militia massacred a party of 120 found only a hard life. Young men labored for meager
California-bound emigrants and murdered suspicious wages building thousands of tenements, warehouses,
travelers and Mormons seeking to flee Young’s regime. and workshops. Others worked as low-paid clerks or
Despite this bloodshed, the “Mormon War” ended operatives in hundreds of mercantile and manufactur-
quietly in June 1858. President Buchanan, a longtime ing firms. The young women had an even harder time.
supporter of the white South, feared that the forced Thousands toiled as live-in domestic servants, ordered
abolition of polygamy would serve as a precedent for about by the mistress of the household and often sexu-
ending slavery and offered a pardon to Utah citizens ally exploited by the master. Thousands more scraped
who would acknowledge federal authority. (To enable out a bare living as needlewomen in New York City’s
Utah to win admission to the Union in 1896, its citi- booming ready-made clothes industry. Unwilling to
zens ratified a constitution that “forever” banned the endure domestic service or subsistence wages, many
practice of polygamy. However, the state government young girls turned to prostitution. Dr. William Sanger’s
has never strictly enforced that ban.) careful survey, commissioned in 1855 by worried city
The Salt Lake Mormons had succeeded even as officials, found six thousand women engaged in com-
other social experiments had failed. Reaffirming tradi- mercial sex. Three-fifths were native-born whites, and
tional values, their leaders resolutely used strict reli- the rest were foreign immigrants; most were between
gious controls to perpetuate patriarchy and communal fifteen and twenty years old. Half were or had been
discipline. However, by endorsing domestic servants, half had children, and half were
COMPARE AND private property and individual infected with syphilis.
CONTRAST enterprise, Mormons became Commercialized sex — and sex in general — formed
How were the cultures prosperous contributors to the one facet of the new urban culture. “Sporting men”
of utopian communalists new market society. This blend of engaged freely in sexual conquests; otherwise respect-
and urban residents simi- economic innovation, social con- able married men kept mistresses in handy apartments;
lar to and different from servatism, and hierarchical lead- and working men frequented bawdy houses. New York
the mainstream culture ership, in combination with a City had two hundred brothels in the 1820s and five
described in Chapters 8
strong missionary impulse, cre- hundred by the 1850s. Prostitutes — so-called “public”
and 9?
ated a wealthy and expansive women — openly advertised their wares on Broadway,
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 355
the city’s most fashionable thoroughfare, and wel- silver-plated walking sticks for young men. Rivaling
comed clients on the infamous “Third Tier” of the the elegance on Broadway was the colorful dress on the
theaters. Many men considered illicit sex as a right. Bowery, the broad avenue that ran along the east side
“Man is endowed by nature with passions that must be of lower Manhattan. By day, the “Bowery Boy” worked
gratified,” declared the Sporting Whip, a working-class as an apprentice or journeyman. By night, he prowled
magazine. Even the Reverend William Berrian, pastor the streets as a “consummate dandy,” his hair cropped
of the ultra-respectable Trinity Episcopal Church, at the back of his head “as close as scissors could cut,”
remarked from the pulpit that he had resorted ten with long front locks “matted by a lavish application of
times to “a house of ill-fame.” bear’s grease, the ends tucked under so as to form a roll
Prostitution formed only the tip of the urban sexual and brushed until they shone like glass bottles.” The
volcano. Freed from family oversight, men formed “B’hoy,” as he was called, cut a dashing figure as he
homoerotic friendships and relationships; as early walked along with a “Bowery Gal” in a striking dress
as 1800, the homosexual “Fop” was an acknowledged and shawl: “a light pink contrasting with a deep blue”
character in Philadelphia. Young people moved from or “a bright yellow with a brighter red.”
partner to partner until they chanced on an ideal mate.
Middle-class youth strolled along Broadway in the Minstrelsy Popular entertainment was a central
latest fashions: elaborate bonnets and silk dresses facet of the new urban culture. In New York, working-
for young women; flowing capes, leather boots, and men could partake of traditional rural blood
356 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
sports — rat and terrier fights as well as boxing drunkenness of Irish immigrants, parodied the halting
matches — at Sportsmen Hall, or they could seek drink English of German immigrants, denounced women’s
and fun in billiard and bowling saloons. Other workers demands for political rights, and mocked the arro-
crowded into the pit of the Bowery Theatre to see gance of upper-class men. Still, by caricaturing blacks,
the “Mad Tragedian,” Junius Brutus Booth, deliver the minstrels declared the importance of being white
a stirring (abridged) performance of Shakespeare’s and spread racist sentiments among Irish and German
Richard III. Reform-minded couples enjoyed evenings immigrants.
at the huge Broadway Tabernacle, where they could
hear an abolitionist lecture, see the renowned Immigrant Masses and Nativist Reaction By 1850,
Hutchinson Family Singers lead a roof-raising rendi- immigrants were a major presence throughout the
tion of their antislavery anthem, “Get Off the Track,” Northeast. Irish men and women in New York City
and sentimentally lament the separation of a slave numbered 200,000, and Germans 110,000 (Figure 11.1).
couple in Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susanna,” a popular German-language shop signs filled entire neighbor-
song of the late 1840s. Families could visit the museum hoods, and German foods (sausages, hamburgers,
of oddities (and hoaxes) created by P. T. Barnum, the sauerkraut) and food customs (such as drinking beer
great cultural entrepreneur and founder of the Barnum in family biergärten) became part of the city’s culture.
& Bailey Circus. The mass of impoverished Irish migrants found allies
However, the most popular theatrical entertain- in the American Catholic Church, which soon became
ments were the minstrel shows, in which white actors an Irish-dominated institution, and the Democratic
in blackface presented comic routines that combined Party, which gave them a foothold in the political
racist caricature and social criticism. Minstrelsy began process.
around 1830, when a few actors put on blackface Native-born New Yorkers took alarm as hordes of
and performed song-and-dance routines (Thinking ethnically diverse migrants altered the city’s culture.
Like a Historian, p. 358). The most famous was John They organized a nativist movement — a final aspect of
Dartmouth Rice, whose “Jim Crow” blended a weird the new urban world. Beginning in the mid-1830s,
shuffle-dance-and-jump with unintelligible lyrics nativists called for a halt to immigration and mounted
delivered in “Negro dialect.” By the 1840s, there were a cultural and political assault on foreign-born resi-
hundreds of minstrel troupes, including a group of dents (Chapter 9). Gangs of B’hoys assaulted Irish
black entertainers, Gavitt’s Original Ethiopian Sere- youths in the streets, employers restricted Irish work-
naders. The actor-singers’ rambling lyrics poked racist ers to the most menial jobs, and temperance reformers
fun at African Americans, portraying them as lazy, denounced the German fondness for beer. In 1844,
sensual, and irresponsible while simultaneously using the American Republican Party, with the endorsement
them to criticize white society. Minstrels ridiculed the of the Whigs, swept the city elections by focusing on
FIGURE 11.1
Irish potato famine /
Immigrants
“the Great Hunger” U.S. Civil War
The Surge in Imigration, 1854–1855
(thousands) 1845–1852 1861–1865 In 1845, the failure of the potato crop in Ireland
450
prompted the wholesale migration to the United
400 States of peasants from the overcrowded farms of
its western counties. Population growth and limited
350 German revolutions economic prospects likewise spurred the migration
1848−1849 of tens of thousands of German peasants, while the
300
failure of the liberal republican political revolution
250 of 1848 prompted hundreds of prominent German
politicians and intellectuals to follow them. An
200 American economic recession cut the flow of immi-
grants, but the booming northern economy during
150
the Civil War again persuaded Europeans to set sail
100 U.S. for the United States.
economic
50 recession
1856−1857
0
1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 357
Rampant Racism
Minstrel shows and their music were just two facets
of the racist culture of mid-nineteenth-century
America. Exploiting the market for almanacs among
farmers and city-folk alike, the publishing firm of
Fisher and Brother produced the Black Joke Al-Ma-
Nig for 1852. Like other almanacs, it provided
astrological charts, weather predictions, and a
detailed calendar of events. To boost sales, the
almanac included “new an’ original nigga’ stories,
black jokes, puns, parodies” that would “magne-
tize bofe white an’ black.” Such racist caricatures
of black faces and language influenced white
views of African Americans well into the twentieth
century. Courtesy: The Library Company of Philadelphia.
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Dance and Social Styles of dance and attitudes toward them tell us a great deal about cultural
and social norms. When nineteenth-century Americans took to partying, their
Identity in Antebellum dances — regardless of the class or ethnic identity of the dancers — focused more
on individual couples and allowed more room for improvisation and intimacy
1. William Sidney Mount, Rustic Dance After a Sleigh was the most widely circulated American periodical
Ride, 1830. In the eighteenth century, wealthy, prior to the Civil War and an arbiter of good taste
fashionable Americans danced the French minuet, among the aspiring middle classes. Each issue con-
a ceremonious and graceful dance in which couples tained a sheet of music for the latest dance craze.
executed prescribed steps while barely touching. The Lady’s Book cautiously endorsed the waltz,
Ordinary white folks preferred the country dances a sensuous dance that required a close embrace,
brought by their ancestors from Europe, which but enthusiastically welcomed its cousin, the polka,
also involved intricate steps, line formations, and whose lively tempo and rapid spinning had a
limited physical contact. Mount (1807–1868) was wholesome and joyful quality. Introduced from
self-taught, lived in rural Long Island, and depicted Bohemia, the polka dominated the ballrooms of
scenes of everyday life. This painting, replete with America’s upper and middle classes in the 1840s
amorous pursuits, depicts a traditional contra and 1850s.
dance in which the lead couple advances a few
steps and then sashays to the back of the line,
as another couple takes its place.
358
4. Description of juba dancing from Charles Dickens, Minstrels toured the United States, Europe, and
American Notes for General Circulation, 1842. Australia between 1877 and 1882, thrilling audi-
In New York’s Five Points slum in 1842, Charles ences with the clog dances that had devolved out
Dickens described a challenge dance featuring of juba.
William Henry Lane, or Master Juba, a young
African American who created juba dancing,
a blend of Irish jig and African dance moves. Sources: (3) Luther S. Harris, Around Washington Square: An Illustrated History of
Greenwich Village (Baltimore, 2003), 41; (4) Charles Dickens, American Notes and
The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the Pictures from Italy (C. Scribner: New York, 1868), 107.
tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised
orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five
or six couples come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
young negro, who is the wit of the assembly, and the 1. What do sources 1 and 2 suggest about sexual manners
among rural folk and genteel urbanites?
greatest dancer known. . . . Instantly the fiddler grins,
2. What does the polka (sources 3 and 4) reveal about
and goes at it tooth and nail; there is new energy in the changing cultural practices among the social elite?
tambourine. . . . Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and 3. Compare the juba and minstrelsy dances described
cross-cut; snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in above (sources 4 and 5) with the polka and contra dance
his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spin- forms (sources 1 and 2). How were dance forms and
ning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the popular entertainment evolving? How did those changes
relate to broader social developments?
man’s fingers on the tambourine; dancing with two left
4. The waltz, polka, and juba dances were popular dur-
legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two ing the Second Great Awakening, when (and long
spring legs — all sorts of legs and no legs — . . . having afterward) preachers often complained that “dance is
danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, he fin- destructive to Christian life.” Why might ministers (and
priests) take such a view? Would any form of dance be
ishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling acceptable to them?
for something to drink.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
5. Poster advertising Barlow, Wilson, Primrose, and
Using the material on class, religion, and culture in Chap-
West’s “Mammoth Minstrels’ Colored Masquer- ters 9 and 11, the description of the Quarterons Ball in
ade.” Unlike slavery, minstrelsy survived the Civil Chapter 12 (p. 387), and the insights you have gathered
War and remained popular until the early twenti- by a careful inspection of these sources, write an essay
showing how dance and other entertainments reflect
eth century, when it evolved into vaudeville. or reveal differences among American social groups.
Barlow, Wilson, Primrose, and West’s Mammoth
359
360 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Black Social Thought: Uplift, David Walker’s Appeal Responding to the attacks,
David Walker published a stirring pamphlet, An
Race Equality, and Rebellion
Appeal . . . to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829),
Beginning in the 1790s, leading African Americans in protesting black “wretchedness in this Republican
the North advocated a strategy of social uplift, encour- Land of Liberty!!!!!” Walker was a free black from North
aging free blacks to “elevate” themselves through Carolina who had moved to Boston, where he sold
education, temperance, and hard work. By securing secondhand clothes and copies of Freedom’s Journal. A
“respectability,” they argued, blacks could become the self-educated author, Walker ridiculed the religious
social equals of whites. To promote that goal, black pretensions of slaveholders, justified slave rebellion, and
leaders — men such as James Forten, a Philadelphia in biblical language warned of a slave revolt if justice
sailmaker; Prince Hall, a Boston barber; and ministers were delayed. “We must and shall be free,” he told white
Hosea Easton and Richard Allen (Chapter 8) — founded Americans. “And woe, woe, will be it to you if we have
an array of churches, schools, and self-help associations. to obtain our freedom by fighting. . . . Your destruc-
Capping this effort, John Russwurm and Samuel D. tion is at hand, and will be speedily consummated
Cornish of New York published the first African unless you repent.” Walker’s pamphlet quickly went
American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in 1827. through three printings and, carried by black merchant
The black quest for respectability elicited a violent seamen, reached free African Americans in the South.
response in Boston, Pittsburgh, and other northern In 1830, Walker and other African American activ-
cities among whites who refused ists called a national convention in Philadelphia. The
CHANGE OVER TIME to accept African Americans as delegates refused to endorse either Walker’s radical call
How and why did Afri- their social equals. “I am Mr. for a slave revolt or the traditional program of uplift for
can American efforts to ______’s help,” a white maid free blacks. Instead, this new generation of activists
achieve social equality informed a British visitor. “I am demanded freedom and “race equality” for those of
change between 1800 no sarvant; none but negers are African descent. They urged free blacks to use every
and 1840? sarvants.” Motivated by racial legal means, including petitions and other forms of
contempt, white mobs terrorized political protest, to break “the shackles of slavery.”
black communities. The attacks in Cincinnati were so
violent and destructive that several hundred African Nat Turner’s Revolt As Walker threatened violence
Americans fled to Canada for safety. in Boston, Nat Turner, a slave in Southampton County,
Virginia, staged a bloody revolt — a chronological “all those who should undertake a similar plot.” Turner
coincidence that had far-reaching consequences. As a died by hanging, still identifying his mission with that
child, Turner had taught himself to read and had hoped of his Savior. “Was not Christ crucified?” he asked.
for emancipation, but one new master forced him into Deeply shaken by Turner’s Rebellion, the Virginia
the fields, and another separated him from his wife. assembly debated a law providing for gradual eman-
Becoming deeply spiritual, Turner had a religious cipation and colonization abroad. When the bill
vision in which “the Spirit” explained that “Christ had failed by a vote of 73 to 58, the possibility that southern
laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, planters would voluntarily end slavery was gone for-
and that I should take it on and fight against the ever. Instead, the southern states toughened their slave
Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the codes, limited black movement, and prohibited anyone
first should be last and the last should be first.” Taking from teaching slaves to read. They would meet Walker’s
an eclipse of the sun in August 1831 as an omen, Turner radical Appeal with radical measures of their own.
and a handful of relatives and friends rose in rebellion
and killed at least 55 white men, women, and children.
Turner hoped that hundreds of slaves would rally to his Evangelical Abolitionism
cause, but he mustered only 60 men. The white militia Rejecting Walker’s and Turner’s resort to violence, a
quickly dispersed his poorly armed force and took cadre of northern evangelical Christians launched a
their revenge. One company of cavalry killed 40 blacks moral crusade to abolish the slave regime. If planters
in two days and put 15 of their heads on poles to warn did not allow blacks their God-given status as free
moral agents, these radical Christians warned, they Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses
faced eternal damnation at the hands of a just God. (1839), Weld and the Grimkés addressed a simple
question: “What is the actual condition of the slaves in
William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, and the United States?” Using reports from southern news-
Angelina and Sarah Grimké The most determined papers and firsthand testimony, they presented incrim-
abolitionist was William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879). inating evidence of the inherent violence of slavery.
A Massachusetts-born printer, Garrison had worked Angelina Grimké told of a treadmill that South
during the 1820s in Baltimore on an antislavery news- Carolina slave owners used for punishment: “One poor
paper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation. In 1830, girl, [who was] sent there to be flogged, and who was
Garrison went to jail, convicted of libeling a New accordingly stripped naked and whipped, showed me
England merchant engaged in the domestic slave trade. the deep gashes on her back — I might have laid my
In 1831, Garrison moved to Boston, where he immedi- whole finger in them — large pieces of flesh had actu-
ately started his own weekly, The Liberator (1831– ally been cut out by the torturing lash.” Filled with such
1865), and founded the New England Anti-Slavery images of pain and suffering, the book sold more than
Society. 100,000 copies in a single year.
Influenced by a bold pamphlet, Immediate, Not
Gradual Abolition (1824), by an English Quaker, The American Anti-Slavery Society To spread
Elizabeth Coltman Heyrick, Garrison demanded their message, the abolitionists turned to mass com-
immediate abolition without compensation to slave- munication. Using new steam-powered presses to print
holders. “I will not retreat a single inch,” he declared, a million pamphlets, the American Anti-Slavery Society
“and I will be heard.” Garrison accused the Amer- carried out a “great postal campaign” in 1835, flooding
ican Colonization Society (Chapter 8) of perpetuating the nation, including the South, with its literature.
slavery and assailed the U.S. Constitution as “a cove- The abolitionists’ second tactic was to aid fugitive
nant with death and an agreement with Hell” because it slaves. They provided lodging and jobs for escaped
implicitly accepted racial bondage. blacks in free states and created the Underground
In 1833, Garrison, Theodore Weld, and sixty other Railroad, an informal network of whites and free blacks
religious abolitionists, black and white, established the in Richmond, Charleston, and other southern towns
American Anti-Slavery Society. The society won finan- that assisted fugitives (Map 11.3). In Baltimore, a free
cial support from Arthur and African American sailor loaned his identification
COMPARE AND Lewis Tappan, wealthy silk mer- papers to future abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who
CONTRAST chants in New York City. Women used them to escape to New York. Harriet Tubman and
How did the ideology and abolitionists established separate other runaways risked re-enslavement or death by
tactics of the Garrisonian groups, including the Philadel- returning repeatedly to the South to help others escape.
abolitionists differ from phia Female Anti-Slavery Society, “I should fight for . . . liberty as long as my strength
those of the antislavery founded by Lucretia Mott in 1833, lasted,” Tubman explained, “and when the time came
movements discussed in and the Anti-Slavery Conventions for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.” Thanks
Chapters 6 and 8? of American Women, a network to the Railroad, about one thousand African Americans
of local societies. The women reached freedom in the North each year.
raised money for The Liberator and carried the move- There, they faced an uncertain future because most
ment to the farm villages and small towns of the whites continued to reject civic or social equality for
Midwest, where they distributed abolitionist literature African Americans. Voters in six northern and mid-
and collected thousands of signatures on antislavery western states adopted constitutional amendments
petitions. that denied or limited the franchise for free blacks. “We
Abolitionist leaders launched a three-pronged plan want no masters,” declared a New York artisan, “and
of attack. To win the support of religious Americans, least of all no negro masters.” Moreover, the Fugitive
Weld published The Bible Against Slavery (1837), which Slave Law (1793) allowed owners and their hired slave
used passages from Christianity’s holiest book to dis- catchers to seize suspected runaways and return them
credit slavery. Two years later, Weld teamed up with the to bondage. To thwart these efforts, white abolitionists
Grimké sisters — Angelina, whom he married, and and free blacks formed mobs that attacked slave catch-
Sarah. The Grimkés had left their father’s plantation in ers, released their captives, and often spirited them off
South Carolina, converted to Quakerism, and taken up to British-ruled Canada, which refused to extradite
the abolitionist cause in Philadelphia. In American fugitive slaves.
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 363
R.
MAINE
ce
N
en
L. Superior
wr
MINNESOTA E
La
VT.
St.
NEBRASKA UNORG. W
TERRITORY L N.H.
TERR. %RVWRQ S
.H
ri o
Hudson R
Onta NEW
L. Michigan
MASS.
u ro
Mi L.
ssi
Most fugitives fled from such ss WIS. YORK ATLANTIC
n
states as Maryland, Kentucky, OCEAN
ipp
MICH. ie R.I.
.
and Missouri that bordered free Er
i
L.
R.
territory. However, a significant PA. CONN.
IOWA
number of slaves escaped from N.J. This map shows free and slave
the Lower South on boats engaged MD.
in the coastal trade. IND. OHIO DEL. areas as determined by state and
ILLINOIS territorial constitutions and laws.
Missou i
R.
R. io VIRGINIA
r
Arka
KANSAS Oh
nsas R. TERRITORY KY.
MISSOURI NORTH The routes of the Underground
CAROLINA Railroad system are conjectural;
TENN. the surviving evidence mainly
UNORG. identifies the “stations” and the
NEW MEXICO TERRITORY ARKANSAS S.C.
“destinations” of the system, not
TERRITORY the “tracks” that connected them.
Red R. ALA. &KDUOHVWRQ
MISS. GEORGIA
Statistics indicating the percentage
TEXAS LA. of slaves in each county come from
the U.S. census of 1850.
MAP 11.3
The Underground Railroad in the 1850s
Before 1840, most African Americans who fled slavery did so on their own or with the help of
family and friends. Thereafter, they could count on support from members of the Underground
Railroad. Provided with food and directions by free blacks in the South, fugitive slaves crossed into
free states. There, they received protection and shelter from abolitionists who arranged for their
transportation to Canada or to “safe” American cities and towns.
A political campaign was the final element of the Government,” an essay urging individuals to follow
abolitionists’ program. Between 1835 and 1838, the a higher moral law. The black abolitionist Henry
American Anti-Slavery Society bombarded Congress Highland Garnet went further; his Address to the Slaves
with petitions containing nearly 500,000 signatures. of the United States of America (1841) called for “Liberty
They demanded the abolition of slavery in the District or Death” and urged slave “Resistance! Resistance!
of Columbia, an end to the interstate slave trade, and a Resistance!”
ban on admission of new slave states.
Thousands of deeply religious farmers and small-
town proprietors supported these efforts. The number Opposition and Internal Conflict
of local abolitionist societies grew from two hundred Still, abolitionists remained a minority, even among
in 1835 to two thousand by 1840, with nearly 200,000 churchgoers. Perhaps 10 percent of northerners and
members, including many transcendentalists. Emerson midwesterners strongly supported the movement, and
condemned Americans for supporting slavery, and only another 20 percent were sympathetic to its goals.
Thoreau, viewing the Mexican War as a naked scheme
to extend slavery, refused to pay taxes and submitted to Attacks on Abolitionism Slavery’s proponents
arrest. In 1848, he published “Resistance to Civil were more numerous and equally aggressive. The
364 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
abolitionists’ agitation, ministers warned, risked Chicago who profited from lucrative sales to slave
“embroiling neighborhoods and families — setting plantations. Finally, whites almost universally opposed
friend against friend, overthrowing churches and insti- “amalgamation,” the racial mixing and intermarriage
tutions of learning, embittering one portion of the land that Garrison seemed to support by holding meetings
against the other.” Wealthy men feared that the attack of blacks and whites of both sexes.
on slave property might become an assault on all prop- Racial fears and hatreds led to violent mob actions.
erty rights, conservative clergy- White workers in northern towns laid waste to taverns
UNDERSTAND men condemned the public roles and brothels where blacks and whites mixed, and they
POINTS OF VIEW assumed by abolitionist women, vandalized “respectable” African American churches,
Which groups of Americans and northern wage earners feared temperance halls, and orphanages. In 1833, a mob of
opposed the abolitionists, that freed blacks would work for 1,500 New Yorkers stormed a church in search of
and why did they do so? lower wages and take their jobs. Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Another white mob swept
Underlining the national “reach” through Philadelphia’s African American neighbor-
of slavery, northern merchants and textile manufactur- hoods, clubbing and stoning residents and destroying
ers supported the southern planters who supplied homes and churches. In 1835, “gentlemen of property
them with cotton, as did hog farmers in Ohio, Indiana, and standing” — lawyers, merchants, and bankers —
and Illinois and pork packers in Cincinnati and broke up an abolitionist convention in Utica, New
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 365
York. Two years later, a mob in Alton, Illinois, shot and 1835, southern postmasters simply refused to deliver
killed Elijah P. Lovejoy, editor of the abolitionist Alton mail suspected to be of abolitionist origin.
Observer. By pressing for emancipation and equality, Politicians joined the fray. President Andrew
the abolitionists had revealed the extent of racial preju- Jackson, a longtime slave owner, asked Congress in
dice and had heightened race consciousness, as both 1835 to restrict the use of the mails by abolitionist
whites and blacks identified across class lines with groups. Congress refused, but in 1836, the House of
members of their own race. Representatives adopted the so-called gag rule. Under
Racial solidarity was especially strong in the South, this informal agreement, which remained in force until
where whites banned abolitionists. The Georgia legis- 1844, the House automatically tabled antislavery peti-
lature offered a $5,000 reward for kidnapping Garrison tions, keeping the explosive issue of slavery off the con-
and bringing him to the South to be tried (or lynched) gressional stage.
for inciting rebellion. In Nashville, vigilantes whipped
a northern college student for distributing abolitionist Internal Divisions Assailed by racists from the
pamphlets; in Charleston, a mob attacked the post outside, evangelical abolitionists fought among them-
office and destroyed sacks of abolitionist mail. After selves over gender issues. Many antislavery clergymen
opposed an activist role for women, but Garrison had Garrison admitted, “it did not occur to us that nearly
broadened his reform agenda to include pacifism, the every religious sect, and every political party would
abolition of prisons, and women’s rights: “Our object is side with the oppressor.”
universal emancipation, to redeem women as well as
men from a servile to an equal condition.” In 1840,
Garrison’s demand that the American Anti-Slavery
Society support women’s rights split the abolitionist The Women’s Rights
movement. Abby Kelley, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, among others, remained with Garrison
Movement
in the American Anti-Slavery Society and assailed both The prominence of women among the abolitionists
the institutions that bound blacks and the customs that reflected a broad shift in American culture. By joining
constrained free women. religious revivals and reform movements, women
Garrison’s opponents founded a new organization, entered public life. Their activism caused many gender
the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which issues — sexual behavior, marriage, family authority —
turned to politics. Its members mobilized their to become subjects of debate. The debate entered a
churches to oppose racial bondage and organized the new phase in 1848, when some reformers focused
Liberty Party, the first antislavery political party. In on women’s rights and demanded complete equality
1840, the new party nominated James G. Birney, a for- with men.
mer Alabama slave owner, for president. Birney and
the Liberty Party argued that the Constitution did not
recognize slavery and, consequently, that slaves became Origins of the Women’s Movement
free when they entered areas of federal authority, such “Don’t be afraid, not afraid, fight Satan; stand up for
as the District of Columbia and the national territories. Christ; don’t be afraid.” So spoke Mary Walker Ostram
However, Birney won few votes, and the future of polit- on her deathbed in 1859. Her religious convictions
ical abolitionism appeared dim. were as firm at the age of fifty-eight as they had been in
Popular violence in the North, government-aided 1816, when she joined the first Sunday school in Utica,
suppression in the South, and internal schisms stunned New York. Married to a lawyer-politician and childless,
the abolitionist movement. By melding the energies Ostram had devoted her life to evangelical Presbyter-
and ideas of evangelical Protestants, moral reformers, ianism and its program of benevolent social reform.
and transcendentalists, it had raised the banner of anti- At her funeral, minister Philemon Fowler celebrated
slavery to new heights, only to face a hostile backlash. Ostram as a “living fountain” of faith, an exemplar of
“When we first unfurled the banner of The Liberator,” “Women’s Sphere of Influence” in the world.
A Nineteenth-Century
Middle-Class Family
Whereas colonial-era families were large,
often with six to eight children, nineteenth-
century middle-class couples, such as Azariah
and Eliza Caverly, pictured here in 1836 by
Joseph H. Davis (1811–1865), consciously
limited their fertility, treated their spouses
with affection, and carefully supervised the
education of their children. The Caverlys’
daughter fingers a Bible, suggesting her
future moral responsibilities as a mother,
while their son holds a square ruler, either
indicating Azariah’s profession or foreshadow-
ing the son’s career as a prosperous architect
or engineer. Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown,
New York.
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 367
The temperance crusade was the most successful antebellum reform movement.
It mobilized more than a million supporters in all sections of the nation and sig-
Saving the Nation nificantly lowered the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Nonetheless, like
other reform efforts, the antidrinking crusade divided over questions of strategy
from Drink and tactics. The following passages, taken from the writings of leading temper-
ance advocates, show that some reformers favored legal regulation while others
preferred persuasion and voluntary abstinence.
Lyman Beecher demand for ardent spirits, and made distillation and
“Intemperance Is the Sin of Our Land” importation a gainful traffic. . . . Let the temperate cease
to buy — and the demand for ardent spirits will fall in the
A leading Protestant minister and spokesman for the market three fourths, and ultimately will fail wholly. . . .
Benevolent Empire, Lyman Beecher regarded drunkenness This however cannot be done effectually so long as
as a sin. His Six Sermons on . . . Intemperance (1829) con- the traffic in ardent spirits is regarded as lawful, and is
demned the recklessness of working-class drunkards and patronized by men of reputation and moral worth in
called on responsible members of the middle class to lead every part of the land. Like slavery, it must be regarded
the way to a temperate society. as sinful, impolitic, and dishonorable. That no measures
Intemperance is the sin of our land, and, with our bound- will avail short of rendering ardent spirits a contraband
less prosperity, is coming in upon us like a flood; and if of trade, is nearly self-evident.
anything shall defeat the hopes of the world, which hang
upon our experiment of civil liberty, it is that river of
fire. . . . Abraham Lincoln
In every city and town the poor-tax, created chiefly “A New Class of Champions”
by intemperance, is [increasing the burden on taxpaying
In Baltimore in 1840, a group of reformed alcoholics
citizens]. . . . The frequency of going upon the town [rely-
formed the Washington Temperance Society, which turned
ing on public welfare] has taken away the reluctance of
the antidrinking movement in a new direction. By talking
pride, and destroyed the motives to providence which
publicly about their personal experiences of alcoholic
the fear of poverty and suffering once supplied. The pros-
decline and spiritual recovery, they inspired thousands to
pect of a destitute old age, or of a suffering family, no
“sign the pledge” of total abstinence. (Its philosophy exists
longer troubles the vicious portion of our community.
today in the organization Alcoholics Anonymous.) In 1842,
They drink up their daily earnings, and bless God for
Lincoln, an ambitious lawyer and Illinois legislator who did
the poor-house, and begin to look upon it as, of right,
not drink, praised such “moral suasion” in an address to
the drunkard’s home. . . . Every intemperate and idle
the Washingtonians of Springfield, Illinois.
man, whom you behold tottering about the streets and
steeping himself at the stores, regards your houses and Although the temperance cause has been in progress for
lands as pledged to take care of him, puts his hands near twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just now
deep, annually, into your pockets. . . . being crowned with a degree of success hitherto unparal-
What then is this universal, natural, and national leled. The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions
remedy for intemperance? it is the banishment of of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands.
ardent spirits from the list of lawful articles The warfare heretofore waged against the demon
of commerce, by a correct and efficient public intemperance has somehow or other been erroneous. . . .
sentiment; such as has turned slavery out of half [Its] champions for the most part have been preachers
our land, and will yet expel it from the world. [such as Beecher], lawyers, and hired agents. Between
We are not therefore to come down in wrath upon these and the mass of mankind there is a want of
the distillers, and importers, and venders of ardent approachability. . . .
spirits. None of us are enough without sin to cast the But when one who has long been known as a victim
first stone. . . . It is the buyers who have created the of intemperance bursts the fetters that have bound him,
368
and appears before his neighbors “clothed and in his right the morals of the people.” Subsequently, the American
mind,” . . . to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be Temperance Magazine became a strong advocate of legal
endured no more . . . there is a logic and an eloquence in prohibition and by 1856 had won passage of “Maine
it that few with human feelings can resist. . . . Laws” in twelve other states (Chapter 9).
In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of This is a utilitarian age. The speculative has in all things
champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, yielded to the practical. Words are mere noise unless
owing. . . . [Previously,] too much denunciation against they are things [and result in action].
dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged in. This I In this sense, moral suasion is moral balderdash.
think was both impolitic and unjust. . . . When the dram- “Words, my lord, words” . . . are a delusion. . . . The
seller and drinker were incessantly [condemned] . . . as drunkard’s mental and physical condition pronounces
moral pestilences . . . they were slow [to] . . . join the them an absurdity. He is ever in one or other extreme —
ranks of their denouncers in a hue and cry against under the excitement of drink, or in a state of morbid
themselves. collapse. . . . Reason with a man when all reason has
By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the fled, and it is doubtful whether he or you is the greater
habitual drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated. . . . They fool. . . . Moral suasion! Bah!
teach hope to all — despair to none. As applying to their Place this man we have been describing out of the
cause, they deny the doctrine of unpardonable sin. . . . reach of temptation. He will have time to ponder. His
If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be esti- mind and frame recover their native vigor. The public-
mated by the great amount of human misery they house does not beset his path. . . . Thus, and thus only,
alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then indeed will reformation and temperance be secured. And how is
will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen. this accomplished? Never except through the instrumen-
Of our political revolution of ’76 we are all justly proud. tality of the law. If it were possible to reason the drunkard
It has given us a degree of political freedom far exceed- into sobriety, it would not be possible to make the rum-
ing that of any other nation of the earth. . . . But, with seller forego his filthy gains. Try your moral suasion on
all these glorious results, past, present, and to come, [this him. . . . The only logic he will comprehend, is some such
freedom] had its evils too. It [was abused by drunken ordinance as this, coming to him in the shape and with
husbands and thereby] breathed forth famine, swam in the voice of law — you shall not sell.
blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the orphan’s
cry and the widow’s wail continued to break the sad Source: David Brion Davis, Antebellum American Culture: An Interpretive Anthology
silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 395–398, 403–409.
price, paid for the blessings it brought. . . .
Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumit-
1. What does Lincoln’s address suggest about his general
ted, a greater tyrant deposed; in it, more of want supplied, political philosophy?
more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it no 2. Compare Beecher’s position to Lincoln’s. In what ways
orphans starving, no widows weeping. are they similar? How are they different? Then compare
Glorious consummation! Hail, fall of fury! Reign of Beecher’s solution to that of the American Temper-
reason, all hail! ance Magazine. Are they the same? Whose view of
personal responsibility versus institutional coercion is
closest to the position of Orestes Brownson (Chapter 9,
pp. 308–309)?
American Temperance Magazine
3. In which of these selections do you see the influence of
“You Shall Not Sell” the Second Great Awakening, especially the evangeli-
cal message of Charles Grandison Finney? Where do
In 1851, the Maine legislature passed a statute prohibiting you see the influence of the Market Revolution and the
the sale of alcoholic beverages in the state. The Maine cultural values of the rising middle class? What positions
do these selections take with respect to the appropriate
Supreme Court upheld the statute, arguing that the legis-
role of government in regulating morality and personal
lature had the “right to regulate by law the sale of behavior?
any article, the use of which would be detrimental of
369
370 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
Abolitionist Women Women were central to the followers in his Sermon on the Mount . . . without any
antislavery movement because they understood the reference to sex or condition,” she replied: “Men and
special horrors of slavery for women. In her autobiog- women were created equal; both are moral and
raphy, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, black aboli- accountable beings and whatever is right for man to
tionist Harriet Jacobs described forced sexual inter- do, is right for woman.” In a pamphlet debate with
course with her white owner. “I cannot tell how much I Catharine Beecher (who believed that women should
suffered in the presence of these wrongs,” she wrote. exercise authority primarily as wives, mothers, and
According to Jacobs and other enslaved women, such schoolteachers), Angelina Grimké pushed the argu-
sexual assaults incited additional cruelty by their own- ment beyond religion by invoking Enlightenment
ers’ wives, who were enraged by their husbands’ pro- principles to claim equal civic rights:
miscuity. In her best-selling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1852), Harriet Beecher Stowe pinpointed the sexual It is a woman’s right to have a voice in all the laws
abuse of women as a profound moral failing of the and regulations by which she is governed, whether
in Church or State. . . . The present arrangements
slave regime.
of society on these points are a violation of human
As Garrisonian women attacked slavery, they fre- rights, a rank usurpation of power, a violent seizure
quently violated social taboos by speaking to mixed and confiscation of what is sacredly and inalienably
audiences of men and women. Maria W. Stewart, an hers.
African American, spoke to mixed crowds in Boston in
the early 1830s. As abolitionism blossomed, scores of By 1840, female abolitionists were asserting that
white women delivered lectures condemning slavery, traditional gender roles resulted in the domestic slav-
and thousands more made home “visitations” to win ery of women. “How can we endure our present mar-
converts to their cause (Map 11.4). When Congrega- riage relations,” asked Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “[which
tionalist clergymen in New England assailed Angelina give a woman] no charter of rights, no individuality of
and Sarah Grimké for such activism in a Pastoral her own?” As reformer Ernestine Rose put it: “The rad-
Letter in 1837, Sarah Grimké turned to the Bible for ical difficulty . . . is that women are considered as
justification: “The Lord Jesus defines the duties of his belonging to men.” Having acquired a public voice and
MAP 11.4
Women and Antislavery, 1837–1838
CANADA Beginning in the 1830s, abolitionists
L. Superior and antislavery advocates dispatched
MAINE
VT. dozens of petitions to Congress
671
WISCONSIN 1,792 demanding an end to forced labor.
L.
Hu
TERRITORY
Women accounted for two-thirds
L. Michigan
N.Y. N.H.
Mis
ron
o
s ntar i 2,088 MASS.
L. O 852 of the 67,000 signatures on the
iss
IOWA
ippi R
MICHIGAN 625
M TERRITORY 120 petitions submitted in 1837–1838,
r ie 908 R.I.
a fact that suggests not only the
.
L. E5,887
iss
535 PA.
ouri
CONN. 8,369
66 OHIO 3.061 influence of women in the anti-
R.
LA.
REPUBLIC
OF Antislavery Petitions
TEXAS to Congress, 1837–38
N FLA. Female signers Male signers
TERR.
W E Total signers 67,202 100%
Gulf of Mexico Female signers 44,929 67%
S
(after Opdycke) Male signers 22,273 33%
CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform, 1800–1860 371
political skills in the crusade for African American some family assets in their wives’
PLACE EVENTS
freedom, thousands of northern women now advo- names. Fathers also desired their IN CONTEXT
cated greater rights for themselves. married daughters to have prop- What was the relationship
erty rights to protect them (and between the abolition-
Seneca Falls and Beyond During the 1840s, wom- their paternal inheritances) from ist and women’s rights
en’s rights activists devised a pragmatic program of financially irresponsible hus- movements?
reform. Unlike radical utopians, they did not challenge bands. Such motives prompted
the institution of marriage or the conventional division legislatures in three states — Mississippi, Maine, and
of labor within the family. Instead, they tried to Massachusetts — to enact married women’s property
strengthen the legal rights of married women by seek- laws between 1839 and 1845. Then, women activists in
ing legislation that permitted them to own property New York won a comprehensive statute that became
(America Compared, p. 372). This initiative won cru- the model for fourteen other states. The New York stat-
cial support from affluent men, who feared bankruptcy ute of 1848 gave women full legal control over the
in the volatile market economy and wanted to put property they brought to a marriage.
Also in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia
Mott organized a gathering of women’s rights activists
in the small New York town of Seneca Falls. Seventy
women and thirty men attended the Seneca Falls
Convention, which issued a rousing manifesto extend-
ing to women the egalitarian republican ideology of
the Declaration of Independence. “All men and women
are created equal,” the Declaration of Sentiments
declared, “[yet] the history of mankind is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man
toward woman [and] the establishment of an absolute
tyranny over her.” To persuade Americans to right this
long-standing wrong, the activists resolved to “employ
agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National
legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the
press on our behalf.” By staking out claims for equality
for women in public life, the Seneca Falls reformers
repudiated both the natural inferiority of women and
the ideology of separate spheres.
Most men dismissed the Seneca Falls declaration as
nonsense, and many women also rejected the activists
and their message. In her diary, one small-town mother
and housewife lashed out at the female reformer who
“aping mannish manners . . . wears absurd and barba-
rous attire, who talks of her wrongs in harsh tone, who
struts and strides, and thinks that she proves herself
Crusading Reformers superior to the rest of her sex.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Susan B. Still, the women’s rights movement grew in strength
Anthony (1820–1906) were a dynamic duo. Stanton,
the well-educated daughter of a prominent New York and purpose. In 1850, delegates to the first national
judge, was an early abolitionist and the mother of seven women’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts,
children. Anthony came from a Quaker family and became hammered out a program of action. The women called
a teacher and a temperance activist. Meeting in 1851, on churches to eliminate notions of female inferiority
Stanton and Anthony became friends and co-organizers.
From 1854 to 1860, they led a successful struggle to in their theology. Addressing state legislatures, they
expand New York’s Married Women’s Property Law of proposed laws to allow married women to institute
1848. During the Civil War, they formed the Women’s lawsuits, testify in court, and assume custody of their
Loyal National League, which helped win passage of the
Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery. In 1866, they joined
children in the event of divorce or a husband’s death.
the American Equal Rights Association, which demanded the Finally, they began a concerted campaign to win the
vote for women and African Americans. © Bettmann/Corbis. vote for women. As delegates to the 1851 convention
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
During the political uprising in France in 1848, Pauline Roland and Jeanne Dero-
ine unsuccessfully sought voting rights and an equal civil status for French
Women’s Rights women. However, the two women won election to the Central Committee of
the Associative Unions, the umbrella organization of French trade unions.
in France and the Imprisoned for their activism, they dispatched a letter to the Second Woman’s
Rights Convention, which met in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1851.
United States, 1848 When their letter was read to the Convention, Ernestine Potowsky Rose
(1810–1892) offered the following response, which indicated the different per-
spective and political strategy of the American women’s movement.
Pauline Roland and Jeanne Deroine . . . But need we wonder that France, governed as
Letter to the Convention of the she is by Russian and Austrian despotism, does not rec-
Women of America ognize . . . the Rights of Woman, when even here, in this
far-famed land of freedom . . . woman, the mockingly
Dear Sisters: Your courageous declaration of Woman’s so-called “better half ” of man, has yet to plead for her
Rights has resounded even to our prison and has filled rights. . . . In the laws of the land, she has no rights; in
our souls with inexpressible joy. In France the [conserva- government she has no voice. . . . From the cradle to the
tive] reaction [to the uprising of 1848] has suppressed grave she is subject to the power and control of man.
the cry of liberty of the women of the future. . . . The Father, guardian, or husband, one conveys her like some
Assembly kept silence in regard to the right of one half piece of merchandise over to the other.
of humanity. . . . No mention was made of the right of . . . Carry out the republican principle of universal
woman in a Constitution framed in the name of Liberty, suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute
Equality, and Fraternity. . . . “Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Sub-
[However,] the right of woman has been recognized mission and Slavery to the other.” Give women the
by the laborers and they have consecrated that right by elective franchise. Let married women have the same
the election of those who had claimed it in vain for both right to property that their husbands have. . . .
sexes. . . . It is by labor; it is by entering resolutely into the There is no reason against woman’s elevation, but . . .
ranks of the working people that women will conquer the prejudices. The main cause is a pernicious falsehood
civil and political equality on which depends the happiness propagated against her being, namely that she is inferior
of the world. . . . Sisters of America! your socialist sisters of by her nature. Inferior in what? What has man ever done
France are united with you in the vindication of the right that woman, under the same advantages could not do?
of woman to civil and political equality. . . . [Only] by the
union of the working classes of both sexes [can we Source: History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and
Matilda Joslyn Gage (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1887), 1: 234–242.
achieve] . . . the civil and political equality of woman.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Ernestine Rose
1. What strategy to achieve women’s rights do Roland and
Speech to the Second Woman’s Rights Deroine advocate? What strategy can be detected in
Convention Rose’s remarks? How are their perspectives similar to, or
different from, one another?
After having heard the letter read from our poor incarcer- 2. What does this French-American comparison (and your
ated sisters of France, well might we exclaim, Alas poor reading in Chapter 11) suggest about the nature and
values of the American women’s rights movement?
France! Where is thy glory?
proclaimed, suffrage was “the corner-stone of this operative was Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), a
enterprise, since we do not seek to protect woman, but Quaker who had acquired political skills in the tem-
rather to place her in a position to protect herself.” perance and antislavery movements. Those experi-
The activists’ legislative campaign required talented ences, Anthony reflected, taught her “the great evil
organizers and lobbyists. The most prominent political of woman’s utter dependence on man.” Joining the
372
CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER REVIEW 373
women’s rights movement, she worked closely with on the great literary figures of the era and linked tran-
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Anthony created an activist scendentalism to the rise of individualism and the
network of political “captains,” all women, who relent- character of middle-class American culture.
lessly lobbied state legislatures. In 1860, her efforts Our analysis of communal experiments probed
secured a New York law granting women the right to their members’ efforts to devise new rules for sexual
control their own wages (which fathers or husbands behavior, gender relationships, and property owner-
had previously managed); to own property acquired by ship. We saw that successful communal experiments,
“trade, business, labors, or services”; and, if widowed, such as Mormonism, required a charismatic leader or a
to assume sole guardianship of their children. Genuine religious foundation and endured if they developed
individualism for women, the dream of transcenden- strong, even authoritarian, institutions.
talist Margaret Fuller, had advanced a tiny step closer We also traced the personal and ideological factors
to reality. In such small and much larger ways, the mid- that linked the abolitionist and women’s rights move-
century reform movements had altered the character ments. Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the
of American culture. Grimké sisters began as antislavery advocates, but,
denied access to lecture platforms by male abolitionists
and conservative clergy, they became staunch advo-
cates of women’s rights. This transition was a logical
SUMMARY one: both enslaved blacks and married women were
“owned” by men, either as property or as their legal
In this chapter, we examined four major cultural move- dependents. Consequently, the efforts to abolish the
ments of the mid-nineteenth century — transcenden- legal prerogatives of husbands were as controversial as
talist reform, communalism, abolitionism, and those to end the legal property rights of slave owners.
women’s rights — as well as the new popular culture in As reformers took aim at such deeply rooted institu-
New York City. Our discussion of the transcendental- tions and customs, many Americans feared that their
ists highlighted the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson activism would not perfect society but destroy it.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Analyze the relationship between religion and 3. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
reform in the decades from 1800 to 1860. Why did events listed under “Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture” on
many religious people feel compelled to remake the thematic timeline on page 283, paying particu-
society? How successful were they? Do you see any lar attention to the entries related to individualism
parallels with social movements today? and rights on the one hand and to various commu-
nal and religious movements on the other. What
2. The word reform has a positive connotation, as
was the relationship between these somewhat con-
an effort to make things better. Yet many mid-
tradictory cultural impulses? How were these two
nineteenth-century Americans viewed some
movements related to the social and economic
“reforms,” such as abolitionism and women’s rights,
changes in America in the decades after 1800?
as destructive to the social order, and other
“reforms,” such as Sabbatarianism and temperance,
as threats to individual freedom. What was the
apparent conflict among reform, social order, and
liberty?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Did the era of with the thoughtful or intense expression on the
reform (1820–1860) increase or diminish the faces of the social reformers depicted in this chap-
extent of social and cultural freedom that existed ter (Emerson, p. 346; Fuller, p. 348; and Stanton
during the Revolutionary era (1770–1820)? and Anthony, p. 371). Given their beliefs, would
those reformers have approved or disapproved of
2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Compare the cheerful
the conduct of the young Philadelphia woman?
depiction of the young woman in the watercolor
Explain your reasoning.
depicting “night life in Philadelphia” on page 355
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee (1975). Explores
Life and Death of a Prostitute in New York City (1998). the life and rebellion of Nat Turner.
A gripping murder mystery that probes the nature of
Mark Perry, Lift Up Thy Voice (2001). Offers a study of
the new plebeian culture.
the Grimké family.
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (1995).
Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (2007). A
Shows how racism shaped white working-class
comprehensive history from a cultural perspective.
culture.
Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of
Matthias (1995). A compelling story of religious
utopianism gone mad.
CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER REVIEW 375
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1835 t Abolitionists launch great postal campaign, sparking series of antiabolitionist riots
KEY TURNING POINTS: Most of the entries here relate to events in the 1830s, 1840s, and
1850s. In your judgment, which is the most important event in each decade? Over all three
decades? Write a coherent essay that justifies your choices and, if possible, relates those events
to each other.
The South Expands:
12
C H A P T E R
Slavery and Society
1800–1860
L
THE DOMESTIC ife in South Carolina had been IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
SLAVE TRADE good to James Lide. A slave-owning How did the creation of a cotton-
The Upper South Exports Slaves planter along the Pee Dee River, Lide based economy change the lives of
The Impact on Blacks and his wife raised twelve children and whites and blacks in all regions of
long resisted the “Alabama Fever” that the South?
THE WORLD OF
prompted thousands of Carolinians to move
SOUTHERN WHITES
west. Finally, at age sixty-five, probably seeking land for his many offspring, he moved
The Dual Cultures of the
Planter Elite his slaves and family — including six children and six grandchildren — to a plantation
near Montgomery, Alabama. There, the family lived initially in a squalid log cabin with
Planters, Smallholding Yeomen,
and Tenants air holes but no windows. Even after building a new house, the Lides’ life remained
unsettled. “Pa is quite in the notion of moving somewhere,” his daughter Maria
EXPANDING AND reported. Although James Lide died in Alabama, many of his children moved on. In
GOVERNING THE SOUTH 1854, at the age of fifty-eight, Eli Lide migrated to Texas, telling his father, “Something
The Settlement of Texas within me whispers onward and onward.”
The Politics of Democracy The Lides’ story was that of southern society. Between 1800 and 1860, white plant-
THE AFRICAN ers moved west and, using the muscles and sweat of a million enslaved African Ameri-
AMERICAN WORLD cans, brought millions of acres into cultivation. By 1840, the South was at the cutting
Evangelical Black Protestantism edge of the American Market Revolution (Figure 12.1). It annually produced and
Forging Families and exported 1.5 million bales of raw cotton — over two-thirds of the world’s supply — and
Communities its economy was larger and richer than that of most nations. “Cotton is King,” boasted
Negotiating Rights the Southern Cultivator.
The Free Black Population No matter how rich they were, few cotton planters in Alabama, Mississippi, and
Texas lived in elegant houses or led cultured lives. They had forsaken the aristocratic
gentility of the Chesapeake and the Carolinas to make money. “To sell cotton in order
to buy negroes — to make more cotton to buy more negroes, ‘ad infinitum,’ is the
aim . . . of the thorough-going cotton planter,” a traveler reported from Mississippi in
1835. “His whole soul is wrapped up in the pursuit.” Plantation women lamented the
loss of genteel surroundings and polite society. Raised in North Carolina, where she was
“blest with every comfort, & even luxury,” Mary Drake found Mississippi and Alabama
“a dreary waste.”
Enslaved African Americans knew what “dreary waste” really meant: unremitting
toil, unrelieved poverty, and profound sadness. Sold south from Maryland, where his
family had lived for generations, Charles Ball’s father became “gloomy and morose”
and ran off and disappeared. With good reason: on new cotton plantations, slaves
labored from “sunup to sundown” and from one end of the year to the other, forced to
work by the threat of the lash. Always wanting more, southern planters and politicians
plotted to extend their plantation economy across the continent.
376
A Slave Family Picking Cotton Picking cotton — thousands of small bolls attached to 3-foot-high
woody and often prickly stalks — was a tedious and time-consuming task, taking up to four months
on many plantations. However, workers of both sexes and all ages could pick cotton, and masters
could measure output by weighing the baskets of each picker or family, chastising those who failed to
meet their quotas. What does this early photograph of a family of pickers, taken on a plantation near
Savannah, Georgia, suggest about women’s and children’s lives, family relations, and living conditions?
© Collection of the New-York Historical Society.
377
378 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
FIGURE 12.1
Millions of bales Cotton Production and Producers,
4.5 1800–1860
4.0 Until 1820, Georgia and South Carolina
plantations (marked #7 and #8 on the
3.5 right side of the lower graph) grew
more than one-half of American cotton.
3.0 As output increased significantly between
2.5 1820 and 1840 (see the upper graph), the
locus of production shifted. By the early
2.0 1840s, planters had moved hundreds of
thousands of slaves to the Mississippi
1.5 Valley, and Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Alabama (#4, #5, and #6) grew nearly
1.0
70 percent of a much larger cotton
0.5 crop. Simultaneously, production leapt
dramatically, reaching (as the red bars
0 show) 2 million bales a year by the mid-
1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1840s, 3 million by the mid-1850s, and
4 million on the eve of the Civil War.
1. Tennessee 4. Louisiana 7. Georgia/Florida 9. North Carolina Source: From Time on the Cross: The Economics of
2. Arkansas 5. Mississippi panhandle 10. Virginia
3. Texas 6. Alabama 8. South Carolina American Negro Slavery, by Robert W. Fogel and
100% Stanley L. Engerman. Copyright © 1974 Little Brown.
1
2
3
80
4
60
5
40
6
20
7
9
10 8
0
1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860
CHAPTER 12 The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860 379
1790 1830
CANADA
CANADA
MAINE MAINE
L. Superior L. Superior
VT.
L. VT. L.
N.H.
N.H. MICH. MASS.
H
Hu
ur
Hudson R
r i NEW MASS. ri o
Hudson R
o
Onta NEW
ron
Onta TERR.
on
L. Michigan
L. Michigan
L. L.
YORK YORK
M
R.I.
iss
R.I. MICH.
iss
.
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ipp
TERR.
.
r E
.E CONN. L.
i R.
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N.J. UNORG. N.J.
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ILLINOIS
M MD.
iss N
. VIRGINIA
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iss
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KENTUCKY W
.
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TERR.
1860
CANADA
C WASHINGTON MAINE
TERRITORY L. Superior
ol
um
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VT.
UNORG. L.
TERR. N.H.
MASS.
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ri
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o
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ron
L. Michigan
NEBRASKA Mi L.
ssi WIS.
TERRITORY ss YORK
Sn . R.I.
ipp
a ke R MICH. ie
Er
.
iR
L. CONN.
.
PA.
IOWA N.J.
OHIO MD.
IND. DEL.
ILLINOIS
UTAH
TERRITORY . Missou i R. VIRGINIA
r
R. io
R
KANSAS Oh
do
Ark a
n sas R. TERRITORY
ra
KY.
lo
MISSOURI
Co
NORTH
CAROLINA
CALIFORNIA
UNORG. TENN.
NEW MEXICO TERRITORY ARKANSAS S.C.
TERRITORY (No census returns) ATLANTIC
Red R. ALA. GEORGIA OCEAN
MISS.
PACIFIC N
OCEAN TEXAS LA. E
W
FLA. S
Areas without slaves
Under 10 percent
10 to 30 percent Gulf of Mexico
30 to 50 percent
MEXICO 0 250 500 miles
50 percent and over
0 250 500 kilometers
MAP 12.1
Distribution of the Slave Population in 1790, 1830, and 1860
The cotton boom shifted the African American population to the South and West. In 1790, most
slaves lived and worked on Chesapeake tobacco and Carolina rice and indigo plantations. By 1830,
those areas were still heavily populated by black families, but hundreds of thousands of slaves also
labored on the cotton and sugar lands of the Lower Mississippi Valley and on cotton plantations
in Georgia and northern Florida. Three decades later, the majority of blacks lived and worked
along the Mississippi River and in an arc of fertile cotton lands — the “black belt” — sweeping from
Mississippi through South Carolina.
380 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
was growing rapidly from natural increase — an aver- market brought wealth to American traders between
age of 27 percent a decade by the 1810s — and creating 1800 and 1860. One set of routes ran to the Atlantic
a surplus of enslaved workers on many plantations. The coast and sent thousands of slaves to sugar plantations
result was a growing domestic trade in slaves. Between in Louisiana, the former French territory that entered
1818 and 1829, planters in just one Maryland tobacco- the Union in 1812. As sugar output soared, slave trad-
growing county — Frederick — sold at least 952 slaves ers scoured the countryside near the port cities of
to traders or cotton planters. Plantation owners in Baltimore, Alexandria, Richmond, and Charleston —
Virginia disposed of 75,000 slaves searching, as one of them put it, for “likely young men
IDENTIFY CAUSES during the 1810s and again dur- such as I think would suit the New Orleans market.”
What factors drove the ing the 1820s. The number of Each year, hundreds of muscular young slaves passed
expansion of the domestic forced Virginia migrants jumped through auction houses in the port cities bound for the
slave trade, and how did it to nearly 120,000 during the massive trade mart in New Orleans. Because this
work? 1830s and then averaged 85,000 coastal trade in laborers was highly visible, it elicited
during the 1840s and 1850s. In widespread condemnation by northern abolitionists.
Virginia alone, then, slave owners ripped 440,000 Sugar was a “killer” crop, and Louisiana (like the
African Americans from communities where their eighteenth-century West Indies) soon had a well-
families had lived for three or four generations. By deserved reputation among African Americans “as a
1860, the “mania for buying negroes” from the Upper place of slaughter.” Hundreds died each year from dis-
South had resulted in a massive transplantation of ease, overwork, and brutal treatment. Maryland farmer
more than 1 million slaves (Figure 12.2). A majority of John Anthony Munnikhuysen refused to allow his
African Americans now lived and worked in the Deep daughter Priscilla to marry a Louisiana sugar planter,
South, the lands that stretched from Georgia to Texas. declaring: “Mit has never been used to see negroes
This African American migration took two forms: flayed alive and it would kill her.”
transfer and sale. Looking for new opportunities, thou- The inland system that fed slaves to the Cotton
sands of Chesapeake and Carolina planters — men like South was less visible than the coastal trade but more
James Lide — sold their existing plantations and moved extensive. Professional slave traders went from one
their slaves to the Southwest. Many other planters gave rural village to another buying “young and likely
slaves to sons and daughters who moved west. Such Negroes.” The traders marched their purchases in
transfers accounted for about 40 percent of the African coffles — columns of slaves bound to one another — to
American migrants. The rest — about 60 percent of the Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri in the 1830s and to
1 million migrants — were “sold south” through traders. Arkansas and Texas in the 1850s. One slave described
Just as the Atlantic slave trade enriched English the arduous journey: “Dem Speckulators would put the
merchants in the eighteenth century, so the domestic chilluns in a wagon usually pulled by oxens and de
FIGURE 12.2
Slaves displaced each decade Forced Slave Migration to the Lower
Total, 1790–1860
Cumulative shift southward 1,000,500 South, 1790–1860
1 million The cotton boom set in motion a vast
redistribution of the African American
population. Between 1790 and 1860,
0.75 white planters moved or sold more than
a million enslaved people from the Upper
to the Lower South, a process that broke
up families and long-established black
0.5
communities. Based on data in Robert William Fogel
and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The
267,500
145,000 179,000 231,500 Economics of American Negro Slavery, by Robert W.
0.25 Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Copyright © 1974 Little
120,000
Brown and in Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders,
37,000
20,500 and Slaves in the Old South, by Michael Tadman,
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s
CHAPTER 12 The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860 381
mothers, mothers there children, and women there hundred slaves and huge tracts of the most fertile lands.
husbands.” Their ranks included many of the richest families in the
Whether or not they acknowledged the slaves’ pain, United States. On the eve of the Civil War, southern
few southern whites questioned the morality of the slave owners accounted for nearly two-thirds of all
slave trade. Responding to abolitionists’ criticism, the American men with wealth of $100,000 or more. Other
city council of Charleston, South Carolina, declared white southerners — backcountry yeomen farmers and
that “the removal of slaves from place to place, and cotton-planting tenants in particular — occupied some
their transfer from master to master, by gift, purchase, of the lowest rungs of the nation’s social order. The
or otherwise” was completely consistent “with moral expansion of southern slavery, like the flowering of
principle and with the highest order of civilization” northern capitalism, increased inequalities of wealth
(American Voices, p. 384). and status.
To see a longer excerpt of the city council of
Charleston, South Carolina, document, along with
other primary sources from this period, see Sources
The Dual Cultures of the Planter Elite
for America’s History. The westward movement split the plantation elite into
two distinct groups: the traditional aristocrats of the
Old South, whose families had gained their wealth
The World of Southern Whites from tobacco and rice, and the upstart capitalist-
inclined planters of the cotton states.
American slavery took root in the early eighteenth cen-
tury on the tobacco plantations of the Chesapeake and The Traditional Southern Gentry The Old South
in the rice fields of the Carolina low country. However, gentry dominated the Tidewater region of the Chesa-
it grew to maturity during the first half of the nine- peake and the low country of South Carolina and
teenth century on the cotton fields and sugar planta- Georgia. During the eighteenth century, these planters
tions of the Mississippi Valley. By then, a small elite of built impressive mansions and adopted the manners
extraordinarily wealthy planter families stood at the and values of the English landed gentry (Chapter 3).
top of southern society. These families — about three Their aristocratic-oriented culture survived the Rev-
thousand in number — each owned more than one olution of 1776 and soon took on a republican glaze
Redcliffe Plantation
In 1857, James Henry Hammond
began construction of this house
on a 400-acre site in Aiken County,
South Carolina. It originally had a
double-decked porch in the Greek
Revival style, which gave it an even
more imposing presence. Fifty
enslaved African Americans
worked at Redcliffe, and nearly
three hundred more on Hammond’s
other properties, providing the
wealth that allowed his family to
live in comfort. Hammond lived at
Redcliffe until he died in 1864 at
the age of fifty-seven, his health
undermined by his struggles with
Confederate leaders over wartime
policies and by mercury poisoning
from the laxatives he had taken for
nearly forty years. Michael A. Stroud.
AMERICAN
VOICES
As the abolitionist assault on slavery mounted, its rhetoric shaped the debate
over the emergent system of wage labor in the northern states. By the 1850s,
New York senator William Seward starkly contrasted the political systems of the
South and the North in terms of their labor systems: “the one resting on the
The Debate over Free basis of servile or slave labor, the other on voluntary labor of freemen.” Seward
strongly favored the “free-labor system,” crediting to it “the strength, wealth,
and Slave Labor greatness, intelligence, and freedom, which the whole American people now
enjoy.” As the following documents show, some Americans agreed with Seward,
while others, such as New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley and South Caro-
lina senator James Henry Hammond (who is quoted often in this chapter and
whose house appears on page 383), contested his premises and conclusions.
South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond New York Protestant Episcopal Church Mission Society
Speech to the Senate, March 4, 1858 Sixth Annual Report, 1837
In response to New York senator Seward, Senator Hammond This excerpt demonstrates the society’s belief that a class-
urged admission of Kansas under the proslavery Lecompton bound social order could be avoided by encouraging “a
Constitution and, by way of argument, celebrated the suc- spirit of independence and self-estimation” among the
cess of the South’s cotton economy and its political and poor.
social institutions.
In the older countries of Europe, there is a CLASS OF
In all social systems there must be a class to do the POOR: families born to poverty, living in poverty, dying
menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. . . . Such in poverty. With us there are none such. In our bounteous
a class you must have, or you would not have that other land individuals alone are poor; but they form no poor
class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. class, because with them poverty is but a transient evil . . .
It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political save [except] paupers and vagabonds . . . all else form one
government. . . . Fortunately for the South, she found a common class of citizens; some more, others less advanced
race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior in the career of honorable independence.
to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in
docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her Source: New York Protestant Episcopal Church Mission Society, Sixth Annual Report
(New York, 1837), 15–16.
purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them
slaves. . . .
The Senator from New York said yesterday that the Horace Greeley
whole world had abolished slavery. Aye, the name, but Public Letter Declining an Invitation to
not the thing; . . . for the man who lives by daily labor, Attend an Antislavery Convention in
and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his Cincinnati, Ohio, June 3, 1845
labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it;
in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers This letter from the editor of the New York Tribune
and “operatives,” as you call them, are essentially slaves. explains his broad definition of slavery.
The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for Dear Sir: — I received, weeks since, your letter inviting
life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no beg- me to be present at a general convention of opponents
ging, no want of employment among our people, and not of Human Slavery. . . . What is Slavery? You will probably
too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, answer; “The legal subjection of one human being to the
not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be will and power of another.” But this definition appears to
proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any me inaccurate. . . .
street in any of your large towns. I understand by Slavery, that condition in which one
human being exists mainly as a convenience for other
Source: The Congressional Globe (Washington, DC, March 6, 1858), 962.
human beings. . . . In short, . . . where the relation [is
384
one] of authority, social ascendency and power over sub- In the last will I made I left to you . . . Sally Johnson the
sistence on the one hand, and of necessity, servility, and mother of Louisa & all the children of both. Sally says
degradation on the other — there, in my view, is Slavery. . . . Henderson is my child. It is possible, but I do not believe
If I am less troubled concerning the Slavery prevalent in it Yet act on her’s rather than my opinion. Louisa’s first
Charleston or New-Orleans, it is because I see so much child may be mine. I think not. Her second I believe is
Slavery in New-York. . . . mine. Take care of her & her children who are both of
Wherever Opportunity to Labor is obtained with dif- your blood if not of mine. . . . The services of the rest will
ficulty, and is so deficient that the Employing class may compensate for indulgence to these. I cannot free these
virtually prescribe their own terms and pay the Laborer people & send them North. It would be cruelty to them.
only such share as they choose of the produce, there is a Nor would I like that any but my own blood should own
strong tendency to Slavery. as slaves my own blood or Louisa. I leave them to your
charge, believing that you will best appreciate & most
Source: Horace Greeley, Hints Toward Reform in Lectures, Addresses, and Other Writings independently carry out my wishes in regard to them. Do
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850), 352–355.
not let Louisa or any of my children or possible children
be the Slaves of Strangers. Slavery in the family will be
Editorial in the Staunton Spectator, 1859 their happiest earthly condition.
Entitled “Freedom and Slavery,” this editorial argues that
Source: James Hammond to Harry Hammond, February 19, 1856, in JHH Papers, SCL,
“the black man’s lot as a slave, is vastly preferable to that quoted in Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for
of his free brethren at the North.” Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 87.
385
386 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
(Chapter 8). Classical republican theory, which had owned 4,383 slaves — nearly 300 apiece — who annu-
long identified political tyranny as the major threat to ally grew and processed 14 million pounds of rice. As
liberty, had its roots in the societies of Greece and inexpensive Asian rice entered the world market in
Rome, where slavery was part of the natural order of the 1820s and cut their profits, the Carolina rice aristo-
society. That variety of republicanism appealed to crats sold some slaves and worked the others harder,
wealthy southerners, who feared federal government sustaining their luxurious lifestyle. The “hospitality
interference with their slave property. On the state and elegance” of Charleston and Savannah impressed
level, planters worried about populist politicians who savvy English traveler John Silk Buckingham.
would mobilize poorer whites, and so they demanded Buckingham likewise found “polished” families among
that authority rest in the hands of incorruptible men of long-established French Catholic planters in New
“virtue.” Orleans and along the Mississippi River: There, the
Indeed, affluent planters cast themselves as a repub- “sugar and cotton planters live in splendid edifices, and
lican aristocracy. “The planters here are essentially enjoy all the luxury that wealth can impart” (America
what the nobility are in other countries,” declared Compared, p. 387).
James Henry Hammond of South Carolina. “They In tobacco-growing regions, the lives of the planter
stand at the head of society & politics . . . [and form] aristocracy followed a different trajectory, in part
an aristocracy of talents, of virtue, of generosity and because slave ownership was widely diffused. In the
courage.” Wealthy planters criticized the democratic 1770s, about 60 percent of white families in the Chesa-
polity and middle-class society that was developing in peake region owned at least one African American. As
the Northeast and Midwest. “Inequality is the funda- wealthy tobacco planters moved their estates and slaves
mental law of the universe,” declared one planter. to the Cotton South, middling whites (who owned
Others condemned professional politicians as “a set of between five and twenty slaves) came to dominate the
demagogues” and questioned the legitimacy of univer- Chesapeake economy. The descendants of the old
sal suffrage. “Times are sadly different now to what tobacco aristocracy remained influential, but increas-
they were when I was a boy,” lamented David Gavin, a ingly as slave-owning grain farmers, lawyers, mer-
prosperous South Carolinian. Then, the “Sovereign chants, industrialists, and politicians. They hired out
people, alias mob” had little influence; now they vied surplus slaves, sold them south, or allowed them to
for power with the elite. “[How can] I rejoice for a free- purchase their freedom.
dom,” Gavin thundered, “which allows every bankrupt,
swindler, thief, and scoundrel, traitor and seller of his The Ideology and Reality of “Benevolence” The
vote to be placed on an equality with myself ?” planter aristocracy flourished around the periphery of
To maintain their privileged identity, aristocratic the South’s booming Cotton Belt — in Virginia, South
planters married their sons and daughters to one Carolina, and Louisiana — but it took the lead in
another and expected them to follow in their foot- defending slavery. Ignoring the Jeffersonian response
steps — the men working as plant- to slavery as a “misfortune” or a “necessary evil”
TRACE CHANGE ers, merchants, lawyers, news- (Chapter 8), southern apologists in the 1830s argued
OVER TIME paper editors, and ministers and that the institution was a “positive good” because it
Between 1800 and 1860, the women hosting plantation subsidized an elegant lifestyle for a white elite and pro-
what changes occurred balls and church bazaars. To con- vided tutelage for genetically inferior Africans. “As a
in the South’s planta- firm their social preeminence, race, the African is inferior to the white man,” declared
tion crops, labor system, they lived extravagantly and enter- Alexander Stephens, the future vice president of the
defense of slavery, and tained graciously. James Henry Confederacy. “Subordination to the white man, is his
elite planter lifestyle? Hammond built a Greek Revival normal condition.” Apologists depicted planters and
mansion with a center hall 53 feet their wives as aristocratic models of “disinterested
by 20 feet, its floor embellished with stylish Belgian benevolence,” who provided food and housing for their
tiles and expensive Brussels carpets. “Once a year, workers and cared for them in old age. One wealthy
like a great feudal landlord,” Hammond’s neighbor Georgian declared, “Plantation government should be
recounted, “[he] gave a fete or grand dinner to all the eminently patriarchal. . . . The pater-familias, or head
country people.” of the family, should, in one sense, be the father of the
Rice planters remained at the apex of the plantation whole concern, negroes and all.”
aristocracy. In 1860, the fifteen proprietors of the vast Those planters who embraced Christian steward-
plantations in All Saints Parish in South Carolina ship tried to shape the religious lives of their chattel.
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
Bernhard, Duke of
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
In 1825 and 1826, Bernhard, heir to the German principality of Saxe-Weimar-
The Racial Eisenach, traveled throughout the United States, and in 1828 he published an
account of his adventures. After a military career, the duke ruled his principality
Complexities from 1853 until his death in 1862.
of Southern Society
In New Orleans we were invited to a subscription white men. The “quarterons” regard such attachment
ball. . . . Only good society is invited to these balls. The as the equivalent of marriage. They would not think of
first to which we came was not very well attended; but entering upon it other than with a formal contract in
most of the ladies were very nice looking and well turned which the man engages to pay a stipulated sum to the
out in the French manner. Their clothing was elegant after mother or father of the girl. . . .
the latest Paris fashions. They danced very well and did Some of these women have inherited from their fathers
credit to their French dancing masters. Dancing and some and lovers, and possess considerable fortunes. Their status
music are the main branches of the education of a Creole is nevertheless always very depressed. They must not ride
[an American-born white] woman. . . . in the street in coaches, and their lovers can bring them to
The native men are far from matching the women in the balls in their own conveyances only after nightfall. . . .
elegance. And they stayed only a short time, preferring But many of these girls are much more carefully educated
to escape to a so-called “Quarterons Ball” which they than the whites, behave with more polish and more polite-
find more amusing and where they do not have to stand ness, and make their lovers happier than white wives their
on ceremony. . . . husbands. And yet the white ladies speak of these unfortu-
A “quarteron” [actually an octoroon, a person of nate depressed creatures with great disdain, even bitterness.
one-eighth African ancestry] is the offspring of a mes- Because of the depth of these prejudices, many fathers send
tizo mother and a white father, just as the mestizo is the their daughters, conceived after this manner, to France
child of a mulatto and a white man. The “quarterons” are where good education and wealth are no impediments to
almost completely white. There would be no way of rec- the attainment of a respectable place.
ognizing them by their complexion, for they are often
fairer than the Creoles. Black hair and eyes are generally Source: From Travels by His Highness Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
the signs of their status, although some are quite blond. Through North America in the Years 1825 and 1826, edited by C. J. Jeronimus and
translated by William Jeronimus. Copyright © 2001 University Press of America.
The ball is attended by the free “quarterons.” Yet the deep- Used by permission of the Rowan & Littlefield Publishing Company.
est prejudice reigns against them on account of their
colored origin; the white women particularly feel or affect
to feel a strong repugnance to them. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Marriage between colored and white people is forbid- 1. What does this passage suggest about the effect of slavery
den by the laws of the state. Yet the “quarterons,” for their and the meaning of racial identity on sexual relationships
part, look upon the Negroes and mulattoes as inferiors and marriages in America and in France?
and are unwilling to mix with them. The girls therefore 2. How does Bernhard’s account help to explain the values
and outlook of the free black population in the South?
have no other recourse than to become the mistresses of
They built churches on their plantations, welcomed belief, but they also hoped to counter abolitionist criti-
evangelical preachers, and required their slaves to cism and to use religious teachings to control their
attend services. A few encouraged African Americans workers.
with spiritual “gifts” to serve as exhorters and deacons. Indeed, slavery’s defenders increasingly used reli-
Most of these planters acted from sincere Christian gious justifications for human bondage. Protestant
387
388 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
ministers in the South pointed out that the Hebrews, engineers made casks, processed sugar, and built irri-
God’s chosen people, had owned slaves and that Jesus gation systems.
Christ had never condemned slavery. As James Henry To increase output, profit-seeking cotton planters
Hammond told a British abolitionist in 1845: “What began during the 1820s to use a rigorous gang-labor
God ordains and Christ sanctifies should surely com- system. Previously, many planters had supervised their
mand the respect and toleration of man.” However, workers sporadically or assigned them specific tasks to
many aristocratic defenders of slavery were absentee complete at their own pace. Now masters with twenty
owners or delegated authority to overseers, and they or more slaves organized disciplined teams, or “gangs,”
rarely glimpsed the day-to-day brutality of their regime supervised by black drivers and white overseers. They
of forced labor. “I was at the plantation last Saturday instructed the supervisors to work the gangs at a steady
and the crop was in fine order,” an absentee’s son wrote pace, clearing and plowing land or hoeing and picking
to his father, “but the negroes are most brutally scarred cotton. A traveler in Mississippi described two gangs
& several have run off.” returning from work:
First came, led by an old driver carrying a whip,
Cotton Entrepreneurs There was much less hypoc-
forty of the largest and strongest women I ever saw
risy and far less elegance among the entrepreneurial
together; they were all in a simple uniform dress of
planters of the Cotton South. “The glare of expensive a bluish check stuff, the skirts reaching little below
luxury vanishes” in the black soil regions of Alabama the knee. . . . They carried themselves loftily, each
and Mississippi, John Silk Buckingham remarked as having a hoe over the shoulder, and walking with a
he traveled through the Cotton South. Frederick Law free, powerful swing.
Olmsted — the future architect of New York’s Central
Park, who during the mid-1850s traveled through the Next marched the plow hands with their mules, “the
South for the New York Times — found that the planta- cavalry, thirty strong, mostly men, but a few of them
tions in Mississippi mostly had “but small and mean women.” Finally, “a lean and vigilant white overseer, on
residences.” Aristocratic paternalism vanished as well. a brisk pony, brought up the rear.”
A Mississippi planter put it plainly: “Everything has to The gang-labor system enhanced profits by increas-
give way to large crops of cotton, land has to be culti- ing productivity. Because slaves in gangs finished
vated wet or dry, negroes [must] work, hot or cold.” tasks in thirty-five minutes that took a white yeoman
Angry at being sold south and pressed to hard planter an hour to complete, gang labor became ever
labor, many slaves grew “mean” and stubborn. Those more prevalent. In one Georgia county, the percent-
who would not labor were subject to the lash. “Whiped age of blacks working in gangs doubled between 1830
all the hoe hands,” Alabama planter James Torbert and 1850. As the price of raw cotton surged after 1846,
wrote matter-of-factly in his journal. Overseers pushed the wealth of the planter class skyrocketed. And no
workers hard because their salaries often depended on wonder: nearly 2 million enslaved African Americans
the amount of cotton they were able “to make for the now labored on the plantations of the Cotton South
market.” A Mississippi slave recalled, “When I wuz so and annually produced 4 million bales of the valuable
tired I cu’dnt hardly stan’, I had to spin my cut of cotton fiber.
befor’ I cu’d go to sleep. We had to card, spin, an’ reel
at nite.” Planters, Smallholding Yeomen,
Cotton was a demanding crop because of its long
growing season. Slaves plowed the land in March; and Tenants
dropped seeds into the ground in early April; and, once Although the South was a slave society — that is, a
the plants began to grow, continually chopped away the society in which the institution of slavery affected all
surrounding grasses. In between these tasks, they aspects of life — most white southerners did not own
planted the corn and peas that would provide food for slaves. The percentage of white families who held
them and the plantation’s hogs and chickens. When the blacks in bondage steadily decreased — from 36 per-
cotton bolls ripened in late August, the long four- cent in 1830, to 31 percent in 1850, to about 25 percent
month picking season began. Slaves in the Cotton a decade later. However, slave ownership varied by
South, concluded Olmsted, worked “much harder and region. In some cotton-rich counties, 40 percent of the
more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions. white families owned slaves; in the hill country near
Moreover, fewer of them acquired craft skills than in the Appalachian Mountains, the proportion dropped
tobacco, sugar, and rice areas, where slave coopers and to 10 percent.
CHAPTER 12 The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860 389
in the North, they lost their legal identity when they that barely kept the family in food. In South Carolina,
married. To express their concerns, many southern W. J. Simpson struggled for years as a smallholding cot-
women joined churches, where they usually outnum- ton planter and then gave up. He hired out one of his
bered men by a margin of two to one. Women espe- two slaves and went to work as an overseer on his
cially welcomed the message of spiritual equality father’s farm.
preached in evangelical Baptist and Methodist churches, Less fortunate smallholders fell from the privileged
and they hoped that the church community would ranks of the slave-owning classes. Selling their land
hold their husbands to the same standards of Christian and slaves to pay off debts, they joined the mass of
behavior to which they conformed. However, most propertyless tenants who farmed the estates of wealthy
churches supported patriarchal rule and told female landlords. In 1860, in Hancock County, Georgia, there
members to remain in “wifely obedience,” whatever the were 56 slave-owning planters and 300 propertyless
actions of their husbands. white farm laborers and factory workers; in nearby
Whatever their authority within the household, Hart County, 25 percent of the white farmers were ten-
most southern yeomen lived and died as hardscrabble ants. Across the South, about 40 percent of the white
farmers. They worked alongside their slaves in the population worked as tenants or farm laborers; as the
fields, struggled to make ends meet as their families Southern Cultivator observed, they had “no legal right
grew, and moved regularly in search of opportunity. nor interest in the soil [and] no homes of their own.”
Thus, in 1847, James Buckner Barry left North Carolina
with his new wife and two slaves to settle in Bosque Poor Freemen Propertyless whites suffered the ill
County, Texas. There he worked part-time as an Indian consequences of living in a slave society that accorded
fighter while his slaves toiled on a drought-ridden farm little respect to hardworking white laborers. Nor could
they hope for a better life for their children, because Mountains stretched great grasslands. An army
slave owners refused to pay taxes to fund public explorer, Major Stephen H. Long, thought the plains
schools. Moreover, wealthy planters bid up the price of region “almost wholly unfit for cultivation” and in 1820
African Americans, depriving white laborers and ten- labeled it the Great American Desert. The label stuck.
ants of easy access to the slave labor required to accu- Americans looking for land turned south, to Mexican
mulate wealth. Finally, planter-dominated legislatures territory. At the same time, elite planters struggled to
forced all white men, whether they owned slaves or control state governments in the Cotton South.
not, to serve in the patrols and militias that deterred
black uprisings. The majority of white southerners,
Frederick Law Olmsted concluded, “are poor. They . . . The Settlement of Texas
have little — very little — of the common comforts and After winning independence from Spain in 1821, the
consolations of civilized life. Their destitution is not Mexican government pursued an activist settlement
material only; it is intellectual and it is moral.” policy. To encourage migration to the refigured state of
Marking this moral destitution, poor whites Coahuila y Tejas, it offered sizable land grants to its cit-
enjoyed the psychological satisfaction that they ranked izens and to American emigrants. Moses Austin, an
above blacks. As Alfred Iverson, a U.S. senator from American land speculator, settled smallholding farm-
Georgia (1855–1861), explained: a white man “walks ers on his large grant, and his son, Stephen F. Austin,
erect in the dignity of his color and race, and feels that acquired even more land — some 180,000 acres — which
he is a superior being, with the more exalted powers he sold to newcomers. By 1835, about 27,000 white
and privileges than others.” To reinforce that sense of Americans and their 3,000 African American slaves
racial superiority, planter James Henry Hammond told were raising cotton and cattle in the well-watered
his poor white neighbors, “In a slave country every plains and hills of eastern and central Texas. They far
freeman is an aristocrat.” outnumbered the 3,000 Mexican residents, who lived
Rejecting that half-truth, many southern whites fled primarily near the southwestern Texas towns of Goliad
planter-dominated counties in the 1830s and sought and San Antonio.
farms in the Appalachian hill country and beyond — in When Mexico in 1835 adopted a new constitution
western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the southern creating a stronger central government and dissolving
regions of Illinois and Indiana, and Missouri. Living as state legislatures, the Americans split into two groups.
yeomen farmers, they used family labor to grow food- The “war party,” led by Sam Houston and recent
stuffs for sustenance. To obtain cash or store credit to migrants from Georgia, demanded independence for
buy agricultural implements, cloth, shoes, salt, and other Texas. Members of the “peace party,” led by Stephen
necessities, yeomen families sold their surplus crops, Austin, negotiated with the central government in
raised hogs for market sale, and — when the price of cot- Mexico City for greater political autonomy. They
ton rose sharply — grew a few bales. Their goals were believed Texas could flourish within a decentralized
modest: on the family level, they wanted to preserve Mexican republic, a “federal” constitutional system
their holdings and buy enough land to set up their chil- favored by the Liberal Party in Mexico (and advocated
dren as small-scale farmers. As citizens, smallholders in the United States by Jacksonian Democrats). Austin
wanted to control their local government and elect men won significant concessions for the Texans, including
of their own kind to public office. However, thoughtful an exemption from a law ending slavery, but in 1835
yeomen understood that the slave-based cotton econ- Mexico’s president, General Antonio López de Santa
omy sentenced family farmers to a subordinate place in Anna, nullified them. Santa Anna wanted to impose
the social order. They could hope for a life of indepen- national authority throughout Mexico. Fearing central
dence and dignity only by moving north or farther west, control, the war party provoked a rebellion that most
where labor was “free” and hard work was respected. of the American settlers ultimately supported. On
March 2, 1836, the American rebels proclaimed the
independence of Texas and
adopted a constitution legalizing UNDERSTAND
Expanding and Governing slavery. POINTS OF VIEW
To put down the rebellion, What issues divided the
the South President Santa Anna led an army
Mexican government and
the Americans in Texas,
By the 1830s, settlers from the South had carried both that wiped out the Texan garri-
and what proposals sought
yeoman farming and plantation slavery into Arkansas son defending the Alamo in San to resolve them?
and Missouri. Between those states and the Rocky Antonio and then captured Goliad,
392 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
executing about 350 prisoners of war (Map 12.2). Santa The Texans voted for annexation by the United
Anna thought that he had crushed the rebellion, but States, but President Martin Van Buren refused to bring
New Orleans and New York newspapers romanticized the issue before Congress. As a Texas diplomat reported,
the deaths at the Alamo of folk heroes Davy Crockett the cautious Van Buren and other party politicians
and Jim Bowie. Drawing on anti-Catholic sentiment feared that annexation would spark a war with Mexico
aroused by Irish immigration and the massacre at and, beyond that, a “desperate death-struggle . . .
Goliad, they urged Americans to “Remember the between the North and the South [over the extension
Alamo” and depicted the Mexicans as tyrannical butch- of slavery]; a struggle involving the probability of a dis-
ers in the service of the pope. American adventurers, solution of the Union.”
lured by offers of land grants, flocked to Texas to join
the rebel forces. Commanded by General Sam Houston,
the Texans routed Santa Anna’s overconfident army The Politics of Democracy
in the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, winning de As national leaders refused admission to Texas, elite
facto independence. The Mexican government refused planters faced political challenges in the Cotton South.
to recognize the Texas Republic but, for the moment, Unlike the planter-aristocrats who ruled the colo-
did not seek to conquer it. nial world, they lived in a republican society with a
CHAPTER 12 The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860 393
Tr
South came from the ranks of middle-level planters
ini
Pe
Br
c os
ty R
az
R.
and planter-lawyers. Astute politicians, they refrained
os
.
Edwards’s
R.
N Claimed by Texas ad Colony
Ro from laying “oppressive” taxes on the people, particu-
(1836–1850) ni
o San Jacinto
n to April 21, 1836
Austin’s
W E Sa
nA
Colony larly the white majority who owned no slaves. Between
Ri San Antonio Galveston
Bay 1830 and 1860, the Alabama legislature obtained about
oG
S
MEXICO
ran
Nu Goliad DeWitt’s
ec e 70 percent of the state’s revenue from taxes on slaves
de
s R. Colony
0 100 200 miles
The Alamo Corpus
March 6, 1836 Christi Bay
and land. Another 10 to 15 percent came from levies
0 100 200 kilometers
Gulf of Mexico on carriages, gold watches, and other luxury goods and
Main battles in
Texas War of Independence Matamoros
on the capital invested in banks, transportation com-
panies, and manufacturing enterprises.
MAP 12.2 To win the votes of taxpaying slave owners, Ala-
American Settlements, the Texas-Mexican War, bama Democrats advocated limited government and
and Boundary Disputes low taxes. They attacked their Whig opponents for
During the 1820s the Mexican government encouraged favoring higher taxes and for providing government
Americans to settle in the sparsely populated state of subsidies for banks, canals, railroads, and other inter-
Coahuila y Tejas. By 1835 the nearly 30,000 Americans
far outnumbered Mexican residents. To put down an
nal improvements. “Voting against appropriations is
American-led revolt, General Santa Anna led 6,000 the safe and popular side,” one Democratic legislator
soldiers into Tejas in 1836. After overwhelming the declared, and his colleagues agreed; until the 1850s,
rebels at the Alamo in March, Santa Anna set out they rejected most of the bills that would have granted
to capture the Texas Provisional Government, which
had fled to Galveston. But the Texans’ victory at San subsidies to transportation companies or banks.
Jacinto in April ended the war and secured de facto If tax policy in Alabama had a democratic thrust,
independence for the Republic of Texas (1836–1845). elsewhere in the South it did not. In some states,
However, the annexation of Texas to the United States
sparked a war with Mexico in 1846, and the state’s
wealthy planters used their political muscle to exempt
boundaries remained in dispute until the Compromise slave property from taxation. Or they shifted the bur-
of 1850. den to backcountry yeomen, who owned low-quality
pasturelands, by taxing farms according to acreage
rather than value. Planter-legislators also spared them-
democratic ethos. The Alabama Constitution of 1819 selves the cost of building fences around their fields by
granted suffrage to all white men; it also provided for a enacting laws that required yeomen to “fence in” their
secret ballot (rather than voice-voting); apportion- livestock. And, during the 1850s, wealthy legislators
ment of legislative seats based on population; and the throughout the South used public funds to subsidize
election of county supervisors, sheriffs, and clerks of the canals and railroads in which they had invested,
court. Given these democratic provisions, political fac- ignoring the protests of yeoman-backed legislators.
tions in Alabama had to compete for votes. When a
Whig newspaper sarcastically asked whether the state’s The Paradox of Southern Prosperity Even with-
policies should “be governed and controlled by the out these internal improvements, the South had a
whim and caprice of the majority of the people,” strong economy. Indeed, it ranked fourth in the world
Democrats hailed the power of the common folk. They in 1860, with a per capita income among whites higher
called on “Farmers, Mechanics, laboring men” to repu- than that of France and Germany. As a contributor to a
diate Whig “aristocrats . . . the soft handed and soft Georgia newspaper argued in the 1850s, planters and
headed gentry.” yeomen should not complain about “tariffs, and mer-
chants, and manufacturers” because “the most highly
Taxation Policy Whatever the electioneering rheto- prosperous people now on earth, are to be found in
ric, most Whig and Democrat political candidates were these very [slave] States.” Such arguments tell only part
men of substance. In the early 1840s, nearly 90 percent of the story. Nearly all African Americans — 40 percent
of Alabama’s legislators owned slaves, testimony to the of the population — lived in dire and permanent pov-
political power of the slave-owning minority. Still, rel- erty. And, although the average southern white man
atively few lawmakers — only about 10 percent — were was 80 percent richer than the average northerner in
394 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
crop there quickly doubled. Cotton and agriculture ritual scars, had maintained the religious practices of
remained King. their homelands.
Slavery also deterred Europeans from migrating
to the South, because they feared competition from African Religions and Christian Conversion Afri-
bound labor. Their absence deprived the region of cans carried their traditional religious practices to the
skilled artisans and of hardworking laborers to drain United States. Some practiced Islam, but the majority
swamps, dig canals, smelt iron, and work on railroads. relied on African gods and spirits. As late as 1842,
When entrepreneurs tried to hire slaves for these dan- Charles C. Jones, a Presbyterian minister, noted that
gerous tasks, planters replied that “a negro’s life is too the blacks on his family’s plantation in Georgia believed
valuable to be risked.” Slave owners also feared that hir- “in second-sight, in apparitions, charms, witchcraft . . .
ing out would make their slaves too independent. As a [and other] superstitions brought from Africa.” Fearing
planter told Frederick Law Olmsted, such workers for their own souls if they withheld “the means of sal-
“had too much liberty . . . and got a habit of roaming vation” from African Americans, Jones and other zeal-
about and taking care of themselves.” ous Protestant preachers and planters set out to convert
Thus, despite its increasing size and booming slaves.
exports, the South remained an economic colony: Great Other Protestant crusaders came from the ranks
Britain and the North bought its staple crops and pro- of pious black men and women who had become Christ-
vided its manufactures, financial services, and shipping ians in the Chesapeake. Swept to the Cotton South by
facilities. In 1860, some 84 percent of southerners — the domestic slave trade, they carried with them the
more than double the percentage in the northern evangelical message of emotional conversion, ritual bap-
states — still worked in agriculture, and southern facto- tism, and communal spirituality. Equally important,
ries turned out only 10 percent of the nation’s manufac- these crusaders adapted Protestant doctrines to black
tures. The South’s fixation on an “exclusive and exhaust- needs. Enslaved Christians pointed out that blacks as
ing” system of cotton monoculture and slave labor well as whites were “children of God” and should be
filled South Carolina textile entrepreneur William treated accordingly. Black Protes-
Gregg with “dark forebodings”: “It has produced us tantism generally ignored the doc- PLACE EVENTS
such an abundant supply of all the luxuries and ele- trines of original sin and predesti- IN CONTEXT
gances of life, with so little exertion on our part, that we nation, and preachers didn’t use How did the Second Great
have become enervated, unfitted for other and more biblical passages that encouraged Awakening affect the
laborious pursuits.” unthinking obedience to author- development of black
ity. A white minister in Liberty religion?
County, Georgia, reported that
The African American World when he urged slaves to obey their masters, “one half of
my audience deliberately rose up and walked off.”
By the 1820s, the cultural life of most slaves reflected
both the values and customs of their West African Black Worship Indeed, some African American con-
ancestors and the language, laws, and religious beliefs verts envisioned the deity as the Old Testament warrior
of the South’s white population. This mix of African- who had liberated the Jews and so would liberate
and European-derived cultural values persisted for them. Inspired by a vision of Christ, Nat Turner led his
decades because whites discouraged blacks from bloody rebellion against slavery in Virginia (see Chap-
assimilating and because slaves prized their diverse ter 11). Other black Christians saw themselves as
African heritages. Chosen People: “de people dat is born of God.” Charles
Davenport, a Mississippi slave, recalled black preachers
“exhort[ing] us dat us was de chillun o’ Israel in de wil-
Evangelical Black Protestantism derness an’ de Lawd done sont us to take dis lan’ o’ milk
The emergence of black Christianity illustrated the an’ honey.”
synthesis of African and European cultures. From the Still, African Americans expressed their Chris-
1790s to the 1840s, the Second Great Awakening swept tianity in distinctive ways. The thousands of blacks
over the South, and evangelical Baptist and Methodist who joined the Methodist Church respected its ban on
preachers converted thousands of white families and profane dancing but praised the Lord in what minister
hundreds of enslaved blacks (see Chapter 8). Until that Henry George Spaulding called the “religious dance of
time, African-born blacks, often identifiable by their the Negroes.” Spaulding described the African-derived
396 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
“ring shout” this way: “Three or four, standing still, Africa, and dey’d all take it up and keep at it, and keep
clapping their hands and beating time with their feet, a-addin’ to it, and den it would be a spiritual.
commence singing in unison one of the peculiar shout By such African-influenced means, black congrega-
melodies, while the others walk around in a ring, in tions devised a distinctive and joyous brand of Protes-
single file, joining also in the song.” The songs them- tant worship to sustain them on the long journey to
selves were usually collective creations, devised spon- emancipation and the Promised Land. “O my Lord
taneously from bits of old hymns and tunes. Recalled delivered Daniel,” the slaves sang, “O why not deliver
an ex-slave: me too?”
We’d all be at the “prayer house” de Lord’s day, and
de white preacher he’d splain de word and read whar Forging Families and Communities
Esekial done say — Dry bones gwine ter lib ergin.
And, honey, de Lord would come a-shinin’ thoo dem
Black Protestantism was one facet of an increasingly
pages and revive dis ole nigger’s heart, and I’d jump homogeneous African American culture in the rural
up dar and den and holler and shout and sing and South. Even in South Carolina — a major point of entry
pat, and dey would all cotch de words and I’d sing for imported slaves — only 20 percent of the black resi-
it to some ole shout song I’d heard ’em sing from dents in 1820 had been born in Africa. The domestic
CHAPTER 12 The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860 397
slave trade mingled blacks from many states, erased The creation of fictive kinship
UNDERSTAND
regional differences, and prompted the emergence of a ties was part of a community-
POINTS OF VIEW
core culture in the Lower Mississippi Valley. A prime building process, a partial substi- In what respects did
example was the fate of the Gullah dialect, which com- tute for the family ties that sus- African cultural practices
bined words from English and a variety of African lan- tained whites during periods of affect the lives of enslaved
guages in an African grammatical structure. Spoken by crisis. Naming children was African Americans?
blacks in the Carolina low country well into the twen- another. Recently imported slaves
tieth century, Gullah did not take root on the cotton frequently gave their children African names. Males
plantations of Alabama and Mississippi. There, slaves born on Friday, for example, were often called Cuffee —
from Carolina were far outnumbered by migrants from the name of that day in several West African languages.
the Chesapeake, who spoke black English. Like Gullah, Many American-born parents chose names of British
black English used double negatives and other African origin, but they usually named sons after fathers, uncles,
grammatical forms, but it consisted primarily of or grandfathers and daughters after grandmothers.
English words rendered with West African pronuncia- Those transported to the Cotton South often named
tion (for example, with th pronounced as d — “de their children for relatives left behind. Like incest rules
preacher”). and marriage rituals, this intergenerational sharing of
Nonetheless, African influences remained signifi- names evoked memories of a lost world and bolstered
cant. At least one-third of the slaves who entered the kin ties in the new one.
United States between 1776 and 1809 came from the
Congo region of West-Central Africa, and they brought
their cultures with them. As traveler Isaac Holmes Negotiating Rights
reported in 1821: “In Louisiana, and the state of By forming stable families and communities, African
Mississippi, the slaves . . . dance for several hours dur- Americans gradually created a sense of order in the
ing Sunday afternoon. The general movement is in harsh and arbitrary world of slavery. In a few regions,
what they call the Congo dance.” Similar descriptions slaves won substantial control over their lives.
of blacks who “danced the Congo and sang a purely
African song to the accompaniment of . . . a drum” Working Lives During the Revolutionary era, blacks
appeared as late as 1890. in the rice-growing lowlands of South Carolina suc-
African Americans also continued to respect cessfully asserted the right to labor by the “task.” Under
African incest taboos by shunning marriages between the task system, workers had to complete a precisely
cousins. On the Good Hope Plantation in South defined job each day — for example, digging up a
Carolina, nearly half of the slave children born between quarter-acre of land, hoeing half an acre, or pounding
1800 and 1857 were related by blood to one another; seven mortars of rice. By working hard, many finished
yet when they married, only one of every forty-one their tasks by early afternoon, a Methodist preacher
unions took place between cousins. White planters reported, and had “the rest of the day for themselves,
were not the source of this taboo: cousin marriages which they spend in working their own private
were frequent among the 440 South Carolina men and fields . . . planting rice, corn, potatoes, tobacco &c. for
women who owned at least one hundred slaves in 1860, their own use and profit.”
in part because such unions kept wealth within an Slaves on sugar and cotton plantations led more
extended family (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 398). regimented lives, thanks to the gang-labor system. As
Unlike white marriages, slave unions were not one field hand put it, there was “no time off [between]
legally binding. According to a Louisiana judge, “slaves de change of de seasons. . . . Dey was allus clearin’ mo’
have no legal capacity to assent to any contract . . . lan’ or sump’. ” Many slaves faced bans on growing crops
because slaves are deprived of all civil rights.” None- on their own. “It gives an excuse for trading,” explained
theless, many African Americans took marriage vows one owner, and that encouraged roaming and indepen-
before Christian ministers or publicly marked their dence. Still, many masters hired out surplus workers
union in ceremonies that included the West African as teamsters, drovers, steamboat workers, turpentine
custom of jumping over a broomstick together. Once gatherers, and railroad builders; in 1856, no fewer than
married, newly arrived young people in the Cotton 435 hired slaves laid track for the Virginia & Tennessee
South often chose older people in their new communi- Railroad. Many owners regretted the result. As an over-
ties as fictive “aunts” and “uncles.” The slave trade had seer remarked about a slave named John, “He is not as
destroyed their family, but not their family values. good a hand as he was before he went to Alabamy.”
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
1. Ex-slave Josephine Smith, interviewed at age Ole mammy ‘Lit’ wus mity ole en she lived in one corner
ninety-four by Mary A. Hicks, Raleigh, North of de big yard en she keered fur all de black chilluns while
Carolina, 1930s. Slave children had loving but de old folks wurk in de field. Mammy Lit wus good to all
limited relationships with their mothers, who de chilluns en I had ter help her wid dem chilluns en keep
worked long hours in the fields and were dem babies on de pallet. Mammy Lit smoked a pipe, en
sometimes sold away from their children. sum times I wuld hide dat pipe, en she wuld slap me fur
I ‘members seein’ a heap o’ slave sales, wid de niggers in it, den sum times I wuld run way en go ter de kitchen
chains, an’ de spec’ulators sellin’ an’ buyin’ dem off. I also whar my mammy wus at wurk en mammy Lit wuld
‘members seein’ a drove of slaves wid nothin’ on but a rag hafter cum fur me en den she wuld whip me er gin.
‘twixt dere legs bein’ galloped roun’ ‘fore de buyers. ‘Bout She sed I wus bad.
de wust thing dat eber I seed do’ wuz a slave ‘woman at
4. “Mrs. Meriwether Administering Bitters,” illus-
Louisburg who had been sold off from her three weeks
tration from John Pendleton Kennedy, Swallow
old baby, an wuz bein’ marched ter New Orleans.
Barn, Or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion, 1851.
She had walked till she quz give out, an’ she wuz weak
Bitters — strong alcoholic beverages flavored with
enough ter fall in de middle o’ de road. . . . As I pass by
bitter herbs — were administered as medicine in
dis ‘oman begs me in God’s name fer a drink o’ water, an’
the nineteenth century, as in this depiction of a
I gives it ter her. I ain’t neber be so sorry fer nobody. . . .
planter’s wife tending to enslaved children. Ken-
Dey walk fer a little piece an’ dis ‘oman fall out. She dies
nedy’s cheerful depictions of Virginia plantation life
dar side o’ de road, an’ right dar dey buries her, cussin’,
in this popular book, first published in 1832, rein-
dey tells me, ’bout losin’ money on her.
forced the notion of slavery as a “positive good.”
2. “Narrative of James Curry, a Fugitive Slave,”
The Liberator, January 10, 1840. The abolitionist
newspaper The Liberator published heartrending
accounts of death and separation in slave families
and how “fictive kinship” assisted the survivors.
My mother’s labor was very hard. She would go to the
house in the morning, take her pail upon her head, and
go away to the cow-pen, and milk fourteen cows. She
then put on the bread for the family breakfast, and got
the cream ready for churning, and set a little child to
churn it, she having the care of from ten to fifteen chil-
dren, whose mothers worked in the field. . . . Among the
slave children, were three little orphans, whose mothers,
at their death, committed them to the care of my mother.
One of them was a babe. She took them and treated them
as her own. The master took no care about them. She
always took a share of the cloth she had provided for
her own children, to cover these little friendless ones.
398
5. G. M. J., “Early Culture of Children,” 1855. This in the nursery with servants, whose tastes, feelings, mor-
excerpt from a Christian advice manual for mothers als, manners, and language are but a little removed from
reflects the values of the mid-nineteenth-century the lower animals of creation; there to receive impres-
white Protestant middle class. sions, and imbibe habits, which will grow with their
growth, and strengthen with their strength, until like the
“Train up a child in the way he should go,” is a law as branches of the giant oak, they shall expand and deepen
imperative in the 19th century, as when first uttered by into a shade that will forever conceal the parent stock.
the lips of the wise man. Mothers are the natural execu-
tors of this law to their daughters. Nothing but the most 6. Visiting Cards Created by Philadelphia Portrait
unavoidable and pressing force of circumstances, should Painter and Photographer Peregrine F. Cooper, As
wrench this power from their hands. Who will guard with We Found Them (left), As They Are Now (right),
a mother’s jealous eye the health, habits, morals, and reli- 1864. One of the ways to “train up a child in the
gion of this most delicate part of creation. . . . How often I way he should go” was to inculcate abolitionist
have been pained to see mothers place those delicate plants sentiments early and often.
Sources: (1) WPA Slave Narrative Project, 1936–38, learnnc.org; (2) “Narrative of James Curry, a Fugitive Slave,” The Liberator, January 10, 1840, learnnc.org; (3) The MS Gen Web
Project, msgw.org/slaves/alford-xslave.htm; (5) Home Garner; or the Intellectual and Moral Store House, ed. Mary G. Clarke (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1855), 115.
399
400 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860
The planters’ greatest fear was that enslaved African barns, poisoning his food, or destroying his crops. Fear
Americans — a majority of the population in most of resistance, as well as critical scrutiny by abolitionists,
cotton-growing counties — would rise in rebellion. prompted many masters to reduce their reliance on the
Legally speaking, owners had virtually unlimited lash and use positive incentives such as food and spe-
power over their slaves. “The power of the master must cial privileges. Noted Frederick Law Olmsted: “Men of
be absolute,” intoned Justice Thomas Ruffin of the sense have discovered that it was better to offer them
North Carolina Supreme Court in 1829. But absolute rewards than to whip them.” Nonetheless, owners
power required brutal coercion, and only hardened or could always resort to violence, and countless masters
sadistic masters had the stomach for such violence. regularly asserted their power by demanding sex from
“These poor negroes, receiving none of the fruits of their female slaves. As ex-slave Bethany Veney
their labor, do not love work,” explained one woman lamented in her autobiography, from “the unbridled
who worked her own farm; “if we had slaves, we should lust of the slave-owner . . . the law holds . . . no pro-
have to . . . beat them to make use of them.” tecting arm” over black women.
Moreover, passive resistance by African Americans
seriously limited their owners’ power. Slaves slowed the Survival Strategies Slavery remained an exploit-
pace of work by feigning illness and losing or breaking ative system grounded in fear and coercion. Over the
tools. One Maryland slave, faced with transport to decades, hundreds of individual slaves responded by
Mississippi and separation from his wife, flatly refused attacking their masters and overseers. But only a few
“to accompany my people, or to blacks — among them Gabriel and Martin Prosser
PLACE EVENTS be exchanged or sold,” his owner (1800) and Nat Turner (1831) — plotted mass upris-
IN CONTEXT reported. Masters ignored such ings. Most slaves recognized that revolt would be futile;
How successful were slaves feelings at their peril. A slave (or a they lacked the autonomous institutions such as the
in securing significant con-
relative) might retaliate by setting communes of European peasants, for example, needed
trol over their lives?
fire to the master’s house and to organize a successful rebellion. Moreover, whites
CHAPTER 12 The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860 401
were numerous, well armed, and determined to main- “pegged down to one single spot, and must take root
tain their position of racial superiority. there or die.”
Escape was equally problematic. Blacks in the Upper “Taking root” meant building the best possible lives
South could flee to the North, but only by leaving their for themselves. Over time, enslaved African Americans
family and kin. Slaves in the Lower South escaped to pressed their owners for a greater share of the product of
sparsely settled regions of Florida, where some inter- their labor, much like unionized workers in the North
married with the Seminole Indians. Elsewhere in the were doing. Thus slaves insisted on getting paid for
South, escaped slaves eked out a meager existence “overwork” and on the right to cultivate a garden and sell
in inhospitable marshy areas or mountain valleys. its produce. “De menfolks tend to de gardens round dey
Consequently, most African Americans remained on own house,” recalled a Louisiana slave. “Dey raise some
plantations; as Frederick Douglass put it, they were cotton and sell it to massa and git li’l money dat way.”
Enslaved women raised poultry and sold chickens and
eggs. An Alabama slave remembered buying “Sunday
clothes with dat money, sech as hats and pants and
shoes and dresses.” By the 1850s, thousands of African
Americans were reaping the small rewards of this under-
ground economy, and some accumulated sizable prop-
erty. Enslaved Georgia carpenter Alexander Steele
owned four horses, a mule, a silver watch, two cows, a
wagon, and large quantities of fodder, hay, and corn.
Whatever their material circumstances, few slaves
accepted the legitimacy of their status. Although he
was fed well and never whipped, a former slave told an
English traveler, “I was cruelly treated because I was
kept in slavery.”
beliefs,” said one. Calls by white planters in the 1840s to beyond. Powered by cotton, this movement westward
re-enslave free African Americans reinforced black involved the forced migration of more than 1 million
unity. Knowing their own liberty was not secure so enslaved African Americans and divided the planter
long as slavery existed, free blacks celebrated on August elite into aristocratic paternalists and entrepreneurial
1, the day slaves in the British West Indies won eman- capitalists.
cipation, and sought a similar goal for enslaved African We also examined the character of white and black
Americans. As a delegate to the National Convention societies in the Cotton South. After 1820, less than a
of Colored People in 1848 put it, “Our souls are yet third of white families owned slaves, and another third
dark under the pall of slavery.” In the rigid American were yeomen farmers; propertyless tenant farmers and
caste system, free blacks stood as symbols of hope to laborers made up the rest. Many whites joined evan-
enslaved African Americans and as symbols of danger gelical Protestant churches, as did blacks, who infused
to most whites. their churches with African modes of expression.
Indeed, church and family became core institutions of
African American society, providing strength and so-
SUMMARY lace amid the tribulations of slavery. Finally, we explored
the initiatives taken by the free black population, in
In this chapter, we focused on the theme of an expand- both the northern and southern states, to achieve indi-
ing South. Beginning about 1800, planters carried the vidual mobility and to build community institutions.
system of plantation slavery from its traditional home These efforts resulted in a church-based leadership
in the Upper South to the Mississippi Valley and class and a black abolitionist movement.
404 PART 4 CHAPTER REVIEW
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Why in 1860 did white southerners remain 3. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
committed to the institution of slavery and its events listed under “Identity” on the thematic time-
expansion? line on page 283, and then discuss how the end of
the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 and the subsequent
2. Based on what you have learned in Part 4, compare
rise of the domestic slave trade affected the identity
and contrast society in the American South with
of the African American population.
that in the North. Was America, in fact, two dis-
tinct societies by 1860? If not, what bonds, beliefs,
and cultural practices united Americans across
regional boundaries? If so, what factors contributed
to the development of separate regional identities?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE After reviewing 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Chapter 12 contains a
the relevant materials in Chapters 3, 8, and 12, number of paintings or photographs of enslaved
explain how the plantation economy and the sys- African Americans. In your judgment, do those
tem of slavery changed between 1720 and 1860. images, either individually or as a group, capture
the reality of slave life? Explain your position while
evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of paint-
ings and photographs as historical evidence.
CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER REVIEW 405
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (1998). Recounts Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion
Ball’s ancestors’ ownership of slaves, their illicit sexual and the Origins of the Deep South (2005). Analyzes the
unions, and the family’s diverse racial identity. changing character of slavery and African American
society.
Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity (2003). Traces the
history of slavery in the United States. For primary documents on the black Christian
church, consult docsouth.unc.edu/church/index
Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, Ladies and Gentlemen on
.html.
Display (2001). Explores the lives of the planter class.
Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds (1995).
Evokes the patriarchal lives of yeomen families.
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1810s t Africans from Congo region influence black culture for decades
1830s t Gentry in Old South adopt paternalistic ideology and argue that slavery is a “positive good”
KEY TURNING POINTS: Using the five entries in the timeline for the 1830s, write an essay that
describes the economy, society, and polity of the South in that decade and that analyzes the sig-
nificance of the decade’s developments in the evolution of the region between 1800 and 1860.
5
Creating and
Preserving a
Continental Nation
1844–1877
P A R T
C H A P T E R 13 Between 1844 and 1877, the United States became a continental nation by
Expansion, War, winning three wars and creating a stronger central government. This
and Sectional Crisis,
energetic process of national expansion and purposeful state building
1844–1860
spanned three decades and three periods often treated as distinct: ante-
C H A P T E R 14 bellum America, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. In fact, these decades
Two Societies at War,
constitute a single, distinct period of American political and constitu-
1861–1865
tional development that produced a consolidated national republic.
C H A P T E R 15 This era of state building began in the 1840s as the United States
Reconstruction,
expanded to the Pacific through a diplomatic deal with Great Britain and
1865–1877
a war of conquest against Mexico. However, geographic expansion sharp-
C H A P T E R 16 ened the conflict between free and slave states and led eventually to the
Conquering a
secession of the South in 1861. The Union government defeated the seces-
Continent, 1854–1890
sionists in a bloody Civil War and reconstructed the Union under the
ideals of the Republican Party. Freed from slavery, millions of African
Americans fought for better pay and equal citizenship rights. Under pres-
sure to assimilate, most Native Americans adapted selectively while
maintaining tribal ties and traditional lifeways. Subsequently, the national
government promoted Euro-American settlement of the West by con-
quering Indian peoples and confining them to reservations.
The story of these transforming events focuses on three sets of his-
torical issues:
406
Continental Empire and Sectional Tensions, Political
Cultural Conflict Divisions, and Civil War
A romantic spirit of geographic expansion grew The Mexican War prompted a decade-long debate over
during the 1840s, prompting southerners to demand the expansion of slavery into the newly acquired lands.
the annexation of Texas and midwesterners to favor This bitter struggle led to the Compromise of 1850, a
the acquisition of Oregon. Northeastern railroad complex legislative agreement that won little support
entrepreneurs championed western settlement, as either in the North or in the South and divided the
did merchants eager to trade across the Pacific. The Whig Party. As southern Whigs became Democrats
quest for western lands sparked seizure of the Mexican and northern Whigs turned into Republicans or
provinces of New Mexico and California and purchase Know-Nothings, the parties split along sectional
of Russian claims to Alaska. We analyze these events lines. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 began a
in Chapter 13. downward spiral of political conflict that ended in
This process of expansion and state building, the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860
combined with the arrival of millions of immigrants, and the secession of thirteen southern states. Chap-
created new systems of racial and ethnic conflict. In ter 13 details this breakdown of the political system.
the East, Irish Catholics and German-speaking migrants In the long Civil War that followed, the military
organized politically to protect their churches, saloons, forces of the North and South were at first evenly
and cultural identity, prompting a sharp reaction matched. However, the North’s superior financial
among native-born Protestants. In the West, the U.S. and industrial resources gradually gave it the advan-
government fought wars against Cheyennes, Sioux, tage, as did Lincoln’s proclamation of freedom for
and Comanches on the Great Plains as it sought to slaves in 1863. Emancipation undermined European
integrate the region into the national economy. In the support for the secessionists and added thousands of
conquered Mexican territories, newly arriving whites African Americans to the northern armies. Union forces
jostled uneasily with Hispanic residents and despised swept across the South and ended the war, which left
Chinese immigrants. In an era of rapid economic a legacy of half-won freedom for blacks and decades
development, western disputes often centered on of bitter animosity between northern and southern
access to land, jobs, and natural resources. For these whites. The Civil War is the focus of Chapter 14.
conflicts, see Chapters 13 and 16.
The Civil War increased national authority. Three This timeline arranges some of the important
Republican-sponsored constitutional amendments
events of this period into themes. Consider
limited the powers of the states and imposed defini-
tions of citizenship — prohibiting slavery, mandating the events listed under each of the five
suffrage for black men, and forbidding state action themes. Which set of events seems the
that denied people equal protection under the law.
most important? The least important? The
The U.S. Army remained a significant force, enforcing
Reconstruction in the South as late as 1877, while theme of “Politics and Power” begins with a
suppressing Indian uprisings and extending national reference to sectional conflict and concludes
control in the West.
with the section-driven Compromise of 1877.
The Civil War created a powerful American state, as
the Union government mobilized millions of men and Based on other entries in this theme and your
billions of dollars. It created a modern fiscal system, reading in Chapters 13, 14, and 15, explain
an elaborate network of national banks, and — for the
first time in American history — a significant national how the nature of sectionalism and the power
bureaucracy. Inspired by Whig ideology, Republican- of the various sections changed between 1844
run Congresses intervened forcefully to integrate
and 1877. >
the national economy and promote industrialization,
granting subsidies to railroad companies, protecting
industries and workers through protective tariffs, and
distributing western lands to farmers and cattlemen.
In the 1850s and 1860s, U.S. officials also intervened
aggressively in Japan and then built coaling stations
that enabled U.S. steamships to carry products to Asia
and bring Chinese workers to the United States. The
nation’s dynamic postwar economy had set the nation
on a course toward global power. Chapters 15 and 16
discuss all of these events.
408
POLITICS & AMERICA IN THE IDEAS, BELIEFS, WORK, IDENTITY
POWER WORLD & CULTURE EXCHANGE, &
TECHNOLOGY
1840 t Mexican War and t U.S. confronts Mexico t Ideology of Manifest t Irish immigrants build t Whites migrate to
Wilmot Proviso (1846) and Britain: annexes Destiny prompts U.S. northern canal system Oregon and California
increase sectional Texas (1845), acquires expansionism
t Some states default on t Arrival of millions of
conflict Oregon (1846),
t Free-Soil Party (1848) canal bonds Germans and Irish
fights Mexican War
t Gold rush makes advocates white causes social conflicts
(1846–1848) extending t Walker Tariff (1846)
California eligible for smallholder farm
U.S. borders to Pacific lowers rates, increases t Wars against
statehood — free or society
foreign imports Seminole peoples in
slave?
t Women seek legal Florida (1835–1842,
rights at Seneca Falls 1855–1858)
(1848)
1850 t Compromise of 1850 t President Pierce opens t Harriet Beecher Stowe’s t Enslaved blacks expand t Conflict of Hispanics
Japan to trade; seeks Uncle Tom’s Cabin cotton output in South and Anglos in the
t Whig Party to expand American (1852) attacks slavery Southwest
disintegrates; Know- t White settlers expand
territory and slavery into
Nothing Party attacks t Dred Scott decision farm society to trans- t White diseases and
Caribbean by diplomacy
immigrants (1857) opens way Mississippi west brutality kill most
and filibustering actions
to legalize slavery California Indians
t Kansas-Nebraska Act t Entrepreneurs promote
nationwide
(1854) sparks creation railroad building and t Comanches and Sioux
of Republican Party t Southern secessionists manufacturing in North dominate Great Plains
agitate for and Midwest peoples and control
independence trade in horses and
buffalo hides
1860 t Eleven southern t U.S. diplomacy and t Confederate States of t Republicans enact t Emancipation
states secede from Union army victories America (1861–1865) Whigs’ economic Proclamation (1863)
Union, sparking Civil in 1863 cause British vow to continue slavery policies: Homestead and Thirteenth
War (1861–1865); government to stop sale Act (1862), railroad Amendment (1865) free
t Republicans seek to
the Union’s triumph of ironclad ships to the aid, high tariffs, and blacks from slavery
impose equal rights
preserves a continental Confederacy national banking
ideology on South t Aided by Freedmen’s
nation
t Secretary of State t Women assume new Bureau, African
t Black families accept
t Fourteenth Amendment Seward buys Alaska tasks in war economies Americans struggle
ideal of domesticity
(1868) extends legal from Russia (1867) for freedom, land, and
and political rights education
t Burlingame Treaty
(1868) protects
missionaries in China
and limits Chinese
immigration
1870 t Fifteenth Amendment t Britain pays the U.S. t Ku Klux Klan attacks t Sharecropping spreads t U.S. wars against Plains
(1870) extends vote to $15.5 million for the Reconstruction in South Indians (Cheyennes,
black men depredations of the governments Sioux, Apaches, and
t Ranchers create cattle
Alabama during the war Nez Perce) open their
t Compromise of 1877 t Republicans embrace empire on Great Plains lands to white miners,
ends Reconstruction t Anti-Chinese riots in classical liberalism
t Depression of 1873 ranchers, and farmers
San Francisco in late
t White elites challenge halts railway expansion
1870s prompt Chinese t Dawes Act (1887) seeks
ideal of universal
Exclusion Act (1882) Indian assimilation
suffrage and deny
women’s suffrage
13
C H A P T E R
Sectional Crisis
1844–1860
T
MANIFEST DESTINY: he expansionist surge of the 1840s IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
SOUTH AND NORTH had deep roots. Since the nation’s What were the causes of the Mexi-
The Push to the Pacific founding in 1776, visionaries con- can War, and in what ways did it
The Plains Indians ceived its future both as a republic and as bring about a growing sectional cri-
The Fateful Election of 1844 an empire, and they predicted a glorious sis during the 1850s?
expansion across the continent. “It belongs
WAR, EXPANSION, AND of right to the United States to regulate the future destiny of North America,” declared
SLAVERY, 1846–1850
the New-York Evening Post in 1803. Politicians soon took up the refrain. “Our natural
The War with Mexico,
boundary is the Pacific Ocean,” asserted Massachusetts congressman Francis Baylies in
1846–1848
1823. “The swelling tide of our population must and will roll on until that mighty ocean
A Divisive Victory
interposes its waters.” However, the creation of a continental republic was far from
California Gold and Racial
inevitable. It would require a revolution in transportation — canals and railways — to
Warfare
access the nation’s fertile core in the vast Mississippi River basin and a growing popula-
1850: Crisis and Compromise
tion and dynamic economy to exploit its riches. By the 1840s, all those prerequisites
THE END OF THE were in place.
SECOND PARTY SYSTEM, Other obstacles remained. Well-armed Indian peoples controlled the Great Plains,
1850–1858 Mexico held sovereignty over Texas and the lands west of the Rocky Mountains, and
Resistance to the Fugitive Great Britain laid claim to the Oregon Country. To extend the American republic would
Slave Act
involve new Indian wars and possibly armed conflict with Great Britain and with Mexico
The Whigs Disintegrate and (and perhaps France, its main creditor). An ardent imperialist, President James Polk will-
New Parties Rise
ingly assumed those risks. “I would meet the war which either England or France . . . might
Buchanan’s Failed Presidency
wage and fight until the last man,” he told Secretary of State James Buchanan in 1846.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN Polk’s aggressive expansionism sparked fighting abroad and conflict at home. A war
AND THE REPUBLICAN with Mexico intended to be “brief, cheap, and bloodless” became “long, costly, and
TRIUMPH, 1858–1860 sanguinary,” complained Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Even Polk’s great
Lincoln’s Political Career territorial acquisitions — New Mexico, California, the Oregon Country — proved double-
The Union Under Siege edged by reigniting a bitter debate over slavery. Northerners vowed to prevent the
expansion of bound labor into the newly acquired territories, prompting southerners to
threaten secession from the Union. Rhetoric spiraled downward into violence, as white
and black abolitionists attacked slave catchers in the North and secessionists harassed
Union supporters in the South. When Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner accused
his South Carolina colleague Andrew P. Butler of taking “the harlot slavery” as his mis-
tress, a southern congressman beat Sumner unconscious with a walking cane. As this
violence shook Washington in 1856, proslavery migrants fought armed New England
abolitionists in the Kansas Territory. Passion had replaced compromise as the hallmark of
American political life.
410
John Gast, American Progress In 1845, journalist John O’Sullivan coined the term Manifest Destiny
to describe Americans’ suddenly urgent longing to extend the boundaries of the republic to the Pacific
Ocean. More than a quarter century later, John Gast’s American Progress (1872) gave visual form to that
aspiration in an allegorical painting that was widely distributed through color lithographs. The goddess
Liberty floats westward, holding a “School Book” in one hand and telegraph lines trailing from the other
as symbols of the advance of Anglo-American civilization across the continent. Library of Congress.
411
412 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
MAP 13.1
RUSSIAN Claimed by Britain and Territorial Conflict in Oregon, 1819–1846
ALASKA the United States
United States claim As thousands of American settlers poured into
Fort Simpson the Oregon Country in the early 1840s, British
Fort
CO
BRITISH
E
WILLAMETTE
VALLEY Willamette R.
S
G
UNITED
ON
n STATES
S
R A a ke R.
T
IL Fort Hall
Spanish-Am
erican Boundary, 1819
MEXICO
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 413
Settling Oregon
Americans quickly populated the Far West and re-created there the small-town life of the eastern
states. As early as 1845, as this drawing by a British military officer shows, Oregon City boasted a
steepled church, several large merchandise warehouses, and several dozen houses. On the riverbank
opposite the town stand several Native Americans, who had a very different way of life and would be
steadily pushed off the lands of their ancestors. Library of Congress.
five thousand oxen and cattle — gathered in Indepen- security of their domestic space.
IDENTIFY CAUSES
dence in April 1843. As the spring mud dried, they About 2,500 women endured Did the idea of Mani-
began their six-month trek, hoping to miss the winter pregnancy or gave birth during fest Destiny actually
snows. Another 5,000 settlers, mostly yeomen farm the long journey, and some did cause events, such as the
families from the southern border states (Missouri, not survive. “There was a woman political support for terri-
Kentucky, and Tennessee), set out over the next two died in this train yesterday,” Jane torial expansion, or simply
years. These pioneers overcame floods, dust storms, Gould Tortillott noted in her justify actions taken for
livestock deaths, and a few armed encounters with diary. “She left six children, one other reasons?
native peoples before reaching Oregon, a journey of of them only two days old.”
2,000 miles. The 10,000 migrants who made it to Oregon in the
By 1860, about 250,000 Americans had braved the 1840s mostly settled in the Willamette Valley. Many
Oregon Trail, with 65,000 heading for Oregon, 185,000 families squatted on 640 acres and hoped Congress
to California, and others staying in Wyoming, Idaho, would legalize their claims so that they could sell sur-
and Montana. More than 34,000 migrants died, mostly plus acreage to new migrants. The settlers quickly cre-
from disease and exposure; fewer than 500 deaths ated a race- and gender-defined polity by restricting
resulted from Indian attacks. The walking migrants voting to a “free male descendant of a white man.”
wore paths 3 feet deep, and their wagons carved
5-foot ruts across sandstone formations in southern California About 3,000 other early pioneers ended
Wyoming — tracks that are visible today. Women up in the Mexican province of California. They left the
found the trail especially difficult; in addition to their Oregon Trail along the Snake River, trudged down the
usual chores and the new work of driving wagons and California Trail, and mostly settled in the interior along
animals, they lacked the support of female kin and the the Sacramento River, where there were few Mexicans.
414 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
CO
WASHINGTON Gros Ventres Ft. Union
NT
S Co
R O
l TERRITORY
IN
Astoria u m
bia Hidatsas UNORG. MINN.
ENTAL
R. Missouri R.
Mandans TERR.
R.
C K
Ft. Vancouver
ette
Crows
R.
Arikaras
lam
ke
Flatheads
a
Ft. Boise Mi
Sn
Wil
GR
OREGON NEBRASKA ss i
Y
Lakotas ssi WIS.
TERRITORY pp
i
EA
R.
Ft. Hall South
Cheyennes
T
Pass
M O
Salt Ft. Pawnees
Laramie
Omahas
Sacramento R.
DIV
SIE
IOWA
Lake
Ft. I Iowas
PL
Plat
RR
DE
City te
U N
Bridger Arapahoes R .
A
Ft. Nauvoo
AI
Kearney
Carson City
Sacramento
UTAH
Shoshones Cheyennes St. Joseph ILL.
NS
TERR.
San Francisco GREAT T A I Kansas
Ft. Leavenworth
San Independence
BASIN
NE
Osages MO.
Monterey
A Louis
.
oR
DA
rk
ad
an
Ft. Dodge
lor Fort
N S
s as
Springfield
Co
Kiowas
R.
NEW MEXICO Comanches Apaches ARK.
Santa Barbara
Los Angeles
CALIF. TERRITORY Santa Fe
UNORG.
TERR.
Red Ft. Smith
Albuquerque R . Wichitas
San Diego
PAC I F I C Caddos
Ft. Yuma
OCEAN Comanches
Jumanos
El Paso
LA.
TEXAS
Rio
Gr
Spanish Trail
an
de
Santa Fe Trail
Oregon Trail
Mormon Trail
California Trail MEXICO Gulf of
Pony Express Mail Route
Me x i co
Butterfield Overland Mail Route
Camino Real 0 250 500 miles
MAP 13.2
The Great Plains: Settler Trails, Indian Raiders, and Traders
By the 1850s, the Mormon, Oregon, and Santa Fe trails ran across “Indian Country,” the semiarid,
buffalo-filled Great Plains west of the 95th meridian, and then through the Rocky Mountains. Tens
of thousands of Americans set out on these trails to found new communities in Utah, Oregon,
New Mexico, and California. This mass migration exposed sedentary Indian peoples to American
diseases, guns, and manufactures. However, raids by Comanches and Sioux affected their lives even
more significantly, as did the Euro-American traders who provided a ready market for Indian horses
and mules, dried meat, and buffalo skins.
A remote outpost of Spain’s American empire, Cali- over the Franciscan-run missions and freed the 20,000
fornia had few nonnative residents until the 1770s, Indians whom the monks had persuaded or coerced
when Spanish authorities built a chain of forts and reli- into working on them. Some mission Indians rejoined
gious missions along the Pacific coast. When Mexico their tribes, but many intermarried with mestizos
achieved independence in 1821, its government took (Mexicans of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry).
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 415
William Henry Jackson, California Crossing, South Platte River, detail, 1867
The South Platte River was wide (stretching from the foreground to the low bluff in the middle of the picture)
but shallow, allowing relatively easy passage for the migrants’ cattle and covered wagons. Wagon trains
followed the course of the various branches of the Platte River for more than 300 miles across the Great
Plains. During the late spring and early summer, wagons often stretched as far as the eye could see. National
Park Service/Picture Research Consultants & Archives.
They worked on huge ranches — the 450 estates created by colonizing the country and then seeking annexa-
by Mexican officials and bestowed primarily on their tion. However, in the early 1840s, these settlers num-
families and political allies. The owners of these bered only about 1,000, far outnumbered by the 7,000
vast properties (averaging 19,000 acres) mostly raised Mexicans who lived along the coast.
Spanish cattle, prized for their hides and tallow.
The ranches soon linked California to the American
economy. New England merchants dispatched dozens The Plains Indians
of agents to buy leather for the booming Massachusetts As the Pacific-bound wagon trains rumbled across
boot and shoe industry and tallow to make soap and Nebraska along the broad Platte River, the migrants
candles. Many agents married the daughters of the encountered the unique ecology of the Great Plains.
elite Mexican ranchers — the Californios — and adopted A vast sea of wild grasses stretched from Texas to
their manners, attitudes, and Catholic religion. A Saskatchewan in Canada, and west from the Missouri
crucial exception was Thomas Oliver Larkin, a suc- River to the Rocky Mountains. Tall grasses flourished
cessful merchant in the coastal town of Monterey. in the eastern regions of the future states of Kansas,
Although Larkin worked closely with Mexican politi- Nebraska, and the Dakotas, where there was ample
cians and landowners, he remained strongly American rainfall. To the west, in the semiarid region beyond the
in outlook. 100th meridian, the migrants found short grasses that
Like Larkin, the American migrants in the Sacra- sustained a rich wildlife dominated by buffalo and
mento River Valley did not assimilate into Mexican grazing antelopes. Nomadic buffalo-hunting Indian
society. Some hoped to emulate the Americans in Texas peoples roamed the western plains, while the eastern
416 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
river valleys were home to semisedentary tribes and, After 1800, the Comanches gradually built up a
since the 1830s, the Indian peoples whom Andrew pastoral economy, raising horses and mules and sell-
Jackson had “removed” to the west. A line of military ing them to northern Indian peoples and to Euro-
forts — stretching from Fort Jesup in Louisiana to Fort American farmers in Missouri and Arkansas. Many
Snelling, then in the Wisconsin Territory — policed Comanche families owned thirty to thirty-five horses
the boundary between white settlements and what or mules, far more than the five or six required for
Congress in 1834 designated as Permanent Indian hunting buffalo and fighting neighboring peoples. The
Territory. Comanches also exchanged goods with merchants and
For centuries, the Indians who lived on the eastern travelers along the Santa Fe Trail, which cut through
edge of the plains, such as the Pawnees and the their territory as it connected Missouri and New
Mandans on the Upper Missouri River, subsisted pri- Mexico. By the early 1840s, goods worth nearly $1 mil-
marily on corn and beans, supplemented by buffalo lion moved along the trail each year.
meat. They hunted buffalo on foot, driving them over By the 1830s, the Kiowas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos
cliffs or into canyons for the kill. To the south, the had also adopted this horse culture and, allied with
nomadic Apaches acquired horses from Spanish set- the Comanches, dominated the plains between the
tlers in New Mexico and ranged widely across the Arkansas and Red rivers. The new culture brought
plains. The Comanches, who migrated down the sharper social divisions. Some Kiowa men owned hun-
Arkansas River from the Rocky Mountains around dreds of horses and had several “chore wives” and cap-
1750, developed both a horse-based culture and impe- tive children who worked for them. Poor men, who
rial ambitions. Skilled buffalo hunters and fierce war- owned only a few horses, had difficulty finding mar-
riors, the Comanches slowly pushed the Apaches to the riage partners and often had to work for their wealthy
southern edge of the plains. They also raided Spanish kinsmen.
settlements in New Mexico, incorporating captured While European horses made Plains Indians
women and children into their society. wealthier and more mobile, European diseases and
guns thinned their ranks. A devastating smallpox epi- buffalo robes, and sleeping cov-
TRACE CHANGE
demic spread northward from New Spain in 1779– ers. Over time, Indian hunters
OVER TIME
1781 and killed half of the Plains peoples. Twenty years increased the kill and traded sur- Why did some Great Plains
later, another smallpox outbreak left dozens of deserted plus hides and robes — about peoples flourish between
villages along the Missouri River. Smallpox struck the 40,000 annually by the 1840s — for 1750 and 1860 while
northern plains again from 1837 to 1840, killing half of pots, knives, guns, and other others did not?
the Assiniboines and Blackfeet and nearly a third of the Euro-American manufactures. As
Crows, Pawnees, and Cheyennes. “If I could see this among the Kiowas, trade increased social divisions. “It
thing, if I knew where it came from, I would go there is a fine sight,” a traveler noted around 1850, “to see
and fight it,” exclaimed a distressed Cheyenne warrior. one of those big men among the Blackfeet, who has
European weapons also altered the geography of two or three lodges, five or six wives, twenty or thirty
native peoples. Around 1750, the Crees and Assini- children, fifty to a hundred head of horses; for his trade
boines, who lived on the far northern plains, acquired amounts to upward of $2,000 per year.”
guns by trading wolf pelts and beaver skins to the Although the Blackfeet, Kiowas, and Lakotas con-
British-run Hudson’s Bay Company. Once armed, they tributed buffalo hides to the national economy, they
drove the Blackfoot peoples westward into the Rocky did not fully grasp their market value as winter clothes,
Mountains and took control of the Saskatchewan and leather accessories, and industrial drive belts. Conse-
Upper Missouri River basins. When the Blackfeet quently, they could not demand the best price. More-
obtained guns and horses around 1800, they emerged over, the increasing size of the kill diminished the
from the mountains and pushed the Shoshones and buffalo herds. Between 1820 and 1870, the northern
Crows to the south. Because horses could not easily herd shrank from 5 million to less than 2 million. When
find winter forage in the snow-filled plains north of the the Assiniboines’ cultural hero Inkton’mi had taught
Platte River, Blackfoot families kept only five to ten his people how to kill the buffalo, he told them, “The
horses and remained hunters rather than pastoralists. buffalo will live as long as your people. There will be no
The powerful Lakota Sioux, who acquired guns end of them until the end of time.” Meant as a perpetual
and ammunition from French, Spanish, and American guarantee, by the 1860s Inkton’mi’s words prefigured
traders along the Missouri River, also remained buffalo the end of time — the demise of traditional buffalo
hunters. A nomadic war-prone people who lived in hunting and, perhaps, of the Assiniboines as well.
small groups, the Lakotas largely avoided major epi-
demics. They kept some sedentary peoples, such as the
Arikaras, in subjection and raided others for their The Fateful Election of 1844
crops and horses. By the 1830s, the Lakotas were the The election of 1844 changed the American govern-
dominant tribe on the central as well as the northern ment’s policy toward the Great Plains, the Far West,
plains. “Those lands once belonged to the Kiowas and and Texas. Since 1836, southern leaders had supported
the Crows,” boasted the Oglala Sioux chief Black Hawk, the annexation of Texas, but cautious party politicians,
“but we whipped those nations out of them, and in this pressured by northerners who opposed the expansion
we did what the white men do when they want the of slavery, had rebuffed them (Chapter 12). Now
lands of the Indians.” rumors swirled that Great Britain was encouraging
The Sioux’s prosperity also came at the expense of Texas to remain independent; wanted California as
the buffalo, which provided them with a diet rich in payment for the Mexican debts owed to British inves-
protein and with hides and robes to sell. The number of tors; and had designs on Spanish Cuba, which some
hides and robes shipped down the Missouri River each slave owners wanted to add to the United States. To
year by the American Fur Company and the Missouri thwart such imagined schemes, southern expansionists
Fur Company increased from 3,000 in the 1820s, to demanded the immediate annexation of Texas.
45,000 in the 1830s, and to 90,000 annually after 1840. At this crucial juncture, Oregon fever altered the
North of the Missouri, the story was much the same. political landscape in the North. In 1843, Americans
The 24,000 Indians of that region — Blackfeet, Crees, in the Ohio River Valley and the Great Lakes states
and Assiniboines — annually killed about 160,000 buf- organized “Oregon conventions,” and Democratic and
falo. The women dried the meat to feed their people Whig politicians alike called for American sover-
and to sell to white traders and soldiers. The women eignty over the entire Oregon Country, from Spanish
also undertook the arduous work of skinning and California to Russian Alaska (which began at 54°40'
tanning the hides, which they fashioned into tepees, north latitude). With northerners demanding Oregon,
418 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
President John Tyler, a proslavery zealot, called for the house, and Texas became the twenty-eighth state in
annexation of Texas. Disowned by the Whigs because December 1845. Polk’s strategy of linking Texas and
he thwarted Henry Clay’s nationalist economic pro- Oregon had put him in the White House and Texas in
gram, Tyler hoped to win reelection in 1844 as a the Union. Shortly, it would make the expansion of the
Democrat. To curry favor among northern expansion- South — and its system of slavery — the central topic of
ists, Tyler supported claims to all of Oregon. American politics.
In April 1844, Tyler and John C. Calhoun, his pro-
slavery, expansionist-minded secretary of state, sent
the Senate a treaty to bring Texas
UNDERSTAND into the Union. However, the War, Expansion, and Slavery,
POINTS OF VIEW two major presidential hopefuls,
Democrat Martin Van Buren and
1846–1850
Why did party politi-
cians initially oppose the Whig Henry Clay, opposed Tyler’s The acquisition of Texas whetted Polk’s appetite for the
annexation of Texas, and initiative. Fearful of raising the Mexican lands between Texas and the Pacific Ocean. If
how did this view change issue of slavery, they persuaded necessary, he was ready to go to war for them. What he
during the election of the Senate to reject the treaty. and many Democrats consciously ignored was the
1844? Nonetheless, expansion into domestic crisis that a war of conquest to expand slav-
Texas and Oregon became the ery would unleash.
central issue in the election of 1844. Most southern
Democrats favored Texas annexation and refused to
support Van Buren’s candidacy. The party also passed The War with Mexico, 1846–1848
over Tyler, whom they did not trust. Instead, the Since gaining independence in 1821, Mexico had not
Democrats selected Governor James K. Polk of Ten- prospered. Its civil wars and political instability pro-
nessee, a slave owner and an avowed expansionist. duced a stagnant economy, a weak government, and
Known as “Young Hickory” because he was a protégé modest tax revenues, which a bloated bureaucracy and
of Andrew Jackson, Polk shared his mentor’s iron will, debt payments to European bankers quickly devoured.
boundless ambition, and determination to open up Although the distant northern provinces of California
lands for American settlement. Accepting the false and New Mexico remained undeveloped and sparsely
claim in the Democratic Party platform that both settled, with a Spanish-speaking population of only
areas already belonged to the United States, Polk cam- 75,000 in 1840, Mexican officials vowed to preserve
paigned for the “Re-occupation of Oregon and the their nation’s historic boundaries. When its breakaway
Re-annexation of Texas.” He insisted that the United province of Texas prepared to join the American
States defy British claims and occupy “the whole of the Union, Mexico suspended diplomatic relations with
territory of Oregon” to the Alaskan border. “Fifty-four the United States.
forty or fight!” became his jingoistic cry.
The Whigs nominated Henry Clay, who again Polk’s Expansionist Program President Polk now
advocated his American System of high tariffs, internal moved quickly to acquire Mexico’s other northern
improvements, and national banking. Clay initially provinces. He hoped to foment a revolution in
dodged the issue of Texas but, seeking southern votes, California that, like the 1836 rebellion in Texas, would
ultimately supported annexation. Northern Whigs lead to annexation. In October 1845, Secretary of State
who opposed the admission of a new slave state refused James Buchanan told merchant Thomas Oliver Larkin,
to vote for Clay and cast their ballots for James G. now the U.S. consul for the Mexican province, to
Birney of the Liberty Party (Chapter 11). Birney gar- encourage influential Californios to seek indepen-
nered less than 3 percent of the national vote but took dence and union with the United States. To add mili-
enough Whig votes in New York to cost Clay that tary muscle to this scheme, Polk ordered American
state — and the presidency. naval commanders to seize San Francisco Bay and
Following Polk’s narrow victory, congressional California’s coastal towns in case of war with Mexico.
Democrats called for immediate Texas statehood. The president also instructed the War Department to
However, they lacked the two-thirds majority in the dispatch Captain John C. Frémont and an “exploring”
Senate needed to ratify a treaty of annexation. So the party of soldiers into Mexican territory. By December
Democrats admitted Texas using a joint resolution of 1845, Frémont’s force had reached California’s Sacra-
Congress, which required just a majority vote in each mento River Valley.
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 419
With these preparations in place, Polk launched a soil.” Ignoring pleas by some Whigs for a negotiated
secret diplomatic initiative: he sent Louisiana con- settlement, an overwhelming majority in Congress
gressman John Slidell to Mexico, telling him to secure voted for war — a decision greeted with great popular
the Rio Grande boundary for Texas and to buy the acclaim. To avoid a simultaneous war with Britain,
provinces of California and New Mexico for $30 mil- Polk retreated from his demand for “fifty-four forty or
lion. However, Mexican officials refused to meet with fight” and in June 1846 accepted British terms that
Slidell. divided the Oregon Country at the forty-ninth parallel.
Events now moved quickly toward war. Polk
ordered General Zachary Taylor and an American American Military Successes American forces in
army of 2,000 soldiers to occupy disputed lands Texas quickly established their military superiority.
between the Nueces River (the historic southern Zachary Taylor’s army crossed the Rio Grande; occu-
boundary of Spanish Texas) and the Rio Grande, which pied the Mexican city of Matamoros; and, after a fierce
the Republic of Texas had claimed as its border with six-day battle in September 1846, took the interior
Mexico. “We were sent to provoke a fight,” recalled Mexican town of Monterrey. Two months later, a U.S.
Ulysses S. Grant, then a young officer serving with naval squadron in the Gulf of Mexico seized Tampico,
Taylor, “but it was essential that Mexico should com- Mexico’s second most important port. By the end of
mence it.” When the armies clashed near the Rio 1846, the United States controlled much of northeast-
Grande in May 1846, Polk delivered the war message ern Mexico (Map 13.3).
he had drafted long before. Taking liberties with the Fighting also broke out in California. In June 1846,
truth, the president declared that Mexico “has passed naval commander John Sloat landed 250 marines in
the boundary of the United States, has invaded our ter- Monterey and declared that California “henceforward
ritory, and shed American blood upon the American will be a portion of the United States.” Simultaneously,
MAP 13.3
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 OREGON COUNTRY
1846
M
a m e n to R.
sou
is
ri R IOWA
Leavenworth in present-day Kansas, Great Salt Lake INDIAN
.
TERRITORY
S acr
Sutter’s Fort
45
Monterey a do Fort
MO.
1847. Simultaneously, U.S. troops under lo r
Co
Ar
General Zachary Taylor and Colonel Taos
ka
Santa Barbara ns
as
Alfred A. Doniphan won victories over Los Angeles R.
Santa Fe
Fort Smith
Albuquerque
General Santa Anna’s forces south of 3 San
San Pascual 2
Gabriel
the Rio Grande. In mid-1847, General San Diego
Gila R.
6
Socorro Re d R .
184
Winfield Scott mounted a successful Claimed
By Texas
seaborne attack on Veracruz and Tucson El Paso Fort Jessup
Mexico City, ending the war. TEXAS
Gu
Rio
Presidio Austin
lf o
18
del Norte
G
San Antonio
fC
nd
46
ra
e 46
a li
Chihuahua
Presidio de N Goliad 18
f or
18
Rio Grande u e c e
47
nia
s R . Corpus Christi
PACIFIC 4 Mier
OCEAN Monterrey Fort Brown
46
18 Matamoros 1
Campaigns in Mexico
5 Buena Vista
Gulf of
1847
N
Santa Anna (1847)
Jalapa
Mexico City
Campaigns in California W E
7 PueblaCerro
Frémont (1845–1846) Veracruz
S Gordo
Kearny (1846–1847) 6
Sloat (1846)
Major battle 0 150 300 miles
1 Sequence of battles
0 150 300 kilometers
420 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
American settlers in the Sacra- Polk expected these victories to end the war, but he
COMPARE AND
mento River Valley staged a revolt underestimated the Mexicans’ national pride and the
CONTRAST
How was the American
and, supported by Frémont’s force, determination of President Santa Anna. In February
acquisition of California captured the town of Sonoma, 1847 in the Battle of Buena Vista, Santa Anna nearly
similar to, and different where they proclaimed the in- defeated Taylor’s army in northeastern Mexico. With
from, the American-led dependence of the “Bear Flag most Mexican troops deployed in the north, Polk
creation of the Texas Republic. ” To cement these victo- approved General Winfield Scott’s plan to capture the
Republic (discussed in ries, Polk ordered army units to port of Veracruz and march 260 miles to Mexico City.
Chapter 12)? capture Santa Fe in New Mexico An American army of 14,000 seized the Mexican capi-
and then march to southern tal in September 1847. That American victory cost
California. Despite stiff Mexican resistance, American Santa Anna his presidency, and a new Mexican govern-
forces secured control of California early in 1847. ment made a forced peace with the United States.
The Mexican War: Conflict with Mexico prompted debates over the Polk administration’s aggres-
sive efforts to acquire territory and spread slavery. Here, Polk’s critics face off
Expansion and Slavery against the expansionists.
Source: Sean Wilentz, ed., Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787–1848 (Lexington,
MA: D. C. Heath, 1991), 525–528.
422
Charles Sumner, Conscience Whig and Future Walt Whitman, Poet and Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle
Republican Senator from Massachusetts Editorial, September 1, 1847
Letter to Robert Winthrop, Whig The question whether or no there shall be slavery in the
Congressman from Massachusetts,
new territories . . . is a question between the grand body
October 25, 1846
of white workingmen, the millions of mechanics, farmers,
If we regard Texas as a province of Mexico, its bound- and operatives of our country, with their interests on the
aries must be sought in the geography of that republic. If one side — and the interests of the few thousand rich,
we regard it as an independent State, they must be deter- “polished,” and aristocratic owners of slaves at the South,
mined by the extent of jurisdiction which the State was on the other side.
able to maintain. Now it seems clear that the river Nueces Experience has proved . . . that a stalwart mass of
was always recognized by Mexico as the western bound- respectable workingmen, cannot exist, much less flourish,
ary; and it is undisputed that the State of Texas, since its in a thorough slave State. Let any one think for a moment
Declaration of Independence, never exercised any juris- what a different appearance New York, Pennsylvania, or
diction beyond the Nueces. . . . Ohio, would present — how much less sturdy indepen-
In the month of January, 1846, the President of the dence and family happiness there would be — were slaves
United States directed the troops under General Taylor, the workmen there, instead of each man as a general
called the Army of Occupation, to take possession of this thing being his own workman. . . .
region [west of the Nueces River]. Here was an act of Slavery is a good thing enough . . . to the rich — the
aggression. As might have been expected, it produced one out of thousands; but it is destructive to the dig-
collision. The Mexicans, aroused in self-defence, sought nity and independence of all who work, and to labor
to repel the invaders. . . . itself. . . . All practice and theory . . . are strongly arrayed
Here the question occurs, What was the duty of in favor of limiting slavery to where it already exists.
Congress in this emergency? Clearly to withhold all
sanction to unjust war, — to aggression upon a neigh- Source: Sean Wilentz, ed., Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787–1848 (Lexington,
MA: D. C. Heath, 1991), 543.
boring Republic. . . . The American forces should have
been directed to retreat, not from any human force, but
from wrongdoing; and this would have been a true
victory. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Alas! This was not the mood of Congress. With 1. What arguments do Buchanan and Sumner make about
wicked speed a bill was introduced, furnishing large the boundaries of Texas, the issue that sparked the fight-
ing? Whose argument is more persuasive and why?
and unusual supplies of men and money. . . . This was
2. Do O’Sullivan’s and Buchanan’s assertions support or
adopted by a vote of 123 to 67; and the bill then leaped undercut the claim that the Mexican War was an aggres-
forth, fully armed, as a measure of open and active hos- sive act of imperialism?
tility against Mexico. 3. Why does Whitman oppose the expansion of slavery?
Given Whitman’s views, who might have gotten his vote
Source: Sean Wilentz, ed., Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787–1848 (Lexington, in the election of 1848? Why?
MA: D. C. Heath, 1991), 541. 4. Two of the sources are newspaper editorials; two are
letters written by or addressed to public officials. How
does the nature of each of these sources influence its
content?
423
424 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
M is
ceded to the United States some of the
siss
disputed lands. These lands and other parts
ipp
of the Mexican cession were then organized
iR
.
into the territories of New Mexico and Utah.
Tri
California became a free state . Pe
bi
Bra
co
nit
ne
sR
.
y
zos
R.
R.
R.
PAC I F I C
Nuece
In the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, the United
OCEAN States acquired additional land from Mexico Galveston Bay
s R.
Rio
to facilitate the construction of a railroad
Gr
from Texas to California.
an
de
0 100 200 miles Corpus Gulf of Mexico
MEXICO Christi Bay
0 100 200 kilometers
MAP 13.4
The Mexican Cession, 1848
In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico ceded to the United States its vast northern
territories — the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and half
of Colorado. These new territories, President Polk boasted to Congress, “constitute of themselves
a country large enough for a great empire, and the acquisition is second in importance only to that
of Louisiana in 1803.”
The Election of 1848 The conflict over slavery took opposed any expansion of slavery. They joined the
a toll on Polk and the Democratic Party. Scorned by Free-Soil Party, as did former Democratic president
Whigs and Free-Soilers and exhausted by his rigorous Martin Van Buren, who became its candidate for pres-
dawn-to-midnight work regime, Polk declined to run ident. To attract Whig votes, the Free-Soilers chose
for a second term and died just three months after leav- conscience Whig Charles Francis Adams for vice
ing office. In his place, the Democrats nominated president.
Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, an avid expansionist The Whigs nominated General Zachary Taylor.
who had advocated buying Cuba, annexing Mexico’s Taylor was a Louisiana slave owner firmly committed
Yucatán Peninsula, and taking all of Oregon. To main- to the defense of slavery in the South but not in the ter-
tain party unity on the slavery ritories, a position that won him support in the North.
PLACE EVENTS issue, Cass promoted a new idea, Moreover, the general’s military exploits had made him
IN CONTEXT squatter sovereignty. Under this a popular hero, known affectionately among his troops
What did conscience plan, Congress would allow set- as “Old Rough and Ready.” In 1848, as in 1840 with the
Whigs, David Wilmot, tlers in each territory to deter- candidacy of William Henry Harrison, running a mili-
and free-soilers have in mine its status as free or slave. tary hero worked for the Whigs. Taylor took 47 percent
common, and why did Cass’s doctrine of squatter of the popular vote to Cass’s 42 percent. However,
they all rise to prominence
sovereignty failed to persuade Taylor won a majority in the electoral college (163 to
between 1846 and 1848?
those northern Democrats who 127) only because Van Buren and the Free-Soil ticket
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 425
In 1849, hundreds of Australian men booked passage for collectively protect those claims — a rough system of dem-
San Francisco, hoping to make their fortune in the Califor- ocratic self-rule. In Victoria, the British crown owned much
nia goldfields. A mere two years later, thousands more of the land and gold commissioners and police adminis-
Australian “diggers” flocked to the colony of Victoria in tered the diggings, selling licenses to dig for 30 shillings a
Australia itself, drawn by a gold strike that yielded one- month (about $200 in present-day U.S. dollars). Distressed
third of the world’s gold output during the 1850s. by license fees and corrupt local officials, 10,000 miners at
In California and Victoria, miners lived mostly in can- Ballarat voted to create a Reform League, which demanded
vas tents and flimsy wood shanties and found gold initially abolition of fees and universal male suffrage. When
in stream beds. In both territories, the huge migration vir- authorities ignored their demands, 500 miners seized a
tually wiped out the aboriginal peoples. Similarly, both rich mine at Eureka. In the ensuing struggle, British troops
rushes attracted about 40,000 Chinese miners, an influx killed 22 miners, ending the armed uprising.
that, in the race-conscious, English-speaking world of Despite these differences — as well as a significant
the nineteenth century, prompted riots and legislation disparity in the proportion of women — California and Vic-
in both regions to restrict Asian migrants. Finally, only toria were both transformed by the nearly simultaneous
a few California “forty-niners” or Australian “diggers” discovery of gold. Within a few decades a mining boom
made a fortune, perhaps 5 of every 100. vastly increased their wealth and boasted their popula-
There were differences as well. Upon a gold strike tions, as the following chart indicates:
in California, the prospectors would stake their claims and
TABLE 13.1
Nonnative Population Increases from Gold Rush in United States and Australia
California, United States Victoria, Australia
Total Women Nonwhite Total Women Nonwhite
1845 11,000
1850 93,000 7,000 7% 1% 1851 97,000 39,000 40% 0%
1860 380,000 120,000 31% 15% 1861 540,000 219,000 40% 5%
1870 560,000 211,000 37% 11% 1871 746,000 339,000 45% 4%
Racial Warfare and Land Rights Farming required the native peoples came first. When the gold rush
arable land, and Mexican grantees and native peoples began in 1848, there were about 150,000 Indians in
owned or claimed much of it. The American migrants California; by 1861, there were only 30,000. As else-
brushed aside both groups, brutally eliminating the where in the Americas, European diseases took the
Indians and wearing down Mexican claimants with lives of thousands. In California, white settlers also
legal tactics and political pressure. The subjugation of undertook systematic campaigns of extermination,
426
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 427
MAP 13.5
Gold mining region Sea Passengers through
The California Gold Rush, 1849–1857 San Francisco
Instant metropolis
Traveling from all parts of the Major ranches
arriving
world — South America, Europe,
OL
(supplying food)
departing
D
China, and Australia, as well as
CA
Major gold mine
LIF
the eastern United States — tens Outfitting center
OR
of thousands of bonanza-seekers Sea link with eastern U.S.
NIA
(via Cape Horn) 1849 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 1857
converged on the California gold-
Sac r a
TRAIL
Main supply routes to Lake S
fields. Miners traveling by sea landed goldfields me
n
Amer ica
nR . Tahoe ES
R
to
PONY EXP
at San Francisco, which mushroomed UTAH
R.
into a substantial city; many other Coloma TERRITORY
(Sutter's Mill)
prospectors trekked overland to the
SI
ER
goldfields on the California Trail. By 0 25 50 miles
RA
the mid-1850s, the gold rush was over: Sacramento
0 25 50 kilometers
almost as many people were sailing
NE
from San Francisco each year as were
VA
arriving to seek their fortune. N Benicia
DA
Tuolumne
W E Stockton R.
L
EA
S San Francisco
R
O
MIN
CA
Sa
PAC IF IC
nJ
EL
oaq
OCEAN San Jose
ui
R
n
.
CALIF.
and local political leaders did little to stop them: “A war in the Round Valley; a decade
EXPLAIN
of extermination will continue to be waged . . . until later, only 85 men and 215 women CONSEQUENCES
the Indian race becomes extinct,” predicted Governor remained. What were the main
Peter Burnett in 1851. Congress abetted these assaults. The Mexicans and Californios changes caused by the
At the bidding of white Californians, it repudiated trea- who held grants to thousands huge increase in Califor-
ties that federal agents had negotiated with 119 tribes of acres were harder to dislodge. nia’s population and its
and that had provided the Indians with 7 million acres The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo composition between
of land. Instead, in 1853, Congress authorized five res- guaranteed that the property 1849 and 1870?
ervations of only 25,000 acres each and refused to pro- owned by Mexicans would be
vide the Indians with military protection. “inviolably respected.” Although many of the 800
Consequently, some settlers simply murdered Indi- grants made by Spanish and Mexican authorities in
ans to push them off nonreservation lands. The Yuki California were either fraudulent or poorly docu-
people, who lived in the Round Valley in northern mented, the Land Claims Commission created by
California, were one target. As the Petaluma Journal Congress eventually upheld the validity of 75 percent
reported in April 1857: “Within the past three weeks, of them. In the meantime, hundreds of Americans had
from 300 to 400 bucks, squaws and children have been set up farms on the sparsely settled grants. Having
killed by whites.” Other white Californians turned to come of age in the antimonopoly Jacksonian era, these
slave trading: “Hundreds of Indians have been stolen American squatters rejected the legitimacy of the
and carried into the settlements and sold,” the state’s Californios’ claims to unoccupied and unimproved
Indian Affairs superintendent reported in 1856. Labor- land and successfully pressured local land commis-
hungry farmers quickly put them to work. Indians sioners and judges to void or reduce the size of many
were “all among us, around us, with no house and grants. Indeed, the Americans’ clamor for land was so
kitchen without them,” recalled one farmer. Expelled intense and their numbers so large that many Californio
from their lands and widely dispersed, many Indian claimants sold off their properties at bargain prices.
peoples simply vanished as distinct communities. In northern California, farmers found that they
Those tribal communities that survived were a shadow could grow most eastern crops: corn and oats to feed
of their former selves. In 1854, at least 5,000 Yukis lived work horses, pigs, and chickens; potatoes, beans, and
428 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
would allow slavery. Senator Salmon P. Chase of Zachary Taylor’s sudden death, Whig leaders Henry
Ohio, elected by a Democratic–Free-Soil coalition, and Clay and Daniel Webster and Democrat Stephen A.
Senator William H. Seward, a New York Whig, urged a Douglas won the passage of five separate laws known
fourth position: that federal legislation restrict slavery collectively as the Compromise of 1850. To mollify the
within its existing boundaries and eventually extin- South, the compromise included a new Fugitive Slave
guish it completely. Condemning slavery as “morally Act giving federal support to slave catchers. To satisfy
unjust, politically unwise, and socially pernicious” and the North, the legislation admitted California as a
invoking “a higher law than the Constitution,” Seward free state, resolved a boundary dispute between New
demanded bold action to protect freedom, “the com- Mexico and Texas in favor of New Mexico, and abol-
mon heritage of mankind.” ished the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of
Columbia. Finally, the compromise organized the rest
A Complex Compromise Standing on the brink of of the conquered Mexican lands into the territories of
disaster, senior Whig and Democratic politicians New Mexico and Utah and, invoking popular sover-
worked desperately to preserve the Union. Aided by eignty, left the issue of slavery in the hands of their res-
Millard Fillmore, who became president in 1850 after idents (Map 13.6).
CANADA
MAINE
MINNESOTA VT.
OREGON N.H.
TERRITORY TERRITORY
1849 MASS.
1848 NEBRASKA N.Y.
TERRITORY WIS.
1854 MICH. R.I.
PA. CONN.
IOWA N.J.
OHIO DEL.
ILL. IND.
UTAH TERRITORY MD.
KANSAS VIRGINIA
1850
CALIF. TERRITORY MO. KY.
1850 1854 N.C.
INDIAN TENN.
NEW MEXICO
TERRITORY RESERVE S.C.
ARK.
1850 GA.
MISS. ALA.
ATLANTIC
TEXAS
LA. OCEAN
PACIFIC FLA.
OCEAN
N
MAP 13.6
The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
The contest over the expansion of slavery involved vast territories. The Compromise of 1850
peacefully resolved the status of the Far West: California would be a free state, and settlers in
the Utah and New Mexico territories would vote for or against slavery (the doctrine of popular
sovereignty). However, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 voided the Missouri Compromise (1820)
and instituted popular sovereignty in those territories. That decision sparked a bitter local war and
revealed a fatal flaw in the doctrine.
430 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
The Compromise of 1850 pre- Religious leaders, conservative businessmen, and lead-
PLACE EVENTS
served national unity by accept- ing judges called upon citizens to support the compro-
IN CONTEXT
How did the Compromise
ing once again the stipulation mise to preserve “government and civil society.” Their
of 1850 resolve the various advanced by the South since 1787: hopes quickly faded. Demanding freedom for fugitive
disputes over slavery, and no Union without slavery. Still, slaves and free soil in the West, antislavery northerners
who benefitted more from southerners feared for the future refused to accept the legitimacy of the compromise.
its terms? and threatened secession. Militant For their part, proslavery southerners plotted to extend
activists (or “fire-eaters”) in South slavery into the West, the Caribbean, and Central
Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama orga- America. The resulting disputes destroyed the Second
nized special conventions to safeguard “southern Party System and deepened the crisis of the Union.
rights.” Georgia congressman Alexander H. Stephens
called on convention delegates to prepare “men and
money, arms and munitions, etc. to meet the emer- Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act
gency.” A majority of delegates remained committed to The Fugitive Slave Act proved the most controversial
the Union, but only on the condition that Congress element of the compromise. The act required federal
protect slavery where it existed and grant statehood to magistrates to determine the status of alleged runaways
any territory that ratified a proslavery constitution. and denied them a jury trial or even the right to testify.
Political wizardry had solved the immediate crisis, but Using its provisions, southern owners re-enslaved
not the underlying issues. about 200 fugitives (as well as some free blacks).
The plight of the runaways and the presence of
slave catchers aroused popular hostility in the North
and Midwest. Ignoring the threat of substantial fines
The End of the Second Party and prison sentences, free blacks and white abolition-
System, 1850–1858 ists protected fugitives. In October 1850, Boston aboli-
tionists helped two slaves escape from Georgia slave
The Missouri Compromise had endured for a genera- catchers. Rioters in Syracuse, New York, broke into
tion, and the architects of the Compromise of 1850 a courthouse, freed a fugitive, and accused the U.S.
hoped their agreement would have an even longer life. marshal of kidnapping. Abandoning nonviolence,
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 431
Frederick Douglass declared, “The only way to make a Ultimately, the party settled on
IDENTIFY CAUSES
Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter is to make half a dozen Franklin Pierce of New Hamp- Why did the Fugitive Slave
or more dead kidnappers.” Precisely such a deadly shire, a congenial man who was Act fail?
result occurred in Christiana, Pennsylvania, in sympathetic to the South. As the
September 1851, when twenty African Americans Whig Party fragmented over slavery, Pierce swept to
exchanged gunfire with Maryland slave catchers, kill- victory.
ing two of them. Federal authorities indicted thirty-six
blacks and four whites for treason and other crimes, Proslavery Initiatives As president, Pierce pursued
but a Pennsylvania jury acquitted one defendant, and an expansionist foreign policy. To assist northern mer-
the government dropped charges against the rest. chants, who wanted a commercial empire, he negoti-
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin ated a trade-opening treaty with Japan. To mollify
(1852) boosted opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. southern expansionists, who desired a plantation
Conveying the moral principles of abolitionism in empire, he sought extensive Mexican lands south of the
heartrending personal situations — using the now Rio Grande. Ultimately, Pierce settled for a smaller
familiar literary trope of sentimental domesticity — slice of land — the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, now part
Stowe’s book quickly sold 310,000 copies in the United of Arizona and New Mexico — that opened the way for
States and double that number in Britain, where it his negotiator, James Gadsden, to build a transconti-
prompted an antislavery petition signed by 560,000 nental rail line from New Orleans to Los Angeles.
English women. As Uncle Tom’s Cabin sparked an Pierce’s most controversial initiatives came in the
unprecedented discussion of race and slavery, state Caribbean and Central America. Southern expansion-
legislators in the North protested that the Fugitive ists had long urged Cuban slave owners to declare
Slave Act violated state sovereignty, and they passed independence from Spain and join the United States.
personal-liberty laws that guaranteed to all residents, To assist the expansionists and the American traders
including alleged fugitives, the right to a jury trial. In who still supplied enslaved Africans to Cuba, Pierce
1857, the Wisconsin Supreme Court went further, threatened war with Spain and covertly supported fili-
ruling in Ableman v. Booth that the Fugitive Slave Act bustering (private military) expeditions to Cuba. When
was unconstitutional because it violated the rights Secretary of State William L. Marcy arranged in 1854
of Wisconsin’s citizens. Taking a states’ rights stance — for American diplomats in Europe to compose the
traditionally a southern position — the Wisconsin Ostend Manifesto, which urged Pierce to seize Cuba,
court denied the authority of the federal judiciary to northern Democrats denounced these aggressive ini-
review its decision. In 1859, Chief Justice Roger B. tiatives and scuttled the planters’ dreams of American
Taney led a unanimous Supreme Court in affirming expansion into the Caribbean.
the supremacy of federal courts — a position that has
withstood the test of time — and upholding the consti- The Kansas-Nebraska Act The Caribbean was a
tutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act. By then, as sideshow. The main stage was the trans-Mississippi
Frederick Douglass had hoped, popular opposition west, where a major controversy in 1854 destroyed the
had made the law a “dead letter.” Whig Party and sent the Union spinning toward disas-
ter. The Missouri Compromise prohibited new slave
states in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30', so
The Whigs Disintegrate
southern senators had long prevented the creation of
and New Parties Rise new territories there. It remained Permanent Indian
The conflict over slavery split both major political par- Territory. Now Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois
ties along sectional lines. Hoping to unify their party, wanted to open it up, allowing a transcontinental rail-
the Whigs ran another war hero, General Winfield road to link Chicago to California. Douglas proposed
Scott, as their presidential candidate in 1852. Among to extinguish Native American rights on the Great
the Democrats, southerners demanded a candidate Plains and create a large free territory called Nebraska.
who embraced Calhoun’s constitutional argument Southern politicians opposed Douglas’s initiative.
that all territories were open to slavery. However, They hoped to extend slavery throughout the Louisiana
northern and midwestern Democrats stood behind Purchase and to have a southern city — New Orleans,
the three leading candidates — Lewis Cass of Michigan, Memphis, or St. Louis — as the eastern terminus of a
Stephen Douglas of Illinois, and James Buchanan of transcontinental railroad. To win their support,
Pennsylvania — who advocated popular sovereignty. Douglas amended his bill so that it explicitly repealed
432 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
the Missouri Compromise and organized the region on who own the soil and work it with their own hands.”
the basis of popular sovereignty. He also agreed to the Abraham Lincoln, an ex-Whig from Illinois, conveyed
formation of two territories, Nebraska and Kansas, the new party’s vision of social mobility. “There is no
raising the prospect that settlers in the southern one, permanent class of hired laborers among us,” he
Kansas, would choose slavery. Knowing the revised bill declared, ignoring the growing social divisions in the
would “raise a hell of a storm” in the North, Douglas industrializing North and Midwest. Lincoln and his
argued that Kansas was not suited to plantation agri- fellow Republicans envisioned a society of independent
culture and would become a free state. After weeks of farmers, artisans, and proprietors, and they celebrated
bitter debate, the Senate passed the Kansas-Nebraska middle-class values: domesticity and respectability,
Act. As 1,600 petitions opposing the bill flooded the religious commitment, and capitalist enterprise.
House of Representatives, the measure barely squeaked The Republicans faced strong competition from the
through. American, or Know-Nothing, Party, which had its
origins in the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic move-
The Republican and American Parties The Kansas- ments of the 1840s (Chapter 9). In 1850, these nativist
Nebraska Act of 1854 was a disaster for the American societies banded together as the Order of the Star-
political system. It finished off the Whig Party: “We Spangled Banner; the following year, they formed the
went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative American Party. When questioned, the party’s secrecy-
Union Whigs & and waked up stark mad abolitionists,” conscious members often replied, “I know nothing,”
cotton textile magnate Amos Lawrence lamented. And hence the nickname. The American (or Know-
it crippled the Democracy, because “anti-Nebraska Nothing) Party program was far from secret, however:
Democrats” denounced the act as “part of a great party supporters wanted to mobilize native-born
scheme for extending and perpetuating supremacy of Protestants against the “alien menace” of Irish and
the slave power.” In 1854, they joined ex-Whigs, Free- German Catholics, prohibit further immigration, and
Soilers, and abolitionists to form a new Republican institute literacy tests for voting. Northern members of
Party. the party had a strong antislavery outlook. In 1854,
The new party was a coalition of “strange, discor- voters elected dozens of American Party candidates to
dant and even hostile elements,” one Republican the House of Representatives and gave the party con-
observed. However, all its members opposed slavery, trol of the state governments of Massachusetts and
which, they argued, drove down Pennsylvania. The emergence of a Protestant-based
COMPARE AND the wages of free workers and nativist party to replace the Whigs became a real
CONTRAST degraded the dignity of manual possibility.
What were the main policy
labor. Like Thomas Jefferson,
objectives of the Republi-
Republicans praised a society Bleeding Kansas Meanwhile, thousands of settlers
can and American parties?
based on “the middling classes rushed into the Kansas Territory, putting Douglas’s
concept of popular sovereignty to the test. On the of many northern Know-Nothings by demanding
side of slavery, Missouri senator David R. Atchison legislation banning foreign immigrants and imposing
encouraged residents of his state to cross temporarily high tariffs on foreign manufactures. As a Pennsylvania
into Kansas to vote in crucial elections there. Opposing Republican put it, “Let our motto be, protection to
Atchison was the abolitionist New England Emigrant everything American, against everything foreign.” In
Aid Society, which dispatched free-soilers to Kansas. In New York, Republicans campaigned on a reform plat-
1855, the Pierce administration accepted the legiti- form designed to unite “all of the Anti-Slavery, Anti-
macy of a proslavery legislature in Lecompton, Kansas, Popery and Anti-Whiskey” voters.
which had been elected with aid from border-crossing The Democrats reaffirmed their support for popu-
Missourians. However, the majority of Kansas resi- lar sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and they
dents favored free soil and refused allegiance to the nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. A tall,
Lecompton government. dignified, and experienced politician, Buchanan was
In 1856, both sides turned to violence, prompting staunchly prosouthern. He won the three-way race
Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune to label the with 1.8 million popular votes (45.3 percent) and 174
territory “Bleeding Kansas.” A proslavery force, seven electoral votes. Frémont polled 1.3 million popular
hundred strong, looted and burned the free-soil town votes (33.2 percent) and 114 electoral votes; Fillmore
of Lawrence. The attack enraged John Brown, a fifty- won 873,000 popular votes (21.5 percent) but captured
six-year-old abolitionist from New York and Ohio, only 8 electoral votes.
who commanded a free-state militia. Brown was a The dramatic restructuring of the political system
complex man with a record of failed businesses, but was now apparent (Map 13.7). With the splintering of
he had an intellectual and moral intensity that won the American Party, the Republicans had replaced the
the trust of influential people. Avenging the sack of Whigs as the second major party. However, Frémont
Lawrence, Brown and his followers murdered five pro- had not won a single vote in the South; had he tri-
slavery settlers at Pottawatomie. Abolitionists must umphed, a North Carolina newspaper warned, the
“fight fire with fire” and “strike terror in the hearts of result would have been “a separation of the states.” The
the proslavery people,” Brown declared. The attack on fate of the republic hinged on President Buchanan’s
Lawrence and the Pottawatomie killings started a guer- ability to quiet the passions of the past decade and
rilla war in Kansas that took nearly two hundred lives. to hold the Democratic Party — the only national
party — together.
Buchanan’s Failed Presidency Dred Scott: Petitioner for Freedom Events — and
The violence in Kansas dominated the presidential his own values and weaknesses — conspired against
election of 1856. The new Republican Party counted on Buchanan. Early in 1857, the Supreme Court decided
anger over Bleeding Kansas to boost the party’s for- the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, which raised the
tunes. Its platform denounced the Kansas-Nebraska controversial issue of Congress’s constitutional author-
Act and demanded that the federal government pro- ity over slavery. Dred Scott was an enslaved African
hibit slavery in all the territories. Republicans also American who had lived for a time with his owner,
called for federal subsidies for transcontinental rail- an army surgeon, in the free state of Illinois and at Fort
roads, reviving a Whig economic proposal popular Snelling in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase
among midwestern Democrats. For president, the (then part of the Wisconsin Territory), where the
Republicans nominated Colonel John C. Frémont, a Missouri Compromise (1820) prohibited slavery. Scott
free-soiler who had won fame in the conquest of claimed that residence in a free state and a free terri-
Mexican California. tory had made him free. Buchanan opposed Scott’s
appeal and pressured the two
The Election of 1856 The American Party entered justices from Pennsylvania to PLACE EVENTS
the election with equally high hopes, but like the Whigs side with their southern col- IN CONTEXT
Why did northern Demo-
and Democrats, it split along sectional lines over leagues. Seven of the nine justices
cratic presidents, such
slavery. The southern faction of the American Party declared that Scott was still a
as Pierce and Buchanan,
nominated former Whig president Millard Fillmore, slave, but they disagreed on the
adopt prosouthern
while the northern contingent endorsed Frémont. legal rationale (Thinking Like a policies?
During the campaign, the Republicans won the votes Historian, p. 434).
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Sometimes the life of one individual can exemplify an era, and Bridget “Biddy”
Mason was such a person. Mason was born into slavery in Georgia in 1818, of
mixed African American and Native American descent. In 1836, her owner gave
Biddy, age eighteen, to his recently married cousins, Robert and Rebecca Smith,
who owned a Mississippi plantation. Trained as a midwife, Biddy delivered all six
Biography as History of Rebecca’s babies as well as working in the fields. Biddy herself gave birth to
three daughters, probably fathered by Smith, as were at least two of her sister
Hannah’s eight children. In the mid-1840s, the Smiths converted to Mormonism
and, in 1847, along with other Mississippi converts and their slaves, journeyed
1,700 miles to the Utah Territory.
1. Joseph Smith’s Plan to End Slavery, February 7, 3. Mormon apostle Amasa Mason Lyman and his
1844. Like many Americans, members of the Church wives. In 1851, at the behest of Brigham Young,
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struggled with five hundred Mormons — including the Robert
the question of slavery. Running for president Smiths and their slaves — moved to San Bernardino,
in 1844, its founder, Joseph Smith, decried the California. They settled on land purchased from
institution. Antonio Maria Lugo, who held the 35,000 acres
Petition, also, ye goodly inhabitants of the slave States, of the Rancho Bernardino under a Mexican grant,
your legislators to abolish slavery by the year 1850, or a claim protected by the Treaty of Guadalupe
now. . . . Pray Congress to pay every man a reasonable Hidalgo (1848) that ended the Mexican War. The
price for his slaves out of the surplus revenue arising settlement’s leader was Amasa Mason Lyman,
from the sale of public lands, and from the deduction whom Biddy knew through the Smith family and
of pay from the members of Congress. Break off the whose middle name she eventually took for her
shackles from the poor black man, and hire him to surname.
labor like other human beings; for “an hour of virtuous
liberty on earth is worth a whole eternity of bondage.”
434
4. Mason v. Smith, 1856 (the Bridget “Biddy” Mason
case). Most Mormon migrants to California heeded
Brigham Young’s advice to free their slaves, as Cali-
fornia was a free state. Robert Smith refused to do
so and, in 1855, prepared to move to Texas. How-
ever, in 1856, members of the free black community
assisted Biddy to file a habeas corpus petition
and obtain freedom for herself and her extended
family of thirteen women and children. In a later
interview, Mason stated: “I feared this trip to
Texas since I first heard of it.”
And it further appearing by satisfactory proof to the judge Source: Los Angeles Public Library.
here, that all of the said persons of color are entitled to
their freedom, and are free and cannot be held in slavery
or involuntary servitude . . . And it further appearing to
the satisfaction of the judge here that the said Robert
Smith intended to and is about to remove from the State
of California where slavery does not exist, to the State
of Texas, where slavery of Negroes and persons of color
does exist, and is established by the municipal laws, and
intends to remove the said before-mentioned persons of Sources: (1) History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Vol. VI (Salt Lake
City, UT: Mormon Church, 1912), 205; (2) The Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star, Vol.
color, to his own use without the free will and consent of XIII (Liverpool: Franklin D. Richards, 1851), 63; (4) Golden State Insurance Company
all or any of the said persons of color, whereby their lib- Records, UCLA, Dept. of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library.
erty will be greatly jeopardized, and there is good reason
to apprehend and believe that they may be sold into slav-
ery or involuntary servitude . . . and it further appearing ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
that none of the said persons of color can read and write, 1. Were Smith’s and Hyde’s positions on slavery and prop-
and are almost entirely ignorant of the laws of the state erty rights (sources 1 and 2) similar or different?
of California as well as those of the State of Texas, and of 2. How might the set of photographs of Amasa Mason
Lyman and his wives (source 3) suggest that Mormon
their rights and that the said Robert Smith, from his past
family life resembled Biddy’s experience in growing up
relations to them as members of his family does possess on a southern plantation? How might it mirror her own
and exercise over them an undue influence in respect to sexual experience, and that of her sister Hannah, as
the matter of their said removal insofar that they have Robert Smith’s slaves?
been in duress and not in possession and exercise of 3. As a slave, Biddy did not have a surname. Why might
have she taken Lyman’s middle name as her surname
their free will so as to give a binding consent to any when she became free in 1856?
engagement or arrangement with him. 4. How does the ruling in Biddy’s case (source 4) by Judge
Benjamin Ignatius Hayes, in a California state court,
5. Photograph of Biddy Mason and the deed of her reflect the political and constitutional turmoil that west-
first land purchase, 1866. Once free, Biddy pros- ward expansion created with regard to slavery? How
is this ruling similar to, and different from, the famous
pered as a midwife and an investor in Los Angeles
case brought by Dred Scott in Missouri and decided
real estate. When she died in 1891, Biddy had accu- eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v.
mulated a fortune of $300,000 (about $7.6 million Sandford (1857)?
today). Despite her contact with Mormonism, Biddy 5. What do you think explains Biddy Mason’s religious
Mason never joined the Mormon church. Instead, choices and charitable activities as described in the head-
note to source 5?
in 1872 she was a founding member of the first
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Los PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Angeles. An active philanthropist of charitable List the main themes and arguments presented in Chapters
causes, she funded a traveler’s aid society and an 12 and 13. Then, write an essay that explores the ways in
elementary school for black children. which Biddy Mason’s experiences — plantation labor in
Georgia and Mississippi, coerced miscegenation, exposure
to the new religion of Mormonism, a trek by foot across a
continent, legally won emancipation, and entrepreneurial
success in formerly Mexican California — either exemplify or
are inconsistent with those themes and arguments.
435
436 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
9 WASH. 8
UNORGANIZED TERR.
OREGON TERR. 66 UNORG. 55
12 TERR. 4 13
TERRITORY 4 36 3 35
5
5 4 NEBRASKA 6 4
26 6 TERR. 27 4 6
4 7 4
INDIAN 23 8 3 UTAH 23 8 3
9 12 11 13
TERRITORY TERRITORY 3
MEXICAN 17 15
7 12 4 KANSAS 9 12
CESSION, TERR.
1848 11 10
13 INDIAN 12
3 9 NEW MEXICO TERR. 4 8
9 10 TERRITORY 9 10
6 7
4 6 4 6
3 1860 3
1848
MAP 13.7
Political Realignment, 1848 and 1860
In the presidential election of 1848, both the Whig and Democratic candidates won electoral votes
throughout the nation. Subsequently, the political conflict over slavery and the Compromise of
1850 destroyed the Whig Party in the South. As the only nationwide party, the Democrats won
easily over the Whigs in 1852 and, with the opposition split between the Republican and American
parties, triumphed in 1856 as well. However, a new region-based party system appeared by 1860
and persisted for the next seventy years — with Democrats dominant in the South and Republicans
usually controlling the Northeast, Midwest, and Far West.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland, a slave In a single stroke, Taney had declared the Repub-
owner himself, wrote the most influential opinion. lican proposals to restrict the expansion of slavery
He declared that Negroes, whether enslaved or free, through legislation to be unconstitutional. The Repub-
could not be citizens of the United States and that Scott licans could never accept the legitimacy of Taney’s con-
therefore had no right to sue in federal court. That stitutional arguments, which indeed had significant
argument was controversial, given that free blacks were flaws. Led by Senator Seward of New York, they accused
citizens in many states and therefore had access to the the chief justice and President Buchanan of participat-
federal courts. Taney then made two even more con- ing in the Slave Power conspiracy.
troversial claims. First, he endorsed John C. Calhoun’s Buchanan then added fuel to the raging constitu-
argument that the Fifth Amendment, which prohibited tional fire. Ignoring reports that antislavery residents
“taking” of property without due process of law, meant held a clear majority in Kansas, he refused to allow a
that Congress could not prevent southern citizens from popular vote on the proslavery Lecompton constitution
moving their slave property into the territories and and in 1858 strongly urged Congress to admit Kansas as
owning it there. Consequently, the chief justice con- a slave state. Angered by Buchanan’s machinations,
cluded, the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance and Stephen Douglas, the most influential Democratic sen-
the Missouri Compromise that prohibited slavery had ator and architect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, broke
never been constitutional. Second, Taney declared that with the president and persuaded Congress to deny
Congress could not give to territorial governments any statehood to Kansas. (Kansas would enter the Union as
powers that it did not possess, such as the authority a free state in 1861.) Still determined to aid the South,
to prohibit slavery. Taney thereby endorsed Calhoun’s Buchanan resumed negotiations to buy Cuba in
interpretation of popular sovereignty: only when set- December 1858. By pursuing a proslavery agenda — first
tlers wrote a constitution and requested statehood in Dred Scott and then in Kansas and Cuba — Buchanan
could they prohibit slavery. widened the split in his party and the nation.
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 437
the proslavery Supreme Court might soon declare that Senator Seward of New York declared that freedom
the Constitution “does not permit a state to exclude and slavery were locked in “an irrepressible conflict,”
slavery,” just as it had decided in Dred Scott that “nei- and ruthless abolitionist John Brown, who had perpe-
ther Congress nor the territorial legislature” could ban trated the Pottawatomie massacre, showed what that
slavery in a territory. In that event, he warned, “we shall might mean. In October 1859, Brown led eighteen
awake to the reality . . . that the Supreme Court has heavily armed black and white men in a raid on the
made Illinois a slave state.” This prospect informed federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown
Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech. Quoting the hoped to arm slaves with the arsenal’s weapons and
biblical adage “A house divided against itself cannot mount a major rebellion to end slavery.
stand,” he predicted that American society “cannot Republican leaders condemned Brown’s unsuccess-
endure permanently half slave and half free. . . . It will ful raid, but Democrats called his plot “a natural,
become all one thing, or all the other.” logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings
The Senate race in Illinois attracted national inter- of the Republican party.” When the state of Virginia
est because of Douglas’s prominence and Lincoln’s rep- sentenced Brown to be hanged, transcendentalist
utation as a formidable speaker. During a series of reformers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo
seven debates, Douglas declared his support for white Emerson (Chapter 11) proclaimed him a “saint await-
supremacy: “This government was made by our fathers, ing his martyrdom.” The slaveholding states looked to
by white men for the benefit of white men,” he said, the future with terror. “The aim of the present black
attacking Lincoln for supporting “negro equality.” republican organization is the destruction of the social
Lincoln parried Douglas’s racist attacks by arguing that system of the Southern States,” warned one newspaper.
free blacks should have equal Once Republicans came to power, another cautioned,
UNDERSTAND economic opportunities but not they “would create insurrection and servile war in the
POINTS OF VIEW equal political rights. Taking the South — they would put the torch to our dwellings and
What was Lincoln’s posi- offensive, he asked how Douglas the knife to our throats.”
tion on slavery and people could accept the Dred Scott Nor could the South count any longer on the
of African descent during decision (which protected slave Democratic Party to protect its interests. At the party’s
the 1840s and 1850s? property in the territories) yet convention in April 1860, northern Democrats rejected
advocate popular sovereignty Jefferson Davis’s proposal to protect slavery in the
(which allowed settlers to exclude slavery). Douglas territories, and delegates from eight southern states
responded with the so-called Freeport Doctrine: that a quit the meeting. At a second Democratic convention,
territory’s residents could exclude slavery by not adopt- northern and midwestern delegates nominated
ing laws to protect it. That position pleased neither Stephen Douglas for president; meeting separately,
proslavery nor antislavery advocates. Nonetheless, southern Democrats nominated the sitting vice presi-
when Democrats won a narrow majority in the state dent, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.
legislature, they reelected Douglas to the U.S. Senate.
The Election of 1860 With the Democrats divided,
the Republicans sensed victory. They courted white
The Union Under Siege voters with a free-soil platform that opposed both
The debates with Douglas gave Lincoln a national rep- slavery and racial equality: “Missouri for white men
utation, and in the election of 1858 the Republican and white men for Missouri,” declared that state’s
Party won control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Republican platform. The national Republican conven-
tion chose Lincoln as its presidential candidate because
The Rise of Radicalism Shaken by the Republicans’ he was more moderate on slavery than the best-known
advance, southern Democrats divided again into mod- Republicans, Senators William Seward of New York
erates and fire-eaters. The moderates, who included Sen- and Salmon Chase of Ohio. Lincoln also conveyed a
ator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, strongly defended compelling egalitarian image that appealed to small-
“southern rights” and demanded ironclad political or holding farmers, wage earners, and midwestern voters.
constitutional protections for slavery. The fire-eaters — The Republican strategy worked. Although Lincoln
men such as Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina received less than 1 percent of the popular vote in the
and William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama — repudiated South and only 40 percent of the national poll, he won
the Union and actively promoted secession. Radical every northern and western state except New Jersey,
antislavery northerners likewise took a strong stance. giving him 180 (of 303) electoral votes and an absolute
CHAPTER 13 Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860 439
many southerners, it seemed time to think carefully We saw that the determination of Presidents John
about Lincoln’s 1858 statement that the Union must Tyler and James Polk to add territory and slave states to
“become all one thing, or all the other.” the Union pushed the United States into the Mexican
War and into a new debate over the expansion of slav-
To see a longer excerpt of Keziah Brevard’s diary, ery. To resolve the resulting crisis, Henry Clay, Daniel
along with other primary sources from this period, Webster, and Stephen Douglas devised the Compromise
see Sources for America’s History.
of 1850. Their efforts were in vain: antislavery north-
erners defied the Fugitive Slave Act, and expansionist-
minded southerners sought new slave states in the
Caribbean. Ideology (the pursuit of absolutes) replaced
SUMMARY politics (the art of compromise) as the ruling principle
of American political life.
In this chapter, we examined four related themes: the The Second Party System rapidly disintegrated. The
ideology of Manifest Destiny and the westward move- Whig Party vanished, and two issue-oriented parties,
ment of Americans in the 1840s, the impact of Ameri- the nativist American Party and the antislavery
can traders and settlers on the Indian peoples of Republican Party, competed for its members. As the
the Great Plains and California, the causes and conse- Republicans gained strength, the Democratic Party
quences of the Mexican War (1846–1848), and the splintered into sectional factions over Bleeding Kansas
disintegration of the Second Party System during and other slavery-related issues. The stage was set for
the 1850s. Lincoln’s victory in the climactic election of 1860.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. In what specific ways did the ideology of Manifest address the issue of slavery, and what was the effect
Destiny influence events during the 1840s and of each of them on sectional conflicts?
1850s?
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Some histo-
2. What were the main constitutional arguments pre- rians claim that the mistakes of a “blundering gen-
sented during the debate over slavery in the territo- eration” of political leaders led, by 1860, to the
ries? Which of those arguments influenced Chief imminent breakup of the Union. Using the events
Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott? from “Politics and Power” on the thematic timeline
on page 409, explain why you agree or disagree.
3. How did the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-
Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision seek to
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE How were the 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE In American Progress
American territorial acquisitions of the 1840s simi- (p. 411), why does John Gast choose Liberty to
lar to, and/or different from, those of the Louisiana lead the republic westward? How does he interpret
Purchase and the Paris Treaty of 1783 (discussed in the American experience, and what stories does he
Chapters 6 and 7)? tell in the image’s foreground, middle ground,
and background? How does the evidence in the
chapter challenge Gast’s interpretation of westward
expansion?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (1970). Still Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North
offers the best analysis of the ideology of the Republi- and Southern Domination, 1780–1860 (2000). Offers a
can Party. broad cultural analysis.
Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest The PBS documentary The West and its Web site (pbs
(1989). Highlights social conflicts in the West. .org/weta/thewest) offer a comprehensive history of
the West, and the PBS Web site on the U.S.-Mexican
William A. Link, Roots of Secession (2003). A good
War: 1846–1848 (pbs.org/usmexicanwar) covers
state-focused study about the causes of secession.
both American and Mexican perspectives of this
Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None (1977). pivotal event.
A classic biography about Lincoln.
442 PART 5 CHAPTER REVIEW
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1858 t President Buchanan urges Congress to admit Kansas under the proslavery Lecompton
constitution and seeks to buy and annex Cuba as a slave state
t Abraham Lincoln debates Stephen Douglas for U.S. Senate seat
KEY TURNING POINT: Three new political parties appeared in the six years from 1848 to
1854: Free-Soil, American (Know-Nothing), and Republican. What accounts for this upsurge
in political activity, and what was its result?
Two Societies at War
14
C H A P T E R
1861–1865
W
SECESSION AND hat a scene it was,” Union sol- IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
MILITARY STALEMATE, dier Elisha Hunt Rhodes wrote How did the military and political
1861–1862 in his diary at Gettysburg in goals of the war bring significant
The Secession Crisis July 1863. “Oh the dead and the dying on changes to social, economic, and
The Upper South Chooses Sides this bloody field.” Thousands of men had cultural life?
Setting War Objectives and already died, and the slaughter would con-
Devising Strategies tinue for two more years. “Why is it that 200,000 men of one blood and tongue . . . [are]
TOWARD TOTAL WAR seeking one another’s lives?” asked Confederate lieutenant R. M. Collins as another
gruesome battle ended. “We could settle our differences by compromising and all be at
Mobilizing Armies and Civilians
home in ten days.” But there was no compromise. “God wills this contest, and wills that
Mobilizing Resources
it shall not yet end,” President Abraham Lincoln reflected. “The Almighty has His own
THE TURNING POINT: purposes.”
1863 While the reasons for the war are complex, racial slavery played a primary role. To
Emancipation southern whites, the Republican victory in 1860 presented an immediate danger to the
Vicksburg and Gettysburg slave-owning republic that had existed since 1776. “[O]ur struggle is for inherited
rights,” declared one southern leader. Southerners did not believe Lincoln when he
THE UNION
promised not “directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the
VICTORIOUS, 1864–1865
States where it exists.” Soon, a southern senator warned, “cohorts of Federal office-
Soldiers and Strategy
holders, Abolitionists, may be sent into [our] midst” to encourage slave revolts and,
The Election of 1864 and
even worse, racial mixture. By racial mixture, white southerners meant sexual relations
Sherman’s March
between black men and white women, given that white masters had already fathered
untold thousands of children by their enslaved black women. “Better, far better! [to]
endure all horrors of civil war,” insisted a Confederate recruit, “than to see the dusky
sons of Ham leading the fair daughters of the South to the altar.” To preserve black
subordination and white supremacy, radical southerners chose the dangerous enterprise
of secession.
Lincoln and the North would not let them go in peace. Living in a world still ruled by
monarchies, northern leaders believed that the collapse of the American Union might
forever destroy the possibility of democratic republican governments. “We cannot
escape history,” Lincoln eloquently declared. “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the
last best hope of earth.”
And so came the conflict. Called the War Between the States by southerners and
the War of the Rebellion by northerners, the struggle finally resolved the great issues of
the Union and slavery. The costs were terrible: more American lives lost than the com-
bined total for all the nation’s other wars, and a century-long legacy of bitterness
between the triumphant North and the vanquished white South.
444
Fields of Death Fought with mass armies and new weapons, the Civil War took a huge toll in human
lives, as evidenced by this grisly photograph of a small section of the battlefield at Antietam, Maryland.
The most costly single-day battle in American history, it left 22,700 dead, wounded, and missing Con-
federate and Union soldiers. After the equally bloody three-day battle at Shiloh, Tennessee, in April
1862, General Ulysses Grant surveyed a field “so covered with dead that it would have been possible to
walk . . . in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.” Library of Congress.
445
446 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
The Lower South Secedes Fire-eaters elsewhere in Meanwhile, the Union government floundered.
the Deep South quickly called similar conventions and President Buchanan declared secession illegal but — in
organized mobs to attack local Union supporters. In line with his states’ rights outlook — claimed that the
early January, white Mississippians joyously enacted a federal government lacked authority to restore the
secession ordinance, and Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Union by force. Buchanan’s timidity prompted South
and Louisiana quickly followed. Texans soon joined Carolina’s new government to demand the surrender
them, ousting Unionist governor Sam Houston and of Fort Sumter (a federal garrison in Charleston
ignoring his warning that “the North . . . will over- Harbor) and to cut off its supplies. The president again
whelm the South” (Map 14.1). In February, the jubilant backed down, refusing to use the navy to supply the
secessionists met in Montgomery, Alabama, to pro- fort.
claim a new nation: the Confederate States of America.
Adopting a provisional constitution, the delegates The Crittenden Compromise Instead, the outgoing
named Mississippian Jefferson Davis, a former U.S. president urged Congress to find a compromise. The
senator and secretary of war, as the Confederacy’s pres- plan proposed by Senator John J. Crittenden of
ident and Georgia congressman Alexander Stephens as Kentucky received the most support. The Crittenden
vice president. Compromise had two parts. The first, which Congress
Secessionist fervor was less intense in the four approved, called for a constitutional amendment to
states of the Middle South (Virginia, North Carolina, protect slavery from federal interference in any state
Tennessee, and Arkansas), where there were fewer where it already existed. Crittenden’s second provision
slaves. White opinion was especially divided in the four called for the westward extension of the Missouri
border slave states (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Compromise line (36°30' north latitude) to the Cali-
and Missouri), where yeomen farmers held greater fornia border. The provision would ban slavery north
political power and, from bitter experience as well as of the line and allow bound labor to the south, includ-
the writings of journalist Hilton Helper, knew that all ing any territories “hereafter acquired,” raising the
too often “the slaveholders . . . have hoodwinked you.” prospect of expansion into Cuba or Central America.
Reflecting such sentiments, the legislatures of Virginia Congressional Republicans rejected Crittenden’s sec-
and Tennessee refused to join the secessionist move- ond proposal on strict instructions from president-
ment and urged a compromise. elect Lincoln. With good reason, Lincoln feared it
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 447
MAP 14.1
The Process of Secession, 1860–1861
The states of the Lower South had the highest concentration of slaves, and they led the secessionist
movement. After the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, the states of the Upper South joined
the Confederacy. Yeomen farmers in Tennessee and the backcountry of Alabama, Georgia, and
Virginia opposed secession but, except in the future state of West Virginia, initially rallied to
the Confederate cause. Consequently, the South entered the Civil War with its white population
relatively united.
would unleash new imperialist adventures. “I want collect duties and imposts” there. If military force was
Cuba,” Senator Albert G. Brown of Mississippi had necessary to preserve the Union, Lincoln — like
candidly stated in 1858. “I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, Democrat Andrew Jackson during the nullification cri-
and one or two other Mexican States . . . for the plant- sis — would use it. The choice was the South’s: Return
ing or spreading of slavery.” In 1787, 1821, and 1850, to the Union, or face war.
the North and South had resolved their differences
over slavery. In 1861, there would be no compromise.
In his March 1861 inaugural address, Lincoln care- The Upper South Chooses Sides
fully outlined his positions. He promised to safeguard The South’s decision came quickly. When Lincoln dis-
slavery where it existed but vowed to prevent its expan- patched an unarmed ship to resupply Fort Sumter,
sion. Equally important, the Republican president Jefferson Davis and his associates in the Provisional
declared that the Union was “perpetual”; consequently, Government of the Confederate States decided to seize
the secession of the Confederate states was illegal. the fort. The Confederate forces opened fire on April
Lincoln asserted his intention to “hold, occupy, and 12, with ardent fire-eater Edmund Ruffin supposedly
possess” federal property in the seceded states and “to firing the first cannon. Two days later, the Union
448 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
raids by Confederate guerrilla bands, which included Union Thrusts Toward Richmond Lincoln hoped
the notorious outlaws Jesse and Frank James, the Union that a quick strike against the Confederate capital of
retained control of Missouri. Richmond, Virginia, would end the rebellion. Many
In Kentucky, where secessionist and Unionist senti- northerners were equally optimistic. “What a picnic,”
ment was evenly balanced, Lincoln moved cautiously. thought one New York volunteer, “to go down South
He allowed Kentucky’s thriving trade with the for three months and clean up the whole business.”
Confederacy to continue until August 1861, when So in July 1861, Lincoln ordered General Irvin
Unionists took over the state government. When the McDowell’s army of 30,000 men to attack General
Confederacy responded to the trade cutoff by invading P. G. T. Beauregard’s force of 20,000 troops at Manas-
Kentucky in September, Illinois volunteers com- sas, a Virginia rail junction 30 miles southwest of
manded by Ulysses S. Grant drove them out. Mixing Washington. McDowell launched a strong assault near
military force with political persuasion, Lincoln had Bull Run, but panic swept his troops when the Con-
kept four border states (Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, federate soldiers counterattacked, shouting the hair-
and Kentucky) and the northwestern portion of raising “rebel yell.” “The peculiar corkscrew sensation
Virginia in the Union. that it sends down your backbone . . . can never be
told,” one Union veteran wrote. “You have to feel it.”
Setting War Objectives McDowell’s troops — and the many civilians who had
come to observe the battle — retreated in disarray to
and Devising Strategies Washington.
Speaking as provisional president of the Confederacy The Confederate victory at Bull Run showed the
in April 1861, Jefferson Davis identified the Con- strength of the rebellion. Lincoln replaced McDowell
federates’ cause with that of the Patriots of 1776: like with General George McClellan and enlisted a million
their grandfathers, he said, white southerners were men to serve for three years in the new Army of the
fighting for the “sacred right of self-government.” The Potomac. A cautious military engineer, McClellan spent
Confederacy sought “no conquest, no aggrandize- the winter of 1861–1862 training
ment . . . ; all we ask is to be let alone.” Davis’s renunci- the recruits and launched a major COMPARE
ation of expansion was probably a calculated short-run offensive in March 1862. With AND CONTRAST
policy; after all, the quest to extend slavery into Kansas great logistical skill, the Union In 1861 and 1862, what
and Cuba had sparked Lincoln’s election. Still, this general ferried 100,000 troops were the political and
decision simplified the Confederacy’s military strategy; down the Potomac River to the military strategies of the
it needed only to defend its boundaries to achieve Chesapeake Bay and landed them Confederate and Union
independence. Ignoring strong antislavery sentiment on the peninsula between the leaders? Which side was
among potential European allies, the Confederate York and James rivers (Map 14.2). the more successful and
constitution explicitly ruled out gradual emancipation Ignoring Lincoln’s advice to why?
or any other law “denying or impairing the right of “strike a blow” quickly, McClellan
property in negro slaves.” Indeed, Confederate vice advanced slowly toward Richmond, allowing the
president Alexander Stephens insisted that his nation’s Confederates to mount a counterstrike. Thomas J.
“cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the “Stonewall” Jackson marched a Confederate force rap-
Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery — idly northward through the Shenandoah Valley in
subordination to the superior race — is his natural or western Virginia and threatened Washington. When
normal condition.” Lincoln recalled 30,000 troops from McClellan’s army
Lincoln responded to Davis in a speech to Congress to protect the Union capital, Jackson returned quickly
on July 4, 1861. He portrayed secession as an attack on to Richmond to bolster General Robert E. Lee’s army.
representative government, America’s great contribu- In late June, Lee launched a ferocious six-day attack
tion to world history. The issue, Lincoln declared, was that cost 20,000 casualties to the Union’s 10,000. When
“whether a constitutional republic” had the will and McClellan failed to exploit the Confederates’ losses,
the means to “maintain its territorial integrity against Lincoln ordered a withdrawal and Richmond remained
a domestic foe.” Determined to crush the rebellion, secure.
Lincoln rejected General Winfield Scott’s strategy of
peaceful persuasion through economic sanctions and a Lee Moves North: Antietam Hoping for victories
naval blockade. Instead, he insisted on an aggressive that would humiliate Lincoln’s government, Lee went
military campaign to restore the Union. on the offensive. Joining with Jackson in northern
450 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
12 Antietam
Sept. 17, 1862 Frederick
Baltimore
Harpers MARYLAND
Ferry
Winchester
5 May 25, 1862
WEST VIRGINIA Poto
ma
(1863) c
.
R.
S
. Washington, D.C. The only major battle
T
R
ah of 1861 — Bull Run —
do
M
To relieve pressure on Richmond, an took place about 30 miles
Confederate troops under General southwest of the Union’s
en
Sh
10
D
I
R
McDowell 4 Cedar Mt. 13
E
N June 8, 1862
7 The Peninsular Campaign
L
Ra
Assisted by Jackson’s attacks, Lee repulsed between the James and York rivers.
pp
the Union assault on Richmond and then ha
a
advanced toward Washington. After another
nn
o
0 20 40 miles Confederate victory in the Second Battle of
ck
Che
Bull Run (10) in August 1862, Lee’s army
R.
Fair Oaks 6
0 20 40 kilometers moved into Maryland. May 31ñJune 1, 1862
sapea
Union Movements Confederate Movements
VIRGINIA
Richmond
McDowell Johnston
ke Bay
Yo
McClellan Holmes 8 Seven Days r kR
June 25ñJuly 1, 1862 .
2
FrÈmont Jackson
Siege of
Banks Lee Yorktown
James
R Apr. 5ñMay 4,
Shields .
Confederate Williamsburg 1862
victory 3 May 5, 1862
Pope To help you to follow the sequence of
Railroad the major battles of the eastern
Burnside campaigns of 1862, each battle is
Sequence of
Union victory 1
battles
dated and its place in the chronology
Ft. Monroe
denoted by a number in a circle.
MAP 14.2
The Eastern Campaigns of 1862
Many of the great battles of the Civil War took place in the 125 miles separating the Union capi-
tal, Washington, D.C., and the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. During 1862, Confederate
generals Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee won battles that defended
the Confederate capital (3, 6, 8, and 13) and launched offensive strikes against Union forces
guarding Washington (1, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10). They also suffered a defeat — at Antietam (12), in
Maryland — that was almost fatal to the Confederate cause. As was often the case in the Civil
War, the victors in these battles were either too bloodied or too timid to exploit their advantage.
Virginia, he routed Union troops in the Second Battle West Virginia, a copy of Lee’s orders fell into McClellan’s
of Bull Run (August 1862) and then struck north hands. The Union general again failed to exploit his
through western Maryland. There, he nearly met with advantage, delaying an attack against Lee’s depleted
disaster. When the Confederate commander divided army, thereby allowing it to secure a strong defensive
his force, sending Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry in position west of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg,
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 451
Maryland. Outnumbered 87,000 to 50,000, Lee desper- the Confederate and Union dead numbered 4,800 and
ately fought off McClellan’s attacks until Jackson’s the wounded 18,500, of whom 3,000 soon died. (By
troops arrived and saved the Confederates from a comparison, there were 6,000 American casualties on
major defeat. Appalled by the Union casualties, D-Day, which began the invasion of Nazi-occupied
McClellan allowed Lee to retreat to Virginia. France in World War II.)
The fighting at Antietam was savage. A Wisconsin In public, Lincoln claimed Antietam as a Union
officer described his men “loading and firing with victory; privately, he criticized McClellan for not fight-
demoniacal fury and shouting and laughing hysteri- ing Lee to the bitter end. A masterful organizer of men
cally.” A sunken road — nicknamed Bloody Lane — was and supplies, McClellan refused to risk his troops, fear-
filled with Confederate bodies two and three deep, and ing that heavy casualties would undermine public sup-
the advancing Union troops knelt on this “ghastly port for the war. Lincoln worried more about the
flooring” to shoot at the retreating Confederates. The danger of a lengthy war. He dismissed McClellan and
battle at Antietam on September 17, 1862, remains the began a long search for an aggressive commanding
bloodiest single day in U.S. military history. Together, general. His first choice, Ambrose E. Burnside, proved
to be more daring but less competent than McClellan. except by complete conquest.” Lincoln agreed. During
In December, after heavy losses in futile attacks against the summer of 1862, he abandoned hope for a compro-
well-entrenched Confederate forces at Fredericksburg, mise peace that would restore the Union. Instead, he
Virginia, Burnside resigned his command, and Lincoln committed the nation to a total war that would mobi-
replaced him with Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. As lize all of society’s resources — economic, political, and
1862 ended, Confederates were optimistic: they had cultural — in support of the North’s military effort and
won a stalemate in the East. end slavery in the South. Aided by the Republican
Party and a talented cabinet, Lincoln gradually orga-
The War in the Mississippi Valley Meanwhile, nized an effective central government able to wage all-
Union commanders in the Upper South had been more out war; and urged on by antislavery politicians and
successful (Map 14.3). Their goal was to control the activists, he moved toward a controversial proclama-
Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers, dividing the tion of emancipation. Jefferson Davis had less success
Confederacy and reducing the mobility of its armies. at harnessing southern resources, because the eleven
Because Kentucky did not join the rebellion, the Union states of the Confederacy remained suspicious of cen-
already dominated the Ohio River Valley. In February tralized rule and southern yeomen grew increasingly
1862, the Union army used an innovative tactic to take skeptical of the war effort.
charge of the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers as well.
General Ulysses S. Grant used riverboats clad with iron
plates to capture Fort Donelson on the Cumberland Mobilizing Armies and Civilians
River and Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. When Initially, patriotic fervor filled both armies with eager
Grant moved south toward Mississippi to seize critical young volunteers. All he heard was “War! War! War!”
railroad lines, Confederate troops led by Albert Sidney one Union recruit recalled. Even those of sober minds
Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard caught his army by joined up. “I don’t think a young man ever went over all
surprise near a small log church at Shiloh, Tennessee. the considerations more carefully than I did,” reflected
However, Grant relentlessly committed troops and William Saxton of Cincinnatus, New York. “It might
forced a Confederate withdrawal. As the fighting at mean sickness, wounds, loss of limb, and even life
Shiloh ended on April 7, Grant surveyed a large field itself. . . . But my country was in danger.” The southern
“so covered with dead that it would have been possible call for volunteers was even more successful, thanks to
to walk over the clearing in any direction, stepping on its strong military tradition and a culture that stressed
dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.” The duty and honor. “Would you, My Darling, . . . be will-
cost in lives was horrific, but Lincoln was resolute: ing to leave your Children under such a [despotic
“What I want . . . is generals who will fight battles and Union] government?” James B. Griffin of Edgefield,
win victories.” South Carolina, asked his wife. “No — I know you
Three weeks later, Union naval forces commanded would sacrifice every comfort on earth, rather than
by David G. Farragut struck the Confederacy from submit to it.” However, enlistments declined as poten-
the Gulf of Mexico. They captured New Orleans, the tial recruits learned the realities of mass warfare: epi-
South’s financial center and largest city. The Union army demic diseases in the camps and wholesale death on
also took control of fifteen hundred plantations and the battlefields. Both governments soon faced the need
50,000 slaves in the surrounding region, striking a strong for conscription.
blow against slavery. Workers on some plantations
looted their owners’ mansions; others refused to labor The Military Draft The Confederacy acted first. In
unless they were paid wages. “[Slavery there] is forever April 1862, following the bloodshed at Shiloh, the
destroyed and worthless,” declared one northern Confederate Congress imposed the first legally binding
reporter. Union victories had significantly undermined draft (conscription) in American history. New laws
Confederate strength in the Mississippi River Valley. required existing soldiers to serve for the duration of
the war and mandated three years of military service
from all men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-
Toward Total War five. In September 1862, after the heavy casualties at
Antietam, the age limit jumped to forty-five. The
The military carnage in 1862 revealed that the war South’s draft had two loopholes, both controversial.
would be long and costly. Grant later remarked that, First, it exempted one white man — the planter, a son,
after Shiloh, he “gave up all idea of saving the Union or an overseer — for each twenty slaves, allowing some
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 453
M O h i o R. Louisville
iss ILLINOIS
iss Perryville
ip Oct. 8, 1862
pi
Ft. Henry
R.
MISSOURI Feb. 6, KENTUCKY
1862 Fort Donelson
Feb. 16,
Springfield Columbus Cairo
1862 d R.
Mar. 4, 1862
r l an
Wilson's Creek Bowling C um b e
Aug. 10, 1861 New Madrid 4
Mar. 14,1862 Green
Island No. 10
1
2
Pea Ridge
April 8, 1862 3 TENNESSEE
Mar. 6–8, 1862
Nashville Murfreesboro
Feb. 25, Dec. 31,
1862 1862
Ft. Pillow
Knoxville
June 5,
1862
Columbia
10
ARKANSAS NORTH
Grand 5
Junction CAROLINA
Memphis Shiloh April 6–7, 1862
June 6, Chattanooga
11 1862 Corinth Florence
Ark a
Luka
sa Decatur
n
sR Tupelo
. R.
sa
o
Tomb
Co
Granada
ALABAMA
igbee R.
GEORGIA
Greenville
MISSISSIPPI
Vicksburg
bombarded
June 26–28,
1862
Monroe 12
Meridian
Selma
Cahaba
Montgomery
a R.
LOUISIANA
Sherman
a b am
Pearl
Grant
Al
Garland
R.
Farragut-Butler
Buell
Lyon
N
9 8 Curtis
E Baton Rouge Mobile Pensacola
FLORIDA Union Victory
W May 12, 1862
May 18, 1862
Bragg
S New Orleans
Ft. Pickens Confederate victory
April 25, 1862
Lake Railroads
Pontchartrain Proctorsville
7 1 Sequence of battles
Berwick
Ft. Jackson
April 24, 1862
0 50 100 miles
MAP 14.3
The Western Campaigns, 1861–1862
As the Civil War intensified in 1862, Union and Confederate military and naval forces sought
control of the great valleys of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers. From February through
April 1862, Union armies moved south through western Tennessee (1–3 and 5). By the end of June,
Union naval forces controlled the Mississippi River north of Memphis (4, 10, and 11) and from the
Gulf of Mexico to Vicksburg (6, 7, 9, and 12). These military and naval victories gave the Union
control of crucial transportation routes, kept Missouri in the Union, and carried the war to the
borders of the states of the Lower South.
454 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
whites on large plantations to avoid military service. overrode the judges’ authority to free conscripted men,
This provision, a Mississippi legislator warned Jefferson so the government was able to keep substantial armies
Davis, “has aroused a spirit of rebellion in some places.” in the field well into 1864.
Second, draftees could hire substitutes. By the time the The Union government acted more ruthlessly
Confederate Congress closed this loophole in 1864, the toward draft resisters and Confederate sympathizers.
price of a substitute had soared to $300 in gold, three In Missouri and other border states, Union command-
times the annual wage of a skilled worker. Laborers and ers levied special taxes on southern supporters. Lincoln
yeomen farmers angrily complained that it was “a rich went further, suspending habeas corpus and, over the
man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” course of the war, temporarily imprisoning about
Consequently, some southerners refused to serve. 15,000 southern sympathizers without trial. He also
Because the Confederate constitution vested sovereignty gave military courts jurisdiction over civilians who dis-
in the individual states, the government in Richmond couraged enlistments or resisted the draft, preventing
could not compel military service. Independent-minded acquittals by sympathetic local juries. However, most
governors such as Joseph Brown of Georgia and Union governments used incentives to lure recruits. To
Zebulon Vance of North Carolina simply ignored meet the local quotas set by the Militia Act of 1862,
President Davis’s first draft call in towns, counties, and states used cash bounties of as
PLACE EVENTS early 1862. Elsewhere, state judges much as $600 (about $11,000 today) and signed up
IN CONTEXT issued writs of habeas corpus — nearly 1 million men. The Union also allowed men to
How did the Union and legal instruments used to protect avoid military service by providing a substitute or pay-
Confederacy mobilize their people from arbitrary arrest — and ing a $300 fee.
populations for war, and ordered the Confederate army to When the Enrollment Act of 1863 finally initiated
how effective were these
release reluctant draftees. How- conscription, recent German and Irish immigrants
methods?
ever, the Confederate Congress often refused to serve. It was not their war, they said.
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 455
Northern Democrats used the furor over conscription The Union government won much stronger sup-
to bolster support for their party, which increasingly port from native-born middle-class citizens. In 1861,
criticized Lincoln’s policies. They accused Lincoln of prominent New Yorkers established the U.S. Sanitary
drafting poor whites to liberate enslaved blacks, who Commission to provide the troops with clothing, food,
would then flood the cities and take their jobs. Slavery and medical services. Seven thousand local auxiliaries
was nearly “dead, [but] the negro is not, there is the assisted the commission’s work. “I almost weep,”
misfortune,” declared a Democratic newspaper in reported a local agent, “when these plain rural people
Cincinnati. In July 1863, the immigrants’ hostility to come to send their simple offerings to absent sons and
conscription and blacks sparked riots in New York brothers.” The commission also recruited battlefield
City. For five days, Irish and German workers ran nurses and doctors for the Union Army Medical
rampant, burning draft offices, sacking the homes of Bureau. Despite these efforts, dysentery, typhoid, and
influential Republicans, and attacking the police. The malaria spread through the camps, as did mumps and
rioters lynched and mutilated a dozen African Amer- measles, viruses that were often deadly to rural recruits.
icans, drove hundreds of black families from their Diseases and infections killed about 250,000 Union
homes, and burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum. soldiers, nearly twice the 135,000 who died in combat.
To suppress the mobs, Lincoln rushed in Union troops Still, thanks to the Sanitary Commission, Union troops
who had just fought at Gettysburg; they killed more had a far lower mortality rate than soldiers fighting
than a hundred rioters. in nineteenth-century European wars. Confederate
troops were less fortunate, despite the efforts of thou- Mobilizing Resources
sands of women who volunteered as nurses, because Wars are usually won by the side that possesses greater
the Confederate army’s health system was poorly orga- resources. In that regard, the Union had a distinct
nized. Scurvy was a special problem for southern sol- advantage. With nearly two-thirds of the nation’s pop-
diers; lacking vitamin C in their diets, they suffered ulation, two-thirds of the railroad mileage, and almost
muscle ailments and had low resistance to camp dis- 90 percent of the industrial output, the North’s econ-
eases (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 458). omy was far superior to that of the South (Figure 14.2).
So much death created new industries and cultural Furthermore, many of its arms factories were equipped
rituals. Embalmers devised a zinc chloride fluid to pre- for mass production.
serve soldiers’ bodies, allowing them to be shipped Still, the Confederate position was far from weak.
home for burial, an innovation that began modern Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee had substan-
funeral practices. Military cemeteries with hundreds of tial industrial capacity. Richmond, with its Tredegar
crosses in neat rows replaced the landscaped “rural Iron Works, was an important manufacturing center,
cemeteries” in vogue in American cities before the and in 1861 it acquired the gun-making machinery
Civil War. As thousands of mothers, wives, and sisters from the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry. The production
mourned the deaths of fallen soldiers, they faced at the Richmond armory, the purchase of Enfield rifles
changed lives. Confronting utter deprivation, working- from Britain, and the capture of 100,000 Union guns
class women grieved for the loss of a breadwinner. enabled the Confederacy to provide every infantryman
Middle-class wives often had financial resources but, with a modern rifle-musket by 1863.
having embraced the affectionate tenets of domesticity, Moreover, with 9 million people, the Confederacy
mourned the death of a loved one by wearing black could mobilize enormous armies. Enslaved blacks,
crape “mourning” dresses and other personal accesso- one-third of the population, became part of the war
ries of death. The destructive war, in concert with the effort by producing food for the army and raw cot-
emerging consumer culture and ethic of domesticity, ton for export. Confederate leaders counted on King
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 457
FIGURE 14.2
Economies, North and South, 1860 North South
The military advantages of the North were even Population 61% 39%
greater than this chart suggests. The population
Commodity output 70% 30%
figures for the South include slaves, whom the
Confederacy feared to arm. Also, the South’s Farm acreage 67% 33%
commodity output was primarily in farm goods 85% 15%
Factories
rather than manufactures. Finally, southern factories
were much smaller on average than those in the Railroad mileage 66% 34%
North.
Cotton — the leading American export and a cru- However, British manufacturers had stockpiled cotton
cial staple of the nineteenth-century economy — to and developed new sources in Egypt and India. Still,
purchase clothes, boots, blankets, and weapons from the South received some foreign support. Although
abroad. Leaders also saw cotton as a diplomatic Britain never recognized the Confederacy as an inde-
weapon that would persuade Britain and France, which pendent nation, it treated the rebel government as a
had large textile industries, to assist the Confederacy. belligerent power — with the right under international
The Civil War, like all wars before and since, encouraged innovation in both the
Military Deaths — and destruction and the saving of human life. More than 620,000 soldiers — 360,000
on the Union side and 260,000 Confederates — died during the war, about 20
Lives Saved — During percent of those who served. However, thanks to advances in camp hygiene and
battlefield treatment, the Union death rate was about 54–58 per 1,000 soldiers
the Civil War per year, less than half the level for British and French troops during the Crimean
War of 1854–1855.
1. Report by surgeon Charles S. Tipler, medical direc- Private George W. Lemon suffered a minie ball wound
tor of the Army of the Potomac, January 4, 1862. to his femur similar to the one shown here (below), sur-
Most Civil War deaths came from disease. The geons amputated his leg below the hip and, after the
major killers were bacterial intestinal diseases — war, fitted him with a prosthetic leg.
typhoid fever, diarrhea, and dysentery — which
spread because of unsanitary conditions in the
camps.
The aggregate strength of the forces from which I have
received reports is 142,577. Of these, 47,836 have been
under treatment in the field and general hospitals, 35,915
of whom have been returned to duty, and 281 have died;
9,281 remained under treatment at the end of the
month; . . .
The diseases from which our men have suffered
most have been continued remittent and typhoid fevers,
measles, diarrhea, dysentery, and the various forms of
catarrh [heavy discharge of mucus from the nose]. Of all
the scourges incident to armies in the field I suppose that Source: National Museum of Health & Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology.
chronic diarrheas and dysenteries have always been the
most prevalent and the most fatal. I am happy to say that
in this army they are almost unknown. We have but 280
cases of chronic diarrhea and 69 of chronic dysentery
reported in the month of November.
458
3. Kate Cumming, April 23, 1862, journal entry on 5. John Tooker, MD, “Aspects of Medicine, Nurs-
treating a Confederate victim after the Battle of ing, and the Civil War,” 2007. The Union doctor
Shiloh. Union surgeons performed 29,980 battle- Jonathan Letterman pioneered a new method
field amputations during the Civil War. Confederate of battlefield triage that was adopted by the
records are less complete, but surgeons apparently entire army in 1864.
undertook about 28,000 amputations. They quickly Letterman had devised an efficient and, for the times,
removed limbs too shattered to mend, which modern system of mass casualty management, begin-
increased the chances of survival. According to ning with first aid adjacent to the battlefield, removal of
one witness, “surgeons and their assistants, the wounded by an organized ambulance system to field
stripped to the waist and bespattered with hospitals for urgent and stabilizing treatment, such as
blood, stood around, some holding the poor wound closure and amputation, and then referral to gen-
fellows while others, armed with long, bloody eral hospitals for longer term definitive management.
knives and saws, cut and sawed away with fright- This three-stage approach to casualty management,
ful rapidity, throwing the mangled limbs on a pile strengthened by effective and efficient transport, earned
nearby as soon as removed.” This journal entry Letterman the title of “The Father of Battlefield Medicine.”
from a young Confederate nurse in Corinth, Mis-
sissippi, describes the plight of one such victim
after the Battle of Shiloh. Sources: (1) The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the
Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
A young man whom I have been attending is going to 1889), Series 1, Vol. 5 (Part V), 111–112; (3) Kate Cumming, A Journal of Hospital
Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee (Louisville, KY: John P. Morton & Com-
have his arm cut off. Poor fellow! I am doing all I can to pany, 1866), 19; (4) William Williams Keen, “Surgical Reminiscences of the Civil
cheer him. He says that he knows that he will die, as all War,” in Addresses and Other Papers (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1905), 433–434;
who have had limbs amputated in this hospital have (5) John Tooker, “Antietam: Aspects of Medicine, Nursing, and the Civil War,”
National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine,
died. . . . He lived only a few hours after his amputation. National Institutes of Health.
459
460 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
law to borrow money and purchase weapons. The of public finance that secured funds in three ways.
odds, then, did not necessarily favor the Union, despite First, the government increased tariffs; placed high
its superior resources. duties on alcohol and tobacco; and imposed direct
taxes on business corporations, large inheritances, and
Republican Economic and Fiscal Policies To mobil- the incomes of wealthy citizens. These levies paid about
ize northern resources, the Republican-dominated 20 percent of the cost. Second, interest-paying bonds
Congress enacted a neomercantilist program of issued by the U.S. Treasury financed another 65 per-
government-assisted economic development that far cent. The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864
surpassed Henry Clay’s American System (Chapter 10). forced most banks to buy those bonds; and Philadelphia
The Republicans imposed high tariffs (averaging nearly banker and Treasury Department agent Jay Cooke
40 percent) on various foreign goods, thereby encour- used newspaper ads and 2,500 subagents to persuade a
aging domestic industries. To boost agricultural out- million northern families to buy them.
put, they offered “free land” to farmers. The Homestead The Union paid the remaining 15 percent by print-
Act of 1862 gave settlers the title to 160 acres of public ing paper money. The Legal Tender Act of 1862 autho-
land after five years of residence. To create an inte- rized $150 million in paper currency — soon known as
grated national banking system (far more powerful greenbacks — and required the public to accept them
than the First and Second Banks of the United States), as legal tender. Like the Continental currency of the
Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase forced thou- Revolutionary era, greenbacks could not be exchanged
sands of local banks to accept federal charters and for specie; however, the Treasury issued a limited
regulations. amount of paper money, so it lost only a small part of
Finally, the Republican Congress implemented its face value.
Clay’s program for a nationally financed transportation If a modern fiscal system was one result of the war,
system. Expansion to the Pacific, the California gold immense concentrations of capital in many industries —
rush, and subsequent discoveries of gold, silver, copper, meatpacking, steel, coal, railroads, textiles, shoes — was
and other metals in Nevada, Montana, and other west- another. The task of supplying the huge war machine, an
ern lands had revived demands observer noted, gave a few men “the command of mil-
TRACE CHANGE for such a network. Therefore, in lions of money.” Such massed financial power threat-
OVER TIME 1862, Congress chartered the ened not only the prewar society of small producers but
How did the economic Union Pacific and Central Pacific also the future of democratic self-government (America
policies of the Republican- companies to build a transconti- Compared, p. 461). Americans “are never again to see
controlled Congress nental railroad line and granted the republic in which we were born,” lamented aboli-
redefine the character of them lavish subsidies. This eco- tionist and social reformer Wendell Phillips.
the federal government? nomic program won the alle-
giance of farmers, workers, and The South Resorts to Coercion and Inflation The
entrepreneurs and bolstered the Union’s ability to fight economic demands on the South were equally great,
a long war. but, true to its states’ rights philosophy, the Confederacy
New industries sprang up to provide the Union initially left most matters to the state governments.
army — and its 1.5 million men — with guns, clothes, However, as the realities of total war became clear,
and food. Over the course of the war, soldiers consumed Jefferson Davis’s administration took extraordinary
more than half a billion pounds of pork and other measures. It built and operated shipyards, armories,
packed meats. To meet this demand, Chicago railroads foundries, and textile mills; commandeered food and
built new lines to carry thousands of hogs and cattle to scarce raw materials such as coal, iron, copper, and
the city’s stockyards and slaughterhouses. By 1862, Chi- lead; requisitioned slaves to work on fortifications;
cago had passed Cincinnati as the meatpacking capital and directly controlled foreign trade.
of the nation, bringing prosperity to thousands of mid- The Confederate Congress and ordinary southern
western farmers and great wealth to Philip D. Armour citizens opposed many of Davis’s initiatives, particu-
and other meatpacking entrepreneurs. larly those involving taxes. The Congress refused to
Bankers and financiers likewise found themselves tax cotton exports and slaves, the most valuable prop-
pulled into the war effort. The annual spending of the erty held by wealthy planters, and the urban middle
Union government shot up from $63 million in 1860 to classes and yeomen farm families refused to pay more
more than $865 million in 1864. To raise that enor- than their fair share. Consequently, the Confederacy
mous sum, the Republicans created a modern system covered less than 10 percent of its expenditures through
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
Wars cost money, sometimes a lot of money, and nations to less than 5 percent. Ample tariff revenues and the
often pay for them by issuing bonds and expanding the frugal policies of Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin
national debt. The British national debt grew enormously Van Buren then cut the debt nearly to zero by the early
between 1750 and 1815 as it fought a great series of wars, 1840s. Even the war with Mexico barely raised the level
all of which involved either its American colonies or the of the debt, thanks to the return of prosperity and the
United States: the Great War for Empire (1754–1763), the growth of GDP between 1844 and 1857.
War of American Independence (1776–1783), and the Wars Then came the Civil War, which boosted the Union
of the French Revolution and Napoleon (1793–1815). Con- debt from $62 million in 1860 to $2.2 billion at the end of
sequently, Britain’s national debt peaked in 1815 at 260 1865, a 1,500 percent increase. (The Fourteenth Amend-
percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Even in 1830, ment, ratified in 1868, declared “illegal and void” all debts
after years of high taxation and economic growth, the incurred by the Confederacy.) In relation to GDP, the
debt amounted to 180 percent of British GDP. U.S. national debt shot up to 27 percent, the same level
By comparison, the United States in 1830 was virtually as 1790, and then — thanks again to tariff revenue —
debt-free, as the policies of Jeffersonian Republicans decreased gradually to about 10 percent of GDP by 1900.
reduced its debt from about 27 percent of GDP in 1790 By then, the British national debt had fallen to about 40
percent of its GDP, as the British — the world’s strongest
power — mostly avoided new wars and built a prosperous
commercial and industrial economy. The cost of war, civil
200
or international, may well be a high national debt.
United States
United Kingdom
150
Debt to GDP Ratio (%)
100
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
taxation. The government paid another 30 percent by of currency created a spectacular inflation: by 1865,
borrowing, but wealthy planters and foreign bankers prices had risen to ninety-two times their 1861 level.
grew increasingly fearful that the South would never As food prices soared, riots erupted in more than
redeem its bonds. a dozen southern cities and towns. In Richmond,
Consequently, the Confederacy paid 60 percent several hundred women broke into bakeries, crying,
of its war costs by printing paper money. The flood “Our children are starving while the rich roll in
461
462 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
“until the Slave power is completely subjugated, and passed the Confiscation Act, which authorized the
emancipation made certain.” Because slave-grown crops seizure of all property, including slave property, used to
sustained the Confederacy, activists justified black support the rebellion.
emancipation on military grounds. As Frederick With the Confiscation Act, Radical Republicans —
Douglass put it, “Arrest that hoe in the hands of the the members of the party who had been bitterly
Negro, and you smite the rebellion in the very seat of opposed to the “Slave Power” since the mid-1850s —
its life.” began to use wartime legislation to destroy slavery.
Their leaders were treasury secretary Salmon Chase,
“Contrabands” As abolitionists pressed their case, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and Repre-
African Americans exploited wartime chaos to seize sentative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. A long-
freedom for themselves. When three slaves reached the time member of Congress, Stevens was a masterful
camp of Union general Benjamin Butler in Virginia in politician, skilled at fashioning legislation that could
May 1861, he labeled them “contraband of war” (enemy win majority support. In April 1862, Stevens and the
property that can be legitimately seized, according to Radicals persuaded Congress to end slavery in the
international law) and refused to return them. Butler’s District of Columbia by providing compensation for
term stuck, and soon thousands of “contrabands” were owners; in June, Congress outlawed slavery in the fed-
camping with Union armies. Near Fredericksburg, eral territories (finally enacting the Wilmot Proviso of
Virginia, an average of 200 blacks appeared every day, 1846); and in July, it passed a second Confiscation Act,
“with their packs on their backs and handkerchiefs tied which declared “forever free” the thousands of refugee
over their heads — men, women, little children, and slaves and all slaves captured by the Union army.
babies.” This influx created a humanitarian crisis; abo- Emancipation had become an instrument of war.
litionist Harriet Jacobs reported that hundreds of refu-
gees were “[p]acked together in the most miserable The Emancipation Proclamation Initially, Lincoln
quarters,” where many died from smallpox and dysen- rejected emancipation as a war aim, but faced with
tery. To provide legal status to the refugees — some thousands of refugees and Radical Republican pressure,
400,000 by the war’s end — in August 1861 Congress he moved cautiously toward that goal. The president
drafted a general proclamation of emancipation in July white jobs. Every freed slave, suggested a nativist-
1862, and he publicly linked black freedom with the minded New Yorker, should “shoulder an Irishman
preservation of the Union in August. “If I could save and leave the Continent.” Such sentiments propelled
the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it,” Democrat Horatio Seymour into the governor’s office
Lincoln told Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, in New York; if abolition was a war goal, Seymour
“and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would argued, the South should not be conquered. In the
do it.” November election, Democrats swept to victory in
Now he waited for a Union victory. Considering Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois and gained thirty-four
the Battle of Antietam “an indication of the Divine seats in Congress. However, Republicans still held a
Will,” Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation of twenty-five-seat majority in the House and gained five
emancipation on September 22, 1862, basing its legal seats in the Senate. Lincoln refused to retreat. Calling
authority on his duty as commander in chief to sup- emancipation an “act of justice,” he signed the final
press the rebellion. The proclamation legally abolished proclamation on New Year’s Day 1863. “If my name
slavery in all states that remained out of the Union on ever goes into history,” he said, “it was for this act.”
January 1, 1863. The rebel states could preserve slavery
by renouncing secession. None chose to do so. To see a longer excerpt of the Jefferson Davis
The proclamation was politically astute. Lincoln document, along with other primary sources from
this period, see Sources for America’s History.
conciliated slave owners in the Union-controlled bor-
der states, such as Maryland and
UNDERSTAND Missouri, by leaving slavery intact
in those states. It also permitted Vicksburg and Gettysburg
POINTS OF VIEW
Some historians argue that slavery to continue in areas occu- The Emancipation Proclamation’s fate would depend
slaves “freed themselves” pied by Union armies: western on Republican political success and Union military
by fleeing to Union armies, and central Tennessee, western victories, neither of which looked likely. Democrats
thereby forcing Lincoln Virginia, and southern Louisiana. had made significant gains in 1862, and popular sup-
to issue the Emancipation In Indian Territory, also under port was growing for a negotiated peace. Two brilliant
Proclamation. How persua- Union control, most mixed-blood victories in Virginia by General Robert E. Lee, whose
sive is that argument? Cherokee slave owners remained army defeated Union forces at Fredericksburg (Decem-
committed to the Confederacy ber 1862) and Chancellorsville (May 1863), further
and to bondage. They did not formally free their 4,000 eroded northern support for the war.
slaves until July 1866, when a treaty with the U.S. gov-
ernment specified that their ex-slaves “shall have all the The Battle for the Mississippi At this critical junc-
rights of native Cherokee.” ture, General Grant mounted a major offensive to split
Consequently, the Emancipation Proclamation did the Confederacy in two. Grant drove south along the
not immediately free a single slave. Yet, as abolitionist west bank of the Mississippi in Arkansas and then
Wendell Phillips understood, Lincoln’s proclamation crossed the river near Vicksburg, Mississippi. There, he
had moved slavery to “the edge of Niagara,” and would defeated two Confederate armies and laid siege to the
soon sweep it over the brink. Advancing Union troops city. After repelling Union assaults for six weeks, the
became the agents of slavery’s destruction. “I became exhausted and starving Vicksburg garrison surren-
free in 1863, in the summer, when the yankees come by dered on July 4, 1863. Five days later, Union forces took
and said I could go work for myself,” recalled Jackson Port Hudson, Louisiana (near Baton Rouge), and
Daniel of Maysville, Alabama. As Lincoln now saw it, seized control of the entire Mississippi River. Grant had
“the old South is to be destroyed and replaced by new taken 31,000 prisoners; cut off Louisiana, Arkansas, and
propositions and ideas” — a system of free labor. Texas from the rest of the Confederacy; and prompted
Hailed by reformers in Europe, emancipation was thousands of slaves to desert their plantations. Con-
extraordinarily controversial in America. In the federate troops responded by targeting refugees for
Confederacy, Jefferson Davis labeled it the “most exe- re-enslavement and massacre. “The battlefield was sick-
crable measure recorded in the history of guilty man”; ening,” a Confederate officer reported from Arkansas,
in the North, white voters unleashed a racist backlash. “no orders, threats or commands could restrain the
During the elections of 1862, the Democrats denounced men from vengeance on the negroes, and they were
emancipation as unconstitutional, warned of slave piled in great heaps about the wagons, in the tangled
uprisings, and predicted that freed blacks would take brushwood, and upon the muddy and trampled road.”
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 465
As Grant had advanced toward Vicksburg in May, first day of battle, Lee drove the Union’s advance guard
Confederate leaders had argued over the best strategic to the south of town. There, Union commander
response. President Davis and other politicians wanted George G. Meade placed his troops in well-defended
to send an army to Tennessee to relieve the Union pres- hilltop positions and called up reinforcements. By the
sure along the Mississippi River. General Lee, buoyed morning of July 2, Meade had 90,000 troops to Lee’s
by his recent victories, favored a new invasion of the 75,000. Lee knew he was outnumbered but was intent
North. That strategy, Lee suggested, would either draw on victory; he ordered assaults on Meade’s flanks but
Grant’s forces to the east or give the Confederacy a failed to turn them.
major victory that would destroy the North’s will to On July 3, Lee decided on a dangerous frontal
fight. assault against the center of the Union line. After the
heaviest artillery barrage of the war, Lee sent General
Lee’s Advance and Defeat Lee won out. In June George E. Pickett and his 14,000 men to take Cemetery
1863, he maneuvered his army north through Maryland Ridge. When Pickett’s men charged across a mile of
into Pennsylvania. The Army of the Potomac moved open terrain, they faced deadly fire from artillery and
along with him, positioning itself between Lee and massed riflemen; thousands suffered death, wounds, or
Washington, D.C. On July 1, the two great armies met capture. As the three-day battle ended, the Confederates
by accident at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in what counted 28,000 casualties, one-third of the Army of
became a decisive confrontation (Map 14.4). On the Northern Virginia, while 23,000 of Meade’s soldiers lay
Harrisburg July 1
Carlisle 0 15 30 miles
PENNSYLVANIA
0 15 30 kilometers
N
Dover Wrightsville
Chambersburg
3 Sus
W E Gettysburg q
York
ue
S
na
R.
Hanover July 2
Pot
om Hagerstown Taneytown N.J.
ac
R. Westminster
DGE
July 3
WEST VIRGINIA
SEMINARY RI
Cr.
Martinsburg MARYLAND
RIDGE
Frederick
Marsh
Pickett's
Baltimore Charge
Y
DEL.
LE Brookville
CEMETERY
L Edwards Ferry Poolesville
Roc
VA
k
Leesburg Rockville
Cr.
A H Front Royal July 2
O Union Movements
D
AN Hooker's, later
EN
Washington Meade's, infantry
Chesapeake B
LITTLE
SH
Culpeper
Confederate victory Union Confederate
Falmouth Earlier position Earlier position
Chancellorsville
May 1863 Fredericksburg Major railroads Later position Later position
1 Dec. 1862 Poto
mac R. 1 Sequence of battles Retreat Advance
MAP 14.4
Lee Invades the North, 1863
After Lee’s victories at Chancellorsville (1) in May and Brandy Station (2) in June, the Confederate
forces moved northward, constantly shadowed by the Union army. On July 1, the two armies met
accidentally near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In the ensuing battle (3), the Union army, commanded
by General George Meade, emerged victorious, primarily because it was much larger than the
Confederate force and held well-fortified positions along Cemetery Ridge, which gave its units
a major tactical advantage.
466 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
killed or wounded. Shocked by win “the right to citizenship.” Yet many northern whites
EXPLAIN
the bloodletting, Meade allowed refused to serve with blacks. “I am as much opposed to
CONSEQUENCES
How did the battles at
the Confederate units to escape. slavery as any of them,” a New York soldier told his
Gettysburg and Vicksburg Lincoln was furious at Meade’s local newspaper, “but I am not willing to be put on a
significantly change the caution, perceiving that “the war level with the negro and fight with them.” Union gener-
tide of war? will be prolonged indefinitely.” als also opposed the enlistment of African Americans,
Still, Gettysburg was a great doubting they would make good soldiers. Nonetheless,
Union victory and, together with the simultaneous tri- free and contraband blacks formed volunteer regi-
umph at Vicksburg, marked a major military, political, ments in New England, South Carolina, Louisiana, and
and diplomatic turning point. As southern citizens Kansas.
grew increasingly critical of their government, the
Confederate elections of 1863 went sharply against the The Impact of Black Troops The Emancipation
politicians who supported Jefferson Davis. Meanwhile, Proclamation changed military policy and popular
northern citizens rallied to the Union, and Republicans sentiment. The proclamation invited former slaves to
swept state elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New serve in the Union army, and northern whites, having
York. In Europe, the victories boosted the leverage of suffered thousands of casualties, now accepted that
American diplomats. Since 1862, the British-built iron- blacks should share in the fighting and dying. A heroic
clad cruiser the Alabama had sunk or captured more and costly attack by the 54th Massachusetts Infantry
than a hundred Union merchant ships, and the Confed- on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863 convinced
eracy was about to accept delivery of two more iron- Union officers of the value of black soldiers. By the
clads. With a Union victory increasingly likely, the spring of 1865, the Lincoln administration had
British government decided to impound the warships recruited and armed nearly 200,000 African Americans.
and, subsequently, to pay $15.5 million for the depre- Without black soldiers, said Lincoln, “we would be
dations of the Alabama. British workers and reformers compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.”
had long condemned slavery and praised emancipa- Military service did not end racial discrimination.
tion; moreover, because of poor grain harvests, Britain Black soldiers initially earned less than white soldiers
depended on imports of wheat and flour from the ($10 a month versus $13) and died, mostly from dis-
American Midwest. King Cotton diplomacy had failed ease, at higher rates than white soldiers. Nonetheless,
and King Wheat stood triumphant. “Rest not your African Americans continued to volunteer, seeking
hopes in foreign nations,” President Jefferson Davis freedom and a new social order. “Hello, Massa,” said
advised his people. “This war is ours; we must fight it one black soldier to his former master, who had been
ourselves.” taken prisoner. “Bottom rail on top dis time.” The worst
fears of the secessionists had come true: through the
disciplined agency of the Union army, African Ameri-
cans had risen in a successful rebellion against slavery,
The Union Victorious, just as six decades earlier enslaved Haitians had won
1864–1865 emancipation in the army of Toussaint L’Ouverture
(Chapter 7).
The Union victories of 1863 meant that the South could
not win independence through a decisive military tri- Capable Generals Take Command As African
umph. However, the Confederacy could still hope for a Americans bolstered the army’s ranks, Lincoln finally
battlefield stalemate and a negotiated peace. To keep found a ruthless commanding general. In March 1864,
the Union in Republican hands, Lincoln faced the Lincoln placed General Ulysses S. Grant in charge of all
daunting task of conquering the South. Union armies; from then on, the president determined
overall strategy and Grant implemented it. Lincoln
favored a simultaneous advance against the major
Soldiers and Strategy Confederate armies, a strategy Grant had long favored,
The promotion of aggressive generals and the enlist- in order to achieve a decisive victory before the elec-
ment of African American soldiers allowed the Union tion of 1864.
to prosecute the war vigorously. As early as 1861, free Grant knew how to fight a war that relied on indus-
African Americans and fugitive slaves had volunteered, trial technology and targeted an entire society. At
both to end slavery and, as Frederick Douglass put it, to Vicksburg in July 1863, he had besieged the whole city
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 467
and forced its surrender. Then, in November, he had point-blank range; an Iowa recruit
EXPLAIN
used railroads to rescue an endangered Union army recalled “lines of blue and grey CONSEQUENCES
near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Grant believed that the [soldiers firing] into each other’s How did the Emancipation
cautious tactics of previous Union commanders had faces; for an hour and a half.” Proclamation and Grant’s
prolonged the war. He was willing to accept heavy Despite heavy losses in these appointment as general in
casualties, a stance that earned him a reputation as a battles and then at Cold Harbor, chief affect the course of
butcher of enemy armies and his own men. Grant drove on (Map 14.5). His the war?
In May 1864, Grant ordered two major offensives. attacks severely eroded Lee’s forces,
Personally taking charge of the 115,000-man Army of which suffered 31,000 casualties, but Union losses were
the Potomac, he set out to destroy Lee’s force of 75,000 even higher: 55,000 killed or wounded.
troops in Virginia. Grant instructed General William
Tecumseh Sherman, who shared his harsh outlook, to Stalemate The fighting took a heavy psychological
invade Georgia and take Atlanta. “All that has gone toll. “Many a man has gone crazy since this campaign
before is mere skirmish,” Sherman wrote as he pre- began from the terrible pressure on mind and body,”
pared for battle. “The war now begins.” observed a Union captain. As morale declined, soldiers
Grant advanced toward Richmond, hoping to force deserted. In June 1864, Grant laid siege to Petersburg,
Lee to fight in open fields, where the Union’s superior an important railroad center near Richmond. As the
manpower and artillery would prevail. Remembering siege continued, Union and Confederate soldiers built
his tactical errors at Gettysburg, Lee remained in complex networks of trenches, tunnels, and artillery
strong defensive positions and attacked only when he emplacements stretching for 40 miles along the eastern
held an advantage. The Confederate general seized that edge of Richmond and Petersburg, foreshadowing the
opportunity twice in May 1864, winning costly victo- devastating trench warfare in France in World War I.
ries at the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Invoking the intense imagery of the Bible, an officer
Court House. At Spotsylvania, the troops fought at described the continuous artillery barrages and sniping
468 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
as “living night and day within the ‘valley of the shadow methodically toward Atlanta, a railway hub at the heart
of death.’ ” The stress was especially great for the out- of the Confederacy. General Joseph E. Johnson’s
numbered Confederate troops, who spent months in Confederate army of 60,000 stood in his way and, in
the muddy, hellish trenches without rotation to the rear. June 1864, inflicted heavy casualties on Sherman’s
As time passed, Lincoln and Grant felt pressures of forces near Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. By late July,
their own. The enormous casualties and military stale- the Union army stood on the northern outskirts of
mate threatened Lincoln with defeat in the November Atlanta, but the next month brought little gain. Like
election. The Republican outlook worsened in July, Grant, Sherman seemed bogged down in a hopeless
when Jubal Early’s cavalry raided and burned the campaign.
Pennsylvania town of Chambersburg and threatened
Washington. To punish farmers in the Shenandoah The National Union Party Versus the Peace
Valley who had aided the Confederate raiders, Grant Democrats Meanwhile, the presidential campaign
ordered General Philip H. Sheridan to turn the region of 1864 was heating up. In June, the Republican Party’s
into “a barren waste.” Sheridan’s troops conducted a convention rebuffed attempts to prevent Lincoln’s
scorched-earth campaign, destroying grain, barns, renomination. It endorsed the president’s war strategy,
and gristmills and any other resource useful to the demanded the Confederacy’s unconditional surrender,
Confederates. These tactics, like Early’s raid, violated and called for a constitutional amendment to abolish
the military norms of the day, which treated civilians as slavery. The delegates likewise embraced Lincoln’s
noncombatants. Rising desperation and anger were political strategy. To attract border-state and Demo-
changing the definition of conventional warfare. cratic voters, the Republicans took a new name, the
National Union Party, and chose Andrew Johnson, a
Tennessee slave owner and Unionist Democrat, as
The Election of 1864
Lincoln’s running mate.
and Sherman’s March The Democratic Party met in August and nomi-
As the siege at Petersburg dragged on, Lincoln’s hopes nated General George B. McClellan for president.
for reelection depended on General Sherman in Lincoln had twice removed McClellan from military
Georgia. Sherman’s army of 90,000 men had moved commands: first for an excess of caution and then for
CHAPTER 14 Two Societies at War, 1861–1865 469
MAP 14.5
Grant
The Closing Virginia Campaign,
R.
Potomac
Lee
1864–1865
Confederate defense line
Beginning in May 1864, General Confederate victory Chancellorsville
Ulysses S. Grant launched an all-out 1 The Wilderness
Union victory May 5–7, 1864
campaign against Richmond, trying Fredericksburg
Ra
Railroads Orange
to lure General Robert E. Lee into id Ra
p
an p pa
1 Sequence of battles R. Court Spotsylvania han
open battle. Lee avoided a major test House May 8–19, 1864 2 noc
kR
.
of strength. Instead, he retreated to
defensive positions and inflicted heavy
casualties on Union attackers at the 3 North Anna
Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, May 23–26, 1864
his opposition to emancipation. Like McClellan, the celebration. “We are gaining strength,” Lincoln warned
Democratic delegates rejected emancipation and con- Confederate leaders, “and may, if need be, maintain the
demned Lincoln’s repression of domestic dissent, par- contest indefinitely.”
ticularly the suspension of habeas corpus and the use A deep pessimism settled over the Confederacy.
of military courts to prosecute civilians. However, they Mary Chesnut, a plantation mistress and general’s wife,
split into two camps over war policy. War Democrats wrote in her diary, “I felt as if all were dead within me,
vowed to continue fighting until the rebellion ended, forever,” and foresaw the end of the Confederacy: “We
while Peace Democrats called for a “cessation of hos- are going to be wiped off the earth.” Recognizing the
tilities” and a constitutional convention to negotiate a dramatically changed military situation, McClellan
peace settlement. Although personally a War Demo- repudiated the Democratic peace platform. The
crat, McClellan promised if elected to recommend to National Union Party went on the offensive, attacking
Congress an immediate armistice and a peace conven- McClellan’s inconsistency and labeling Peace Demo-
tion. Hearing this news, Confederate vice president crats as “copperheads” (poisonous snakes) who were
Alexander Stephens celebrated “the first ray of real hatching treasonous plots. “A man must go for the
light I have seen since the war began.” He predicted Union at all hazards,” declared a Republican legislator
that if Atlanta and Richmond held out, Lincoln would in Pennsylvania, “if he would entitle himself to be con-
be defeated and McClellan would eventually accept an sidered a loyal man.”
independent Confederacy. Lincoln won a clear-cut victory in November. The
president received 55 percent of the popular vote and
The Fall of Atlanta and Lincoln’s Victory Stephens’s won 212 of 233 electoral votes. Republicans and
hopes collapsed on September 2, 1864, as Atlanta fell to National Unionists captured 145 of the 185 seats in the
Sherman’s army. In a stunning move, the Union gen- House of Representatives and increased their Senate
eral pulled his troops from the trenches, swept around majority to 42 of 52 seats. Many Republicans owed
the city, and destroyed its rail links to the south. Fearing their victory to the votes of Union troops, who wanted
that Sherman would encircle his army, Confederate to crush the rebellion and end slavery.
general John B. Hood abandoned the city. “Atlanta is Legal emancipation was already under way at the
ours, and fairly won,” Sherman telegraphed Lincoln, edges of the South. In 1864, Maryland and Missouri
sparking hundred-gun salutes and wild Republican amended their constitutions to end slavery, and the
470 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
In February 1865, Sherman invaded South Carolina their infurnal negroes,” grumbled an Alabama hill
to punish the instigators of nullification and secession. farmer. More and more soldiers fled their units. “I am
His troops ravaged the countryside as they cut a nar- now going to work instead of to the war,” vowed David
row swath across the state. After capturing South Harris, another backcountry yeoman. By 1865, at least
Carolina’s capital, Columbia, they burned the business 100,000 men had deserted from Confederate armies,
district, most churches, and the wealthiest residential prompting reluctant Confederate leaders to approve
neighborhoods. “This disappointment to me is the enlistment of black soldiers and promising them
extremely bitter,” lamented Jefferson Davis. By March, freedom. However, the fighting ended too soon to
Sherman had reached North Carolina, ready to link up reveal whether any slaves would have fought for the
with Grant and crush Lee’s army. Confederacy.
The symbolic end of the war
The Confederate Collapse Grant’s war of attrition took place in Virginia. In April PLACE EVENTS
in Virginia had already exposed a weakness in the 1865, Grant finally gained control IN CONTEXT
Confederacy: rising class resentment among poor of the crucial railroad junction at To what extent were Grant
and Sherman’s military
whites. Angered by slave owners’ exemptions from mil- Petersburg and forced Lee to
strategy and tactics
itary service and fearing that the Confederacy was abandon Richmond. As Lincoln
responsible for defeat
doomed, ordinary southern farmers now repudiated visited the ruins of the Con- of the Confederacy?
the draft. “All they want is to git you . . . to fight for federate capital, greeted by joyful
KENTUCKY VIRGINIA
R.
see
6 n es
T en
Nashville TENNESSEE
Dec. 15–16, 1864 NORTH Raleigh
Franklin Johnston Surrenders
Nov. 30, 1864 Murfreesboro CAROLINA
April 18, 1865
5 10
Goldsboro
2 Chattanooga
Nov. 23–25, 1863 Bentonville
Pulaski
Fayettesville March 19, 1865
Chickamauga 9
Sept. 20, 1863
1 SOUTH CAROLINA
Kennesaw Mt. Wilmington
June 27, 1864 3 Columbia
Feb. 17, 1865
Atlanta 8
ALABAMA July 20, 22, 28,
Sept. 2, 1864
4 N
Union Confederate W E
Movements Movements
Macon
Rosecrans Bragg-Johnston Charleston S
Sherman Johnston Ft. Sumter
Schofield Hood GEORGIA ATLANTIC
Thomas Confederate
victory OCEAN
Fort Savannah
Union victory Dec. 20, 1864 Ft. Pulaski
Railroads 7 0 50 100 miles
1 Sequence of battles 0 50 100 kilometers
MAP 14.6
Sherman’s March Through the Confederacy, 1864–1865
The Union victory in November 1863 at Chattanooga, Tennessee (2), was almost as critical as the
victories in July at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, because it opened up a route of attack into the heart
of the Confederacy. In mid-1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman advanced on the railway hub
of Atlanta (3 and 4). After finally taking the city in September 1864, Sherman relied on other Union
armies to stem General Hood’s invasion of Tennessee (5 and 6) while he began his devastating
March to the Sea. By December, he had reached Savannah (7); from there, he cut a swath through
the Carolinas (8–10).
AMERICAN
VOICES
Gender, Class, and When the white men of the South marched off to war, they left behind their
wives and children. Soon, Confederate women in the border states confronted
Sexual Terror in the an enemy army of occupation. Later, when Union armies invaded the Confed-
eracy, southern women — both black and white — faced an even more danger-
Invaded South ous army of conquest and destruction.
Cornelia Peake McDonald Confederate wounded. An officer one morning sent for
Journal Mrs. N. [to return an item stolen by Union soldiers]. . . .
She thanked him for his kindness. He seemed moved and
Cornelia Peake McDonald was the wife of an affluent said, “Mrs. N., I will do what I can for you, for I cannot be
lawyer in Winchester, Virginia, a town occupied by Union too thankful that my wife is not in an invaded country.”
forces. She had nine children, born between 1848 and 1861.
[May 1863] 22nd . . . To day I received another intimation Source: Rod Gragg, The Illustrated Confederate Reader (New York: Harper & Row,
1989), 88–89.
that my house would be wanted for a [Union] regimental
hospital. I feel a sickening despair when I think of what
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel J. Nasmith
will be my condition if they do take it. . . .
Major Butterworth . . . told me that he was a quarter Report, July 1, 1863
master, and that he had been sent to inform me that I must In June 1863, Confederate raiders attacked and burned
give up the house, as they must have it for a hospital. . . . twenty Union-run cotton plantations near Goodrich’s
I lost no time in seeking [General] Milroy’s presence. . . . Landing, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River. They cap-
“Gen. Milroy,” said I. He looked around impatiently. tured 1,200 African American refugees and took ven-
“They have come to take my house from me.” . . . [He geance on many others, including women and children. A
replied,] “Why should you expect me to shelter you and report by Colonel Nasmith of the 25th Wisconsin Infantry
your family, you who are a rebel, and whose husband and related the gruesome details.
family are in arms against the best government the world
ever saw?” . . . “But Gen. Milroy, you are commandant Major Farnan, commanding the cavalry, reports that the
here . . . and you can suffer me to remain in mine, where scenes witnessed by him . . . were of a character never
at least I can have a shelter for my sick children.” . . . At before witnessed in a civilized country. . . . They spared
last he raised his head and looked in my face. “You can neither age, sex, nor condition. In some instances the
stay but I allow it at the risk of my commission.” Negroes were shut up in their quarters, and literally
roasted alive. The charred remains found in numerous
Source: A Woman’s Civil War, ed. Minrose C. Gwin (Madison: University of Wisconsin instances testified to a degree of fiendish atrocity such
Press, 1992), 101, 150–153. as has no parallel either in civilized or savage warfare.
Young children, only five or six years of age, were found
skulking in the cane break with wounds, while helpless
Judith White Brockenbrough McGuire women were found shot down in the most inhumane
Diary manner. The whole country was destroyed, and every
sign of civilization was given to the flames.
Judith White Brockenbrough McGuire, of Alexandria,
Virginia, spent most of the war as a refugee in Richmond.
Source: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1889), Series 1, Vol.
June 11, 1865 24 (Part II), 517.
These particulars . . . I have [heard] from our nephew,
J. P. [in occupied central Virginia. He reports that] . . . the Anna Maria Green
Northern officers seemed disposed to be courteous to the
ladies, in the little intercourse which they had with them.
Diary
General Ferrera, who commanded the negro troops, was Twenty-year-old Anna Maria Green kept a diary as Gen-
humane, in having a coffin made for a young Confederate eral William Tecumseh Sherman’s army of 60,000 men
officer. . . . The surgeons, too, assisted in attending to the approached Milledgeville, Georgia.
472
Saturday evening November 19th [1864] — Again we are Daniel Heyward Trezevant
in a state of excitement caused by the near approach to Report
our town of the enemy. Last night they were two thou-
sand strong at Monticello. . . . Minnie came in to call me Daniel Heyward Trezevant, a doctor in Columbia, South
to look at a fire in the west. My heart sank, and almost Carolina, wrote a brief report after Sherman’s departure.
burst with grief as I beheld the horizon crimson and the The Yankees’ gallantry, brutality and debauchery were
desolation our hated foe was spreading. Great God! afflicted on the negroes. . . . The case of Mr. Shane’s old
Deliver us, oh! Spare our city. . . . negro woman, who, after being subjected to the most bru-
Nov. 25th Friday evening . . . This morning the last tal indecency from seven of the Yankees, was, at the prop-
of the vandals left our city and burned the bridge after osition of one of them to “finish the old Bitch,” put into a
them — leaving suffering and desolation behind them, ditch and held under water until life was extinct. . . .
and embittering every heart. The worst of their acts was Mrs. T. B. C. was seized by one of the soldiers, an offi-
committed to poor Mrs. Nichols — violence done, and cer, and dragged by the hair and forced to the floor for the
atrocity committed that ought to make her husband an purpose of sensual enjoyment. She resisted as far as prac-
enemy unto death. Poor woman. I fear she has been tical — held up her young infant as a plea for sparing her
driven crazy. and succeeded, but they took her maid, and in her pres-
ence, threw her on the floor and had connection with
Source: Rod Gragg, The Illustrated Confederate Reader (New York: Harper & Row, her. . . . They pinioned Mrs. McCord and robbed her.
1989), 175–176.
They dragged Mrs. Gynn by the hair of her head about
the house. Mrs. G. told me of a young lady about 16, Miss
Unknown Woman Kinsler, who . . . three officers brutally ravished and who
Letter to Her Daughter became crazy.
This letter was written by a woman in Columbia, South Source: Rod Gragg, The Illustrated Confederate Reader (New York: Harper & Row,
Carolina. 1989), 192.
473
474 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
ex-slaves, Grant cut off Lee’s escape route to North before his assassination — Abraham Lincoln could
Carolina. On April 9, almost four years to the day after justify the hideous carnage only by alluding to divine
the attack on Fort Sumter, Lee surrendered at Appo- providence: “[S]o still it must be said ‘the judgments of
mattox Court House, Virginia. In return for their prom- the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ ”
ise not to fight again, Grant allowed the Confederate What of the war’s effects on society? A New York
officers and men to go home. By late May, all of the census taker suggested that the conflict had under-
secessionist armies and governments had simply mined “autocracy” and had an “equalizing effect.”
melted away (Map 14.7). Slavery was gone from the South, he reflected, and in
The hard and bitter conflict was finally over. North- the North, “military men from the so called ‘lower
ern armies had preserved the Union and destroyed classes’ now lead society, having been elevated by real
slavery; many of the South’s factories, railroads, and merit and valor.” However perceptive these remarks,
cities lay in ruins; and its farms and plantations had they ignored the wartime emergence of a new finan-
suffered years of neglect. Almost 260,000 Confederate cial aristocracy that would soon preside over what
soldiers had paid for secession with their lives. On the Mark Twain labeled the Gilded Age. Nor was the
other side, more than 360,000 northerners had died sectional struggle yet concluded. As the North began
for the Union, and thousands more had been maimed. to reconstruct the South and the Union, it found
Was it all worth the price? Delivering his second inau- those tasks to be almost as hard and bitter as the war
gural address in March 1865 — less than a month itself.
Pittsburgh Philadelphia
Baltimore
Cincinnati
Washington, D.C.
St. Louis N
.
o R Louisville
O hi
Richmond W E
Lynchburg Norfolk
S
Charlotte
i
Memphis
ipp
Chattanooga
Fayetteville
iss
Corinth
ss
Camden
Mi
MAP 14.7
The Conquest of the South, 1861–1865
It took four years for the Union armies to defeat the Confederate forces. Until 1864, most of the
South remained in Confederate hands; even at the end of the war, Union armies had never entered
many parts of the rebellious states. Most of the Union’s territorial gains came on the vast western
front, where its control of strategic lines of communication (the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and
major railroads) gave its forces a decisive advantage.
CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER REVIEW 475
SUMMARY
In this chapter, we surveyed the dramatic events of the
Civil War. Looking at the South, we watched the fire-
eaters declare secession, form a new Confederacy, and
attack Fort Sumter. Subsequently, we saw its generals
repulse Union attacks against Richmond and go on the
offensive. However, as the war continued, the inherent
weaknesses of the Confederacy came to the fore.
Enslaved workers fled or refused to work, and yeomen
farmers refused to fight for an institution that primarily
benefitted wealthy planters.
Examining the North, we witnessed its military
shortcomings. Its generals — McClellan and Meade —
moved slowly to attack and did not pursue their weak-
ened foes. However, the Union’s significant advantages
in industrial output, financial resources, and military
manpower became manifest over time. Congress cre-
ated efficient systems of banking and war finance,
Lincoln found efficient and ruthless generals, and the
emancipation and recruitment of African Americans
An Uncounted Casualty of the War
provided an abundant supply of soldiers determined to
Many men who died in the war were husbands and
fathers, leaving tens of thousands of widows — and even
end slavery.
more children — to grieve over their loss. Dressed in mourn- We explored the impact of the war on civilians in
ing clothes, this unidentified, sad-faced young girl holds an both regions: the imposition of conscription and high
image of her dead father, a cavalryman holding a sword taxes, the increased workload of farm women, and the
and wearing a regulation dress hat. Library of Congress.
constant food shortages and soaring prices. Above all
else, there was the omnipresent fact of death — a trag-
edy that touched nearly every family, North and South.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Based on the evidence presented in this chapter, Union policy toward slavery and enslaved people
did Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and Grant’s change over the course of the war?
magnanimity to the defeated forces save the nation
3. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING The thematic
from a drawn-out guerrilla war, as some historians
timeline for Part 5 (p. 409) lists six events or devel-
have argued? Or, as other scholars have suggested,
opments in the 1860s relating directly to the South’s
did the events at Appomattox undermine black
secession and the Civil War. Does that list capture
emancipation by giving a high priority to the rec-
the war’s overwhelming importance to the history
onciliation of northern and southern whites?
of nineteenth-century America? If not, is this defi-
2. In 1860, the institution of slavery was firmly ciency inherent to timelines, or does it reflect a
entrenched in the United States; by 1865, it was faulty construction of this specific timeline? How
dead. How did this happen? How and why did would you address this problem?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE After reviewing 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE The photographs of the
the compromises over slavery at the Constitutional Southern Refugee Family (p. 462) and Grant
Convention (p. 206), in the Missouri Compromise Planning a Strategic Maneuver (p. 468) remind us
(p. 269), and in the Compromise of 1850 (p. 429), of a world in which people, goods, and soldiers
write an essay analyzing why the opposing sides moved either on foot or on horses and mules. How
failed to compromise in 1861. did this limited mobility affect civilians — slave and
free — and military forces during the Civil War?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cow- Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (1997).
ards: The Social Face of War (2008). Demonstrates the Views the fighting from the perspective of the seces-
role of friendship and community in soldiers’ wartime sionists.
behavior.
Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle (1997). Vividly
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death describes the smell, sound, and feel of combat.
and the American Civil War (2008). Examines the
James M. McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom
cultural changes prompted by massive casualties.
(1988). A fine narrative history of the Civil War.
William W. Freehling, The South vs. the South (2001).
Explores anti-Confederate sentiment in the South.
CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER REVIEW 477
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t Congress passes Homestead Act and Transcontinental Railroad Act (May, July)
t Union initiates draft (March), sparking riots in New York City (July)
15
C H A P T E R
1865–1877
O
THE STRUGGLE n the last day of April 1866, black IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
FOR NATIONAL soldiers in Memphis, Tennessee, What goals did Republican policy-
RECONSTRUCTION turned in their weapons as they makers, ex-Confederates, and freed-
Presidential Approaches: From mustered out of the Union army. The next people pursue during Reconstruc-
Lincoln to Johnson
day, whites who resented the soldiers’ tion? To what degree did each
Congress Versus the President presence provoked a clash. At a street cel- succeed?
Radical Reconstruction ebration where African Americans shouted
Woman Suffrage Denied “Hurrah for Abe Lincoln,” a white policeman responded, “Your old father, Abe Lincoln,
is dead and damned.” The scuffle that followed precipitated three days of white vio-
THE MEANING OF
FREEDOM lence and rape that left forty-eight African Americans dead and dozens more wounded.
The Quest for Land Mobs burned black homes and churches and destroyed all twelve of the city’s black
schools.
Republican Governments
in the South Unionists were appalled. They had won the Civil War, but where was the peace?
Building Black Communities Ex-Confederates murdered freedmen and flagrantly resisted federal control. After the
Memphis attacks, Republicans in Congress proposed a new measure that would protect
THE UNDOING OF African Americans by defining and enforcing U.S. citizenship rights. Eventually this bill
RECONSTRUCTION became the most significant law to emerge from Reconstruction, the Fourteenth
The Republicans Unravel Amendment to the Constitution.
Counterrevolution in the South Andrew Johnson, however — the Unionist Democrat who became president after
Reconstruction Rolled Back Abraham Lincoln’s assassination — refused to sign the bill. In May 1865, while Congress
The Political Crisis of 1877 was adjourned, Johnson had implemented his own Reconstruction plan. It extended
Lasting Legacies amnesty to all southerners who took a loyalty oath, except for a few high-ranking Con-
federates. It also allowed states to reenter the Union as soon as they revoked secession,
abolished slavery, and relieved their new state governments of financial burdens by
repudiating Confederate debts. A year later, at the time of the Memphis carnage, all
ex-Confederate states had met Johnson’s terms. The president rejected any further
intervention.
Johnson’s vetoes, combined with ongoing violence in the South, angered Unionist
voters. In the political struggle that ensued, congressional Republicans seized the initia-
tive from the president and enacted a sweeping program that became known as Radical
Reconstruction. One of its key achievements would have been unthinkable a few years
earlier: voting rights for African American men.
Black Southeners, though, had additional, urgent priorities. “We have toiled nearly
all our lives as slaves [and] have made these lands what they are,” a group of South
Carolina petitioners declared. They pleaded for “some provision by which we as Freed-
men can obtain a Homestead.” Though northern Republicans and freedpeople agreed
that black southerners must have physical safety and the right to vote, former slaves
also wanted economic independence. Northerners sought, instead, to revive cash-crop
plantations with wage labor. Reconstruction’s eventual failure stemmed from the con-
flicting goals of lawmakers, freedpeople, and relentlessly hostile ex-Confederates.
478
Celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment, 1870 This lithograph depicts a celebration in Baltimore
on May 15, 1870. With perhaps 200,000 people attending, the grand parade and orations marked
passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which enfranchised men irrespective of “race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.” The heroes depicted at the top are Martin Delany, the first black man to become
an officer in the U.S. Army; abolitionist Frederick Douglass, born in slavery on Maryland’s eastern shore;
and Mississippi senator Hiram Rhodes Revels. The images at the bottom carried the following captions:
“Liberty Protects the Marriage Altar,” “The Ballot Box is open to us,” and “Our representative Sits in the
National Legislature.” Such lithographs, widely printed and sold, capture the pride, hope, and optimism
of Reconstruction — but the optimism was not to last. Library of Congress.
479
480 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
of 1864, placing Lincoln and this War Democrat on the program. Hoping to mollify Congress, some southern
ticket together had seemed a smart move, designed to states dropped the most objectionable provisions from
promote unity. But after Lincoln’s death, Johnson’s their Black Codes. But at the same time, antiblack vio-
disagreement with Republicans, combined with his lence erupted in various parts of the South.
belligerent and contradictory actions, wreaked politi- Congressional Republicans concluded that the fed-
cal havoc. eral government had to intervene. Back in March 1865,
The new president and Congress confronted a set Congress had established the Freedmen’s Bureau to aid
of problems that would have challenged even Lincoln. displaced blacks and other war refugees. In early 1866,
During the war, Unionists had insisted that rebel lead- Congress voted to extend the bureau, gave it direct
ers were a small minority and most white southerners funding for the first time, and authorized its agents to
wanted to rejoin the Union. With even greater opti- investigate southern abuses. Even more extraordinary
mism, Republicans hoped the defeated South would was the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which declared for-
accept postwar reforms. Ex-Confederates, however, merly enslaved people to be citizens and granted them
contested that plan through both violence and political equal protection and rights of contract, with full access
action. New southern state legislatures, created under to the courts.
Johnson’s limited Reconstruction plan, moved to These bills provoked bitter conflict with Johnson,
restore slavery in all but name. In 1865, they enacted who vetoed them both. Johnson’s racism, hitherto pub-
Black Codes, designed to force former slaves back to licly muted, now blazed forth: “This is a country for
plantation labor. Like similar laws passed in other white men, and by God, as long as I am president, it shall
places after slavery ended, the codes reflected planta- be a government for white men.” Galvanized, Repub-
tion owners’ economic interests (America Compared, licans in Congress gathered two-thirds majorities and
p. 482). They imposed severe penalties on blacks who overrode both vetoes, passing the Civil Rights Act in
did not hold full-year labor contracts and also set up April 1866 and the Freedmen’s Bureau law four months
procedures for taking black children from their parents later. Their resolve was reinforced by continued upheaval
and apprenticing them to former slave masters. in the South. In addition to the violence in Memphis,
Faced with these developments, Johnson gave all twenty-four black political leaders and their allies in
the wrong signals. He had long talked tough against Arkansas were murdered and their homes burned.
southern planters. But in practice, Johnson allied him- Anxious to protect freedpeople and reassert Repub-
self with ex-Confederate leaders, forgiving them when lican power in the South, Congress took further mea-
they appealed for pardons. White southern leaders sures to sustain civil rights. In what became the
were delighted. “By this wise and noble statesmanship,” Fourteenth Amendment (1868), it declared that “all
wrote a Confederate legislator, “you have become the persons born or naturalized in the United States” were
benefactor of the Southern people.” Northerners and citizens. No state could abridge “the privileges or
freedmen were disgusted. The president had left immunities of citizens of the United States”; deprive
Reconstruction “to the tender mercies of the rebels,” “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
wrote one Republican. An angry Union veteran in process of law”; or deny anyone “equal protection.” In a
Missouri called Johnson “a traitor to the loyal people of stunning increase of federal power, the Fourteenth
the Union.” Emboldened by Johnson’s indulgence, ex- Amendment declared that when people’s essential
Confederates began to filter back into the halls of rights were at stake, national citizenship henceforth
power. When Georgians elected Alexander Stephens, took priority over citizenship in a state.
former vice president of the Confederacy, to represent Johnson opposed ratification, but public opinion
them in Congress, many outraged Republicans saw had swung against him. In the 1866 congressional
this as the last straw. elections, voters gave Republicans a 3-to-1 majority
in Congress. Power shifted to the so-called Radical
Republicans, who sought sweep-
Congress Versus the President ing transformations in the PLACE EVENTS
Under the Constitution, Congress is “the judge of the defeated South. Radicals’ leader IN CONTEXT
Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own in the Senate was Charles Sumner Under what circumstances
did the Fourteenth Amend-
Members” (Article 1, Section 5). Using this power, of Massachusetts, the fiery aboli-
ment win passage, and
Republican majorities in both houses had refused to tionist who in 1856 had been
what problems did its
admit southern delegations when Congress convened nearly beaten to death by South authors seek to address?
in December 1865, effectively blocking Johnson’s Carolina congressman Preston
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
Many government officials agreed with former masters on the need to control
rural workers. Often planters themselves or allied with the planter class, they
believed that economic strength and public revenue depended on plantation
Labor Laws After export crops and that workers would not produce those without legal coercion.
This was true in the British Caribbean and also Haiti, which eventually, after
Emancipation: Haiti a successful slave revolt ending in 1803, became an independent republic led by
former slaves and, in particular, by propertied free men of color. In the passage
and the United States below, a British observer describes a rural labor code adopted by Haiti’s govern-
ment in 1826. Despite the law, Haiti’s large plantations did not revive; the island’s
economy, even more than that of the U.S. South, came to be dominated by
small-scale, impoverished farmers.
The Code of Laws before us is one that could only have before a Justice, who, after reading the Law to him, shall
been framed by a legislature composed of proprietors of commit him to jail, until he consent to bind himself
land, having at their command a considerable military according to law.
power, of which they themselves were the leaders; for a . . . Those who are hired from a job-master [labor
population whom it was necessary to compel to labour. . . . agent], . . . are entitled to receive half the produce, after
The choice of a master, altho’ expressly reserved to the deducting the expences of cultivation; [those who are
labourer, is greatly modified by the clauses which restrain bound to the proprietor directly], one-fourth of the gross
the labourer from quitting the section of country to which produce of their labour. . . . Out of their miserable pit-
he belongs; and from the absence of any clause compelling tance, these Haitian labourers are to provide themselves
proprietors to engage him; so that the cultivator must and their children with almost every thing, and to lay by
consent to bind himself to whomsoever may be willing a provision for old age. . . .
to engage him, or remain in prison, to be employed These, with the regulations already detailed, clearly
among convicts. . . . shew what is intended to be the condition of the labour-
The Code begins (Article 1) by declaring Agriculture ing population of Haiti. I must not call it slavery; the word
to be the foundation of national prosperity; and then is objectionable; but few of the ingredients of slavery seem
decrees (Article 3), That all persons, excepting soldiers, to be wanting.
and civil servants of the State, professional persons, arti-
zans, and domestic servants, shall cultivate the soil. The
next clause (Article 4), forbids the inhabitants of the QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
country quitting it to dwell in towns or villages; and 1. Compare this Haitian law with the Black Codes briefly
adopted by ex-Confederate states, and with the share-
every kind of wholesale or retail trade is forbidden cropping system that evolved in the United States during
(Article 7) to be exercised by persons dwelling in the Reconstruction (p. 491). What did these labor systems —
country. or proposed systems — have in common? How did they
differ?
Further articles stipulate that any person dwelling in
2. Why would the Haitian government, led by men of color,
the country, not being the owner or occupier of land, and enact such laws? What considerations other than race
not having bound himself in the manner directed, . . . might have shaped their views, and why?
shall be considered a vagabond, be arrested, and taken
PENN.
1870 Date of readmission to the Union IOWA OHIO MD. DEL.
IND.
1871 Date of defeat of radical VA.
Reconstruction government ILL.
1870
W. VA.
Military district boundary 1870
MILITARY DISTRICT
Confederate states MO. NO. 1
KY.
COLO. KANS. N.C.
1868
1870
TENN.
1866 MILITARY DISTRICT NO. 2
1869
INDIAN ARK. S.C.
TERRITORY 1868 1868
1874 1877 N
NEW MEXICO GA.
TERRITORY MILITARY DISTRICT NO. 4 1870
ALA. W E
MISS. 1871
1868
1870 1874 S
1875
MILITARY DISTRICT NO. 3
TEXAS LA.
1870 1868 ATLANTIC
1873 1877 OCEAN
MILITARY DISTRICT NO. 5 FLA.
1868
1877
Gulf of Mexico
MAP 15.1
Reconstruction
The federal government organized the Confederate states into five military districts during Radical
Reconstruction. For the states shown in this map, the first date indicates when that state was
readmitted to the Union; the second date shows when Radical Republicans lost control of the state
government. All the ex-Confederate states rejoined the Union between 1868 and 1870, but the
periods of Radical government varied widely. Republicans lasted only a few months in Virginia; they
held on until the end of Reconstruction in Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina.
leading ex-Confederates. Each military commander enemy of Johnson — resigned so Stanton could resume
was required to register all eligible adult males, black as his place as secretary of war. On February 21, 1868,
well as white; supervise state constitutional conven- Johnson formally dismissed Stanton. The feisty secre-
tions; and ensure that new constitutions guaranteed tary of war responded by barricading himself in his
black suffrage. Congress would readmit a state to the office, precipitating a crisis.
Union once these conditions were met and the new Three days later, for the first time in U.S. history,
state legislature ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. legislators in the House of Representatives introduced
Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction Act, but Congress articles of impeachment against the president, employ-
overrode his veto (Table 15.1). ing their constitutional power to charge high federal
officials with “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson In August and Misdemeanors.” The House serves, in effect, as the
1867, Johnson fought back by “suspending” Secretary prosecutor in such cases, and the Senate serves as the
of War Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical, and replacing him court. The Republican majority brought eleven counts
with Union general Ulysses S. Grant, believing Grant of misconduct against Johnson, most relating to infringe-
would be a good soldier and follow orders. Johnson, ment of the powers of Congress. After an eleven-week
however, had misjudged Grant, who publicly objected trial in the Senate, thirty-five senators voted for convic-
to the president’s machinations. When the Senate tion — one vote short of the two-thirds majority
overruled Stanton’s suspension, Grant — now an open required. Twelve Democrats and seven Republicans
484 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
TABLE 15.1
Primary Reconstruction Laws and Constitutional Amendments
Law (Date of Congressional Passage) Key Provisions
Thirteenth Amendment (December 1865*) Prohibited slavery
Civil Rights Act of 1866 (April 1866) Defined citizenship rights of freedmen
Authorized federal authorities to bring suit against
those who violated those rights
Fourteenth Amendment (June 1866†) Established national citizenship for persons born or
naturalized in the United States
Prohibited the states from depriving citizens of their
civil rights or equal protection under the law
Reduced state representation in House of
Representatives by the percentage of adult male
citizens denied the vote
Reconstruction Act of 1867 (March 1867) Divided the South into five military districts, each
under the command of a Union general
Established requirements for readmission of
ex-Confederate states to the Union
Tenure of Office Act (March 1867) Required Senate consent for removal of any federal
official whose appointment had required Senate
confirmation
Fifteenth Amendment (February 1869‡) Forbade states to deny citizens the right to vote on
the grounds of race, color, or “previous condition
of servitude”
Ku Klux Klan Act (April 1871) Authorized the president to use federal prosecutions
and military force to suppress conspiracies to
deprive citizens of the right to vote and enjoy the
equal protection of the law
*Ratified by three-fourths of all states in December 1865.
†Ratified by three-fourths of all states in July 1868.
‡Ratified by three-fourths of all states in March 1870.
voted for acquittal. The dissenting Republicans felt that opponent, former New York governor Horatio
removing a president for defying Congress was too Seymour, almost declined the nomination because he
damaging to the constitutional system of checks and understood that Democrats could not yet overcome
balances. But despite the president’s acquittal, Congress the stain of disloyalty. Grant won by an overwhelming
had shown its power. For the brief months remaining margin, receiving 214 out of 294 electoral votes.
in his term, Johnson was largely irrelevant. Republicans retained two-thirds majorities in both
houses of Congress.
Election of 1868 and the Fifteenth Amendment In February 1869, following this smashing victory,
The impeachment controversy made Grant, already Republicans produced the era’s last constitutional
the Union’s greatest war hero, amendment, the Fifteenth. It protected male citizens’
TRACE CHANGE a Republican idol as well. He eas- right to vote irrespective of race, color, or “previous
OVER TIME ily won the party’s presidential condition of servitude.” Despite Radical Republicans’
How and why did federal nomination in 1868. Although he protests, the amendment left room for a poll tax (paid
Reconstruction policies supported Radical Reconstruc- for the privilege of voting) and literacy requirements.
evolve between 1865
tion, Grant also urged sectional Both were concessions to northern and western states
and 1870?
reconciliation. His Democratic that sought such provisions to keep immigrants and
CHAPTER 15 Reconstruction, 1865–1877 485
the “unworthy” poor from the polls. Congress required corrected that impression. National women’s rights
the four states remaining under federal control to leaders, who had campaigned for the ballot since the
ratify the measure as a condition for readmission Seneca Falls convention of 1848, hoped to secure vot-
to the Union. A year later, the Fifteenth Amendment ing rights for women and African American men at the
became law. same time. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it, women
Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, despite its could “avail ourselves of the strong arm and the blue
limitations, was an astonishing feat. Elsewhere in the uniform of the black soldier to walk in by his side.” The
Western Hemisphere, lawmakers had left emancipated protected categories for voting in the Fifteenth Amend-
slaves in a condition of semi-citizenship, with no vot- ment could have read “race, color, sex, or previous con-
ing rights. But, like almost all Americans, congressio- dition of servitude.” But that word proved impossible
nal Republicans had extraordinary faith in the power to obtain.
of the vote. Many African Americans agreed. “The col- Enfranchising black men had clear benefits for the
ored people of these Southern states have cast their lot authors of Reconstruction. It punished ex-Confederates
with the Government,” declared a delegate to Arkansas’s and ensured Republican support in the South. But
constitutional convention, “and with the great Repub- women’s partisan loyalties were not so clear, and a
lican Party. . . . The ballot is our only means of protec- substantial majority of northern voters — all men, of
tion.” In the election of 1870, hundreds of thousands of course — opposed women’s enfranchisement. Even
African Americans voted across the South, in an atmo- Radicals feared that this “side issue” would overburden
sphere of collective pride and celebration. their program. Influential abolitionists such as Wendell
Philips refused to campaign for women’s suffrage, fear-
ing it would detract from the focus on black men.
To see a longer excerpt of the Arkansas delegate’s
document, along with other primary sources from Philips criticized women’s leaders for being “selfish.”
this period, see Sources for America’s History. “Do you believe,” Stanton hotly replied, “the African
race is entirely composed of males?”
By May 1869, the former allies were at an impasse.
At a convention of the Equal Rights Association, black
Woman Suffrage Denied abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Frederick
Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment was a bittersweet Douglass pleaded for white women to consider the sit-
victory for one group of Union loyalists: women. Some uation in the South and allow black male suffrage to
formerly enslaved women believed they would win take priority. “When women, because they are women,
voting rights along with their men, until northern allies are hunted down, . . . dragged from their homes and
486 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
hung upon lamp posts,” Douglass the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA),
UNDERSTAND
said, “then they will have an focused exclusively on women’s rights and took up the
POINTS OF VIEW
Abolitionists and women’s
urgency to obtain the ballot equal battle for a federal suffrage amendment.
suffrage advocates were to our own.” Some women’s suf- In 1873, NWSA members decided to test the new
generally close allies frage leaders joined Douglass in constitutional amendments. Suffragists all over the
before 1865. What divi- backing the Fifteenth Amendment United States, including some black women in the
sions emerged during without the word sex. But many, South, tried to register and vote. Most were turned
Reconstruction and why? especially white women, rejected away. In an ensuing lawsuit, suffrage advocate Virginia
Douglass’s plea. One African Minor of Missouri argued that the registrar who denied
American woman remarked that they “all go for sex, her a ballot had violated her rights under the Fourteenth
letting race occupy a minor position.” Embittered, Amendment. In Minor v. Happersett (1875), the
Elizabeth Cady Stanton lashed out against “Patrick and Supreme Court dashed such hopes. It ruled that suf-
Sambo and Hans and Ung Tung,” maligning unedu- frage rights were not inherent in citizenship; women
cated freedmen and immigrants who could vote while were citizens, but state legislatures could deny women
educated white women could not. Douglass’s resolu- the vote if they wished.
tion in support of the Fifteenth Amendment failed, and Despite these defeats, Radical Reconstruction had
the convention broke up. created the conditions for a nationwide women’s rights
At this searing moment, a rift opened in the wom- movement. Some argued for suffrage as part of a
en’s movement. The majority, led by Lucy Stone, recon- broader expansion of democracy. Others, on the con-
ciled themselves to disappointment. Organized into trary, saw white women’s votes as a possible counter-
the American Woman Suffrage Association, they weight to the votes of African American or Chinese
remained loyal to the Republican Party in hopes that men (while opponents pointed out that black and
once Reconstruction had been settled, it would be immigrant women would likely be enfranchised, too).
women’s turn. A group led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton When Wyoming Territory gave women full voting
and Susan B. Anthony struck out in a new direction. rights in 1869, its governor received telegrams of con-
They saw that, once the Reconstruction Amendments gratulation from around the world. Afterward, con-
had passed, women’s suffrage was unlikely in the near trary to dire predictions, female voters in Wyoming
future. Stanton declared that woman “must not put did not appear to neglect their homes, abandon their
her trust in man.” The new organization she headed, children, or otherwise “unsex” themselves. Women’s
CHAPTER 15 Reconstruction, 1865–1877 487
suffrage could no longer be dismissed as the absurd economic revolution of the antebellum period had
notion of a tiny minority. It had become a serious issue transformed New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.
for national debate. Believing similar development could revolutionize the
South, most congressional leaders sought to restore
cotton as the country’s leading export, and they envi-
The Meaning of Freedom sioned former slaves as wageworkers on cash-crop
plantations, not independent farmers. Only a handful
While political leaders wrangled in Washington, eman- of radicals, like Thaddeus Stevens, argued that freed
cipated slaves acted on their own ideas about freedom slaves had earned a right to land grants, through what
(American Voices, p. 488). Emancipation meant many Lincoln had referred to as “four hundred years of unre-
things: the end of punishment by the lash; the ability to quited toil.” Stevens proposed that southern planta-
move around; reunion of families; and opportunities to tions be treated as “forfeited estates of the enemy” and
build schools and churches and to publish and read broken up into small farms for former slaves. “Nothing
newspapers. Foremost among freedpeople’s demands will make men so industrious and moral,” Stevens
were voting rights and economic autonomy. Former declared, “as to let them feel that they are above want
Confederates opposed these goals. Most southern and are the owners of the soil which they till.”
whites believed the proper place for blacks was as Today, most historians of Reconstruction agree
“servants and inferiors,” as a Virginia planter testified with Stevens: policymakers did not do enough to
to Congress. Mississippi’s governor, elected under ensure freedpeople’s economic security. Without land,
President Johnson’s plan, vowed that “ours is and it former slaves were left poor and vulnerable. At the
shall ever be, a government of white men.” Meanwhile, time, though, Stevens had few allies. A deep veneration
as Reconstruction unfolded, it became clear that on for private property lay at the heart of his vision, but
economic questions, southern blacks and northern others interpreted the same principle differently: they
Republican policymakers did not see eye to eye. defined ownership by legal title, not by labor invested.
Though often accused of harshness toward the defeated
Confederacy, most Republicans — even Radicals —
The Quest for Land could not imagine “giving” land to former slaves. The
During the Civil War, wherever Union forces had con- same congressmen, of course, had no difficulty giving
quered portions of the South, rural black workers had away homesteads on the frontier that had been taken
formed associations that agreed on common goals from Indians. But they were deeply reluctant to confis-
and even practiced military drills. After the war, cate white-owned plantations.
when resettlement became the responsibility of the Some southern Republican state governments did
Freedmen’s Bureau, thousands of rural blacks hoped try, without much success, to use tax policy to break up
for land distributions. But Johnson’s amnesty plan, large landholdings and get them into the hands of
which allowed pardoned Confederates to recover poorer whites and blacks. In 1869, South Carolina
property seized during the war, blasted such hopes. In established a land commission to buy property and
October 1865, for example, Johnson ordered General resell it on easy terms to the landless; about 14,000
Oliver O. Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, to black families acquired farms through the program.
restore plantations on South Carolina’s Sea Islands to But such initiatives were the exception, not the rule.
white property holders. Dispossessed blacks protested: Over time, some rural blacks did succeed in becom-
“Why do you take away our lands? You take them from ing small-scale landowners, especially in Upper South
us who have always been true, always true to the states such as Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Government! You give them to our all-time enemies! But it was an uphill fight, and policymakers provided
That is not right!” Former slaves resisted efforts to evict little aid.
them. Led by black Union veterans, they fought pitched
battles with former slaveholders and bands of ex- Wage Labor and Sharecropping Without land,
Confederate soldiers. But white landowners, some- most freedpeople had few options but to work for
times aided by federal troops, generally prevailed. former slave owners. Landowners wanted to retain the
old gang-labor system, with wages replacing the food,
Freed Slaves and Northerners: Conflicting Goals clothing, and shelter that slaves had once received.
On questions of land and labor, freedmen in the South Southern planters — who had recently scorned the
and Republicans in Washington seriously differed. The North for the cruelties of wage labor — now embraced
AMERICAN
VOICES
The breath of Emancipation has passed over the country, My dear Jim
& we are now in that transition state between the new Your letter of date July 1865, has just reached me and you
& the old systems — a state of chaos & disorder. Will the will be relieved by my answers, to find that I am still alive,
negro be materially benefitted by the change? Will the and extremely glad to hear from you. . . . I have served in
condition of the country in its productive resources, in the Army, my brother died in the Army, and every family
material prosperity be improved? Will it be a benefit to has lost members. No one can know how reduced we are,
the landed proprietors? These are questions which will particularly the refined & educated. . . .
have their solution in the future. They are in the hands My father had five plantations on the coast, and all the
of that Providence which over-ruleth all things for good. buildings were burnt, and the negroes, now left to them-
It was a strong conviction of my best judgment that the selves, are roaming in a starvation condition . . . like lost
old relation of master & slave, had received the divine sheep, with no one to care for them.
sanction & was the best condition in which the two races They find the Yankee only a speculator, and they
could live together for mutual benefit. There were many have no confidence in anyone. They very naturally, poor
defects to be corrected & many abuses to be remedied. things, think that freedom means doing nothing, and this
Among these defects I will enumerate the want of legisla- they are determined to do. They look to the government,
tion to make the marriage contract binding — to prevent to take care of them, and it will be many years, before this
the separation of families, & to restrain the cupidity of once productive country will be able to support itself. The
cruel masters. Perhaps it is for neglecting these obliga- former kind and just treatment of the slaves, and their
tions that God has seen fit to dissolve that relation. I docile and generous temper, make them now disposed
believe the negro must remain in this country & that to be [quiet] and obedient: but the determination of your
his condition although a freed-man, must be to labour Northern people to give them a place in the councils of
on the soil. Nothing but necessity will compel him to the Country and make them the equal of the white man,
labour. Now the question is, will that necessity be so will at last, bear its fruit, and we may then expect them,
strong as to compel him to labour, which will be profit- to rise against the whites, and in the end, be exterminated
able to the landed proprietors. Will he make as much themselves.
cotton, sugar, rice & tobacco for the world as he did I am now interested in a school for the negroes, who
previously? They will now have a choice where to labour. are around me, and will endeavor to do my duty, to them,
This will ensure good treatment & the best terms. The as ever before, but I am afraid their best days are past. . . .
most humane, the most energetic & the most judicious I feel now that I have no country, I obey like a subject,
managers have the best chances in the race for success. but I cannot love such a government. Perhaps the next
I expect to see a revolution in the ownership of landed letter, you get from me, will be from England. . . .
estates. Those only can succeed who bring the best
capacity for the business. Time will show. Source: Stanley I. Kutler, ed., Looking for America: The People’s History, 2nd ed., 2 vols.
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 2: 4–6.
Source: The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection, ed. William E.
Gienapp (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 304–305.
488
Isabella Soustan Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without
Letter, July 10, 1865 some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and
kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by
Isabella Soustan, a freedwoman in Virginia, wrote to her asking you to send us our wages for the time we served
former master not long after the Civil War ended. you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and
I have the honor to appeal to you once more for assis- rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served
tance, Master. I am cramped hear nearly to death and no you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty
one ceares for me heare, and I want you if you please Sir, years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me and two dol-
to Send for me. I dont care if I am free. I had rather live lars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to
with you. I was as free while with you, as I wanted to be. eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to
Mas Man you know I was as well Satisfied with you as I this the interest for the time our wages have been kept
wanted to be. . . . John is still hired out at the same and back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and
doing Well and well Satisfied only greaveing about home, three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy,
he want to go home as bad as I do, if you ever Send for and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled
me I will Send for him immediately, and take him home to. Please send the balance by Adams Express, in care of
to his kind Master. . . . Pleas to give my love to all of my V. Winters, esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you do not pay us for
friends, and especially to my young mistress don’t forget faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your
to reserve a double portion for yourself. I Will close at promises in the future. . . .
present, hoping to bee at your Service Soon yes before In answering this letter, please state if there would be
yonder Sun Shal rise and set any more. any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up,
May I subscribe myself your Most affectionate humble and both good-looking girls. . . . I would rather stay here
friend and Servt. and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my
Isabella A. Soustan girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of
their young masters. You will also please state if there has
Source: Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: been any schools opened for the colored children in your
Knopf, 1979), 332. neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give
my children an education, and have them form virtuous
Jourdon Anderson habits.
Letter, August 7, 1865 From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson
Anderson had escaped with his family from Tennessee and P.S. Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for
settled in Dayton, Ohio. He dictated this letter to a friend, taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
and it later appeared in the New York Tribune. Folklorists
have reported on ways that enslaved people found, even Source: Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York:
in bondage, for “puttin’ down” masters. But only in free- Knopf, 1979), 333–335.
dom — and in a northern state — could Anderson’s sarcasm
be expressed so openly.
Sharecroppers in Georgia
This photograph shows a Georgia sharecropping family in front of their cabin at cotton-harvesting time.
The man in the buggy behind them is probably the landowner. What does this photograph reveal about the
condition of sharecroppers? Is there evidence that they might have considered themselves to be doing fairly
well — as well as evidence of limits on their success and independence? Note that cotton is growing all the
way up to the house, suggesting that the family left little room for a garden or livestock. Through the relent-
less pressure of loans and debt, sharecropping forced southern farmers into a cash-crop monoculture. Brown
Brothers.
wage work with apparent satisfaction. Maliciously At the same time, struggles raged between employ-
comparing black workers to free-roaming pigs, land- ers and freedpeople over women’s work. In slavery,
owners told them to “root, hog, or die.” Former slaves African American women’s bodies had been the sexual
found themselves with rock-bottom wages; it was a property of white men. Protecting black women from
shock to find that emancipation and “free labor” did such abuse, as much as possible, was a crucial priority
not prevent a hardworking family from nearly starving. for freedpeople. When planters demanded that black
African American workers used a variety of tactics women go back into the fields, African Americans
to fight back. As early as 1865, alarmed whites across resisted resolutely. “I seen on some plantations,” one
the South reported that former slaves were holding freedman recounted, “where the white men would . . .
mass meetings to agree on “plans and terms for labor.” tell colored men that their wives and children could
Such meetings continued through the Reconstruction not live on their places unless they work in the fields.
years. Facing limited prospects at home, some workers The colored men [answered that] whenever they
left the fields and traveled long distances to seek better- wanted their wives to work they would tell them
paying jobs on the railroads or in turpentine and lum- themselves.”
ber camps. Others — from rice cultivators to laundry There was a profound irony in this man’s definition
workers — organized strikes. of freedom: it designated a wife’s labor as her husband’s
CHAPTER 15 Reconstruction, 1865–1877 491
property. Some black women asserted their indepen- who desire to be masters of their own time.” In a few
dence and headed their own households, though this areas, wage work became the norm — for example, on
was often a matter of necessity rather than choice. For the giant sugar plantations of Louisiana financed by
many freedpeople, the opportunity for a stable family northern capital. But cotton planters lacked money to
life was one of the greatest achievements of emancipa- pay wages, and sometimes, in lieu of a wage, they
tion. Many enthusiastically accepted the northern ideal offered a share of the crop. Freedmen, in turn, paid
of domesticity. Missionaries, teachers, and editors of their rent in shares of the harvest.
black newspapers urged men to work diligently and Thus the Reconstruction years gave rise to a dis-
support their families, and they told women (though tinctive system of cotton agriculture known as share-
many worked for wages) to devote themselves to moth- cropping, in which freedmen worked as renters,
erhood and the home. exchanging their labor for the use of land, house,
Even in rural areas, former slaves refused to work implements, and sometimes seed and fertilizer. Share-
under conditions that recalled slavery. There would be croppers typically turned over half of their crops to the
no gang work, they vowed: no overseers, no whippings, landlord (Map 15.2). In a credit-starved agricultural
no regulation of their private lives. Across the South, region that grew crops for a world economy, sharecrop-
planters who needed labor were forced to yield to what ping was an effective strategy, enabling laborers and
one planter termed the “prejudices of the freedmen, landowners to share risks and returns. But it was a very
Road Road
Valley floor Valley floor
The boundary also
Gentle slopes Gentle slopes indicates that the
Higher ground Higher ground land was surveyed
according to the old
“metes-and-bounds”
The boundary line system, not the
of the plantation is rectangular pattern
W ri the same on both Wright created by the Land
ght’s B maps because the ’s B
r r Ordinance of 1785
Barrow Plantation
an
an
remained in the
ch
Branc
h ork
ork
e
ek
Fork
Fork
ek
Handy
R
R
iver
iver
Barrow
’s
’s
Syll
Syll
ary ary
nd nd
Plantation bou Plantation bou
MAP 15.2
The Barrow Plantation, 1860 and 1881
This map is a modern redrawing of one that first appeared in the popular magazine Scribner’s
Monthly in April 1881, accompanying an article about the Barrow plantation. Comparing the 1860
map of this central Georgia plantation with the 1881 map reveals the impact of sharecropping on
patterns of black residence. In 1860, the slave quarters were clustered near the planter’s house. In
contrast, by 1881 the sharecroppers were scattered across the plantation’s 2,000 acres, having built
cabins on the ridges between the low-lying streams. The surname Barrow was common among the
sharecropping families, which means almost certainly that they had been slaves who, years after
emancipation, still had not moved on. For sharecroppers, freedom meant not only their individual
lots and cabins but also the school and church shown on the map.
492 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
unequal relationship. Starting out penniless, share- War. In India, Egypt, Brazil, and West Africa, variants
croppers had no way to make it through the first grow- of the sharecropping system emerged. Everywhere
ing season without borrowing for food and supplies. international merchants and bankers, who put up cap-
Country storekeepers stepped in. Bankrolled by ital, insisted on passage of crop-lien laws. Indian and
northern suppliers, they furnished sharecroppers with Egyptian villagers ended up, like their American coun-
provisions and took as collateral a lien on the crop, terparts, permanently under the thumb of furnishing
effectively assuming ownership of croppers’ shares merchants.
and leaving them only what remained after debts had By 1890, three out of every four black farmers in
been paid. Crop-lien laws enforced lenders’ ownership the South were tenants or sharecroppers; among white
rights to the crop share. Once indebted at a store, share- farmers, the ratio was one in three. For freedmen,
croppers became easy targets for exorbitant prices, sharecropping was not the worst choice, in a world
unfair interest rates, and crooked bookkeeping. As cot- where former masters threatened to impose labor con-
ton prices declined in the 1870s, more and more share- ditions that were close to slavery. But the costs were
croppers fell into permanent debt. If the merchant was devastating. With farms leased on a year-to-year basis,
also the landowner or conspired with the landowner, neither tenant nor owner had much incentive to
debt became a pretext for forced labor, or peonage. improve the property. The crop-lien system rested
Sharecropping arose in part because it was a good on expensive interest payments — money that might
fit for cotton agriculture. Cotton, unlike sugarcane, otherwise have gone into agricultural improvements or
could be raised efficiently by small farmers (provided to meet human needs. And sharecropping committed
they had the lash of indebtedness the South inflexibly to cotton, a crop that generated the
IDENTIFY CAUSES always on their backs). We can see cash required by landlords and furnishing merchants.
Why did sharecropping this in the experience of other The result was a stagnant farm economy that blighted
emerge, and how did it regions that became major pro- the South’s future. As Republican governments tried to
affect freedpeople and the
ducers in response to the global remake the region, they confronted not only wartime
southern economy?
cotton shortage set off by the Civil destruction but also the failure of their hopes that free
labor would create a modern, prosperous South, built pressured Congress to uphold justice for freedmen.
in the image of the industrializing North. Instead, the After blacks won voting rights, the league organized
South’s rural economy remained mired in widespread meetings at churches and schoolhouses to instruct
poverty and based on an uneasy compromise between freedmen on political issues and voting procedures.
landowners and laborers. League clubs held parades and military drills, giving a
public face to the new political order.
The Freedmen’s Bureau also supported grassroots
Republican Governments in the South Reconstruction efforts. Though some bureau officials
Between 1868 and 1871, all the former Confederate sympathized with planters, most were dedicated, ideal-
states met congressional stipulations and rejoined the istic men who tried valiantly to reconcile opposing
Union. Protected by federal troops, Republican admin- interests. Bureau men kept a sharp eye out for unfair
istrations in these states retained power for periods labor contracts and often forced landowners to bargain
ranging from a few months in Virginia to nine years in with workers and tenants. They advised freedmen on
South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. These govern- economic matters; provided direct payments to des-
ments remain some of the most misunderstood insti- perate families, especially women and children; and
tutions in all U.S. history. Ex-Confederates never helped establish schools. In cooperation with northern
accepted their legitimacy. Many other whites agreed, aid societies, the bureau played a key role in founding
focusing particularly on the role of African Americans African American colleges and universities such as
who began to serve in public office. “It is strange, Fisk, Tougaloo, and the Hampton Institute. These insti-
abnormal, and unfit,” declared one British visitor to tutions, in turn, focused on training teachers. By 1869,
Louisiana, “that a negro Legislature should deal . . . with there were more than three thousand teachers instruct-
the gravest commercial and financial interests.” During ing freedpeople in the South. More than half were
much of the twentieth century, historians echoed such themselves African Americans.
critics, condemning Reconstruction leaders as igno- Ex-Confederates viewed the Union League,
rant and corrupt. These historians shared the racial Freedmen’s Bureau, and Republican Party as illegiti-
prejudices of the British observer: Blacks were simply mate forces in southern affairs, and they resented the
unfit to govern. political education of freedpeople. They referred to
In fact, Reconstruction governments were ambi- southern whites who supported Reconstruction as
tious. They were hated, in part, because they under- scalawags — an ancient Scots-Irish term for worthless
took impressive reforms in public education, family animals — and denounced northern whites as carpet-
law, social services, commerce, and transportation. Like baggers, self-seeking interlopers who carried all their
their northern allies, southern Republicans admired property in cheap suitcases called carpetbags. Such
the economic and social transformations that had labels glossed over the actual diversity of white Repub-
occurred in the North before the Civil War and worked licans. Many arrivals from the North, while motivated
energetically to import them. by personal profit, also brought capital and skills.
The southern Republican Party included former Interspersed with ambitious schemers were reformers
Whigs, a few former Democrats, black and white hoping to advance freedmen’s rights. So-called scala-
newcomers from the North, and southern African wags were even more varied. Some southern Republi-
Americans. From the start, its leaders faced the cans were former slave owners; others were ex-Whigs
dilemma of racial prejudice. In the upcountry, white or even ex-Democrats who hoped to attract northern
Unionists were eager to join the party but sometimes capital. But most hailed from the backcountry and
reluctant to work with black allies. In most areas, the wanted to rid the South of its slaveholding aristocracy,
Republicans also desperately needed African Ameri- believing slavery had victimized whites as well as
cans, who constituted a majority of registered voters in blacks.
Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Mississippi. Southern Democrats’ contempt for black politi-
For a brief moment in the late 1860s, black and cians, whom they regarded as ignorant field hands, was
white Republicans joined forces through the Union just as misguided as their stereotypes about white
League, a secret fraternal order. Formed in border Republicans. Many African American leaders in the
states and northern cities during the Civil War, the South came from the ranks of antebellum free blacks.
league became a powerful political association that Others were skilled men like Robert Smalls of South
spread through the former Confederacy. Functioning Carolina, who as a slave had worked for wages that he
as a grassroots wing of Radical Republicanism, it turned over to his master. Smalls, a steamer pilot in
494 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
Thousands of white children, particularly girls and the great work of freedom. “Ignorant
COMPARE AND
sons of poor farmers and laborers, also benefitted from though they may be, on account CONTRAST
new public education systems. Young white women’s of long years of oppression, they Compare the results of
graduation from high school, an unheard-of occur- exhibit a desire to hear and to African Americans’ com-
rence before the Civil War, became a celebrated event learn, that I never imagined,” munity building with their
in southern cities and towns. reported African American min- struggles to obtain better
Southern Reconstruction governments also had ister Reverend James Lynch, who working conditions. What
their flaws — flaws that would become more apparent traveled from Maryland to the links do you see between
as the 1870s unfolded. In the race for economic devel- Deep South. “Every word you say these efforts?
opment, for example, state officials allowed private while preaching, they drink down
companies to hire out prisoners to labor in mines and and respond to, with an earnestness that sets your heart
other industries, in a notorious system known as con- all on fire.”
vict leasing. Corruption was rife and conditions hor- Independent churches quickly became central
rific. In 1866, Alabama’s governor leased 200 state con- community institutions, as blacks across the South left
victs to a railroad construction company for the grand white-dominated congregations, where they had sat in
total of $5. While they labored to build state-subsidized segregated balconies, and built churches of their own.
lines such as the Alabama and Chattanooga, prisoners These churches joined their counterparts in the North
were housed at night in open, rolling cages. Physical to become national denominations, including, most
abuse was common and medical care nonexistent. At prominently, the National Baptist Convention and the
the start of 1869, Alabama counted 263 prisoners avail- African Methodist Episcopal Church. Black churches
able for leasing; by the end of the year, a staggering 92 served not only as sites of worship but also as schools,
of them had died. While convict leasing expanded in social centers, and meeting halls. Ministers were often
later decades, it began during Reconstruction, sup- political spokesmen as well. As Charles H. Pearce, a
ported by both Republicans and Democrats. black Methodist pastor in Florida, declared, “A man in
this State cannot do his whole duty as a minister except
he looks out for the political interests of his people.”
Building Black Communities Religious leaders articulated the special destiny of
In slavery days, African Americans had built networks freedpeople as the new “Children of Israel.”
of religious worship and mutual aid, but these operated The flowering of black churches, schools, news-
largely in secret. After emancipation, southern blacks papers, and civic groups was one of the most endur-
could engage in open community building. In doing ing initiatives of the Reconstruction era. Dedicated
so, they cooperated with northern missionaries and teachers and charity leaders embarked on a project of
teachers, both black and white, who came to help in the “race uplift” that never ceased thereafter, while black
Freedmen’s School,
Petersburg, Virginia, 1870s
A Union veteran, returning to
Virginia in the 1870s to photo-
graph battlefields, captured this
image of an African American
teacher and her students at a
freedmen’s school. Note the dif-
ficult conditions in which they
study: many are barefoot, and
there are gaps in the walls and
floor of the school building.
Nonetheless, the students have
a few books. Despite poverty
and relentless hostility from
many whites, freedpeople across
the South were determined to
get a basic education for them-
selves and their children. William L.
Clements Library, University of
Michigan.
496 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
entrepreneurs were proud to build businesses that access to schools, public transportation, hotels, and
served their communities. The issue of desegrega- churches. Despite a series of defeats and delays, the bill
tion — sharing public facilities with whites — was a remained on Capitol Hill for five years. Opponents
trickier one. Though some black leaders pressed for charged that shared public spaces would lead to race
desegregation, they were keenly aware of the backlash mixing and intermarriage. Some sympathetic Repub-
this was likely to provoke. Others made it clear that licans feared a backlash, while others questioned
they preferred their children to attend all-black schools, whether, because of the First Amendment, the federal
especially if they encountered hostile or condescend- government had the right to regulate churches. On
ing white teachers and classmates. Many had prag- his deathbed in 1874, Sumner exhorted a visitor to
matic concerns. Asked whether she wanted her boys remember the civil rights bill: “Don’t let it fail.” In the
to attend an integrated school, one woman in New end, the Senate removed Sumner’s provision for inte-
Orleans said no: “I don’t want my children to be grated churches, and the House removed the clause
pounded by . . . white boys. I don’t send them to school requiring integrated schools. But to honor the great
to fight, I send them to learn.” Massachusetts abolitionist, Congress passed the Civil
At the national level, congressmen wrestled with Rights Act of 1875. The law required “full and equal”
similar issues as they debated an ambitious civil rights access to jury service and to transportation and public
bill championed by Radical Republican senator accommodations, irrespective of race. It was the last
Charles Sumner. Sumner first introduced his bill in such act for almost a hundred years — until the Civil
1870, seeking to enforce, among other things, equal Rights Act of 1964.
CHAPTER 15 Reconstruction, 1865–1877 497
Some Republicans believed that, because the bank unabashed elitism, Godkin and others claimed that
had been so closely associated with the U.S. Army and freedmen were unfit to vote. They denounced universal
federal agencies, Congress had a duty to step in. Even suffrage, which “can only mean in plain English the
one southern Democrat argued that the government government of ignorance and vice.”
was “morally bound to see to it that not a dollar is The second Grant administration gave liberals
lost.” But in the end, Congress refused to compensate plenty of ammunition. The most notorious scandal
the 61,000 depositors. About half recovered small involved Crédit Mobilier, a sham corporation set up by
amounts — averaging $18.51 — but the others received shareholders in the Union Pacific Railroad to secure
nothing. The party of Reconstruction was losing its government grants at an enormous profit. Organizers
moral gloss. of the scheme protected it from investigation by pro-
viding gifts of Crédit Mobilier stock to powerful
The Disillusioned Liberals As a result of the depres- members of Congress. Another scandal involved the
sion and rising criticism of postwar activist govern- Whiskey Ring, a network of liquor distillers and trea-
ment, a revolt emerged in the Republican Party. It was sury agents who defrauded the government of millions
led by influential intellectuals, journalists, and busi- of dollars of excise taxes on whiskey. The ringleader
nessmen who believed in classical liberalism: free trade, was Grant’s private secretary, Orville Babcock. Others
small government, low property taxes, and limitation went to prison, but Grant stood by Babcock, possibly
of voting rights to men of education and property. perjuring himself to save his secretary from jail. The
Liberals responded to the massive increase in federal stench of scandal permeated the White House.
power, during the Civil War and Reconstruction, by
urging a policy of laissez faire, in which government
“let alone” business and the economy. In the postwar Counterrevolution in the South
decades, laissez faire advocates never succeeded in While northerners became preoccupied with scandals
ending federal policies such as the protective tariff and and the shock of economic depression, ex-Confederates
national banking system (Chapter 16), but their argu- seized power in the South. Most believed (as north-
ments helped roll back Reconstruction. Unable to ern liberals had also begun to argue) that southern
block Grant’s renomination for the presidency in 1872, Reconstruction governments were illegitimate “regimes.”
the dissidents broke away and formed a new party Led by the planters, ex-Confederates staged a massive
under the name Liberal Republican. Their candidate insurgency to take back the South.
was Horace Greeley, longtime publisher of the New When they could win at the ballot box, southern
York Tribune and veteran reformer and abolitionist. Democrats took that route. They got ex-Confederate
The Democrats, still in disarray, also nominated voting rights restored and campaigned against “negro
Greeley, notwithstanding his editorial diatribes against rule.” But when force was necessary, southern Demo-
them. A poor campaigner, Greeley was assailed so crats used it. Present-day Americans, witnessing polit-
severely that, as he said, “I hardly knew whether I was ical violence in other countries, seldom remember that
running for the Presidency or the penitentiary.” our own history includes the overthrow of elected gov-
Grant won reelection overwhelmingly, capturing ernments by paramilitary groups. But this is exactly
56 percent of the popular vote and every electoral how Reconstruction ended in many parts of the South.
vote. Yet Liberal Republicans had shifted the terms of Ex-Confederates terrorized Republicans, especially in
debate. The agenda they advanced — smaller govern- districts with large proportions of black voters. Black
ment, restricted voting rights, and reconciliation with political leaders were shot, hanged, beaten to death,
ex-Confederates — resonated with Democrats, who had and in one case even beheaded. Many Republicans,
long advocated limited government and were working both black and white, went into hiding or fled for their
to reclaim their status as a legitimate national party. lives. Southern Democrats called this violent process
Liberalism thus crossed party lines, uniting disillu- “Redemption” — a heroic name that still sticks today,
sioned conservative Republicans even though this seizure of power was murderous and
UNDERSTAND with Democrats who denounced undemocratic.
POINTS OF VIEW government activism. E. L. Godkin No one looms larger in this bloody story than
How did ex-Confederates, of The Nation and other classical Nathan Bedford Forrest, a decorated Confederate
freedpeople, Republicans,
liberal editors played key roles general. Born in poverty in 1821, Forrest had risen to
and classical liberals view
in turning northern public opin- become a big-time slave trader and Mississippi planter.
the end of Reconstruction?
ion against Reconstruction. With A fiery secessionist, Forrest had formed a Tennessee
CHAPTER 15 Reconstruction, 1865–1877 499
a victory but a revolution,” exulted a Democratic news- political power. The Court thus gutted the Fourteenth
paper in New York. Amendment. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the jus-
After 1874, with Democrats in control of the House, tices also struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875,
Republicans who tried to shore up their southern wing paving the way for later decisions that sanctioned seg-
had limited options. Bowing to election results, the regation. The impact of these decisions endured well
Grant administration began to reject southern Repub- into the twentieth century.
licans’ appeals for aid. Events in Mississippi showed the
outcome. As state elections neared there in 1875, para- The Political Crisis of 1877 After the grim election
military groups such as the Red Shirts operated openly. results of 1874, Republicans faced a major battle in the
Mississippi’s Republican governor, Adelbert Ames, a presidential election of 1876. Abandoning Grant, they
Union veteran from Maine, appealed for U.S. troops, nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, a former Union gen-
but Grant refused. “The whole public are tired out with eral who was untainted by corruption and — even
these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South,” com- more important — hailed from the key swing state of
plained a Grant official, who told southern Republicans Ohio. Hayes’s Democratic opponent was New York
that they were responsible for their own fate. Facing governor Samuel J. Tilden, a Wall Street lawyer with a
a rising tide of brutal murders, Governor Ames — reform reputation. Tilden favored home rule for the
realizing that only further bloodshed could result — South, but so, more discreetly, did Hayes. With enforce-
urged his allies to give up the fight. Brandishing guns ment on the wane, Reconstruction did not figure
and stuffing ballot boxes, Democratic “Redeemers” prominently in the campaign, and little was said about
swept the 1875 elections and took control of Mississippi. the states still led by Reconstruction governments:
By 1876, Reconstruction was largely over. Republican Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana.
governments, backed by token U.S. military units, Once returns started coming in on election night,
remained in only three southern states: Louisiana, however, those states loomed large. Tilden led in the
South Carolina, and Florida. Elsewhere, former Con- popular vote and seemed headed for victory until sleep-
federates and their allies took power. less politicians at Republican headquarters realized that
the electoral vote stood at 184 to 165, with the 20 votes
The Supreme Court Rejects Equal Rights Though from Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana still uncer-
ex-Confederates seized power in southern states, new tain. If Hayes took those votes, he would win by a mar-
landmark constitutional amendments and federal laws gin of 1. Citing ample evidence of Democratic fraud
remained in force. If the Supreme Court had left these and intimidation, Republican officials certified all three
intact, subsequent generations of civil rights advocates states for Hayes. “Redeemer” Democrats who had taken
could have used the federal courts to combat racial dis- over the states’ governments submitted their own elec-
crimination and violence. Instead, the Court closed off toral votes for Tilden. When Congress met in early 1877,
this avenue for the pursuit of justice, just as it dashed it confronted two sets of electoral votes from those states.
the hopes of women’s rights advocates. The Constitution does not provide for such a con-
As early as 1873, in a group of decisions known tingency. All it says is that the president of the Senate
collectively as the Slaughter-House Cases, the Court (in 1877, a Republican) opens the electoral certificates
began to undercut the power of the Fourteenth Amend- before the House (Democratic) and the Senate
ment. In this case and a related ruling, U.S. v. Cruikshank (Republican) and “the Votes shall then be counted”
(1876), the justices argued that the Fourteenth Amend- (Article 2, Section 1). Suspense gripped the country.
ment offered only a few, rather trivial federal protec- There was talk of inside deals or a new election — even
tions to citizens (such as access to navigable water- a violent coup. Finally, Congress appointed an electoral
ways). In Cruikshank — a case that emerged from a commission to settle the question. The commission
gruesome killing of African American farmers by included seven Republicans, seven Democrats, and, as
ex-Confederates in Colfax, Louisiana, followed by a the deciding member, David Davis, a Supreme Court
Democratic political coup — the Court ruled that vot- justice not known to have fixed party loyalties. Davis,
ing rights remained a state matter unless the state itself however, disqualified himself by accepting an Illinois
violated those rights. If former slaves’ rights were vio- Senate seat. He was replaced by Republican justice
lated by individuals or private groups (including the Joseph P. Bradley, and by a vote of 8 to 7, on party lines,
Klan), that lay beyond federal jurisdiction. The the commission awarded the election to Hayes.
Fourteenth Amendment did not protect citizens from In the House of Representatives, outraged Demo-
armed vigilantes, even when those vigilantes seized crats vowed to stall the final count of electoral votes so
CHAPTER 15 Reconstruction, 1865–1877 501
“Grantism”
President Grant was lampooned on both
sides of the Atlantic for the problems of
his scandal-ridden administration. The
British magazine Puck shows Grant barely
defying gravity to keep himself and his
corrupt subordinates aloft and out of jail.
To a great extent, however, the hero of the
Union army remained personally popular
at home and abroad. The British public
welcomed Grant with admiration on his
triumphant foreign tour in 1877. Library
of Congress.
as to prevent Hayes’s inauguration on March 4. But in setting aside the U.S. troops who were serving on bor-
the end, they went along — partly because Tilden him- der duty in Texas, only 3,000 Union soldiers remained
self urged that they do so. Hayes had publicly indicated in the South. As soon as the new president ordered
his desire to offer substantial patronage to the South, them back to their barracks, the last Republican admin-
including federal funds for education and internal istrations in the South collapsed. Reconstruction had
improvements. He promised “a complete change of ended.
men and policy” — naively hoping, at the same time,
that he could count on support from old-line southern
Whigs and protect black voting rights. Hayes was inau- Lasting Legacies
gurated on schedule. He expressed hope in his inaugu- In the short run, the political events of 1877 had little
ral address that the federal government could serve impact on most southerners. Much of the work of
“the interests of both races carefully and equally.” But, “Redemption” had already been done. What mattered
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
1. Commemorative postcard of living Confederate flag, Robert E. Lee Monument, Richmond, Virginia, 1907.
An estimated 150,000 people gathered in 1890 to dedicate this statue — ten times more than had attended
earlier memorial events.
2. From the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the glorious cause for which they fought; to cherish
Constitution, 1894. The United Daughters of the the ties of friendship among members of this Association;
Confederacy (UDC), founded in 1894, grew in three to endeavor to have used in all Southern schools only
years to 136 chapters and by the late 1910s such histories as are just and true.
counted a membership of 100,000.
The objects of this association are historical, educational, 3. McNeel Marble Co. advertisement in Confederate
memorial, benevolent, and social: To fulfill the duties Veteran magazine, 1905.
of sacred charity to the survivors of the war and those To the Daughters of the Confederacy: In regard to that
dependent on them; to collect and preserve material Confederate monument which your Chapter has been
for a truthful history of the war; to protect historic talking about and planning for since you first got orga-
places of the Confederacy; to record the part taken nized. Why not buy it NOW and have it erected before
by the Southern women . . . in patient endurance of all the old veterans have answered the final roll call? Why
hardship and patriotic devotion during the struggle; wait and worry about raising funds? Our terms to U.D.C.
to perpetuate the memory of our Confederate heroes Chapters are so liberal and our plans for raising funds
502
are so effective as to obviate the necessity of either waiting negroes of the South is an everlasting tribute to the splen-
or worrying. During the last three or four years we have did character of the dominant race and their moral uplift
sold Confederate monuments to thirty-seven of your of a weaker one. . . . When these negroes were landed
sister Chapters. . . . Our designs, our prices, our work, on American shores, almost all were savages taken from
our business methods have pleased them, and we can the lowest forms of jungle life. It was largely the women
please you. What your sister Chapters have done, you of the South who trained these heathen people, molded
can do. . . . WRITE TO-DAY. their characters, and, in the second and third generations,
lifted them up a thousand years in the scale of civilization.
4. Confederate veteran’s letter, Confederate Veteran
magazine, 1910. An anonymous Georgian who 6. Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in
had served in Lee’s army sent the following letter Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops,
to the veterans’ magazine after attending a Late 1st S.C. Volunteers, 1902. Susie King Taylor,
reunion in Memphis. born in slavery in Georgia in 1848, fled with her
Reunion gatherings are supposed to be for the benefit of uncle during the Civil War and served as a nurse
the old veterans; but will you show us where the privates, in the Union army.
the men who stood the hardships and did the fighting, have I read an article, which said the ex-Confederate Daughters
any consideration when they get to the city that is expected had sent a petition to the managers of the local theatres
to entertain them? . . . [In Memphis, I] stopped at the in Tennessee to prohibit the performance of “Uncle Tom’s
school building, where there were at least twenty-five or Cabin,” claiming it was exaggerated (that is, the treatment
thirty old veterans lying on the ground, and had been there of the slaves), and would have a very bad effect on the
all night. All this while the officers were being banqueted, children who might see the drama. I paused and thought
wined, dined, and quartered in the very best hotels; but the back a few years of the heart-rending scenes I have wit-
private must shift for himself, stand around on the street, nessed. . . . I remember, as if it were yesterday, seeing
or sit on the curbstone. He must march if he is able, but the droves of negroes going to be sold, and I often went to
officers ride in fine carriages. Pay more attention to the look at them, and I could hear the auctioneer very plainly
men of the ranks — men who did service! I always go from my house, auctioning these poor people off.
prepared to pay my way; but I do not like to be ignored. Do these Confederate Daughters ever send petitions
to prohibit the atrocious lynchings and wholesale mur-
5. Matthew Page Andrews, The Women of the South dering and torture of the negro? Do you ever hear of
in War Times, 1923. Matthew Page Andrews’s The them fearing this would have a bad effect on the chil-
Women of the South in War Times, approved by dren? Which of these two, the drama or the present
the UDC, was a popular textbook for decades in state of affairs, makes a degrading impression upon
schools throughout the South. the minds of our young generation? In my opinion it
The Southern people of the “old regime” have been pic- is not “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” . . . It does not seem as if
tured as engaged primarily in a protracted struggle for our land is yet civilized.
the maintenance of negro slavery. . . . Fighting on behalf
of slavery was as far from the minds of these Americans
as going to war in order to free the slaves was from the Sources: (2) Minutes of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the United Daughters of
the Confederacy (Nashville, TN.: Press of Foster & Webb, Printers, 1901), 235;
purpose of Abraham Lincoln, whose sole object, fre- (3) Confederate Veteran, 1905; (4) Confederate Veteran, Vol. XVIII (Nashville, TN.:
quently expressed by him, was to “preserve the Union.” . . . S. A. Cunningham, 1910); (5) Matthew Page Andrews, ed., The Women of the South in
War Times (Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Co., 1923), 3–4, 9–10; (6) Susie King
That, in the midst of war, there were almost no Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (Boston: Published by the author, 1902),
instances of arson, murder, or outrage committed by the 65–66.
ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE 4. How does source 5 depict slaves? Slaveholders? Is this an
accurate account of the history of the South, and how does
1. What do sources 2 and 3 tell us about the work of local UDC
this compare to source 4? What do these different interpre-
chapters? What does the advertisement suggest about the
tations suggest about the legacy of “Redemption”?
economy of the postwar South?
2. What can you infer from these sources about the situation
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
in the South after the Civil War? Why might women have
played a particularly important role in memorial associa- “Lost Cause” advocates often stated that their work was not
tions? political. To what extent was this true, based on the evidence
3. Compare and contrast sources 4 and 6. Who did “Lost here? What do these documents suggest about the influence
Cause” associations serve, and how is this connected to of the Lost Cause, and also the limitations and challenges it
issues of class and race? faced? What do they tell us about the legacies of Reconstruc-
tion more broadly?
503
504 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
was the long, slow decline of Radical Republican power Du Bois meticulously documented the history of
and the corresponding rise of Democrats in the South African American struggle, white vigilante violence,
and nationally. It was obvious that so-called Redeemers and national policy failure. If Reconstruction, he wrote,
in the South had assumed power through violence. “had been conceived as a major national program . . .
But many Americans — including prominent classical whose accomplishment at any price was well worth the
liberals who shaped public opinion — believed the effort, we should be living today in a different world.”
Democrats had overthrown corrupt, illegitimate gov- His words still ring true, but in 1935 historians ignored
ernments; thus the end justified the means. After 1874, him. Not a single scholarly journal reviewed Du Bois’s
those who deplored the results had little political important book. Ex-Confederates had lost the war,
traction. The only remaining question was how far but they won control over the nation’s memory of
Reconstruction would be rolled back. Reconstruction.
The South never went back to the antebellum status Meanwhile, though their programs failed in the
quo. Sharecropping, for all its flaws and injustices, was South, Republicans carried their nation-building proj-
not slavery. Freedmen and freedwomen managed to ect into the West, where their policies helped consoli-
resist gang labor and work on their own terms. They date a continental empire. There, the federal power that
also established their right to marry, read and write, had secured emancipation created the conditions for
worship as they pleased, and travel in search of a better the United States to become an industrial power and a
life — rights that were not easily revoked. Across the major leader on the world stage.
South, black farmers overcame great odds to buy and
work their own land. African American businessmen
built thriving enterprises. Black churches and commu-
nity groups sustained networks of mutual aid. Parents
sacrificed to send their children to school, and a few
SUMMARY
proudly watched their sons and daughters graduate Postwar Republicans faced two tasks: restoring rebel-
from college. lious states to the Union and defining the role of eman-
Reconstruction had also shaken, if not fully over- cipated slaves. After Lincoln’s assassination, his succes-
turned, the legal and political framework that had sor, Andrew Johnson, hostile to Congress, unilaterally
made the United States a white man’s country. This was offered the South easy terms for reentering the Union.
a stunning achievement, and though hostile courts and Exploiting this opportunity, southerners adopted
political opponents undercut it, no one ever repealed oppressive Black Codes and put ex-Confederates back
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. in power. Congress impeached Johnson and, though
They remained in the Constitution, and the civil rights failing to convict him, seized the initiative and placed
movement of the twentieth century would return and the South under military rule. In this second, or radi-
build on this framework (Chapter 26). cal, phase of Reconstruction, Republican state govern-
Still, in the final reckoning, Reconstruction failed. ments tried to transform the South’s economic and
The majority of freedpeople remained in poverty, and social institutions. Congress passed innovative civil
by the late 1870s their political rights were also erod- rights acts and funded new agencies like the Freed-
ing. Vocal advocates of smaller government argued men’s Bureau. The Fourteenth Amendment defined
that Reconstruction had been a mistake; pressured by U.S. citizenship and asserted that states could no longer
economic hardship, northern voters abandoned their supersede it, and the Fifteenth Amendment gave vot-
southern Unionist allies. One of the enduring legacies ing rights to formerly enslaved men. Debate over this
of this process was the way later Americans remem- amendment precipitated a split among women’s rights
bered Reconstruction itself. After “Redemption,” gen- advocates, since women did not win inclusion.
erations of schoolchildren were taught that ignorant, Freedmen found that their goals conflicted with
lazy blacks and corrupt whites had imposed illegiti- those of Republican leaders, who counted on cotton to
mate Reconstruction “regimes” on the South. White fuel economic growth. Like southern landowners,
southerners won national support for their celebration national lawmakers envisioned former slaves as wage-
of a heroic Confederacy (Thinking Like a Historian, workers, while freedmen wanted their own land.
p. 502). Sharecropping, which satisfied no one completely,
One of the first historians to challenge these views emerged as a compromise suited to the needs of the
was the great African American intellectual W. E. B. cotton market and an impoverished, credit-starved
Du Bois. In Black Reconstruction in America (1935), region.
CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER REVIEW 505
Nothing could reconcile ex-Confederates to Repub- victory in the presidential election of that year resulted
lican government, and they staged a violent counter- in withdrawal of the last Union troops from the South.
revolution in the name of white supremacy and A series of Supreme Court decisions also undermined
“Redemption.” Meanwhile, struck by a massive eco- the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights laws,
nomic depression, northern voters handed Republicans setting up legal parameters through which, over the
a crushing defeat in the election of 1874. By 1876, long term, disenfranchisement and segregation would
Reconstruction was dead. Rutherford B. Hayes’s narrow flourish.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. How did U.S. presidents and Congress seek to rein- 3. Why did Reconstruction falter? To what extent was
tegrate the Confederacy into the Union? What dif- its failure the result of events in the South, the
ferent approaches did they take, and what were the North, and Washington, D.C.?
results?
4. Some of the language historians use to describe
2. Compare the goals of Radical Republicans, freed- Reconstruction still reflects the point of view of ex-
people, and ex-Confederates during Reconstruc- Confederates, who spoke of “Redemption.” What
tion. What conflicts ensued from their differing other names might we use for that process? What
agendas? difference (if any) would it make if scholars called it
something else?
506 PART 5 CHAPTER REVIEW
5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Look again at from being a loose union of states to being a more
the events listed under “Politics and Power” and unified and inclusive nation. To what extent do you
“Identity” on the thematic timeline on page 409. agree? Use the events of Reconstruction as evidence
Some historians have argued that, during this era, in making your case.
the United States moved, politically and socially,
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Ex-Confederates American heroes depicted at the top and the three
were not the first Americans to engage in violent scenes at the bottom. In the complete version of
protest against what they saw as tyrannical govern- this popular lithograph, additional images appear
ment power. Imagine, for example, a conversation on the left and right: black Union soldiers in battle;
between a participant in Shays’s Rebellion (Chap- an African American minister preaching at an
ter 6) and a southern Democrat who participated independent black church; a teacher and her stu-
in the overthrow of a Republican government in his dents in a freedpeople’s school; an African Ameri-
state. How would each describe his grievances? can farmer in a wheat field; and a drawing of a
Who would he name as enemies? Compare and proud black family on their farm with the caption
contrast the tactics of these and other violent pro- “We till our own fields.” If a freedperson and a for-
tests against government power in the United mer slave owner had seen this image in 1870, how
States. To what extent did these groups succeed? might each have responded? Imagine that an
African American family had placed the picture in
2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Return to the image at
their home in 1870. How might they have reflected
the start of this chapter (p. 479), which shows a cel-
differently, twenty years later, on its significance?
ebration in Baltimore after ratification of the Fif-
teenth Amendment. Note the distinguished African
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
American Social History Project, Freedom’s Unfinished Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet (2003). Hahn’s
Revolution (1996). A wonderful collection of images groundbreaking study of the rural South shows how
and eyewitness accounts. African Americans’ strategies during Reconstruction
were built on earlier experiences during slavery and
Philip Dray, Capitol Men (2008). A readable history of
the Civil War.
Reconstruction from the perspective of the first
African American congressmen. Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents
(1998). A lively assessment of presidential politics
Faye E. Dudden, Fighting Chance: The Struggle over
from Lincoln through Hayes, full of entertaining
Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction
quotations.
America (2011). A thoughtful exploration of the split
among radical reformers.
Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (1990).
The best short overview of events in this decade,
combining grassroots and political perspectives.
CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER REVIEW 507
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1864 t Wade-Davis Bill passed by Congress but killed by Lincoln’s pocket veto
t Minor v. Happersett: Supreme Court rules that Fourteenth Amendment does not extend
voting rights to women
KEY TURNING POINTS: Identify two crucial turning points in the course of Reconstruction.
What caused those shifts in direction, and what were the results?
Conquering a Continent
16
C H A P T E R
1854–1890
O
THE REPUBLICAN VISION n May 10, 1869, Americans IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
The New Union and the World poured into the streets for a giant How did U.S. policymakers seek to
Integrating the National party. In big cities, the racket was stimulate the economy and inte-
Economy incredible. Cannons boomed and train grate the trans-Mississippi west into
whistles shrilled. New York fired a hundred- the nation, and how did this affect
INCORPORATING THE
gun salute at City Hall. Congregations sang people living there?
WEST
anthems, while the less religious gathered
Mining Empires
in saloons to celebrate with whiskey. Philadelphia’s joyful throngs reminded an observer
Cattlemen on the Plains
of the day, four years earlier, when news had arrived of Lee’s surrender. The festivities
Homesteaders
were prompted by a long-awaited telegraph message: executives of the Union Pacific
The First National Park and Central Pacific railroads had driven a golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, link-
A HARVEST OF BLOOD: ing up their lines. Unbroken track now stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. A
NATIVE PEOPLES journey across North America could be made in less than a week.
DISPOSSESSED The first transcontinental railroad meant jobs and money. San Francisco residents
The Civil War and Indians on the got right to business: after firing a salute, they loaded Japanese tea on a train bound for
Plains St. Louis, marking California’s first overland delivery to the East. In coming decades,
Grant’s Peace Policy trade and tourism fueled tremendous growth west of the Mississippi. San Francisco,
The End of Armed Resistance which in 1860 had handled $7.4 million in imports, increased that figure to $49 million
Strategies of Survival over thirty years. The new railroad would, as one speaker predicted in 1869, “populate
Western Myths and Realities our vast territory” and make America “the highway of nations.”
The railroad was also a political triumph. Victorious in the Civil War, Republicans saw
themselves as heirs to the American System envisioned by antebellum Whigs. They
believed government intervention in the economy was the key to nation building. But
unlike Whigs, whose plans had met stiff Democratic opposition, Republicans enjoyed a
decade of unparalleled federal power. They used it vigorously: U.S. government spend-
ing per person, after skyrocketing in the Civil War, remained well above earlier levels.
Republicans believed that national economic integration was the best guarantor of last-
ing peace. As a New York minister declared, the federally supported transcontinental
railroad would “preserve the Union.”
The minister was wrong on one point. He claimed the railroad was a peaceful
achievement, in contrast to military battles that had brought “devastation, misery, and
woe.” In fact, creating a continental empire caused plenty of woe. Regions west of the
Mississippi could only be incorporated if the United States subdued native peoples and
established favorable conditions for international investors — often at great domestic
cost. And while conquering the West helped make the United States into an industrial
power, it also deepened America’s rivalry with European empires and created new pat-
terns of exploitation.
508
The Great West In the wake of the Civil War, Americans looked westward. Republicans imple-
mented an array of policies to foster economic development in the “Great West.” Ranchers, farmers,
and lumbermen cast hungry eyes on the remaining lands held by Native Americans. Steamboats and
railroads, both visible in the background of this image, became celebrated as symbols of the expanding
reach of U.S. economic might. This 1881 promotional poster illustrates the bountiful natural resources to
be found out west, as well as the land available for ranching, farming, and commerce. The men in the
lower left corner are surveying land for sale. Library of Congress.
509
510 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
United States would one day claim the Philippines and his Republican successors would follow thirty years
build a Panama canal. later in an aggressive bid for global power.
Seward’s short-term achievements were modest.
Exhausted by civil war, Americans had little enthusiasm
for further military exploits. Seward achieved only two Integrating the National Economy
significant victories. In 1868, he secured congressional Closer to home, Republicans focused on transporta-
approval for the Burlingame Treaty with China, which tion infrastructure. Railroad development in the United
guaranteed the rights of U.S. missionaries in China and States began well before the Civil War, with the first
set official terms for the emigration of Chinese laborers, locomotives arriving from Britain in the early 1830s.
some of whom were already clearing farmland and Unlike canals or roads, railroads offered the promise
building railroads in the West. That same year, Seward of year-round, all-weather service. Locomotives could
negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia. After run in the dark and never needed to rest, except to take
the Senate approved the deal, Seward waxed poetic: on coal and water. Steam engines crossed high moun-
tains and rocky gorges where pack animals could find
Our nation with united interests blest
no fodder and canals could never reach. West of the
Not now content to poise, shall sway the rest;
Mississippi, railroads opened vast regions for farming,
Abroad our empire shall no limits know,
But like the sea in endless circles flow. trade, and tourism. A transcontinental railroad execu-
tive was only half-joking when he said, “The West is
Many Americans scoffed at the purchase of Alaska, a purely a railroad enterprise.”
frigid arctic tract that skeptics nicknamed “Seward’s Governments could choose to build and operate
Icebox.” But the secretary of state mapped out a path railroads themselves or promote construction by
512 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
private companies. Unlike most European countries, century, legislatures gradually began to allow any busi-
the United States chose the private approach. The fed- ness to become a corporation by simply applying for a
eral government, however, provided essential loans, state charter. Among the first corporations to become
subsidies, and grants of public land. States and locali- large interstate enterprises, private railroads were much
ties also lured railroads with offers of financial aid, freer than earlier companies to do as they pleased.
mainly by buying railroad bonds. Without this aid, rail After the Civil War, they received lavish public aid with
networks would have grown much more slowly and few strings attached. Their position was like that of
would probably have concentrated in urban regions. American banks in late 2008 after the big federal bail-
With it, railroads enjoyed an enormous — and reck- out: even critics acknowledged that public aid to these
less — boom. By 1900, virtually no corner of the coun- giant companies was good for the economy, but they
try lacked rail service (Map 16.1). At the same time, observed that it also lent government support to fabu-
U.S. railroads built across the border into Mexico lous accumulations of private wealth.
(America Compared, p. 514).
Railroad companies transformed American capi- Tariffs and Economic Growth Along with the trans-
talism. They adopted a legal form of organization, the formative power of railroads, Republicans’ protective
corporation, that enabled them to raise private capital tariffs helped build other U.S. industries, including tex-
in prodigious amounts. In earlier decades, state legisla- tiles and steel in the Northeast and Midwest and, through
tures had chartered corporations for specific public tariffs on imported sugar and wool, sugar beet farming
purposes, binding these creations to government goals and sheep ranching in the West. Tariffs also funded
and oversight. But over the course of the nineteenth government itself. In an era when the United States did
CHAPTER 16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 513
Pacific
Time C A N A D A
Zone Mountain
Time Central
Zone Time
Seattle Zone
uperior Eastern
L. S Time
Zone
Portland L.
Minneapolis-
Hu
i Boston
o
L. Michigan
St. Paul nt a r
ron
L. OBuffalo
Detroit ie
Er New York
L.
Chicago Cleveland Pittsburgh
Salt Omaha
Lake Washington,
City Denver Cincinnati D.C.
Kansas
San Francisco City St. Louis
Memphis ATLANTIC
Los Angeles
Atlanta
OCEAN
Charleston
Dallas
N
PACIFIC El Paso
E
OCEAN W
New Orleans S
Gulf of Me x i co
Railroad Growth between 1870 – 1890
MEXICO
Major rail lines in 1870 0 200 400 miles
Major rail lines added 1870–1890
0 200 400 kilometers
MAP 16.1
Expansion of the Railroad System, 1870–1890
In 1860, the nation had 30,000 miles of rail track; by 1890, it had 167,000 miles. The tremendous
burst of construction during the last twenty years of that period essentially completed the nation’s
rail network, although there would be additional expansion for the next two decades. The main
areas of growth were in the South and in lands west of the Mississippi. Time zones — introduced
by the railroad companies in 1883 — are marked by the gray lines.
not levy income taxes, tariffs provided the bulk of trea- factory. For protectionist Republicans, high tariffs were
sury revenue. The Civil War had left the Union with a akin to the abolition of slavery: they protected and
staggering debt of $2.8 billion. Tariff income erased uplifted the most vulnerable workers.
that debt and by the 1880s generated huge budget sur- In these fierce debates, both sides were partly right.
pluses — a circumstance hard to imagine today. Protective tariffs did play a powerful role in economic
As Reconstruction faltered, tariffs came under growth. They helped transform the United States into a
political fire. Democrats argued that tariffs taxed global industrial power. Eventually, though, even pro-
American consumers by denying them access to low- tectionist Republicans had to admit that Democrats
cost imported goods and forcing them to pay subsidies had a point: tariffs had not prevented industrial pov-
to U.S. manufacturers. Republicans claimed, conversely, erty in the United States. Corporations accumulated
that tariffs benefitted workers because they created massive benefits from tariffs but failed to pass them
jobs, blocked low-wage foreign competition, and safe- along to workers, who often toiled long hours for low
guarded America from the kind of industrial poverty wages. Furthermore, tariffs helped foster trusts, corpo-
that had arisen in Europe. According to this argument, rations that dominated whole sectors of the economy
tariffs helped American men earn enough to support and wielded near-monopoly power. The rise of large
their families; wives could devote themselves to home- private corporations and trusts generated enduring
making, and children could go to school, not the political problems.
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
This map, based on an 1885 traveler’s guide published by the Atchison, Topeka,
The Santa Fe Railroad and Santa Fe Railroad, includes the company’s U.S. lines and also those of its
Mexican Central Railroad, an ATSF subsidiary that crossed the border and termi-
in Mexico and the nated at Guaymas and Mexico City, Mexico. The dots represent the many stops
that the trains made along the routes between major cities. Most Mexican rail-
United States roads in this era were built and operated by U.S. companies. As you analyze this
map, consider how residents of the two countries may have experienced the
railroad’s arrival in different ways.
MAP 16.2
The Santa Fe Railroad System, 1885
PACIFIC Chihuahua
OCEAN Guaymas
N MEXICO
W E
S
Gulf of
Mexico
Lines of the Sante Fe
Railroad with Selected Stops 0 150 300 miles
Railroad stop 0 150 300 kilometers
Mexico City
The Role of Courts While fostering growth, most feared that too many state and local regulations would
historians agree, Republicans did not give government impede business and fragment the national marketplace.
enough regulatory power over the new corporations. Starting in the 1870s, they interpreted the “due process”
State legislatures did pass hundreds of regulatory laws clause of the new Fourteenth Amendment — which dic-
after the Civil War, but interstate companies challenged tated that no state could “deprive any person of life, lib-
them in federal courts. In Munn v. Illinois (1877), the erty, or property, without due process of law” — as shield-
Supreme Court affirmed that states could regulate key ing corporations from excessive regulation. Ironically,
businesses, such as railroads and grain elevators, that the Court refused to use the same amendment to pro-
were “clothed in the public interest.” However, the justices tect the rights of African Americans.
514
CHAPTER 16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 515
In the Southwest as well, federal courts promoted standing ratio. Thus, with a law
IDENTIFY CAUSES
economic development at the expense of racial justice. that became infamous to later What federal policies
Though the United States had taken control of New critics as the “Crime of 1873,” contributed to the rise
Mexico and Arizona after the Mexican War, much Congress chose gold. It directed of America’s industrial
land remained afterward in the hands of Mexican farm- the U.S. Treasury to cease minting economy, and what were
ers and ranchers. Many lived as peónes, under long- silver dollars and, over a six- their results?
standing agreements with landowners who held large year period, retire Civil War–era
tracts originally granted by the Spanish crown. The greenbacks (paper dollars) and replace them with
post–Civil War years brought railroads and an influx of notes from an expanded system of national banks.
land-hungry Anglos. New Mexico’s governor reported After this process was complete in 1879, the treasury
indignantly that Mexican shepherds were often “asked” exchanged these notes for gold on request. (Advocates
to leave their ranges “by a cowboy or cattle herder with a of bimetallism did achieve one small victory: the
brace of pistols at his belt and a Winchester in his hands.” Bland-Allison Act of 1878 required the U.S. Mint to
Existing land claims were so complex that Congress coin a modest amount of silver.)
eventually set up a special court to rule on land titles. By adopting the gold standard, Republican policy-
Between 1891 and 1904, the court invalidated most makers sharply limited the nation’s money supply, to
traditional claims, including those of many New the level of available gold. The amount of money circu-
Mexico ejidos, or villages owned collectively by their lating in the United States had been $30.35 per person
communities. Mexican Americans lost about 64 per- in 1865; by 1880, it fell to only $19.36 per person.
cent of the contested lands. In addition, much land was Today, few economists would sanction such a plan,
sold or appropriated through legal machinations like especially for an economy growing at breakneck speed.
those of a notorious cabal of politicians and lawyers They would recommend, instead, increasing money
known as the Santa Fe Ring. The result was displace- supplies to keep pace with development. But at the
ment of thousands of Mexican American villagers and time, policymakers remembered rampant antebellum
farmers. Some found work as railroad builders or mine speculation and the hardships of inflation during the
workers; others, moving into the sparse high country Civil War. The United States, as a developing country,
of the Sierras and Rockies where cattle could not sur- also needed to attract investment capital from Britain,
vive, developed sheep raising into a major enterprise. Belgium, and other European nations that were on the
gold standard. Making it easy to exchange U.S. bonds
Silver and Gold In an era of nation building, U.S. and and currency for gold encouraged European investors
European policymakers sought new ways to rationalize to send their money to the United States.
markets. Industrializing nations, for example, tried to Republican policies fostered exuberant growth and a
develop an international system of standard measure- breathtakingly rapid integration of the economy. Rail-
ments and even a unified currency. Though these pro- roads and telegraphs tied the nation together. U.S. manu-
posals failed as each nation succumbed to self-interest, facturers amassed staggering amounts of capital and built
governments did increasingly agree that, for “scientific” corporations of national and even global scope. With its
reasons, money should be based on gold, which was immense, integrated marketplace of workers, consumers,
thought to have an intrinsic worth above other metals. raw materials, and finished products, the United States
Great Britain had long held to the gold standard, was poised to become a mighty industrial power.
meaning that paper notes from the Bank of England
could be backed by gold held in the bank’s vaults. Dur-
ing the 1870s and 1880s, the United States, Germany,
France, and other countries also converted to gold.
Incorporating the West
Beforehand, these nations had been on a bimetallic Republicans wanted farms as well as factories. As early
standard: they issued both gold and silver coins, with as 1860, popular lyrics hailed the advent of “Uncle
respective weights fixed at a relative value. The United Sam’s Farm”:
States switched to the gold standard in part because
A welcome, warm and hearty, do we give the sons of toil,
treasury officials and financiers were watching devel-
To come west and settle and labor on Free Soil;
opments out west. Geologists accurately predicted the We’ve room enough and land enough, they needn’t feel
discovery of immense silver deposits, such as Nevada’s alarmed —
Comstock Lode, without comparable new gold strikes. Oh! Come to the land of Freedom and vote yourself
A massive influx of silver would clearly upset the long- a farm.
516 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
The Homestead Act (1862) gave 160 acres of federal lumber, and other raw materials. But for ordinary
land to any applicant who occupied and improved the Americans who went west, dreams often outran reality.
property. Republicans hoped the bill would help build Well-financed corporations, not individual prospec-
up the interior West, which was inhabited by Indian tors, reaped most of the profits from western mines,
peoples but remained “empty” on U.S. government while the Great Plains environment proved resistant to
survey maps. ranching and farming.
Implementing this plan required innovative poli-
cies. The same year it passed the Homestead Act,
Congress also created the federal Department of Agri- Mining Empires
culture and, through the Morrill Act, set aside 140 mil- In the late 1850s, as easy pickings in the California gold
lion federal acres that states could sell to raise money rush diminished, prospectors scattered in hopes of
for public universities. The goal of these land-grant col- finding riches elsewhere. They found gold at many
leges was to broaden educational opportunities and sites, including Nevada, the Colorado Rockies, and
foster technical and scientific expertise. After the Civil South Dakota’s Black Hills (Map 16.3). As news of each
War, Congress also funded a series of geological sur- strike spread, remote areas turned overnight into mob
veys, dispatching U.S. Army officers, scientists, and scenes of prospectors, traders, prostitutes, and saloon
photographers to chart unknown western terrain and keepers. At community meetings, white prospectors
catalog resources. made their own laws, often using them as an instru-
To a large extent, these policies succeeded in incor- ment for excluding Mexicans, Chinese, and blacks.
porating lands west of the Mississippi. The United The silver from Nevada’s Comstock Lode, discov-
States began to exploit its western empire for minerals, ered in 1859, built the boomtown of Virginia City,
Hydraulic Mining
When surface veins of gold played out, miners turned to hydraulic mining, the modern form of which was
invented in California in 1853. The technology was simple, using high-pressure streams of water to wash
away hillsides of gold-bearing soil. Although building the reservoirs, piping systems, and sluices cost money,
the profits from hydraulic mining helped transform western mining into big business. But, as this daguerreo-
type suggests, the large scale on which hydraulic mining was done wreaked large-scale havoc on the
environment. Collection of Matthew Isenburg.
CHAPTER 16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 517
(after Francaviglia) federally owned land to work the claim and keep all
the proceeds. (The law — including the $5-per-acre fee
Coeur d’Alene
for filing a claim — remains in force today.) Americans
WASHINGTON
idealized the notion of the lone, hardy mining prospec-
MONTANA
Helena
N. DAK.
tor with his pan and his mule, but digging into deep
Butte
OREGON
Florence
Virginia City
veins of underground ore required big money. Con-
IDAHO 1862 BLACK
Deadwood HILLS
sortiums of powerful investors, bringing engineers
Silver City 1861
1874
Boise City
Custer City and advanced equipment, generally extracted the most
S. DAK.
WYOMING wealth. This was the case for the New York trading firm
Weaverville South Pass
Virginia Corinne 1868 NEBR. Phelps Dodge, which invested in massive copper mines
City
Coloma 1859 Eureka Central and smelting operations on both sides of the U.S.-
1848 Austin City Denver
San
Aurora
UTAH
TERRITORY
Leadville COLORADO Mexico border. The mines created jobs in new towns
Francisco 1876 Pike’s Peak
Mariposa NEVADA 1859 like Bisbee and Morenci, Arizona — but with danger-
Creede Creek
Cripple
CALIFORNIA
1890
ous conditions and low pay, especially for those who
ARIZONA
received the segregated “Mexican wage.” Anglos, testi-
TERRITORY
NEW MEXICO
fied one Mexican mine worker, “occupied decorous
Los Angeles
Wickenburg
1863
TERRITORY
residences . . . and had large amounts of money,” while
N Santa
Rita
“the Mexican population and its economic condition
Tubac
W
E 1854 Tombstone
offered a pathetic contrast.” He protested this affront to
1878
S TEXAS “the most elemental principles of justice.”
Terlingua
The rise of western mining created an insatiable
Gold bonanza Gold mining (primarily) market for timber and produce from the Pacific North-
Intermontane region west (Map 16.4). Seattle and Portland grew rapidly as
Silver bonanza (gold, silver, copper, iron)
Rocky Mountain region
(gold, silver, lead, copper)
supply centers, especially during the great gold rushes overhunting and the introduction of European animal
of California (after 1849) and the Klondike in Canada’s afflictions, like the bacterial disease brucellosis, were
Yukon Territory (after 1897). Residents of Tacoma, already decimating the herds. In the 1870s, hide hunt-
Washington, claimed theirs was the “City of Destiny” ers finished them off so thoroughly that at one point
when it became the Pacific terminus for the Northern fewer than two hundred bison remained in U.S. terri-
Pacific, the nation’s third transcontinental railroad, in tory. Hunters hidden downwind, under the right con-
1887. But rival businessmen in Seattle succeeded in ditions, could kill four dozen at a time without moving
promoting their city as the gateway to Alaska and the from the spot. They took hides but left the meat to rot,
Klondike. Seattle, a town with 1,000 residents in 1870, an act of vast wastefulness that shocked native peoples.
grew over the next forty years to a population of a quar- Removal of the bison opened opportunities for
ter million. cattle ranchers. South Texas provided an early model
for their ambitious plans. By the end of the Civil War,
about five million head of longhorn cattle grazed on
Cattlemen on the Plains Anglo ranches there. In 1865, the Missouri Pacific
While boomtowns arose across the West, hunters Railroad reached Sedalia, Missouri, far enough west to
began transforming the plains. As late as the Civil War be accessible as Texas reentered the Union. A longhorn
years, great herds of bison still roamed this region. But worth $3 in Texas might command $40 at Sedalia.
With this incentive, ranchers inaugurated the Long extending railroad tracks, and trains took these gath-
Drive, hiring cowboys to herd cattle hundreds of miles ered cattle to giant slaughterhouses in cities like Chi-
north to the new rail lines, which soon extended into cago, which turned them into cheap beef for customers
Kansas. At Abilene and Dodge City, Kansas, ranchers back east.
sold their longhorns and trail-weary cowboys crowded
into saloons. These cow towns captured the nation’s
imagination as symbols of the Wild West, but the real- Homesteaders
ity was much less exciting. Cowboys, many of them Republicans envisioned the Great Plains dotted with
African Americans and Latinos, were really farm- small farms, but farmers had to be persuaded that
hands on horseback who worked long, harsh hours for crops would grow there. Powerful interests worked
low pay. hard to overcome the popular idea that the grassland
North of Texas, public grazing lands drew investors was the Great American Desert. Railroads, eager to sell
and adventurers eager for a taste of the West. By the land the government had granted them, advertised
early 1880s, as many as 7.5 million cattle were over- aggressively. Land speculators, transatlantic steamship
grazing the plains’ native grasses. A cycle of good lines, and western states and territories joined the
weather postponed disaster, which arrived in 1886: campaign.
record blizzards and bitter cold. An awful scene of rot- Newcomers found the soil beneath the native prai-
ting carcasses greeted cowboys as they rode onto the rie grasses deep and fertile. Steel plows enabled them to
range that spring. Further hit by a severe drought the break through the tough roots, while barbed wire pro-
following summer, the cattle boom collapsed. vided cheap, effective fencing against roaming cattle.
Thanks to new strategies, however, cattle ranching European immigrants brought strains of hard-kernel
survived and became part of the integrated national wheat that tolerated the extreme temperatures of the
economy. As railroads reached Texas and ranchers plains. As if to confirm promoters’ optimism, a wet
there abandoned the Long Drive, the invention of cycle occurred between 1878 and 1886, increasing
barbed wire — which enabled ranchers and farmers to rainfall in the arid regions east of the Rockies.
fence large areas cheaply and easily on the plains, where Americans decided that “rain follows the plow”:
wood was scarce and expensive — made it easier for settlement was increasing rainfall. Some attributed the
northern cattlemen to fence small areas and feed ani- rain to soil cultivation and tree planting, while others
mals on hay. Stockyards appeared beside the rapidly credited God. One Harvard professor proposed that
520 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
steel railroad tracks attracted moisture. Such optimists Western wheat traveled by rail to giant grain elevators
would soon learn their mistake. and traded immediately on world markets. Hoping
The motivation for most settlers, American or frontier land values would appreciate rapidly, many
immigrant, was to better themselves economically. farmers planned to profit from selling acres as much as
Union veterans, who received favorable terms in stak- (or more than) from their crops. In boom times, many
ing homestead claims, played a major role in settling rushed into debt to acquire more land and better equip-
Kansas and other plains states. When severe depres- ment. All these enthusiasms — for cash crops, land
sion hit northern Europe in the 1870s, Norwegians and speculation, borrowed money, and new technology —
Swedes joined German emigrants in large numbers. At bore witness to the conviction that farming was, as one
the peak of “American fever” in 1882, more than agricultural journal remarked, a business “like all other
105,000 Scandinavians left for the United States. business.”
Swedish and Norwegian became the primary lan-
guages in parts of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Women in the West Early miners, lumbermen, and
For some African Americans, the plains repre- cowboys were overwhelmingly male, but homestead-
sented a promised land of freedom. In 1879, a group of ing was a family affair. The success of a farm depended
black communities left Mississippi and Louisiana in a on the work of wives and children who tended the gar-
quest to escape poverty and white violence. Some 6,000 den and animals, preserved food, and helped out at
blacks departed together, most carrying little but the harvest time. Some women struck out on their own: a
clothes on their backs and faith in God. They called study of North Dakota found between 5 and 20 percent
themselves Exodusters, participants in a great exodus of homestead claims filed by single women, often
to Kansas. The 1880 census reported 40,000 blacks working land adjacent to that of sisters, brothers, and
there, by far the largest African American concentra- parents. Family members thus supported one another
tion in the West aside from Texas, where the expanding in the difficult work of farming, while easing the lone-
cotton frontier attracted hundreds of thousands of liness many newcomers felt. Looking back with pride
black migrants. on her homesteading days, one Dakota woman said
For newcomers, taming the plains differed from simply, “It was a place to stay and it was mine.”
pioneering in antebellum Iowa or Oregon. Dealers sold While promoting farms in the West, Republicans
big new machines to help with plowing and harvesting. clashed with the distinctive religious group that had
CHAPTER 16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 521
already settled Utah: Mormons, or members of the often cut dugouts into hillsides
COMPARE AND
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). and then, after a season or two, CONTRAST
After suffering persecution in Missouri and Illinois, erected houses made of turf cut Compare the development
Mormons had moved west to Utah in the 1840s, from the ground. of mining, ranching, and
attracting many working-class converts from England Over the long term, home- farming in the West. How
as well. Most Americans at the time were deeply hostile steaders discovered that the west- did their environmental
to Mormonism, especially the LDS practice of plural ern grasslands did not receive consequences differ?
marriage — sanctioned by church founder Joseph enough rain to grow wheat and
Smith — through which some Mormon men married other grains. As the cycle of rainfall shifted from wet to
more than one wife. dry, farmers as well as ranchers suffered. “A wind hot as
Mormons had their own complex view of women’s an oven’s fury . . . raged like a pestilence,” reported one
role, illustrated by the career of Mormon leader Nebraskan, leaving “farmers helpless, with no weapon
Emmeline Wells. Born in New Hampshire, Emmeline against this terrible and inscrutable wrath of nature.”
converted to Mormonism at age thirteen along with By the late 1880s, some recently settled lands emptied
her mother and joined the exodus to Utah in 1848. as homesteaders fled in defeat — 50,000 from the
After her first husband abandoned her when he left the Dakotas alone. It became obvious that farming in the
church, Emmeline became the seventh wife of church arid West required methods other than those used east
elder Daniel Wells. In 1870, due in part to organized of the Mississippi.
pressure from Wells and other Mormon women, the Clearly, 160-acre homesteads were the wrong size
Utah legislature granted full voting rights to women, for the West: farmers needed either small irrigated
becoming the second U.S. territory to do so (after plots or immense tracts for dry farming, which
Wyoming, in 1869). The measure increased LDS con- involved deep planting to bring subsoil moisture to the
trol, since most Utah women were Mormons, while roots and quick harrowing after rainfalls to slow evap-
non-Mormons in mining camps were predominantly oration. Dry farming developed most fully on huge
male. It also recognized the central role of women in corporate farms in the Red River Valley of North
Mormon life. Dakota. But even family farms, the norm elsewhere,
Amid the constitutional debates of Reconstruction, could not survive on less than 300 acres of grain. Crop
polygamy and women’s voting rights became inter- prices were too low, and the climate too unpredictable,
twined issues (American Voices, p. 522). Encouraged to allow farmers to get by on less.
by other plural wives, Emmeline Wells began in 1877 In this struggle, settlers regarded themselves as
to write for a Salt Lake City newspaper, the Woman’s nature’s conquerors, striving, as one pioneer remarked,
Exponent. She served as editor for forty years and led “to get the land subdued and the wilde nature out of it.”
local women’s rights groups. At first, Utah’s legislature Much about its “wilde nature” was hidden to the new-
blocked Wells’s candidacy in a local election, based on comers. They did not know that destroying biodiver-
her sex. But when Utah won statehood in 1896, Wells sity, which was what farming the plains really meant,
had the pleasure of watching several women win seats opened pathways for exotic, destructive pests and
in the new legislature, including Dr. Martha Hughes weeds, and that removing native grasses left the soil
Cannon, a physician and Mormon plural wife who vulnerable to erosion. By the turn of the twentieth cen-
became the first American woman to serve in a state tury, about half the nation’s cattle and sheep, one-third
senate. Like their counterparts in other western states, of its cereal crops, and nearly three-fifths of its wheat
Utah’s women experienced a combination of severe came from the Great Plains. But in the drier parts of
frontier hardships and striking new opportunities. the region, it was not a sustainable achievement. This
renowned breadbasket was later revealed to be, in the
Environmental Challenges Homesteaders faced a words of one historian, “the largest, longest-run agri-
host of challenges, particularly the natural environ- cultural and environmental miscalculation in Ameri-
ment of the Great Plains. Clouds of grasshoppers could can history.”
descend and destroy a crop in a day; a prairie fire or John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Union veteran,
hailstorm could do the job in an hour. In spring, home- predicted the catastrophe from an early date. Powell,
steaders faced sudden, terrifying tornados, while their employed by the new U.S. Geological Survey, led a
winter experiences in the 1870s added the word bliz- famous expedition in the West in which his team navi-
zard to America’s vocabulary. On the plains, also, water gated the rapids of the Colorado River through the
and lumber were hard to find. Newly arrived families Grand Canyon in wooden boats. In his Report on the
AMERICAN
VOICES
In 1870, Utah’s territorial legislature granted voting rights to women. The deci-
sion was a shock to advocates of women’s suffrage in the East: they expected
their first big victories would come in New England. Furthermore, Utah was
overwhelmingly peopled by Mormons — members of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Critics saw Mormonism as a harshly patriarchal reli-
Women’s Rights gion. They especially loathed the Mormon practice of “plural marriage,” in
which some Mormon men took more than one wife. Most easterners thought
in the West this practice was barbaric and demeaning to women. Over the next two decades,
Republicans pressured Mormons to abolish plural marriage. They also disenfran-
chised Mormon women and required men to take an anti-polygamy oath; Con-
gress refused to admit Utah as a state. Only after 1890, when the LDS church
officially abolished plural marriage, was Utah statehood possible. In 1896, when
Utah became a state, women’s voting rights were finally reinstated.
522
leave at any time — either go singly, or to rise en masse, tried to change the debate to focus on the vulnerability of
and there is no power here that could, or would wish to, all married women to exploitation by their husbands. Her
prevent us. I will now ask this assemblage of intelligent report from Utah, published in her journal The Revolution,
ladies, do you know of anyplace on the face of the earth, is below.
where woman has more liberty, and where she enjoys Woman’s work in monogamy and polygamy is essentially
such high and glorious privileges as she does here, as a one and the same — that of planting her feet on the solid
latter-day saint? No! The very idea of woman here in a ground of self-support; . . . there is and can be no salva-
state of slavery is a burlesque on good common sense. tion for womanhood but in the possession of power over
her own subsistence.
Harriet Cook Young: Wherever monogamy reigns, adul- The saddest feature here is that there really is nothing
tery, prostitution and foeticide, directly or indirectly, are by which these women can earn an independent liveli-
its concomitants. . . . The women of Utah comprehend hood for themselves and children. No manufacturing
this; and they see, in the principle of plurality of wives, establishments; no free schools to teach. Women here,
the only safeguard against adultery, prostitution, and the as everywhere, must be able to live honestly and honor-
reckless waste of pre-natal life, practiced throughout the ably without men, before it can be possible to save the
land. masses of them from entering into polygamy or prostitu-
tion, legal or illegal. Whichever way I turn, whatever
Phoebe Woodruff: God has revealed unto us the law of phase of social life presents itself, the same conclusion
the patriarchal order of marriage, and commanded us comes — independent bread alone can redeem woman
to obey it. We are sealed to our husbands for time and from her sure subjection to man. . . .
eternity, that we may dwell with them and our children Here is missionary ground. Not for “thus saith the Lord,”
in the world to come; which guarantees unto us the great- divine rights, canting priests, or echoing priestesses of any
est blessing for which we are created. If the rulers of the sect whatsoever; but for great, god-like, humanitarian
nation will so far depart from the spirit and letter of our men and women, who “feel for them in bonds as bound
glorious constitution as to deprive our prophets, apostles with them,” . . . a simple, loving, sisterly clasp of hands
and elders of citizenship, and imprison them for obeying with these struggling women, and an earnest work with
this law, let them grant this, our last request, to make their them. Not to modify nor ameliorate, but to ABOLISH
prisons large enough to hold their wives, for where they the whole system of woman’s subjection to man in both
go we will go also. polygamy and monogamy.
Source: Edward W. Tullidge, Women of Mormondom (New York: Tullidge & Crandall,
Source: The Revolution, July 20, 1871.
1877), 390–391, 396, 400.
Susan B. Anthony
Letter to The Revolution, July 5, 1871
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
National women’s suffrage leaders responded awkwardly 1. What arguments did the Mormon women make in
to the Utah suffrage victory. Being associated with defense of plural marriage? On what grounds did
Mormons, they understood, damaged their fragile new Stenhouse argue for its abolition?
movement in the eyes of most Americans. But they tried 2. Susan B. Anthony’s letter was published in Boston. How
might Mormon women have reacted to it? How might
tentatively to forge alliances with Mormon women they non-Mormon women have reacted to the statements by
viewed as progressive, as well as dissidents in the church. Snow, Young, and Woodruff?
Suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony traveled to Salt Lake 3. Compare the experiences of plural marriage described
City in 1871 to try to forge alliances with Mormon women, by Stenhouse, on the one hand, and Snow, Young, and
Woodruff, on the other. How do you account for these
especially dissidents such as Fanny Stenhouse. Anthony
very different perspectives?
expressed strong disapproval of polygamy, but she also
523
524 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
Lands of the Arid Region of the United States (1879), federal funding paid for dams and canals that supported
Powell told Congress bluntly that 160-acre homesteads intensive agriculture in many parts of the West.
would not work in dry regions. Impressed with the
success of Mormon irrigation projects in Utah, Powell
urged the United States to follow their model. He pro- The First National Park
posed that the government develop the West’s water Powell was not the only one rethinking land use. The
resources, building dams and canals and organizing West’s incorporation into the national marketplace
landowners into local districts to operate them. Doubt- occurred with such speed that some Americans began
ing that rugged individualism would succeed in the to fear rampant overdevelopment. Perhaps the federal
West, Powell proposed massive cooperation under government should not sell off all its public land, but
government control. instead hold and manage some of it. Amid the heady
After heated debate, Congress rejected Powell’s plan. initiatives of Reconstruction, Congress began to pre-
Critics accused him of playing into the hands of large serve sites of unusual natural splendor. As early as
ranching corporations; boosters were not yet willing to 1864, Congress gave 10 square miles of the Yosemite
give up the dream of small homesteads. But Powell Valley to California for “public use, resort, and recre-
turned out to be right. Though environmental historians ation.” (In 1890, Yosemite reverted to federal control.)
do not always agree with Powell’s In 1872, it set aside 2 million acres of Wyoming’s
IDENTIFY CAUSES proposed solutions, they point to Yellowstone Valley as the world’s first national park:
What factors led to the
his Report on Arid Lands as a preserved as a public holding, it would serve as “a pub-
creation of the first
cogent critique of what went lic park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoy-
national parks?
wrong on the Great Plains. Later, ment of the people.”
Railroad tourism, which developed side by side with country well.” For thirteen days, Nez Perce men raided
other western industries, was an important motive for the valley for supplies, waylaying several groups of
the creation of Yellowstone National Park. The North- tourists. The conflict made national headlines. East-
ern Pacific Railroad lobbied Congress vigorously to get erners, proud of their new “pleasuring ground,” were
the park established. Soon, luxury Pullman cars ushered startled to find that it remained a site of native resis-
visitors to Yellowstone’s hotel, operated by the railroad tance. Americans were not settling an empty West.
itself. But creation of the park was fraught with compli- They were unsettling it by taking it from native peoples
cations. Since no one knew exactly what a “national who already lived there.
park” was or how to operate it, the U.S. Army was dis-
patched to take charge; only in the early 1900s, when
Congress established many more parks in the West, did
consistent management policies emerge. In the mean- A Harvest of Blood: Native
time, soldiers spent much of their time arresting native
peoples who sought to hunt on Yellowstone lands.
Peoples Dispossessed
The creation of Yellowstone was an important step Before the Civil War, when most Americans believed
toward an ethic of respect for land and wildlife. So was the prairie could not be farmed, Congress reserved the
the 1871 creation of a U.S. Fisheries Commission, which Great Plains for Indian peoples. But in the era of steel
made recommendations to stem the decline in wild plows and railroads, policymakers suddenly had the
fish; by the 1930s, it merged with other federal wildlife power and desire to incorporate the whole region. The
bureaus to become the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. U.S. Army fought against the loosely federated Sioux —
At the same time, eviction of Indians showed that the major power on the northern grasslands — as well
defining small preserves of “uninhabited wilderness” as other peoples who had agreed to live on reservations
was part of conquest itself. In 1877, for example, the but found conditions so desperate that they fled
federal government forcibly removed the Nez Perce (Map 16.5). These “reservation wars,” caused largely by
tribe from their ancestral land in what is now Idaho, local violence and confused federal policies, were
Washington, and Oregon. Under the leadership of messy and bitter. Pointing to failed military campaigns,
young Chief Joseph, the Nez Perces tried to flee to army atrocities, and egregious corruption in the Indian
Canada. After a journey of 1,100 miles, they were Bureau, reformers called for new policies that would
forced to surrender just short of the border. During destroy native people’s traditional lifeways and “civi-
their trek, five bands crossed Yellowstone; as a Nez lize” them — or, as one reformer put it, “kill the Indian
Perce named Yellow Wolf recalled, they “knew that and save the man.”
C A NA DA
QUINAULT SALISH COLVILLE Bear Paw Mtn.
(Chief Joseph surrenders), 1877
CHINOOK WASH. BLACKFEET
YAKIMA
Chief Joseph’s N. DAK.
CAYUSE M CHIPPEWA
Route MONT.
iss
Co l u m MINN.
bia R. SIOUX
our
N Little Big
Horn, 1876 MANDAN CHIPPEWA
i R.
WALLA CROW
UMPQUA WALLA NEZ WIS.
W PERCÉ ARIKARA M
E COOS ORE. BLACK HILLS in
ne MENOMINEE
IDAHO Fetterman S. DAK. s ot
Dakota Sioux a R
S Bozeman Massacre, 1866 . WINNEBAGO
Trail SIOUX Uprising, 1862
HUIA R . CHEYENNE Wounded Knee SIOUX
Sn a ke
WYO. Massacre, 1890 IOWA
YUROK
PAIUTE IOWA
SHOSHONE
MAIDU NEB. SAUK
Great AND FOX
POMO P l a tt e R .
Salt
NEV. ARAPAHO ILL.
Lake UTE PAWNEE
UTAH COLO.
PAC IFIC
R.
CALIF. o Sand Creek
PAIUTE ad Massacre, 1864 KANS.
O C EAN or MO.
l
Co
APACHE CHEYENNE
Arkansa s R .
CHUMASH NAVAJO KIOWA OSAGE
CHEROKEE
.
i R
HAVASUPAI HOPI INDIAN TERR.
COMANCHE ARK.
ipp
MOHAVE CREEK SEMINOLE
SERRANO ARIZ. TAOS Red River War
siss
CHOCTAW
TERR. 1874-75
Mis
ZUÑI PUEBLO CHICKASAW
YUMA N. MEX. Red
APACHE R.
0 100 200 miles TERR. MISS.
PIMA
0 100 200 kilometers CADDO
TONKAWA
Skeleton Canyon LA.
Indian-Ceded Lands (Geronimo surrenders), 1886 TEXAS
Before 1850 APACHE
1850–1870
1870–1890 Rio
Gr
Reservations, 1890 an
de
Selected battles Gulf of Mexico
MEXICO
Tribal locations reflect
situation in the 1840s
MAP 16.5
Indian Country in the West, to 1890
As settlement pushed onto the Great Plains after the Civil War, native peoples put up bitter resis-
tance but ultimately to no avail. Over a period of decades, they ceded most of their lands to the
federal government, and by 1890 they were confined to scattered reservations.
Minnesotans’ ferocious response to the uprising set In May 1864, Cheyenne chief
IDENTIFY CAUSES
the stage for further conflict. A hastily appointed mili- Black Kettle, fearing his band What factors led to
tary court, bent on revenge, sentenced 307 Dakotas to would be attacked, consulted with warfare between whites
death, making it clear that rebellious Indians would be U.S. agents, who instructed him and native peoples on the
treated as criminals rather than warriors. President to settle along Sand Creek in east- plains?
Abraham Lincoln reviewed the trial records and com- ern Colorado until a treaty could
muted most of the sentences but authorized the deaths be signed. On November 29, 1864, Chivington’s
of 38 Dakota men. They were hanged just after Christ- Colorado militia attacked the camp while most of the
mas 1862 in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. men were out hunting, slaughtering more than a hun-
Two months later, Congress canceled all treaties with dred women and children. “I killed all I could,” one
the Dakotas, revoked their annuities, and expelled them officer testified later. “I think and earnestly believe the
from Minnesota. The scattered bands fled west to join Indian to be an obstacle to civilization and should be
nonreservation allies. exterminated.” Captain Silas Soule, who served under
As the uprising showed, the Civil War created two Chivington but refused to give his men the order to
dangerous conditions in the West, compounding the fire, dissented. “It was hard to see little children on
problems already caused by corruption. With the Union their knees,” he wrote later, “having their brains beat
army fighting the Confederacy, western whites felt vul- out by men professing to be civilized.” Chivington’s
nerable to Indian attacks. They also discovered they men rode back for a celebration in Denver, where they
could fight Indians with minimal federal oversight. In hung Cheyenne scalps (and women’s genitals) from the
the wake of the Dakota uprising, worried Coloradans rafters of the Apollo Theater.
favored a military campaign against the Cheyennes — The northern plains exploded in conflict. Infuriated
allies of the Sioux — even though the Cheyennes had by the Sand Creek massacre, Cheyennes carried war
shown little evidence of hostility. Colorado militia pipes to the Arapahos and Sioux, who attacked and
leader John M. Chivington, an aspiring politician, burned white settlements along the South Platte River.
determined to quell public anxiety and make his career. Ordered to subdue these peoples, the U.S. Army failed
528 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
miserably: officers could not even locate the enemy, Association, who suggested that instead of an “Indian
who traveled rapidly in small bands and knew the problem” there might be a “white problem” — refusal
country well. A further shock occurred in December to permit Indians to follow their own lifeways. To most
1866 when 1,500 Sioux warriors executed a perfect nineteenth-century Americans, such a notion was
ambush, luring Captain William Fetterman and 80 sol- shocking and uncivilized. Increasingly dismissive of
diers from a Wyoming fort and wiping them out. With blacks’ capacity for citizenship and hostile toward “hea-
the Fetterman massacre, the Sioux succeeded in clos- then” Chinese immigrants, white Americans were even
ing the Bozeman Trail, a private road under army pro- less willing to understand and respect Indian cultures.
tection that had served as the main route into Montana. They believed that in the modern world, native peoples
General William Tecumseh Sherman, now com- were fated for extinction (Thinking Like a Historian,
manding the army in the West, swore to defeat defiant p. 530).
Indians. But the Union hero met his match on the
plains. Another year of fighting proved expensive and Indian Boarding Schools Reformers focused their
inconclusive. In 1868, the Sioux, led by the Oglala band greatest energy on educating the next generation.
under Chief Red Cloud, told a peace commission they Realizing that acculturation — adoption of white ways —
would not sign any treaty unless the United States was difficult when children lived at home, agents and
pledged to abandon all its forts along the Bozeman missionaries created off-reservation schools. Native
Trail. The commission agreed. Red Cloud had won. families were exhorted, bullied, and bribed into send-
In the wake of these events, eastern public opinion ing their children to these schools, where, in addition
turned against the Indian wars, which seemed at best to school lessons, boys learned farming skills and girls
ineffective, at worst brutal. Congress held hearings on practiced housekeeping. “English only” was the rule;
the slaughter at Sand Creek. Though Chivington, now students were punished if they spoke their own lan-
a civilian, was never prosecuted, the massacre became guages. Mourning Dove, a Salish girl from what is now
an infamous example of western vigilantism. By the Washington State, remembered that her school “ran
time Ulysses Grant entered the White House in 1869, strictly. We never talked during meals without per-
the authors of Reconstruction in the South also began mission, given only on Sunday or special holidays.
to seek solutions to what they called the “Indian Otherwise there was silence — a terrible silent silence. I
problem.” was used to the freedom of the forest, and it was hard
to learn this strict discipline. I was punished many
times before I learned.” The Lakota boy Plenty Kill,
Grant’s Peace Policy who at boarding school received the new name Luther,
Grant inherited an Indian policy in disarray. Federal remembered his loneliness and fear upon arrival: “The
incompetence was highlighted by yet another mass big boys would sing brave songs, and that would start
killing of friendly Indians in January 1870, this time on the girls to crying. . . . The girls’ quarters were about a
the Marias River in Montana, by an army detachment hundred and fifty yards from ours, so we could hear
that shot and burned to death 173 Piegans (Blackfeet). them.” After having his hair cut short, Plenty Kill felt a
Having run out of other options, Grant introduced profound change in his identity. “None of us slept well
a peace policy, based on recommendations from that night,” he recalled. “I felt that I was no more Indian,
Christian advisors. He offered selected appointments but would be an imitation of a white man.”
to the reformers — including many former abolition-
ists — who had created such groups as the Indian To see a longer excerpt of Mourning Dove’s
Rights Association and the Women’s National Indian autobiography, along with other primary sources
from this period, see Sources for America’s History.
Association.
Rejecting the virulent anti-Indian stance of many
westerners, reformers argued that native peoples had Even in the first flush of reform zeal, Grant’s poli-
the innate capacity to become equal with whites. They cies faced major hurdles. Most Indians had been
believed, however, that Indians could achieve this pushed off traditional lands and assigned to barren
only if they embraced Christianity and white ways. ground that would have defeated the most enterprising
Reformers thus aimed to destroy native languages, cul- farmer. Poverty and dislocation left Indians especially
tures, and religions. Despite humane intentions, their vulnerable to the ravages of infectious diseases like
condescension was obvious. They ignored dissenters measles and scarlet fever. At the same time, Quaker,
like Dr. Thomas Bland of the National Indian Defense Presbyterian, and Methodist reformers fought turf
CHAPTER 16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 529
battles among themselves and with Catholic mission- many chiefs are allowed to talk so
UNDERSTAND
aries. Many traders and agents also continued to steal many different ways, and promise POINTS OF VIEW
money and supplies from people they were supposed so many different things.” A How did post–Civil War
to protect. In the late 1870s, Rutherford B. Hayes’s Kiowa chief agreed: “We make reformers believe they
administration undertook more housecleaning at the but few contracts, and them we were improving U.S. Indian
Bureau of Indian Affairs, but corruption lingered. remember well. The whites make policies, and in what ways
From the Indians’ point of view, reformers often so many they are liable to forget did that prove to be true
became just another interest group in a crowded field them. The white chief seems not and untrue?
of whites sending hopelessly mixed messages. The atti- to be able to govern his braves.”
tudes of individual army representatives, agents, and Native peoples were nonetheless forced to accom-
missionaries ranged from courageous and sympathetic modate, as independent tribal governance and treaty
to utterly ruthless. Many times, after chiefs thought making came to an end. Back in the 1830s, the U.S.
they had reached a face-to-face agreement, they found Supreme Court had declared Indians no longer sover-
it drastically altered by Congress or Washington eign but rather “domestic dependent nations.” On a
bureaucrats. Nez Perce leader Joseph observed that practical basis, however, both the U.S. Senate and
“white people have too many chiefs. They do not agents in the field continued to negotiate treaties as late
understand each other. . . . I cannot understand why so as 1869. Two years later, the House of Representatives,
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
The documents below, designed for white audiences, all depict American Indi-
Representing Indians ans in the West.
1. Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West advertisement, 1899. Cody never called the Wild West a “show,” placing tre-
mendous emphasis on its allegedly authentic reenactments of events.
Superstock.
2. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877. Some tribes and families have been left in geographical
Morgan, a leading American anthropologist, stud- isolation to work out the problems of progress. . . .
ied the Iroquois and other native peoples. In 1877 [Others] have been adulterated through external influ-
he published an influential theory of human ence. Thus, while Africa was and is an ethnical chaos of
development, ranking various peoples in their savagery and barbarism, Australia and Polynesia were
“progress” from the “lowest stage of savagery” in savagery, pure and simple. . . . The Indian family of
through the pinnacle of “civilization” — northern America, unlike any other existing family, exemplified
Europeans. the condition of mankind in three successive ethnical
TABLE 16.1
Status of Civilization (from Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877)
I. Lower Status of Savagery From the Infancy of the Human Race to the commencement of the next Period.
II. Middle Status of Savagery From the acquisition of a fish subsistence and a knowledge of the use of fire . . .
III. Upper Status of Savagery From the Invention of the Bow and Arrow . . .
IV. Lower Status of Barbarism From the Invention of the Art of Pottery . . .
V. Middle Status of Barbarism From the Domestication of animals on the Eastern hemisphere, and in the Western
from the cultivation of maize and plants by Irrigation . . .
VI. Upper Status of Barbarism From the Invention of the process of Smelting Iron Ore, with the use of iron tools . . .
VII. Civilization From the Invention of writing, to the present time.
530
periods. . . . The far northern Indians and some of the Flatheads are a success. It would be a matter of surprise to
coast tribes of North and South America were in the some people who think that the only good Indian is a
Upper Status of savagery; the partially Village Indians dead Indian, to see the way some of the women handle
east of the Mississippi were in the Lower Status of bar- sewing machines.
barism, and the Village Indians of North and South
America were in the Middle Status. . . .
Sources: (2) Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
Commencing, then, with the Australians and Poly- 1878), 12–13, 16–18; (3) John Hyde, Wonderland (St. Paul, 1888), 21, and 1894, 27.
nesians, following with the American Indian tribes, and
concluding with the Roman and Grecian, who afford 4. Gertrude Käsebier, photograph of Joe Black Fox,
the highest exemplifications respectively of the six great 1898. One of the first women to become a pro-
stages of human progress, the sum of their united experi- fessional photographer, Käsebier here depicts Joe
ences may be supposed fairly to represent that of the Black Fox relaxing with a cigarette. Black Fox, an
human family. . . . We are dealing substantially, with Oglala Sioux, toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
the ancient history and condition of our own remote in 1900.
ancestors.
531
532 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
jealous of Senate privileges, passed a bill to abolish all Civil War but permitted to reoccupy their traditional
treaty making with Indians. The Senate agreed, pro- land, gave up further military resistance. An outbreak
vided that existing treaties remained in force. It was among California’s Modoc people in 1873 — again,
one more step in a long, torturous erosion of native humiliating to the army — was at last subdued. Only
rights. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Sitting Bull, a leader of the powerful Lakota Sioux on
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903) that Congress could the northern plains, openly refused to go to a reserva-
make whatever Indian policies it chose, ignoring all tion. When pressured by U.S. troops, he repeatedly
existing treaties. That same year, in Ex Parte Crow Dog, crossed into Canada, where he told reporters that “the
the Court ruled that no Indian was a citizen unless life of white men is slavery. . . . I have seen nothing that
Congress designated him so. Indians were henceforth a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or
wards of the government. These rulings remained in food, that is as good as the right to move in open coun-
force until the New Deal of the 1930s. try and live in our own fashion.”
In 1874, the Lakotas faced direct provocation.
Breaking Up Tribal Lands Reformers’ most sweep- Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, a brash
ing effort to assimilate Indians was the Dawes Severalty self-promoter who had graduated last in his class at
Act (1887), the dream of Senator Henry L. Dawes of West Point, led an expedition into South Dakota’s Black
Massachusetts, a leader in the Indian Rights Associa- Hills and loudly proclaimed the discovery of gold.
tion. Dawes saw the reservation system as an ugly relic Amid the severe depression of the 1870s, prospectors
of the past. Through severalty — division of tribal rushed in. The United States, wavering on its 1868
lands — he hoped to force Indians onto individual treaty, pressured Sioux leaders to sell the Black Hills.
landholdings, partitioning reservations into home- The chiefs said no. Ignoring this answer, the govern-
steads, just like those of white farmers. Supporters of ment demanded in 1876 that all Sioux gather at the
the plan believed that landownership would encourage federal agencies. The policy backfired: not only did
Indians to assimilate. It would lead, as Dawes wrote, to Sitting Bull refuse to report, but other Sioux, Cheyennes,
“a personal sense of independence.” Individual prop- and Arapahos slipped away from reservations to join
erty, echoed another reformer, would make the Indian him. Knowing they might face military attack, they
man “intelligently selfish, . . . with a pocket that aches agreed to live together for the summer in one great vil-
to be filled with dollars! ” lage numbering over seven thousand people. By June,
The Dawes Act was a disaster. It played into the they were camped on the Little Big Horn River in what
hands of whites who coveted Indian land and who per- is now southeastern Montana. Some of the young men
suaded the government to sell them land that was not wanted to organize raiding parties, but elders coun-
needed for individual allotments. In this and other seled against it. “We [are] within our treaty rights as
ways, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) implemented hunters,” they argued. “We must keep ourselves so.”
the law carelessly, to the outrage of Dawes. In Indian The U.S. Army dispatched a thousand cavalry and
Territory, a commission seized more than 15 million infantrymen to drive the Indians back to the reser-
“surplus” acres from native tribes by 1894, opening the vation. Despite warnings from experienced scouts —
way for whites to convert the last federal territory set including Crow Indian allies — most officers thought
aside for native peoples into the state of Oklahoma. In the job would be easy. Their greatest fear was that
addition to catastrophic losses of collectively held the Indians would manage to slip away. But amid the
property, native peoples lost 66 percent of their indi- nation’s centennial celebration on the Fourth of July
vidually allotted lands between the 1880s and the 1876, Americans received dreadful news. On June 26
1930s, through fraud, BIA mismanagement, and pres- and 27, Lieutenant Colonel Custer, leading the 7th
sure to sell to whites. Cavalry as part of a three-pronged effort to surround
the Indians, had led 210 men in an ill-considered
assault on Sitting Bull’s camp. The Sioux and their allies
The End of Armed Resistance had killed the attackers to the last man. “The Indians,”
As the nation consolidated control of the West in the one Oglala woman remembered, “acted just like they
1870s, Americans hoped that Grant’s peace policy was were driving buffalo to a good place where they could
solving the “Indian problem.” In the Southwest, such be easily slaughtered.”
formidable peoples as the Kiowas and Comanches had As retold by the press in sensational (and often fic-
been forced onto reservations. The Diné or Navajo tionalized) accounts, the story of Custer’s “last stand”
nation, exiled under horrific conditions during the quickly served to justify American conquest of Indian
CHAPTER 16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 533
“savages.” Long after Americans forgot the massacres the Nez Perces, fleeing for the
EXPLAIN
of Cheyenne women and children at Sand Creek and of Canadian border, also surrendered. CONSEQUENCES
Piegan people on the Marias River, prints of the Battle The final holdouts fought in the How did Grant’s peace
of Little Big Horn hung in barrooms across the country. Southwest with Chiricahua Apache policy fail to consider the
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, in his traveling Wild leader Geronimo. Like many oth- needs of Native Americans
West performances, enacted a revenge killing of a ers, Geronimo had accepted res- in the West, and what
Cheyenne man named Yellow Hand in a tableau Cody ervation life but found conditions were its results?
called “first scalp for Custer.” Notwithstanding that the unendurable. Describing the des-
tableau featured a white man scalping a Cheyenne, olate land the tribe had been allotted, one Apache said
Cody depicted it as a triumph for civilization. it had “nothing but cactus, rattlesnakes, heat, rocks,
Little Big Horn proved to be the last military vic- and insects. . . . Many, many of our people died of star-
tory of Plains Indians against the U.S. Army. Pursued vation.” When Geronimo took up arms in protest, the
relentlessly after Custer’s death and finding fewer and army recruited other Apaches to track him and his
fewer bison to sustain them, Sioux parents watched band into the hills; in September 1886, he surren-
their children starve through a bitter winter. Slowly, dered for the last time. The Chiricahua Apaches never
families trickled into the agencies and accommodated returned to their homeland. The United States had
themselves to reservation life (Map 16.6). The next year, completed its military conquest of the West.
534 PART 5 CREATING AND PRESERVING A CONTINENTAL NATION, 1844–1877
Standing Rock
1868
custom were so strong. Parents also hated to relinquish
Agency
their children to off-reservation boarding schools.
Thus more and more Indian schools ended up on or
Cheyenne River near reservations; white teachers had to accept their
Agency
pupils’ continued participation in the rhythms of
GREAT SIOUX Indian community life.
RESERVATION Selectively, most native peoples adopted some
white ways. Many parents urged their sons and
Missouri R
Spotted Tail Agency . daughters to study hard, learn English, and develop
Red Cloud Agency skills to help them succeed in the new world they
Standing Rock confronted. Even Sitting Bull announced in 1885 that
Agency 1877
he wanted his children “to be educated like the white
children are.” Some Indian students grew up to be
Cheyenne River lawyers, doctors, and advocates for their people,
Agency
including writers and artists who interpreted native
GREAT SIOUX
experiences for national audiences. One of the most
RESERVATION famous was a Santee Sioux boy named Ohiyesa, who
Pine Ridge
Agency
Rosebud
Agency
became Dr. Charles Eastman. Posted to the Pine
Missouri R
. Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Eastman prac-
ticed medicine side by side with traditional healers,
whom he respected, and wrote popular books under
1889
Standing Rock
his Sioux name. He remembered that when he left for
Reservation Sisseton boarding school, his father had said, “We have now
Cheyenne River Reservation
Reservation entered upon this life, and there is no going
Crow Creek
back. . . . Remember, my boy, it is the same as if I sent
Lower Brulé Reservation you on your first war-path. I shall expect you to
Reservation
Pine Ridge Rosebud
conquer.”
Reservation Reservation Yankton
Reservation
Nothing exemplified this syncretism, or cultural
Wounded Knee
Missouri R
Santee
. blending, better than the Ghost Dance movement of
Present-day state
boundaries are shown. Reservation the late 1880s and early 1890s, which fostered native
peoples’ hope that they could, through sacred dances,
MAP 16.6
The Sioux Reservations in South Dakota, 1868–1889 resurrect the bison and call a great storm to drive
In 1868, when they bent to the demand that they whites back across the Atlantic. The Ghost Dance
move onto the reservation, the Sioux thought they drew on Christian elements as well as native ones.
had gained secure rights to a substantial part of their As the movement spread from reservation to reser-
ancestral hunting grounds. But harsh conditions on
vation — Paiutes, Arapahos, Sioux — native peoples
reservations led to continuing military conflicts. Land-
hungry whites exerted continuous local pressure, and developed new forms of pan-Indian identity and
officials in Washington repeatedly changed the terms cooperation.
of Sioux land holdings — always eroding native claims. White responses to the Ghost Dance showed con-
tinued misunderstanding and lethal exertion of
authority. In 1890, when a group of Lakota Sioux
Strategies of Survival Ghost Dancers left their South Dakota reservation,
Though the warpath closed, many native peoples con- they were pursued by the U.S. Army, who feared that
tinued secretly to practice traditional customs. Away further spread of the religion would provoke war. On
from the disapproving eyes of December 29, at Wounded Knee, the 7th Cavalry
TRACE CHANGE agents and teachers, they passed caught up with fleeing Lakotas and killed at least
OVER TIME on their languages, histories, and 150 — perhaps as many as 300. Like other massacres,
In what ways did the traditional arts and medicine to this one could have been avoided. The deaths at
outlook of native peoples younger generations. Frustrated Wounded Knee stand as a final indictment of decades
change in the era after
missionaries often concluded that of relentless U.S. expansion, white ignorance and
armed resistance had
little could be accomplished greed, chaotic and conflicting policies, and bloody
ended?
because bonds of kinship and mistakes.
CHAPTER 16 Conquering a Continent, 1854–1890 535
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What national policies did Republicans pursue struggle continue as late as 1890, despite the U.S.
during the Civil War and Reconstruction to stimu- “peace policy” that was proclaimed in the 1870s?
late economic growth and consolidate a continen-
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
tal empire? What were the resulting achievements
events listed under “Peopling” on the thematic
and costs?
timeline on page 409. Between the 1840s and the
2. How did the trans-Mississippi west develop eco- 1870s, what distinctive patterns of racial and ethnic
nomically in this era? What problems and conflicts conflict occurred along the northeastern seaboard
resulted? and in the West? What were the results for immi-
grants in the Northeast, and for different ethnic
3. Why did U.S. policies toward Native Americans in
and racial groups in the West?
this era result in so much violence? Why did armed
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE During the 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Review the images in this
Reconstruction years, Republican policymakers chapter. Find two that show how Americans of the
made sweeping policy decisions — especially hav- era thought the landscapes of the West ought to
ing to do with land rights, voting rights, and educa- look when settlement was complete. Identify at
tion — that shaped the future of African Americans least three others that show what the natural and
in the South and American Indians in the West. In built environments of the West really looked like.
an essay, compare U.S. policies toward the two What do you conclude from this comparison about
groups. What assumptions and goals underlay each the ambitions and limits of westward expansion?
effort to incorporate racial minorities into the
United States? To what extent did each effort suc-
ceed or fail, and why? How did the actions of pow-
erful whites in each region shape the results?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest
(1995). A powerful history of American Indian (1987) and Something in the Soil (2000). Limerick’s
boarding schools. lively, accessible books are an excellent introduction to
historians’ recent rethinking of western history.
American Experience (PBS), “Last Stand at Little Big
Horn.” A nuanced one-hour documentary about the María Montoya, Translating Property (2002). Tells the
famous battle. story of the displacement of Mexican Americans (and
their neighbors) in struggles over the Maxwell Land
Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question
Grant in New Mexico and Colorado.
(2002). An exploration of plural marriage debates in
national politics.
Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (2001). A
wonderful study of Buffalo Bill’s performances and
their role in shaping mythologies of the West.
538 PART 5 CHAPTER REVIEW
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t John Wesley Powell presents Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States
KEY TURNING POINTS: The military, political, and economic events of the Civil War years
(1861–1865) are often treated as largely occurring in the Northeast and South — at places such
as Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Washington, D.C. What impact did these developments have on the
West, and what were their legacies?
6
Industrializing
America: Upheavals
and Experiments
1877–1917
P A R T
540
Corporations and Conflicts A Diverse, Urban Society
In the post–Civil War decades, giant corporations While the old values of thrift, piety, and domesticity
developed national and even global networks of never entirely faded, they faced challenges in the era
production, marketing, and finance. In many fields, of industrialization. Women asserted more indepen-
vertical integration enabled corporate managers to dent roles in public life. The new model for men was
control production from the harvesting of raw materi- an aggressive masculinity, embodied in the rise of
als through the sale of finished products. Nationwide sports. Widespread acceptance of Charles Darwin’s
marketing networks developed through innovative use theory of evolution prompted influential thinkers to
of railroads — and through ruthless competitive tactics justify economic inequality as a law of nature. In
such as predatory pricing. culture, the rise of literary realism and abstract art
Corporations’ complex structures opened career marked decisive innovations. Responding to these
opportunities for middle managers and salesmen. upheavals, people of religious faith reshaped their
Women, filling new niches as telephone operators institutions. Some accepted modernity, while others
and department store clerks, also played an important called for a return to Christian “fundamentals.” See
role in the expanding service sector. At the same time, Chapter 18 for these developments.
traditional craftsmen found themselves displaced as Great cities arose, becoming playgrounds for the
deskilled wage work steadily expanded. Factory new superrich while also housing millions of poor
workers and miners endured dangerous conditions, immigrants in tenements. At the same time, people
health hazards, low pay, and frequent bouts of of all classes in the vibrant cities enjoyed new plea-
unemployment. sures, from amusement parks to vaudeville and
The most dangerous, low-wage work was often movies. The fast-growing cities proved challenging
allotted to African Americans and immigrants from to govern. To the frustration of middle-class reform-
Europe, Mexico, and Asia. Workers organized to ers, many immigrant voters supported political
protest these conditions. In addition to creating machines like New York’s Tammany Hall. By 1900,
labor unions, they forged political alliances with though, even some machine leaders admitted the
farmers, who also found their livelihoods at risk need for reform, and big cities began to serve as
in the changing global economy. Native-born work- seedbeds for progressive experiments. On these
ers and European immigrants successfully agitated developments, see Chapters 18 and 19.
for the legal exclusion of Chinese workers. These
events are covered in Chapter 17.
542
WORK, PEOPLING ENVIRONMENT POLITICS AND IDEAS, BELIEFS,
EXCHANGE, AND AND POWER AND CULTURE
TECHNOLOGY GEOGRAPHY
1870 t Economic depression t Hostility toward t Successful containment t Democrats make t Comstock Act bans
(1873–1879) Chinese immigrants of New York cholera sweeping congressional circulation of most
grows outbreak spurs gains (1874) information about sex
t First department store movement for public and birth control (1873)
opens in Philadelphia t Era of close party
health (1866)
(1874) competition in national t National League
t First national park elections (1874–1894) launches professional
t Great Railroad Strike established at baseball (1876)
(1877) t Reconstruction ends
Yellowstone (1872)
(1877) t Henry George, Progress
t Deskilling of labor t Appalachian Mountain and Poverty (1879)
under mass production Club founded (1876)
1880 t First vertically t Rapid industrialization t Drought on the plains t Pendleton Civil Service t Increasing numbers of
integrated corporations draws immigrants prompts calls for Act (1883) students attend college
from around the world; federal irrigation
t Rockefeller establishes t Peak influence of t Booker T. Washington
American cities grow
Standard Oil Trust t Hatch Act (1887) Woman’s Christian founds Tuskegee
rapidly
provides federal Temperance Union Institute (1881)
t Emergence of white- t Chinese Exclusion Act support for agricultural (1880s)
collar managerial work t William Dean Howells
(1882–1943) research and
t Interstate Commerce calls for realism in
t Women enter paid labor experiment stations
Act (1887) literature (1881)
as office workers t Industrialization and
t Hull House settlement t Birth of American
t Knights of Labor grows urban growth cause
founded (1889) football
rapidly (mid-1880s) rising pollution
t Popularity of vaudeville
t American Federation of (1880s–1890s)
Labor founded (1886)
1890 t Severe economic t Gorras Blancas confront t Sierra Club founded t Rise of People’s Party t Chicago World’s Fair
depression (1893– wealthy Anglo interests (1892) (1890–1896) (1893)
1897) in New Mexico
t “Bicycle craze” and rise t Sweeping Republican t Literary realism and
t Accelerated corporate t Ellis Island opens (1892) of hiking and camping gains (1894) naturalism gain
mergers in key get more Americans recognition
t Supreme Court upholds t “Solid South” emerges;
industries outdoors
segregation of schools African American t Popularity of ragtime
t Birth of modern and public facilities disenfranchisement in music (1890s–1900s)
advertising in Plessy v. Ferguson South (1890–1905)
t Armory Show introduces
(1896)
t William McKinley modern art (1913)
t Unemployed whites defeats William
t Rise of Social Gospel
attack and drive Jennings Bryan (1896)
Chinese farmworkers t Joseph Pulitzer pioneers
t National Consumers’
out of California “yellow journalism”
League founded (1899)
1900 t U.S. Steel becomes t Rising immigration t Lacey Act (1900) t William McKinley t Nickelodeons introduce
nation’s first billion- from Eastern and assassinated; Theodore commercial motion
t Antiquities Act (1906)
dollar corporation (1901) Southern Europe Roosevelt becomes pictures
gives president president (1901)
t Women’s Trade Union t Height of eugenics authority to create t Custom of
League founded (1903) (1900s–1920s) and protect national t Niagara Movement unchaperoned “dating”
monuments calls for full voting arises
t International Workers t Increasing numbers of rights and equal
of the World founded blacks move to cities; t National Audubon t Rise of the Negro
opportunities for blacks
(1905) responses include “race Society forms (1901) Leagues
riots” by whites t Women’s suffrage
t Marianna mine disaster t Newlands Reclamation t Peak in overseas
movement grows
(1907) t Japanese immigrants Act (1902) missionary activity
barred from becoming
t Muller v. Oregon (1908) t First national wildlife t Advent of literary and
U.S. citizens (1906)
permits state regulation refuge created (1903) artistic modernism
of women’s working
t U.S. Forest Service
hours
created (1905)
t Triangle Shirtwaist fire
t National Park Service
(1911)
created (1916)
17
C H A P T E R
Corporations and Conflicts
1877–1911
F
THE RISE OF BIG or millions of his contemporaries, IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
BUSINESS Andrew Carnegie exemplified Amer- What new opportunities and risks
Innovators in Enterprise ican success. Arriving from Scotland did industrialization bring, and how
The Corporate Workplace as a poor twelve-year-old in 1848, Carnegie did it reshape American society?
On the Shop Floor found work as an errand boy for the Penn-
sylvania Railroad and rapidly scaled the managerial ladder. In 1865, he struck out on his
IMMIGRANTS, EAST own as an iron manufacturer, selling to friends in the railroad business. Encouraged by
AND WEST
Republican tariffs to enter the steel industry, he soon built a massive steel mill outside
Newcomers from Europe
Pittsburgh where a state-of-the-art Bessemer converter made steel refining dramatically
Asian Americans and Exclusion
more efficient. With Carnegie leading the way, steel became a major U.S. industry,
LABOR GETS reaching annual production of 10 million metric tons by 1900 — almost as much as the
ORGANIZED combined output of the world’s other top producers, Germany (6.6 million tons) and
The Emergence of a Labor Britain (4.8 million).
Movement At first, skilled workers at Carnegie’s mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, earned
The Knights of Labor good wages. They had a strong union, and Carnegie affirmed workers’ right to orga-
Farmers and Workers: The nize. But Carnegie — confident that new machinery enabled him to replace many skilled
Cooperative Alliance laborers — eventually decided that collective bargaining was too expensive. In the sum-
Another Path: The American mer of 1892, he withdrew to his estate in Scotland, leaving his partner Henry Clay Frick
Federation of Labor in command. A former coal magnate and veteran foe of labor, Frick was well qualified
to do the dirty work. He announced that after July 1, members of the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers would be locked out of the Homestead mill. If
they wanted to return to work, they would have to abandon the union and sign new
individual contracts. Frick fortified the mill and prepared to hire replacement workers.
The battle was on.
At dawn on July 6, barges chugging up the Monongahela River brought dozens of
private armed guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, hired by Carnegie to defend
the plant. Locked-out workers opened fire, starting a gunfight that left seven workers
and three Pinkertons dead. Frick appealed to Pennsylvania’s governor, who sent the
state militia to arrest labor leaders on charges of riot and murder. Most of the locked-
out workers lost their jobs. The union was dead.
As the Homestead lockout showed, industrialization was a controversial and often
bloody process. During the half century after the Civil War, more and more Americans
worked not as independent farmers or artisans but as employees of large corporations.
Conditions of work changed for people of all economic classes. Drawn by the dynamic
economy, immigrants arrived from around the globe. These transformations provoked
working people, including farmers as well as industrial workers, to organize and defend
their interests.
544
Marianna Mine Disaster The bituminous mines of Marianna, Pennsylvania, and many other rich
sites provided the coal that fueled American industrial growth. On November 28, 1908, an explosion
in the mine killed 158 workers. Many were American-born; some were Irish, Welsh, Italian, and Polish
immigrants. Here, a horse-drawn wagon carries bodies recovered from the mine. Such catastrophes laid
bare the human cost of industrialization. Marianna was one among many: in the same decade, disasters
at Scofield, Utah; Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania; Monongah, West Virginia; and Cherry, Illinois, each killed
over 200 men. Library of Congress.
545
546 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
FIGURE 17.1
100 Business Activity and Wholesale Prices, 1869–1900
This graph shows the key feature of the performance of the
80 late-nineteenth-century economy: while output was boom-
ing, wholesale prices were, on the whole, falling. Thus, while
workers often struggled with falling wages — especially during
1926–1929 = 100
Wholesale prices
60 decades of severe economic crisis — consumer products also
became cheaper to buy.
40
GDP*
20
0
1869 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900
*Gross domestic product
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 547
Production and Sales After Chicago’s Union Stock Big packers invented new
IDENTIFY CAUSES
Yards opened in 1865, middlemen shipped cows by rail sales tactics. For example, Swift & Why did large corpora-
from the Great Plains to Chicago and from there to Company periodically slashed tions arise in the late
eastern cities, where slaughter took place in local prices in certain markets to below nineteenth century, and
butchertowns. Such a system — a national livestock production costs, driving inde- how did leading indus-
market with local processing — could have lasted, as it pendent distributors to the wall. trialists consolidate their
did in Europe. But Gustavus Swift, a shrewd Chicago With profits from its sales else- power?
cattle dealer, saw that local slaughterhouses lacked the where, a large firm like Swift
scale to utilize waste by-products and cut labor costs. could survive temporary losses in one locality until
To improve productivity, Swift invented the assembly competitors went under. Afterward, Swift could raise
line, where each wageworker repeated the same slaugh- prices again. This technique, known as predatory pric-
tering task over and over. ing, helped give a few firms unprecedented market
Swift also pioneered vertical integration, a model control.
in which a company controlled all aspects of produc-
tion from raw materials to finished goods. Once his Standard Oil and the Rise of the Trusts No one
engineers designed a cooling system, Swift invested in used ruthless business tactics more skillfully than the
a fleet of refrigerator cars to keep beef fresh as he shipped king of petroleum, John D. Rockefeller. After inventors
it eastward, priced below what local butchers could in the 1850s figured out how to extract kerosene — a
afford. In cities that received his chilled meat, Swift clean-burning fuel for domestic heating and light-
built branch houses and fleets of delivery wagons. He ing — from crude oil, enormous oil deposits were dis-
also constructed factories to make fertilizer and chem- covered at Titusville, Pennsylvania. Just then, the Civil
icals from the by-products of slaughter, and he devel- War severely disrupted whaling, forcing whale-oil
oped marketing strategies for those products as well. customers to look for alternative lighting sources.
Other Chicago packers followed Swift’s lead. By 1900, Overnight, a forest of oil wells sprang up around
five firms, all vertically integrated, produced nearly Titusville. Connected to these Pennsylvania oil fields
90 percent of the meat shipped in interstate commerce. by rail in 1863, Cleveland, Ohio, became a refining
center. John D. Rockefeller was then an up-and-coming By 1900, America’s largest one hundred companies
Cleveland grain dealer. (He, like Carnegie and most controlled a third of the nation’s productive capacity.
other budding tycoons, hired a substitute to fight for Purchasing several steel companies in 1901, including
him in the Civil War.) Rockefeller had strong nerves, a Carnegie Steel, J. P. Morgan created U.S. Steel, the
sharp eye for able partners, and a genius for finance. He nation’s first billion-dollar corporation. Such familiar
went into the kerosene business and borrowed heavily firms as DuPont and Eastman Kodak assumed domi-
to expand. Within a few years, his firm — Standard Oil nant places in their respective industries.
of Ohio — was Cleveland’s leading refiner.
Like Carnegie and Swift, Rockefeller succeeded Assessing the Industrialists The work of men like
through vertical integration: to control production and Swift, Rockefeller, and Carnegie was controversial in
sales all the way from the oil well to the kerosene lamp, their lifetimes and has been ever since. Opinions have
he took a big stake in the oil fields, added pipelines, and tended to be harsh in eras of economic crisis, when the
developed a vast distribution network. Rockefeller shortcomings of corporate America appear in stark
allied with railroad executives, who, like him, hated the relief. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a his-
oil market’s boom-and-bust cycles. What they wanted torian coined the term robber barons, which is still
was predictable, high-volume traffic, and they offered used today. In periods of prosperity, both scholars and
Rockefeller secret rebates that gave him a leg up on the public have tended to view early industrialists more
competitors. favorably, calling them industrial statesmen.
Rockefeller also pioneered a strategy called hori- Some historians have argued that industrialists
zontal integration. After driving competitors to the benefitted the economy by replacing the chaos of mar-
brink of failure through predatory pricing, he invited ket competition with a “visible hand” of planning and
them to merge their local companies into his conglom- expert management. But one recent study of railroads
erate. Most agreed, often because they had no choice. asserts that the main skills of early tycoons (as well
Through such mergers, Standard Oil wrested control of as those of today) were cultivating political “friends,”
95 percent of the nation’s oil refining capacity by the defaulting on loans, and lying to the public. Whether
1880s. In 1882, Rockefeller’s lawyers created a new we consider the industrialists heroes, villains, or some-
legal form, the trust. It organized a small group of asso- thing in between, it is clear that the corporate economy
ciates — the board of trustees — to hold stock from a was not the creation of just a few individuals, however
group of combined firms, managing them as a single famous or influential. It was a systemic transformation
entity. Rockefeller soon invested in Mexican oil fields of the economy.
and competed in world markets against Russian and
Middle Eastern producers. A National Consumer Culture As they integrated
Other companies followed Rockefeller’s lead, creat- vertically and horizontally, corporations innovated in
ing trusts to produce such products as linseed oil, other ways. Companies such as Bell Telephone and
sugar, and salt. Many expanded sales and production Westinghouse set up research laboratories. Steelmakers
overseas. As early as 1868, Singer Manufacturing invested in chemistry and materials science to make
Company established a factory in Scotland to produce their products cheaper, better, and stronger. Mass mar-
sewing machines. By World War I, such brands as Ford kets brought an appealing array of goods to consumers
and General Electric had become familiar around the who could afford them. Railroads whisked Florida
world. oranges and other fresh produce to the shelves of gro-
Distressed by the development of near monopolies, cery stores. Retailers such as F. W. Woolworth and the
reformers began to denounce “the trusts,” a term that Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) opened
in popular usage referred to any large corporation that chains of stores that soon stretched nationwide.
seemed to wield excessive power. Some states outlawed The department store was pioneered in 1875 by
trusts as a legal form. But in an effort to attract corpo- John Wanamaker in Philadelphia. These megastores
rate headquarters to its state, New Jersey broke ranks in displaced small retail shops, tempting customers with
1889, passing a law that permitted the creation of hold- large show windows and Christmas displays. Like
ing companies and other combinations. Delaware soon industrialists, department store magnates developed
followed, providing another legal haven for consoli- economies of scale that enabled them to slash prices.
dated corporations. A wave of mergers further concen- An 1898 newspaper advertisement for Macy’s Depart-
trated corporate power during the depression of the ment Store urged shoppers to “read our books, cook in
1890s, as weaker firms succumbed to powerful rivals. our saucepans, dine off our china, wear our silks, get
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 549
when he chose. The same was true for puddlers and steel mills, foremen were known as “pushers,” notori-
rollers in iron works; molders in stove making; and ous for driving their gangs mercilessly. On the other
machinists, glass blowers, and skilled workers in many hand, industrial labor operated on a human scale,
other industries. Such workers abided by the stint, a through personal relationships that could be close and
self-imposed limit on how much they would produce enduring. Striking craft workers would commonly
each day. This informal system of restricting output receive the support of helpers and laborers, and labor
infuriated efficiency-minded engineers, but to the gangs would sometimes walk out on behalf of a popu-
workers it signified personal dignity, manly pride, lar foreman.
and brotherhood with fellow employees. One shop in As industrialization advanced, however, workers
Lowell, Massachusetts, posted regulations requiring all increasingly lost the independence characteristic of
employees to be at their posts by the time of the open- craft work. The most important cause of this was the
ing bell and to remain, with the shop door locked, until deskilling of labor under a new system of mechanized
the closing bell. A machinist promptly packed his tools, manufacturing that men like meat-packer Gustavus
declaring that he had not “been brought up under such Swift had pioneered, and that automobile maker Henry
a system of slavery.” Ford would soon call mass pro-
Skilled workers — craftsmen, inside contractors, duction. Everything from type- TRACE CHANGE
and foremen — enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. writers to automobiles came to OVER TIME
How did conditions
But those who paid helpers from their own pocket be assembled from standardized
change for industrial
could also exploit them. Subcontracting arose, in part, parts, using machines that increas-
workers in the late nine-
to enable manufacturers to distance themselves from ingly operated with little human teenth century, and why?
the consequences of shady labor practices. In Pittsburgh oversight. A machinist protested
552 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
in 1883 that the sewing machine industry was so “sub- that workers would respond automatically to the lure
divided” that “one man may make just a particular part of higher earnings. But scientific management was not,
of a machine and may not know anything whatever in practice, a great success. Implementing it proved
about another part of the same machine.” Such a to be expensive, and workers stubbornly resisted. Cor-
worker, noted an observer, “cannot be master of a craft, porate managers, however, adopted bits and pieces of
but only master of a fragment.” Employers, who origi- Taylor’s system, and they enthusiastically agreed that
nally favored automatic machinery because it increased decisions should lie with “management alone.” Over
output, quickly found that it also helped them control time, in comparison with businesses in other coun-
workers and cut labor costs. They could pay unskilled tries, American corporations created a particularly
workers less and replace them easily. wide gap between the roles of managers and those of
By the early twentieth century, managers sought to the blue-collar workforce.
further reduce costs through a program of industrial Blue-collar workers had little freedom to negotiate,
efficiency called scientific management. Its inventor, a and their working conditions deteriorated markedly as
metal-cutting expert named Frederick W. Taylor, rec- mass production took hold. At the same time, industri-
ommended that employers eliminate all brain work alization brought cheaper products that enabled many
from manual labor, hiring experts to develop rules for Americans to enjoy new consumer products — if they
the shop floor. Workers must be required to “do what could avoid starvation. From executives down to
they are told promptly and without asking questions or unskilled workers, the hierarchy of corporate employ-
making suggestions.” In its most extreme form, scien- ment contributed to sharper distinctions among three
tific management called for engineers to time each task economic classes: the wealthy elite; an emerging, self-
with a stopwatch; companies would pay workers more defined “middle class”; and a struggling class of work-
if they met the stopwatch standard. Taylor assumed ers, who bore the brunt of the economy’s new risks
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 553
and included many Americans living in dire poverty. Alabama convicts, forced to work in coal mines, faced
As it wrought these changes, industrialization prompted brutal working conditions and fatal illnesses caused by
intense debate over inequality (Thinking Like a His- the mines’ contamination of local water. At the time,
torian, p. 554). people were well aware of many of these dangers, but
workers had an even more urgent priority: work.
Health Hazards and Pollution Industrialized labor Pittsburgh’s belching smokestacks meant coughing and
also damaged workers’ health. In 1884, a study of the lung damage, but they also meant running mills and
Illinois Central Railroad showed that, over the previ- paying jobs.
ous decade, one in twenty of its workers had been killed
or permanently disabled by an accident on the job. For Unskilled Labor and Discrimination As managers
brakemen — one of the most dangerous jobs — the rate deskilled production, the ranks of factory workers
was one in seven. Due to lack of regulatory laws and came to include more and more women and children,
inspections, mining was 50 percent more dangerous in who were almost always unskilled and low paid. Men
the United States than in Germany; between 1876 and often resented women’s presence in factories, and
1925, an average of over 2,000 U.S. coal miners died male labor unions often worked to exclude women —
each year from cave-ins and explosions. Silver, gold, especially wives, who they argued should remain in the
and copper mines were not immune from such trage- home. Women vigorously defended their right to work.
dies, but mining companies resisted demands for safety On hearing accusations that married women worked
regulation. only to buy frivolous luxuries, one female worker in a
Extractive industries and factories also damaged Massachusetts shoe factory wrote a heated response to
nearby environments and the people who lived there. the local newspaper: “When the husband and father
In big cities, poor residents suffered from polluted air cannot provide for his wife and children, it is perfectly
and the dumping of noxious by-products into the water natural that the wife and mother should desire to
supply. Mines like those in Leadville, Colorado, con- work. . . . Don’t blame married women if the land of
taminated the land and water with mercury and lead. the free has become a land of slavery and oppression.”
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Amid rising industrial poverty, food emerged as a reference point. How much
was too little, or too much? If some Americans were going hungry, how should
Poverty and Food others respond? The documents below show some contributions to these
debates.
1. Lewis W. Hine, “Mealtime, New York Tenement,” . . . For a minute no one spoke, only a minute, for Jo
1910. Hine was an influential photographer and exclaimed impetuously, I’m so glad you came before we
reformer. He took a famous series of photographs began!
at Ellis Island, remarking that he hoped Americans May I go and help . . . ? asked Beth eagerly.
would view new immigrants in the same way they I shall take the cream and the muffins, added Amy. . . .
thought of the Pilgrims. What does the photog- Meg was already covering the buckwheats and piling the
rapher emphasize in the living conditions of this bread into one big plate.
Italian immigrant family and their relationships I thought you’d do it, said Mrs. March, smiling.
with one another? Why do you think Hine photo- . . . A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken
graphed them at the table? windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wail-
ing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children. . . . Mrs.
March gave the mother tea and gruel [while] the girls
meantime spread the table [and] set the children round
the fire. . . .
That was a very happy breakfast, though they didn’t
get any of it. And when they went away, leaving comfort
behind, I think there were not in all the city four merrier
people than the hungry little girls who gave away their
breakfasts and contented themselves with bread and milk
on Christmas morning.
555
556 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
Child Labor
For many working-class families, children’s wages — even though they were low — made up an essential
part of the household income. These boys worked the night shift in a glass factory in Indiana. Lewis Hine,
an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, took their picture at midnight, as
part of a campaign to educate more prosperous Americans about the widespread employment of child
labor and the harsh conditions in which many children worked. Library of Congress.
In 1900, one of every five children under the age barred from office work and other new employment
of sixteen worked outside the home. Child labor options; instead, they remained heavily concentrated
was most widespread in the South, where a low- in domestic service, with more than half employed as
wage industrial sector emerged after Reconstruction cooks or servants. African American men confronted
(Map 17.1). Textile mills sprouted in the Carolinas and similar exclusion. America’s booming vertically inte-
Georgia, recruiting workers from surrounding farms; grated corporations turned black men away from all
whole families often worked in the mills. Many chil- but the most menial jobs. In 1890, almost a third of
dren also worked in Pennsylvania coal fields, where black men worked in personal service. Employers in
death and injury rates were high. State law permitted the North and West recruited, instead, a different kind
children as young as twelve to labor with a family of low-wage labor: newly arrived immigrants.
member, but turn-of-the-century investigators esti-
mated that about 10,000 additional boys, at even
younger ages, were illegally employed in the mines.
Also at the bottom of the pay scale were most
Immigrants, East and West
African Americans. Corporations and industrial man- Across the globe, industrialization set people in motion
ufacturers widely discriminated against them on the with the lure of jobs. Between the Civil War and World
basis of race, and such prejudice was hardly limited to War I, over 25 million immigrants entered the United
the South. After the Civil War, African American States. The American working class became truly global,
women who moved to northern cities were largely including not only people of African and Western
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 557
MD.
Mi
DEL.
s si
s si
pp
R.
i
St. Louis
W. VA.
Ark ansa .
s R. o R Louisville VA. Richmond
O hi
MO.
Newport
KY. News
Greensboro
Nashville
IND.
N.C.
TERR. TENN.
ARK. Chattanooga
Charlotte
Memphis
S.C.
Atlanta Augusta
Birmingham
GA.
Charleston
MISS. ALA. Macon
Savannah
Ft. Worth Dallas
LA.
TEXAS
Mobile
AT L A N T I C
OCEAN
New Orleans N
Houston
E
W
FLA. S
Gulf of Mexico
Major railroads
Textile manufacturing
Coal and iron mining
MEXICO Cotton-growing regions 0 200 400 miles
Tobacco-growing regions
0 200 400 kilometers
MAP 17.1
The New South, 1900
The economy of the Old South focused on raising staple crops, especially cotton and tobacco.
In the New South, staple agriculture continued to dominate, but there was marked industrial
development as well. Industrial regions evolved, producing textiles, coal, and iron. By 1900, the
South’s industrial pattern was well defined, though the region still served — like the West — as
a major producer of raw materials for the industrial region that stretched from New England
to Chicago.
European descent but also Southern and Eastern For immigrants themselves, America could be disori-
Europeans, Mexicans, and Asians. In 1900, census tak- enting, liberating, and disappointing.
ers found that more than 75 percent of San Francisco
and New York City residents had at least one parent
who was foreign-born. Newcomers from Europe
In the new industrial order, immigrants made an Mass migration from Western Europe had started
ideal labor supply. They took the worst jobs at low pay, in the 1840s, when more than one million Irish fled a
and during economic downturns tens of thousands terrible famine. In the following decades, as Europe’s
returned to their home countries, reducing the shock population grew rapidly and agriculture became com-
of unemployment in the United States. But many mercialized, peasant economies suffered, first in Ger-
native-born Americans viewed immigrants with hos- many and Scandinavia, then across Austria-Hungary,
tility, through the lens of racial, ethnic, and religious Russia, Italy, and the Balkans. This upheaval displaced
prejudices. They also feared that immigrants would millions of rural people. Some went to Europe’s mines
take more coveted jobs and erode white men’s wages. and factories; others headed for South America and
558 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
the United States (Map 17.2; America Compared, pick the worms from his food?” After 1892, European
p. 560). immigrants were routed through the enormous receiv-
“America was known to foreigners,” remembered ing station at New York’s Ellis Island.
one Jewish woman from Lithuania, “as the land where Some immigrants brought skills. Many Welshmen,
you’d get rich.” But the reality was much harsher. Even for example, arrived in the United States as experi-
in the age of steam, a transatlantic voyage was grueling. enced tin-plate makers; Germans came as machinists
For ten to twenty days, passengers in steerage class and carpenters, Scandinavians as sailors. But industri-
crowded belowdecks, eating ter- alization required, most of all, increasing quantities of
UNDERSTAND rible food and struggling with unskilled labor. As poor farmers from Italy, Greece,
POINTS OF VIEW seasickness. An investigator who and Eastern Europe arrived in the United States, heavy,
What factors accounted traveled with immigrants from low-paid labor became their domain.
for the different expecta-
Naples asked, “How can a steerage In an era of cheap railroad and steamship travel,
tions and experiences of
passenger remember that he is a many immigrants expected to work and save for a few
immigrants in this era?
human being when he must first years and then head home. More than 800,000 French
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 559
N N
W W
E E
S S
M e d i t e rra n e a n S e a M e d i t e r r a n e a n Se a
MAP 17.2
Sources of European Immigration to the United States, 1871–1910
Around 1900, Americans began to speak of the “new” immigration. They meant the large numbers
of immigrants arriving from Eastern and Southern Europe — Poles, Slovaks and other Slavic peoples,
Yiddish-speaking Jews, Italians — who overwhelmed the still substantial number of immigrants from
the British Isles and Northern Europe.
Canadians moved to New England in search of textile Jews arrived from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and other
jobs, many families with hopes of scraping together parts of Eastern Europe, transforming the Jewish
enough savings to return to Quebec and buy a farm. presence in the United States. Like other immigrants,
Thousands of men came alone, especially from Ireland, they sought economic opportunity, but they also
Italy, and Greece. Many single Irishwomen also immi- came to escape religious repression (American Voices,
grated. But some would-be sojourners ended up stay- p. 562).
ing a lifetime, while immigrants who had expected to Wherever they came from, immigrants took a con-
settle permanently found themselves forced to leave by siderable gamble in traveling to the United States.
an accident or sudden economic depression. One his- Some prospered quickly, especially if they came with
torian has estimated that a third of immigrants to the education, money, or well-placed business contacts.
United States in this era returned to their home Others, by toiling many years in harsh conditions, suc-
countries. ceeded in securing a better life for their children or
Along with Italians and Greeks, Eastern European grandchildren. Still others met with catastrophe or
Jews were among the most numerous arrivals. The early death. One Polish man who came with his par-
first American Jews, who numbered around 50,000 in ents in 1908 summed up his life over the next thirty
1880, had been mostly of German-Jewish descent. In the years as “a mere struggle for bread.” He added:
next four decades, more than 3 million poverty-stricken “Sometimes I think life isn’t worth a damn for a man
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
Emigrants and The United States received more new residents than any other nation during the
era of industrialization, but it was not the only place where emigrants (those
Destinations, departing) became immigrants (those arriving). The graph below shows six
major destinations for emigrants from four European countries.
1881–1915
British Emigrants
(excluding Ireland) German Emigrants
Oceania* 13%
Brazil 2 %
Africa 8% Africa <1%
Canada 1%
Oceania* <1% Argentina 1%
Argentina 23%
United States 55% United States
100%
Brazil 16 %
Africa 3%
Oceania* <1% Canada 2% * Primarily to Australia and New Zealand
FIGURE 17.2
Major Destinations for Emigrants, 1881–1915
the way for increasing numbers to emigrate. Fleeing laborers from entering the United States. Each decade
poverty and upheaval in southern China, they, like thereafter, Congress renewed the law and tightened its
European immigrants, filled low-wage jobs in the provisions; it was not repealed until 1943. Exclusion
American economy. The Chinese confronted threats barred almost all Chinese women, forcing husbands
and violence. “We kept indoors after dark for fear of and wives to spend many years apart when men took
being shot in the back,” remembered one Chinese jobs in the United States.
immigrant to California. During the depression of the Asian immigrants made vigorous use of the courts
1870s, a rising tide of racism was especially extreme in to try to protect their rights. In a series of cases brought
the Pacific coast states, where the majority of Chinese by Chinese and later Japanese immigrants, the U.S.
immigrants lived. “The Chinese must go!” railed Supreme Court ruled that all persons born in the
Dennis Kearney, leader of the California Workingmen’s United States had citizenship rights that could not be
Party, who referred to Asians as “almond-eyed lepers.” revoked, even if their parents had been born abroad.
Incited by Kearney in July 1877, a mob burned San Nonetheless, well into the twentieth century, Chinese
Francisco’s Chinatown and beat up residents. In the immigrants (as opposed to native-born Chinese
1885 Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming, white men Americans) could not apply for citizenship. Meanwhile,
burned the local Chinatown and murdered at least Japanese and a few Korean immigrants also began to
twenty-eight Chinese miners. arrive; by 1909, there were 40,000 Japanese immigrants
Despite such atrocities, some Chinese managed to working in agriculture, 10,000 on railroads, and 4,000
build profitable businesses and farms. Many did so by in canneries. In 1906, the U.S. attorney general ruled
filling the only niches native-born Americans left open that Japanese and Koreans, like Chinese immigrants,
to them: running restaurants and laundries. Facing were barred from citizenship.
intense political pressure, Congress in 1882 passed the The Chinese Exclusion Act created the legal foun-
Chinese Exclusion Act, specifically barring Chinese dations on which far-reaching exclusionary policies
Chinese Workers in a
Salmon Cannery, c. 1900
Shut out of many fields of
employment by racial discrimina-
tion, many Chinese immigrants
founded their own restaurants,
laundries, and other small
businesses. Others, like these
cannery workers in Astoria,
Oregon, took on some of the
most grueling and lowest-paid
work in the American economy.
Job segregation reinforced, in
turn, racial prejudice. Visiting
British author Rudyard Kipling,
touring canneries along the
Columbia River, described
Chinese workers in the plants
as “blood-besmeared yellow
devils.” These workers, refuting
Kipling’s slur, appear clean and
respectable. Notice the man in
an apron, on the left, who wears
his traditional queue, or braided
pigtail, tucked into his straw hat.
Oregon Historical Society.
AMERICAN
VOICES
562
Charles Zwirn Nathan Toplitzky
Letter from La Crosse, Wisconsin, 1913 Letter from Detroit, Michigan, 1908
[Mr. Goldfish] took me into his house and gave me a I, Nathan Toplitzky, sent to the above city 5 months ago,
very nice welcome. He then led me to the synagogue and wish to inform you that a great misfortune has happened
introduced me to all the members. Mr. Goldfish is a Jew to me. Your committee has placed me to work in a machine
with a real Jewish heart. He is religiously inclined and the factory where I have earned $.75 a day, and being unskilled
biggest businessman in the city. If any controversy arises, I have had 4 of my fingers torn from my right hand. I now
it is always settled by Mr. Goldfish. . . . [He] took me to remain a cripple throughout my life. For six weeks my
a shop and they paid me $6 more than I earned in New sufferings were indescribable.
York. When I wanted to thank him, he said that the only When the condition of my health improved a little, I
thing he expects of me is that I conduct myself properly called on the Committee and they advised me to go back
and go on the right path so I can eventually succeed. This, to the old employer. I went back to him and he placed me
he said, was the best reward I can give him. I did as he to work at the same machine where the accident occurred.
told me and saved a few hundred dollars. . . . Having lost my fingers I was unable to operate the
Another man sent here had been in the country two machine. . . . Kindly write to your Committee to find
months. . . . He was sent to Mr. Goldfish, who found him a position for me.
a job sorting corks for $2 a day. . . . He then left. By the
way, . . . would you be so kind as to send to me a boy to
S. Klein
drive a milk wagon on Mr. Jacob’s farm and an older man
to work at junk? They must be honest and respectable Letter from Cleveland, Ohio, 1905
people. In the past week something terrible has happened here.
Two men sent here by the Removal Office committed
Mary Rubin suicide out of despair. One took poison and the other
hanged himself. . . . That shows the deplorable condition
Letter from New Orleans, Louisiana, 1905 of those who are sent here by the Removal Office. The
You have sent us out here to starve for hunger and live Cleveland Removal Office is managed by an inexperi-
in the streets. . . . We have arrived in New Orleans about enced young man who maintains his position merely
12 o’clock in the night, and there was nobody to await us through favoritism. . . . It was told to me that the one
there, and we had to go around alnight and look for the who hanged himself came to this agent and implored
address which you had given. . . . They put the nine of us him with tears in his eyes to provide some kind of
all in one room, with out a bed or a pillow to sleep on. . . . employment.
Then they took Mr. Rubin and his wife up to the cigar
factory and gave them both a job. Mrs. Rubin is getting Source: Letters from the Records of the Industrial Removal Office; 1-91; AJHS, NY, NY
and Boston, MA as follows: Alex Grubman, Box 116, Folder 14; Barnet Marlin, Box 95,
about four ($4) a week and Mr. Rubin five ($5). Now we Folder 4; Raphael Gershoni, Box 95, Folder 4; Charles Zwirn, Box 120, Folder 9; Mary
will ask you if a family man can make a living with that. Rubin, Box 99, Folder 17; Nathan Toplitky, Box 101, Folder 7; S. Klein, Box 114, Folder 5.
And Mr. Rosenthal they told if he wants work he will
have to look for it himself. . . . When he found work, QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
they told him to bring his tools and come to work. He
1. Based on the accounts above, what factors contributed
went to the office and asked for the tools; they told him to an immigrant’s economic success or failure in a new
that he can’t have them. location?
. . . [The local Committee] sent mama to be a cook 2. In at least ten places, the immigrants above report on
for $4 a month, which she had never done before, and if wages — daily, weekly, or monthly. For comparison, make
a rough conversion of all of these to weekly wages and
she wanted to be a cook in N.Y. she could have gotten 3 list them. What do you conclude about compensation
times that much or more, but it did not suit us to let our for professional, skilled, and unskilled work?
mother be a cook, and now we should have to do. 3. Using information from this chapter, as well as the docu-
ments above, explain why immigrants sent to the South
might have faced more difficulties, on average, than
those sent to other parts of the country.
563
564 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
would be built in the 1920s and ensured that, despite the harsh policies of Chinese
EXPLAIN
after (Chapter 22). To enforce the exclusion, the flow of Asian immigrants never fully
CONSEQUENCES
What were the long-term
law, Congress and the courts gave ceased.
consequences of the Chi- sweeping new powers to immi-
nese Exclusion Act for U.S. gration officials, transforming the
immigration policy? Chinese into America’s first illegal
immigrants. Drawn, like others,
Labor Gets Organized
by the promise of jobs in America’s expanding econ- In the American political system, labor has typically
omy, Chinese men stowed away on ships or walked been weak. Industrial workers cluster in cities, near
across the borders. Disguising themselves as Mexi- factories and jobs; compared with small towns and
cans — who at that time could freely enter the United rural areas, urban areas have been underrepresented in
States — some perished in the desert as they tried to bodies such as the U.S. Senate and the presidential
reach California. electoral college, in which representation is calculated
Some would-be immigrants, known as paper sons, by state, rather than (or in addition to) individuals.
relied on Chinese residents in the United States, who This problem became acute in the era of industrializa-
generated documents falsely claiming the newcomers tion, and it has lingered. Even today, the twenty-two
as American-born children. Paper sons memorized U.S. senators elected from Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Maine,
pages of information about their supposed relatives Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota,
and hometowns. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming represent a
helped their cause by destroying all the port’s records. smaller number of people, combined, than the two U.S.
“That was a big chance for a lot of Chinese,” remem- senators who represent heavily urban California.
bered one immigrant. “They forged themselves certifi- Faced with this obstacle, labor advocates could
cates saying they could go back to China and bring adopt one of two strategies. First, they could try to
back four or five sons, just like that!” Such persistence make political alliances with sympathetic rural voters
Anti-Chinese Racism
This cartoon from the magazine
Puck, drawn by James A. Wales
during the 1880 presidential
campaign, offers vivid evidence
of the widespread and virulent
American prejudice against
Chinese immigrants. Republican
candidate James Garfield, on the
left, and Democratic candidate
Winfield Scott Hancock, on the
right, both nail up their party’s
“planks” in favor of restricting
Chinese immigration. Asian
immigrants were not permitted
to apply for naturalization as
U.S. citizens; they thus had no
vote and no power in politics.
Congress passed the Chinese
Exclusion Act, with bipartisan
support, soon after Garfield’s
victory. Library of Congress.
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 565
who shared their problems. Second, they could reject railroads and manufacturing, which they hoped
politics and create narrowly focused trade unions to would — after an initial period of turmoil — bring
negotiate directly with employers. In general, labor prosperity to all. George believed the emerging indus-
advocates emphasized the first strategy between the trial order meant permanent poverty. Industrialization,
1870s and the early 1890s, and the latter in the early he wrote, was driving a wedge through society, lifting
twentieth century. Across this era, while industrializa- the fortunes of professionals and the middle class but
tion made America increasingly rich and powerful, it pushing the working class down by forcing them into
also brought large-scale conflict between labor and deskilled, dangerous, and low-paid labor. George’s pro-
capital. posed solution, a federal “single tax” on landholdings,
did not win widespread support, but his insightful
diagnosis of the problem helped encourage radical
The Emergence of a Labor Movement movements for economic reform.
The problem of industrial labor entered Americans’ Many rural people believed they faced the same
consciousness dramatically with the Great Railroad problems as industrial workers. In the new economy,
Strike of 1877. Protesting steep wage cuts amid the they found themselves at the mercy of large corpora-
depression that had begun in 1873, thousands of rail- tions, from equipment dealers who sold them harvest-
road workers walked off the job. Broader issues were at ers and plows to railroads and grain elevators that
stake. “The officers of the road,” reported strike leader shipped and stored their products. Though farmers
Barney Donahue in upstate New York, “were bound to appeared to have more independence than corporate
break the spirit of the men, and any or all organizations employees, many felt trapped in a web of middlemen
they belonged to.” He believed railroad companies who chipped away at their profits while international
wanted to block workers from “all fellowship for forces robbed them of decision-making power.
mutual aid.” The strike brought rail travel and com- Farmers denounced not only corporations but also
merce to a halt. Thousands of people poured into the the previous two decades of government efforts to fos-
streets of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Chicago to protest ter economic development — policies that now seemed
the economic injustice wrought by railroads — as well wrongheaded. Farmers’ advocates argued that high
as fires caused by stray sparks from locomotives and tariffs forced rural families to pay too much for basic
injuries and deaths on train tracks in urban neighbor- necessities while failing to protect America’s great
hoods. When Pennsylvania’s governor sent state militia export crops, cotton and wheat. At the same time, they
to break the strike, Pittsburgh crowds reacted by burn- charged, Republican financial policies benefitted
ing railroad property and overturning locomotives. banks, not borrowers. Farmers blamed railroad com-
Similar clashes between police and protesters occurred panies for taking government grants and subsidies to
in other cities across the country, from Galveston, build but then charging unequal rates that privileged
Texas, to San Francisco. big manufacturers. From the farmers’ point of view,
The 1877 strike left more than fifty people dead and public money had been used to build giant railroad
caused $40 million worth of damage, primarily to rail- companies that turned around and exploited ordinary
road property. “It seemed as if the whole social and people.
political structure was on the very brink of ruin,” wrote The most prominent rural protest group of the
one journalist. For their role in the strike, many rail- early postwar decades was the National Grange of the
road workers were fired and blacklisted: railroad com- Patrons of Husbandry, founded in 1867. Like industrial
panies circulated their names on a “do not hire” list to workers, Grange farmers sought to counter the rising
prevent them from getting any work in the industry. In power of corporate middlemen through cooperation
the aftermath of the strike, the U.S. government cre- and mutual aid. Local Grange halls brought farm fam-
ated the National Guard, intended not to protect ilies together for recreation and conversation. The
Americans against foreign invasion but to enforce Grange set up its own banks, insurance companies, and
order at home. grain elevators, and, in Iowa, even a farm implement
Watching the upheavals of industrialization, some factory. Many Grange members also advocated politi-
radical thinkers pointed out its impact on workers. cal action, building independent local parties that ran
Among the most influential was Henry George, whose on anticorporate platforms.
book Progress and Poverty (1879) was a best-seller for During the 1870s depression, Grangers, labor
decades after publication. George warned that Ameri- advocates, and local workingmen’s parties forged a
cans had been too optimistic about the impact of national political movement, the Greenback-Labor
566 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
Party. In the South, Greenbackers or executives at the top but the “noble sons of Labor . . . /
COMPARE AND
protested the collapse of Recon- Who with bone, and brain, and fiber / Make the nation’s
CONTRAST
How did the methods
struction and urged that every wealth.”
used by railroad workers man’s vote be protected. Across The Greenback movement radicalized thousands
to protest their working the country, Greenbackers advo- of farmers, miners, and industrial workers. In Alabama’s
conditions compare with cated laws to regulate corpora- coal-mining regions, black and white miners cooper-
the tactics employed by tions and enforce an eight-hour ated in the party. Texas boasted seventy African
the Greenbackers, who workday to reduce long, grueling American Greenback clubs. In 1878, Greenback-Labor
also sought reform? work hours. They called for the candidates won more than a million votes, and the
federal government to print more party elected fifteen congressmen nationwide. In the
greenback dollars and increase the amount of money Midwest, Greenback pressure helped trigger a wave of
in circulation; this, they argued, would stimulate the economic regulatory actions known as Granger laws.
economy, create jobs, and help borrowers by allowing By the early 1880s, twenty-nine states had created rail-
them to pay off debts in dollars that, over time, slowly road commissions to supervise railroad rates and poli-
decreased in value. Greenbackers, like many industrial cies; others appointed commissions to regulate insur-
labor leaders, subscribed to the ideal of producerism: ance and utility companies. Such early regulatory
they dismissed middlemen, bankers, lawyers, and efforts were not always effective, but they were crucial
investors as idlers who lived off the sweat of people starting points for reform. While short-lived, the
who worked with their hands. As a Pittsburgh worker Greenback movement created the foundation for more
put it in an 1878 poem, it was not the money-handlers sustained efforts to regulate big business.
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 567
Chicago led to a clash with police that left four strikers The Haymarket violence profoundly damaged the
dead. (Three unions, including a Knights of Labor American labor movement. Seizing on resulting anti-
assembly, had struck, but the Knights had reached an union hysteria, employers took the offensive. They
agreement and returned to work. Only the machinists’ broke strikes with mass arrests, tied up the Knights in
union remained on strike when the incident occurred.) expensive court proceedings, and forced workers to
Chicago was a hotbed of anarchism, the revolutionary sign contracts pledging not to join labor organizations.
advocacy of a stateless society. Local anarchists, many The Knights of Labor never recovered. In the view of
of them German immigrants, called a protest meeting the press and many prosperous Americans, they were
the next day, May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square. When tainted by their alleged links with anarchism. Struggles
police tried to disperse the crowd, someone threw a between industrialists and workers had created bitter
bomb that killed several policemen. Officers responded divides.
with gunfire. In the trial that followed, eight anarchists
were found guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy.
Farmers and Workers:
All were convicted, not on any definitive evidence that
one of them threw the bomb (the bomber’s identity still The Cooperative Alliance
remains unknown) but on the basis of their antigov- In the aftermath of Haymarket, the Knights’ coopera-
ernment speeches. Four of the eight were executed by tive vision did not entirely fade. A new rural move-
hanging, one committed suicide in prison, and the ment, the Farmers’ Alliance, arose to take up many of
others received long sentences. the issues that Grangers and Greenbackers had earlier
CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911 569
sought to address. Founded in Texas during the depres- research and education, meeting
PLACE EVENTS
sion of the 1870s, the Farmers’ Alliance spread across farmers’ demands for government
IN CONTEXT
the plains states and the South, becoming by the late aid to agriculture. The Interstate Why did farmers and
1880s the largest farmer-based movement in American Commerce Act counteracted a industrial workers
history. A separate Colored Farmers’ Alliance arose to Supreme Court decision of the cooperate, and what
represent rural African Americans. The harsh condi- previous year, Wabash v. Illinois political objectives did
tions farmers were enduring — including drought in (1886), that had struck down they achieve?
the West and plunging global prices for corn, cotton, states’ authority to regulate rail-
and wheat — intensified the movement’s appeal. Travel- roads. The act created the Interstate Commerce
ing Alliance lecturers exhorted farmers to “stand as a Commission (ICC), charged with investigating inter-
great conservative body against . . . the growing cor- state shipping, forcing railroads to make their rates
ruption of wealth and power.” public, and suing in court when necessary to make
Like earlier movements, Alliance leaders pinned companies reduce “unjust or unreasonable” rates.
their initial hopes on cooperative stores and exchanges Though creation of the ICC was a direct response
that would circumvent middlemen. Cooperatives gath- to farmer-labor demands, its final form represented a
ered farmers’ orders and bought in bulk at wholesale compromise. Radical leaders wanted Congress to
prices, passing the savings along. Alliance cooperatives establish a direct set of rules under which railroads
achieved notable victories in the late 1880s. The Dakota must operate. If a railroad did not comply, any citizen
Alliance, for example, offered members cheap hail could take the company to court; if the new rules trig-
insurance and low prices on machinery and farm sup- gered bankruptcy, the railroad could convert to public
plies. The Texas Alliance established a huge coopera- ownership. But getting such a plan through Congress
tive enterprise to market cotton and provide farmers proved impossible. Lawmakers more sympathetic to
with cheap loans. When cotton prices fell further in business called instead for an expert commission to
1891, however, the Texas exchange failed. Other coop- oversee the railroad industry. In a pattern that repeated
eratives also suffered from chronic underfunding and frequently over the next few decades, the commission
lack of credit, and they faced hostility from merchants model proved more acceptable to the majority of
and lenders they tried to circumvent. congressmen.
The Texas Farmers’ Alliance thus proposed a fed- The ICC faced formidable challenges. Though the
eral price-support system for farm products, modeled new law forbade railroads from reaching secret rate-
on the national banks. Under this plan, the federal gov- setting agreements, evidence was difficult to gather and
ernment would hold crops in public warehouses and secret “pooling” continued. A hostile Supreme Court
issue loans on their value until they could be profitably also undermined the commission’s powers. In a series
sold. When Democrats — still wary of big-government of sixteen decisions over the two decades after the
schemes — declared the idea too radical, Alliances in ICC was created, the Court sided with railroads fifteen
Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, and elsewhere decided times. The justices delivered a particularly hard blow in
to create a new political party, the Populists (see Chap- 1897 when they ruled that the ICC had no power to
ter 20). In this venture, the Alliance cooperated with interfere with shipping rates. Nonetheless, the ICC’s
the weakened Knights of Labor, seeking to use rural existence was a major achievement. In the early twen-
voters’ substantial clout on behalf of urban workers tieth century, Congress would strengthen the commis-
who shared their vision. sion’s powers, and the ICC would become one of the
By this time, farmer-labor coalitions had made a most powerful federal agencies charged with oversee-
considerable impact on state politics. But state laws and ing private business.
commissions were proving ineffective against corpora-
tions of national and even global scope. It was difficult
Another Path: The American
for Wisconsin, for instance, to enforce new laws against
a railroad company whose lines might stretch from Federation of Labor
Chicago to Seattle and whose corporate headquarters While the Knights of Labor exerted political pressure,
might be in Minnesota. Militant farmers and labor other workers pursued a different strategy. In the 1870s,
advocates demanded federal action. printers, ironworkers, bricklayers, and other skilled
In 1887, responding to this pressure, Congress and workers organized nationwide trade unions. These
President Grover Cleveland passed two landmark laws. “brotherhoods” focused on the everyday needs of
The Hatch Act provided federal funding for agricultural workers in skilled occupations. Trade unions sought
570 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
advocated what he saw as the most practical defensive the United States, though they often endured harsh
plan. In the meantime, the upheaval wrought by indus- conditions after they arrived. Asian immigrants, by
trialization spread far beyond the workplace, trans- contrast, faced severe discrimination. The Chinese
forming every aspect of American life. Exclusion Act blocked all Chinese laborers from com-
ing to the United States; it was later extended to other
Asians, and it built the legal framework for broader
SUMMARY forms of exclusion.
Nationwide movements for workers’ rights arose in
The end of the Civil War ushered in the era of Ameri- response to industrialization. During the 1870s and
can big business. Exploiting the continent’s vast 1880s, coalitions of workers and farmers, notably the
resources, vertically integrated corporations emerged Knights of Labor and the Farmers’ Alliance, sought
as the dominant business form, and giant companies political solutions to what they saw as large corpora-
built near monopolies in some sectors of the economy. tions’ exploitation of working people. Pressure from
Corporations devised new modes of production, dis- such movements led to the first major attempts to
tribution, and marketing, extending their reach regulate corporations, such as the federal Interstate
through the department store, the mail-order catalog, Commerce Act. Radical protest movements were
and the new advertising industry. These developments weakened, however, after public condemnation of
laid the groundwork for mass consumer culture. They anarchist violence in 1886 at Chicago’s Haymarket
also offered emerging jobs in management, sales, and Square. Meanwhile, trade unions such as the American
office work. Federation of Labor organized skilled workers and
Rapid industrialization drew immigrants from negotiated directly with employers, becoming the most
around the world. Until the 1920s, most European and popular form of labor organization in the early twenti-
Latin American immigrants were welcome to enter eth century.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. How did the rise of big business in the United States 4. This chapter explores the impact of industrializa-
transform the economy and affect the lives of work- tion from many points of view. Based on this infor-
ing people? mation, do you think the term industrial statesmen
or robber barons is more accurate as a description
2. How did patterns of immigration to the United
for Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and
States change between the 1840s and the 1910s?
other early titans? Or would you prefer a different
What roles did newly arrived immigrants play in
term? Explain why.
the economy during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries? 5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
events listed under “Politics and Power,” “Peopling,”
3. Compare the accomplishments and limitations of
and “Work, Exchange, and Technology” on the the-
American farmer-labor movements of the 1870s
matic timeline on page 543. Industrialization was
and 1880s, such as the Greenback-Labor Party and
an economic process, but it also transformed
the Knights of Labor, with those of the American
American society and politics. How?
Federation of Labor. Why did the latter choose a
different strategy?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Imagine a con- of a terrible mining accident in Pennsylvania.
versation in the 1890s between a young brother and Imagine, first, that the young man in the middle of
sister in Chicago, who are working, respectively, in the picture, facing the camera, is the nephew of an
a meat-packing plant and as a telephone operator, Irish immigrant miner who was killed in the explo-
and their grandmother, who as a young girl worked sion. In the voice of this young man, write a letter to
in a Lowell, Massachusetts, textile mill in the 1840s the editor of the local paper explaining what les-
(Chapter 9) before the family moved west to take sons Americans should take from the disaster.
advantage of new opportunities. What similarities Now imagine instead that the young man has
and differences might they see in their various enrolled in business school to become a manager;
experiences of work? What does this tell us about he is the son of a Scottish-born executive in the
changes in workers’ lives over these decades? mining company, and Andrew Carnegie is his hero.
In the voice of this young man, write a letter to the
2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Return to the chapter-
editor explaining what lessons Americans should
opening photograph (p. 545), taken in the aftermath
take from the disaster.
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Roger Daniels, Coming to America (2002). A sweeping David Montgomery, Citizen Worker (1993). A brief
overview of immigration to the United States from exploration of workers’ experiences with government,
colonial times to the 1980s. electoral politics, and the marketplace in the late
nineteenth century.
Walter Friedman, Birth of a Salesman (2004). A lively
treatment of the rise of salesmanship. Richard White, Railroaded (2011). A recent reassess-
ment of big business and its impact, focusing on the
Erika Lee, At America’s Gates (2003). One of several
railroad industry.
superb recent treatments of Chinese immigration and
exclusion.
Harold Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor
in America (1978). A classic biography of the AFL’s
founder.
CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER REVIEW 573
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1889 t New Jersey passes law enabling trusts to operate in the state
1893 t Severe depression hits; causes mass unemployment and wave of corporate mergers
1900 t America’s one hundred largest companies control one-third of national productive capacity
KEY TURNING POINTS: In the era of industrialization, what events prompted the rise of
labor unions and other reform groups that called for stronger government responses to corpo-
rate power? Before 1900, what key events or turning points marked reformers’ successes and
failures?
The Victorians Make the Modern
18
C H A P T E R
1880–1917
W
COMMERCE AND hen Philadelphia hosted the IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
CULTURE 1876 Centennial Exposition, How did the changes wrought by
Consumer Spaces Americans weren’t sure what industrialization shape Americans’
Masculinity and the Rise to expect from their first world’s fair — identities, beliefs, and culture?
of Sports including what foods exhibitors would
The Great Outdoors offer. One cartoonist humorously proposed that Russians would serve castor oil, Arabs
would bring camel’s milk punch, and Germans would offer beer. Reflecting widespread
WOMEN, MEN, AND THE
SOLITUDE OF SELF racial prejudices, the cartoon showed Chinese men selling “hashed cat” and “rat pie.”
In reality, though, the 1876 Exposition offered only plain lunchrooms and, for the
Changes in Family Life
wealthiest visitors, expensive French fare.
Education
By the early twentieth century, American food had undergone a revolution. Visitors
From Domesticity to Women’s
to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 could try food from Scandinavia, India, and the
Rights
Philippines. Across the United States, Chinese American restaurants flourished as a chop
SCIENCE AND FAITH suey craze swept the nation. New Yorkers could sample Hungarian and Syrian cuisine;
Darwinism and Its Critics a San Francisco journalist enthusiastically reviewed local Mexican and Japanese restau-
Realism in the Arts rants. Even small-town diners could often find an Italian or German meal.
Religion: Diversity and What had happened? Americans had certainly not lost all their prejudices: while
Innovation plates of chop suey were being gobbled up, laws excluding Chinese immigrants remained
firmly in place. Industrialization reshaped class identities, however, and promoted a cre-
ative consumer culture. In the great cities, amusement parks and vaudeville theaters
catered to industrial workers (Chapter 19). Other institutions served middle-class cus-
tomers who wanted novelty and variety at a reasonable price. A Victorian ethos of self-
restraint and moral uplift gave way to expectations of leisure and fun. As African Amer-
icans and women claimed a right to public spaces — to shop, dine, and travel freely — they
built powerful reform movements. At the same time, the new pressures faced by profes-
sional men led to aggressive calls for masculine fitness, exemplified by the rise of sports.
Stunning scientific discoveries — from dinosaur fossils to distant galaxies — also chal-
lenged long-held beliefs. Faced with electricity, medical vaccines, and other wonders,
Americans celebrated technological solutions to human problems. But while science
gained popularity, religion hardly faded. In fact, religious diversity grew, as immigrants
brought new faiths and Protestants responded with innovations of their own. Ameri-
cans found themselves living in a modern world — one in which their grandparents’
beliefs and ways of life no longer seemed to apply. In a market-driven society that
claimed to champion individual freedom, Americans took advantage of new ideas while
expressing anxiety over the accompanying upheavals and risks.
574
Chicago Department Store Advertisement, 1893 In the same year that the Chicago World’s
Columbian Exhibition offered an array of dazzling experiences for visitors, the city’s Siegel-Cooper
Department Store did the same for consumers who could afford to shop in its halls. Note the many types
of goods and services offered in its “Sixty-Five Complete Departments,” from meat and groceries to
medical and legal advice. What evidence, here, shows the types of customers the store sought to attract,
inviting them to say, “I’ll meet you at the Fountain”? How did the store encourage shoppers to linger?
Chicago History Museum.
575
576 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
without a male chaperone risked damaging her reputa- 1876, entrepreneurs introduced
EXPLAIN
tion. But the rise of new businesses encouraged change. the device for business use, but it
CONSEQUENCES
To attract an eager public, purveyors of consumer cul- soon found eager residential cus- How did new consumer
ture invited women and families, especially those of tomers. Telephones changed eti- practices, arising from
the middle class, to linger in department stores and quette and social relations for industrialization, reshape
enjoy new amusements. middle-class suburban women — Americans’ gender, class,
No one promoted commercial domesticity more while providing their working- and race relationships?
successfully than showman P. T. Barnum (1810–1891), class counterparts with new
who used the country’s expanding rail network to employment options (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 578).
develop his famous traveling circus. Barnum con- Railroads also reflected the emerging privileges of
demned earlier circus managers who had opened their professional families. Finding prosperous Americans
tents to “the rowdy element.” Proclaiming children as eager for excursions, railroad companies, like depart-
his key audience, he created family entertainment for ment stores, made things comfortable for middle-class
diverse audiences (though in the South, black audi- women and children. Boston’s South Terminal Station
ences sat in segregated seats or attended separate boasted of its modern amenities, including “everything
shows). He promised middle-class parents that his cir- that the traveler needs down to cradles in which the
cus would teach children courage and promote the baby may be soothed.” An 1882 tourist guide promised
benefits of exercise. To encourage women’s attendance, readers that they could live on the Pacific Railroad
Barnum emphasized the respectability and refinement “with as much true enjoyment as the home drawing
of his female performers. room.” Rail cars manufactured by the famous Pullman
Department stores also lured middle-class women Company of Chicago set a national standard for taste
by offering tearooms, children’s play areas, umbrellas, and elegance. Fitted with rich carpets, upholstery, and
and clerks to wrap and carry every purchase. Store woodwork, Pullman cars embodied the growing pros-
credit plans enabled well-to-do women to shop with- perity of America’s elite, influencing trends in home
out handling money in public. Such tactics succeeded decor. Part of their appeal was the chance for people of
so well that New York’s department store district became modest means to emulate the rich. An experienced
known as Ladies’ Mile. Boston department store mag- train conductor observed that the wives of grocers, not
nate William Filene called the department store an millionaires, were the ones most likely to “sweep . . . into
“Adamless Eden.” a parlor car as if the very carpet ought to feel highly
These Edens were for the elite and middle class. honored by their tread.”
Though bargain basements and neighborhood stores First-class “ladies’ cars” soon became sites of
served working-class families, big department stores struggle for racial equality. For three decades after the
enlisted vagrancy laws and police to discourage the end of the Civil War, state laws and railroad regula-
“wrong kind” from entering. Working-class women tions varied, and African Americans often succeeded
gained access primarily as clerks, cashiers, and cash in securing seats. One reformer noted, however, “There
girls, who at age twelve or younger served as internal are few ordeals more nerve-wracking than the one
store messengers, carrying orders and change for $1.50 which confronts a colored woman when she tries to
a week. The department store was no Eden for these secure a Pullman reservation in the South and even in
women, who worked long hours on their feet, often some parts of the North.” When they claimed first-class
dealing with difficult customers. Nevertheless, many seats, black women often faced confrontations with
clerks claimed their own privileges as shoppers, mak- conductors, resulting in numerous lawsuits in the
ing enthusiastic use of employee discounts and battling 1870s and 1880s. Riding the Chesapeake & Ohio line
employers for the right to wear their fashionable pur- in 1884, young African American journalist Ida B.
chases while they worked in the store. Wells was told to leave. “I refused,” she wrote later, “say-
In similar ways, class status was marked by the ing that the [nearest alternative] car was a smoker, and
ways technology entered American homes. The rise of as I was in the ladies’ car, I proposed to stay.” Wells
electricity, in particular, marked the gap between afflu- resisted, but the conductor and a baggage handler
ent urban consumers and rural and working-class fam- threw her bodily off the train. Returning home to
ilies. In elite houses, domestic servants began to use — Memphis, Wells sued and won in local courts, but
or find themselves replaced by — an array of new devices, Tennessee’s supreme court reversed the ruling.
from washing machines to vacuum cleaners. When In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court settled such issues
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in decisively — but not justly. The case, Plessy v. Ferguson,
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
1. “Hello Ma Baby” sheet music cover and lyrics, 2. “The Perfect Operator,” Saturday Evening Post,
1899. This popular music hit, this song was written July 12, 1930. Katherine Schmitt opened the New
in the voice of an African American man to his girl. York Operator’s School in 1902. Looking back later,
The man’s tuxedo is a bit disheveled; in 1899, most she described the qualities sought in operators.
white Americans would have assumed he wore What does this document tell us about the values
it for waiting tables or other service work. The of the emerging corporate workplace?
woman wears a dressing gown — not how a [The operator] must now be made as nearly as possible
respectable lady would want to appear. Nonethe- a paragon of perfection, a kind of human machine, the
less, the racial depiction here is more modern than exponent of speed and courtesy; a creature spirited
those of old-fashioned minstrel shows. The song’s enough to move like chain lightning, and with perfect
chorus appears below. What changing expectations accuracy; docile enough to deny herself the sweet privi-
does it convey about courtship and dating? lege of the last word. She must assume that the subscriber
is always right, and even when she knows he is not, her
only comeback must be: “Excuse it please,” in the same
smiling voice.
300
150
San Rafael
100
Antioch
50
0
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
Based on Figure 9 from A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, by Claude S. Fischer (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992). Copyright © 1992 by The Regents of the University of California. Used by permission of the University of California Press.
thoroughly all over, and then take a hose and hitch it on excuse for telephoning an invitation when time is not
the fire plug and wash her out.” an object, or when the person invited is not an intimate
. . . The result is that No. 1,111 does not now speak to friend.
No. 2,222, and Dr. Highflyer has had the telephone taken
out of his house. 6. Bell Telephone advertisement, 1910. The text from
this ad was accompanied by a picture of a young
4. Estimated residential telephones in three California woman on the telephone with young men and
locations, 1900–1940 (top of page). Palo Alto was women in a room behind her, dancing.
an affluent university town. Antioch was working- For Social Arrangements: The informal invitation which
class. San Rafael had a mixed economy, including comes over the phone is generally the most welcome. The
some industry; it served increasingly as a bedroom Bell service makes it possible to arrange delightful social
community for San Francisco professionals. affairs at the last moment. . . .
5. Telephone etiquette from “A Woman of Fashion,” For Impromptu Invitations: The easiest way to get up an
1898. At the turn of the century, etiquette authori- informal party, quickly, is by telephone.
ties began grudgingly to acknowledge the role of
telephones in social life. Do you notice any contra-
dictions in the advice below? Sources: (2) Venus Green, Race on the Line (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2001), 67; (3) Wheeling Register, October 26, 1884; (5) Etiquette for Americans (New
Invitations by telephone, for anything other than infor- York: Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1898), 59, 70–71; (6) Claude S. Fischer, America Calling
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 184.
mal engagements . . . are hopelessly vulgar. They should
be the last resort. Invitations to bicycle or to play golf may
be transmitted in this way, and the telephone is a blessing ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
often in adjusting details, or making explanations; but for
1. Consider the audience for each of these sources. Who
most social matters the use of the telephone is question- was intended to read, view, or listen to it? What mes-
able, at best. Many women will stand with aching feet and sage does it convey?
irritated brow at a telephone for half an hour rather than 2. Sources 2, 5, and 6 all give advice on how women should
write a note which would take four minutes. . . . Invita- behave. Compare these pieces of advice. In what ways
are they similar and different?
tion by telephone is one of those modern innovations
3. Based on these sources, which groups of Americans
to which the conservative have never been accustomed, appear to have been affected by the arrival of tele-
and which shocks elderly, conventional persons still. The phones, and how?
convenience of the telephone for quickness and prompt
response appeals, however, to so many persons, that it PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
is hopeless and useless to inveigh against it. . . . If some Using evidence from these sources and your knowledge
of the period, write an essay explaining how the tele-
one’s note has been mislaid or forgotten, there is nothing
phone contributed to, and reflected, changes in American
simpler than to telephone to repair the error, and to explain. women’s social and economic roles.
It is much speedier than sending a note. . . . There is no
579
580 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
billiards or cards? Could they smoke? At first, YMCA provided fresh air and exercise,
TRACE CHANGE
leaders said no, but to attract working-class men they kept men out of saloons, and pro- OVER TIME
had to make concessions. As a result, the “Y” became a moted discipline and teamwork. How and why did Ameri-
place where middle-class and working-class customs Players on company-sponsored can sports evolve, and
blended — or existed in uneasy tension. At the same teams, wearing uniforms embla- how did athletics soften or
time, YMCA leaders innovated. Searching for winter zoned with their employers’ sharpen social divisions?
activities in the 1890s, YMCA instructors invented the names, began to compete on paid
new indoor games of basketball and volleyball. work time. Baseball thus set a pattern for how other
For elite Americans, meanwhile, country clubs American sports developed. Begun among indepen-
flourished; both men and women could enjoy tennis, dent craftsmen, it was taken up by elite men anxious to
golf, and swimming facilities as well as social gather- prove their strength and fitness. Well-to-do Americans
ings. By the turn of the century — perhaps because then decided the sport could benefit the working class.
country club women were encroaching on their ath- Big-time professional baseball arose with the
letic turf — elite men took up even more aggressive launching of the National League in 1876. The league
physical sports, including boxing, weightlifting, and quickly built more than a dozen teams in large cities,
martial arts. As early as 1890, future president Theodore from the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers to the Cleveland
Roosevelt argued that such “virile” activities were Spiders. Team owners were, in their own right, profit-
essential to “maintain and defend this very civiliza- minded entrepreneurs who shaped the sport to please
tion.” “Most masterful nations,” he claimed, “have consumers. Wooden grandstands soon gave way to
shown a strong taste for manly sports.” Roosevelt, son concrete and steel stadiums. By 1900, boys collected
of a wealthy New York family, became one of the first lithographed cards of their favorite players, and the
American devotees of jujitsu. During his presidency baseball cap came into fashion. In 1903, the Boston
(1901–1909), he designated a judo room in the White Americans defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first
House and hired an expert Japanese instructor. World Series. American men could now adopt a new
Roosevelt also wrestled and boxed, urging other Ameri- consumer identity — not as athletes, but as fans.
can men — especially among the elite — to increase their
leadership fitness by pursuing the “strenuous life.” Rise of the Negro Leagues Baseball stadiums, like
first-class rail cars, were sites of racial negotiation and
To see a longer excerpt of Theodore Roosevelt’s conflict. In the 1880s and 1890s, major league man-
views on sports, along with other primary sources agers hired a few African American players. As late
from this period, see Sources for America’s History.
as 1901, the Baltimore Orioles succeeded in sign-
ing Charlie Grant, a light-skinned black player from
America’s Game Before the 1860s, the only distinc- Cincinnati, by renaming him Charlie Tokohoma and
tively American game was Native American lacrosse, claiming he was Cherokee. But as this subterfuge
and the most popular team sport among European suggested, black players were increasingly barred. A
Americans was cricket. After the Civil War, however, Toledo team received a threatening note before one
team sports became a fundamental part of American game in Richmond, Virginia: if their “negro catcher”
manhood, none more successfully than baseball. A played, he would be lynched. Toledo put a substitute on
derivative of cricket, the game’s formal rules had begun the field, and at the end of the season the club termi-
to develop in New York in the 1840s and 1850s. Its nated the black player’s contract.
popularity spread in military camps during the Civil Shut out of white leagues, players and fans turned
War. Afterward, the idea that baseball “received its to all-black professional teams, where black men could
baptism in the bloody days of our Nation’s direst dan- showcase athletic ability and race pride. Louisiana’s top
ger,” as one promoter put it, became part of the game’s team, the New Orleans Pinchbacks, pointedly named
mythology. themselves after the state’s black Reconstruction gover-
Until the 1870s, most amateur players were clerks nor. By the early 1900s, such teams organized into sep-
and white-collar workers who had leisure to play and arate Negro Leagues. Though players suffered from
the income to buy their own uniforms. Business erratic pay and rundown ball fields, the leagues thrived
frowned on baseball and other sports as a waste until the desegregation of baseball after World War II.
of time, especially for working-class men. But late- In an era of stark discrimination, they celebrated black
nineteenth-century employers came to see baseball, manhood and talent. “I liked the way their uniform fit,
like other athletic pursuits, as a benefit for workers. It the way they wore their cap,” wrote an admiring fan of
582 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
the Newark Eagles. “They showed a style in almost injured players from the game. But such measures were
everything they did.” adopted grudgingly, with supporters arguing that they
ruined football’s benefits in manly training.
American Football The most controversial sport of Like baseball and the YMCA, football attracted
the industrializing era was football, which began at sponsorship from business leaders hoping to divert
elite colleges during the 1880s. The great powerhouse workers from labor activism. The first professional
was the Yale team, whose legendary coach Walter teams emerged in western Pennsylvania’s steel towns,
Camp went on to become a watch manufacturer. soon after the defeat of the steelworkers’ union. Car-
Between 1883 and 1891, under Camp’s direction, Yale negie Steel executives organized teams in Homestead
scored 4,660 points; its opponents scored 92. Drawing and Braddock; the first league appeared during the
on the workplace model of scientific management, anthracite coal strike of 1902. Other teams arose in the
Camp emphasized drill and precision. He and other midwestern industrial heartland. The Indian-Acme
coaches argued that football offered perfect training Packing Company sponsored the Green Bay Packers;
for the competitive world of business. The game was the future Chicago Bears, first known as the Decatur
violent: six players’ deaths in the 1908 college season Staleys, were funded by a manufacturer of laundry
provoked a public outcry. Eventually, new rules pro- starch. Like its baseball equivalent, professional foot-
tected quarterbacks and required coaches to remove ball encouraged men to buy in as spectators and fans.
MAP 18.1
National Parks and Forests, 1872–1980
Yellowstone, the first national park in the United States, dates from 1872. In 1893, the federal
government began to intervene to protect national forests. Without Theodore Roosevelt, how-
ever, the national forest program might have languished; during his presidency, he added 125
million acres to the forest system, plus six national parks in addition to several that had already
been created during the 1890s. America’s national forest and park systems remain one of the
most visible and beloved legacies of federal policy innovation in the decades between the Civil
War and World War I.
As early as the late 1880s, the lakes and hiking trails passenger pigeon, which vanished around 1900, they
of the Catskill Mountains became so thronged with made it harder for rural people to support themselves
working-class tourists from nearby New York City, from the bounty of the land.
including many Jewish immigrants, that elite visitors
began to segregate themselves into gated summer com-
munities. They thus preserved the “seclusion and pri-
vacy” that they snobbishly claimed as the privilege of Women, Men, and the
those who could demonstrate “mental and personal
worth.”
Solitude of Self
At the state level, meanwhile, new game laws trig- Speaking to Congress in 1892, women’s rights advocate
gered conflicts between elite conservationists and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton described what she called the
poor. Shifting from year-round subsistence hunting to “solitude of self.” Stanton rejected the claim that women
a limited, recreational hunting season brought hard- did not need equal rights because they enjoyed men’s
ship to poor rural families who depended on game for protection. “The talk of sheltering woman from the
food. Regulation brought undeniable benefits: it sup- fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery,” she
pressed such popular practices as songbird hunting declared. “They beat on her from every point of the
and the use of dynamite to kill fish. Looking back on compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal
the era before game laws, one Alabama hunter remem- results, for he has been trained to protect himself.”
bered that “the slaughter was terrific.” But while game Stanton’s argument captured one of the dilemmas
laws prevented further extinctions like that of the of industrialization: the marketplace of labor brought
CHAPTER 18 The Victorians Make the Modern, 1880–1917 585
Portrait of a Middle-Class
American Family
This photograph of the Hedlund family
was taken on July 4, 1911, on the front
porch of their home in St. Paul, Minne-
sota. Christian, Grace, and Anna Hedlund
appear on the top row, Louis and George
on the bottom. Families like this one —
with three children — were becoming
typical among the middle class, in contrast
to larger families in earlier generations.
This photo was taken by twenty-one-year-
old Joseph Pavlicek, a recent immigrant
from Eastern Europe who was boarding
with the Hedlunds. Pavlicek bought fire-
works for the children to celebrate the
holiday. He remembered being so proud
and grateful to be in America that his
heart “was nearly bursting.” Minnesota
Historical Society.
promoting the rise of “secret vice.” degree — was valuable for boys who hoped to enter
PLACE EVENTS
Though critics charged Comstock professional or managerial work. Daughters attended
IN CONTEXT
In what ways did the
with high-handed interference in in even larger numbers than their brothers (Table 18.1).
Comstock Act reflect and private matters, others supported Parents of the Civil War generation, who had witnessed
contradict the realities of his work, fearful of the rising tide the plight of war widows and orphans, encouraged
American life in the indus- of pornography, sexual informa- girls to prepare themselves for teaching or office jobs,
trial era? tion, and contraceptives made work before marriage, and gain skills they could fall
available by industrialization. A back on, “just in case.” By 1900, 71 percent of Americans
committee of the New York legislature declared between the ages of five and eighteen attended school.
Comstock’s crusade “wholly essential to the safety and That figure rose further in the early twentieth century,
decency of the community.” It appears, however, that as public officials adopted laws requiring school
Comstock had little success in stopping the lucrative attendance.
and popular trade in contraceptives. Most high schools were coeducational, and almost
every high school featured athletics. Recruited first as
cheerleaders for boys’ teams, girls soon established
Education field hockey and other sports of their own. Boys and
In the industrial economy, the watchword for young girls engaged in friendly — and sometimes not-so-
people who hoped to secure good jobs was education. friendly — rivalry in high school. In 1884, a high school
A high school diploma — now a gateway to a college newspaper in Concord, New Hampshire, published
CHAPTER 18 The Victorians Make the Modern, 1880–1917 587
TABLE 18.1
High School Graduates, 1870–1910
Percent
Year Number 17-Year-Olds Male Female
1870 16,000 2.0 7,000 9,000
1890 44,000 3.0 19,000 25,000
1910 156,000 8.6 64,000 93,000
Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), 1: 386.
this poem from a disgruntled boy who caricatured his In the South, one of the most famous educational
female classmates: projects was Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute,
founded in 1881. Washington both taught and exem-
We know many tongues of living and dead,
plified the goal of self-help; his autobiography, Up from
In science and fiction we’re very well read,
But we cannot cook meat and cannot make bread
Slavery (1901), became a best-seller. Because of the
And we’ve wished many times that we were all dead. deep poverty in which most southern African Amer-
icans lived, Washington concluded that “book educa-
A female student shot back a poem of her own, tion” for most “would be almost a waste of time.” He
denouncing male students’ smoking habit: focused instead on industrial education. Students, he
argued, would “be sure of knowing how to make a liv-
But if boys will smoke cigarettes
ing after they had left us.” Tuskegee sent female gradu-
Although the smoke may choke them,
One consolation still remains —
ates into teaching and nursing; men more often entered
They kill the boys that smoke them. the industrial trades or farmed by the latest scientific
methods.
The rate of Americans attending college had long Washington gained national fame in 1895 with his
hovered around 2 percent; driven by public universi- Atlanta Compromise address, delivered at the Cotton
ties’ expansion, the rate rose in the 1880s, reaching States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. For the exposi-
8 percent by 1920. Much larger numbers attended a tion’s white organizers, the racial “compromise” was
growing network of business and technical schools. inviting Washington to speak at all. It was a move
“GET A PLACE IN THE WORLD,” advertised one intended to show racial progress in the South.
Minneapolis business college in 1907, “where your tal- Washington, in turn, delivered an address that many
ents can be used to the best advantage.” Typically, such interpreted as approving racial segregation. Stating
schools offered both day and night classes in subjects that African Americans had, in slavery days, “proved
such as bookkeeping, typewriting, and shorthand. our loyalty to you,” he assured whites that “in our
The needs of the new economy also shaped the humble way, we shall stand by you . . . ready to lay
curriculum at more traditional collegiate institutions. down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours.” The
State universities emphasized technical training and races could remain socially detached: “In all things that
fed the growing professional workforce with graduates are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers,
trained in fields such as engineering. Many private col- yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual
leges distanced themselves from such practical pur- progress.” Washington urged,
suits; their administrators argued that students who however, that whites join him in TRACE CHANGE
aimed to be leaders needed broad-based knowledge. working for “the highest intelli- OVER TIME
But they modernized course offerings, emphasizing gence and development of all.” How did educational
French and German, for example, rather than Latin and Whites greeted this address opportunities change
Greek. Harvard, led by dynamic president Charles W. with enthusiasm, and Washington after the Civil War, and
Eliot from 1869 to 1909, pioneered the liberal arts. became the most prominent black for whom?
Students at the all-male college chose from a range of leader of his generation. His sooth-
electives, as Eliot called for classes that developed each ing rhetoric and style of leadership, based on avoiding
young man’s “individual reality and creative power.” confrontation and cultivating white patronage and
588 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
in the language of feminine self- drinking for religious reasons. Immigrants passion-
UNDERSTAND
sacrifice. “Womanliness first,” she ately disagreed, however: Germans and Irish Catholics
POINTS OF VIEW
How did women use wide-
advised her followers; “afterward, enjoyed their Sunday beer and saw no harm in it.
spread beliefs about their what you will.” WCTU members Saloons were a centerpiece of working-class leisure and
“special role” to justify vividly described the plight of community life, offering free lunches, public toilets,
political activism, and for abused wives and children when and a place to share neighborhood news. Thus, while
what goals? men suffered in the grip of alco- some labor unions advocated voluntary temperance,
holism. Willard’s motto was attitudes toward prohibition divided along ethnic, reli-
“Home Protection,” and though it placed all the blame gious, and class lines.
on alcohol rather than other factors, the WCTU WCTU activism led some leaders to raise radical
became the first organization to identify and combat questions about the shape of industrial society. As she
domestic violence. investigated alcohol abuse, Willard increasingly con-
The prohibitionist movement drew activists from fronted poverty, hunger, unemployment, and other
many backgrounds. Middle-class city dwellers worried industrial problems. “Do Everything,” she urged her
about the link between alcoholism and crime, espe- members. Across the United States, WCTU chapters
cially in the growing immigrant wards. Rural citizens founded soup kitchens and free libraries. They intro-
equated liquor with big-city sins such as prostitution duced a German educational innovation, the kinder-
and political corruption. Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, garten. They investigated prison conditions. Though
and members of other denominations condemned she did not persuade most prohibitionists to follow her
friends, angry that it competed with a nearby white- Suffrage (1911). Antisuffragists argued that it was
owned store. When the black store owners defended expensive to add so many voters to the rolls; wives’ bal-
themselves, wounding several of their attackers, all lots would just “double their husbands’ votes” or worse,
three were lynched. Grieving their deaths, Wells left cancel them out, subjecting men to “petticoat rule.”
Memphis and urged other African Americans to join Some antisuffragists also argued that voting would
her in boycotting the city’s white businesses. As a jour- undermine women’s special roles as disinterested
nalist, she launched a one-woman campaign against reformers: no longer above the fray, they would be
lynching. Wells’s investigations demolished the myth plunged into the “cesspool of politics.” In short, women
that lynchers were reacting to the crime of interracial were “better citizens without the ballot.” Such argu-
rape; she showed that the real cause was more often ments helped delay passage of national women’s suf-
economic competition, a labor dispute, or a consensual frage until after World War I.
relationship between a white woman and a black man. By the 1910s, some women moved beyond suffrage
Settling in Chicago, Wells became a noted and accom- to take a public stance for what they called feminism —
plished reformer, but in an era of increasing racial women’s full political, economic, and social equality.
injustice, few whites supported her cause. A famous site of sexual rebellion was New York’s
The largest African American women’s organiza- Greenwich Village, where radical intellectuals, includ-
tion arose within the National Baptist Church (NBC), ing many gays and lesbians, created a vibrant commu-
which by 1906 represented 2.4 million black church- nity. Among other political activities, women there
goers. Founded in 1900, the Women’s Convention of founded the Heterodoxy Club (1912), open to any
the NBC funded night schools, health clinics, kinder- woman who pledged not to be “orthodox in her opin-
gartens, day care centers, and prison outreach programs. ions.” The club brought together intellectuals, jour-
Adella Hunt Logan, born in Alabama, exemplified nalists, and labor organizers. Almost all supported
how such work could lead women to demand political suffrage, but they had a more ambitious view of what
rights. Educated at Atlanta University, Logan became a was needed for women’s liberation. “I wanted to belong
women’s club leader, teacher, and suffrage advocate. “If to the human race, not to a ladies’ aid society,” wrote
white American women, with all their mutual and one divorced journalist who joined Heterodoxy. Fem-
acquired advantage, need the ballot,” she declared, inists argued that women should not simply fulfill
“how much more do Black Americans, male and expectations of feminine self-sacrifice; they should
female, need the strong defense of a vote to help secure work on their own behalf.
them their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness?”
Dates on the map indicate when Note how women won the right to
individual states, on their own initiative, vote in a roughly west-to-east movement.
granted full suffrage to women. What reasons might be advanced to
CANADA explain this pattern of diffusion?
WASH. ME.
1910
MONTANA NORTH MINN.
DAKOTA VT.
1914
NEW N.H. MASS.
OREGON YORK
1912 SOUTH WIS.
IDAHO DAKOTA 1917
MICH. R.I.
1896 WYOMING 1918 1918 CONN.
1890 PA.
N.J.
IOWA
NEBRASKA OHIO MD. DEL.
NEVADA IND.
ILL. N
1914 UTAH W.
1896 COLORADO VA. VA.
CALIF. 1893 KANSAS MO. E
1911 1912 KY. W
NORTH
CAROLINA S
TENNESSEE
OKLAHOMA S.C.
ARIZONA NEW 1918 ARK.
1912 MEXICO ALA. GEORGIA
MISS. ATLANTIC
LA. OCEAN
PACIFIC TEXAS
OCEAN FLA.
MAP 18.2
Women’s Suffrage, 1890–1919
By 1909, after more than sixty years of agitation, only four lightly populated western states had
granted women full voting rights. A number of other states offered partial suffrage, limited to
voting for school boards and such issues as taxes and local referenda on whether or not to permit
the sale of liquor licenses (the so-called local option). Between 1910 and 1918, as the effort shifted
to the struggle for a constitutional amendment, eleven states joined the list granting full suffrage.
The West remained the most progressive region in granting women’s voting rights; the most
stubborn resistance lay in the ex-Confederacy.
saw the fair buildings illuminated with strings of elec- of realism. Other Americans struggled to reconcile sci-
tric lights. One observer called the fair “a vast and won- entific discoveries with their religious faith.
derful university of the arts and sciences.”
It is hardly surprising, amid these achievements,
that “fact worship” became a central feature of intellec- Darwinism and Its Critics
tual life. Researchers in many fields argued that one Evolution — the idea that species are not fixed, but ever
could rely only on hard facts to understand the “laws of changing — was not a simple idea on which all scien-
life.” In their enthusiasm, some economists and sociol- tists agreed. In his immensely influential 1859 book,
ogists rejected all social reform as sentimental. Fiction On the Origin of Species, British naturalist Charles
writers and artists kept a more humane emphasis, but Darwin argued that all creatures struggle to survive.
they made use of similar methods — close observation When individual members of a species are born with
and attention to real-life experience — to create works random genetic mutations that better suit them for
594 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
their environment — for example, camouflage coloring suffered from eugenics policies. Advocates of eugen-
for a moth — these characteristics, since they are genet- ics had a broad impact. Because they associated mental
ically transmissible, become dominant in future gener- unfitness with “lower races” — including people of
ations. Many scientists rejected this theory of natural African, Asian, and Native American descent — their
selection. They followed a line of thinking laid out by arguments lent support to segregation and racial dis-
French biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who argued, crimination. By warning that immigrants from Eastern
unlike Darwin, that individual animals or plants could and Southern Europe would dilute white Americans’
acquire transmittable traits within a single lifetime. racial purity, eugenicists helped win passage of immi-
A rhinoceros that fought fiercely, in Lamarck’s view, gration restriction in the 1920s.
could build up a stronger horn; its offspring would
then be born with that trait.
Darwin himself disapproved of the word evolution Realism in the Arts
(which does not appear in his book) because it implied Inspired by the quest for facts, American authors
upward progress. In his view, natural selection was rejected nineteenth-century romanticism and what
blind: environments and species changed randomly. they saw as its unfortunate product, sentimentality.
Others were less scrupulous about drawing sweeping Instead, they took up literary realism. In the 1880s, edi-
conclusions from Darwin’s work. In the 1870s, British tor and novelist William Dean Howells called for writ-
philosopher Herbert Spencer spun out an elaborate ers “to picture the daily life in the most exact terms
theory of how human society possible.” By the 1890s, a younger generation of writers
PLACE EVENTS advanced through “survival of pursued this goal. Theodore Dreiser dismissed unreal-
IN CONTEXT the fittest.” Social Darwinism, as istic novels that always had “a happy ending.” In Main-
How did the ideas of sci- Spencer’s idea became (confus- Travelled Roads (1891), based on the struggles of his
entists and social scientists ingly) known, found its American midwestern farm family, Hamlin Garland turned the
reflect events they saw champion in William Graham same unsparing eye on the hardships of rural life.
happening around them? Sumner, a sociology professor at Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893),
Yale. Competition, said Sumner, privately printed because no publisher would touch it,
was a law of nature, like gravity. Who were the fittest? described the seduction, abandonment, and death of a
“Millionaires,” Sumner declared. Their success showed slum girl.
they were “naturally selected.” Some authors believed realism did not go far
Even in the heyday of Social Darwinism, Sumner’s enough to overturn sentimentalism. Jack London
views were controversial (American Voices, p. 596). spent his teenage years as a factory worker, sailor, and
Some thinkers objected to the application of biological tramp. In stories such as “The Law of Life” (1901), he
findings to the realm of society and government. They dramatized what he saw as the harsh reality of an
pointed out that Darwin’s theories applied to finches uncaring universe. American society, he said, was “a
and tortoises, not human institutions. Social Darwin- jungle wherein wild beasts eat and are eaten.” Similarly,
ism, they argued, was simply an excuse for the worst Stephen Crane tried to capture “a world full of fists.”
excesses of industrialization. By the early twentieth London and Crane helped create literary naturalism.
century, intellectuals revolted against Sumner and his They suggested that human beings were not so much
allies. rational shapers of their own destinies as blind victims
Meanwhile, though, the most dubious applications of forces beyond their control — including their own
of evolutionary ideas were codified into new reproduc- subconscious impulses.
tive laws based on eugenics, a so-called science of America’s most famous writer, Samuel Langhorne
human breeding. Eugenicists argued that mentally Clemens, who took the pen name of Mark Twain, came
deficient people should be prevented from reproduc- to an equally bleak view. Though he achieved enor-
ing. They proposed sterilizing those deemed “unfit,” mous success with such lighthearted books as The
especially residents of state asylums for the insane or Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Clemens courted
mentally disabled. In early-twentieth-century America, controversy with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
almost half of the states enacted eugenics laws. By the (1884), notable for its indictment of slavery and rac-
time eugenics subsided in the 1930s, about twenty ism. In his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
thousand people had been sterilized, with California Court (1889), which ends with a bloody, technology-
and Virginia taking the lead. Women in Puerto Rico driven slaughter of Arthur’s knights, Mark Twain
and other U.S. imperial possessions (Chapter 21) also became one of the bitterest critics of America’s idea of
CHAPTER 18 The Victorians Make the Modern, 1880–1917 595
progress. Soon afterward, Clemens was devastated by In the visual arts, new technologies influenced aes-
the loss of his wife and two daughters, as well as by thetics. By 1900, some photographers argued that their
failed investments and bankruptcy. An outspoken “true” representations made painting obsolete. But
critic of imperialism and foreign missions, Twain even- painters invented their own forms of realism. Nebraska-
tually denounced Christianity itself as a hypocritical born artist Robert Henri became fascinated with life in
delusion. Like his friend the industrialist Andrew the great cities. “The backs of tenement houses are liv-
Carnegie, Clemens “got rid of theology.” ing documents,” he declared, and he set out to put them
By the time Clemens died in 1910, realist and natu- on canvas. Henri and his followers, notably John Sloan
ralist writers had laid the groundwork for modernism, and George Bellows, called themselves the New York
which rejected traditional canons of literary taste. Realists. Critics derided them as
Questioning the whole idea of progress and order, the Ash Can school because they EXPLAIN
modernists focused on the subconscious and “primi- chose subjects that were not con- CONSEQUENCES
What effect did technol-
tive” mind. Above all, they sought to overturn conven- ventionally beautiful.
ogy and scientific ideas
tion and tradition. Poet Ezra Pound exhorted, “Make In 1913, Realists participated
have on literature and the
it new!” Modernism became the first great literary and in one of the most controversial
arts?
artistic movement of the twentieth century. events in American art history,
AMERICAN
VOICES
The idea that human society advanced through “survival of the fittest” was a
popular doctrine, referred to by historians as “Social Darwinism.” Many Ameri-
Three Interpretations cans agreed with Harvard sociologist William Graham Sumner, who argued that
the poor and weak were a “burden,” a “dead-weight on the society in all its
of Social Darwinism struggles.” Such views prompted a range of responses, ranging from enthusias-
tic endorsement to uneasy accommodation to impassioned opposition.
Theodore Dreiser The lobster was in the corner. Before him was the squid
The Financier cut in two and partially devoured. . . .
The incident made a great impression on him. It
Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) was an American literary answered in a rough way that riddle which had been
naturalist. His novel The Financier (1912) traces the rise of annoying him so much in the past: “How is life orga-
Frank Cowperwood, a young man who, during the last years nized?” Things lived on each other — that was it. Lobsters
of the nineteenth century, becomes a powerful banker. lived on squids and other things. What lived on lobsters?
Dreiser loosely based the character on the life of financier Men, of course! . . . And what lived on men? he asked
Charles Yerkes. In this excerpt, the narrator describes a himself. Was it other men? Wild animals lived on men.
transformative moment in Cowperwood’s youth. And there were Indians and cannibals. And some men
[Cowperwood] could not figure out how this thing he were killed by storms and accidents. He wasn’t so sure
had come into — this life — was organized. How did all about men living on men; but men did kill each other.
these people get into the world? What were they doing How about wars and street fights and mobs? . . .
here? Who started things, anyhow? His mother told him Frank thought of this and of the life he was tossed
the story of Adam and Eve, but he didn’t believe it. . . . into, for he was already pondering on what he should be
One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in [a] tank, in this world, and how he should get along. From seeing
and in connection with them was witness to a tragedy his father count money, he was sure that he would like
which stayed with him all his life and cleared things up banking; and Third Street, where his father’s office was,
considerably intellectually. The lobster, it appeared from seemed to him the cleanest, most fascinating street in
the talk of the idle bystanders, was offered no food, as the the world.
squid was considered his rightful prey. He lay at the bottom
of the clear glass tank . . . apparently seeing nothing — you Source: Theodore Dreiser, The Financier (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1912), 10–15.
596
resident in undivine humanity. He will not be surprised to all the definitions. Art is the antithesis of nature. If we call
find the waters of the stream disturbed; for he will reflect one the natural method, we must call the other the artifi-
that the divine purity has come into a turbid stream, and cial method. If nature’s process is rightly named natural
that it can purify only by being itself indistinguishably selection, man’s process is artificial selection. The survival
combined with the impure. When he is told that modern of the fittest is simply the survival of the strong, which
Christianity is only a “civilized paganism,” he will reply, implies, and might as well be called, the destruction of the
“That is exactly what I supposed it to be; and it will con- weak. And if nature progresses through the destruction of
tinue to be a civilized paganism until civilization has the weak, man progresses through the protection of the
entirely eliminated paganism.” He will not be surprised to weak. . . .
find pagan ceremonies in the ritual, ignorance and super- . . . Man, through his intelligence, has labored success-
stition in the church, and even errors and partialisms in fully to resist the law of nature. His success is conclusively
the Bible. For he will remember that the divine life, which demonstrated by a comparison of his condition with that
is bringing all life into harmony with itself, is a life resi- of other species of animals. No other cause can be
dent in man. He will remember that the Bible does not assigned for his superiority. How can the naturalistic phi-
claim to be the absolute Word of God; that, on the con- losophers shut their eyes to such obvious facts? Yet, what
trary . . . it claims to be the Word of God . . . as spoken to is their attitude? They condemn all attempts to protect the
men, and understood and interpreted by men, which saw weak, whether by private or public methods. They claim
it in part as we still see it, and reflected it as from a mirror that it deteriorates the race by enabling the unfit to sur-
in enigmas. vive and transmit their inferiority. . . . Nothing is easier
He will remember that the Church is not yet the bride than to show that the unrestricted competition of nature
of Christ, but the plebeian daughter whom Christ is edu- does not secure the survival of the fittest possible, but
cating to be his bride. He will remember that Christianity only of the actually fittest, and in every attempt man
is not the absolutely divine, but the divine in humanity, makes to obtain something fitter than this actual fittest
the divine force resident in man and transforming man he succeeds, as witness improved breeds of animals and
into the likeness of the divine. Christianity is the light grafts of fruits. Now, the human method of protecting the
struggling with the darkness, life battling with death, the weak deals in such way with men. It not only increases
spiritual overcoming the animal. We judge Christianity as the number but improves the quality.
the scientist judges the embryo, as the gardener the bud,
as the teacher the pupil, — not by what it is, but by what it Source: Lester Frank Ward, Glimpses of the Cosmos (New York: Harper, 1913), 371, 374.
promises to be.
Source: Lyman Abbott, The Evolution of Christianity (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892),
8–10.
597
598 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
the Armory Show. Housed in an enormous National Robert Henri banned small brushes as “too feminine.”
Guard building in New York, the exhibit introduced In their own ways, these writers and artists contributed
America to modern art. Some painters whose work to a broad movement to masculinize American culture.
appeared at the show were experimenting with cubism,
characterized by abstract, geometric forms. Along with
works by Henri, Sloan, and Bellows, organizers fea- Religion: Diversity and Innovation
tured paintings by European rebels such as Pablo By the turn of the twentieth century, emerging scien-
Picasso. America’s academic art world was shocked. tific and cultural paradigms posed a significant chal-
One critic called cubism “the total destruction of the lenge to religious faith. Some Americans argued that
art of painting.” But as the exhibition went on to Boston science and modernity would sweep away religion
and Chicago, more than 250,000 people crowded to altogether. Contrary to such predictions, American reli-
see it. gious practice remained vibrant. Protestants developed
A striking feature of both realism and modernism, creative new responses to the challenges of industrial-
as they developed, was that many leading writers and ization, while millions of newcomers built institutions
artists were men. In making their work strong and for worship and religious education.
modern, they also strove to assert their masculinity.
Paralleling Theodore Roosevelt’s call for “manly sports,” Immigrant Faiths Arriving in the United States in
they denounced nineteenth-century culture as hope- large numbers, Catholics and Jews wrestled with similar
lessly feminized. Stephen Crane called for “virility” questions. To what degree should they adapt to
in literature. Jack London described himself as a Protestant-dominated American society? Should the
“man’s man, . . . lustfully roving and conquering.” Artist education of clergy be changed? Should children attend
religious or public schools? What happened if they mar- gious practices as keeping a kosher kitchen and con-
ried outside the faith? Among Catholic leaders, Bishop ducting services in Hebrew. This was not the way
John Ireland of Minnesota argued that “the principles of Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe, who
of the Church are in harmony with the interests of arrived in large numbers after the 1880s. Generally
the Republic.” But traditionalists, led by Archbishop much poorer and eager to preserve their own traditions,
Michael A. Corrigan of New York, disagreed. They they founded Orthodox synagogues, often in vacant
sought to insulate Catholics from the pluralistic Ameri- stores, and practiced Judaism as they had at home.
can environment. Indeed, by 1920, almost two million But in Eastern Europe, Judaism had been an entire
children attended Catholic elementary schools nation- way of life, one not easily replicated in a large American
wide, and Catholic dioceses operated fifteen hundred city. “The very clothes I wore and the very food I ate
high schools. Catholics as well as Jews feared some of the had a fatal effect on my religious habits,” confessed the
same threats that distressed Protestants: industrial pov- hero of Abraham Cahan’s novel The Rise of David
erty and overwork kept working-class people away from Levinsky (1917). “If you . . . attempt to bend your reli-
worship services, while new consumer pleasures enticed gion to the spirit of your surroundings, it breaks. It falls
many of them to go elsewhere. to pieces.” Levinsky shaved off his beard and plunged
Faithful immigrant Catholics were anxious to pre- into the Manhattan clothing business. Orthodox
serve familiar traditions from Europe, and they gener- Judaism survived the transition to America, but like
ally supported the Church’s traditional wing. But they other immigrant religions, it had to renounce its claims
also wanted religious life to express their ethnic identi- to some of the faithful.
ties. Italians, Poles, and other new arrivals wanted sep-
arate parishes where they could celebrate their customs, Protestant Innovations One of the era’s dramatic
speak their languages, and establish their own paro- religious developments — facilitated by global steamship
chial schools. When they became numerous enough, and telegraph lines — was the rise of Protestant foreign
they also demanded their own bishops. The Catholic missions. From a modest start before the Civil War,
hierarchy, dominated by Irishmen, felt the integrity of this movement peaked around 1915, a year when
the Church was at stake. The demand for ethnic par- American religious organizations sponsored more than
ishes implied local control of church property. With nine thousand overseas missionaries, supported at home
some strain, the Catholic Church managed to satisfy by armies of volunteers, including more than three
the diverse needs of the immigrant faithful. It met the million women. A majority of Protestant missionaries
demand for representation, for example, by appointing served in Asia, with smaller numbers posted to Africa
immigrant priests as auxiliary bishops within existing and the Middle East. Most saw American-style domes-
dioceses. ticity as a central part of evangelism, and missionary
In the same decades, many prosperous native-born societies sent married couples into the field. Many
Jews embraced Reform Judaism, abandoning such reli- unmarried women also served overseas as missionary
Christian Missions in
Japan, 1909
Through this colorful postcard,
Protestant missionaries in Japan
demonstrate their success in
winning converts (at least a
few) and their adaptation of
missionary strategies to meet
local needs and expectations.
Here, outside their headquarters,
they demonstrate “preaching by
means of banners.” The large
characters on the vertical banner
proclaim the “Association of
Christian Gospel Evangelists.”
The horizontal banner is a Jap-
anese translation of Matthew
11:28, “Come unto me, all ye
who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.”
© Bettmann/Corbis.
600 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
teachers, doctors, and nurses, who resolved to live by Christ’s precepts for one year.
IDENTIFY CAUSES
though almost never as minis- “If church members were all doing as Jesus would do,”
How did America’s reli-
gious life change in this
ters. “American woman,” declared Sheldon asked, “could it remain true that armies of
era, and what prompted one Christian reformer, has “the men would walk the streets for jobs, and hundreds of
those changes? exalted privilege of extending them curse the church, and thousands of them find in
over the world those blessed influ- the saloon their best friend?”
ences, that are to renovate degraded man.” The Salvation Army, which arrived from Great
Protestant missionaries won converts, in part, by Britain in 1879, also spread a gospel message among
providing such modern services as medical care and the urban poor, offering assistance that ranged from
women’s education. Some missionaries developed deep soup kitchens to shelters for former prostitutes. When
bonds of respect with the people they served. Others
showed considerable condescension toward the “poor
heathen,” who in turn bristled at their assumptions
(America Compared, p. 601). One Presbyterian, who
found Syrians uninterested in his gospel message,
angrily denounced all Muslims as “corrupt and
immoral.” By imposing their views of “heathen races”
and attacking those who refused to convert, Christian
missionaries sometimes ended up justifying Western
imperialism.
Chauvinism abroad reflected attitudes that also
surfaced at home. Starting in Iowa in 1887, militant
Protestants created a powerful political organization,
the American Protective Association (APA), which for
a brief period in the 1890s counted more than two mil-
lion members. This virulently nativist group expressed
outrage at the existence of separate Catholic schools
while demanding, at the same time, that all public
school teachers be Protestants. The APA called for a
ban on Catholic officeholders, arguing that they were
beholden to an “ecclesiastic power” that was “not cre-
ated and controlled by American citizens.” In its viru-
lent anti-Catholicism and calls for restrictions on
immigrants, the APA prefigured the revived Ku Klux
Klan of the 1920s (Chapter 22).
The APA arose, in part, because Protestants found
their dominance challenged. Millions of Americans,
especially in the industrial working class, were now
Catholics or Jews. Overall, in 1916, Protestants still
constituted about 60 percent of Americans affiliated The Salvation Army on the Streets
with a religious body. But they faced formidable rivals: This theater poster for the popular play On the Bowery
the number of practicing Catholics in 1916 — 15.7 mil- (1894), written by theater agent Robert Neilson Stephens,
shows how many Americans perceived the Salvation Army.
lion — was greater than the number of Baptists, Here, Salvation Army workers in New York City offer the
Methodists, and Presbyterians combined. organization’s newspaper, War Cry, to a man who brushes
Some Protestants responded to the urban, immi- them off (rudely). The man is Steve Brodie, a celebrity who
grant challenge by evangelizing among the unchurched. was recruited to portray himself onstage. A former East River
lifesaving champion who became a saloon owner in New
They provided reading rooms, day nurseries, voca- York’s Bowery district, Brodie had won fame in 1886 by
tional classes, and other services. The goal of renewing claiming to have jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge and
religious faith through dedication to justice and social survived. (It was later claimed that he faked the stunt, but
“doing a Brodie” became popular slang for taking a big
welfare became known as the Social Gospel. Its goals risk.) While many Americans admired the Salvation Army,
were epitomized by Charles Sheldon’s novel In His others — particularly men of working-class origins, like
Steps (1896), which told the story of a congregation Brodie — rejected its appeals. Library of Congress.
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
I do not understand why the Christian lands have ignored last year the Japanese were driven out in wholesale from
the rights and advantages of forty million souls of Japan one of the territories of the United States; when our busi-
for forty years. . . . One of the excuses offered by foreign ness men in San Francisco were compelled by some union
nations is that our country is not yet civilized. Is it the not to employ Japanese assistants and laborers, but the
principle of civilized law that the rights and profits of the Americans; when there are some in the same city who
so-called uncivilized, or the weaker, should be sacrificed? speak on the platform against those of us who are already
As I understand it, the spirit and necessity of law is to here; when there are many who go in procession hoisting
protect the rights and profits of the weaker against the lanterns marked “Japs must go”; when the Japanese in the
aggression of the stronger. . . . Hawaiian Islands were deprived of their suffrage; when
From the religious source, the claim is made that the we see some western people in Japan who erect before the
Japanese are idolaters and heathen. . . . [A]dmitting for entrance to their houses a special post upon which is the
the sake of argument that we are idolaters and heathen, notice, “No Japanese is allowed to enter here” — just like a
is it Christian morality to trample upon the rights and board upon which is written, “No dogs allowed”; when we
advantages of a non-Christian nation, coloring all their are in such a situation, notwithstanding the kindness of
natural happiness with the dark stain of injustice? . . . the western nations from one point of view, who send
You send your missionaries to Japan and they advise their missionaries to us, that we unintelligent heathens
us to be moral and believe Christianity. We like to be are embarrassed and hesitate to swallow the sweet and
moral, we know that Christianity is good; and we are warm liquid of the heaven of Christianity, will not be
very thankful for this kindness. But at the same time our unreasonable.
people are rather perplexed. . . . For when we think that
the treaty stipulated in the time of feudalism, when we
Source: The World’s Parliament of Religions, ed. John Henry Barrows (Chicago:
were yet in our youth, is still clung to by the powerful Parliament Publishing Co., 1893), 444–450.
nations of Christendom; when we find that every year a
good many western vessels of seal fishery are smuggled
into our seas; when legal cases are always decided by the ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
foreign authorities in Japan unfavorably to us; when some 1. What is Hirai’s attitude toward American Christians?
years ago a Japanese was not allowed to enter a university 2. Of what events is Hirai aware that are taking place in the
on the Pacific coast of America because of his being of a United States? How does this shape his view of Christian
different race; when a few months ago the school board missions in Japan?
3. How might American delegates to the Parliament, espe-
in San Francisco enacted a regulation that no Japanese
cially Protestant missionaries, have responded to Hirai?
should be allowed to enter the public school there; when
all else failed, down-and-outers knew they could count different theological path. Disturbed by what they saw
on the Salvation Army, whose bell ringers became a as rising secularism, conservative ministers and their
familiar sight on city streets. The group borrowed up- allies held a series of Bible Conferences at Niagara Falls
to-date marketing techniques and used the latest busi- between 1876 and 1897. The resulting “Niagara Creed”
ness slang in urging its Christian soldiers to “hustle.” reaffirmed the literal truth of the Bible and the certain
The Salvation Army succeeded, in part, because it damnation of those not born again in Christ. By the
managed to bridge an emerging divide between Social 1910s, a network of churches and Bible institutes had
Gospel reformers and Protestants who were taking a emerged from these conferences. They called their
601
602 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
movement fundamentalism, based on their belief in conversion he had been a hard-drinking outfielder for
the fundamental truth of the Bible. the Chicago White Stockings. To advertise his revivals,
Fundamentalists and their allies made particularly Sunday often organized local men into baseball teams,
effective use of revival meetings. Unlike Social Gospel then put on his own uniform and played for both sides.
advocates, revivalists said little about poverty or earthly Through such feats and the fiery sermons that fol-
justice, focusing not on the matters of the world, but on lowed, Sunday offered a model of spiritual inspiration,
heavenly redemption. The pioneer modern evangelist manly strength, and political engagement. His revivals
was Dwight L. Moody, a former Chicago shoe sales- were thoroughly modern: marketed shrewdly, they
man and YMCA official who won fame in the 1870s. provided mass entertainment and the chance to meet a
Eternal life could be had for the asking, Moody prom- pro baseball player. Like other cultural developments
ised. His listeners needed only “to come forward and of the industrializing era, Billy Sunday’s popularity
take, take!” Moody’s successor, Billy Sunday, helped showed how Americans often adjusted to modernity:
bring evangelism into the modern era. More often than they adapted older beliefs and values, enabling them to
his predecessors, Sunday took political stances based endure in new forms.
on his Protestant beliefs. Condemning the “booze traf-
fic” was his greatest cause. Sunday also denounced
unrestricted immigration and labor radicalism. “If I
had my way with these ornery wild-eyed Socialists,”
SUMMARY
he once threatened, “I would stand them up before a Industrialization and new consumer practices created
firing squad.” Sunday supported some progressive foundations for modern American culture. While
reform causes; he opposed child labor, for example, middle-class families sought to preserve the Victorian
and advocated voting rights for women. But in other domestic ideal, a variety of factors transformed family
ways, his views anticipated the nativism and antiradi- life. Families had fewer children, and a substantial
calism that would dominate American politics after majority of young people achieved more education
World War I. than their parents had obtained. Across class and gen-
Billy Sunday, like other noted men of his era, broke der lines, Americans enjoyed athletics and the out-
free of Victorian practices and asserted his leadership doors, fostering the rise of environmentalism.
in a masculinized American culture. Not only was he Among an array of women’s reform movements,
a commanding presence on the stage, but before his the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union sought
CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER REVIEW 603
prohibition of liquor, but it also addressed issues such the results, including Theodore Dreiser’s scandalous
as domestic violence, poverty, and education. Members novel Sister Carrie, Mark Twain’s rejection of Christian
of women’s clubs pursued a variety of social and eco- faith, and the boldly modernist paintings displayed at
nomic reforms, while other women organized for race New York’s Armory Show. Science and modernism did
uplift and patriotic work. Gradually, the Victorian ideal not, however, displace religion. Newly arrived Catholics
of female moral superiority gave way to modern claims and Jews, as well as old-line Protestants, adapted their
for women’s equal rights. faith to the conditions of modern life. Foreign mis-
New intellectual currents, including Darwinism, sions, in the meantime, spread the Christian gospel
challenged Victorian certainties. In the arts, realist and around the world, with mixed results for those receiv-
naturalist writers rejected both romanticism and Vic– ing the message.
torian domesticity. Many Americans were shocked by
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Why did athletics become popular in the late- 2. What changes in women’s private and public lives
nineteenth-century United States? In what ways occurred in the decades after the Civil War, and
did this trend represent broader changes in Ameri- how did these affect women from different back-
can society and culture? grounds? Why do you think emphasis on the status
of “ladies” became so insistent in this era?
604 PART 6 CHAPTER REVIEW
3. Some historians argue that the changes brought by 5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING On the Part 6
industrialization caused Americans to become a thematic timeline (p. 543), review developments in
more secular people. To what extent do you agree “Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture” and “Environment and
or disagree, and why? Use evidence from this chap- Geography.” How did industrialization change
ter to make your case. Americans’ relationship to the outdoors — to natu-
ral environments? What connections do you see
4. What policy changes resulted, in part, from
between those changes and other, broader shifts in
Americans’ new zest for outdoor recreation? (You
American society and culture?
may also want to review Chapter 16, pp. 521 and
524–525 on John Wesley Powell, the creation of
Yellowstone, and early wildlife conservation.)
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE This chapter 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE This chapter contains sev-
explains cultural transformation as largely the eral depictions of domestic spaces, and also of
result of industrialization. That’s true, but it’s not women in public. After studying these images, how
the whole story: the Civil War also helped bring would you describe the ideal roles that Americans
about change. Organizers of the WCTU, for ex- of this era believed women should fulfill? Did the
ample, were distressed by alcoholism among the ideal differ, based on social and economic class?
industrial working class but also by the plight of Compare these images to the photographs of
veterans, some of whom anaesthetized their war women in this chapter. What differences do you see
wounds through heavy drinking. Review the mate- between the “ideal” depictions and the ways in
rial in Chapters 14 and 15, on the Civil War and its which real women appeared in front of the
aftermath, and then write an essay in which you camera?
explain how changes in American society during
the Civil War and Reconstruction laid the ground-
work for new controversies in the areas of race rela-
tions, reform, science, and religious faith.
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Patrick W. Carey, The Roman Catholics in America emerged in this period, and their impact on religious
(1996). A major synthesis of American Catholic faith.
history.
Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism (2004). Provides
Stephen Fox, The American Conservation Movement an excellent account of the negotiations between
(1985). A history of the rise of environmentalism. Americanized Jews and new Eastern European
immigrants in this era.
Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow (1996). An
influential account of African American women’s David Shi, Facing Facts (1994). Explores the impact
activism in reform and politics. of realism and scientific thinking on the arts and
intellectual life.
Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity (2001). A good
introduction to the new ideas of masculinity that
CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER REVIEW 605
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t Comstock Act
KEY TURNING POINT: Some historians have argued that the 1890s was a crucial turning
point in American culture — a decade when “modernity arrived.” Based on events in this chap-
ter, do you agree?
“Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise
19
C H A P T E R
and Reform of Industrial Cities
1880–1917
C
THE NEW METROPOLIS larence Darrow, a successful law- IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
The Shape of the Industrial City yer from Ashtabula, Ohio, felt iso- How did the rise of large cities shape
Newcomers and Neighborhoods lated and overwhelmed when he American society and politics?
City Cultures moved to Chicago in the 1880s. “There is
no place so lonely to a young man as a great city,” Darrow later wrote. “When I walked
GOVERNING THE along the street I scanned every face I met to see if I could not perchance discover some-
GREAT CITY one from Ohio.” Instead, he saw a “sea of human units, each intent upon hurrying by.”
Urban Machines At one point, Darrow felt near despair. “If it had been possible I would have gone back
The Limits of Machine to Ohio,” he wrote, “but I didn’t want to borrow the money, and I dreaded to confess
Government
defeat.”
CRUCIBLES OF In the era of industrialization, more and more Americans had experiences like
PROGRESSIVE REFORM Darrow’s. In 1860, the United States was rural: less than 20 percent of Americans lived
Fighting Dirt and Vice in an urban area, defined by census takers as a place with more than 2,500 inhabitants.
The Movement for Social By 1910, more Americans lived in cities (42.1 million) than had lived in the entire nation
Settlements on the eve of the Civil War (31.4 million). The country now had three of the world’s ten
Cities and National Politics largest cities (America Compared, p. 611). Though the Northeast remained by far the
most urbanized region, the industrial Midwest was catching up. Seattle, San Francisco,
and soon Los Angeles became hubs on the Pacific coast. Even the South boasted of
thriving Atlanta and Birmingham. As journalist Frederic C. Howe declared in 1905,
“Man has entered on an urban age.”
The scale of industrial cities encouraged experiments that ranged from the amuse-
ment park to the art museum, the skyscraper to the subway. Yet the city’s complexity
also posed problems, some of them far worse than Clarence Darrow’s loneliness. Broth-
els flourished, as did slums, pollution, disease, and corrupt political machines. Fast-
talking hucksters enjoyed prime opportunities to fleece newcomers; homeless men
slept in the shadows of the mansions of the superrich. One African American observer
called the city “Civilization’s Inferno.” The locus of urgent problems, industrial cities
became important sites of political innovation and reform.
606
George Bellows, New York George Bellows, a member of the so-called Ash Can school of painters
(Chapter 18), was fascinated by urban life. In this 1911 painting, he depicts Madison Square during a
winter rush-hour, crowded with streetcars, horse-drawn wagons, and pedestrians. If you could enter the
world of this painting, what might you hear, feel, and smell, as well as see? What does Bellows suggest
about the excitement and challenges of life in the big city? Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.
607
608 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
genius of this school was architect Louis Sullivan, the entrances to the theaters blaze out on the sidewalk.”
whose “vertical aesthetic” of set-back windows and At the end of a long working day, city dwellers flocked
strong columns gave skyscrapers a “proud and soaring” to this free entertainment. Nothing, declared an
presence and offered plentiful natural light for workers observer, matched the “festive panorama” of Broadway
inside. Chicago pioneered skyscraper construction, “when the lights are on.”
but New York, with its unrelenting demand for prime
downtown space, took the lead by the late 1890s. The
fifty-five-story Woolworth Building, completed in 1913, Newcomers and Neighborhoods
marked the beginning of Manhattan’s modern skyline. Explosive population growth made cities a world of
new arrivals, including many young women and men
The Electric City One of the most dramatic urban arriving from the countryside. Traditionally, rural
amenities was electric light. Gaslight, produced from daughters had provided essential labor for spinning
coal gas, had been used for residential light since the and weaving cloth, but industrialization relocated
early nineteenth century, but gas lamps were too dim those tasks from the household to the factory. Finding
to brighten streets and public spaces. In the 1870s, as themselves without a useful household role, many
generating technology became commercially viable, farm daughters sought paid employment. In an age of
electricity proved far better. Electric arc lamps, installed declining rural prosperity, many sons also left the
in Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia in farm and — like immigrants arriving from other
1878, astonished viewers with their brilliant illumina- countries — set aside part of their pay to help the folks
tion. Electric streetlights soon replaced gaslights on at home. Explaining why she moved to Chicago, an
city streets. African American woman from Louisiana declared, “A
Before it had a significant effect on industry, elec- child with any respect about herself or hisself wouldn’t
tricity gave the city its modern tempo. It lifted eleva- like to see their mother and father work so hard and
tors, illuminated department store windows, and above earn nothing. I feel it my duty to help.”
all, turned night into day. Electric streetlights made America’s cities also became homes for millions of
residents feel safer; as one magazine put it in 1912, “A overseas immigrants. Most numerous in Boston were
light is as good as a policeman.” Nightlife became less the Irish; in Minneapolis, Swedes; in other northern
risky and more appealing. One journalist described cities, Germans. Arriving in a great metropolis, immi-
Broadway in 1894: “All the shop fronts are lighted, and grants confronted many difficulties. One Polish man,
610 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
who had lost the address of his American cousins, felt in Pittsburgh, for example, the carpentry shop was
utterly alone after disembarking at New York’s main German, the hammer shop Polish, and the blooming
immigration facility, Ellis Island, which opened in mill Serbian. “My people . . . stick together,” observed a
1892. Then he heard a kindly voice in Polish, offering son of Ukrainian immigrants. But he added, “We who
to help. “From sheer joy,” he recalled, “tears welled up are born in this country . . . feel this country is our
in my eyes to hear my native tongue.” Such experiences home.”
suggest why immigrants stuck together, relying on rel- Patterns of settlement varied by ethnic group. Many
atives and friends to get oriented and find jobs. A high Italians, recruited by padroni, or labor bosses, found
degree of ethnic clustering resulted, even within a work in northeastern and Mid-Atlantic cities. Their
single factory. At the Jones and Laughlin steelworks urban concentration was especially marked after the
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
The World’s Biggest This table lists the ten largest cities in the world, by population in millions, at the
start of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.
Cities, 1800–2000
TABLE 19.1
1800 1900
City Population City Population
Beijing, China 1.10 million London, United Kingdom 6.48 million
London, United Kingdom 0.86 New York, United States 4.24
Guangzhou, China 0.80 Paris, France 3.33
Istanbul, Turkey 0.57 Berlin, Germany 2.42
Paris, France 0.55 Chicago, United States 1.72
Hangzhou, China 0.50 Vienna, Austria 1.66
Edo (later Tokyo), Japan 0.49 Tokyo, Japan 1.50
Naples (later part of Italy) 0.43 St. Petersburg, Russia 1.44
Suzhou, China 0.39 Philadelphia, United States 1.42
Osaka, Japan 0.38 Manchester, United Kingdom 1.26
2000
City Population
Tokyo, Japan 34.45 million
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Mexico City, Mexico 18.02
1. In each year, how many of the world’s ten larg-
New York City/Newark, United States 17.85 est cities were located in the United States? In
what regions of the world were the other cities
São Paulo, Brazil 17.10 located? What does this tell us about the United
States’s role in the world at each of these histori-
Mumbai (Bombay), India 16.09
cal moments?
Delhi, India 15.73 2. The figures from 1900 and 2000 show, to a large
degree, the effects of industrialization. What
Shanghai, China 13.22 does the table suggest about its impact?
Calcutta, India 13.06
Buenos Aires, Argentina 11.85
Los Angeles, United States 11.81
611
612 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
1880s, as more and more laborers arrived from south- while New York Jews patronized a lively Yiddish theater.
ern Italy. The attraction of America was obvious to one By 1903, Italians in Chicago had sixty-six mutual aid
young man, who had grown up in a poor southern societies, most composed of people from a particular
Italian farm family. “I had never gotten any wages of province or town. These societies collected dues from
any kind before,” he reported after settling with his members and paid support in case of death or disabil-
uncle in New Jersey. “The work here was just as hard as ity on the job. Mutual benefit societies also functioned
that on the farm; but I didn’t mind it much because I as fraternal clubs. “We are strangers in a strange coun-
would receive what seemed to me like a lot.” Amadeo try,” explained one member of a Chinese tong, or
Peter Giannini, who started off as a produce merchant mutual aid society, in Chicago. “We must have an orga-
in San Francisco, soon turned to banking. After the San nization (tong) to control our country fellows and
Francisco earthquake in 1906, his Banca d’Italia was develop our friendship.”
the first financial institution to reopen in the Bay Sharply defined ethnic neighborhoods such as San
area. Expanding steadily across the West, it eventually Francisco’s Chinatown, Italian North Beach, and Jewish
became Bank of America. Hayes Valley grew up in every major city, driven by
Like Giannini’s bank, institutions of many kinds both discrimination and immigrants’ desire to stick
sprang up to serve ethnic urban communities. together (Map 19.1). In addition to patterns of ethnic
Throughout America, Italian speakers avidly read the and racial segregation, residential districts in almost all
newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano; Jews, the industrial cities divided along lines of economic class.
Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward, also published Around Los Angeles’s central plaza, Mexican neigh-
in New York. Bohemians gathered in singing societies, borhoods diversified, incorporating Italians and Jews.
CHAPTER 19 “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917 613
I.
S
Lower East Side preferred to live in
ttan
neighborhoods populated by those
nha
from their home regions of Eastern
Ma
Queens
Europe. Their sense of a common E. 21st St.
identity made for a remarkable
Avenue A
Third Ave.
Av e n u e B
flowering of educational, cultural,
and social institutions on the Jewish
Avenue C
Union Brooklyn
East Side. Ethnic neighborhoods Square
Park
became a feature of almost every Hebrew Technical E. 14th St.
American city. School for Boys
Fou
Ave.
Ave.
thr
East River
Ave
S e co n d
Tompkins
F i rs t
Square Park
Public
School 63
Music School
Settlement E. 3rd. St. Houston St.
Ferr y
t on St .
E. Hous
W. Houston St. Beth
urg
Hamedrash Williamsb
Hagadol Bridge
Bowe
Broadway
Allen Hebrew
St. Sheltering
Delancey Grand St.
ry
House
People’s Machzike
Talmud Hebrew Technical Ferry
St .
Bath
Torah School for Girls
St .
Grand
Educational Jewish Maternity Hospital
Alliance .
Yiddish Rialto St Home for the Aged
Ca n Cl
al .
St
in
Henry Street
Baxter St.
S t.
to
n
si o Settlement
n
vi
St
Di
.
oe
nr
Thalia Israel Mo Beth Israel Hospital
Worth S t. Theater Elchanan
Yeshiva
Ma
nh
City Br atta
Hall idg n
e
Park
Later, as the plaza became a site for business and tour- more than 50 percent African American. Blacks also
ism, immigrants were pushed into working-class settled in northern cities, albeit not in the numbers that
neighborhoods like Belvedere and Boyle Heights, would arrive during the Great Migration of World
which sprang up to the east. Though ethnically diverse, War I. Though blacks constituted
East Los Angeles was resolutely working class; middle- only 2 percent of New York City’s PLACE EVENTS
class white neighborhoods grew up predominantly in population in 1910, they already IN CONTEXT
West Los Angeles. numbered more than 90,000. What opportunities did
African Americans also sought urban opportuni- These newcomers confronted con- urban neighborhoods
ties. In 1900, almost 90 percent of American blacks still ditions even worse than those for provide to immigrants and
African Americans, and
lived in the South, but increasing numbers had moved foreign-born immigrants. Relent-
what problems did these
to cities such as Baton Rouge, Jacksonville, Montgom- lessly turned away from manufac-
newcomers face?
ery, and Charleston, all of whose populations were turing jobs, most black men and
614 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
women took up work in the service sector, becoming Evansville, Indiana (1903); and Springfield, Illinois
porters, laundrywomen, and domestic servants. (1908). By then, one journalist observed, “In every
Blacks faced another urban danger: the so-called important Northern city, a distinct race-problem already
race riot, an attack by white mobs triggered by street exists which must, in a few years, assume serious
altercations or rumors of crime. One of the most viru- proportions.”
lent episodes occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1906. Whether they arrived from the South or from
The violence was fueled by a nasty political campaign Europe, Mexico, or Asia, working-class city residents
that generated sensational false charges of “negro needed cheap housing near their jobs (Map 19.2). They
crime.” Roaming bands of white men attacked black faced grim choices. As urban land values climbed,
Atlantans, invading middle-class black neighborhoods speculators tore down houses that were vacated by
and in one case lynching two barbers after seizing them middle-class families moving away from the industrial
in their shop. The rioters killed at least twenty-four core. In their place, they erected five- or six-story tene-
blacks and wounded more than a hundred. The disease ments, buildings that housed twenty or more families
of hatred was not limited to the South. Race riots broke in cramped, airless apartments (Figure 19.1). Tenements
out in New York City’s Tenderloin district (1900); fostered rampant disease and horrific infant mortality.
CHAPTER 19 “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917 615
City Cultures
Despite their dangers and problems, industrial cities
could be exciting places to live. In the nineteenth cen-
tury, white middle-class Protestants had set the cul-
tural standard; immigrants and the poor were expected
to follow cues from their betters, seeking “uplift” and
respectability. But in the cities, new mass-based enter-
tainments emerged among the working classes, espe-
cially youth. These entertainments spread from the
working class to the middle class — much to the dis-
tress of many middle-class parents. At the same time,
cities became stimulating centers for intellectual life.
MAP 19.2
The residential areas of
City limits, The Expansion of Chicago, 1865–1902
1902
the city tended to spread
out along elevated (light- N In 1865, Chicagoans depended on horsecar
rail) railroad lines and lines to get around town. By 1900, the
streetcar tracks. These new W E
forms of mass transit city limits had expanded enormously and
enabled people living in
distant neighborhoods to
S so had the streetcar service, which was by
reach the central business then electrified. Elevated trains eased the
district and other places congestion on downtown streets. Ongoing
of employment.
extension of the streetcar lines, some beyond
the city limits, ensured that suburban
Note that the number Lake development would continue as well.
of square miles within
Chicago’s city limits Michigan
increased more than
300 percent between
1865 and 1902.
Central
Business
District
Note that some areas of the old city Horsecar lines, 1865
were not used for either residence
or industry. Most of these were large City limits,
regional parks or undeveloped land. 1865
0 1 2 3 miles
FIGURE 19.1
Floor Plan of a Dumbbell Tenement
In a contest for a design that met an
1879 requirement for every room to have
a window, the dumbbell tenement won. The
interior indentation, which created an airshaft
Air Shaft between adjoining buildings, gave the tene-
(Toilets) ment its “dumbbell” shape. But what was
10'
touted as a model tenement demonstrated
Bed Bed Bed
Fire Escape
Parlor Kitchen Room Room Room Kitchen Parlor instead the futility of trying to reconcile
Public Hall maximum land usage with decent housing.
Bed Bed Bed Each floor contained four apartments of three
Parlor Kitchen Room Room Room Kitchen Parlor or four rooms, the largest only 10 by 11 feet.
Air Shaft The two toilets in the hall became filthy or
50'0" broke down under daily use by forty or more
people. The narrow airshaft provided almost
no light for the interior rooms and served
mainly as a dumping ground for garbage.
So deplorable were these tenements that
they became the stimulus for the next wave
of New York housing reform.
CHAPTER 19 “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917 617
chance to come by ferry, escape the hot city, and enjoy with the right). Ragtime became wildly popular among
roller coasters, lagoon plunges, and “hootchy-kootchy” audiences of all classes and races who heard in its infec-
dance shows. Among the amazed observers was Cuban tious rhythms something exciting — a decisive break
revolutionary José Martí, working as a journalist in with Victorian hymns and parlor songs.
the United States. “What facilities for every pleasure!” For the master of the genre, composer Scott Joplin,
Martí wrote. “What absolute absence of any outward ragtime was serious music. Joplin, the son of former
sadness or poverty! . . . The theater, the photographers’ slaves, grew up along the Texas-Arkansas border and
booth, the bathhouses!” He concluded that Coney Island took piano lessons as a boy from a German teacher. He
epitomized America’s commercial society, driven not and other traveling performers introduced ragtime to
by “love or glory” but by “a desire for gain.” Similar national audiences at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
parks grew up around the United States. By the sum- Seeking to elevate African American music and secure
mer of 1903, Philadelphia’s Willow Grove counted a broad national audience, Joplin warned pianists, “It
three million visitors annually; so did two amusement is never right to play ‘Ragtime’ fast.” But his instruc-
parks outside Los Angeles. tions were widely ignored. Young Americans embraced
ragtime.
Ragtime and City Blues Music also became a They also embraced each other, as ragtime ushered
booming urban entertainment. By the 1890s, Tin in an urban dance craze. By 1910, New York alone had
Pan Alley, the nickname for New York City’s song- more than five hundred dance halls. In Kansas City,
publishing district, produced such national hit tunes shocked guardians of morality counted 16,500 dancers
as “A Bicycle Built for Two” and “My Wild Irish Rose.” on the floor on a Saturday night; Chicago had 86,000.
The most famous sold more than a million copies of Some young Polish and Slovak women chose restau-
sheet music, as well as audio recordings for the newly rant jobs rather than domestic service so they would
invented phonograph. To find out what would sell, have free time to visit dance halls “several nights a
publishers had musicians play at New York’s working- week.” New dances like the Bunny Hug and Grizzly
class beer gardens and dance halls. One publishing Bear were overtly sexual: they called for close body
agent, who visited “sixty joints a week” to test new songs, contact and plenty of hip movement. In fact, many of
declared that “the best songs came from the gutter.” these dances originated in brothels. Despite widespread
African American musicians brought a syncopated denunciation, dance mania quickly spread from the
beat that began, by the 1890s, to work its way into urban working classes to rural and middle-class youth.
mainstream hits like “A Hot Time in the Old Town By the 1910s, black music was achieving a central
Tonight.” Black performers became stars in their own place in American popular culture. African American
right with the rise of ragtime. This music, apparently trumpet player and bandleader W. C. Handy, born in
named for its ragged rhythm, combined a steady beat Alabama, electrified national audiences by performing
in the bass (played with the left hand on the piano) music drawn from the cotton fields of the Mississippi
with syncopated, off-beat rhythms in the treble (played Delta. Made famous when it reached the big city, this
618 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
music became known as the blues. Blues music spoke practical necessity. “If I did not have a man,” declared
of hard work and heartbreak, as in Handy’s popular hit one waitress, “I could not get along on my wages.” In
“St. Louis Blues” (1914): the anonymous city, there was not always a clear line
between working-class treats and casual prostitution.
Got de St. Louis Blues jes blue as I can be,
Dating and casual sex were hallmarks of an urban
Dat man got a heart lak a rock cast in the sea,
Or else he wouldn’t gone so far from me. world in which large numbers of residents were young
and single. The 1900 census found that more than
Blues spoke to the emotional lives of young urbanites 20 percent of women in Detroit, Philadelphia, and
who were far from home, experiencing dislocation, Boston lived as boarders and lodgers, not in family
loneliness, and bitter disappointment along with the units; the percentage topped 30 percent in St. Paul and
thrills of city life. Like Coney Island and other leisure Minneapolis. Single men also found social opportuni-
activities, ragtime and blues helped forge new collec- ties in the city. One historian has called the late nine-
tive experiences in a world of strangers. teenth century the Age of the Bachelor, a time when
Ragtime and blues spread quickly and had a pro- being an unattached male lost its social stigma. With
found influence on twentieth-century American cul- boardinghouses, restaurants, and abundant personal
ture. By the time Handy published “St. Louis Blues,” services, the city afforded bachelors all the comforts of
composer Irving Berlin, a Russian Jewish immigrant, home and, on top of that, an array of men’s clubs,
was introducing altered ragtime pieces into musical saloons, and sporting events.
theater — which eventually transferred to radio and Many industrial cities developed robust gay sub-
film. Lyrics often featured sexual innuendo, as in the cultures. New York’s gay underground, for example,
title of Berlin’s hit song “If You Don’t Want My Peaches included an array of drinking and meeting places, as
(You’d Better Stop Shaking My Tree).” The popularity well as clubs and drag balls. Middle-class men, both
of such music marked the arrival of modern youth cul- straight and gay, frequented such venues for entertain-
ture. Its enduring features included “crossover” music ment or to find companionship. One medical student
that originated in the black working class and a com- remembered being taken to a ball at which he was
mercial music industry that brazenly appropriated startled to find five hundred gay and lesbian couples
African American musical styles. waltzing to “a good band.” By the 1910s, the word queer
had come into use as slang for homosexual. Though
Sex and the City In the city, many young people harassment was frequent and moral reformers like
found parental oversight weaker than it had been Anthony Comstock issued regular denunciations of sex-
before. Amusement parks and dance halls helped fos- ual “degeneracy,” arrests were few. Gay sex shows and
ter the new custom of dating, which like other cultural saloons were lucrative for those who ran them (and for
innovations emerged first among the working class. police, who took bribes to look the other way, just as
Gradually, it became acceptable for a young man to they did for brothels). The exuberant gay urban subcul-
escort a young woman out on the town for commercial ture offered a dramatic challenge to Victorian ideals.
entertainments rather than spending time at home
under a chaperone’s watchful eye. Dating opened a new High Culture For elites, the rise of great cities offered
world of pleasure, sexual adventure, and danger. Young an opportunity to build museums, libraries, and other
women headed to dance halls alone to meet men; the cultural institutions that could flourish only in major
term gold digger came into use to describe a woman who metropolitan centers. Millionaires patronized the arts
wanted a man’s money more than the man himself. partly to advance themselves socially but also out of a
But young women, not men, proved most vulner- sense of civic duty and national pride. As early as the
able in the system of dating. Having less money to 1870s, symphony orchestras emerged in Boston and
spend because they earned half or less of men’s wages, New York. Composers and conductors soon joined
working-class girls relied on the “treat.” Some tried to Europe in new experiments. The Metropolitan Opera,
maintain strict standards of respectability, keenly founded in 1883 by wealthy businessmen, drew enthusi-
aware that their prospects for marriage depended on a astic crowds to hear the innovative work of Richard
virtuous reputation. Others became so-called charity Wagner. In 1907, the Met shocked audiences by present-
girls, eager for a good time. Such young women, one ing Richard Strauss’s sexually scandalous opera Salome.
investigator reported, “offer themselves to strangers, Art museums and natural history museums also
not for money, but for presents, attention and plea- became prominent new institutions in this era. The
sure.” For some women, sexual favors were a matter of nation’s first major art museum, the Corcoran Gallery
CHAPTER 19 “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917 619
of Art, opened in Washington, D.C., in 1869, while New the corruption afflicting America’s urban governments.
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art settled into its per- Steffens used dramatic language to expose “swindling”
manent home in 1880. In the same decades, public politicians. He claimed, for example, that the mayor of
libraries grew from modest collections into major urban Minneapolis had turned his city over to “outlaws.” In
institutions. The greatest library benefactor was steel St. Louis, “bribery was a joke,” while Pittsburgh’s Demo-
magnate Andrew Carnegie, who announced in 1881 cratic Party operated a private company that handled
that he would build a library in any town or city that most of the city’s street-paving projects — at a hefty
was prepared to maintain it. By 1907, Carnegie had profit. Historians now believe that Steffens and other
spent more than $32.7 million to establish over a thou- middle-class crusaders took a rather extreme view
sand libraries throughout the United States. of urban politics; the reality was more complex. But
charges of corruption could hardly be denied. As
Urban Journalism Patrons of Carnegie’s libraries industrial cities grew with breathtaking speed, they
could read, in addition to books, an increasing array of posed a serious problem of governance.
mass-market newspapers. Joseph Pulitzer, owner of
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and New York World, led the
way in building his sales base with sensational investi- Urban Machines
gations, human-interest stories, and targeted sections In the United States, cities relied largely on private
covering sports and high society. By the 1890s, Pulitzer developers to build streetcar lines and provide urgently
faced a challenge from William Randolph Hearst needed water, gas, and electricity. This preference for
(Thinking Like a Historian, p. 620). The arrival of business solutions gave birth to what one urban his-
Sunday color comics featuring the “Yellow Kid” gave torian calls the “private city” — an urban environment
such publications the name yellow journalism, a derog- shaped by individuals and profit-seeking businesses.
atory term for mass-market newspapers. Hearst’s and Private enterprise, Americans believed, spurred great
Pulitzer’s sensational coverage was often irresponsible. innovations — trolley cars, electric lighting, skyscrap-
In the late 1890s, for example, their papers helped whip ers — and drove urban real estate development. Invest-
up frenzied pressure for the United States to declare ment opportunities looked so tempting, in fact, that
war against Spain (Chapter 21). But Hearst and Pulitzer new cities sprang up almost overnight from the ruins
also exposed scandals and injustices. They believed of a catastrophic Chicago fire in 1871 and a major San
their papers should challenge the powerful by speaking Francisco earthquake in 1906. Real estate interests
to and for ordinary Americans. were often instrumental in encouraging streetcar lines
Along with Hearst’s and Pulitzer’s stunt reporters, to build outward from the central districts.
other urban journalists also worked to promote reform. When contractors sought city business, or saloon-
New magazines such as McClure’s introduced national keepers needed licenses, they turned to political
audiences to reporters such as Ida Tarbell, who exposed machines: local party bureaucracies that kept an
the machinations of John D. Rockefeller, and David unshakable grip on both elected and appointed public
Graham Phillips, whose “Treason of the Senate,” pub- offices. A machine like New York’s infamous Tammany
lished in Cosmopolitan in 1906, documented the defer- Society — known by the name of its meeting place,
ence of U.S. senators — especially Republicans — to Tammany Hall — consisted of layers of political func-
wealthy corporate interests. Theodore Roosevelt dis- tionaries. At the bottom were precinct captains who
missed such writers as muckrakers who focused too knew every city neighborhood and block; above them
much on the negative side of American life. The term were ward bosses and, at the top, powerful citywide
stuck, but muckrakers’ influence was profound. They leaders, who had usually started at the bottom and
inspired thousands of readers to get involved in reform worked their way up. Machines dispensed jobs and
movements and tackle the problems caused by patronage, arranged for urban services, and devoted
industrialization. their energies to staying in office, which they did, year
after year, on the strength of their political clout and
popularity among urban voters.
Governing the Great City For constituents, political machines acted as a
rough-and-ready social service agency, providing jobs
One of the most famous muckrakers was Lincoln for the jobless or a helping hand for a bereaved family.
Steffens, whose book The Shame of the Cities (1904), Tammany ward boss George Washington Plunkitt,
first published serially in McClure’s magazine, denounced for example, reported that he arranged housing for
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Among the businesses that served urban consumers were mass-market news-
Making Mass Media: papers. Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World led the way in the 1880s; a decade
later Pulitzer had a powerful rival in the New York Journal, owned by William
Newspaper Empires Randolph Hearst.
1. R. F. Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid” comic, The World, much abused piece of bronze called the “BARTHOLDI
August 9, 1896. Pulitzer and Hearst introduced statue.” It begins to look as if the World may nurse it to a
Sunday color comics, including “The Yellow Kid” successful termination by raising funds enough through
(shown here on a bicycle). Working-class readers public contributions to complete the pedestal upon which
instantly recognized the “kid,” slang that then it is to stand. Success to the enterprise.
referred to working-class immigrant children. The
Kid, like other boys of his age, wore skirts; tene-
ment toddlers’ heads were shaved to discourage 3. “HOMELESS, HOPELESS! Nellie Bly in a Night
lice. Haunt of the City’s Wretchedest of Women,” New
York World, February 9, 1896. Pulitzer and Hearst
hired many “stunt reporters.” The most famous
was Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, who took her pen
name, Nellie Bly, from a popular song. In 1892,
sponsored by the World, Bly beat the record in
Jules Verne’s famous novel Around the World
in Eighty Days, circumnavigating the world in
seventy-two days. She filed many investigative
pieces such as this one.
An old woman stood with her back against the side of a
building. Over her head was a ragged shawl that had once
been red. Around her knees hung a limp and shapeless
calico skirt. The rain and sleet were falling steadily and
lay thick and slushy upon the streets.
I shivered as I stopped to watch. . . . If the old woman
felt the cold she gave no sign. She stood motionless, peep-
ing around the corner. Her eyes were fixed upon the door
of the Oak Street Station-House.
Just then three small boys, unmindful of the weather,
came trudging down the street . . . industriously gather-
ing every white spot that showed upon the pavement to
add to the black snowballs they held in their wet red hands.
Turning the corner suddenly they came upon the old
woman. For a second they paused and looked at her and
she glared at them. It reminded me of the way dogs
The World, Sunday, August 9, 1896.
behave when they turn a corner and espy a cat. . . . The
old woman started on a frantic hobble across the street,
2. Editorial, Wheeling Register, April 6, 1885. A West the boys after her. Their black snowballs landed squarely
Virginia newspaper commented on a campaign by and soakingly against her bent back. . . . The old woman
the New York World to complete the Statue of Lib- shouted things as she ran, things that do not sound well
erty. Parts of the statue, donated by France, were and are never by any chance reproduced in print, but they
languishing in New York City parks. seemed to increase the delight of the fiendish boys. . . .
The New York World is a liberty-loving journal. It has She could hobble she made for the station-house and the
taken the responsibility of being foster mother to that boys pursued her, pelting her.
620
4. Lewis Wickes Hine, newsboys sell-
ing at a Hartford, Connecticut
saloon, 9:30 P.M., March 1909.
In addition to subscriptions and
sales at newsstands, newspapers
sold bundles of one hundred
papers to boys and girls, who
resold as many as they could. Pho-
tographer Lewis Hine’s caption,
included below, suggests one
strategy for selling papers. Hine,
working for the National Child
Labor Committee, took many such
images.
A common case of “team work.” The
smaller boy . . . goes into one of the
saloons and sells his “last” papers. Then
comes out and his brother gives him
more. Joseph said, “Drunks are me best Library of Congress.
customers. . . . Dey buy me out so I kin
go home.” He sells every afternoon and
6. Circulation statistics for the New York World from
night. Extra late Saturday. At it again at
N. W. Ayer and Son’s American Newspaper Annual
6 a.m.
and Directory, 1910.
5. Newsboys strike coverage, New York Herald-
Tribune, July 25, 1899. As sales plummeted after Political No. of
the War of 1898, Pulitzer and other newspaper Edition affiliation Pages Circulation
titans raised the cost of a newspaper bundle, for Morning Democratic 16 361,412
children who resold them, from 50 to 60 cents. Evening Independent 12–16 410,259
Newsboys struck. They failed to get the 50-cent
Sunday Democratic 56–72 459,663
price reinstated, but the World and other compa-
nies agreed to buy back unsold papers, which they
had not done before. Kid Blink, the strike leader, Sources: (2) Wheeling Register, April 6, 1885; (3) New York World, February 9, 1896;
was blind in one eye. (5) New York Herald-Tribune, July 25, 1899; (6) N. W. Ayer and Son’s American
Newspaper Annual and Directory (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer and Son, 1910), 623.
The newsboys’ strike gathered new strength last night in a
monster mass meeting held at New Irving Hall. . . . “Kid”
Blink, who has been made Grand Master Workman of the
ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
union, led the procession. . . . The unbiased spectator last
1. Based on these sources, why do you think “yellow jour-
evening could not fail to be impressed with the resolute, nalism” was popular and profitable? What audiences did
manly fight the little fellows are making. . . . it serve, and how?
SPEECH OF “KID” BLINK 2. Consider the tone and point of view of sources 1, 3,
. . . Dis is de time when we’se got to stick togedder like and 5. What do they suggest about American attitudes
toward the urban poor?
glue! But der’s one ting I want ter say before I goes any
3. What do these sources say about how Pulitzer and
furder. I don’t believe in getting’ no feller’s papers frum Hearst viewed their role as publishers? How might we
him and tearin’ ’em up. I know I done it. (Cries of “You compare their newspaper empires to other corporations
bet you did!”) But I’m sorry fer it. No! der ain’t nuttin in of the industrial era (Chapter 17)?
dat. We know wot we wants and we’ll git it. . . . Dem 10
cents is as good ter us as to de millionaires — maybe bet- PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
ter. . . . We’ll strike and restrike till we get it. . . . We’ll Write a brief essay in which you explain the ways in which
the rise of mass-market newspapers might have contributed
stick togedder like plaster, won’t we, boys? to and helped to publicize calls for progressive reform.
The boys answered that they would.
621
622 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
families after their apartments burned, “fix[ing] them To see a longer excerpt of the Jane Addams essay,
up until they get things runnin’ again.” Plunkitt was an along with other primary sources from this period,
Irishman, and so were most Tammany Hall leaders. see Sources for America’s History.
City Garbage
“How to get rid of the garbage?” was a question that bedeviled every American city. The difficulties of keep-
ing up are all too clear in this ground-level photograph by the great urban investigator Jacob Riis, looking
down Tammany Street in New York City around 1890. Museum of the City of New York.
saying, “The Mayor and the Aldermen are Invited to had abolished the early-nineteenth-century system of
Swim Here.” As cities expanded, the limitations of outdoor relief, which provided public support for the
political machines became increasingly clear. indigent. Fearing the system promoted laziness among
the poor, middle-class reformers had insisted on pri-
vate, not public, charity. Even cities that continued to
The Limits of Machine Government provide outdoor relief in the 1890s were overwhelmed
The scale of urban problems became dramatically evi- by the magnitude of the crisis. Flooded with “tramps,”
dent in the depression of the 1890s, when unemploy- police stations were forced to end the long-standing
ment reached a staggering 25 percent in some cities. practice of allowing homeless individuals to sleep inside.
Homelessness and hunger were rampant; newspapers Faced with this crisis, many urban voters proved
nationwide reported on cases of starvation, despera- none too loyal to the machines when better alterna-
tion, and suicide. To make matters worse, most cities tives arose. Cleveland, Ohio, for example, experienced
624 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
eighty-three labor strikes between 1893 and 1898. vegetable gardens. Though some people ridiculed
Workers’ frustration centered on corrupt businesses “Pingree’s Potato Patches,” the gardens helped feed
with close ties to municipal officials. The city’s Central thousands of Detroit’s working people during the
Labor Union, dissatisfied with Democrats’ failure to harsh depression years. By 1901, a coalition of reform-
address its concerns, worked with middle-class allies ers who campaigned against New York’s Tammany
to build a thriving local branch of the People’s Party Hall began to borrow ideas from Pingree and other
(Chapter 20). Their demands for stronger government mayors. In the wealthier wards of New York, they
measures, especially to curb corporate power, culmi- promised to reduce crime and save taxpayer dollars.
nated in citywide protests in 1899 during a strike In working-class neighborhoods, they vowed to pro-
against the hated streetcar company. That year, more vide affordable housing and municipal ownership of
than eight thousand workers participated in the city’s gas and electricity. They defeated Tammany’s candi-
annual Labor Day parade. As they passed the mayor’s dates, and though they did not fulfill all of their prom-
reviewing stand, the bands fell silent and the unions ises, they did provide more funding for overcrowded
furled their flags in a solemn protest against the may- public schools.
or’s failure to support their cause. Reformers also experimented with new ways of
To recapture support from working-class Cleve- organizing municipal government itself. After a devas-
landers, Democrats made a dramatic change in 1901, tating hurricane in 1900 killed an estimated six thou-
nominating Tom Johnson for mayor. Johnson, a sand people in Galveston, Texas, and destroyed much
reform-minded businessman, advocated municipal of the city, rebuilders adopted a commission system
ownership of utilities and a tax system in which that became a nationwide model for efficient govern-
“monopoly and privilege” bore the main burdens. ment. Leaders of the National Municipal League advised
(Johnson once thanked Cleveland’s city appraisers for cities to elect small councils and hire professional city
raising taxes on his own mansion.) Johnson’s comfort- managers who would direct operations like a corporate
able victory transformed Democrats into Cleveland’s executive. The league had difficulty persuading politi-
leading reform party. While the new mayor did not ful- cians to adopt its business-oriented model; it won its
fill the whole agenda of the Central Labor Union and greatest victories in young, small cities like Phoenix,
its allies, he became an advocate of publicly owned util- Arizona, where the professional classes held political
ities, and one of the nation’s most famous and innova- power. Other cities chose, instead, to enhance demo-
tive reformers. cratic participation. As part of the Oregon System,
Like Johnson, other mayors began to oust machines which called for direct voting on key political ques-
and launch ambitious programs of reform. Some mod- tions, Portland voters participated in 129 municipal
eled their municipal governments on those of Glasgow, referendum votes between 1905 and 1913.
Scotland; Düsseldorf, Germany; and other European
cities on the cutting edge of innovation. In Boston,
Mayor Josiah Quincy built public baths, gyms, swim-
ming pools, and playgrounds and provided free public Crucibles of Progressive
concerts. Like other mayors, he battled streetcar com-
panies to bring down fares. The scope of such projects
Reform
varied. In 1912, San Francisco managed to open one The challenges posed by urban life presented rich
small municipally owned streetcar line to compete opportunities for experimentation and reform. As hap-
with private companies. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the pened in Cleveland with Tom Johnson’s election as
other hand, elected socialists who experimented with a mayor, working-class radicals and middle-class reform-
sweeping array of measures, including publicly subsi- ers often mounted simultaneous challenges to political
dized medical care and housing. machines, and these combined pressures led to dra-
Republican Hazen Pingree, matic change. Many reformers pointed to the plight of
PLACE EVENTS mayor of Detroit from 1890 to the urban poor, especially children. Thus it is not sur-
IN CONTEXT 1897, was a particularly noted prising that progressivism, an overlapping set of move-
How did reformers try reformer who worked for better ments to combat the ills of industrialization (Chapter
to address the limits of streets and public transportation. 20), had important roots in the city. In the slums and
machine government? During the depression, Pingree tenements of the metropolis, reformers invented new
To what extent did they
opened a network of vacant forms of civic participation that shaped the course of
succeed?
city-owned lots as community national politics.
CHAPTER 19 “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917 625
The public health movement became one of the Park, where city people could stroll, rest, and contem-
era’s most visible and influential reforms. In cities, the plate natural landscapes. By the turn of the twentieth
impact of pollution was obvious. Children played on century, the “City Beautiful” movement arose to advo-
piles of garbage, breathed toxic air, and consumed poi- cate more and better urban park spaces. Though most
soned food, milk, and water. Infant mortality rates parks still featured flower gardens and tree-lined paths,
were shocking: in the early 1900s, a baby born to a they also made room for skating rinks, tennis courts,
Slavic woman in an American city had a 1 in 3 chance baseball fields, and swimming pools. Many included
of dying in infancy. Outraged, reformers mobilized to play areas with swing sets and seesaws, promoted by
demand safe water and better garbage collection. the National Playground Association as a way to keep
Hygiene reformers taught hand-washing and other urban children safe and healthy.
techniques to fight the spread of tuberculosis.
Americans worked in other ways to make indus- Closing Red Light Districts Distressed by the
trial cities healthier and more beautiful to live in. Many commercialization of sex, reformers also launched a
municipalities adopted smoke-abatement laws, though campaign against urban prostitution. They warned, in
they had limited success with enforcement until the dramatic language, of the threat of white slavery, alleg-
post–World War I adoption of natural gas, which ing (in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary)
burned cleaner than coal. Recreation also received that large numbers of young white women were being
attention. Even before the Civil War, urban planners kidnapped and forced into prostitution. In The City’s
had established sanctuaries like New York’s Central Perils (1910), author Leona Prall Groetzinger wrote
that young women arrived from the countryside “burn- The crusade against prostitution accomplished its
ing with high hope and filled with great resolve, but the main goal, closing brothels, but in the long term it
remorseless city takes them, grinds them, crushes worsened the conditions under which many prosti-
them, and at last deposits them in unknown graves.” tutes worked. Though conditions in some brothels
Practical investigators found a more complex real- were horrific, sex workers who catered to wealthy
ity: women entered prostitution as a result of many fac- clients made high wages and were relatively protected
tors, including low-wage jobs, economic desperation, by madams, many of whom set strict rules for clients
abandonment, and often sexual and domestic abuse. and provided medical care for their workers. In the
Women who bore a child out of wedlock were often wake of brothel closings, such women lost control of
shunned by their families and forced into prostitution. the prostitution business. Instead, almost all sex work-
Some working women and even housewives under- ers became “streetwalkers” or “call girls,” more vulner-
took casual prostitution to make ends meet. For decades, able to violence and often earning lower wages than
female reformers had tried to “rescue” such women they had before the antiprostitution crusade began.
and retrain them for more respectable employments,
such as sewing. Results were, at best, mixed. Efforts to
curb demand — that is, to focus on arresting and pun- The Movement for Social Settlements
ishing men who employed prostitutes — proved unpop- Some urban reformers focused their energies on build-
ular with voters. ing a creative new institution, the social settlement.
Nonetheless, with public concern mounting over These community welfare centers investigated the
“white slavery” and the payoffs machine bosses exacted plight of the urban poor, raised funds to address urgent
from brothel keepers, many cities appointed vice com- needs, and helped neighborhood residents advocate on
missions in the early twentieth century. A wave of their own behalf. At the movement’s peak in the early
brothel closings crested between 1909 and 1912, as twentieth century, dozens of social settlements oper-
police shut down red light districts in cities nation- ated across the United States. The most famous, and
wide. Meanwhile, Congress passed the Mann Act one of the first, was Hull House on Chicago’s West Side,
(1910) to prohibit the transportation of prostitutes founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and her companion
across state lines. Ellen Gates Starr. Their dilapidated mansion, flanked
by saloons in a neighborhood council. The women, Addams wrote, had shown “civic
TRACE CHANGE
of Italian and Eastern European enterprise and moral conviction” in carrying out the
OVER TIME
immigrants, served as a spark project themselves.
What were the origins
of social settlements, and plug for community improve- Social settlements took many forms. Some attached
how did they develop ment and political reform. themselves to preexisting missions and African Ameri-
over time? The idea for Hull House came can colleges. Others were founded by energetic college
partly from Toynbee Hall, a graduates. Catholics ran St. Elizabeth Center in St.
London settlement that Addams and Starr had visited Louis; Jews, the Boston Hebrew Industrial School.
while touring Europe. Social settlements also drew Whatever their origins, social settlements were, in
inspiration from U.S. urban missions of the 1870s and Addams’s words, “an experimental effort to aid in the
1880s. Some of these, like the Hampton Institute, had solution of the social and industrial problems which
aided former slaves during Reconstruction; others, like are engendered by the modern condition of life in a
Grace Baptist in Philadelphia, arose in northern cities. great city.”
To meet the needs of urban residents, missions offered Settlements served as a springboard for many other
employment counseling, medical clinics, day care cen- projects. Settlement workers often fought city hall to get
ters, and sometimes athletic facilities in cooperation better schools and lobbied state legislatures for new
with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). workplace safety laws. At Hull House, Hamilton inves-
Jane Addams, a daughter of the middle class, first tigated lead poisoning and other health threats at local
expected Hull House to offer art classes and other cul- factories. Her colleague Julia Lathrop investigated the
tural programs for the poor. But Addams’s views plight of teenagers caught in the criminal justice system.
quickly changed as she got to know her new neighbors She drafted a proposal for separate juvenile courts and
and struggled to keep Hull House open during the persuaded Chicago to adopt it. Pressuring the city to
depression of the 1890s. Addams’s views were also experiment with better rehabilitation strategies for juve-
influenced by conversations with fellow Hull House niles convicted of crime, Lathrop created a model for
resident Florence Kelley, who had studied in Europe juvenile court systems across the United States.
and returned a committed socialist. Dr. Alice Hamilton, Another example of settlements’ long-term impact
who opened a pediatric clinic at Hull House, wrote that was the work of Margaret Sanger, a nurse who moved
Addams came to see her settlement as “a bridge to New York City in 1911 and volunteered with a Lower
between the classes. . . . She always held that this bridge East Side settlement. Horrified by women’s suffering
was as much of a help to the well-to-do as to the poor.” from constant pregnancies — and remembering her
Settlements offered idealistic young people “a place devout Catholic mother, who had died young after
where they could live as neighbors and give as much as bearing eleven children — Sanger launched a crusade
they could of what they had.” for what she called birth control. Her newspaper col-
Addams and her colleagues believed that working- umn, “What Every Girl Should Know,” soon garnered
class Americans already knew what they needed. What an indictment for violating obscenity laws. The public-
they lacked were resources to fulfill those needs, as well ity that resulted helped Sanger launch a national birth
as a political voice. These, settlement workers tried to control movement.
provide. Hull House was typical in offering a bath- Settlements were thus a crucial proving ground for
house, playground, kindergarten, and day care center. many progressive experiments, as well as for the emerg-
Some settlements opened libraries and gymnasiums; ing profession of social work, which transformed the
others operated penny savings banks and cooperative provision of public welfare. Social workers rejected the
kitchens where tired mothers could purchase a meal at older model of private Christian charity, dispensed by
the end of the day. (Addams humbly closed the Hull well-meaning middle-class volunteers to those in need.
House kitchen when she found that her bland New Instead, social workers defined themselves as profes-
England cooking had little appeal for Italians; her sional caseworkers who served as advocates of social
coworker, Dr. Alice Hamilton, soon investigated the justice. Like many reformers of the era, they allied
health benefits of garlic.) At the Henry Street Settle- themselves with the new social sciences, such as soci-
ment in New York, Lillian Wald organized visiting ology and economics, and undertook statistical surveys
nurses to improve health in tenement wards. Addams, and other systematic methods for gathering facts. Social
meanwhile, encouraged local women to inspect the work proved to be an excellent opportunity for edu-
neighborhood and bring back a list of dangers to health cated women who sought professional careers. By 1920,
and safety. Together, they prepared a complaint to city women made up 62 percent of U.S. social workers.
CHAPTER 19 “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917 629
“These Dead Bodies Entire books have been written about the catastrophic 1911 fire at the Triangle
Shirtwaist Company in New York City. The following excerpts are from docu-
ments by four contemporaries who in various ways played a part in the Triangle
Were the Answer”: tragedy and its aftermath. Note the different audiences that these speakers and
authors were addressing and the lessons that each one draws from this horrific
The Triangle Fire event.
William G. Shepherd, Reporter This was not an inevitable disaster which man could nei-
William G. Shepherd’s eyewitness account appeared in ther foresee nor control. We might have foreseen it, and
newspapers across the country. Working for the United some of us did; we might have controlled it, but we chose
Press, Shepherd phoned the story to his editor as he not to do so. . . . It is not a question of enforcement of law
watched the unfolding tragedy. nor of inadequacy of law. We have the wrong kind of laws
and the wrong kind of enforcement. Before insisting upon
I was walking through Washington Square when a puff inspection and enforcement, let us lift up the industrial
of smoke issuing from a factory building caught my eye. standards so as to make conditions worth inspecting, and,
I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I if inspected, certain to afford security to workers. . . . And
saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the when we go before the legislature of the state, and demand
building. I learned a new sound — a more horrible sound increased appropriations in order to ensure the possibility
than description can picture. It was the thud of a speed- of a sufficient number of inspectors, we will not forever be
ing, living body on a stone sidewalk. . . . put off with the answer: We have no money.
I looked up — saw that there were scores of girls at The lesson of the hour is that while property is good,
the windows. The flames from the floor below were beat- life is better; that while possessions are valuable, life is
ing in their faces. Somehow I knew that they, too, must priceless. The meaning of the hour is that the life of the
come down, and something within me — something I lowliest worker in the nation is sacred and inviolable,
didn’t know was there — steeled me. and, if that sacred human right be violated, we shall
I even watched one girl falling. Waving her arms, stand adjudged and condemned before the tribunal
trying to keep her body upright until the very instant of God and history.
she struck the sidewalk, she was trying to balance her-
self. Then came the thud — then a silent, unmoving pile
of clothing and twisted, broken limbs. . . . Rose Schneiderman, Trade Unionist
On the sidewalk lay heaps of broken bodies. A police- Rose Schneiderman also spoke at the Metropolitan Opera
man later went about with tags, which he fastened with House meeting. At age thirteen, she had gone to work in
wire to the wrists of the dead girls, numbering each with a garment factory like Triangle Shirtwaist’s and, under the
a lead pencil, and I saw him fasten tag no. 54 to the wrist tutelage of the Women’s Trade Union League, had become
of a girl who wore an engagement ring. . . . a labor organizer. The strike she mentions in her speech
The floods of water from the firemen’s hose that ran into was popularly known as the Uprising of the 30,000, a
the gutter were actually stained red with blood. I looked nearly spontaneous walkout in 1909 that launched the
upon the heap of dead bodies and I remembered these girls union movement in the women’s garment trades.
were the shirtwaist makers. I remembered their great strike
of last year in which these same girls had demanded more I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I
sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you
shops. These dead bodies were the answer. good people of the public and we have found you want-
ing. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews
and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know
Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi what these things are today; the iron teeth are our neces-
A week after the fire, on April 2, 1911, a memorial meet- sities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift
ing was held at the Metropolitan Opera House. One of the machinery close to which we must work, and the rack
speakers, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a prominent figure in is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the
New York reform circles, made the following remarks. minute they catch on fire.
630
This is not the first time girls have been burned alive own way will you tell the jury everything you did, every-
in the city. . . . Every year thousands of us are maimed. thing you said, and everything you saw from the moment
The life of men and women is so cheap and property is you first saw flames.”
so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters The question was put in precisely the same words that
little if 146 of us are burned to death. the District Attorney had put it, and little Rose started her
We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and answer with exactly the same word that she had started it
you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, to the District Attorney . . . and the only change in her
brothers, and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every recital was that Rose left out one word. And then Rose
time the workers come out in the only way they know was asked, “Didn’t you leave out a word that you put in
to protest against conditions which are unbearable the when you answered it before?” . . . So Rose started to
strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily repeat to herself the answer [laughter], and as she came to
upon us . . . [and] beats us back, when we rise, into the the missing word she said, “Oh, yes!” and supplied it; and
conditions that make life unbearable. thereupon the examiner went on to an entirely different
I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. subject. . . . [W]hen again he [asked her to repeat her
Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my expe- story] . . . Rose started with the same word and finished
rience it is up to the working people to save themselves. with the same word, her recital being identical with her
The only way they can save themselves is by a strong first reply to the same question.
working-class movement. The jurymen were not weeping. Rose had not hurt the
case, and the defendants were acquitted; there was not a
word of reflection at any time during that trial upon poor
Max D. Steuer, Lawyer
little Rose.
After finding physical evidence of the locked door that
had blocked escape from the fire, New York’s district attor- Source: Excerpt from Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle of Industrial Democracy by
ney brought manslaughter charges against the Triangle Leon Stein, copyright © 1977 by Leon Stein. Used by permission of Quadrangle Books,
an imprint of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this
proprietors, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who hired in material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly
their defense the best, highest-priced trial attorney in to Random House LLC for permission.
631
632 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
Shocked by this horrific event, that was far more ethnically, racially, and religiously
EXPLAIN
New Yorkers responded with an diverse.
CONSEQUENCES
outpouring of anger and grief that In the era of industrialization, some rural and
How did urban reform
movements impact state
crossed ethnic, class, and religious native-born commentators warned that immigrants
and national politics? boundaries. Many remembered were “inferior breeds” who would “mongrelize” Amer-
that, only a year earlier, shirtwaist ican culture. But urban political leaders defended
workers had walked off the job to protest abysmal cultural pluralism, expressing appreciation — even
safety and working conditions — and that the owners admiration — for immigrants, including Catholics and
of Triangle, among other employers, had broken the Jews, who sought a better life in the United States. At
strike. Facing demands for action, New York State the same time, urban reformers worked to improve
appointed a factory commission that developed a conditions of life for the diverse residents of American
remarkable program of labor reform: fifty-six laws cities. Cities, then, and the innovative solutions pro-
dealing with such issues as fire hazards, unsafe posed by urban leaders, held a central place in America’s
machines, and wages and working hours for women consciousness as the nation took on the task of pro-
and children. The chairman and vice chairman of the gressive reform.
commission were Robert F. Wagner and Alfred E.
Smith, both Tammany Hall politicians then serving in
the state legislature. They established the commission,
participated fully in its work, and marshaled party reg-
SUMMARY
ulars to pass the proposals into law — all with the After 1865, American cities grew at an unprecedented
approval of Tammany. The labor code that resulted was rate, and urban populations swelled with workers from
the most advanced in the United States. rural areas and abroad. To move burgeoning popula-
Tammany’s response to the Triangle fire showed tions around the city, cities pioneered innovative forms
that it was acknowledging its need for help. The social of mass transit. Skyscrapers came to mark urban sky-
and economic problems of the industrial city had out- lines, and new electric lighting systems encouraged
grown the power of party machines; only stronger nightlife. Neighborhoods divided along class and eth-
state and national laws could bar industrial firetraps, nic lines, with the working class inhabiting crowded,
alleviate sweatshop conditions, and improve slums. shoddily built tenements. Immigrants developed new
Politicians like Wagner and Smith saw that Tammany ethnic cultures in their neighborhoods, while racism
had to change or die. The fire had unforeseen further followed African American migrants from the country
consequences. Frances Perkins, a Columbia University to the city. At the same time, new forms of popular
student who witnessed the horror of Triangle workers urban culture bridged class and ethnic lines, challeng-
leaping from the windows to their deaths, decided she ing traditional sexual norms and gender roles. Popular
would devote her efforts to the cause of labor. Already journalism rose to prominence and helped build rising
active in women’s reform organizations, Perkins went sympathy for reform.
to Chicago, where she volunteered for several years Industrial cities confronted a variety of new politi-
at Hull House. In 1929, she became New York State’s cal challenges. Despite notable achievements, estab-
first commissioner of labor; four years later, during lished machine governments could not address urban
the New Deal (Chapter 23), Franklin D. Roosevelt problems through traditional means. Forward-looking
appointed her as U.S. secretary of labor — the first politicians took the initiative and implemented a range
woman to hold a cabinet post. of political, labor, and social reforms. Urban reformers
The political aftermath of the Triangle fire demon- also launched campaigns to address public health,
strated how challenges posed by industrial cities morals, and welfare. They did so through a variety of
pushed politics in new directions, transforming urban innovative institutions, most notably social settlements,
government and initiating broader movements for which brought affluent Americans into working-class
reform. The nation’s political and cultural standards neighborhoods to learn, cooperate, and advocate on
had long been set by native-born, Protestant, middle- behalf of their neighbors. Such projects began to
class Americans. By 1900, the people who thronged to increase Americans’ acceptance of urban diversity and
the great cities helped build America into a global indus- their confidence in government’s ability to solve the
trial power — and in the process, created an electorate problems of industrialization.
CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER REVIEW 633
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What were the major features of industrial cities 4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Using the
that arose in the United States in the late nineteenth thematic timeline on page 543, consider some of
and early twentieth centuries? What institutions the ways in which mass migrations of people — both
and innovations helped make urban life from other countries and from places within the
distinctive? United States — shaped industrial cities. How did
this influence American society, culture, and
2. What were the limitations and achievements of
national identity?
urban governments run by political machines?
3. Why did so many reform initiatives of the early
twentieth century emerge in large cities? What
were some of those initiatives, and what was their
political impact?
634 PART 6 CHAPTER REVIEW
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE In Chapter 17 we tion? What remedies would each suggest? On what
explored the activities of agrarian reformers and points would they have disagreed? Can you imag-
labor unions who protested the impact of industri- ine any issues on which they might have worked
alization on their lives. In Chapters 18 and 19 we together? What does this suggest about the oppor-
considered the work of middle-class and urban tunities and limits of alliance building, in the late
reformers who sought to address some of the same 1800s and early 1900s, across class and geographic
conditions. Chronologically, their work over- lines?
lapped: note, for example, that Jane Addams
2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Imagine that you have just
founded Hull House in 1889, just as the Farmers’
arrived in a big American city in the early 1900s.
Alliance was reaching a peak of activism and work-
Look carefully at all the images in this chapter and
ers had organized the Knights of Labor and
group them under two categories: (1) problems and
American Federation of Labor. Imagine a conver-
dangers you might have encountered as a new
sation among the following individuals: a rural
urban resident; (2) sights and opportunities that
man or woman active in the Farmers’ Alliance; a
might have been appealing and exciting to you as a
skilled workman who joined the American
newcomer. On balance, do you think you would
Federation of Labor; an urban antiprostitution
have wanted to stay, or turn around and head back
reformer; and a middle-class volunteer who worked
home? Why? What factors might have shaped your
in a settlement house. How would each have
decision?
described the problems caused by industrializa-
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910). An Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood (1982). A poignant
inspiring must-read by a great American reformer. account of Progressive Era antiprostitution campaigns
and their tragic impact on sex workers.
George Chauncey, Gay New York (1994). A ground-
breaking study of the rise of urban gay subcultures. David Von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire That Changed
America (2003). The most recent account of the fire
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements (1986). Explores
and its consequences.
urban working-class dating and the world of young
working-class women.
Harold Platt, The Electric City (1991). A study of how
electricity shaped the urban industrial society and
economy.
CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER REVIEW 635
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1889 t Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr found Hull House in Chicago
KEY TURNING POINTS: On the timeline above, what tipping points can you identify when
Americans began to propose political solutions for urban industrial problems? What issues did
they emphasize?
Whose Government? Politics,
20
C H A P T E R
Populists, and Progressives
1880–1917
W
REFORM VISIONS, e are living in a grand and IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
1880–1892 wonderful time,” declared Kan- In the Progressive Era, how and why
Electoral Politics After sas political organizer Mary E. did reformers seek to address the
Reconstruction Lease in 1891. “Men, women and children problems of industrial America? To
The Populist Program are in commotion, discussing the mighty what extent did they succeed?
problems of the day.” This “movement
THE POLITICAL
EARTHQUAKES among the masses,” she said, was based on the words of Jesus: “Whatsoever ye would
OF THE 1890s that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” Between the 1880s and the
Depression and Reaction 1910s, thousands of reformers like Lease confronted the problems of industrialization.
Democrats and the “Solid Lease herself stumped not only for the People’s Party, which sought more government
South” regulation of the economy, but also for the Knights of Labor and Woman’s Christian
New National Realities Temperance Union (WCTU), as well as for women’s suffrage and public health.
Between the end of Reconstruction and the start of World War I, political reformers
REFORM RESHAPED, focused on four main goals: cleaning up politics, limiting the power of big business,
1901–1912
reducing poverty, and promoting social justice. Historians call this period of agitation
Theodore Roosevelt as President
and innovation the Progressive Era. In the 1880s and 1890s, labor unions and farm
Diverse Progressive Goals groups took the lead in critiquing the industrial order and demanding change. But over
The Election of 1912 time, more and more middle-class and elite Americans took up the call, earning the
WILSON AND THE NEW name progressives. On the whole, they proposed more limited measures than farmer-
FREEDOM, 1913–1917 labor advocates did, but since they had more political clout, they often had greater
Economic Reforms success in winning new laws. Thus both radicals and progressives played important roles
Progressive Legacies in advancing reform.
No single group defined the Progressive Era. On the contrary, reformers took oppo-
site views on such questions as immigration, racial justice, women’s rights, and imperial-
ism. Leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, initially hostile to the
sweeping critiques of capitalism offered by radicals, gradually adopted bolder ideas.
Dramatic political changes influenced the direction of reform. Close party competition
in the 1880s gave way to Republican control between 1894 and 1910, followed by a
period of Democratic leadership during Wilson’s presidency (1913–1919). Progressives
gave the era its name, not because they acted as a unified force, but because they
engaged in diverse, energetic movements to improve America.
636
Coxey’s Army on the March, 1894 During the severe depression of the 1890s, Ohio businessman Jacob
Coxey organized unemployed men for a peaceful march to the U.S. Capitol to plead for an emergency jobs program.
They called themselves the Commonweal of Christ but won the nickname “Coxey’s Army.” Though it failed to win
sympathy from Congress, the army’s march on Washington — one of the nation’s first — inspired similar groups to
set out from many cities. Here, Coxey’s group nears Washington, D.C. The man on horseback is Carl Browne, one of
the group’s leaders and a flamboyant publicist. As the marchers entered Washington, Coxey’s seventeen-year-old
daughter Mamie, dressed as the “Goddess of Peace,” led the procession on a white Arabian horse. Library of Congress.
637
638 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
MAP 20.1
7 The Presidential Elections of 1880, 1884, and 1888
55
5 13 The anatomy of hard-fought, narrowly won presidential
3 35
10
11 4 campaigns is evident in this trio of electoral maps. First,
6
3
11
22
29
9 note the equal division of the popular vote between
3 21 15 3 Republicans and Democrats. Second, note the persistent
5 11
3 5
5 15 12
10
8 pattern of electoral votes, as states overwhelmingly went
12
1 6 7 to the same party in all three elections. Here, we can
8 10 11 identify who determined the outcomes — “swing” states,
8 8 such as New York and Indiana, whose vote shifted every
4 four years and always in favor of the winning candidate.
1880
Between 1880 and 1917, the stature and powers of the U.S. president grew in
Making Modern relation to those of Congress. Presidential campaign techniques also changed.
The sources below shed light on candidates’ increasing public visibility and new
Presidents uses of campaign funds.
1. Household sewing machine company adver- 2. Account of Benjamin Harrison’s front porch cam-
tisement, 1880s. President Grover Cleveland, paign in Indianapolis, New York Tribune, October
a bachelor, married young Frances Folsom in a 12, 1888. For much of the nineteenth century, pres-
quiet White House ceremony in June 1886. The idential candidates left campaigning to their allies.
bride, a college graduate who was twenty-six A man who promoted himself risked appearing
years younger than her husband, proved wildly vain and greedy for office. By the 1880s, Republi-
popular. The Clevelands never authorized polit- cans began to run “front porch campaigns”: party
ical or commercial use of the First Lady’s image. leaders arranged for delegations to visit the candi-
Nonetheless, over their objections, young women date at home.
organized “Frankie Cleveland Clubs” to march in This morning General Harrison’s home was surrounded
Democratic parades, while companies such as this by visitors, who had arrived in the city in the night and
one capitalized on her popularity in advertising. on the early morning trains. . . . There were many relic-
hunters among the early visitors and they swarmed about
the house, taking, without protest from any one, whatever
they were pleased to seize. There is no longer a fence about
the house to be converted into relics, and so the visitors
are taking the trees now. The shrubbery has almost disap-
peared. . . . The informal reception began as soon as the
General got up from [breakfast] and continued until
afternoon. The first delegation was composed of rep-
resentatives of the Cincinnati Republican Clubs. . . . A
delegation from Belleville, Ill., which . . . had patiently
waited for more than four hours, were next invited to
enter the house, and they were accorded the usual hand-
shaking reception. . . .
The parade early in the afternoon was the principal
feature of the day’s demonstration. Two hundred or more
clubs participated and they came from all parts of the
State, representing various classes and interests. . . . There
were mounted men and men on foot, women in wagons
and women in uniform marching, brass bands. . . .
On the balcony beside General Harrison stood his
wife, with several of her lady friends.
640
3. Henry George on money in politics, Wheeling 5. “Expenses of the Campaign,” Springfield Daily
Register, September 19, 1896. Reformer Henry Republican, September 22, 1900.
George was among many who warned of the It is estimated that it costs $25,000,000 to elect a president
influence of corporate contributions, solicited of the United States. The annual allowance which the Brit-
brilliantly in 1896 by William McKinley’s cam- ish Parliament makes to Queen Victoria is $1,925,000 . . .
paign manager, Mark Hanna. Short of funds, indicat[ing] that it is much cheaper to maintain a queen
Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan permanently than it is to elect a president. . . .
undertook exhausting nationwide speaking More than half of the money spent by both national
tours. and state committees goes for campaign orators. During
There is no question which of the great parties represents the next three months it is estimated that the Republican
the house of Have and which the house of Want. . . . national committee will have 3000 “spellbinders” traveling
Democrat[s] are cramped for want of funds. . . . On the out of the Chicago headquarters and 2500 who will report
other hand there is practically “no end of money” at the to the New York office. . . .
disposal of the McKinley committees. . . . The next largest item on the campaign bill is that for
As for the banks, the great railroad companies and printing. . . . Each of the national committees will spend
insurance companies, who, even in ordinary times find at least $500,000 in this way. Before the campaign is over
it to their interest to help financially one, and frequently it is estimated that both the Republican and Democratic
both, sides . . . , their purse strings are unloosed more committees will send out 100,000,000 separate docu-
freely than ever before, but only in one direction. ments. . . .
The danger to a republican form of government of a One more important branch of the work is the two
money interest in politics is so clear that it needs not to house-to-house canvasses of the voters. . . . Hundreds of
be dwelt upon. . . . The steady tendency of American leg- men are employed in each state, and the work of tabulat-
islation, national and state, has not merely been to create ing and classifying the results is by no means small. . . .
great special interests, but in the very effort to control Some novel campaign methods will be adopted by
them for the benefit of the public, to concern them both the great parties during the campaign just opening.
directly in politics. The Republicans, it is stated, have decided to use phono-
graphs. . . . Some eloquent party man . . . will deliver a
4. Theodore Roosevelt on the campaign trail, speech before a phonographic record, from which any
1904. Having watched Bryan’s electrifying tours, desired number of copies may be made . . . and sent far
Theodore Roosevelt became the first winning out into the rural districts, where it would be impossible
candidate to adopt the practice. In 1904, after for the more popular and important orators to go. . . .
a summer front porch campaign, he undertook Democrats, on the other hand, will pin their faith to
a thirty-day speaking tour of the West. To cover stereopticons [an early slide projector].
as much ground as possible, Roosevelt often
spoke from the last car of his train.
Sources: (2) New York Tribune, October 12, 1888; (3) Wheeling Register, September 19,
1896; (5) Springfield Daily Republican, September 22, 1900.
Library of Congress.
641
642 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
took up some of the farmers’ demands, forestalling cre- Nominating former Union gen-
UNDERSTAND
ation of a separate farmer-labor party in that state. But eral and Greenback-Labor leader POINTS OF VIEW
other politicians listened to Alliance pleas and did James B. Weaver for president, the How did the political goals
nothing. It was a response they came to regret. Populists, as they became known, of Populists differ in this
Republicans utterly dominated Kansas, a state captured a million votes in period from those of Dem-
chock-full of Union veterans and railroad boosters. But November and carried four west- ocrats and Republicans?
politicians there treated the Kansas Farmers’ Alliance ern states (Map 20.2).
with contempt. In 1890, the Kansas Alliance joined In recognizing an “irrepressible conflict between
with the Knights of Labor to create a People’s Party. capital and labor,” Populists split from the mainstream
They then stunned the nation by capturing four-fifths parties, calling for stronger government to protect
of the lower house of the Kansas legislature and most of ordinary Americans. “We believe,” declared their Omaha
the state’s congressional seats. The victory electrified Platform (1892), “that the power of government — in
labor and agrarian radicals nationwide. In July 1892, other words, of the people — should be expanded as
delegates from these groups met at Omaha, Nebraska, rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent
and formally created the national People’s Party. people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to
MAP 20.2 C A NA DA
The Heyday of Western Populism, 1892 WASH.
23%
This map shows the percentage of the popular vote won MONT. N.DAK.
MINN.
8% 50%
by James B. Weaver, the People’s Party candidate, in the ORE.
presidential election of 1892. Except in California and 44%
IDAHO S.DAK. WIS.
Montana, the Populists won broad support across the 53% WYO. 37%
West and genuinely threatened the established parties 47% IOWA
NEBR.
in that region. NEVADA 45% ILL.
64% UTAH
TERR. COLO.
55% KAN. MO.
CALIF. 50.03%
9%
ARIZ. OKLA.
N. MEX. TERR. ARK.
TERR.
PACIFIC TERR.
MISS.
OCEAN LA.
TEXAS
24%
Populist party victory
Populist party wins N
20–50% of popular vote
Populist party gains less W E
than 20% of vote
Gulf of
Territories ineligible to vote M E XIC O Mexico
S
644 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
By 1908, every southern state had state on roadbuilding and other projects, under equally
TRACE CHANGE
adopted such measures. cruel conditions. All these developments depended on
OVER TIME
The impact of disenfranchise- a political Solid South in which Democrats exercised
How did politics change
in the South between the ment can hardly be overstated almost complete control.
1880s and the 1910s? (Map 20.3). Across the South, The impact of the 1890s counterrevolution was
voter turnout plunged, from dramatically illustrated in Grimes County, a cotton-
above 70 percent to 34 percent or even lower. Not only growing area in east Texas where blacks comprised
blacks but also many poor whites ceased to vote. Since more than half of the population. African American
Democrats faced virtually no opposition, action shifted voters kept the local Republican Party going after
to the “white primaries,” where Democratic candidates Reconstruction and regularly sent black representa-
competed for nominations. Some former Populists tives to the Texas legislature. Many local white Populists
joined the Democrats in openly advocating white dismissed Democrats’ taunts of “negro supremacy,”
supremacy. The racial climate hardened. Segregation and a Populist-Republican coalition swept the county
laws proliferated. Lynchings of African Americans elections in 1896 and 1898. But after their 1898 defeat,
increasingly occurred in broad daylight, with crowds Democrats in Grimes County organized a secret broth-
of thousands gathered to watch. erhood and forcibly prevented blacks from voting in
The convict lease system, which had begun to take town elections, shooting two in cold blood. The
hold during Reconstruction, also expanded. Blacks Populist sheriff proved unable to bring the murderers
received harsh sentences for crimes such as “vagrancy,” to justice. Reconstituted in 1900 as the White Man’s
often when they were traveling to find work or if they Party, Democrats carried Grimes County by an over-
could not produce a current employment contract. By whelming margin. Gunmen then laid siege to the
the 1890s, Alabama depended on convict leasing for Populist sheriff ’s office, killed his brother and a friend,
6 percent of its total revenue. Prisoners were over- and drove the wounded sheriff out of the county. The
whelmingly black: a 1908 report showed that almost White Man’s Party ruled Grimes County for the next
90 percent of Georgia’s leased convicts were black; out fifty years.
of a white population of 1.4 million, only 322 were in
prison. Calling attention to the torture and deaths of
prisoners, as well as the damaging economic effect of New National Realities
their unpaid labor, reformers, labor unions, and While their southern racial policies were abhorrent,
Populists protested the situation strenuously. But the national Democrats simultaneously amazed the
“reforms” simply replaced convict leasing with the country in 1896 by embracing parts of the Populists’
chain gang, in which prisoners worked directly for the radical farmer-labor program. They nominated for
Lynching in Texas
Lynchings peaked between 1890 and 1910; while most
common in the South, they occurred in almost every
state, from Oregon to Minnesota to New York. After
many lynchings — such as this one in the town of Center,
Texas, in 1920 — crowds posed to have their pictures
taken. Commercial photographers often, as in this case,
produced photographic postcards to sell as souvenirs.
What do we make of these gruesome rituals? Who is in
the crowd, and who is not? What do we learn from the
fact that this group of white men, some of whom may
have been responsible for the lynching, felt comfortable
having their photographs recorded with the body? The
victim in this photograph, a young man named Lige
Daniels, was seized from the local jail by a mob that
broke down the prison door to kidnap and kill him. The
inscription on the back of the postcard includes informa-
tion about the killing, along with the instructions “Give
this to Bud From Aunt Myrtle.” Private Collection.
president a young Nebraska congressman, free-silver while they play whale.” The People’s Party never recov-
advocate William Jennings Bryan, who passionately ered from its electoral losses in 1894 and from
defended farmers and attacked the gold standard. Democrats’ ruthless opposition in the South. By 1900,
“Burn down your cities and leave our farms,” Bryan rural voters pursued reform elsewhere, particularly
declared in his famous convention speech, “and your through the new Bryan wing of the Democratic Party.
cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy Meanwhile, horrified Republicans denounced
our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every Bryan’s platform as anarchistic. Their nominee, the
city in the country.” He ended with a vow: “You shall Ohio congressman and tariff advocate William
not crucify mankind on a cross of gold.” Cheering del- McKinley, chose a brilliant campaign manager, Ohio
egates endorsed a platform calling for free silver and a coal and shipping magnate Marcus Hanna, who
federal income tax on the wealthy that would replace orchestrated an unprecedented corporate fund-raising
tariffs as a source of revenue. Democrats, long defend- campaign. Under his guidance, the party backed away
ers of limited government, were moving toward a more from moral issues such as prohibition of liquor and
activist stance. reached out to new immigrants. Though the popular
Populists, reeling from recent defeats, endorsed vote was closer, McKinley won big: 271 electoral votes
Bryan in the campaign, but their power was waning. to Bryan’s 176 (Map 20.4).
Populist leader Tom Watson, who wanted a separate Nationwide, as in the South, the realignment of the
program, more radical than Bryan’s, observed that 1890s prompted new measures to exclude voters.
Democrats in 1896 had cast the Populists as “Jonah Influenced by classical liberals’ denunciations of “unfit
648 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
4 6
3 1 1 1 44
9 15
3 1 5 36
3 4 12
4
3 9 32 6
13 1
8 22 10
3 24 15 3
6 12
4 17 13 8
8 10
11
12
1 8 9
11 13
9
15 8
1892 4
James B. Weaver
22 1,029,846 8.5
(Populist)
Minor parties 285,297 2.3
4 6
3 3 44
9 15
4 36
3 4 12
14 4
3 32 6
13 10
8 23
3 24 15 3
3 6 12
4 17 12 8
8 10 1 11
12
1 8 9
11 13
9
15 8
William Jennings Bryan 1896 4
parties increasingly turned to the direct primary, ask- Labor organizations also suf-
PLACE EVENTS
ing voters (in most states, registered party members) fered in the new political regime, IN CONTEXT
rather than party leaders to choose nominees. Another as federal courts invalidated many What developments
measure that enhanced democratic participation was regulatory laws passed to protect caused the percentage
the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution (1913), workers. As early as 1882, in the of Americans who voted
requiring that U.S. senators be chosen not by state leg- case of In re Jacobs, the New York to plunge after 1900,
islatures, but by popular vote. Though many states had State Court of Appeals struck and what role did courts
adopted the practice well before 1913, southern states down a public-health law that play in antidemocratic
had resisted, since Democrats feared that it might give prohibited cigar manufacturing developments?
more power to their political opponents. After disen- in tenements, arguing that such
franchisement, such objections faded and the measure regulation exceeded the state’s police powers. In
passed. Thus disenfranchisement enhanced the power Lochner v. New York (1905), the U.S. Supreme Court
of remaining voters in multiple, complicated ways. told New York State it could not limit bakers’ workday
At the same time, the Supreme Court proved hos- to ten hours because that violated bakers’ rights to
tile to many proposed reforms. In 1895, for example, it make contracts. Judges found support for such rulings
struck down a recently adopted federal income tax on in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,
the wealthy. The Court ruled that unless this tax was which prohibited states from depriving “any person
calculated on a per-state basis, rather than by the of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
wealth of individuals, it could not be levied without law.” Though the clause had been intended to protect
a constitutional amendment. It took progressives nine- former slaves, courts used it to shield contract rights,
teen years to achieve that goal. with judges arguing that they were protecting workers’
freedom from government regulation. Interpreted in Roosevelt, from a prominent family, had chosen an
this way, the Fourteenth Amendment was a major unconventional path. After graduating from Harvard,
obstacle to regulation of private business. he plunged into politics, winning a seat as a Republican
Farmer and labor advocates, along with urban pro- New York assemblyman. Disillusioned by his party’s
gressives who called for more government regulation, resistance to reform, he left politics in the mid-1880s
disagreed with such rulings. They believed judges, not and moved to a North Dakota ranch. But his cattle
state legislators, were overreaching. While courts treated herd was wiped out in the blizzards of 1887. He
employers and employees as equal parties, critics dis- returned east, winning appointments as a U.S. Civil
missed this as a legal fiction. “Modern industry has Service commissioner, head of the New York City
reduced ‘freedom of contract’ to a paper privilege,” Police Commission, and McKinley’s assistant secretary
declared one labor advocate, “a mere figure of rhetoric.” of the navy. An energetic presence in all these jobs,
Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., dis- Roosevelt gained broad knowledge of the problems
senting in the Lochner decision, agreed. If the choice America faced at the municipal, state, and federal
was between working and starving, he observed, how levels.
could bakers “choose” their hours of work? Holmes’s After serving in the War of 1898 (Chapter 21),
view, known as legal realism, eventually won judicial Roosevelt was elected as New York’s governor. In this
favor, but only after years of progressive and labor job, he pushed through civil service reform and a tax
activism. on corporations. Seeking to neutralize this progressive
and rather unpredictable political star, Republican
bosses chose Roosevelt as McKinley’s running mate in
Reform Reshaped, 1901–1912 1900, hoping the vice-presidency would be a political
dead end. Instead, they suddenly found Roosevelt in
William McKinley, a powerful presence in the White the White House. The new president, who called for
House, was no reformer. His victory was widely under- vigorous reform, represented a major shift for the
stood as a triumph for business and especially for Republicans.
industrial titans who had contributed heavily to his
campaign. But the depression of the 1890s, by subject- Antitrust Legislation Roosevelt blended reform
ing millions to severe hardship, had dramatically illus- with the needs of private enterprise, but on occasion he
trated the problems of industrialization. At the same challenged corporations in new ways. During a bitter
time, the success of McKinley’s campaign managers — 1902 coal strike, for example, he threatened to nation-
who spent more than $3.5 million, versus Bryan’s alize the big coal companies if their owners refused to
$300,000 — raised unsettling questions about corpo- negotiate with the miners’ union. The owners hastily
rate power. Once the crisis of the 1890s passed, many came to the table. Roosevelt also sought better enforce-
middle-class Americans proved ready to embrace pro- ment of the Interstate Commerce Act and Sherman
gressive ideas. The rise of such ideas was aided by his- Antitrust Act. He pushed through the Elkins Act
torical chance, when a shocking assassination put a (1903), which prohibited discriminatory railway rates
reformer in the White House. that favored powerful customers. That same year, he
created the Bureau of Corporations, empowered to
investigate business practices and bolster the Justice
Theodore Roosevelt as President Department’s capacity to mount antitrust suits. The
On September 14, 1901, only six months after William department had already filed such a suit against the
McKinley won his second face-off against Democrat Northern Securities Company, arguing that this com-
William Jennings Bryan, the president was shot as he bination of northwestern railroads had created a
attended the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
New York. He died eight days later. The murderer, Leon In a landmark decision in 1904, the Supreme Court
Czolgosz, was influenced by anarchists who had carried ordered Northern Securities dissolved.
out recent assassinations in Europe. Though Czolgosz That year, calling for every American to get what he
was American-born, many feared that McKinley’s vio- called a Square Deal, Roosevelt handily defeated
lent death was another warning of the threat posed by Democratic candidate Alton B. Parker. Now president
radical immigrants. As the nation mourned its third in his own right, Roosevelt stepped up his attack on
murdered president in less than four decades, Vice trusts. He regarded large-scale enterprise as the natu-
President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn into office. ral tendency of modern industry, but he hoped to
CHAPTER 20 Whose Government? Politics, Populists, and Progressives, 1880–1917 651
what he called “Anglo-Saxon” superiority, Roosevelt He won battles to restrict lobbying and to give Wiscon-
nonetheless incurred the wrath of white supremacists sin citizens the right of recall — voting to remove
by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White unpopular politicians from office — and referendum —
House. Roosevelt called for elite “best men” to enter voting directly on a proposed law, rather than leaving
politics, but he also defended the dignity of labor. it in the hands of legislators. Continuing his career in
In 1908, Roosevelt chose to retire, bequeathing the the U.S. Senate, La Follette, like Roosevelt, advocated
Republican nomination to talented administrator increasingly aggressive measures to protect workers
William Howard Taft. Taft portrayed himself as and rein in corporate power.
Roosevelt’s man, though he maintained a closer rela-
tionship than his predecessor with probusiness Repub- Protecting the Poor The urban settlement move-
licans in Congress. In 1908, Taft faced off against ment called attention to poverty in America’s industrial
Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who, eloquent as cities. In the emerging social sciences, experts argued
ever, attacked Republicans as the party of “plutocrats”: that unemployment and crowded slums were not
men who used their wealth to buy political influence. caused by laziness and ignorance, as elite Americans
Bryan outdid Taft in urging tougher antitrust and pro- had long believed. Instead, as journalist Robert Hunter
labor legislation, but Taft won comfortably. wrote in his landmark study, Poverty (1904), such
In the wake of Taft’s victory, however, rising pres- problems resulted from “miserable and unjust social
sure for reform began to divide Republicans. Con- conditions.” Charity work was at best a limited solu-
servatives dug in, while militant progressives within tion. “How vain to waste our energies on single cases of
the party thought Roosevelt and his successor had not relief,” declared one reformer, “when society should
gone far enough. Reconciling these conflicting forces aim at removing the prolific sources of all the woe.”
was a daunting task. For Taft, it spelled disaster. By the early twentieth century, reformers placed
Through various incidents, he found himself on the particular emphasis on labor conditions for women
opposite side of progressive Republicans, who began to and children. The National Child Labor Committee,
call themselves “Insurgents” and to plot their own path. created in 1907, hired photographer Lewis Hine to
record brutal conditions in mines and mills where
children worked. (See Hine’s photograph on p. 621.)
Diverse Progressive Goals Impressed by the committee’s investigations, Theodore
The revolt of Republican Insurgents signaled the Roosevelt sponsored the first White House Conference
strength of grassroots demands for change. No one on Dependent Children in 1909, bringing national
described these emerging goals more eloquently than attention to child welfare issues. In 1912, momentum
Jane Addams, who famously declared in Democracy from the conference resulted in creation of the
and Social Ethics (1902), “The cure for the ills of Children’s Bureau in the U.S. Labor Department.
Democracy is more Democracy.” It was a poignant Those seeking to protect working-class women
statement, given the sharply antidemocratic direc- scored a major triumph in 1908 with the Supreme
tion American politics had taken since the 1890s. Court’s decision in Muller v. Oregon, which upheld an
What, now, should more democracy look like? Various Oregon law limiting women’s workday to ten hours.
groups of progressives — women, antipoverty reform- Given the Court’s ruling three years earlier in Lochner
ers, African American advocates — often disagreed v. New York, it was a stunning victory. To win the case,
about priorities and goals. Some, frustrated by events the National Consumers’ League (NCL) recruited
in the United States, traveled abroad to study inspiring Louis Brandeis, a son of Jewish immigrants who was
experiments in other nations, hoping to bring ideas widely known as “the people’s lawyer” for his eagerness
home (America Compared, p. 653). to take on vested interests. Brandeis’s legal brief in the
States also served as seedbeds of change. Theodore Muller case devoted only two pages to the constitu-
Roosevelt dubbed Wisconsin a “laboratory of democ- tional issue of state police powers. Instead, Brandeis
racy” under energetic Republican governor Robert La rested his arguments on data gathered by the NCL
Follette (1901–1905). La Follette promoted what he describing the toll that long work hours took on wom-
called the Wisconsin Idea — greater government inter- en’s health. The “Brandeis brief ” cleared the way for use
vention in the economy, with reliance on experts, of social science research in court decisions. Sanction-
particularly progressive economists, for policy recom- ing a more expansive role for state governments, the
mendations. Like Addams, La Follette combined respect Muller decision encouraged women’s organizations to
for expertise with commitment to “more Democracy.” lobby for further reforms. Their achievements included
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
New Zealand democracy is the talk of the world to-day. It from farms and factories, to give health and education to
has made itself the policeman and partner of industry to the school and factory population and the people gener-
an extent unknown elsewhere. It is the “experiment sta- ally by cheap excursions.
tion” of advanced legislation. . . . . . . Women are enfranchised. . . . On election day one
Instead of escaping from the evils of the social order can see the baby-carriage standing in front of the polls
by going to a new country, the Englishmen who settled while the father and mother go in and vote — against each
New Zealand found that they had brought all its prob- other if they choose.
lems with them. . . . The best acres were in the hands of Last of all, pensions are given to the aged poor.
monopolists. . . . The little farmer, forced by unjust and . . . We are exhorted to take “one step at a time” [but]
deliberately contrived laws to pay his own and his rich this theory does not fit the New Zealand evolution. . . . It
neighbor’s taxes, had to sell out his little homestead to that was not merely a change in parties; it was a change in
neighbor for what he could get. The workingman, able to principles and institutions that amounted to nothing less
get neither land nor work, had to become a tramp. . . . The than a social right-about-face. It was a New Zealand revo-
blood of the people was the vintage of the rich. lution, one which without destruction passed at once to
Here is the record of ten years [of progressive legis- the tasks of construction.
lation]: . . . The rich man, because rich, is made to pay
more. . . .
Source: Henry Demarest Lloyd, Newest England (New York: Doubleday, 1901), 1,
By compulsory arbitration the public gets for the guid- 364–374.
ance of public opinion all the facts as to disputes between
labor and capital, [and] puts an end to strikes and lock-
outs. . . . For the unemployed the nation makes itself a
labor bureau. It brings them and the employers together. It QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
reorganizes its public works and land system so as to give 1. What reforms had New Zealand enacted, according to
land to the landless and work to the workless. . . . The state Lloyd, and what problems did they solve?
itself insures the working people against accident. 2. New Zealand had a population of one million in 1890,
mostly British immigrants and their descendants, with a
. . . The nation’s railroads are used to redistribute smaller number of native Maori. Why might reform have
unemployed labour, to rebuild industry shattered by been easier to achieve there than in the United States?
calamity, to stimulate production by special rates to and
the first law providing public assistance for single moth- interest in protecting future children. Brandeis and his
ers with dependent children (Illinois, 1911) and the first allies hoped this would open the door to broader regu-
minimum wage law for women (Massachusetts, 1912). lation of working hours. The Supreme Court, however,
Muller had drawbacks, however. Though men as seized on motherhood as the key issue, asserting that
well as women suffered from long work hours, the the female worker, because of her maternal function,
Muller case did not protect men. Brandeis’s brief treated was “in a class by herself, and legislation for her protec-
all women as potential mothers, focusing on the state’s tion may be sustained, even when like legislation is not
653
654 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
Robert M. La Follette
La Follette was transformed into a political reformer when, in 1891, a Wisconsin Republican boss attempted
to bribe him to influence a judge in a railway case. As he described it in his autobiography, “Out of this awful
ordeal came understanding; and out of understanding came resolution. I determined that the power of this
corrupt influence . . . should be broken.” This photograph captures him at the top of his form, expounding
his progressive vision to a rapt audience of Wisconsin citizens at an impromptu street gathering. Library of
Congress.
necessary for men.” This conclusion dismayed labor some states, for example, opponents of child labor won
advocates and divided female reformers for decades laws barring young children from factory work and
afterward. strictly regulating hours and conditions for older chil-
Male workers did benefit, however, from new dren’s labor. In the South, however, and in coal-mining
workmen’s compensation measures. Between 1910 states like Pennsylvania, companies fiercely resisted
and 1917, all the industrial states enacted insurance such laws — as did many working-class parents who
laws covering on-the-job accidents, so workers’ fami- relied on children’s income to keep the family fed. A
lies would not starve if a breadwinner was injured or proposed U.S. constitutional amendment to abolish
killed. Some states also experimented with so-called child labor never won ratification; only four states
mothers’ pensions, providing state assistance after a passed it. Tens of thousands of children continued to
breadwinner’s desertion or death. Mothers, however, work in low-wage jobs, especially in the South. The
were subjected to home visits to determine whether same decentralized power that permitted innovation
they “deserved” government aid; injured workmen in Wisconsin hampered the creation of national mini-
were not judged on this basis, a pattern of gender dis- mum standards for pay and job safety.
crimination that reflected the broader impulse to pro-
tect women, while also treating them differently from The Birth of Modern Civil Rights Reeling from
men. Mothers’ pensions reached relatively small num- disenfranchisement and the sanction of racial segrega-
bers of women, but they laid foundations for the tion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), African American
national program Aid to Families with Dependent leaders faced distinctive challenges. Given the obvious
Children, an important component of the Social deterioration of African American rights, a new gener-
Security Act of 1935. ation of black leaders proposed bolder approaches than
While federalism gave the states considerable free- those popularized earlier by Booker T. Washington.
dom to innovate, it hampered national reforms. In Harvard-educated sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois called
CHAPTER 20 Whose Government? Politics, Populists, and Progressives, 1880–1917 655
of the American Federation of Labor’s Bridge and welfare may require it.” He proposed a federal child
Structural Iron Workers Union, had planned labor law, more recognition of labor rights, and a
the bombing against the fiercely antiunion Times. national minimum wage for women. Pressed by friends
McNamara’s brother and another union member had like Jane Addams, Roosevelt also endorsed women’s
carried out the attack. The bombing created a sensa- suffrage. Most radical was his attack on the legal sys-
tion, as did the terrible Triangle Shirtwaist fire (Chap- tem. Insisting that courts blocked reform, Roosevelt
ter 19) and the IWW’s high-profile strikes. What proposed sharp curbs on their powers (American
should be done? As the election of 1912 approached, Voices, p. 658).
labor issues moved high on the nation’s agenda. Early in 1912, Roosevelt announced himself as a
Republican candidate for president. A battle within the
party ensued. Roosevelt won most states that held
The Election of 1912 primary elections, but Taft controlled party caucuses
Retirement did not sit comfortably with Theodore elsewhere. Dominated by regulars, the Republican
Roosevelt. Returning from a yearlong safari in Africa convention chose Taft. Roosevelt then led his followers
in 1910 and finding Taft wrangling with the Insurgents, into what became known as the Progressive Party,
Roosevelt itched to jump in. In a speech in Osawatomie, offering his New Nationalism directly to the people.
Kansas, in August 1910, he called for a New National- Though Jane Addams harbored private doubts (espe-
ism. In modern America, he argued, private property cially about Roosevelt’s mania for battleships), she sec-
had to be controlled “to whatever degree the public onded his nomination, calling the Progressive Party
CHAPTER 20 Whose Government? Politics, Populists, and Progressives, 1880–1917 657
Theodore Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt published the first piece below in a leading journal in 1897.
At the time he was serving as police commissioner of New York City. The second
From Anti-Populist to document is a famous speech he delivered in 1910, when he had retired from
the presidency but was planning a bid for the 1912 Republican nomination.
New Nationalist
“How Not to Help Our Poorer Brother,” 1897 that it is useless to try to carry him when he will not or
cannot walk; and worse than useless to try to bring down
In the 1890s Roosevelt, a rising Republican star, forcefully
the work and reward of the thrifty and intelligent to the
denounced populism and other radical movements. The
level of the capacity of the weak, the shiftless, and the
comments below were part of an exchange with Populists’
idle. . . .
1896 vice-presidential nominee, Tom Watson of Georgia.
If an American is to amount to anything he must rely
There are plenty of ugly things about wealth and its pos- upon himself, and not upon the State. . . . It is both fool-
sessors in the present age, and I suppose there have been ish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well
in all ages. There are many rich people who so utterly lack off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and
patriotism, or show such sordid and selfish traits of char- that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own
acter, . . . that all right-minded men must look upon them industry, honesty and intelligence.
with angry contempt; but, on the whole, the thrifty are apt
to be better citizens than the thriftless; and the worst capi- New Nationalism Speech, August 31, 1910
talist cannot harm laboring men as they are harmed by
Roosevelt delivered this speech to a gathering of Union
demagogues. . . .
veterans at Osawatomie, Kansas, a site associated with
The first lesson to teach the poor man is that, as a
abolitionist John Brown (Chapter 13). Why do you think
whole, the wealth of the community is distinctly benefi-
Roosevelt chose this occasion and audience?
cial to him; that he is better off in the long run because
other men are well off, and that the surest way to destroy Of that [Civil War] generation of men to whom we owe
what measure of prosperity he may have is to paralyze so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course,
industry and the well-being of those men who have Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast
achieved success. our present struggle and saw the way out. He said:
. . . It may become necessary to interfere even more . . . “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.
than we have done with the right of private contract, and Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have
to shackle cunning as we have shackled force. All I insist existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior
upon is that we must be sure of our ground before trying of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
to get any legislation, and that we must not expect too If that remark was original with me, I should be even
much from this legislation. . . . The worst foe of the more strongly denounced as a Communist agitator than
poor man is the labor leader, whether philanthropist I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and
or politician, who tried to teach him that he is a victim that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear.
of conspiracy and injustice, when in reality he is merely Now, let the working man hear his side.
working out his fate with blood and sweat as the immense “Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protec-
majority of men who are worthy of the name always have tion as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war
done and always will have to do. . . . upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of
Something can be done by good laws; more can be labor; property is desirable.”
done by honest administration of the laws; but most of . . . It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took
all can be done by frowning resolutely upon the preachers substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed
of vague discontent; and by upholding the true doctrine the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates
of self-reliance, self-help, and self-mastery. This doctrine of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights.
sets forth many things. Among them is that, though a One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of
man can occasionally be helped when he stumbles, yet special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy
658
liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The
some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, man who wrongly holds that every human right is sec-
or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been ondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate
earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you of human welfare. . . .
fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage
for now. more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and
. . . Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, hours of labor short enough so that after his day’s work is
when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the
every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all management of the community. . . . We keep countless
that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his men from being good citizens by the conditions of life
capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and with which we surround them. We need comprehensive
unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry workmen’s compensation acts [and] laws to regulate child
him, and to get for himself and his family substantially labor and work for women. . . .
what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity The New Nationalism puts the national need before
means that the commonwealth will get from every sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the
citizen the highest service of which he is capable. utter confusion that results from local legislatures
. . . When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean attempting to treat national issues as local issues, [and]
not merely that I stand for fair play under the present the impotence which makes it possible for local selfish-
rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules ness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special
changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. This
opportunity and of reward for equally good service. . . . New Nationalism regards the executive power as the
This means that our government, national and State, must steward of the public welfare. It demands of the judiciary
be freed from the sinister influence or control of special that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare
interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and rather than in property. . . .
slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil The object of government is the welfare of the people.
War, so now the great special business interests too often The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desir-
control and corrupt the men and methods of government able chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material
for their own profit. We must drive the special interests welfare of all good citizens.
out of politics. . . .
The Constitution guarantees protections to property, Sources: Article from Review of Reviews, January 1897; speech from theodore-roosevelt
.com/trspeeches.html.
and we must make that promise good. But it does not give
the right of suffrage to any corporation. The true friend of
property, the true conservative, is he who insists that
property shall be the servant and not the master of the
commonwealth. . . . The citizens of the United States must QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
effectively control the mighty commercial forces which 1. In what ways did Roosevelt’s views change between
they have themselves called into being. 1897 and 1910? What factors might have contributed
There can be no effective control of corporations while to the change? Can you identify aspects of Roosevelt’s
their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be thinking that remained the same?
2. How might the jobs Roosevelt held or sought, in 1897
neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. . . .
and in 1910, have influenced his ideas?
We are face to face with new conceptions of the rela- 3. If you were asked, after reading these documents, what
tions of property to human welfare, chiefly because Roosevelt stood for, how would you respond?
certain advocates of the rights of property as against the
659
660 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
energy would benefit Americans across racial lines. Party — were important components of his base. In the
The change helped lay the foundations for Democrats’ South, many of those voters also upheld strong support
New Deal coalition of the 1930s. for white supremacy. Despite many northern African
Despite the intense campaign, Republicans’ divi- Americans’ support for Wilson, his administration did
sion between Taft and Roosevelt made the result fairly little for those constituents. But he undertook bold
easy to predict. Wilson won, though he received only economic reforms.
42 percent of the popular vote and almost certainly
would have lost if Roosevelt had not been in the race
(Map 20.5). In comparison with Roosevelt and Debs, Economic Reforms
Wilson appeared to be a rather old-fashioned choice. In an era of rising corporate power, many Democrats
But with labor protests cresting and progressives gain- believed workers needed stronger government to inter-
ing support, Wilson faced intense pressure to act. vene on their behalf, and they began to transform
themselves into a modern, state-building party. The
Wilson administration achieved a series of landmark
measures — at least as significant as those enacted
Wilson and the New Freedom, during earlier administrations, and perhaps more so
1913–1917 (Table 20.1). The most enduring was the federal pro-
gressive income tax. “Progressive,” by this definition,
In his inaugural address, Wilson acknowledged that referred to the fact that it was not a flat tax but rose pro-
industrialization had precipitated a crisis. “There can gressively toward the top of the income scale. The tax,
be no equality of opportunity,” he said, “if men and passed in the 1890s but rejected by the Supreme Court,
women and children be not shielded . . . from the con- was reenacted as the Sixteenth Amendment to the
sequences of great industrial and social processes Constitution, ratified by the states in February 1913.
which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.” The next year, Congress used the new power to enact
Wilson was a Democrat, and labor interests and an income tax of 1 to 7 percent on Americans with
farmers — some previously radicalized in the People’s annual incomes of $4,000 or more. At a time when white
MAP 20.5
The Presidential Election of 1912
7 6
4 5 44 The 1912 election reveals why the two-
12 18
5 45
party system is so strongly rooted in
13
4 5 15 5 American politics — especially in presidential
3 38 7
13 elections. The Democrats, though a minority
8 24 14
3 29 15 3 party, won an electoral landslide because
4 8 12
11 6
10 18 13 8 the Republicans divided their vote between
12
12 Roosevelt and Taft. This result indicates what
2 3 10 9 9 is at stake when major parties splinter. The
3
10 12
14 Socialist Party candidate, Eugene V. Debs,
20
10 despite a record vote of 900,000, received no
6 electoral votes.
male wageworkers might expect to make $800 per year, a banking system more resistant to such crises. It
the tax affected less than 5 percent of households. created twelve district reserve banks funded and
Three years later, Congress followed this with an controlled by their member banks, with a central Fed-
inheritance tax. These measures created an entirely eral Reserve Board to impose regulation. The Federal
new way to fund the federal government, replacing Reserve could issue currency — paper money based
Republicans’ high tariff as the chief source of revenue. on assets held in the system — and set the interest rate
Over subsequent decades, especially between the 1930s that district reserve banks charged
and the 1970s, the income tax system markedly reduced to their members. It thereby reg- TRACE CHANGE
America’s extremes of wealth and poverty. ulated the flow of credit to the OVER TIME
Wilson also reorganized the financial system to general public. The act strength- To what degree did
address the absence of a central bank. At the time, the ened the banking system and, to a reforms of the Wilson era
main function of national central banks was to back modest degree, discouraged risky fulfill goals that various
up commercial banks in case they could not meet speculation on Wall Street. agrarian-labor advocates
their obligations. In the United States, the great private Wilson and the Democratic and progressives had
banks of New York (such as J. P. Morgan’s) assumed Congress turned next to the sought?
this role; if they weakened, the entire system could trusts. In doing so, Wilson relied
collapse. This had nearly happened in 1907, when the heavily on Louis D. Brandeis, the celebrated people’s
Knickerbocker Trust Company failed, precipitating a lawyer. Brandeis denied that monopolies were effi-
panic. The Federal Reserve Act (1913) gave the nation cient. On the contrary, he believed the best source of
662 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
TABLE 20.1
Major Federal Progressive Measures, 1883–1921
Before 1900
Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883)
Hatch Act (1887; Chapter 17)
Interstate Commerce Act (1887; Chapter 17)
Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
Federal income tax (1894; struck down by Supreme Court, 1895)
During Theodore Roosevelt’s Presidency, 1901–1909
Newlands Reclamation Act for federal irrigation (1902)
Elkins Act (1903)
First National Wildlife Refuge (1903; Chapter 18)
Bureau of Corporations created to aid Justice Department antitrust work (1903)
National Forest Service created (1905)
Antiquities Act (1906; Chapter 18)
Pure Food and Drug Act (1906; Chapter 19)
Hepburn Act (1906)
First White House Conference on Dependent Children (1909)
During William Howard Taft’s Presidency, 1909–1913
Mann Act preventing interstate prostitution (1910; Chapter 19)
Children’s Bureau created in the U.S. Labor Department (1912)
U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations appointed (1912)
During Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency, 1913–1920
Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution; federal income tax (1913)
Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution; direct election of U.S. senators (1913)
Federal Reserve Act (1913)
Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)
Seamen’s Act (1915)
Workmen’s Compensation Act (1916)
Adamson Eight-Hour Act (1916)
National Park Service created (1916; Chapter 18)
Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution; prohibition of liquor (1919; Chapter 22)
Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution; women’s suffrage (1920; Chapter 21)
efficiency was vigorous competition in a free market. lessen[ed] competition.” The new Federal Trade
The trick was to prevent trusts from unfairly using Commission received broad powers to decide what
their power to curb such competition. In the Clayton was fair, investigating companies and issuing “cease
Antitrust Act (1914), which amended the Sherman and desist” orders against anticompetitive practices.
Act, the definition of illegal practices was left flexible, Labor issues, meanwhile, received attention from a
subject to the test of whether an action “substantially blue-ribbon U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations,
CHAPTER 20 Whose Government? Politics, Populists, and Progressives, 1880–1917 663
appointed near the end of Taft’s presidency and charged regulatory laws, they often found these struck down by
with investigating the conditions of labor. In its 1913 hostile courts and were forced to try again by different
report, the commission summed up the impact of means. Thus the Progressive Era in the United States
industrialization on low-skilled workers. Many earned should be understood partly by its limitations. Elitism
$10 or less a week and endured regular episodes of and racial prejudice, embodied in new voting restric-
unemployment; some faced long-term poverty and tions, limited working-class power at the polls; African
hardship. Workers held “an almost universal convic- Americans, their plight ignored by most white reform-
tion” that they were “denied justice.” The commission ers, faced segregation and violence. Divided power in a
concluded that a major cause of industrial violence was federalist system blocked passage of uniform national
the ruthless antiunionism of American employers. In policies on such key issues as child labor. Key social
its key recommendation, the report called for federal welfare programs that became popular in Europe dur-
laws protecting workers’ right to organize and engage ing these decades, including national health insurance
in collective bargaining. Though such laws were, in and old-age pensions, scarcely made it onto the
1915, too radical to win passage, the commission American agenda until the 1930s.
helped set a new national agenda that would come to An international perspective suggests several rea-
fruition in the 1930s. sons for American resistance to such programs.
Guided by the commission’s revelations, President Business interests in the United States were exception-
Wilson warmed up to labor. In 1915 and 1916, he cham- ally successful and powerful, flush with recent expan-
pioned a host of bills to benefit American workers. sion. At the time, also, voters in countries with older,
They included the Adamson Act, which established an more native-born populations tended to support gov-
eight-hour day for railroad workers; the Seamen’s Act, ernment regulation and welfare spending to a greater
which eliminated age-old abuses of merchant sailors; extent than their counterparts in countries with
and a workmen’s compensation law for federal employ- younger populations and large numbers of immi-
ees. Wilson, despite initial modest goals, presided over grants. Younger voters, understandably, seem to have
a major expansion of federal authority, perhaps the been less concerned than older voters about health
most significant since Reconstruction. The continued insurance and old-age security. Divisions in the
growth of U.S. government offices during Wilson’s American working class also played a role. Black,
term reflected a reality that transcended party lines: immigrant, and native-born white laborers often
corporations had grown in size and power, and Ameri- viewed one another as enemies or strangers rather than
cans increasingly wanted federal authority to grow, too. as members of a single class with common interests.
Wilson’s reforms did not extend to the African This helps explain why the Socialist Party drew, at peak,
Americans who had supported him in 1912. In fact, the less than 6 percent of the U.S. vote at a time when its
president rolled back certain Republican policies, such counterparts in Finland, Germany, and France drew 40
as selected appointments of black postmasters. “I tried percent or more. Lack of pressure from a strong, self-
to help elect Wilson,” W. E. B. Du Bois reflected gloom- conscious workingmen’s party contributed to more
ily, but “under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim limited results in the United States.
Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service But it would be wrong to underestimate progres-
that we had experienced since the Civil War.” Wilson sive achievements. Over several decades, in this period,
famously praised the film Birth of a Nation (1915), more and more prosperous Americans began to sup-
which depicted the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan port stronger economic regula-
in heroic terms. In this way, Democratic control of the tions. Even the most cautious, elite PLACE EVENTS
White House helped set the tone for the Klan’s return progressives recognized that the IN CONTEXT
in the 1920s. United States had entered a new What factors explain
era. Multinational corporations the limits of progres-
overshadowed small businesses; in sive reform in the
Progressive Legacies vast cities, old support systems United States?
In the industrial era, millions of Americans decided based on village and kinship
that their political system needed to adjust to new con- melted away. Outdated political institutions — from
ditions. Whatever their specific goals — and whether the spoils system to urban machines — would no lon-
they were rural, working-class, or middle-class — ger do. Walter Lippmann, founding editor of the pro-
reformers faced fierce opposition from powerful gressive magazine New Republic, observed in 1914 that
business interests. When they managed to win key Americans had “no precedents to guide us, no wisdom
664 PART 6 INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICA: UPHEAVALS AND EXPERIMENTS, 1877–1917
that wasn’t made for a simpler age.” Progressives cre- and Cleveland’s intransigence over the gold stan-
ated new wisdom. By 1917, they had drawn blueprints dard cost the Democrats dearly in the 1894 and 1896
for a modern American state, one whose powers more elections. While Republicans took over the federal
suited the needs of an industrial era. government, southern Democrats restricted voting
rights in the Solid South. Federal courts struck down
regulatory laws and supported southern racial
SUMMARY discrimination.
After McKinley’s assassination, Roosevelt launched
The Progressive Era emerged from the political turmoil a program that balanced reform and private enterprise.
of the 1880s and 1890s. In the 1880s, despite the limits At both the federal and state levels, progressive reform-
imposed by close elections, federal and state govern- ers made extensive use of elite expertise. At the grass-
ments managed to achieve important administrative roots, black reformers battled racial discrimination;
and economic reforms. After 1888, Republican leaders women reformers worked on issues ranging from pub-
undertook more sweeping efforts, including the Sher- lic health to women’s working conditions; and labor
man Antitrust Act, but failed in a quest to protect black activists tried to address the problems that fueled per-
voting rights. In the South and West, the People’s Party sistent labor unrest. The election of 1912 split the
called for much stronger government intervention in Republicans, giving victory to Woodrow Wilson, who
the economy, but its radical program drew bitter launched a Democratic program of economic and
Republican and Democratic resistance. labor reform. Despite the limits of the Progressive Era,
The depression of the 1890s brought a wave of the reforms of this period laid the foundation for a
reaction. Labor unrest threw the nation into crisis, modern American state.
CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER REVIEW 665
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Reformers in the Progressive Era came from differ- that held power (Republicans, in Roosevelt’s case,
ent backgrounds and represented several distinct and Democrats, in Wilson’s)?
interests. What were some of those backgrounds
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Look at the
and interests? How did their goals differ?
events on the thematic timeline on page 543.
2. How did the economic crisis of the 1890s shape Historians often call the decades from the 1880s to
American politics? the 1910s the Progressive Era. Given the limitations
and new problems that emerged during this time,
3. Compare the reform legislation passed during
as well as the achievements of progressive policy-
Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency with that of
making, do you think the name is warranted? What
Wilson’s term. How were these goals and achieve-
other names might we suggest for this era?
ments shaped by the broader agenda of the party
666 PART 6 CHAPTER REVIEW
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Returning to 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Study the cartoons that
Chapter 17, review the strategies and goals of the appear on pages 642, 651, and 660. One depicts a
labor and agrarian organizations that flourished in woman’s dressing room; two depict combat among
the 1880s. The People’s Party embodied many of men. What do these cartoons tell us about the ways
those ideas. Imagine that you are a journalist inter- that ideals of masculinity and femininity were
viewing a former People’s Party leader in 1917. To deployed in political campaigns? How might you
what extent might he or she have said that progres- use these cartoons to explain the challenges that
sives had, after 1900, fulfilled the agrarian-labor women faced in winning suffrage during the
agenda? To what extent might he or she criticize Progressive Era? (For a counterpoint, you may also
progressives for failing to achieve important want to examine John Sloan’s drawing about the
reforms? What do you conclude from this about Ludlow Massacre, on p. 656, and compare its
the similarities and differences of populism and depiction of masculine violence to the other three
progressivism? cartoons.)
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Charles Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic (2006). Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero (2006). This biography
An excellent account of post-Reconstruction politics, of William Jennings Bryan is a good starting point on
emphasizing issues of race and Republicans’ dilemma the era’s Democrats and their charismatic leader.
in the South.
Robert C. McMath, American Populism (1993). A
John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest lively history of the Farmers’ Alliance and People’s
(1983). A provocative dual biography of Theodore Party.
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Nancy Woloch, ed., Muller v. Oregon (1996). An
Maureen Flanagan, America Reformed (2007). A excellent analysis and collection of primary docu-
readable introduction and guide to further sources ments on this critical legal decision.
on progressive movements.
CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER REVIEW 667
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1895 t John Pierpont Morgan arranges gold purchases to rescue U.S. Treasury
1898 t Williams v. Mississippi allows poll taxes and literacy tests for voters
t Seventeenth Amendment
KEY TURNING POINTS: In the timeline above, identify key actions taken by Congress and
the Progressive Era presidents, and those enacted by the Supreme Court. What role did each
branch of government play in the Progressive Era, and how did those roles change over time?
7
Domestic and
Global Challenges
1890–1945
P A R T
668
America’s Rise to World Power Modernity and Its Discontents
The United States became a major international power World War I had a powerful domestic impact in the
after the 1890s, first in the Western Hemisphere and United States. The Great Migration brought African
by the 1940s across the world, renewing debates at Americans northward, and Mexicans across the U.S.
home about America’s global role. After defeating border, to take up wartime jobs. A full-blown modern
Spain in the War of 1898, the United States claimed consumer culture also emerged by the 1920s as radio,
overseas colonies and asserted control over the Carib- cars, and Hollywood movies transformed leisure pas-
bean basin. Though President Wilson attempted to times. While many Americans embraced consumer
maintain neutrality at the start of World War I, trade culture, others expressed deep fear and antagonism
ties and old alliances drew America into the conflict toward a new modern sensibility, especially secularism
on the Allied side. Wilson sought to influence the and sexual freedoms. Repressive impulses also came
peace, but Allied leaders ignored his proposals and from above; during World War I, the federal govern-
the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles. By war’s ment introduced new laws to police dissent, and the
end, the United States’s position on the world stage country took a sharp right turn. A Red Scare, rollback
remained uncertain. of labor and immigrant rights, and rising nativism
The 1920s was an era of dollar diplomacy and U.S. marked the political scene. A resurgent nationwide
business expansion abroad. In the 1930s, faced with Klan arose to target Catholics and Jews as well as
isolationist sentiment at home and the rise of fascist African Americans. Many cultural conflicts emerged:
powers in Europe and Japan, the Roosevelt adminis- the teaching of evolution in the schools angered
tration steered a middle course. In the late 1930s, it religious fundamentalists, while “wets” and “drys”
began to send aid to its traditional ally Great Britain debated the prohibition of liquor.
without committing U.S. forces, keeping the nation Later events showed that racism took many forms:
out of the brewing wars in Europe and the Pacific. the U.S. government deported hundreds of thousands
When the United States entered World War II in 1941, of people of Mexican descent during the Great Depres-
it did so as part of an alliance with both England and sion, including American citizens, and temporarily
the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan (and their imprisoned Japanese Americans in a mass relocation
ally Italy). The United States emerged from the war as policy during World War II. These, too, represented
the dominant global power. These events are covered battles over what a diverse, modern nation would
in Chapters 21, 22, and 24. look like. We explore these conflicts in Chapters 21,
22, and 24.
670
AMERICA IN POLITICS AND IDENTITY IDEAS, BELIEFS, WORK,
THE WORLD POWER AND CULTURE EXCHANGE, AND
TECHNOLOGY
1890 t Congress funds t Republicans sweep t “American t “Remember the Maine” t Depression of 1890s
construction of modern congressional elections exceptionalism” and campaign fuels surge in increases pressure for
battleships as Americans respond rise of imperialism nationalism U.S. to secure foreign
to severe depression markets
t U.S.-backed planters t Alfred Mahan, The
(1894)
overthrow Hawaii’s Influence of Sea Power
queen (1892) t Republican William upon History (1890)
McKinley elected
t U.S. wins War of 1898 president (1896)
against Spain; claims
Hawaii, Puerto Rico,
Guam, and Philippines
1900 t U.S. war against t William McKinley t Insular Cases establish t Rise of modernism t Root-Takahira
Philippine reelected on pro- noncitizenship status Agreement affirms
revolutionaries imperialist platform for new territories free oceanic commerce
(1900) (1901) (1908)
t Roosevelt Corollary to
Monroe Doctrine (1904) t William McKinley t California, Washington,
assassinated; Theodore and Hawaii limit rights
Roosevelt becomes for Asian immigrants
president (1901)
1910 t Wilson intervenes in t Woodrow Wilson t New Ku Klux Klan t Moviemaking industry t Great Migration brings
Mexico (1914) elected president (1912) founded (1915) moves to southern African Americans
California to northern cities,
t Panama Canal opened t Red Scare (1919) t Post-WWI race riots Mexicans north to
(1914) t Birth of a Nation
t Woodrow Wilson issues t Wartime pressure for United States
glorifies the
t United States enters Fourteen Points (1919) “100% loyalty”; dissent Reconstruction-era Klan t Assembly-line
WWI (1917) suppressed
t U.S. Senate rejects (1915) production begins
t War ends; Wilson seeks Treaty of Versailles t Radio Corporation of
to influence peace treaty (1919, 1920) America created (1919)
negotiations (1918)
1920 t Heyday of “dollar t Nineteenth Amendment t National Origins Act t Rise of Hollywood t Economic prosperity
diplomacy” grants women’s limits immigration (1922–1929)
t Harlem Renaissance
suffrage (1920) (1924)
t U.S. occupation of Haiti t Labor gains rolled back
t Popularity of jazz music
and other Caribbean t Prohibition (1920–1933)
t Era of welfare
and Central American t Scopes “monkey trial”
t Teapot Dome scandal capitalism
nations (1925)
(1923)
t Rise of automobile
t Republican “associated loans and consumer
state,” probusiness credit
policies (1920–1932)
1930 t Rise of European fascist t Franklin Roosevelt t Bonus Army (1932) t Documentary impulse t Great Depression
powers elected president (1932) in arts (1929–1941)
t Indian Reorganization
t Japan invades China t First New Deal (1933) Act (1934) t WPA assists artists t Rise of CIO and
(1937) organized labor
t Second New Deal (1935) t Social Security created t Federal Writers’ Project
(1935)
t Roosevelt attempts to
reform Supreme Court
(1937)
1940 t United States enters t Roosevelt elected to t Internment of Japanese t Film industry aids war t War spending ends
WWII (1941) fourth term (1944) Americans effort depression
21
C H A P T E R
1890–1918
A
FROM EXPANSION ccepting the Democratic presiden- IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
TO IMPERIALISM tial nomination in 1900, William As the United States became a major
Foundations of Empire Jennings Bryan delivered a famous power on the world stage, what
The War of 1898 speech denouncing U.S. military occu- ideas and interests did policymak-
Spoils of War pations overseas. “God Himself,” Bryan ers seek to promote in international
declared, “placed in every human heart affairs?
A POWER AMONG the love of liberty. . . . He never made a
POWERS
race of people so low in the scale of civilization or intelligence that it would welcome a
The Open Door in Asia
foreign master.” At the time, Republican president William McKinley was leading an
The United States and Latin
ambitious and popular plan of overseas expansion. The United States had asserted con-
America
trol over the Caribbean, claimed Hawaii, and sought to annex the Philippines. Bryan
THE UNITED STATES failed to convince a majority of voters that imperialism — the exercise of military, politi-
IN WORLD WAR I cal, and economic power overseas — was the wrong direction. He lost the election by a
From Neutrality to War landslide.
“Over There” By the 1910s, however, American enthusiasm for overseas involvement cooled.
War on the Home Front Despite efforts to stay neutral, the United States got caught up in the global catastrophe
of World War I, which killed 8 million combatants, including over 50,000 U.S. soldiers.
CATASTROPHE AT By the war’s end, European powers’ grip on their colonial empires was weakening. The
VERSAILLES
United States also ceased acquiring overseas territories and pursued a different path. It
The Fate of Wilson’s Ideas
did so in part because the war brought dramatic changes at home, leaving Americans a
Congress Rejects the Treaty
postwar legacy of economic upheaval and political disillusionment.
President Woodrow Wilson, who in 1913 appointed Bryan as his secretary of state,
tried to steer a middle course between revolutionary socialism and European-style impe-
rialism. In Wilson’s phrase, America would “make the world safe for democracy” while
unapologetically working to advance U.S. economic interests. The U.S. Senate, however,
rejected the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and with it Wilson’s vision, leaving the nation’s
foreign policy in doubt. Should the United States try to promote democracy abroad? If
so, how? To what degree should the federal government seek to promote American
business interests? Under what conditions was overseas military action justified? When,
on the contrary, did it impinge on others’ sovereignty, endanger U.S. soldiers, and invite
disaster? Today’s debates over foreign policy still center to a large degree on questions
that Americans debated in the era of McKinley, Bryan, and Wilson, when the nation first
asserted itself as a major world power.
672
American Soldiers on a French Battlefield, 1918 As the United States asserted its power on the
world stage, American soldiers found themselves fighting on foreign battlefields. This 1918 photograph
shows a few of the 1 million U.S. soldiers who joined French and British troops fighting on the brutal
Western Front to defeat Germany in the Great War. Over 26,000 American soldiers lost their lives on the
battlefield during World War I, and 95,000 were wounded. Library of Congress.
673
674 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
or dysentery. In the United States, “yellow journalists” in Cuban independence. On April 11, McKinley asked
such as William Randolph Hearst turned their plight Congress for authority to intervene in Cuba “in the
into a cause célèbre. Hearst’s coverage of Spanish atroc- name of civilization, [and] in behalf of endangered
ities fed a surge of nationalism, especially among those American interests.”
who feared that industrialization was causing American Historians long referred to the ensuing fight as the
men to lose physical strength and valor. The govern- Spanish-American War, but because that name ignores
ment should not pass up this opportunity, said Indiana the central role of Cuban revolutionaries, many histo-
senator Albert Beveridge, to “manufacture manhood.” rians now call the three-way conflict the War of 1898.
Congress called for Cuban independence. Though Americans widely admired Cubans’ aspirations
President Cleveland had no interest in supporting for freedom, the McKinley administration defeated a
the Cuban rebellion but worried over Spain’s failure to congressional attempt to recognize the rebel govern-
end it. The war disrupted trade and damaged American- ment. In response, Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado
owned sugar plantations on the island. Moreover, an added an amendment to the war bill, disclaiming any
unstable Cuba was incompatible with U.S. strategic intention by the United States to occupy Cuba. The
interests, including a proposed canal whose Caribbean Teller Amendment reassured Americans that their
approaches had to be safeguarded. Taking office in country would uphold democracy abroad as well as at
1897, President William McKinley took a tough stance. home. McKinley’s expectations differed. He wrote pri-
In September, a U.S. diplomat informed Spain that it vately, “We must keep all we get; when the war is over
must ensure an “early and certain peace” or the United we must keep what we want.”
States would step in. At first, this hard line seemed to On April 24, 1898, Spain declared war on the
work: Spain’s conservative regime fell, and a liberal United States. The news provoked full-blown war fever.
government, taking office in October 1897, offered Across the country, young men enlisted for the fight.
Cuba limited self-rule. But Spanish loyalists in Havana Theodore Roosevelt, serving in the War Department,
rioted against this proposal, while Cuban rebels held resigned to become lieutenant colonel of a cavalry reg-
out for full independence. iment. Recruits poured into makeshift bases around
In February 1898, Hearst’s New York Journal pub- Tampa, Florida, where confusion reigned. Rifles failed
lished a private letter in which a Spanish minister to the to arrive; food was bad, sanitation worse. No provision
United States belittled McKinley. The minister, Dupuy had been made for getting troops to Cuba, so the gov-
de Lôme, resigned, but exposure of the de Lôme letter ernment hastily collected a fleet of yachts and commer-
intensified Americans’ indignation toward Spain. The cial boats. Fortunately, the regular army was a disci-
next week brought shocking news: the U.S. battle cruiser plined, professional force; its 28,000 seasoned troops
Maine had exploded and sunk in Havana harbor, with provided a nucleus for 200,000 volunteers. The navy
260 seamen lost. “Whole Country Thrills with the War was in better shape: Spain had nothing to match
Fever,” proclaimed the New York Journal. “Remember America’s seven battleships and armored cruisers. The
the Maine” became a national chant. Popular passions Spanish admiral bitterly predicted that his fleet would
were now a major factor in the march toward war. “like Don Quixote go out to fight windmills and come
McKinley assumed the sinking of the Maine had back with a broken head.”
been accidental. Improbably, though, a naval board of The first, decisive military engagement took place
inquiry blamed an underwater mine, fueling public in the Pacific. This was the handiwork of Theodore
outrage. (Later investigators disagreed: the more likely Roosevelt, who, in his government post, had gotten the
cause was a faulty ship design that placed explosive intrepid Commodore George Dewey appointed com-
munitions too close to coal bunkers, which were prone mander of the Pacific fleet. In the event of war, Dewey
to fire.) No evidence linked Spain to the purported had instructions to sail immediately for the Spanish-
mine, but if a mine sank the Maine, then Spain was owned Philippines. When war was declared, Roosevelt
responsible for not protecting the ship. confronted his surprised superior and pressured him
Business leaders became impatient, believing war into validating Dewey’s instructions. On May 1, 1898,
was preferable to an unending Cuban crisis. On American ships cornered the Spanish fleet in Manila
March 27, McKinley cabled an ultimatum to Madrid: Bay and destroyed it. Manila, the Philippine capital,
an immediate ceasefire in Cuba for six months and, fell on August 13. “We must on no account let the
with the United States mediating, peace negotiations [Philippines] go,” declared Senator Henry Cabot
with the rebels. Spain, while desperate to avoid war, Lodge. McKinley agreed. The United States now had a
balked at the added demand that mediation must result major foothold in the western Pacific.
676 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
the dangers of annexing eight million Filipinos of an Constitutional issues also remained unresolved.
“inferior race.” “No matter whether they are fit to gov- The treaty, while guaranteeing freedom of religion to
ern themselves or not,” declared a Missouri congress- inhabitants of ceded Spanish territories, withheld any
man, “they are not fit to govern us.” promise of citizenship. It was up to Congress to decide
Beginning in late 1898, anti-imperialist leagues Filipinos’ “civil rights and political status.” In 1901, the
sprang up around the country, but they never sparked a Supreme Court upheld this provision in a set of deci-
mass movement. On the contrary, McKinley’s “splendid sions known as the Insular Cases. The Constitution,
little war” proved immensely popular. Confronted with declared the Court, did not automatically extend citi-
that reality, Democrats waffled. Their standard-bearer, zenship to people in acquired territories; Congress
William Jennings Bryan, decided could decide. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
EXPLAIN not to stake Democrats’ future on were thus marked as colonies, not future states.
CONSEQUENCES opposition to a policy that he The next year, as a condition for withdrawing from
What were the long-term believed to be irreversible. He Cuba, the United States forced the newly independent
results of the U.S. victory threw his party into turmoil by island to accept a proviso in its constitution called the
over Spain, in Hawaii and declaring last-minute support for Platt Amendment (1902). This blocked Cuba from
in former Spanish posses- McKinley’s proposed treaty. Hav- making a treaty with any country except the United
sions? ing met military defeat, Spanish States and gave the United States the right to intervene
representatives had little choice. In in Cuban affairs if it saw fit. Cuba also granted the
the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States a lease on Guantánamo Bay (still in
United States for $20 million. effect), where the U.S. Navy built a large base. Cubans’
Annexation was not as simple as U.S. policymakers hard-fought independence was limited; so was that of
had expected. On February 4, 1899, two days before Filipinos. Eventually, the Jones Act of 1916 committed
the Senate ratified the treaty, fighting broke out the United States to Philippine independence but set
between American and Filipino patrols on the edge of no date. (The Philippines at last achieved indepen-
Manila. Confronted by annexation, rebel leader Emilio dence in 1946.) Though the war’s carnage had rubbed
Aguinaldo asserted his nation’s independence and off some of the moralizing gloss, America’s global aspi-
turned his guns on occupying American forces. Though rations remained intact.
Aguinaldo found it difficult to organize a mass-based
resistance movement, the ensuing conflict between
Filipino nationalists and U.S. troops far exceeded in
length and ferocity the war just concluded with Spain.
A Power Among Powers
Fighting tenacious guerrillas, the U.S. Army resorted to No one appreciated America’s emerging influence more
the same tactics Spain had employed in Cuba: burning than the man who, after William McKinley’s assassina-
crops and villages and rounding up civilians. Atrocities tion, became president in 1901. Theodore Roosevelt
became commonplace on both sides. In three years of was an avid student of world affairs who called on “the
warfare, 4,200 Americans and an estimated 200,000 civilized and orderly powers to insist on the proper
Filipinos died; many of the latter were dislocated civil- policing of the world.” He meant, in part, directing the
ians, particularly children, who succumbed to malnu- affairs of “backward peoples.” For Roosevelt, imperial-
trition and disease. ism went hand in hand with domestic progressivism
McKinley’s convincing victory over William (Chapter 20). He argued that a strong federal govern-
Jennings Bryan in 1900 suggested popular satisfaction ment, asserting itself both at home and abroad, would
with America’s overseas adventures, even in the face of enhance economic stability and political order. Over-
dogged Filipino resistance to U.S. rule. The fighting seas, Roosevelt sought to arbitrate disputes and main-
ended in 1902, and William Howard Taft, appointed as tain a global balance of power, but he also asserted U.S.
governor-general of the Philippines, sought to make interests.
the territory a model of roadbuilding and sanitary engi-
neering. Yet misgivings lingered as Americans con-
fronted the brutality of the war. Philosopher William The Open Door in Asia
James noted that the United States had destroyed “these U.S. officials and business leaders had a burning inter-
islanders by the thousands, their villages and cities. . . . est in East Asian markets, but they were entering a
Could there be any more damning indictment of that crowded field (Map 21.1). In the late 1890s, following
whole bloated ideal termed ‘modern civilization’?” Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895,
(American Voices, p. 680). Japan, Russia, Germany, France, and Britain divided
CHAPTER 21 An Emerging World Power, 1890–1918 679
MAP 21.1
The Great Powers in East Asia, 1898–1910 RUSSIA
L. Baikal R.R.
N
European powers established dominance Irkutsk TRANS-SIB E R
IA
over China by way of “treaty ports,” where Chita
the powers based their naval forces, and CHINES Am Sakhalin
EE
through “spheres of influence” that OUTER MONGOLIA AS
TE
ur
R.
RN
extended from the ports into the hinter- (Russian influence) R .R .
Harbin
land. This map reveals why the United
IA
KURILE
L MANCHURIA IS.
States had a weak hand: it lacked a
N GO Vladivostok
Sea of
presence on this colonized terrain. An MO
I N N E R g Ho Peking Japan
uprising of Chinese nationalists in 1900 SINKIANG
JAPAN
Hw a n Tientsin Port
gave the United States a chance to insert Arthur
Seoul
itself on the Chinese mainland by sending KOREA
Tokyo
an American expeditionary force. Ameri- Kobe
Yokohama
can diplomats made the most of the CHINA
N
opportunity to defend U.S. commercial
TIBET
interests in China. As noted in the key, all Shanghai
Nanking E
Lhasa
Hankow
Ningpo W
place names in this map are those in use Chungking R.
NEPAL gtze Wenchow RYUKYU IS.
in 1910: Modern Beijing, for example, is Yan (Japan)
S
Foochow
shown as Peking. BHUTAN KWANGCHOWAN (Fr.) Amoy
INDIA Wuchow Formosa
Calcutta BURMA Canton (Taiwan)
Hong
Colonial Spheres Hanoi Macao Kong (Br.) PACIFIC
possessions of influence (Port.)
OCEAN
American
South
British China
French SIAM Sea Manila
Bangkok
Japanese FRENCH PHILIPPINE
Russian INDOCHINA ISLANDS
German
Saigon
Chinese treaty ports
open for foreign trade 0 500 1,000 miles
coastal China into spheres of influence. Fearful of and Manchuria, in northern China, by attacking the
being shut out, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay sent tzar’s fleet at Russia’s leased Chinese port. In a series of
these powers a note in 1899, claiming the right of equal brilliant victories, the Japanese smashed the Russian
trade access — an “open door” — for all nations seek- forces. Westerners were shocked: for the first time, a
ing to do business in China. The United States lacked European power had been defeated by a non-Western
leverage in Asia, and Hay’s note elicited only noncom- nation. Conveying both admiration and alarm, Ameri-
mittal responses. But he chose to interpret this as can cartoonists sketched Japan as a martial artist
acceptance of his position. knocking down the Russian giant. Roosevelt mediated
When a secret society of Chinese nationalists, a settlement to the war in 1905, receiving for his
known outside China as “Boxers” because of their pug- efforts the first Nobel Peace Prize awarded to an
nacious political stance, rebelled against foreign occu- American.
pation in 1900, the United States sent 5,000 troops to Though he was contemptuous of other Asians,
join a multinational campaign to break the nationalists’ Roosevelt respected the Japanese, whom he called “a
siege of European offices in Beijing. Hay took this wonderful and civilized people.” More important, he
opportunity to assert a second open door principle: understood Japan’s rising military might and aligned
China must be preserved as a “territorial and adminis- himself with the mighty. The United States approved
trative entity.” As long as the legal fiction of an inde- Japan’s “protectorate” over Korea in 1905 and, six years
pendent China survived, Americans could claim equal later, its seizure of full control.
access to its market. With Japan asserting harsh COMPARE AND
CONTRAST
European and American plans were, however, authority over Manchuria, ener-
What factors constrained
unsettled by Japan’s emergence as East Asia’s dominant getic Chinese diplomat Yüan
and guided U.S. actions in
power. A decade after its victory over China, Japan Shih-k’ai tried to encourage the Asia and in Latin America?
responded to Russian bids for control of both Korea United States to intervene. But
AMERICAN
VOICES
680
Gen. MacArthur: That proposition is not questioned can punish the man probably worse in that way than in
by anybody in the world, excepting a few people in the any other.
United States. . . . We will be benefited, and the Filipino Q: But is that within the ordinary rules of civilized
people will be benefited, and that is what I meant by the warfare? . . .
original proposition — Gen. Hughes: These people are not civilized.
Sen. Patterson: Do you mean the Filipino people that
are left alive?
Cruelties
Gen. MacArthur: I mean the Filipino people. . . .
Sen. Patterson: You mean those left alive after they Daniel J. Evans, Twelfth Infantry, describes the “water cure.”
have been subjugated? Q: The committee would like to hear . . . whether you
Gen. MacArthur: I do not admit that there has been were the witness to any cruelties inflicted upon the
any unusual destruction of life in the Philippine Islands. natives of the Philippine Islands; and if so, under what
The destruction is simply the incident of war, and of circumstances.
course it embraces only a very small percentage of the Evans: The case I had reference to was where they
total population. gave the water cure to a native in the Ilicano Province at
. . . I doubt if any war — either international or civil, Ilocos Norte . . . about the month of August 1900. There
any war on earth — has been conducted with as much were two native scouts with the American forces. They
humanity, with as much careful consideration, with as went out and brought in a couple of insurgents. . . . They
much self-restraint, as have been the American opera- tried to get from this insurgent . . . where the rest of the
tions in the Philippine Archipelago. . . . insurgents were at that time. . . . The first thing one of the
Americans — I mean one of the scouts for the Americans —
Realities grabbed one of the men by the head and jerked his head
back, and then they took a tomato can and poured water
Brigadier General Robert P. Hughes, a military district com-
down his throat until he could hold no more. . . . Then
mander, testified as follows.
they forced a gag into his mouth; they stood him up . . .
Q: In burning towns, what would you do? Would the against a post and fastened him so that he could not move.
entire town be destroyed by fire or would only the offend- Then one man, an American soldier, who was over six feet
ing portions of the town be burned? tall, and who was very strong, too, struck this native in
Gen. Hughes: I do not know that we ever had a case of the pit of the stomach as hard as he could. . . . They kept
burning what you would call a town in this country, but that operation up for quite a time, and finally I thought
probably a barrio or a sitio; probably half a dozen houses, the fellow was about to die, but I don’t believe he was as
native shacks, where the insurrectos would go in and be bad as that, because finally he told them he would tell,
concealed, and if they caught a detachment passing they and from that day on he was taken away, and I saw no
would kill some of them. more of him.
Q: What did I understand you to say would be the
consequences of that? Source: From American Imperialism and the Philippine Insurrection, edited by Henry F.
Graff (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969). Reprinted by permission of the author.
Gen. Hughes: They usually burned the village.
Q: All of the houses in the village?
Gen. Hughes: Yes, every one of them.
Q: What would become of the inhabitants?
Gen. Hughes: That was their lookout. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Q: If these shacks were of no consequence what was 1. The text of this chapter offers the U.S. reasons for hold-
the utility of their destruction? ing on to the Philippines. In what ways does General
MacArthur’s testimony confirm, add to, or contradict the
Gen. Hughes: The destruction was as a punishment. text account?
They permitted these people to come in there and conceal 2. The chapter text also describes the anti-imperialist move-
themselves. . . . ment. What does Senator Patterson’s cross-examination
Q: The punishment in that case would fall, not upon of General MacArthur reveal about the anti-imperialists’
beliefs?
the men, who could go elsewhere, but mainly upon the
3. Does the clash of ideas in these excerpts remain relevant
women and little children. to our own time? How does it compare to what you
Gen. Hughes: The women and children are part of the might read or hear about in a news source today?
family, and where you wish to inflict a punishment you
681
682 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Roosevelt reviewed America’s weak position in the oceans required a canal. European powers conceded
Pacific and declined. He conceded that Japan had “a the United States’s “paramount interest” in the Carib-
paramount interest in what surrounds the Yellow Sea.” bean. Freed by Britain’s surrender of canal-building
In 1908, the United States and Japan signed the Root- rights in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (1901), Roosevelt
Takahira Agreement, confirming principles of free persuaded Congress to authorize $10 million, plus
oceanic commerce and recognizing Japan’s authority future payments of $250,000 per year, to purchase from
over Manchuria. Colombia a six-mile strip of land across Panama, a
William Howard Taft entered the White House in Colombian province.
1909 convinced that the United States had been short- Furious when Colombia rejected this proposal,
changed in Asia. He pressed for a larger role for Roosevelt contemplated outright seizure of Panama
American investors, especially in Chinese railroad but settled on a more roundabout solution. Panama-
construction. Eager to promote U.S. business interests nians, long separated from Colombia by remote jungle,
abroad, he hoped that infusions of American capital chafed under Colombian rule. The United States lent
would offset Japanese power. When the Chinese Revo- covert assistance to an independence movement, trig-
lution of 1911 toppled the Manchu dynasty, Taft sup- gering a bloodless revolution. On November 6, 1903,
ported the victorious Nationalists, who wanted to the United States recognized the new nation of Panama;
modernize their country and liberate it from Japanese two weeks later, it obtained a perpetually renewable
domination. The United States had entangled itself in lease on a canal zone. Roosevelt never regretted the ven-
China and entered a long-term rivalry with Japan for ture, though in 1922 the United States paid Colombia
power in the Pacific, a competition that would culmi- $25 million as a kind of conscience money.
nate thirty years later in World War II. To build the canal, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers hired 60,000 laborers, who came from many
countries to clear vast swamps, excavate 240 million
The United States and Latin America cubic yards of earth, and construct a series of immense
Roosevelt famously argued that the United States locks. The project, a major engineering feat, took eight
should “speak softly and carry a big stick.” By “big years and cost thousands of lives among the workers
stick,” he meant naval power, and rapid access to two who built it. Opened in 1914, the Panama Canal gave
the United States a commanding position in the purchased Mexican plantations, mines, and oil fields.
Western Hemisphere. By the early 1900s, however, Díaz feared the extraordi-
Meanwhile, arguing that instability invited Euro- nary power of these foreign interests and began to
pean intervention, Roosevelt announced in 1904 that nationalize — reclaim — key resources. American inves-
the United States would police all of the Caribbean tors who faced the loss of Mexican holdings began to
(Map 21.2). This so-called Roosevelt Corollary to the back Francisco Madero, an advocate of constitutional
Monroe Doctrine actually turned that doctrine upside government who was friendly to U.S. interests. In 1911,
down: instead of guaranteeing that the United States Madero forced Díaz to resign and proclaimed himself
would protect its neighbors from Europe and help pre- president. Thousands of poor Mexicans took this oppor-
serve their independence, it asserted the United States’s tunity to mobilize rural armies and demand more rad-
unrestricted right to regulate Caribbean affairs. The ical change. Madero’s position was weak, and several
Roosevelt Corollary was not a treaty but a unilateral strongmen sought to overthrow him; in 1913, he was
declaration sanctioned only by America’s military and deposed and murdered by a leading general. Imme-
economic might. Citing it, the United States intervened diately, several other military men vied for control.
regularly in Caribbean and Central American nations Wilson, fearing that the unrest threatened U.S.
over the next three decades. interests, decided to intervene in the emerging Mexican
Entering office in 1913, Democratic president Revolution. On the pretext of a minor insult to the
Woodrow Wilson criticized his predecessors’ foreign navy, he ordered U.S. occupation of the port of Veracruz
policy. He pledged that the United States would “never on April 21, 1914, at the cost of 19 American and
again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest.” 126 Mexican lives. Though the intervention helped
This stance appealed to anti-imperialists in the Demo- Venustiano Carranza, the revolutionary leader whom
cratic base, including longtime supporters of William Wilson most favored, Carranza protested it as illegiti-
Jennings Bryan. But the new president soon showed mate meddling in Mexican affairs. Carranza’s forces,
that, when American interests called for it, his actions after nearly engaging the Americans themselves,
were not so different from those of Roosevelt and Taft. entered Mexico City in triumph a few months later.
Since the 1870s, Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz had Though Wilson had supported this outcome, his inter-
created a friendly climate for American companies that ference caused lasting mistrust.
UNITED STATES
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
BAHAMAS N
Gulf of Mexico
(British)
PACIFIC MEXICO E
W
OCEAN DOMINICAN
S
2 REPUBLIC
U.S. possessions CUBA PUERTO RICO
U.S. interventions Acquired in 1898
Veracruz 8
9
1 Settled border dispute, 1895–1896 7 Guantánamo Bay 4
2 U.S. troops, 1898–1902, VIRGIN IS.
1906–1909, 1917–1922 BRITISH JAMAICA HAITI
HONDURAS (British) Acquired in 1917
3 Support of revolt, 1903
HONDURAS Caribbean Sea
4 U.S. lease beginning in 1903
5 U.S. control beginning NICARAGUA
in 1903 GUATEMALA 6
6 U.S. troops, 1909–1910, EL SALVADOR CANAL
1912–1925 ZONE 5 1
7 Seized by U.S. Navy, 1914 COSTA VENEZUELA BR.
RICA 3 GUIANA
8 U.S. troops, 1915–1934 0 250 500 miles
9 U.S. troops, 1916–1924 COLOMBIA
0 250 500 kilometers PANAMA
MAP 21.2
Policeman of the Caribbean
After the War of 1898, the United States vigorously asserted its interest in the affairs of its
neighbors to the south. As the record of interventions shows, the United States truly became the
“policeman” of the Caribbean and Central America.
684 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Carranza’s victory did not subdue revolutionary Americans had no obvious stake in these develop-
activity in Mexico. In 1916, General Francisco “Pancho” ments. In 1905, when Germany suddenly challenged
Villa — a thug to his enemies, but a heroic Robin Hood French control of Morocco, Theodore Roosevelt
to many poor Mexicans — crossed the U.S.-Mexico bor- arranged an international conference to defuse the cri-
der, killing sixteen American civilians and raiding the sis. Germany got a few concessions, but France — with
town of Columbus, New Mexico. Wilson sent 11,000 British backing — retained Morocco. Accomplished in
troops to pursue Villa, a force that soon resembled an the same year that Roosevelt brokered peace between
army of occupation in northern Mexico. Mexican pub- Russia and Japan, the conference seemed another dip-
lic opinion demanded withdrawal as armed clashes lomatic triumph. One U.S. official boasted that America
broke out between U.S. and Mexican troops. At the had kept peace by “the power of our detachment.” It
brink of war, both governments backed off and U.S. was not to last.
forces departed. But policymakers in Washington had
shown their intention to police not only the Caribbean
and Central America but also Mexico when they From Neutrality to War
deemed it necessary. The spark that ignited World War I came in the Balkans,
where Austria-Hungary and Russia competed for con-
trol. Austria’s 1908 seizure of Ottoman provinces,
including Bosnia, angered the nearby Slavic nation of
The United States in Serbia and its ally, Russia. Serbian revolutionaries
World War I recruited Bosnian Slavs to resist Austrian rule. In June
1914, in the city of Sarajevo, university student Gavrilo
While the United States staked claims around the Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir
globe, a war of unprecedented scale was brewing in to the Austro-Hungarian throne.
Europe. The military buildup of Germany, a rising Like dominos falling, the system of European alli-
power, terrified its neighbors. To the east, the disinte- ances pushed all the powers into war. Austria-Hungary
grating Ottoman Empire was losing its grip on the blamed Serbia for the assassination and declared war
Balkans. Out of these conflicts, two rival power blocs on July 28. Russia, tied by secret treaty to Serbia, mobi-
emerged: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria- lized against Austria-Hungary. This prompted Germany
Hungary, and Italy) and Triple Entente (Britain, France, to declare war on Russia and its ally France. As a prep-
and Russia). Within each alliance, national govern- aration for attacking France, Germany launched a
ments pursued their own interests but were bound to brutal invasion of the neutral country of Belgium,
one another by both public and secret treaties. which caused Great Britain to declare war on Germany.
CHAPTER 21 An Emerging World Power, 1890–1918 685
by 1917, U.S. banks had lent the Allies $2.5 billion. In this threat jolted public opinion. Meanwhile, German
contrast, American trade and loans to Germany stood U-boats attacked U.S. ships without warning, sinking
then at a mere $56 million. This imbalance undercut three on March 18 alone.
U.S. neutrality. If Germany won and Britain and France On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a dec-
defaulted on their debts, American companies would laration of war. He argued that Germany had trampled
suffer catastrophic losses. on American rights and imperiled U.S. trade and citi-
To challenge the British navy, Germany launched zens’ lives. “We desire no conquest,” Wilson declared,
a devastating new weapon, the U-boat (short for “no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall
Unterseeboot, “undersea boat,” or submarine). In April freely make.” Reflecting his progressive idealism, Wilson
1915, Germany issued a warning that all ships flying promised that American involvement would make the
flags of Britain or its allies were liable to destruction. A world “safe for democracy.” On April 6, the United
few weeks later, a U-boat torpedoed the British luxury States declared war on Germany. Reflecting the nation’s
liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 divided views, the vote was far from unanimous. Six
people, including 128 Americans. The attack on the senators and fifty members of the House voted against
passenger ship (which was later revealed to have been entry, including Representative Jeannette Rankin of
carrying munitions) incensed Americans. The follow- Montana, the first woman elected to Congress. “You
ing year, in an agreement known as the Sussex pledge, can no more win a war than you can win an earth-
Germany agreed not to target passenger liners or mer- quake,” Rankin said. “I want to stand by my country,
chant ships unless an inspection showed the latter car- but I cannot vote for war.”
ried weapons. But the Lusitania sinking prompted
Wilson to reconsider his options. After quietly trying
to mediate in Europe but finding neither side inter- “Over There”
ested in peace, he endorsed a $1 billion U.S. military To Americans, Europe seemed a great distance away.
buildup. Many assumed the United States would simply provide
American public opinion still ran strongly against munitions and economic aid. “Good Lord,” exclaimed
entering the war, a fact that shaped the election of 1916. one U.S. senator to a Wilson administration official,
Republicans rejected the belligerently prowar Theodore “you’re not going to send soldiers over there, are you?”
Roosevelt in favor of Supreme Court justice Charles But when General John J. Pershing asked how the
Evans Hughes, a progressive former governor of New United States could best support the Allies, the French
York. Democrats renominated Wilson, who cam- commander put it bluntly: “Men, men, and more men.”
paigned on his domestic record and as the president Amid war fever, thousands of young men prepared to
who “kept us out of war.” Wilson eked out a narrow vic- go “over there,” in the words of George M. Cohan’s
tory; winning California by a mere 4,000 votes, he popular song: “Make your Daddy glad to have had
secured a slim majority in the electoral college. such a lad. / Tell your sweetheart not to pine, / To be
proud her boy’s in line.”
America Enters the War Despite Wilson’s campaign
slogan, events pushed him toward war. In February Americans Join the War In 1917, the U.S. Army
1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine war- numbered fewer than 200,000 soldiers; needing more
fare, a decision dictated by the impasse on the Western men, Congress instituted a military draft in May 1917.
Front. In response, Wilson broke off diplomatic rela- In contrast to the Civil War, when resistance was com-
tions with Germany. A few weeks later, newspapers mon, conscription went smoothly, partly because local,
published an intercepted dispatch from German for- civilian-run draft boards played a central role in the
eign secretary Arthur Zimmermann to his minister in new system. Still, draft registration demonstrated gov-
Mexico. The Zimmermann tele- ernment’s increasing power over ordinary citizens. On
IDENTIFY CAUSES gram urged Mexico to join the a single day — June 5, 1917 — more than 9.5 million
What factors led the Central Powers, promising that if men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty regis-
United States to enter the United States entered the war, tered at local voting precincts for possible military
World War I, despite Germany would help Mexico service.
the desire of so many recover “the lost territory of President Wilson chose General Pershing to head
Americans, including the
Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.” the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), which had to
president, to stay out of
With Pancho Villa’s border raids be trained, outfitted, and carried across the submarine-
the war?
still fresh in Americans’ minds, plagued Atlantic. This required safer shipping. When
CHAPTER 21 An Emerging World Power, 1890–1918 687
the United States entered the war, German U-boats American soldiers against an out-
EXPLAIN
were sinking 900,000 tons of Allied ships each month. numbered and exhausted German CONSEQUENCES
By sending merchant and troop ships in armed con- army in the Argonne forest. By How did U.S. military entry
voys, the U.S. Navy cut that monthly rate to 400,000 early November, this attack broke into World War I affect the
tons by the end of 1917. With trench warfare grinding German defenses at a crucial rail course of the war?
on, Allied commanders pleaded for American soldiers hub, Sedan. The cost was high:
to fill their depleted units, but Pershing waited until the 26,000 Americans killed and 95,000 wounded (Map
AEF reached full strength. As late as May 1918, the 21.3). But the flood of U.S. troops and supplies deter-
brunt of the fighting fell to the French and British. mined the outcome. Recognizing inevitable defeat and
The Allies’ burden increased when the Eastern facing popular uprisings at home, Germany signed an
Front collapsed following the Bolshevik (Communist) armistice on November 11, 1918. The Great War was
Revolution in Russia in November 1917. To consoli- over.
date power at home, the new Bolshevik government,
led by Vladimir Lenin, sought peace with the Central The American Fighting Force By the end of World
Powers. In a 1918 treaty, Russia surrendered its claims War I, almost 4 million American men — popularly
over vast parts of its territories in exchange for peace. known as “doughboys” — wore U.S. uniforms, as did
Released from war against Germany, the Bolsheviks several thousand female nurses. The recruits reflected
turned their attention to a civil war at home. Terrified America’s heterogeneity: one-fifth had been born out-
by communism, Japan and several Allied countries, side the United States, and soldiers spoke forty-nine
including the United States, later sent troops to fight different languages. Though ethnic diversity worried
the Bolsheviks and aid forces loyal to the deposed tsar. some observers, most predicted that military service
But after a four-year civil war, Lenin’s forces established would promote Americanization.
full control over Russia and reclaimed Ukraine and Over 400,000 African American men enlisted,
other former possessions. accounting for 13 percent of the armed forces. Their
Peace with Russia freed Germany to launch a major wartime experiences were often grim: serving in segre-
offensive on the Western Front. By May 1918, German gated units, they were given the most menial tasks.
troops had advanced to within 50 miles of Paris. Racial discrimination hampered military efficiency
Pershing at last committed about 60,000 U.S. soldiers and provoked violence at several camps. The worst
to support the French defense. With American soldiers incident occurred in August 1917, when, after suffer-
engaged in massive numbers, Allied forces brought the ing a string of racial attacks, black members of the 24th
Germans to a halt in July; by September, they forced a Infantry’s Third Battalion rioted in Houston, killing 15
retreat. Pershing then pitted more than one million white civilians and police officers. The army tried 118
688 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
MAP 21.3
NETHERLANDS
U.S. Participation on the Western
ENGL AND North
Front, 1918
R hine
Thame
sR
Se a
.
When American troops reached the
R.
London
Cologne European front in significant numbers
Dunkirk
Calais Ypres
Brussels in 1918, the Allies and Central Powers
GERMANY had been fighting a deadly war of
B ELG IU M
Frankfurt attrition for almost four years. The
el
influx of American troops and supplies
R.
ha nn
l le
sh C
So
m
se
E ngli me helped break the stalemate. Successful
Mo
R
Amiens . LUX. offensive maneuvers by the American
Cantigny Sedan
May 1918 Meuse-Argonne Saar Expeditionary Force included those at
Sept.–Nov. 1918 R.
Soissons Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry
Se
in Belleau Wood Marne and the Meuse-Argonne campaign.
R.
June 1918
e R. Verdun
ne
R.
Château-
Rhi
Paris Strasbourg
Thierry
May 1918 St. Mihiel Nancy
Versailles Sept. 1918
N
W E
FRA N C E
S
of the soldiers in military courts for mutiny and riot, Many progressives also supported the war, hoping
hanged 19, and sentenced 63 to life in prison. Wilson’s ideals and wartime patriotism would renew
Unlike African Americans, American Indians Americans’ attention to reform. But the war bitterly
served in integrated combat units. Racial stereotypes disappointed them. Rather than enhancing democracy,
about Native Americans’ prowess as warriors enhanced it chilled the political climate as government agencies
their military reputations, but it also prompted officers tried to enforce “100 percent loyalty.”
to assign them hazardous duties as scouts and snipers.
About 13,000, or 25 percent, of the adult male Ameri- Mobilizing the Economy American businesses
can Indian population served during the war; roughly made big bucks from World War I. As grain, weapons,
5 percent died, compared to 2 percent for the military and manufactured goods flowed to Britain and France,
as a whole. the United States became a creditor nation. Moreover,
Most American soldiers escaped the horrors of sus- as the war drained British financial reserves, U.S. banks
tained trench warfare. Still, during the brief period of provided capital for investments around the globe.
U.S. participation, over 50,000 servicemen died in Government powers expanded during wartime,
action; another 63,000 died from disease, mainly the with new federal agencies overseeing almost every part
devastating influenza pandemic that began early in of the economy. The War Industries Board (WIB),
1918 and, over the next two years, killed 50 million established in July 1917, directed military production.
people worldwide. The nation’s military deaths, though After a fumbling start that showed the limits of volun-
substantial, were only a tenth as many as the 500,000 tarism, the Wilson administration reorganized the
American civilians who died of this terrible epidemic — board and placed Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street finan-
not to mention the staggering losses of Europeans in cier and superb administrator, at its head. Under his
the war (America Compared, p. 689). direction, the WIB allocated scarce resources among
industries, ordered factories to convert to war produc-
tion, set prices, and standardized procedures. Though
War on the Home Front he could compel compliance, Baruch preferred to win
In the United States, opponents of the war were a voluntary cooperation. A man of immense charm, he
minority. Helping the Allies triggered an economic usually succeeded — helped by the lucrative military
boom that benefitted farmers and working people. contracts at his disposal. Despite higher taxes, corporate
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
The United States played a crucial role in financing World War I. In its war-related
expenditures, totaling $22.6 billion, the United States ranked fourth among all
The Human Cost of nations that participated, ranking behind only Germany ($37.7 billion), Britain
($35.3 billion), and France ($24.3 billion). In human terms, however, the U.S. role
World War I was different. Note that the figures below for military casualties are rough esti-
mates. Civilian casualties are even more uncertain: the exact number of Russians,
Italians, Romanians, Serbians, and others who died will never be known.
TABLE 21.1
World War I Casualties
Country Total Population Military Killed or Missing Total Civilian Deaths
Germany 67,000,000 2,037,000 700,000
Russia 167,000,000 1,800,000 2,000,000
France 39,000,000 1,385,300 40,000
Austria-Hungary 49,900,000 1,016,200 unknown
United Kingdom 46,400,000 702,410 1,386
Italy 35,000,000 462,400 unknown
Turkey 21,300,000 236,000 2,000,000*
Romania 7,510,000 219,800 265,000–500,000
Serbia 5,000,000 127,500 600,000
Bulgaria 5,500,000 77,450 275,000
India 316,000,000 62,060 negligible
Canada 7,400,000 58,990 negligible
Australia 4,872,000 53,560 negligible
United States 92,000,000 51,822 negligible
*Mostly Armenians
profits soared, as military production sustained a boom Administration, meanwhile, introduced daylight sav-
that continued until 1920. ing time to conserve coal and oil. In December 1917,
Some federal agencies took dramatic measures. The the Railroad Administration seized control of the
National War Labor Board (NWLB), formed in April nation’s hodgepodge of private railroads, seeking to
1918, established an eight-hour day for war workers facilitate rapid movement of troops and equipment —
with time-and-a-half pay for overtime, and it endorsed an experiment that had, at best, mixed results.
equal pay for women. In return for a no-strike pledge, Perhaps the most successful wartime agency was
the NWLB also supported workers’ right to organize — the Food Administration, created in August 1917 and
a major achievement for the labor movement. The Fuel led by engineer Herbert Hoover. With the slogan “Food
689
690 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
will win the war,” Hoover convinced farmers to nearly Information (CPI), a government propaganda agency
double their acreage of grain. This increase allowed a headed by journalist George Creel. Professing lofty
threefold rise in food exports to Europe. Among citi- goals — educating citizens about democracy, assimilat-
zens, the Food Administration mobilized a “spirit of ing immigrants, and ending the isolation of rural
self-denial” rather than mandatory rationing. Female life — the committee set out to mold Americans into
volunteers went from door to door to persuade house- “one white-hot mass” of war patriotism. The CPI touched
keepers to observe “Wheatless” Mondays and “Pork- the lives of nearly all civilians. It distributed seventy-
less” Thursdays. Hoover, a Republican, emerged from five million pieces of literature and enlisted thousands
the war as one of the nation’s most admired public of volunteers — Four-Minute Men — to deliver short
figures. prowar speeches at movie theaters.
The CPI also pressured immigrant groups to
Promoting National Unity Suppressing wartime become “One Hundred Percent Americans.” German
dissent became a near obsession for President Wilson. Americans bore the brunt of this campaign (Thinking
In April 1917, Wilson formed the Committee on Public Like a Historian, p. 692). With posters exhorting
CHAPTER 21 An Emerging World Power, 1890–1918 691
citizens to root out German spies, a spirit of confor- people. The Justice Department prosecuted members
mity pervaded the home front. A quasi-vigilante group, of the Industrial Workers of the World, whose oppo-
the American Protective League, mobilized about sition to militarism threatened to disrupt war pro-
250,000 “agents,” furnished them with badges issued by duction of lumber and copper. When a Quaker pacifist
the Justice Department, and trained them to spy on teacher in New York City refused to teach a prowar
neighbors and coworkers. In 1918, members of the curriculum, she was fired. Socialist Party leader
league led violent raids against draft evaders and peace Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in jail for
activists. Government propaganda helped rouse a the crime of arguing that wealthy capitalists had started
nativist hysteria that lingered into the 1920s. the conflict and were forcing workers to fight.
Congress also passed new laws to curb dissent. Federal courts mostly supported the acts. In
Among them was the Sedition Act of 1918, which pro- Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court
hibited any words or behavior that might “incite, pro- upheld the conviction of a socialist who was jailed for
voke, or encourage resistance to the United States, or circulating pamphlets that urged army draftees to resist
promote the cause of its enemies.” Because this and an induction. The justices followed this with a similar
earlier Espionage Act (1917) defined treason loosely, decision in Abrams v. United States (1919), ruling that
they led to the conviction of more than a thousand authorities could prosecute speech they believed to
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Before 1917, Americans expressed diverse opinions about the war in Europe.
After the United States joined the Allies, however, German Americans’ loyalty
became suspect. German immigrant men who were not U.S. citizens were
German Americans required to register as “alien enemies,” and government propaganda fueled
fear of alleged German spies. In April 1918 in Collinsville, Illinois, a German-born
in World War I socialist named Robert Prager — who had sought U.S. citizenship and tried to
enlist in the navy — was lynched by drunken miners. The documents below shed
light on German Americans’ wartime experiences.
692
5. James W. Gerard, radio address, 1917. Gerard was Brocke, a farmer, recalled that neighbors on their
U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. joint telephone line would slam down the phone
The great majority of American citizens of German when his mother or sister spoke German. “We had
descent have, in this great crisis in our history, shown to be so careful,” he said.
themselves splendidly loyal to our flag. Everyone has a I remember when they smashed out store windows at
right to sympathize with any warring nation. But now Uniontown that said [sauer]kraut. . . . Nobody would eat
that we are in the war there are only two sides, and the kraut. Throw the Kraut out, they were Germans. . . . Even
time has come when every citizen must declare himself the great Williamson store, he went in and gathered up
American — or traitor! everything that was made in Germany, and had a big bon-
. . . The Foreign Minister of Germany once said to me fire out in the middle of the street, you know. Although he
“. . . we have in your country 500,000 German reservists had many good German friends all over the county that
who will rise in arms against your government if you dare had helped make him rich. . . . And if it was a German
to make a move against Germany.” Well, I told him that name — we’ll just change our name. . . . There were some
that might be so, but that we had 500,001 lampposts in [German American] boys that got draft deferments. . . .
this country, and that that was where the reservists would Some of them said that their fathers were sick and dying,
be hanging the day after they tried to rise. And if there are and their father had so much land they had to stay home
any German-Americans here who are so ungrateful for all and farm it for them. . . . [Local men] tarred and feath-
the benefits they have received that they are still for the ered some of them. Some of them as old men dying still
Kaiser, there is only one thing to do with them. And that resented and remembered.
is to hog-tie them, give them back the wooden shoes and
the rags they landed in, and ship them back. . . . There is
Sources: (1) Frederick C. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World
no animal that bites and kicks and squeals . . . equal to a War I (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 109; (2) Hearings Before the
fat German-American, if you commenced to tie him up Subcommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 65th Congress, Second Session
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), 300; (5) Gerard speech,
and told him that he was on his way back to the Kaiser. transcript and recording, at Library of Congress American Memory: memory.loc.gov
/ammem/nfhtml/nforSpeakers01.html; (6) New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 16, 1918;
6. Actions by New York liederkranz reported in New (7) Oral histories of Idaho residents at GMU History Matters, historymatters.gmu
.edu/d/2/. Excerpt courtesy of Latah County Historical Society.
Orleans Times-Picayune, May 16, 1918. Lieder-
kranz, or singing societies, played a vital role in
German immigrant communities. Before World
War I the city of Wheeling, West Virginia, counted
eleven such societies, with names like Harmonie,
Germania, and Mozart. By 1918 most liederkranz
had vanished. New York City’s was one of the few ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
that did not. 1. How did conditions change for German Americans
between 1915 and 1918?
Members of the [New York] Liederkranz, an organiza- 2. According to these sources, what aspects of German
tion founded seventy-one years ago by Germans . . . met American culture did other Americans find threatening?
tonight and placed on record their unqualified Ameri- What forms did anti-German hostility take?
canism. 3. Compare the sources that offer a German American per-
spective (sources 1, 2, 6, and 7) to those that represent
. . . They declared English the official language of the
a threat to German Americans’ way of life (3, 4, 5). How
organization, and for the first time in years the sound of did German Americans respond to growing anti-German
an enemy tongue will not be heard in the club’s halls. sentiment in this period?
Likewise they reiterated their offer to turn the buildings
over to the government as a hospital if it were necessary. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
World War I heightened anxieties about who was a “true”
7. Lola Gamble Clyde, 1976 interview on life in Idaho American. What groups were singled out in particular and
why? What continuities do you see between these fears
during World War I. In the 1970s, historians inter-
over “hyphenated” identities and controversies in earlier
viewed residents of rural Latah County, Idaho, eras of U.S. history? Today?
about their experiences in World War I. Frank
693
694 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
war created a new comfort level with women’s employ- White House. Standing silently with their banners,
ment outside the home — and with women’s suffrage. Paul and other NWP activists faced arrest for obstruct-
ing traffic and were sentenced to seven months in jail.
Women’s Voting Rights The National American They protested by going on a hunger strike, which
Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) threw the sup- prison authorities met with forced
port of its 2 million members wholeheartedly into the feeding. Public shock at the EXPLAIN
war effort. Its president, Carrie Chapman Catt, declared women’s treatment drew attention CONSEQUENCES
that women had to prove their patriotism to win the to the suffrage cause. What were the different
ballot. NAWSA members in thousands of communi- Impressed by NAWSA’s patri- effects of African Ameri-
ties promoted food conservation and distributed emer- otism and worried by the NWP’s cans’, Mexican Americans’,
gency relief through organizations such as the Red militancy, the antisuffrage Wilson and women’s civilian
Cross. reversed his position. In January mobilization during World
Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party (NWP) 1918, he urged support for woman War I?
took a more confrontational approach. Paul was a suffrage as a “war measure.” The
Quaker who had worked in the settlement movement constitutional amendment quickly passed the House
and earned a PhD in political science. Finding as a of Representatives; it took eighteen months to get
NAWSA lobbyist that congressmen dismissed her, Paul through the Senate and another year to win ratifi-
founded the NWP in 1916. Inspired by militant British cation by the states. On August 26, 1920, when
suffragists, the group began in July 1917 to picket the Tennessee voted for ratification, the Nineteenth
696 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Wagon Decorated for the Labor Day Parade, San Diego, California, 1910
As the woman suffrage movement grew stronger in the years before and during World War I, working-class
women played increasingly prominent and visible roles in its leadership. This Labor Day parade float, created
by the Women’s Union Label League of San Diego, showed that activists championed equal pay for women
in the workplace as well as women’s voting rights. “Union Label Leagues” urged middle-class shoppers
to purchase only clothing with a union label, certifying that the item had been manufactured under safe
conditions and the workers who made it had received a fair wage. San Diego Historical Society, Title Insurance
Trust Collection.
Amendment became law. The state thus joined Texas women did not gain voting rights until after World
as one of two ex-Confederate states to ratify it. In most War II, and Switzerland, which held out until 1971.)
parts of the South, the measure meant that white Thus, while World War I introduced modern horrors
women began to vote: in this Jim Crow era, African on the battlefield — machine guns and poison gas — it
American women’s voting rights remained restricted brought some positive results at home: economic
along with men’s. opportunity and women’s political participation.
In explaining suffragists’ victory, historians have
debated the relative effectiveness of Catt’s patriotic
strategy and Paul’s militant protests. Both played a role
in persuading Wilson and Congress to act, but neither
might have worked without the extraordinary impact
Catastrophe at Versailles
of the Great War. Across the globe, before 1914, the The idealistic Wilson argued that no victor should be
only places where women had full suffrage were New declared after World War I: only “peace among equals”
Zealand, Australia, Finland, and Norway. After World could last. Having won at an incredible price, Britain
War I, many nations moved to enfranchise women. and France showed zero interest in such a plan. But the
The new Soviet Union acted first, in 1917, with Great devastation wrought by the war created popular pres-
Britain and Canada following in 1918; by 1920, the sure for a just and enduring outcome. Wilson scored a
measure had passed in Germany, Austria, Poland, diplomatic victory at the peace conference, held at
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary as well as the United Versailles, near Paris, in 1919, when the Allies chose to
States. (Major exceptions were France and Italy, where base the talks on his Fourteen Points, a blueprint for
CHAPTER 21 An Emerging World Power, 1890–1918 697
grave long-term consequences for The Versailles treaty thus created conditions for
EXPLAIN
both France and the United States. horrific future bloodshed, and it must be judged one of
CONSEQUENCES
In what ways did the
The establishment of a British history’s great catastrophes. Balfour astutely described
Treaty of Versailles mandate in Palestine (now Israel) Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Wilson as “all-powerful,
embody — or fail to also proved crucial. During the all-ignorant men, sitting there and carving up conti-
embody — Wilson’s war, Brit ish foreign secretary Sir nents.” Wilson, however, remained optimistic as he
Fourteen Points? Arthur Balfour had stated that his returned home, even though his health was beginning
country would work to establish to fail. The president hoped the new League of Nations,
there a “national home for the Jewish people,” with the authorized by the treaty, would moderate the settle-
condition that “nothing shall be done which may prej- ment and secure peaceful resolutions of other disputes.
udice the civil and religious rights of existing non- For this to occur, U.S. participation was crucial.
Jewish communities in Palestine.” Under the British
mandate, thousands of Jews moved to Palestine and
purchased land, in some cases evicting Palestinian Congress Rejects the Treaty
tenants. As early as 1920, riots erupted between Jews The outlook for U.S. ratification was not promising.
and Palestinians — a situation that, even before World Though major opinion makers and religious denomi-
War II, escalated beyond British control. nations supported the treaty, openly hostile Republicans
occupation
NO
North
LATVIA
cS
Sea
DENMARK
lti
IRELAND LITHUANIA
NETHERLANDS Ba
EAST
UNITED PRUSSIA SOVIET UNION
KINGDOM Danzig (Ger.)
(Free City)
N GERMANY POLAND Vol
BELG. RHINELAND ga
R.
W
SAAR CZ
LUXEMBOURG EC
E E H.
IN Ca
S R R A CE
L O LS A sp
A SWITZ. AUST. HUNG. i
FRANCE
an
ROMANIA
Se
Ad YUGOSLAVIA Black Sea
a
AL
ria
IT
TUG
(Fr.) Se
a
Y
POR
ALB.
Sardinia
(It.) GREECE PERSIA
TURKEY
Sicily
SYRIA Persian
Gulf
Mediterranean Sea DODECANESE IS. IRAQ
Crete (Italy)
TUNISIA
(Fr.) PALESTINE
ALGERIA TRANS-
(Fr.) JORDAN KUWAIT
LIBYA (Gr. Br.)
(It.) EGYPT
N O R T H A F R I C A (independent 1922) SAUDI ARABIA
MAP 21.4
Europe and the Middle East After World War I
World War I and its aftermath dramatically altered the landscape of Europe and the Middle East.
In central Europe, the collapse of the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires brought
the reconstitution of Poland and the creation of a string of new states based on the principle of
national (ethnic) self-determination. The demise of the Ottoman Empire resulted in the appearance
of the quasi-independent territories, or “mandates,” of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The
League of Nations stipulated that their affairs would be supervised by one of the Allied powers.
CHAPTER 21 An Emerging World Power, 1890–1918 699
held a majority in the Senate. One group, called the achievements of women’s voting rights seemed to pre-
“irreconcilables,” consisted of western progressive sage a new progressive era. But as peace returned, it
Republicans such as Hiram Johnson of California and became clear that the war had not advanced reform.
Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, who opposed U.S. Rather than embracing government activism, Ameri-
involvement in European affairs. Another group, led by cans of the 1920s proved eager to relinquish it.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, worried
that Article X — the provision for collective security —
would prevent the United States from pursuing an inde-
pendent foreign policy. Was the nation, Lodge asked,
SUMMARY
“willing to have the youth of America ordered to war” Between 1877 and 1918, the United States rose as a
by an international body? Wilson refused to accept major economic and military power. Justifications for
any amendments, especially to placate Lodge, a hated overseas expansion emphasized access to global mar-
rival. “I shall consent to nothing,” the president told kets, the importance of sea power, and the need to
the French ambassador. “The Senate must take its police international misconduct and trade. These justi-
medicine.” fications shaped U.S. policy toward European powers
To mobilize support, Wilson embarked on an in Latin America, and victory in the War of 1898
exhausting speaking tour. His impassioned defense of enabled the United States to take control of former
the League of Nations brought audiences to tears, but Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. Victory,
the strain proved too much for the president. While vis- however, also led to bloody conflict in the Philippines
iting Colorado in September 1919, Wilson collapsed. A as the United States struggled to suppress Filipino
week later, back in Washington, he suffered a stroke that resistance to American rule.
left one side of his body paralyzed. Wilson still urged After 1899, the United States aggressively asserted
Democratic senators to reject all Republican amend- its interests in Asia and Latin America. In China, the
ments. When the treaty came up for a vote in November United States used the so-called Boxer Rebellion to
1919, it failed to win the required two-thirds majority. A make good its claim to an “open door” to Chinese mar-
second attempt, in March 1920, fell seven votes short. kets. Later, President Theodore Roosevelt strengthened
The treaty was dead, and so was Wilson’s leader- relations with Japan, and his successor, William Howard
ship. The president never fully recovered from his Taft, supported U.S. business interests in China. In the
stroke. During the last eighteen months of his adminis- Caribbean, the United States constructed the Panama
tration, the government drifted as Wilson’s physician, Canal and regularly exercised the right, claimed under
his wife, and various cabinet heads secretly took charge. the Roosevelt Corollary, to intervene in the affairs of
The United States never ratified the Versailles treaty or states in the region. President Woodrow Wilson pub-
joined the League of Nations. In turn, the League was licly disparaged the imperialism of his predecessors but
weak. When Wilson died in 1924, his dream of a just repeatedly used the U.S. military to “police” Mexico.
and peaceful international order lay in ruins. At the outbreak of World War I, the United States
The impact of World War I can hardly be over- asserted neutrality, but its economic ties to the Allies
stated. Despite bids for power by Britain and France, rapidly undercut that claim. In 1917, German subma-
Europe’s hold on its colonial empires never recovered. rine attacks drew the United States into the war on the
The United States, now a major world power, appeared side of Britain and France. Involvement in the war pro-
to turn its back on the world when it rejected the foundly transformed the economy, politics, and society
Versailles treaty. But in laying claim to Hawaii and the of the nation, resulting in an economic boom, mass
Philippines, asserting power in Latin America, and migrations of workers to industrial centers, and the
intervening in Asia, the United States had entangled achievement of national voting rights. At the Paris
itself deeply in global politics. By 1918, the nation had Peace Conference, Wilson attempted to implement his
gained too much diplomatic clout — and was too Fourteen Points. However, the designs of the Allies in
dependent on overseas trade — for isolation to be a Europe undermined the Treaty of Versailles, while
realistic long-term option. Republican resistance at home prevented ratification of
On the home front, the effects of World War I the treaty. Although Wilson’s dream of a just interna-
were no less dramatic. Wartime jobs and prosperity tional order failed, the United States had taken its place
ushered in an era of exuberant consumerism, while the as a major world power.
700 PART 7 CHAPTER REVIEW
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What factors prompted the United States to claim 4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
overseas territories in the 1890s and early 1900s? events listed under “America in the World” on the
thematic timeline on page 671. By the end of World
2. What role did the United States play in World War
War I, what influence did the United States exercise
I? On balance, do you think U.S. entry into the war
in the Caribbean, Latin America, the Pacific, and
was justified? Why or why not?
China, and in European affairs? How, and to what
3. How did World War I shape America on the home extent, had its power in each region expanded over
front, economically and politically? the previous four decades? Compare and contrast
the role of the United States to the roles of other
powers in each region.
CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER REVIEW 701
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Read again the Americans shaped white Americans’ racial assump-
documents from “Representing Indians” in Chap- tions in this era.
ter 16 (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 530). In what
2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Review the images on
ways might ideas about Native Americans have
pages 673, 685, and 695. What do they tell us about
informed attitudes toward Hawaiians, Filipinos,
how the 1910s, especially the experiences of World
and other people of color overseas? How might this
War I, changed gender expectations for men and
explain which peoples Woodrow Wilson included
women? At the start of the war, would you rather
and excluded in his ideal of “national self-determina-
have been a young man or a young woman? Why?
tion”? Write a short essay in which you explain how
How did new opportunities vary according to a
Americans’ policies and attitudes toward native
young person’s race and ethnicity? (The posters on
peoples within North America shaped U.S. foreign
pp. 687 and 691 may also be useful in considering
policy between 1898 and 1918. You may also wish
this question.)
to review relevant information in Chapters 15 and
20 and consider how attitudes toward African
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Jean H. Baker, Votes for Women (2002). A collection of Julie Greene, The Canal Builders (2009). The story of
essays on the achievement of women’s suffrage. the Panama Canal through the viewpoint of the
diverse workers who constructed it.
Frank Freidel, Over There (1990). A collection of
American soldiers’ firsthand accounts of their experi- James R. Grossman, Land of Hope (1999). A sweeping
ences in World War I. study of the Great Migration.
The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century. Walter LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity,
An excellent PBS documentary with accompanying 1865–1913 (1993). An excellent, up-to-date synthesis
documents at pbs.org/greatwar/index.html. of foreign policy in this era.
702 PART 7 CHAPTER REVIEW
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1895 t United States arbitrates border dispute between Britain and Venezuela
1900 t United States helps suppress nationalist rebellion in China (“Boxer Rebellion”)
1917 t United States declares war on Germany and its allies, creates new agencies to mobilize
economy and promote national unity
t Espionage Act
KEY TURNING POINTS: On the timeline above, identify at least five events that demonstrated
the rising global power of the United States. Compare their consequences. If you had been an
observer in London or Tokyo, how might you have interpreted the United States’s actions in
each case?
Cultural Conflict,
22
C H A P T E R
Bubble, and Bust
1919–1932
R
CONFLICTED LEGACIES ising to fame in The Sheik (1922), IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
OF WORLD WAR I Rudolph Valentino became a con- What conflicts in culture and politics
Racial Strife troversial Hollywood star. Calling arose in the 1920s, and how did eco-
Erosion of Labor Rights him “dark, darling, and delightful,” female nomic developments in that decade
The Red Scare fans mobbed his appearances. In Chicago, help cause the Great Depression?
Mexican American boys slicked back their
POLITICS IN THE 1920s hair and called each other “sheik.” But some Anglo men said they loathed Valentino.
Women in Politics One reviewer claimed the star had stolen his style from female “vamps” and ridiculed
Republicans and Business him for wearing a bracelet (a gift from his wife). The Chicago Tribune blamed Valentino
Dollar Diplomacy for the rise of “effeminate men,” shown by the popularity of “floppy pants and slave
Culture Wars bracelets.” Outraged, Valentino challenged the journalist to a fight — and defeated the
writer’s stand-in.
INTELLECTUAL
MODERNISM Valentino, an Italian immigrant, upset racial and ethnic boundaries. Nicknamed the
Latin Lover, he played among other roles a Spanish bullfighter and the son of a maha-
Harlem in Vogue
rajah. When a reporter called his character in The Sheik a “savage,” Valentino retorted,
Critiquing American Life
“People are not savages because they have dark skins. The Arab civilization is one of the
FROM BOOM TO BUST oldest in the world.”
The Postwar Economy But to many American-born Protestants, movies were morally dangerous — “vile
Consumer Culture and atrocious,” one women’s group declared. The appeal of “dark” stars like Valentino
The Coming of the Great and his predecessor, Japanese American actor Sessue Hayakawa, was part of the prob-
Depression lem. Hollywood became a focal point for political conflict as the nation took a sharp
right turn. A year before The Sheik appeared, the Reverend Wilbur Crafts published a
widely reprinted article warning of “Jewish Supremacy in Film.” He accused “Hebrew”
Hollywood executives of “gross immorality” and claimed they were racially incapable of
understanding “the prevailing standards of the American people.” These were not
fringe views. Crafts’s editorial first appeared in a newspaper owned by prominent auto-
maker Henry Ford.
Critics, though, failed to slow Hollywood’s success. Faced with threats of regulation,
movie-makers did what other big businesses did in the 1920s: they used their clout to
block government intervention. At the same time, they expanded into world markets;
when Valentino visited Paris, he was swarmed by thousands of French fans. The Sheik
highlighted America’s business success and its political and cultural divides. Young
urban audiences, including women “flappers,” were eager to challenge older sexual
and religious mores. Rural Protestants saw American values going down the drain. In
Washington, meanwhile, Republican leaders abandoned two decades of reform and
deferred to business. Americans wanted prosperity, not progressivism — until the conse-
quences arrived in the shock of the Great Depression.
704
Celebrating the Fourth of July, 1926 This Life magazine cover celebrates two famous symbols
of the 1920s: jazz music and the “flapper,” in her droopy tights and scandalously short skirt, who loves
to dance to its rhythms. The flags at the top record the latest slang expressions, including “so’s your
old man” and “step on it” (“it” being the accelerator of an automobile, in a decade when cars were
America’s hottest commodity). The bottom of the picture also added a note of protest: while July 4,
1926, marked the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Life says that Americans have
had only “one hundred and forty-three years of liberty” — followed by “seven years of Prohibition.”
Picture Research Consultants & Archives.
705
706 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
hand. He set up an antiradicalism division in the Justice in the hands of business. President Calvin Coolidge
Department and appointed his assistant J. Edgar declared, “The man who builds a factory builds a
Hoover to direct it; shortly afterward, it became the temple. The man who works there worships there.” The
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In November same theme prevailed in continued U.S. interventions
1919, Palmer’s agents stormed the headquarters of rad- in Latin America and elsewhere: American business
ical organizations. The dragnet captured thousands of needs were the top priority.
aliens who had committed no crimes but who held
anarchist or revolutionary beliefs. Lacking the protec-
tion of U.S. citizenship, many were deported without Women in Politics
indictment or trial. At the start of the 1920s, many progressives hoped the
The Palmer raids peaked on a notorious night in attainment of women’s voting rights would offer new
January 1920, when federal agents invaded homes and leverage to tackle poverty. They created organizations
meeting halls, arrested six thousand citizens and aliens, like the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, a
and denied the prisoners access to legal counsel. Then Washington-based advocacy group. The committee’s
Palmer, who had presidential ambitions, overreached. greatest accomplishment was the first federally funded
He predicted that on May 1 a radical conspiracy would health-care legislation, the Sheppard-Towner Federal
attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. State mili- Maternity and Infancy Act (1921). Sheppard-Towner
tia and police went on twenty-four-hour alert to guard provided federal funds for medical clinics, prenatal
against the alleged threat, but not a single incident education programs, and visiting nurses. Though
occurred. As the summer of 1920 passed without major opponents warned that the act would lead to socialized
strikes or renewed bombings, the Red Scare began to medicine, Sheppard-Towner improved health care for
abate. the poor and significantly lowered infant mortality
Like other postwar legacies, however, antiradical- rates. It also marked the first time that Congress desig-
ism had broad, long-lasting effects. In May 1920, at the nated federal funds for the states to encourage them to
height of the Red Scare, police arrested Nicola Sacco, a administer a social welfare program.
shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler, In 1923, Alice Paul, founder
EXPLAIN
for the murder of two men during a robbery of a shoe of the National Woman’s Party,
CONSEQUENCES
company in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Sacco and also persuaded congressional allies Before World War I,
Vanzetti were Italian aliens and self-proclaimed anar- to consider an Equal Rights women didn’t have full
chists who had evaded the draft. Convicted of the mur- Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. voting rights, but they had
ders, Sacco and Vanzetti sat in jail for six years while Constitution. It stated simply, considerable success as
supporters appealed their verdicts. In 1927, Judge “men and women shall have equal reformers. After the war
Webster Thayer denied a motion for a new trial and rights throughout the United they could vote, but their
sentenced them to death. Scholars still debate their States.” Advocates were hopeful; proposals met defeat. How
guilt or innocence. But the case was clearly biased by Wisconsin had passed a similar might we account for this
prosecutors’ emphasis on their ties to radical groups. law two years earlier, and it helped apparent contradiction?
The execution of Sacco and Vanzetti was one of the women fight gender discrimina-
ugly scars left by the ethnic and political hostilities of tion. But opponents pointed out that the ERA would
the Great War. threaten recent labor laws that protected women from
workplace abuses. Such laws recognized women’s vul-
nerable place in a heavily sex-segregated labor market.
Politics in the 1920s Would a theoretical statement of “equality” help poor
and working women more than existing protections
As the plight of labor suggested, the 1920s were a tough did? This question divided women’s rights advocates.
decade for progressives who had gained ground before Introduced repeatedly in Congress over the next five
World War I. After a few early reform victories, includ- decades but rarely making it out of committee, the
ing achievement of national women’s suffrage, the ERA was debated again and again until the bitter ratifi-
dominant motif of the 1920s was limited government. cation struggle of the 1970s (Chapter 29).
Native-born white Protestants rallied against what they Horrified at the suffering caused by World War I,
saw as big-city values and advocated such goals as some women joined a growing international peace
immigration restriction. A series of Republican presi- movement. While diplomats conducted negotiations at
dents placed responsibility for the nation’s well-being Versailles, women peace advocates from around the
710 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
dominance while offering, with his austere Yankee government guarantees of repay-
COMPARE AND
morality, a contrast to his predecessor’s cronyism. ment in countries they perceived CONTRAST
Campaigning for election in his own right in 1924, as weak or unstable. What choices did Ameri-
Coolidge called for limited government and tax cuts Officials provided such assur- cans face in the elections
for business. Rural and urban Democrats, deeply ance. In 1922, for example, when of 1920 and 1924, and
divided over such issues as prohibition and immigra- American banks offered an what directions did they
tion restriction, deadlocked at their national conven- immense loan to Bolivia (at a choose?
tion; after 102 ballots, delegates finally nominated hefty profit), State Department
John W. Davis, a Wall Street lawyer. Coolidge easily officials pressured the South American nation to accept
defeated Davis and staved off a challenge from Senator it. Diplomats also forced Bolivia to agree to financial
Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, who tried to resus- oversight by a commission under the banks’ control. A
citate the Progressive Party. The 1924 Progressive plat- similar arrangement was reached with El Salvador’s
form called for stronger government regulation at government in 1923. In other cases, the United States
home and international efforts to reduce weapons pro- intervened militarily, often to force repayment of debt.
duction and prevent war. “Free men of every genera- To implement such policies, the U.S. Marines occupied
tion,” it declared, “must combat the renewed efforts of Nicaragua almost continuously from 1912 to 1933, the
organized force and greed.” In the end, Coolidge Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924, and Haiti
received 15.7 million votes to Davis’s 8.4 million and La from 1915 to 1934.
Follette’s 4.9 million. In these lengthy military deployments, Americans
came to think of the occupied countries as essentially
To see a longer excerpt of the Progressive Party U.S. possessions, much like Puerto Rico and the
platform, along with other primary sources from Philippines. Sensational memoirs by marines who had
this period, see Sources for America’s History. served in Haiti popularized the island as the “American
Africa.” White Americans became fascinated by vodou
For the most part, Republicans dropped progres- (voodoo) and other Haitian religious customs, rein-
sive initiatives of the prewar years. The Federal Trade forcing their view of Haitians as dangerous savages or
Commission failed to enforce antitrust laws. The childlike people who needed U.S. guidance and super-
Supreme Court, now headed by former Republican vision. One commander testified that his troops saw
president William Howard Taft, refused to break up themselves as “trustees of a huge estate that belonged to
the mammoth U.S. Steel Corporation, despite evidence minors. . . . The Haitians were our wards.”
of its near-monopoly status. With the agricultural sec- At home, critics denounced loan guarantees and
tor facing hardship, Congress sought to aid farmers military interventions as dollar diplomacy. The term
with the McNary-Haugen bills of 1927 and 1928, which was coined in 1924 by Samuel Guy Inman, a Disciples
proposed a system of federal price supports for major of Christ missionary who toured U.S.-occupied Haiti
crops. But President Coolidge opposed the bills as and the Dominican Republic. “The United States,”
“special-interest legislation” and vetoed them both. Inman declared, “cannot go on destroying with impu-
While some state and municipal leaders continued to nity the sovereignty of other peoples, however weak.”
pursue ambitious agendas, they were shut out of fed- African American leaders also denounced the Haitian
eral power. occupation. On behalf of the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom and the International
Council of Women of the Darker Races, a delegation
Dollar Diplomacy conducted a fact-finding tour of Haiti in 1926. Their
Political campaigns emphasized domestic issues in the report exposed, among other things, the sexual exploi-
1920s, but while the United States refused to join the tation of Haitian women by U.S. soldiers.
League of Nations, the federal government remained By the late 1920s, dollar diplomacy was on the
deeply engaged in foreign affairs. Republican presidents defensive, in keeping with a broader disgust over inter-
worked to advance U.S. business interests, especially by national affairs. At the same time,
encouraging private banks to make foreign loans — part political leaders became frus- PLACE EVENTS
IN CONTEXT
of the broader government-business alliance in Repub- trated with their poor results.
What were the economic
licans’ associated state. Policymakers hoped loans would Dollar diplomacy usually man-
goals of U.S. foreign
stimulate growth and increase demand for U.S. prod- aged to get loans repaid, securing policymakers in the 1920s?
ucts in developing markets. Bankers, though, wanted bankers’ profits. But the loans
712 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
often ended up in the pockets of local elites; U.S. poli- distillers’ use of barley and other scarce grains, causing
cies failed to build broad-based prosperity overseas. consumption to decline. The decades-long prohibition
Military intervention had even worse results. In Haiti, campaign culminated with Congress’s passage of the
for example, the marines crushed peasant protests and Eighteenth Amendment in 1917. Ratified over the next
helped the Haitian elite consolidate power. U.S. occupa- two years by nearly every state and taking effect in
tion thus helped create the conditions for harsh dicta- January 1920, the amendment prohibited “manufac-
torships that Haitians endured through the rest of the ture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors”
twentieth century. anywhere in the United States.
Defenders hailed prohibition as a victory for health,
morals, and Christian values. In urban areas, though,
Culture Wars thousands flagrantly ignored the law. Patrons flocked
By 1929, ninety-three U.S. cities had populations of to urban speakeasies, or illegal drinking sites, which
more than 100,000. New York City’s population exceeded flourished in almost every Chicago neighborhood; one
7 million; Los Angeles’s had exploded to 1.2 million. raid on a South Side speakeasy yielded 200,000 gallons
The lives and beliefs of urban Americans often differed of alcohol. Profits from the secret clubs enriched noto-
dramatically from those in small towns and farming rious gangsters such as Chicago’s Al Capone and New
areas. Native-born rural Protestants, faced with a dire York’s Jack Diamond.
perceived threat, rallied in the 1920s to protect what In California, Arizona, and Texas, tens of thou-
they saw as American values. sands of Americans streamed “south of the border.”
Mexico regulated liquor but kept it legal (along with
Prohibition Rural and native-born Protestants gambling, drugs, and prostitution), leading to the rise
started the decade with the achievement of a longtime of booming vice towns such as Tijuana and Mexicali,
goal: national prohibition of liquor (Chapter 18). places that had been virtually uninhabited before 1900.
Wartime anti-German prejudice was a major spur. U.S. nightclub owners in these cities included such
Since breweries like Pabst and Anheuser-Busch were prominent figures as African American boxer Jack
owned by German Americans, many citizens decided Johnson. By 1928, the American investors who built a
it was unpatriotic to drink beer. Mobilizing the econ- $10 million resort, racetrack, and casino in Tijuana
omy for war, Congress also limited brewers’ and became known as border barons. Prohibitionists were
The National Klan The 1920s brought a nation- members of the Anti-Saloon League to enforce prohi-
wide resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the white bition laws through threats and violent attacks.
supremacist group formed in the post–Civil War The rise of the Klan was part of an ugly trend that
South. Soon after the premiere of Birth of a Nation began before World War I and extended into the 1930s.
(1915), a popular film glorifying the Reconstruction- In 1915, for example, rising anti-Semitism was marked
era Klan, a group of southerners gathered on Georgia’s by the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory supervi-
Stone Mountain to revive the group. With its blunt sor in Marietta, Georgia, who was wrongly accused of
motto, “Native, white, Protestant supremacy,” the Klan the rape and murder of a thirteen-year-old girl. The
recruited supporters across the country (Thinking Like rise of the national Klan helped prepare the way for
a Historian, p. 716). KKK members did not limit their white supremacist movements of the 1930s, such as the
harassment to blacks but targeted immigrants, Los Angeles–based Silver Legion, a fringe paramilitary
Catholics, and Jews as well, with physical intimidation, group aligned with Hitler’s Nazis. Far more influential
arson, and economic boycotts. were major figures such as industrialist Henry Ford,
At the height of its power, the Klan wielded serious whose Dearborn Independent railed against immigrants
political clout and counted more than three million and warned that members of “the proud Gentile race”
members, including many women. The Klan’s main- must arm themselves against a Jewish conspiracy aimed
stream appeal was illustrated by President Woodrow at world domination. Challenged by critics, Ford issued
Wilson’s public praise for Birth of a Nation. Though the an apology in 1927 and admitted that his allegations
Klan declined nationally after 1925, robbed of a potent had been based on “gross forgeries.” But with his paper’s
issue by passage of the anti-immigration bill, it editorials widely circulated by the Klan and other
remained strong in the South, and pockets of KKK groups, considerable long-term damage had been done.
activity persisted in all parts of the country (Map 22.1).
Klan activism lent a menacing cast to political issues. The Election of 1928 Conflicts over race, reli-
Some local Klansmen, for example, cooperated with gion, and ethnicity created the climate for a stormy
CHAPTER 22 Cultural Conflict, Bubble, and Bust, 1919–1932 715
C A N A D A
ME.
WASH.
NORTH
MONTANA DAKOTA VT.
MINN.
N.H.
MASS.
OREGON N.Y.
IDAHO
SOUTH WIS.
WYOMING
DAKOTA
MICH.
PA.
R.I.
CONN.
N.J.
IOWA
NEBRASKA ILL.
OHIO DEL.
NEVADA IND.
UTAH COLORADO
W.
VA. VA.
MD.
CALIF. KANSAS
MO. KY.
N
N.C.
E
TENN.
OKLAHOMA
W
S.C. S
ARIZONA NEW
MEXICO ARK.
GA.
MISS.
ALA. ATLANTIC
LA. OCEAN
PACIFIC TEXAS
OCEAN
FLA.
Gulf of Mexico
Governor elected with Klan support
MEXICO
U.S. senator elected with Klan support 0 250 500 miles
Major areas of Klan violence
0 250 500 kilometers
MAP 22.1
Ku Klux Klan Politics and Violence in the 1920s
Unlike the Reconstruction-era Klan, the Klan of the 1920s was geographically dispersed and had
substantial strength in the West and Midwest as well as in the South. Although the Klan is often
thought of as a rural movement, some of the strongest “klaverns” were in Chicago, Los Angeles,
Atlanta, Detroit, and other large cities. The organization’s members operated as vigilantes in areas
where they were strong; elsewhere, their aggressive tactics triggered riots between Klansmen and
their ethnic and religious targets.
presidential election in 1928. Democrats had tradi- Although Smith insisted that his Catholic beliefs would
tionally drawn strength from white voters in the South not affect his duties as president, many Protestants
and immigrants in the North: groups that divided over opposed him. “No Governor can kiss the papal ring
prohibition, immigration restriction, and the Klan. By and get within gunshot of the White House,” vowed
1928, the northern urban wing gained firm control. one Methodist bishop.
Democrats nominated Governor Al Smith of New Smith proved no match for the Republican nomi-
York, the first presidential candidate to reflect the aspi- nee, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who
rations of the urban working class. A grandson of Irish embodied the technological promise of the modern
peasants, Smith had risen through New York City’s age. Women who had mobilized for Hoover’s conser-
Democratic machine to become a dynamic reformer. vation campaigns during World War I enlisted as
But he offended many small-town and rural Americans Hoover Hostesses, inviting friends to their homes to
with his heavy New York accent and brown derby hat, hear the candidate’s radio speeches. Riding on eight
which highlighted his ethnic working-class origins. years of Republican prosperity, Hoover promised that
Middle-class reformers questioned his ties to Tammany individualism and voluntary cooperation would ban-
Hall; temperance advocates opposed him as a “wet.” ish poverty. He won overwhelmingly, with 444 elec-
But the governor’s greatest handicap was his religion. toral votes to Smith’s 87 (Map 22.2). Because many
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Who Joined the Asked why a person would join the Klan, you might cite racism and religious
bigotry. But the story is complicated: many whites with strong prejudices did not
Ku Klux Klan? join the Klan in the 1920s, while others did. Why?
1. Klan wedding in Washington, D.C., 1925. propaganda. . . . The idea of drink will be maintained by
means of the Jewish stage, Jewish jazz, and the Jewish
comics, until somebody comes down hard upon it.
TABLE 22.1
Klansmen in Buffalo, New York, 1924
2. Poem read at a meeting of KKK Grand Dragons,
North Carolina, 1923. Percentage of
Total Native
God Give Us Men! The Invisible Empire demands
Percentage White Male
strong
of KKK Workers in
Minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands . . .
Occupational Group Members Buffalo
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie; Professional (predomi-
Men who can stand before a demagogue and damn nantly clergy, doctors,
his treacherous flattering without winking! . . . engineers, pharmacists) 6.1 4.7
Men of dependable character; men of sterling worth;
Business (small
Then wrongs will be redressed, and right will rule the
businessmen, managers,
earth.
inspectors, accountants) 18.5 10.4
3. “95% of Bootleggers Jews,” editorial, Dearborn Low nonmanual (sales-
Independent, Michigan, 1922. men, clerks, foremen) 27.7 22.6
Violation and evasion of the Prohibition laws has had a Skilled (machinists, electri-
deep Jewish complexion from the very beginning. . . . cians, railroad engineers,
This does not mean, of course, that every bootlegger is a construction trades) 30.6 25.3
Jew. Unless you live in Chicago, New York or other large Semiskilled and service
cities, an actual meeting with the Jew in this minor capac- (factory and rail workers,
ity will not be frequent. The Jew is the possessor of the deliverymen, policemen,
wholesale stocks; . . . But notwithstanding all this care- repairmen) 16.4 30.2
fulness, the bulk of the arrests made in the United States
have been among Jews. . . . The maintenance of the idea Unskilled (laborers,
of drink in the minds of the people is due to Jewish gardeners) 0.5 14.5
716
6. Interviews conducted in the 1980s with Indiana r Recognition of the fact . . . that Romanism is working
Klanswomen about Klan life in the 1920s. Seeking here to undermine Americanism. . . . Since Roman Cath-
truthful accounts, the interviewer allowed the olics give first allegiance to an alien political potentate,
women to remain anonymous. the pope . . . their claim to citizenship, to the ballot, and
Anonymous to public office in this Protestant country is illegitimate,
and must be forbidden by law. . . .
For [the Klan] to say, we want to get rid of the niggers,
we want to get rid of the Catholics, it didn’t mean a thing r A law to destroy the alien influence of the foreign lan-
to us. . . . I can remember quite well the stories that you guage press [by] requiring that the English language be
hear sitting on the porch. . . . They’d talk about religion, used exclusively.
and they’d talk about Catholics. . . . The Catholics were
considered horrible people. . . . r . . . Recognition of the tendency toward moral disintegra-
tion, resulting from the activities . . . of the anti-Christian
Anonymous Jews, in our theaters, our motion pictures, and in American
Kelly had a grocery store. Well, it hurt their business ter- business circles; the discontinuance of these anti-Christian
ribly because people wouldn’t go in there, because the Klan activities, and the exclusion of Jews of this character from
would tell you not to. . . . If you had a empty house . . . , America.
why you were told not to rent it to a Catholic.
r The return of the Negroes to their homeland of Africa,
Some Klan leader said that the Pope was coming to
take over the country, and he said he might be on the next under the protection and with the help of the United
train that went through North Manchester. You know, just States Government.
trying to make it specific. So, about a thousand people went r Strict adherence to the Constitution of the United States,
out to the train station and stopped the train. It only had . . . including the Prohibition Amendment, by every citizen.
one passenger on it. They took him off, and he finally con-
vinced them that he wasn’t the Pope. He was a carpet
salesman. And so they put him on the next train and Sources: (2) Kelly J. Baker, Gospel According to the Klan (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 2011), 119; (3) Dearborn Independent editorial reprinted in Aspects of Jewish
he went on to Chicago. Power in the United States (Dearborn, MI: Dearborn Publishing, 1922), 34–40; (4) Rory
McVeigh, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
7. Editorial by National Imperial Wizard Hiram 2009), 150; (5) Shawn Lay, Hooded Knights on the Niagara (New York: New York
University Press, 1995), chapter 4 (esp. 87); (6) Kathleen M. Blee, Women in the Klan
Wesley Evans in the KKK periodical Dawn: A Jour- (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 78–79, 149–151;
nal for True American Patriots, November 10, 1923. (7) McVeigh, 64–65; (8) American Standard, April 15, 1925, 172.
717
718 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Harlem in Vogue
7 6
4 5 44
18
The Great Migration tripled New York’s black popula-
5 12
45
4 5 13
15 5 tion in the decade after 1910. Harlem stood as “the
3 38 7
8
13
29 15
24 14 symbol of liberty and the Promised Land to Negroes
3 3
4 8 12
13
6 10 18 13 8 everywhere,” as one minister put it. Talented African
12
10
12
9
Americans flocked to the district, where they created
3 3 9
10 12
14 bold new art forms and asserted ties to Africa.
20 10
6
Black Writers and Artists Poet Langston Hughes
Electoral Popular Percent of
captured the upbeat spirit of the Harlem Renaissance
Candidate Vote Vote Popular Vote when he asserted, “I am a Negro — and beautiful.”
Herbert C. Hoover
(Republican)
444 21,391,993 58.2 Other writers and artists also championed race pride.
Alfred E. Smith 87 15,016,169 40.9
Claude McKay and Jean Toomer represented in fiction
(Democrat)
what philosopher Alain Locke called, in an influential
1925 book, The New Negro. Painter Jacob Lawrence,
MAP 22.2 who had grown up in crowded tenement districts of
The Presidential Election of 1928
the urban North, used bold shapes and vivid colors to
Historians still debate the extent to which 1928 was a portray the daily life, aspirations, and suppressed anger
critical election — an election that produced a significant
realignment in voting behavior. Although Republican of African Americans.
Herbert Hoover swept the popular and the electoral No one embodied the energy and optimism of the
votes, Democrat Alfred E. Smith won majorities not only Harlem Renaissance more than Zora Neale Hurston.
in the South, his party’s traditional stronghold, but also
in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and (although it is not
Born in the prosperous black community of Eatonville,
evident on this map) all of the large cities of the North Florida, Hurston had been surrounded as a child by
and Midwest. In subsequent elections, the Democrats examples of achievement, though she struggled later
won even more votes among African Americans and with poverty and isolation. In contrast to some other
European ethnic groups and, until 1980, were the
nation’s dominant political party. black thinkers, Hurston believed African American
culture could be understood without heavy emphasis
on the impact of white oppression. After enrolling at
Barnard College and studying with anthropologist
southern Protestants refused to vote for a Catholic, Franz Boas, Hurston traveled through the South and
Hoover carried five ex-Confederate states, breaking the the Caribbean for a decade, documenting folklore,
Democratic “Solid South” for the first time since songs, and religious beliefs. She incorporated this
Reconstruction. Smith, though, carried industrialized material into her short stories and novels, celebrating
Massachusetts and Rhode Island as well as the nation’s the humor and spiritual strength of ordinary black
twelve largest cities, suggesting that urban voters were men and women. Like other work of the Harlem
moving into the Democrats’ camp. Renaissance, Hurston’s stories and novels sought to
articulate what it meant, as black intellectual W. E. B.
Du Bois wrote, “to be both a Negro and an American.”
performers, some of whom had more formal training, K. E. Heinemann, a producer who sold immigrant
injected elements of European concert music. records in Yiddish, Swedish, and other languages,
In the 1920s, as jazz spread nationwide, musicians recorded singer Mamie Smith performing “Crazy
developed its signature mode, the improvised solo. The Blues.” This smash hit prompted big recording labels
key figure in this development was trumpeter Louis like Columbia and Paramount to copy Heinemann’s
Armstrong. A native of New Orleans, Armstrong approach. Yet, while its marketing reflected the segre-
learned his craft playing in the saloons and brothels of gation of American society, jazz brought black music to
the city’s vice district. Like tens of thousands of other the center stage of American culture. It became the
African Americans he moved north, settling in Chicago era’s signature music, so much so that novelist F. Scott
in 1922. Armstrong showed an inexhaustible capacity Fitzgerald dubbed the 1920s the “Jazz Age.”
for melodic invention, and his dazzling solos inspired
other musicians. By the late 1920s, soloists became the Marcus Garvey and the UNIA Harlem’s creative
celebrities of jazz, thrilling audiences with their impro- energy generated broad political aspirations. The
visational skill. Harlem-based Universal Negro Improvement Associa-
As jazz spread, it followed the routes of the Great tion (UNIA), led by charismatic Jamaican-born Marcus
Migration from the South to northern and midwestern Garvey, arose in the 1920s to mobilize African Ameri-
cities, where it met consumers primed to receive it. can workers and champion black separatism. Garvey
Most cities had plentiful dance halls where jazz could urged followers to move to Africa, arguing that people
be featured. Radio also helped popularize jazz, with the of African descent would never be treated justly in
emerging record industry marketing the latest tunes. white-run countries.
As white listeners flocked to ballrooms and clubs to The UNIA soon claimed four
hear Duke Ellington and other stars, Harlem became million followers, including many EXPLAIN
the hub of this commercially lucrative jazz. Those who recent migrants to northern cit- CONSEQUENCES
hailed “primitive” black music rarely suspended their ies. It published a newspaper, How did the Great Migra-
racial condescension: visiting a mixed-race club became Negro World, and solicited funds tion lead to flourishing
known as “slumming.” for the Black Star steamship com- African American culture,
politics, and intellectual
The recording industry soon developed race pany, which Garvey created as an
life, and what form did
records specifically aimed at urban working-class enterprise that would foster trade
these activities take?
blacks. The breakthrough came in 1920, when Otto with the West Indies and carry
720 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Other writers also explored the dark side of the 1919 alone. Then came a two-year recession that raised
human psyche. In such dramas as Desire Under the unemployment to 10 percent. Finally, the economy
Elms (1924), playwright Eugene O’Neill depicted char- began to grow smoothly, and more Americans began
acters driven by raw, ungovernable sexual impulses. to benefit. Between 1922 and 1929, national per capita
O’Neill first made his mark with The Emperor Jones income rose an impressive 24 percent.
(1920), a popular Broadway drama about a black dicta- Large-scale corporations continued to replace
tor driven from power by his people. Appealing to small business in many sectors of the economy. By
Americans’ fascination with Haiti, the play offered an 1929, through successive waves of consolidation, the
ambiguous message: its black protagonist was played two hundred largest businesses had come to control
not by the customary white actors made up in black- almost half of the country’s nonbanking corporate
face, but by African Americans who won acclaim for wealth. The greatest number of mergers occurred in
their performances. W. E. B. Du Bois called it “a splen- rising industries such as chemicals (with DuPont in the
did tragedy.” But others were dissatisfied with the play’s lead) and electrical appliances (General Electric). At
primitivism; one actor who played Emperor Jones the same time, mergers between Wall Street banks
altered the script to omit offensive racial epithets. The enhanced New York City’s position as the financial
white crowds who made The Emperor Jones a hit, like center of the nation and increasingly the world. Aided
those who flocked to Harlem’s jazz clubs, indulged a by Washington’s dollar diplomats, U.S. companies exer-
problematic fascination with “primitive” sexuality. cised growing global power. Seeking cheaper livestock,
In a decade of conflict between traditional and giant American meat-packers opened plants in Argen-
modern worldviews, many writers exposed what they tina; the United Fruit Company developed plantations
saw as the hypocrisy of small-town and rural life in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala; General
(American Voices, p. 722.) The most savage critic of Electric set up production facilities in Latin America,
conformity was Sinclair Lewis, whose novel Babbitt Asia, and Australia.
(1922) depicted the disillusionment of an ordinary Despite the boom, the U.S. economy had areas of
small-town salesman. Babbitt was widely denounced significant weakness throughout the 1920s. Agriculture,
as un-American; Elmer Gantry (1927), a satire about a which still employed one-fourth of all American work-
greedy evangelical minister on the make, provoked ers, never fully recovered from the postwar recession.
even greater outrage. But critics found Lewis’s work Once Europe’s economy revived, its farmers flooded
superb, and in 1930 he became the first American to world markets with grain and other farm products,
win the Nobel Prize for literature. Even more famous causing agricultural prices to fall. Other industries,
was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), which including coal and textiles, languished for similar rea-
offered a scathing indictment of Americans’ mindless sons. As a consequence, many rural Americans shared
pursuit of pleasure and material wealth. little of the decade’s prosperity. The bottom 40 percent
of American families earned an average annual income
of only $725 (about $9,100 today). Many, especially
rural tenants and sharecroppers, languished in poverty
From Boom to Bust and malnutrition.
Spurred by rapid expansion during the war, American
business thrived in the 1920s. Corporations expanded
Consumer Culture
more and more into overseas markets, while at home a
national consumer culture emphasized leisure and fun. In middle-class homes, Americans of the 1920s sat
But some sectors of the economy, notably agriculture, down to a breakfast of Kellogg’s corn flakes before get-
never recovered from a sharp recession in the wake ting into Ford Model Ts to work or shop at Safeway.
of World War I. Meanwhile, close observers worried On weekends, they might head to the local theater to
over the rapid economic growth and easy credit that see the newest Charlie Chaplin film. By 1929, electric
fueled the Roaring Twenties. Their fears proved well refrigerators and vacuum cleaners came into use in
founded: the “Roar” ended in the Great Depression. affluent homes; 40 percent of American households
owned a radio. The advertising industry reached new
levels of ambition and sophistication, entering what
The Postwar Economy one historian calls the era of the “aggressive hard sell.”
Immediately after World War I, the United States expe- The 1920s gave birth, for example, to fashion modeling
rienced a series of economic shocks. They began with and style consulting. “Sell them their dreams,” one
rampant inflation, as prices jumped by one-third in radio announcer urged advertisers in 1923. “People
AMERICAN
VOICES
In the early twentieth century, the United States was becoming an urban society.
By 1920, life outside the metropolis seemed sufficiently remarkable to warrant
Urban Writers Describe sociological investigation — or at least, city people thought so. Presented here
are three views of rural and small-town America, all published during the 1920s.
Small-Town America Though cities had become the wellspring of American intellectual life, urban
writers juxtaposed their own experiences with those of people they thought of
as living in “Middletown, U.S.A.”
When Carol had walked for thirty-two minutes she had The train which brought Carol to Gopher Prairie also
completely covered the town, east and west, north and brought Miss Bea Sorenson.
south; and she stood at the corner of Main Street and Miss Bea was a stalwart, corn-colored, laughing young
Washington Avenue and despaired. woman, and she was bored by farm-work. She desired the
Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its story- excitements of city-life, and the way to enjoy city-life was,
and-a-half wooden residences, its muddy expanse from she had decided, to “go get a yob as a hired girl in Gopher
concrete walk to walk, its huddle of Fords and lumber- Prairie.” . . .
wagons, was too small to absorb her. The broad, straight, Bea had never before been in a town larger than
unenticing gashes of the streets let in the grasping prairie Scandia Crossing, which has sixty-seven inhabitants.
on every side. She realized the vastness and the emptiness As she marched up the street she was meditating that
of the land. The skeleton iron windmill on the farm a few it didn’t hardly seem like it was possible there could be
blocks away, at the north end of Main Street, was like the so many folks all in one place at the same time. My! It
ribs of a dead cow. She thought of the coming of the would take years to get acquainted with them all. And
Northern winter, when the unprotected houses would swell people, too! A fine big gentleman in a new pink
crouch together in terror of storms galloping out of that shirt with a diamond, and not no washed-out blue
wild waste. They were so small and weak, the little brown denim working-shirt. A lovely lady in a longery dress
houses. They were shelters for sparrows. . . . (but it must be an awful hard dress to wash). And the
She wanted to run, fleeing from the encroaching stores! . . . A drug store with a soda fountain that was just
prairie, demanding the security of a great city. Her huge, awful long, and all lovely marble . . . and the soda
dreams of creating a beautiful town were ludicrous. spouts, they were silver, and they came right out of the
Oozing out from every drab wall, she felt a forbidding bottom of the lamp-stand! Behind the fountain there were
spirit which she could never conquer. glass shelves, and bottles of new kinds of soft drinks, that
She trailed down the street on one side, back on the nobody ever heard of. Suppose a fella took you there!
other, glancing into the cross streets. It was a private
Seeing Main Street tour. She was within ten minutes Anzia Yezierska
beholding not only the heart of a place called Gopher
Bread Givers
Prairie, but ten thousand towns from Albany to San
Diego. A child of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Anzia
Dyer’s Drug Store, a corner building of regular and Yezierska grew up on the Lower East Side of New York
unreal blocks of artificial stone. Inside the store, a greasy City. In her autobiographical novel Bread Givers (1925),
marble soda-fountain with an electric lamp of red and Yezierska described her arrival in the Ohio town where she
green and curdled-yellow mosaic shade. Pawed-over attended college.
722
Before this, New York was all of America to me. But now locally are bought on time payment, and a working man
I came to a town of quiet streets, shaded with green trees. earning $35.00 a week frequently plans to use one week’s
No crowds, no tenements. No hurrying noise to beat the pay each month as payment for his car. The automobile
race of the hours. Only a leisured quietness whispered in has apparently unsettled the habit of careful saving for
the air: Peace. . . . some families. . . . “I’ll go without food before I’ll see us
Each house had its own green grass in front, its own give up the car,” said one woman emphatically. . . .
free space all around, and it faced the street with the calm Many families feel that an automobile is justified as
security of being owned for generations, and not rented an agency holding the family group together. . . . [But] the
by the month from a landlord. In the early twilight, it was fact that 348 boys and 382 girls in the three upper years of
like a picture out of fairyland to see people sitting on their the high school placed “use of the automobile” fifth and
porches, lazily swinging in their hammocks, or watering fourth respectively in a list of twelve possible sources of
their own growing flowers. disagreement between them and their parents suggests
So these are the real Americans, I thought, thrilled by that this may be an increasing decentralizing agent. . . .
the lean, straight bearing of the passers-by. They had none If the automobile touches the rest of Middletown’s
of that terrible fight for bread and rent that I always saw living at many points, it has revolutionized its leisure . . .
in the New York people’s eyes. . . . All the young people I making leisure-time enjoyment a regularly expected part
had ever seen were shut up in factories. But here were of every day and week rather than an occasional event. . . .
young girls and young men enjoying life, free from the The frequency of movie attendance of high school boys
worry for a living. . . . The spick-and-span cleanliness of and girls is about equal, business class families tend to go
these people! It smelled from them, the soap and the more often than do working class families, and children
bathing. Their fingernails so white and pink. . . . What a of both groups attend more often without their parents
feast of happenings each day of college was to those other than do all the individuals or combinations of family
students. Societies, dances, letters from home, packages of members put together. . . . It is probable that time for-
food, midnight spreads and even birthday parties. I never merly spent in lodges, saloons, and unions is now being
knew that there were people glad enough of life to cel- spent in part at the movies, at least occasionally with
ebrate the day they were born. other members of the family. Like the automobile and
radio, the movies [break] up leisure time into an indi-
Source: From Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska. Copyright © 1970 by Louise Levitas vidual, family, or small group affair.
Henriksen. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc., New York. All rights
reserved.
Source: Excerpt from Middletown: A Study in American Culture, by Robert S. Lynd and
Helen M. Lynd. Copyright © 1929 by Harcourt, Inc. and renewed 1957 by Robert S. and
Helen M. Lynd. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd Company. All rights reserved.
Middletown
In 1929, sociologists Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd
published Middletown, a study of life in a small midwest-
ern city. Middletown was not a single community but a
composite of several communities studied by the Lynds. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
1. What attitudes toward the small town and big city does
The first real automobile appeared in Middletown in Main Street represent? Why do you think Lewis includes
1900. . . . At the close of 1923 there were 6,221 passenger views as different as Carol’s and Bea’s?
cars in the city, one for every 6.1 persons, or roughly two 2. How does the urban experience of Yezierska’s narrator
shape her reaction to life in an Ohio town? How might
for every three families. . . . As, at the turn of the century, small-town residents have reacted to her description of
business class people began to feel apologetic if they did them as “the real Americans”? How might Lewis have
not have a telephone, so ownership of an automobile has responded to Yezierska’s description?
now reached the point of being an accepted essential of 3. How do the two novelists (Lewis and Yezierska) dif-
fer from the sociologists (the Lynds) in the issues they
normal living. . . .
emphasize, and in their tone and point of view? What
According to an officer of a Middletown automobile features of small-town life does each text emphasize?
financing company, 75 to 90 percent of the cars purchased
723
724 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
don’t buy things to have things. . . . They buy hope — high and families often found it difficult to make ends
hope of what your merchandise will do for them.” meet. Self-help was the watchword as families bartered
In practice, participation in consumer culture was with neighbors and used their yards to raise vegetables,
as contested as the era’s politics. It was no accident that rabbits, and chickens.
white mobs in the Tulsa race riot plundered radios and The lure of consumer culture created friction. Wives
phonograph players from prosperous African Ameri- resented husbands who spent all their discretionary
can homes: the message was that whites deserved such cash at the ballpark. Generational conflicts emerged,
items and blacks did not. But neither prosperity nor especially when wage-earning children challenged the
poverty was limited by race. Surrounded by exhorta- expectation that their pay should go “all to mother.” In
tions to indulge in luxuries, millions of working-class St. Louis, a Czech-born woman was exasperated when
Americans barely squeaked by, with wives and mothers her son and daughter stopped contributing to rent and
often working to pay for basic necessities. In times of food and pooled their wages to buy a car. In Los Angeles,
crisis, some families sold their furniture, starting with one fifteen-year-old girl spent her summer earning $2
pianos and phonographs and continuing, if necessary, a day at a local factory. Planning to enroll in business
to dining tables and beds. In the Los Angeles suburb of school, she spent $75 on dressy shoes and “a black coat
South Gate, white working-class men secured jobs in with a red fox collar.” Her brother reported that “Mom
the steel and automobile industries, but prices were is angry at her for ‘squandering’ so much money.”
CHAPTER 22 Cultural Conflict, Bubble, and Bust, 1919–1932 725
Many poor and affluent families shared one thing a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise,
PLACE EVENTS
in common: they stretched their incomes, small or financed by federal subsidies and IN CONTEXT
large, through new forms of borrowing such as auto state gasoline taxes. Car owner- How did the radio, auto-
loans and installment plans. “Buy now, pay later,” said ship spurred urban sprawl and, in mobile, and Hollywood
the ads, and millions did. Anyone, no matter how rich, 1924, the first suburban shopping movies exemplify the
could get into debt, but consumer credit was particu- center: Country Club Plaza out- opportunities and the
larly perilous for those living on the economic mar- side Kansas City, Missouri. But risks of 1920s consumer
gins. In Chicago, one Lithuanian man described his cars were expensive, and most culture?
neighbor’s situation: “She ain’t got no money. Sure she Americans bought them on credit.
buys on credit, clothes for the children and everything.” This created risks not only for buyers but for the whole
Such borrowing turned out to be a factor in the bust economy. Borrowers who could not pay off car loans
of 1929. lost their entire investment in the vehicle; if they
defaulted, banks were left holding unpaid loans. Amid
The Automobile No possession proved more popu- the boom of the 1920s, however, few worried about this
lar than the automobile, a showpiece of modern con- result.
sumer capitalism that revolutionized American life. Cars changed the way Americans spent their lei-
Car sales played a major role in the decade’s economic sure time, as proud drivers took their machines on the
boom: in one year, 1929, Americans spent $2.58 billion road. An infrastructure of gas stations, motels, and
on automobiles. By the end of the decade, they owned drive-in restaurants soon catered to drivers. Railroad
23 million cars — about 80 percent of the world’s auto- travel faltered. The American Automobile Association,
mobiles — or an average of one for every six people. founded in 1902, estimated that by 1929 almost a third
The auto industry’s exuberant expansion rippled of the population took vacations by car. As early as
through the economy, with both positive and negative 1923, Colorado had 247 autocamps. “I had a few days
results. It stimulated steel, petroleum, chemical, rub- after I got my wheat cut,” reported one Kansas farmer,
ber, and glass production and, directly or indirectly, “so I just loaded my family . . . and lit out.” An elite
created 3.7 million jobs. Highway construction became Californian complained that automobile travel was no
Hollywood Movies formed a second centerpiece of The Coming of the Great Depression
consumer culture. In the 1910s, the moviemaking By 1927, strains on the economy began to show.
industry had begun moving to southern California to Consumer lending had become the tenth-largest busi-
take advantage of cheap land, sunshine, and varied ness in the country, topping $7 billion that year.
scenery within easy reach. The large studios — United Increasing numbers of Americans bought into the
Artists, Paramount, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — were stock market, often with unrealistic expectations. One
run mainly by Eastern European Jewish immigrants Yale professor proclaimed that stocks had reached a
like Adolph Zukor, who arrived from Hungary in the “permanently high plateau.” Corporate profits were
1880s. Starting with fur sales, Zukor and a partner then so high that some companies, fully invested in their
set up five-cent theaters in Manhattan. “I spent a good own operations, plowed excess earnings into the stock
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
European film studios struggled after World War I to reach audiences who had
fallen in love with American movies. Working-class Europeans, in particular, pre-
ferred Hollywood’s offerings to the films produced in Europe. In this 1928 article
from a cinematography journal, German expressionist filmmaker Erich Pommer
Hollywood in Europe suggested new strategies for expanding an audience for European films. Expres-
sionists, influenced by romanticism and modernism, explored dark themes such
as spiritual crisis and insanity. (A famous example of expressionist painting is
Edvard Munch’s The Scream.) Pommer worked for American studios and later
fled to the United States after the rise of Hitler.
The towering importance of the American motion picture Such productions always have a simple story of universal
on the world’s markets cannot be safely explained by the appeal, because it is simply impossible to use spiritual
unlimited financial resources at the disposal of the Amer- thoughts and impressions of the soul in a picture deluxe.
ican producers. . . . Its main reason is the mentality of the The splendour in such production is not merely created
American picture, which, notwithstanding all attacks and for decoration — it is its outstanding purpose. . . . But
claims to the contrary, apparently comes nearest to the splendour means show, and a show is always and every-
taste of international cinema audiences. where easy to understand. . . .
. . . The specific and unique element of the American
film is the fact of its being absolutely uncomplicated.
Source: Excerpt from “The International Picture: A Lesson on Simplicity” by Erich
Being what is called “naïve” it knows no problems. . . . Pommer from “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural
Universal Appeal. It is really preferable to have a pic- Exchange 1920–1939, edited by Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby, 1999, ISBN:
978-0-85989-546-0. Used by permission of Exeter University Press.
ture too light rather than too heavy, because in the latter
case there is a danger that the public will not understand
the story. This is the worst thing that can happen with a
picture. . . . QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Spectacular Appeal. The international appeal of a 1. How does Pommer characterize the attraction of popular
picture has its foundation in a story. It is totally inde- American films for European audiences? What does he
pendent of the capital invested and of the splendor and mean when he calls those films “naïve”?
2. How does Pommer propose to produce German films that
luxury used in its production. The fact that in most cases
will compete with Hollywood? What constraints and chal-
the supers and monumental pictures have proved to be lenges did he face?
such international successes, does not disprove this claim.
market. Other market players compounded risk by triggered disaster. The market
IDENTIFY CAUSES
purchasing on margin. An investor might, for example, rose again in late 1929 and early What domestic and global
spend $20 of his own money and borrow $80 to buy a 1930, and while a great deal factors helped cause the
$100 share of stock, expecting to pay back the loan as of money had been lost, most Great Depression?
the stock rose quickly in value. This worked as long as Americans hoped the aftermath
the economy grew and the stock market climbed. But of the crash would be brief. In fact, the nation had
those conditions did not last. entered the Great Depression. Over the next four years,
Yet when the stock market fell, in a series of plunges industrial production fell 37 percent. Construction
between October 25 and November 13, 1929, few plunged 78 percent. Prices for crops and other raw
onlookers understood the magnitude of the crisis. materials, already low, fell by half. By 1932, unemploy-
Cyclical downturns had been a familiar part of the ment had reached a staggering 24 percent (Figure 22.1).
industrializing economy since the panic of the 1830s; A precipitous drop in consumer spending deep-
they tended to follow periods of rapid growth and ened the crisis. Facing hard times and unemploy-
speculation. A sharp recent recession, in 1921, had not ment, Americans cut back dramatically, creating a
727
728 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
24.9
23.6
21.7
20.1
20
19.0
16.9 17.2
15.9
Percent unemployed
15 14.3 14.6
11.7
10 9.9
8.5 8.7
6.7
5.1 5.2 5.0
5 4.6 4.7
4.2
3.2 3.3 3.2
2.4
1.8 1.9 1.9
1.4 1.4 1.2
0
1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945
FIGURE 22.1
Unemployment, 1915–1945
During the 1920s, business prosperity and low rates of immigration resulted in historically low
unemployment levels. The Great Depression threw millions of people out of work; by 1933, one in
four American workers was unemployed, and the rate remained high until 1941, when the nation
mobilized for World War II.
vicious cycle of falling demand and forfeited loans. In Where did desperate people turn for aid? Their first
late 1930, several major banks went under, victims of hope lay in private charity, especially churches and
overextended credit and reckless management. The synagogues. But by the winter of 1931, these institu-
following year, as industrial production slowed, a much tions were overwhelmed, unable to keep pace with the
larger wave of bank failures occurred, causing an even extraordinary need. Only eight states provided even
greater shock. Since the government did not insure minimal unemployment insurance. There was no pub-
bank deposits, accounts in failed banks simply van- lic support for the elderly, statistically among the poor-
ished. Some people who had had steady jobs and est citizens. Few Americans had any retirement sav-
comfortable savings found themselves broke and out ings, and many who had saved watched their accounts
of work. erased by failing banks.
Not all Americans were devastated by the depres- Even those who were not wiped out had to adapt to
sion; the middle class did not disappear and the rich depression conditions. Couples delayed marriage and
lived in accustomed luxury. But incomes plummeted reduced the number of children they conceived. As a
even among workers who kept their jobs. Salt Lake result, the marriage rate fell to a historical low, and by
City went bankrupt in 1931. Barter systems developed, 1933 the birthrate dropped from 97 births per 1,000
as barbers traded haircuts for onions and potatoes and women to 75. Often the responsibility for birth control
laborers worked for payment in eggs or pork. “We do fell to women. It was “one of the worst problems of
not dare to use even a little soap,” reported one jobless women whose husbands were out of work,” a Califor-
Oregonian, “when it will pay for an extra egg, a few nian told a reporter. Campaigns against hiring married
more carrots for our children.” “I would be only too women were common, on the theory that available
glad to dig ditches to keep my family from going hun- jobs should go to male breadwinners. Three-quarters
gry,” wrote a North Carolina man. of the nation’s school districts banned married women
CHAPTER 22 Cultural Conflict, Bubble, and Bust, 1919–1932 729
from New Orleans, jazz appealed to elite and popular Hollywood films, created new forms of leisure, influ-
audiences alike. Black artists and intellectuals of the encing daily life and challenging older sexual norms.
Harlem Renaissance, including many inspired by pan- However, the risky speculation and easy credit of the
African ideas, explored the complexities of African 1920s undermined the foundations of the economy.
American life. After the 1929 crash, these factors, along with a range
Business thrived and a booming consumer cul- of interconnected global conditions, plunged the
ture, exemplified by the radio, the automobile, and United States into the Great Depression.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What was the Republican vision of “normalcy,” and 2. Along what lines did Americans find themselves
how did the Harding and Coolidge administrations divided in the 1920s? How were those conflicts
seek to realize it? expressed in politics? In culture and intellectual life?
CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER REVIEW 731
3. What factors contributed to the economic boom of of “America in the World,” “Politics and Power,” and
the 1920s and the crash that followed? “Identity” on the thematic timeline on page 671. In
what ways do they suggest that the prosperous
4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Between 1917
1920s were a politically distinctive era? What conti-
and 1945, the “Roaring Twenties” were the only years
nuities do you see in politics and foreign policy?
when the United States did not face a major eco-
nomic or international crisis. Review the categories
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE The Ku Klux Klan 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE This chapter includes two
of the Reconstruction era (Chapter 15) emerged in depictions of people dancing to jazz: the Life maga-
a specific political and social context; while the zine cover that opens the chapter (p. 705) and Blues
Klan of the 1920s built on its predecessor, its goals (p. 719) by Archibald John Motley Jr., an African
and scope were different. Using material from American painter of the Harlem Renaissance. Look
Chapters 15 and 22, imagine that you are investi- at these pictures carefully. Who do you think were
gating a series of Klan meetings in each era (1870s the intended audiences for each? What evidence
and 1920s). Where would you conduct your inves- could you point to in support of that conclusion?
tigation? How might you explain, to the public, the What messages do you think the Life artist and
Klan’s membership and activities? How would you Motley wanted to convey?
compare the two Klans?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper (1995). A Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti (2001). A compelling
readable overview of events in the 1920s. exploration of U.S. occupation of Haiti and its impact
on Haiti and especially the United States.
David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue
(1979). A wonderful account of politics, arts, and The PBS series American Experience has produced an
culture in the vibrant “Negro capital of the world.” excellent documentary on the Scopes trial; informa-
tion and documents are available at pbs.org/wgbh/
Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibi-
amex/monkeytrial/. For a broad view of the 1929
tion (2010). A lively recent history of the movement to
crash and its impact, see pbs.org/wgbh/amex/crash.
ban liquor.
Martha L. Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later (1991). Explores
the rise and impact of consumer credit.
732 PART 7 CHAPTER REVIEW
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t Palmer raids
t Coolidge wins presidential election against Democrats and La Follette’s Progressive Party
KEY TURNING POINTS: American politics underwent two shifts in the period covered in this
chapter: one in the aftermath of World War I, and another in 1932. What caused each turning
point? What factors in American Society, economics, and culture help explain each moment
of political change?
Managing the Great Depression,
23
C H A P T E R
Forging the New Deal
1929–1939
I
EARLY RESPONSES n his inaugural address in March 1933, IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
TO THE DEPRESSION, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt What new roles did the American
1929–1932 did not hide the country’s precarious government take on during the
Enter Herbert Hoover condition. “A host of unemployed citizens New Deal, and how did these roles
Rising Discontent face the grim problem of existence,” he shape the economy and society?
The 1932 Election said, “and an equally great number toil
with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”
THE NEW DEAL
ARRIVES, 1933–1935 Roosevelt, his demeanor sincere and purposeful, saw both despair and determination as
he looked out over the country. “This nation asks for action, and action now.” From
Roosevelt and the First Hundred
Days Congress he would request “broad Executive power to wage a war against the emer-
The New Deal Under Attack gency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a
foreign foe.” With these words, Roosevelt launched a program of federal activism —
THE SECOND NEW DEAL which he called the New Deal — that would change the nature of American government.
AND THE REDEFINING The New Deal represented a new form of liberalism, a fresh interpretation of the
OF LIBERALISM,
ideology of individual rights that had long shaped the character of American society and
1935–1938
politics. Classical nineteenth-century liberals believed that, to protect those rights,
The Welfare State Comes into
Being government should be small and relatively weak. However, the “regulatory” liberals of
the early twentieth century had safeguarded individual freedom and opportunity by
From Reform to Stalemate
strengthening state and federal control over large businesses and monopolies. New
THE NEW DEAL’S Deal activists went much further: their social-welfare liberalism expanded individual
IMPACT ON SOCIETY rights to include economic security. Beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the
A People’s Democracy 1960s, they increased the responsibility of the national government for the welfare of
Reshaping the Environment ordinary citizens. Their efforts did not go unchallenged. Conservative critics of the New
The New Deal and the Arts Deal charged that its “big government” programs were paternalistic and dangerous,
The Legacies of the New Deal undermining individual responsibility and constraining personal freedom. This division
between the advocates and
To see a longer excerpt of Roosevelt’s inaugural
the critics of the New Deal
address, along with other primary sources from this
shaped American politics for period, see Sources for America’s History.
the next half century.
Before Roosevelt was elected president, between the onset of the depression in
1929 and November 1932, the “dark realities of the moment” wore down American
society. Rising unemployment, shuttered businesses, failing banks, and home fore-
closures tore at the nation’s social fabric. As crisis piled upon crisis and the federal gov-
ernment’s initiatives under President Hoover proved ineffectual, Americans had to
reconsider more than the role of government in economic life: they had to rethink many
of the principles of individualism and free enterprise that had guided so much of the
nation’s history.
734
The New Deal This Federal Arts Project poster from 1936 captured the spirit of the New Deal under
President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt and other “New Dealers” hoped to get people working again
during the depths of the Great Depression, raise their spirits, and help rebuild the national infrastructure.
Library of Congress.
735
736 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
tighten their belts and work hard. After the stock mar-
Early Responses to the ket crash, he cut federal taxes in an attempt to boost
private spending and corporate investment. “Any lack
Depression, 1929–1932 of confidence in the economic future or the strength of
The American economy collapsed between 1929 and business in the United States is foolish,” Hoover assured
1932. U.S. gross domestic product fell almost by half, the country in late 1929. Treasury secretary Andrew
from $103.1 billion to $58 billion. Consumption Mellon suggested that the downturn would help
dropped by 18 percent, construction by 78 percent, Americans “work harder” and “live a more moral life.”
and private investment by 88 percent. Nearly 9,000 While many factors caused the Great Depression,
banks closed their doors, and 100,000 businesses failed. Hoover’s adherence to the gold standard was a major
Corporate profits fell from $10 billion to $1 billion. reason for its length and severity in the United States.
Unemployment rose to 25 percent. Fifteen million Faced with economic catastrophe, both Britain and
people were out of work by 1933, and many who had Germany abandoned the gold standard in 1931; when
jobs took wage cuts. “Hoover made a souphound outa they did so, their economies recovered modestly. But
me!” sang jobless harvest hands in the Southwest. the Hoover administration feared that such a move
The depression respected no national boundaries. would weaken the value of the dollar. In reality, an
Germany had preceded the United States into eco- inflexible money supply discouraged investment and
nomic contraction in 1928, and its economy, burdened therefore prevented growth. The Roosevelt administra-
by heavy World War I reparations payments, was tion would ultimately remove the United States from
brought to its knees by 1929. France, Britain, Argen- the burdens of the gold standard in 1933. By that time,
tina, Brazil, Poland, and Canada were hard hit as well however, the crisis had achieved catastrophic dimen-
(America Compared, p. 737). The legacies of World sions. Billions had been lost in business and bank fail-
War I made recovery difficult in two respects. First, ures, and the economy had stalled completely.
Britain’s central bank was in no position to resume its Along with their adherence to the gold standard,
traditional role in managing the international financial the Hoover administration and many congressional
system. Second, the war disrupted the international Republicans believed in another piece of economic
gold standard. The United States and most European orthodoxy that had protected American manufactur-
nations had tied the value of their currencies to the ing in good economic times but that proved damaging
price of gold, and the amount of gold held in reserves, during the downturn: high tariffs (taxes on imported
since the late nineteenth century. This system had goods designed to encourage American manufactur-
worked fairly well for a few decades, but it was vulner- ing). In 1930, Republicans enacted the Smoot-Hawley
able during economic downturns, when large finan- Tariff. Despite receiving a letter from more than a
ciers withdrew their investments and demanded gold thousand economists urging him to veto it, Hoover
payments. The gold standard rendered the interna- approved the legislation. What served American inter-
tional monetary system inflexible at a moment that ests in earlier eras now confounded them. Smoot-
required great flexibility in global finance. Hawley triggered retaliatory tariffs in other countries,
which further hindered global trade and led to greater
economic contraction throughout the industrialized
Enter Herbert Hoover world.
President Herbert Hoover and Congress responded to The president recognized that individual initiative,
the downturn by drawing on two powerful American voluntarism, and high tariffs might not be enough,
traditions. The first was the belief that economic out- given the depth of the crisis, so he proposed govern-
comes were the product of individual character. People’s ment action as well. He called on state and local
fate was in their own hands, and success went to governments to provide jobs by investing in public
those who deserved it. The second projects. And in 1931, he secured an unprecedented
PLACE EVENTS tradition held that through volun- increase of $700 million in federal spending for public
IN CONTEXT tary action, the business commu- works. Hoover’s most innovative program was the
What economic principles nity could right itself and recover Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which
guided President Hoover from economic downturns with- provided federal loans to railroads, banks, and other
and Congress in their out relying on government assis- businesses. But the RFC lent money too cautiously, and
response to the Great
tance. Following these principles, by the end of 1932, after a year in operation, it had
Depression?
Hoover asked Americans to loaned out only 20 percent of its $1.5 billion in funds.
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
The Great Depression In a 1954 book, Denis Brogan, a professor at Cambridge University in England,
looked back at the descent into the Great Depression between 1929 and 1932
in England and the and explained the significance of Franklin Roosevelt’s election from an English
perspective. The second selection is from an oral history conducted in the 1970s
United States with an ordinary resident of London, who recalled life in the 1930s.
Denis W. Brogan, “From England” Gladys Gibson, a Resident of London in the 1930s
No event . . . has so colored the European view of the Most of the unemployed were genuinely seeking work.
United States as “the Depression.” The first news of the A heavy snowfall was a blessing, when men with broken
crash of 1929 was not ill received. There was not only a boots earned a little money by sweeping the streets. The
marked feeling of Schadenfreude at the snub that destiny Boroughs [a form of local administration in London]
had given to the overconfident masters of the new world, took on unemployed, in strict rotation, for thirteen
but also a widespread belief that the extravagant gambling weeks of unskilled work. It sometimes put a man back
of the New York market was one of the chief causes of our in benefit and took him off the hated dole. The situation
ills. . . . But as the extent, depth, and duration of the Ameri- began to change after Munich, when more men found
can depression began to be appreciated, as its impact on work. Salvation came with the War, when the despised
all the world, especially on the dangerously unstable poli- unemployed became valued workers or serving helpers.
tical and economic status quo of Germany and Austria,
became more evident, as the old wound of unemployment
Source: Joseph, Franz M., As Others See Us. © 1959 Princeton University Press, 1987
was made to bleed more deeply in Britain, the tendency renewed PUP. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
to blame the United States became overwhelming. Gone
Nigel Gray, The Worst of Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression in Britain
were the illusions about the “secret of high wages.” If ever (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1985), 54.
found, it had now been lost.
American politics was seen as not only sterile but pos-
itively immoral and dangerous. . . . American business and QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
its political arm, the Republican Party, had been tried in 1. Why would Brogan call the United States “overconfident
the balance and found wanting. And it is safe to say that masters of the new world”? What are his criticisms of U.S.
the election of F. D. Roosevelt was welcomed in every economic policy?
2. How does the testimony of Gladys Gibson about the
country of Europe as good news almost overshadowing
“hated dole” compare with what you have learned about
the nomination of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the attitudes in the United States in these years?
German Reich.
Like most federal initiatives under Hoover, the RFC By 1932, Americans perceived Hoover as insensitive to
was not nearly aggressive enough given the severity of the depth of the country’s economic suffering. The
the depression. With federal officials fearing budget nation had come a long way since the depressions of
deficits and reluctant to interfere with the private mar- the 1870s and 1890s, when no one except the most rad-
ket, caution was the order of the day. ical figures, such as Jacob Coxey, called for direct fed-
Few chief executives could have survived the down- eral aid to the unemployed (Chapter 20). Compared
ward economic spiral of 1929–1932, but Hoover’s with previous chief executives — and in contrast to his
reluctance to break with the philosophy of limited gov- popular image as a “do-nothing” president — Hoover
ernment and his insistence that recovery was always had responded to the national emergency with unprec-
just around the corner contributed to his unpopularity. edented government action. But the nation’s needs
737
738 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Hooverville
The depression cast hundreds of thousands of Americans out of their homes. Most found shelter with
relatives, but those with little choice had to make do as they could. Encampments such as this one south
of downtown Seattle, Washington — places where the homeless crafted makeshift lodging out of whatever
materials were at hand — became known as Hoovervilles. The name reflected Americans’ attitudes toward
President Hoover, whose popularity plummeted as the depression deepened. University of Washington Libraries,
Special Collections, UW2129.
were even more unprecedented, and Hoover’s programs In the industrial sector, layoffs and wage cuts led to
failed to meet them (Map 23.1). violent strikes. When coal miners in Harlan County,
Kentucky, went on strike over a 10 percent wage cut in
1931, the mine owners called in the state’s National
Rising Discontent Guard, which crushed the union. A 1932 confronta-
As the depression deepened, the American vocabulary tion between workers and security forces at the Ford
now included the terms Hoovervilles (shantytowns Motor Company’s giant River Rouge factory outside
where people lived in packing crates) and Hoover blan- Detroit left five workers dead and fifty with serious
kets (newspapers). Bankrupt farmers banded together injuries. A photographer had his camera shot from his
to resist the bank agents and sheriffs who tried to evict hands, and fifteen policemen were clubbed or stoned.
them from their land. To protest low prices for their Whether on farms or in factories, those who produced
goods, in the spring of 1932 thousands of midwestern the nation’s food and goods had begun to push for a
farmers joined the Farmers’ Holiday Association, more aggressive response to the nation’s economic
which cut off supplies to urban areas by barricading troubles.
roads and dumping milk, vegetables, and other food- Veterans staged the most publicized — and most
stuffs onto the roadways. Agricultural prices were so tragic — protest. In the summer of 1932, the Bonus
low that the Farmers’ Holiday Association favored a Army, a determined group of 15,000 unemployed World
government-supported farm program. War I veterans, hitchhiked to Washington to demand
CHAPTER 23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939 739
MAP 23.1
The Great Depression: Families on Relief
WASH. VT. ME.
Although the Great Depression was a MONTANA N. DAK. MINN. N.H.
nationwide crisis, some regions were hit MASS.
OREGON
harder than others. Economic hardship was IDAHO S. DAK.
WIS. N.Y.
MICH. R.I.
widespread in the agricultural-based southern WYOMING CONN.
PA.
and Appalachian states of the Northeast and NEBRASKA IOWA N.J.
NEVADA IND. OHIO DEL.
Midwest. As the depression worsened in 1931 ILL. W.
UTAH VA. VA. MD.
and 1932, local and state governments, as well COLO.
KANSAS MO. KY.
as charitable organizations, could not keep up CALIF.
N.C.
with the demand for relief. After Franklin D. ARIZONA OKLA.
TENN.
S.C.
Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, the N. MEX. ARK. N
MISS. ALA. GA.
national government began a massive program E
of aid through the Federal Emergency Relief TEXAS LA. W
Administration (FERA). S
Percentage of Families FLA.
on Relief, 1933
Below 8 percent
8–15 percent 0 250 500 miles
Over 15 percent
0 250 500 kilometers
immediate payment of pension awards that were due to Roosevelt, whose career he emu-
UNDERSTAND
be paid in 1945. “We were heroes in 1917, but we’re lated. After attending Harvard POINTS OF VIEW
bums now,” one veteran complained bitterly. While their College and Columbia University, What did the depression
leaders unsuccessfully lobbied Congress, the Bonus Franklin Roosevelt served as look like when seen from
Army set up camps near the Capitol building. Hoover assistant secretary of the navy the vantage of ordinary
called out regular army troops under the command of during World War I (as Theodore Americans?
General Douglas MacArthur, who forcefully evicted the Roosevelt had done before the
marchers and burned their main encampment to the War of 1898). Then, in 1921, a crippling attack of polio
ground. When newsreel footage showing the U.S. Army left both of his legs permanently paralyzed. Supported
attacking and injuring veterans reached movie theaters by his wife, Eleanor, he slowly returned to public life
across the nation, Hoover’s popularity plunged. In and campaigned successfully for the governorship of
another measure of how the country had changed since New York in 1928 and again in 1930. Running for the
the 1890s, what Americans had applauded when done to presidency in 1932, Roosevelt pledged vigorous action
Coxey in 1894 was condemned in 1932. but gave no indication what that action might be, argu-
ing simply that “the country needs and, unless I mis-
take its temper, the country demands bold, persistent
The 1932 Election experimentation.” He won easily, receiving 22.8 million
Despite rising discontent, the national mood was votes to Hoover’s 15.7 million.
mixed as the 1932 election approached. Many Ameri- Elected in November, Roosevelt would not begin his
cans had internalized the ideal of the self-made man presidency until March 1933. (The Twentieth Amend-
and blamed themselves for their economic hardships. ment, ratified in 1933, set subsequent inaugurations for
Despair, not anger, characterized their mood. Others, January 20.) Meanwhile, Americans suffered through
out of work for a year or more, perhaps homeless, felt the worst winter of the depression. Unemployment
the deeper stirrings of frustration and rage. Regardless continued to climb, and in three major industrial cities
of their circumstances, most Americans believed that in Ohio, it shot to staggering levels: 50 percent in Cleve-
something altogether new had to be tried — whatever land, 60 percent in Akron, and 80 percent in Toledo.
that might be. The Republicans, reluctant to dump an Private charities and public relief agencies reached only
incumbent president, unenthusiastically renominated a fraction of the needy. The nation’s banking system
Hoover. The Democrats turned to New York governor was so close to collapse that many state governors
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose state had initiated closed banks temporarily to avoid further withdrawals.
innovative relief and unemployment programs. Several states were approaching bankruptcy, their tax
Roosevelt, born into a wealthy New York family, revenues too low to pay for basic services. By March
was a distant cousin to former president Theodore 1933, the nation had hit rock bottom.
740 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
TABLE 23.1
American Banks and Bank Failures, 1920–1940
Year Total Number of Banks Total Assets ($ billion) Bank Failures
1920 30,909 53.1 168
1929 25,568 72.3 659
1931 22,242 70.1 2,294
1933 14,771 51.4 4,004
1934 15,913 55.9 61
1940 15,076 79.7 48
SOURCE: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 1019,
1038–1039.
Agriculture and Manufacturing Roosevelt and the The AAA and the NRA were designed to rescue the
New Deal Congress next turned to agriculture and nation’s productive industries and stabilize the econ-
manufacturing. In those sectors, a seeming paradox omy. The measures had positive effects in some regions,
was evident: the depression led to overproduction in but most historians agree that, overall, they did little to
agriculture and underproduction in manufacturing. end the depression.
Reversing both problematic trends was critical. The
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) began direct gov- Unemployment Relief The Roosevelt administra-
ernmental regulation of the farm economy for the first tion next addressed the massive unemployment prob-
time. To solve the problem of overproduction, which lem. By 1933, local governments and private charities
lowered prices, the AAA provided cash subsidies to had exhausted their resources and were looking to
farmers who cut production of seven major commodi- Washington for assistance. Although Roosevelt wanted
ties: wheat, cotton, corn, hogs, rice, tobacco, and dairy to avoid a budget deficit, he asked Congress to provide
products. Policymakers hoped that farm prices would relief for millions of unemployed Americans. In May,
rise as production fell. Congress established the Federal Emergency Relief
By dumping cash in farmers’ hands, the AAA Administration (FERA). Directed by Harry Hopkins, a
briefly stabilized the farm economy. But the act’s bene- hard-driving social worker from New York, the FERA
fits were not evenly distributed. Subsidies went primar- provided federal funds for state relief programs.
ily to the owners of large and medium-sized farms, Roosevelt and Hopkins had strong reservations
who often cut production by reducing the amount of about the “dole,” the nickname for government welfare
land they rented to tenants and sharecroppers. In payments. As Hopkins put it, “I don’t think anybody
Mississippi, one plantation owner received $26,000 can go year after year, month after month, accepting
from the federal government, while thousands of black relief without affecting his character.” To support the
sharecroppers living in the same county received only traditional values of individualism, the New Deal put
a few dollars in relief payments. people to work. Early in 1933, Congress established the
In manufacturing, the New Deal attacked declining Public Works Administration (PWA), a construction
production with the National Industrial Recovery Act. program, and several months later, Roosevelt created
A new government agency, the National Recovery the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and named
Administration (NRA), set up separate self-governing Hopkins its head. Within thirty days, Hopkins had put
private associations in six hundred industries. Each 2.6 million men and women to work; at its peak in
industry — ranging from large corporations producing 1934, the CWA provided jobs for 4 million Americans
coal, cotton textiles, and steel to small businesses mak- repairing bridges, building highways, and constructing
ing pet food and costume jewelry — regulated itself by public buildings. A stopgap measure to get the country
agreeing on prices and production quotas. Because through the winter of 1933–1934, the CWA lapsed in
large companies usually ran these associations, the the spring, when Republican opposition compelled
NRA solidified their power at the expense of smaller New Dealers to abandon it. A longer-term program,
enterprises and consumer interests. the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), mobilized
AMERICAN
VOICES
Ordinary People Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats and his relief programs prompted thousands
of ordinary Americans to write directly to the president and his wife, Eleanor.
Respond to the Taken together, their letters offer a vivid portrait of depression-era America that
includes popular support for, and opposition to, the New Deal.
New Deal
Mrs. M. H. A. I do believe you Will Strain a point to help the ones who
Mrs. M. H. A. worked in the County Court House in Eureka, helped you mostly & that is the Working Class of People
California. I am not smart or I would be in a different line of work
& better up in ever way yet I will know you are the one
June 14, 1934 & only President that ever helped a Working Class of
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: People. . . .
I know you are overburdened with requests for help and if I am a White Man American age, 47 married wife
my plea cannot be recognized, I’ll understand it is because 2children in high School am a Finishing room foreman
you have so many others, all of them worthy. . . . I mean a Working foreman & am in a furniture Factory
My husband and I are a young couple of very simple, here in Paris Texas where thaire is 175 to 200 Working &
almost poor families. We married eight years ago on the when the NRA [National Recovery Administration] came
proverbial shoe-string but with a wealth of love. . . . We in I was Proud to See my fellow workmen Rec 30 Per hour
managed to build our home and furnish it comfortably. . . . in Place of 8 cents to 20 cents Per hour. . . .
Then came the depression. My work has continued and I can’t see for my life President why a man must toil
my salary alone has just been sufficient to make our &work his life out in Such factories 10 long hours ever
monthly payments on the house and keep our bills day except Sunday for a small sum of 15 cents to 35 cents
paid. . . . But with the exception of two and one-half per hour & pay the high cost of honest & deason living
months work with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey expences. . . .
under the C.W.A. [Civil Works Administration], my please see if something can be done to help this one
husband has not had work since August, 1932. Class of Working People the factories are a man killer not
My salary could continue to keep us going, but I am venelated or kept up just a bunch of Republickins Grafters
to have a baby. . . . I can get a leave of absence from my 90/100 of them Please help us some way I Pray to God for
job for a year. But can’t you, won’t you do something so relief. I am a Christian . . . and a truthful man & have not
my husband can have a job, at least during that year? . . . told you wrong & am for you to the end.
As I said before, if it were only ourselves, or if there [not signed]
were something we could do about it, we would never ask
for help.
We have always stood on our own feet and been proud R. A.
and happy. But you are a mother and you’ll understand R. A. was sixty-nine years old and an architect and builder
this crisis. in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Very sincerely yours,
Mrs. M. H. A. May 19/34
Dear Mrs Roosevelt:
In the Presidents inaugral address delivered from the
Unsigned Letter capitol steps the afternoon of his inaugration he made
mention of The Forgotten Man, and I with thousands of
This unsigned letter came from a factory worker in Paris,
others am wondering if the folk who was borned here in
Texas.
America some 60 or 70 years a go are this Forgotten Man,
November 23, 1936 the President had in mind, if we are this Forgotten Man
Dear President, then we are still Forgotten.
[N]ow that we have had a land Slide [in the election of We who have tried to be diligent in our support of
1936] and done just what was best for our country . . . this most wonderful nation of ours boath social and
742
other wise, we in our younger days tried to do our duty M. A. H.
without complaining. . . . M. A. H. was a widow who ran a small farm in Columbus,
And now a great calamity has come upon us and Indiana.
seemingly no cause of our own it has swept away what
little savings we had accumulated and we are left in a December 14, 1937
condition that is imposible for us to correct, for two Mrs. Roosevelt:
very prominent reasons if no more. I suppose from your point of view the work relief, old age
First we have grown to what is termed Old Age, this pensions, slum clearance and all the rest seems like a per-
befalls every man. fect remedy for all the ills of this country, but I would like
Second, . . . we are confronted on every hand with the for you to see the results, as the other half see them.
young generation, taking our places, this of corse is what We have always had a shiftless, never-do-well class of
we have looked forward to in training our children. But people whose one and only aim in life is to live without
with the extra ordinary crisese which left us helpless and work. I have been rubbing elbows with this class for
placed us in the position that our fathers did not have to nearly sixty years and have tried to help some of the most
contend with. . . . promising and have seen others try to help them, but it
We have been honorable citizens all along our jour- can’t be done. We cannot help those who will not try to
ney, calamity and old age has forced its self upon us help themselves and if they do try a square deal is all they
please do not send us to the Poor Farm but instead need, . . . let each one paddle their own canoe, or sink. . . .
allow us the small pension of $40.00 per month. . . . I live alone on a farm and have not raised any crops
Mrs. Roosevelt I am asking a personal favor of you for the last two years as there was no help to be had. I am
as it seems to be the only means through which I may feeding the stock and have been cutting the wood to keep
be able to reach the President, some evening very soon, my home fires burning. There are several reliefers around
as you and Mr. Roosevelt are having dinner together here now who have been kicked off relief but they refuse
privately will you ask him to read this. And we Amer- to work unless they can get relief hours and wages, but
ican citizens will ever remember your kindness. they are so worthless no one can afford to hire them. . . .
Yours very truly. They are just a fair sample of the class of people on whom
R. A. so much of our hard earned tax-money is being squan-
dered and on whom so much sympathy is being
wasted. . . .
M. A. You people who have plenty of this worlds goods
M. A. was a woman who held a low-level salaried position and whose money comes easy have no idea of the
in a corporation. heart-breaking toil and self-denial which is the lot
of the working people who are trying to make an
Jan. 18, 1937 honest living, and then to have to shoulder all these
[Dear Mrs. Roosevelt:] unjust burdens seems like the last straw. . . . No one
I . . . was simply astounded to think that anyone could should have the right to vote theirself a living at the
be nitwit enough to wish to be included in the so called expense of the tax payers. . . .
social security act if they could possibly avoid it. Call it by M. A. H.
any name you wish it, in my opinion, (and that of many
people I know) [it] is nothing but downright stealing. . . . Sources (in order): Robert S. McElvaine, Down & Out in the Great Depression (Chapel
I am not an “economic royalist,” just an ordinary Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 54–55; Gerald Markowitz and David
Rosner, eds., “Slaves of the Depression”: Worker’s Letters About Life on the Job (Ithaca, NY:
white collar worker at $1600 per [year — about $23,600 Cornell University Press, 1987), 21; Robert S. McElvaine, Down & Out in the Great
in 2009]. Please show this to the president and ask him Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 97, 147, 143.
to remember the wishes of the forgotten man, that is,
the one who dared to vote against him. We expect to be
tramped on but we do wish the stepping would be a little QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
less hard. 1. How do you explain the personal, almost intimate, tone
of these letters to the Roosevelts?
Security at the price of freedom is never desired by
2. How have specific New Deal programs helped or hurt
intelligent people. the authors of these letters?
M. A. 3. What are the basic values of the authors? Do the values
of those who support the New Deal differ from the
values of those who oppose it?
743
744 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
250,000 young men to do reforestation and conserva- home prices collapsed and banks closed, home own-
tion work. Over the course of the 1930s, the “CCC ers were dragged down with them. More than half a
boys” built thousands of bridges, roads, trails, and million Americans lost their homes between 1930 and
other structures in state and national parks, bolstering 1932, and in cities such as Cleveland and Indianapo-
the national infrastructure (Map 23.2). lis, half of all home mortgage holders faced possible
foreclosure. In response, Congress created the Home
Housing Crisis Millions of Americans also faced the Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) to refinance home
devastating prospect of losing their homes. The eco- mortgages. In just two years, the HOLC helped more
nomic expansion of the 1920s had produced the largest than a million Americans retain their homes. The
inflationary housing bubble in American history to Federal Housing Act of 1934 would extend this pro-
that point, a scenario in which home prices rose wildly, gram under a new agency, the Federal Housing
fueled by excessive borrowing. In the early 1930s, as Administration (FHA). Together, the HOLC, the FHA,
CHAPTER 23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939 745
North Cascades
C A N A D A
Olympic
WA Glacier
Mount Voyageurs Isle
Rainier Royale ME
ND
Pictured Rocks
MT Acadia
Crater VT
Lake OR Craters of MN NH
the Moon Yellowstone SD NY
ID Grand Teton WI MA
Redwood
MI CT
Lassen WY RI
Volcanic
NE IA PA
NJ
CA NV Dinosaur MD
Rocky Mountain OH DE
Yosemite UT IL IN
Kings Capitol CO
WV
Canyon Reef Canyonlands KS Shenandoah ATLANTIC
Zion
Sequoia
MO VA OCEAN
Death Great Sand Dunes KY
Valley
Grand Canyon NC
OK TN
Channel Great Smoky N
Islands Joshua Petrified
Mojave Forest El Malpais Mountains
Tree SC
E
Natonal AZ AR W
Preserve NM
GA S
Saguaro AL
White Sands MS
PACIFIC 0 150 300 miles
OCEAN LA
TX 0 150 300 kilometers
Big
Bend
FL
MAP 23.2
Civilian Conservation Corps Camps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) gave hope to unemployed young men during the Great
Depression. The first camp opened in Big Meadows, Virginia, in July 1933, and by the end of the
decade CCC camps had appeared across the length of the country, located in rural, mountainous,
and forested regions alike. Young men constructed bridges and roads, built hiking trails, erected
public campgrounds, and performed other improvements. By the early 1940s, the CCC had planted
three billion trees, among its many other contributions to the national infrastructure.
and the subsequent Housing Act of 1937 permanently however, the New Deal did not break the grip of the
changed the mortgage system and set the foundation depression.
for the broad expansion of home ownership in the
post–World War II decades (Chapter 25).
When an exhausted Congress recessed in June The New Deal Under Attack
1933, at the end of the Hundred Days, it had enacted As New Dealers waited anxiously for the economy to
Roosevelt’s agenda: banking reform, recovery programs revive, Roosevelt turned his attention to the reform of
for agriculture and industry, public works, and unem- Wall Street, where reckless speculation and overlever-
ployment relief. Few presidents had won the passage of aged buying of stocks had helped trigger the financial
so many measures in so short a time. The new federal panic of 1929. In 1934, Congress established the Secur-
agencies were far from perfect and had their critics on ities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the
both the radical left and the conservative right. But the stock market. The commission had broad powers to
vigorous actions taken by Roosevelt and Congress had determine how stocks and bonds were sold to the pub-
halted the downward economic spiral of the Hoover lic, to set rules for margin (credit) transactions, and
years, stabilized the financial sector, and sent a message to prevent stock sales by those with inside informa-
of hope from the nation’s political leaders. For all that, tion about corporate plans. The Banking Act of 1935
746 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
authorized the president to appoint a new Board of believed that a publicity campaign was needed to “serve
Governors of the Federal Reserve System, placing con- the purposes of business salvation,” the NAM pro-
trol of interest rates and other money-market policies duced radio programs, motion pictures, billboards,
in a federal agency rather than in the hands of private and direct mail in the late 1930s. In response to what
bankers. many conservatives perceived as Roosevelt’s antibusi-
ness policies, the NAM promoted free enterprise and
Critics on the Right Such measures exposed the unfettered capitalism. After World War II, the NAM
New Deal to attack from economic conservatives — also emerged as a staunch critic of liberalism and forged
known as the political right. A man of wealth, Roosevelt alliances with influential conservative politicians such
saw himself as the savior of American capitalism, as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
declaring simply, “To preserve we had to reform.” Many For its part, the Supreme Court repudiated several
bankers and business executives disagreed. To them, cornerstones of the early New Deal. In May 1935, in
FDR became “That Man,” a traitor to his class. In 1934, Schechter v. United States, the Court unanimously ruled
Republican business leaders joined with conservative the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional
Democrats in the Liberty League to fight what they because it delegated Congress’s lawmaking power to
called the “reckless spending” and “socialist” reforms the executive branch and extended federal authority
of the New Deal. Herbert Hoover condemned the NRA to intrastate (in contrast to interstate) commerce.
as a “state-controlled or state-directed social or eco- Roosevelt protested but watched helplessly as the Court
nomic system.” That, declared the former president, struck down more New Deal legislation: the Agricul-
was “tyranny, not liberalism.” tural Adjustment Act, the Railroad Retirement Act,
The National Association of and a debt-relief law known as the Frazier-Lemke Act.
COMPARE AND Manufacturers (NAM) was even
CONTRAST more important than the Liberty Critics on the Populist Left If business leaders and
How did critics on the right League in opposing the New Deal, the Supreme Court thought that the New Deal had
and left represent differ- as the NAM’s influence stretched gone too far, other Americans believed it had not gone
ent kinds of challenges to far into the post–World War II far enough. Among these were public figures who, in
Roosevelt and the New
decades. Sparked by a new gener- the tradition of American populism, sought to place
Deal?
ation of business leaders who government on the side of ordinary citizens against
Father Coughlin
One of the foremost critics of
the New Deal was the “Radio
Priest,” Father Charles E.
Coughlin. Coughlin believed
that Roosevelt and the Demo-
cratic Party had not gone far
enough in their efforts to ensure
the social welfare of all citizens.
For instance, he and his organi-
zation, the National Union for
Social Justice, urged Roosevelt to
nationalize the banks. Coughlin,
whose radio audience reached
30 million at the height of his
popularity, was one of the most
recognizable religious leaders in
the country. Unfortunately, his
remarks in the early 1930s were
often laced with anti-Semitism
(anti-Jewish sentiment).
© Bettmann/Corbis.
CHAPTER 23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939 747
corporations and the wealthy. Francis Townsend, a adopting parts of their programs. The administration’s
doctor from Long Beach, California, spoke for the Revenue Act of 1935 proposed a substantial tax
nation’s elderly, most of whom had no pensions and increase on corporate profits and higher income and
feared poverty. In 1933, Townsend proposed the Old estate taxes on the wealthy. When conservatives
Age Revolving Pension Plan, which would give $200 a attacked this legislation as an attempt to “soak the rich,”
month (about $3,300 today) to citizens over the age of Congress moderated its taxation rates. But FDR was
sixty. To receive payments, the elderly would have to satisfied. He had met the Share Our Wealth Society’s
retire and open their positions to younger workers. proposal with a tax plan of his own.
Townsend Clubs sprang up across the country in
support of the Townsend Plan, mobilizing mass sup-
port for old-age pensions. The Welfare State Comes into Being
The most direct political threat to Roosevelt came The Revenue Act symbolized the administration’s new
from Louisiana senator Huey Long. As the Democratic outlook. Unlike the First New Deal, which focused on
governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932, the flam- economic recovery, the Second New Deal emphasized
boyant Long had achieved stunning popularity. He social justice and the creation of a safety net: the use of
increased taxes on corporations, lowered the utility the federal government to assist
bills of consumers, and built new highways, hospitals, working people and to provide COMPARE AND
and schools. To push through these measures, Long economic security for the old, the CONTRAST
seized almost dictatorial control of the state govern- disabled, and the unemployed. How did the Second New
ment. Now a U.S. senator, Long broke with the New The resulting welfare state — a Deal differ from the first?
Deal in 1934 and, like Townsend, established a national term applied to industrial democ-
movement. According to his Share Our Wealth Society, racies that adopted various government-guaranteed
inequalities in the distribution of wealth prohibited social-welfare programs — fundamentally changed
millions of ordinary families from buying goods, which American society.
kept factories humming. Long’s society advocated a tax
of 100 percent on all income over $1 million and on all The Wagner Act and Social Security The first ben-
inheritances over $5 million. He hoped that this popu- eficiary of Roosevelt’s Second New Deal was the labor
list program would carry him into the White House. movement. Section 7(a) of the National Industrial
That prospect encouraged conservatives, who Recovery Act (NIRA) had given workers the right to
hoped that a split between New Dealers and populist organize unions, producing a dramatic growth in rank-
reformers might return the Republican Party, and its and-file militancy and leading to a strike wave in 1934.
ideology of limited government and free enterprise, to When the Supreme Court voided the NIRA in 1935,
political power. In fact, Roosevelt feared that Townsend labor unions called for new legislation that would allow
and Long, along with the popular “radio priest,” Father workers to organize and bargain collectively with
Charles Coughlin, might join forces to form a third employers. Named for its sponsor, Senator Robert F.
party. He had to respond or risk the political unity of Wagner of New York, the Wagner Act (1935) upheld
the country’s liberal forces (Map 23.3). the right of industrial workers to join unions. The act
outlawed many practices that employers had used to
suppress unions, such as firing workers for organiz-
ing activities. It also established the National Labor
The Second New Deal and the Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency with the
authority to protect workers from employer coercion
Redefining of Liberalism, and to guarantee collective bargaining.
1935–1938 A second initiative, the Social Security Act of 1935,
had an equally widespread impact. Other industrial-
As attacks on the New Deal increased, Roosevelt and ized societies, such as Germany and Britain, had
his advisors moved politically to the left. Historians created national old-age pension systems at the turn of
have labeled this shift in policy the Second New Deal. the century, but American reformers had failed to
Roosevelt now openly criticized the “money classes,” secure a similar program in the United States. The Town-
proudly stating, “We have earned the hatred of send and Long movements now pressed Roosevelt to
entrenched greed.” He also decisively countered the act, giving political muscle to pension proponents
rising popularity of Townsend, Coughlin, and Long by within the administration. Children’s welfare advocates,
748 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
N Sit-down strike at
Chrysler, Detroit, Strike at General
W
Sit-down strike at 1937 Motors, Cleveland,
E Father Charles 1936
Seattle’s Unemployed C A N A D A General Motors,
Citizen’s League, 1930–31 S Flint, 1936–37 Coughlin, the
"Radio Priest," Sit-down strike, rubber
Communist-led "Ford Hunger organizes the workers, Akron, 1936
March," Dearborn, 1932 National Union
WASH. for Social Justice, ME.
NORTH MINN. 1934 Textile strike,
MONTANA
DAKOTA
Milk strikes, N.H. Lawrence, 1934
OREGON Wisconsin, 1933 VT.
SOUTH MASS.
Bonus Army march begins DAKOTA Progressive Party N.Y.
in Portland, 1932 IDAHO WYOMING WIS.
launched, Madison, R.I.
1934 PA.
Sioux City farmers’ MICH. CONN.
Farm workers begin organizing, strike, 1932 RCA strike,
IOWA
California, 1933 NEBRASKA OHIO Camden, 1936 N.J. 100,000 participate
in leftist demon-
NEVADA Strike at Republic ILL. IND. General strike, stration in New
UTAH Toledo, 1934 DEL. York City, 1930
CALIF. COLORADO Steel, Chicago, 1937 MD.
W. VA.
San Francisco MO. KY. VA. National Negro Congress
Dr. Francis Townsend proposes KANSAS
general strike, 1934 an "Old Age Revolving Pension" Strike at General organizes tobacco strike,
and organizes Townsend Clubs Motors, Anderson, N.C. Richmond, 1935
Los Angeles cannery Sit-down strike at General
with the slogan, "$200 a month Motors, Kansas City, 1936 1937
strike (women), 1939 Kentucky miners’ strike, 1931
at sixty," 1933–34 ARK. TENN.
S.C.
OKLAHOMA
Strike at General Motors,
Housewives’ meat strikes ARIZONA NEW ALA. GA. Atlanta, 1936
Los Angeles, 1935. Strikes MEXICO Southern Tenant Farmers’
and demonstrations also Union leads marching strikes MISS.
against cotton planters, 1935–36 Alabama Sharecroppers Union
in New York, Detroit, organized, 1931
Denver, and Miami, 1935
TEXAS LA.
Upton Sinclair, leader of End FLA. ATLANTIC
Poverty in California, wins
Democratic primary for Huey Long, governor of Louisiana, OCEAN
governor but loses election, 1934 1928–31, United States senator,
PACIFIC 1931–35, launches national
ILGWU garment workers Share-Our-Wealth Society, 1934
OCEAN strike in San Antonio (women),
1937 Gulf of Mexico
0 250 500 miles
MEXICO
Strike, demonstration, or protest 0 250 500 kilometers
Political action
MAP 23.3
Popular Protest in the Great Depression, 1933–1939
The depression forced Americans to look closely at their society, and many of them did not like
what they saw. Some citizens expressed their discontent through popular movements, and this
map suggests the geography of discontent. The industrial Midwest witnessed union movements,
strikes, and Radio Priest Charles Coughlin’s demands for social reform. Simultaneously, farmers’
movements — tenants in the South, smallholders in the agricultural Midwest — engaged in strikes
and dumping campaigns and rallied behind the ideas of progressives in Wisconsin and Huey Long
in the South. Protests took diverse forms in California, which was home to strikes by farmworkers,
women, and — in San Francisco — all wageworkers. The West was also the seedbed of two impor-
tant reform proposals: Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement and Francis
Townsend’s Old Age Revolving Pension clubs.
concerned about the fate of fatherless families, also The Social Security Act was a milestone in the
pressured the president. The resulting Social Security creation of an American welfare state. Never before
Act had three main provisions: old-age pensions for had the federal government assumed such responsi-
workers; a joint federal-state system of compensation bility for the well-being of so many citizens. Social
for unemployed workers; and a program of payments Security, as old-age pensions were known, became
to widowed mothers and the blind, deaf, and disabled. one of the most popular government programs in
Roosevelt, however, limited the reach of the legislation. American history. On the other hand, the assistance
Knowing that compulsory pension and unemployment program for widows and children known as Aid to
legislation alone would be controversial, he dropped a Dependent Children (ADC) became one of its most
provision for national health insurance, fearing it controversial measures. ADC covered only 700,000
would doom the entire bill. youngsters in 1939; by 1994, its successor, Aid to
CHAPTER 23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939 749
As the 1936 election approached, new voters joined addition to voters such as Reagan, Roosevelt could
the Democratic Party. Many had personally benefitted count on a powerful coalition of organized labor, mid-
from New Deal programs such as the WPA or knew western farmers, white ethnic groups, northern African
people who had (Table 23.2). One was Jack Reagan, Americans, and middle-class families concerned about
a down-on-his-luck shoe salesman (and the father unemployment and old-age security. He also com-
of future president Ronald Reagan), who took a job manded the support of intellectuals and progressive
as a federal relief administrator in Dixon, Illinois, Republicans. With difficulty, the Democrats held on to
and became a strong supporter of the New Deal. In the votes of their white southern constituency as well.
Republicans recognized that the New Deal was too
popular to oppose directly, so they chose as their can-
didate the progressive governor of Kansas, Alfred M.
Landon. Landon accepted the legitimacy of many New
TABLE 23.2
Deal programs but criticized their inefficiency and
Major New Deal Legislation expense. He also pointed to authoritarian regimes in
Agriculture Italy and Germany and hinted that FDR harbored sim-
ilar dictatorial ambitions. These charges fell on deaf
1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
ears. Roosevelt’s victory in 1936 was one of the most
Resettlement Administration (RA) lopsided in American history. The assassination of
1935 Rural Electrification Administration Huey Long by a Louisiana political rival in September
1937 Farm Security Administration (FSA) 1935 had eliminated the threat of a serious third-party
challenge. Roosevelt received 60 percent of the popular
1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938
vote and carried every state except Maine and Vermont.
Finance and Industry Organized labor, in particular, mobilized on behalf of
1933 Emergency Banking Act FDR, donating money, canvassing door to door, and
Glass-Steagall Act (created the FDIC) registering hundreds of thousands of new voters. The
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) New Republic, a liberal publication, boasted that “it was
1934 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
the greatest revolution in our political history.”
“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-
1935 Banking Act of 1935 nourished,” the president declared in his second inau-
Revenue Act (wealth tax) gural address in January 1937. But any hopes that FDR
Conservation and the Environment had for expanding the liberal welfare state were quickly
1933 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dashed. Within a year, staunch opposition to Roosevelt’s
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) initiatives arose in Congress, and a sharp recession
Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment undermined confidence in his economic leadership.
Act
Court Battle and Economic Recession Roosevelt’s
Labor and Social Welfare
first setback in 1937 came when he surprised the nation
1933 Section 7(a) of NIRA by asking for fundamental changes to the Supreme
1935 National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) Court. In 1935, the Court had struck down a series of
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) New Deal measures by the narrow margin of 5 to 4.
Social Security Act With the Wagner Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority,
and Social Security all slated to come before the Court,
1937 National Housing Act
the future of the New Deal rested in the hands of a few
1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) elderly, conservative-minded judges. To diminish their
Relief and Reconstruction influence, the president proposed adding a new justice
1933 Federal Emergency Relief Administration
to the Court for every member over the age of seventy,
(FERA) a scheme that would have brought six new judges to
Civil Works Administration (CWA) the bench at the time the legislation was proposed.
Public Works Administration (PWA) Roosevelt’s opponents protested that he was trying to
“pack” the Court. After a bitter, months-long debate,
1935 Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Congress rejected this blatant attempt to alter the judi-
National Youth Administration (NYA)
ciary to the president’s advantage.
CHAPTER 23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939 751
More than half a dozen New Deal programs were devoted to building up the
physical and cultural infrastructure of the country. The former included roads,
The New Deal and bridges, dams, trails, and national parks. The latter included artwork, murals,
plays, and other forms of literary expression. Examine the following documents
Public Works and use them collectively to analyze the New Deal’s relationship to infrastruc-
ture, art, culture, and politics.
1. Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the interior, The New 3. Federal Writers’ Project interview with a WPA
Democracy, 1934. draftsman, Newburyport, Massachusetts, June 25,
Our Government is no longer a laissez-faire Government, 1939.
exercising traditional and more or less impersonal pow- One reason people here don’t like the WPA is because
ers. There exists in Washington a sense of responsibility they don’t understand it’s not all bums and drunks and
for the health, safety, and well-being of the people. . . . aliens! Nobody ever explains to them that they’d never
I believe that we are at the dawn of a day when the aver- have had the new High School they’re so [. . .] proud of
age man, woman, and child in the United States will have if it hadn’t been for the WPA. They don’t stop to figure
an opportunity for a happier and richer life. And it is just that new brick sidewalks wouldn’t be there, the shade
and desirable that this should be so. . . . We are not here trees wouldn’t be all dressed up to look at along High
merely to endure a purgatorial existence in anticipation Street and all around town, if it weren’t for WPA projects.
of a beatific eternity after the grave closes on us. We are To most in this town, and I guess it’s not much different in
here with hopes and aspirations and legitimate desires this, than any other New England place, WPA’s just a racket,
that we are entitled to have satisfied to at least a reason- set up to give a bunch of loafers and drunks steady pay to
able degree. Nor will such a social program as we are indulge in their vices! They don’t stop to consider that on
discussing cause a strain on our economic system. WPA are men and women who have traveled places and
seen things, been educated and found their jobs folded
2. Herbert Johnson cartoon, Saturday Evening Post, up and nothing to replace them with.
1935.
752
4. Ben Shahn, WPA mural, 1938. This is part of a
three-panel mural commissioned by the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) and painted at a
public school in Roosevelt, New Jersey, by the
well-known artist Ben Shahn.
Sources: (1) Harold L. Ickes, The New Democracy (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company Inc., 1934), 60–61; (3) Federal Writers’ Project Life Histories, Library of
Congress, lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html; (5) David E. Lilienthal,
TVA: Democracy on the March (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1944), xxii, 3.
753
754 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
farmers. Black involvement in the New Deal, however, states, which means that statistically, one man, woman,
could not undo centuries of racial subordination, nor or child was murdered every week for fifty years. But
could it change the overwhelming power of southern despite pleas from black leaders, and from Mrs.
whites in the Democratic Party. Roosevelt herself, FDR feared that southern white
Nevertheless, black Americans received significant Democrats would block his other reforms in retaliation
benefits from New Deal relief programs and believed for such legislation.
that the White House cared about their plight, which If lynching embodied southern lawlessness, south-
caused a momentous shift in their political allegiance. ern law was not much better. In an infamous 1931 case
Since the Civil War, black voters had staunchly sup- in Scottsboro, Alabama, nine young black men were
ported the Republican Party, the party of Abraham accused of rape by two white women hitching a ride on
Lincoln, known as the Great Emancipator. Even in the a freight train. The women’s stories contained many
depression year of 1932, they overwhelmingly sup- inconsistencies, but within weeks a white jury had con-
ported Republican candidates. But in 1936, as part of victed all nine defendants; eight received the death sen-
the tidal wave of national support for FDR, northern tence. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the
African Americans gave Roosevelt 71 percent of their sentences because the defendants had been denied
votes and have remained solidly Democratic ever since. adequate legal counsel, five of the men were again con-
African Americans supported the New Deal partly victed and sentenced to long prison terms. Across the
because the Roosevelt administration appointed a country, the Scottsboro Boys, as they were known,
number of black people to federal office, and an infor- inspired solidarity within African American commu-
mal “black cabinet” of prominent African American nities. Among whites, the Communist Party took the
intellectuals advised New Deal agencies. Among the lead in publicizing the case — and was one of the only
most important appointees was Mary McLeod white organizations to do so — helping to support the
Bethune. Born in 1875 in South Carolina to former Scottsboro Defense Committee, which raised money
slaves, Bethune founded Bethune-Cookman College for legal efforts on the defendants’ behalf.
and served during the 1920s as president of the In southern agriculture, where many sharecroppers
National Association of Colored Women. She joined were black while landowners and government admin-
the New Deal in 1935, confiding to a friend that she istrators were white, the Agricultural Adjustment Act
“believed in the democratic and humane program” of hurt rather than helped the poorest African Americans.
FDR. Americans, Bethune observed, had to become White landowners collected government subsidy
“accustomed to seeing Negroes in high places.” Bethune checks but refused to distribute payments to their
had access to the White House and pushed continually sharecroppers. Such practices forced 200,000 black
for New Deal programs to help African Americans. families off the land. Some black farmers tried to pro-
But the New Deal was limited in its approach to tect themselves by joining the Southern Tenant Farmers
race. Roosevelt did not go further in support of black Union (STFU), a biracial organization founded in
rights, because of both his own racial blinders and his 1934. “The same chain that holds you holds my people,
need for the votes of the white southern Democrats in too,” an elderly black farmer reminded his white neigh-
Congress — including powerful southern senators, bors. But landowners had such economic power and
many of whom held influential committee posts in such support from local sheriffs that the STFU could
Congress. Most New Deal programs reflected prevail- do little.
ing racial attitudes. Roosevelt and other New Dealers A generation of African American leaders came of
had to trim their proposals of measures that would age inspired by the New Deal’s democratic promise.
substantially benefit African Americans. Civilian But it remained just a promise. From the outset, New
Conservation Corps camps segregated blacks, and Dealers wrestled with potentially fatal racial politics.
most NRA rules did not protect black workers from Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party depended
discrimination. Both Social Security and the Wagner heavily on white voters in the South, who were deter-
Act explicitly excluded the domestic and agricultural mined to maintain racial segregation and white
jobs held by most African Americans in the 1930s. supremacy. But many Democrats in the North and
Roosevelt also refused to support legislation making West — centers of New Deal liberalism — would come
lynching a federal crime, which was one of the most to oppose racial discrimination. This meant, ironically,
pressing demands of African Americans in the 1930s. that the nation’s most liberal political forces and some
Between 1882 and 1930, more than 2,500 African of its most conservative political forces existed side by
Americans were lynched by white mobs in the southern side in the same political party. Another thirty years
756 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Scottsboro Defendants
The 1931 trial in Scottsboro, Alabama, of
nine black youths accused of raping two
white women became a symbol of the
injustices African Americans faced in the
South’s legal system. Denied access to an
attorney, the defendants were found guilty
after a three-day trial, and eight were sen-
tenced to death. When the U.S. Supreme
Court overturned their convictions in
1932, the International Labor Defense
Organization hired noted criminal attor-
ney Samuel Leibowitz to argue the case.
Leibowitz eventually won the acquittal of
four defendants and jail sentences for the
rest. This 1933 photograph, taken in a
Decatur jail, shows Leibowitz conferring
with Haywood Patterson, in front of the
other eight defendants. Brown Brothers.
would pass before black Americans would gain an called the Indian New Deal. On the positive side, the
opportunity to reform U.S. racial laws and practices. law reversed the Dawes Act of 1887 (Chapter 16) by
promoting Indian self-government through formal
Indian Policy New Deal reformers seized the oppor- constitutions and democratically elected tribal coun-
tunity to implement their vision for the future of Native cils. A majority of Indian peoples — some 181 tribes —
Americans, with mixed results. Indian peoples had accepted the reorganization policy, but 77 declined to
long been one of the nation’s most disadvantaged and participate, primarily because they preferred the tradi-
powerless groups. In 1934, the average individual tional way of making decisions by consensus rather
Indian income was only $48 per year, and the Native than by majority vote. Through the new law, Indians
American unemployment rate was three times the won a greater degree of religious freedom, and tribal
national average. The plight of Native Americans won governments regained their status as semisovereign
the attention of the progressive commissioner of the dependent nations. When the latter policy was upheld
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), John Collier, an intel- by the courts, Indian people gained a measure of lever-
lectual and critic of past BIA practices. Collier under- age that would have major implications for native
stood what Native Americans had long known: that the rights in the second half of the twentieth century.
government’s decades-long policy of forced assimila- Like so many other federal Indian policies, how-
tion, prohibition of Indian religions, and confiscation ever, the “Indian New Deal” was a mixed blessing.
of Indian lands had left most tribes poor, isolated, and For some peoples, the act imposed a model of self-
without basic self-determination. government that proved incompatible with tribal
Collier helped to write and push through Congress traditions and languages. The Papagos of southern
the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, sometimes Arizona, for instance, had no words for budget or
CHAPTER 23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939 757
representative, and they made no linguistic distinctions trooped from farm to farm and from crop to crop dur-
among law, rule, charter, and constitution. In another ing the long picking season. Some migrants settled in
case, the nation’s largest tribe, the Navajos, rejected the the rapidly growing cities along the West Coast, espe-
BIA’s new policy, largely because the government was cially the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles. Under
simultaneously reducing Navajo livestock to protect the both Hoover and FDR, the federal government pro-
Boulder Dam project. In theory, the new policy gave moted the “repatriation” of Mexican citizens — their
Indians a much greater degree of self-determination. deportation to Mexico. Between 1929 and 1937,
In practice, however, although some tribes did benefit, approximately half a million people of Mexican descent
the BIA and Congress continued to interfere in inter- were deported. But historians estimate that more than
nal Indian affairs and retained financial control over 60 percent of these were legal U.S. citizens, making the
reservation governments. government’s actions constitutionally questionable.
Despite the deportations, many Mexican Ameri-
Struggles in the West By the 1920s, agriculture in cans benefitted from the New Deal and generally held
California had become a big business — intensive, Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in high regard.
diversified, and export-oriented. Large-scale corporate- People of Mexican descent, like other Americans,
owned farms produced specialty crops — lettuce, toma- took jobs with the WPA and the CCC, or received relief
toes, peaches, grapes, and cotton — whose staggered in the worst years of the depression. The National
harvests allowed the use of transient laborers. Thou- Youth Administration (NYA), which employed young
sands of workers, immigrants from Mexico and Asia people from families on relief and sponsored a vari-
and white migrants from the midwestern states, ety of school programs, was especially important in
758 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
southwestern cities. In California, the Mexican Ameri- discrimination excluded young Japanese Americans
can Movement (MAM), a youth-focused organization, from nonfarm jobs, about 20 percent of the immi-
received assistance from liberal New Dealers. New grants returned to Japan.
Deal programs did not fundamentally improve the Chinese Americans were less prosperous than their
migrant farm labor system under which so many Japanese counterparts. Only 3 percent of Chinese
people of Mexican descent labored, but Mexicans Americans worked in professional and technical posi-
joined the New Deal coalition in large numbers because tions, and discrimination barred them from most
of the Democrats’ commitment to ordinary Americans. industrial jobs. In San Francisco, the majority of
“Franklin D. Roosevelt’s name was the spark that Chinese worked in small businesses: restaurants, laun-
started thousands of Spanish-speaking persons to the dries, and firms that imported textiles and ceramics.
polls,” noted one Los Angeles activist. During the depression, they turned for assistance to
Men and women of Asian descent — mostly from Chinese social organizations such as huiguan (district
China, Japan, and the Philippines — formed a small associations) and to the city government; in 1931,
minority of the American population but were a signif- about one-sixth of San Francisco’s Chinese population
icant presence in some western cities. Immigrants from was receiving public aid. But few Chinese benefitted
Japan and China had long faced discrimination. A from the New Deal. Until the repeal of the Exclusion
1913 California law prohibited them from owning Act in 1943, Chinese immigrants were classified as
land. Japanese farmers, who specialized in fruit and “aliens ineligible for citizenship” and therefore were
vegetable crops, circumvented this restriction by put- excluded from most federal programs.
ting land titles in the names of their American-born Because Filipino immigrants came from a U.S. ter-
children. As the depression cut farm prices and racial ritory, they were not affected by the ban on Asian
CHAPTER 23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939 759
immigration enacted in 1924. During the 1920s, their reshaped the use of natural resources, especially water,
numbers swelled to about 50,000, many of whom in the United States.
worked as laborers on large corporate-owned farms.
As the depression cut wages, Filipino immigration The Dust Bowl Among the most hard-pressed citi-
slowed to a trickle, and it was virtually cut off by the zens during the depression were farmers fleeing the
Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934. The act granted inde- “dust bowl” of the Great Plains. Between 1930 and
pendence to the Philippines (which since 1898 had 1941, a severe drought afflicted the semiarid states of
been an American colony), classified all Filipinos in the Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arkansas,
United States as aliens, and restricted immigration and Kansas. Farmers in these areas had stripped the
from the Philippines to fifty people per year. land of its native vegetation, which destroyed the deli-
cate ecology of the plains. To grow
wheat and other crops, they had IDENTIFY CAUSES
Reshaping the Environment pushed agriculture beyond the Why did the natural envi-
Attention to natural resources was a dominant theme natural limits of the soil, making ronment receive so much
of the New Deal, and the shaping of the landscape was their land vulnerable, in times of attention under New Deal
among its most visible legacies. Franklin Roosevelt and drought, to wind erosion of the programs, and with what
Interior Secretary Harold Ickes saw themselves as con- topsoil (Map 23.4). When the result?
servationists in the tradition of FDR’s cousin, Theodore winds came, huge clouds of thick
Roosevelt. In an era before environmentalism, FDR dust rolled over the land, turning the day into night.
practiced what he called the “gospel of conservation.” This ecological disaster prompted a mass exodus. At
The president cared primarily about making the least 350,000 “Okies” (so called whether or not they
land — and other natural resources, such as trees and were from Oklahoma) loaded their belongings into cars
water — better serve human needs. National policy and trucks and headed to California. John Steinbeck’s
stressed scientific land management and ecological novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) immortalized them,
balance. Preserving wildlife and wilderness was of sec- and New Deal photographer Dorothea Lange’s haunt-
ondary importance. Under Roosevelt, the federal gov- ing images of California migrant camps made them the
ernment both responded to environmental crises and public face of the depression’s human toll.
MAP 23.4
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environmental projects. Between 1933
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U
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e SOUTH
as well as hundreds of thousands of nn GEORGIA CAROLINA
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MISSISSIPPI
provided extensive recreational ALABAMA
facilities. Widely praised at the time, Birmingham
N
the TVA came under attack in the W E
Area served by TVA electric power
1970s for its practice of strip mining Tennessee River Valley watershed
Principal TVA dam
and the pollution caused by its power S
0 50 100 miles Steam power plant
plants and chemical factories. Chemical plant
0 50 100 kilometers
New Deal, folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote a song leading painters, muralists, and sculptors. Jackson
about the Columbia. “Your power is turning our dark- Pollock, Alice Neel, Willem de Kooning, and Louise
ness to dawn,” he sang, “so roll on, Columbia, roll on!” Nevelson all received support. The Federal Music
New Deal projects that enhanced people’s enjoy- Project and Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) employed
ment of the natural environment can be seen today 15,000 musicians and 5,000 writers, respectively. Among
throughout the country. CCC and WPA workers built the latter were Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, and John
the famous Blue Ridge Parkway, which connects the Cheever, who became great American writers. The
Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with the Great FWP also collected oral histories, including two thou-
Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. In sand narratives by former slaves. The black folklorist
the West, government workers built the San Francisco and novelist Zora Neale Hurston finished three novels
Zoo, Berkeley’s Tilden Park, and the canals of San while in the Florida FWP, among them Their Eyes Were
Antonio. The Civilian Conservation Corps helped to Watching God (1937). Richard Wright won the 1938
complete the East Coast’s Appalachian Trail and the Story magazine prize for the best tale by a WPA writer
West Coast’s Pacific Crest Trail through the Sierra and went on to complete Native Son (1940), a searing
Nevada. In state parks across the country, cabins, shel- novel about white racism. Similarly, the Federal Theatre
ters, picnic areas, lodges, and observation towers stand Project (FTP) nurtured such talented directors, actors,
as monuments to the New Deal ethos of recreation and playwrights as Orson Welles, John Huston, and
coexisting with nature. Arthur Miller.
The New Deal and the Arts The Legacies of the New Deal
In response to the Great Depression, many American The New Deal addressed the Great Depression by
writers and artists redefined their relationship to soci- restoring hope and promising security. FDR and Con-
ety. Never had there been a decade, critic Malcolm gress created a powerful social-welfare state that took
Cowley suggested in 1939, “when literary events fol- unprecedented responsibility for the well-being of
lowed so closely on the flying coat-tails of social events.” American citizens. During the 1930s, millions of
New Deal administrators encouraged artists to create people began to pay taxes directly to the Social Security
projects that would be of interest to the entire commu- Administration, and more than one-third of the popu-
nity, not just the cultured elite. Encouraged by the lation received direct government assistance from
popular New Deal slogan “Art for the millions,” artists federal programs, including old-age pensions, unem-
painted murals in hundreds of public buildings. The ployment compensation, farm loans, relief work, and
WPA’s Federal Art Project gave work to many young mortgage guarantees. New legislation regulated the
artists who would become the twentieth century’s stock market, reformed the Federal Reserve System,
762 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
and subjected business corporations to federal regula- limited the benefits distributed under New Deal
tion. The New Deal’s pattern of government involve- programs.
ment in social life would persist for the rest of the Whatever the merits of its critics, the New Deal
twentieth century. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson and unquestionably transformed the American political
the “Great Society” Congress dramatically expanded landscape. From 1896 to 1932, the Republican Party had
social-welfare programs, most of which remained intact commanded the votes of a majority of Americans. That
in the wake of the “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s. changed as Franklin Roosevelt’s magnetic personality
Like all other major social transformations, the and innovative programs brought millions of voters
New Deal was criticized both by those who thought it into the Democratic fold. Democratic recruits included
did too much and by those who believed it did too first- and second-generation immigrants from southern
little. Conservatives, who prioritized limited govern- and central Europe — Italians, Poles, Slovaks, and Jews —
ment and individual freedom, pointed out that the as well as African American migrants to northern cities.
New Deal state intruded deeply into the personal and Organized labor aligned itself with a Democratic
financial lives of citizens and the administration that had recognized unions as a legiti-
EXPLAIN affairs of business. Conversely, mate force in modern industrial life. The elderly and
CONSEQUENCES advocates of social-welfare liber- the unemployed, assisted by the Social Security Act, like-
What was the New Deal’s alism complained that the New wise supported FDR. This New Deal coalition of ethnic
long-term legacy? Deal’s safety net had too many groups, city dwellers, organized labor, African Ameri-
holes: no national health-care sys- cans, and a cross section of the middle class formed the
tem, welfare programs that excluded domestic workers nucleus of the northern Democratic Party and sup-
and farm laborers, and state governments that often ported additional liberal reforms in the decades to come.
CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER REVIEW 763
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Some historians have seen the New Deal as a natu- 3. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
ral evolution of progressive reforms from earlier in events listed under “Politics and Power,” “Identity,”
the century. Others have argued that it represented and “Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture” on the thematic
a revolution in social values and government insti- timeline on page 671. In what ways did the New
tutions. Do you view the New Deal as an extension Deal coalition and the emergence of the welfare
of progressivism, or a radical break with the past? state change the character of American politics?
Provide evidence for your argument. Why did Republicans oppose the Democratic ini-
tiatives, and how did these public debates shape
2. How did the lives of women, workers, and racial
visions of American national identity?
and ethnic minority groups change during the
Great Depression? What role did the New Deal
play in helping those groups of Americans?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE People often 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Consider two images: the
view the New Deal as a set of government programs famous Dorothea Lange photograph of Florence
and policies enacted by President Roosevelt and Thompson on page 760 and the photograph of
Congress. In this version, change comes from workers building the Grand Coulee Dam on page
above. Yet there is also evidence that ordinary 762. Why is the first image more frequently associ-
Americans played an important role in inspiring ated with the Great Depression than the second?
and championing aspects of the New Deal. Find How would it change our understanding of the era
several specific examples of this, and think about if we made the second photograph the iconic repre-
the possible connections between the struggles, sentation of the depression?
protests, and actions of ordinary people and the
programs of the New Deal.
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Kristen Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: James F. Simon, FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The
The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle over
and His Moral Conscience (2009). Discusses women the New Deal (2012). Shows the legal controversies
and the New Deal years as seen through the life and surrounding FDR’s expansion of the state.
career of an important reformer.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939); Josephine
Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Herbst, Pity Is Not Enough (1933); and Richard
Origins of Our Times (2013). A powerful explanation Wright, Native Son (1940). Classic depression-era
of the New Deal’s racial politics. novels.
Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression (1984) and For extensive collections of 1930s materials, see the
Down & Out in the Great Depression (1983). The first “New Deal Network” at newdeal.feri.org;
is an excellent overview of the depression and the government-commissioned art at archives.gov
New Deal; the second contains letters written by /exhibits/new_deal_for_the_arts; and the slave
ordinary people. narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project
at memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml.
CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER REVIEW 765
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
KEY TURNING POINTS: Identify two critical turning points between 1934 and 1937, when the
New Deal faced specific challenges.
The World at War
24
C H A P T E R
1937–1945
T
THE ROAD TO WAR he Second World War was the IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
The Rise of Fascism defining international event of the How did World War II transform
War Approaches twentieth century. Battles raged the United States domestically and
The Attack on Pearl Harbor across six of the world’s seven continents change its relationship with the
and all of its oceans. It killed more than world?
ORGANIZING FOR 50 million people and wounded hundreds
VICTORY of millions more. When it was over, the industrial economies and much of the infra-
Financing the War structure of Europe and East Asia lay in ruins. Waged with both technologically advanced
Mobilizing the American weapons and massive armies, the war involved every industrialized power in Europe,
Fighting Force
North America, and Asia, as well as dozens of other nations, many of them colonies of
Workers and the War Effort the industrialized countries.
Politics in Wartime The military conflict began on two continents: in Asia with Japan’s 1937 invasion of
LIFE ON THE HOME China across the Sea of Japan, and in Europe with the 1939 blitzkrieg (lightning war)
FRONT conducted by Germany in Poland. It ended in 1945 after American planes dropped two
“For the Duration” atomic bombs, the product of stunning yet ominous scientific breakthroughs, on the
Migration and the Wartime City Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In between these demonstrations of techno-
logical prowess and devastating power, huge armies confronted and destroyed one
Japanese Removal
another in the fields of France, the forests and steppes of Russia, the river valleys of
FIGHTING AND WINNING China, the volcanic islands of the Pacific, and the deserts of North Africa.
THE WAR “Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four con-
Wartime Aims and Tensions tinents,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the nation in January 1941. After
The War in Europe remaining neutral for several years, the United States would commit to that “armed
The War in the Pacific defense.” Both FDR and British prime minister Winston Churchill came to see the war
The Atomic Bomb and the End as a defense of democratic values from the threat posed by German, Italian, and Japa-
of the War nese fascism. For them, the brutal conflict was the “good war.” When the grim reality
The Toll of the War of the Jewish Holocaust came to light, U.S. participation in the war seemed even more
just. But as much as it represented a struggle between democracy and fascism, it was
also inescapably a war to maintain British, French, and Dutch control of colonies in
Africa, India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. By 1945, democracy in the industrial-
ized world had been preserved, and a new Euro-American alliance had taken hold; the
future of the vast European colonial empires, however, remained unresolved.
On the U.S. domestic front, World War II ended the Great Depression, hastened
profound social changes, and expanded the scope and authority of the federal govern-
ment. Racial politics and gender roles shifted under the weight of wartime migration
and labor shortages. The pace of urbanization increased as millions of Americans
uprooted themselves and moved hundreds or thousands of miles to join the military or
to take a war job. A stronger, more robust federal government, the product of a long,
hard-fought war, would remain in place to fight an even longer, more expensive, and
potentially more dangerous Cold War in the ensuing years. These developments, which
accelerated transformations already under way, would have repercussions far into the
postwar decades.
766
Black Mechanics in Tuskegee, Alabama World War II was a “total war,” fought on seven
continents by hundreds of millions of people and massive national armies. Though a late arrival to the
conflict, the United States played a critical role in defeating the Axis powers. Here, African American
soldiers in Tuskegee, Alabama, make engine adjustments for a training flight. Jeff Ethell Color Archives.
767
768 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler salutes German
troops during a parade at the
Nazi Party’s annual congress at
Nuremberg. German fascism
reveled in great public spectacles,
such as the famous Nuremberg
rallies held every year between
the early 1920s and the late
1930s. Hitler used these mass
rallies, at which tens and some-
times hundreds of thousands of
soldiers and civilians gathered,
to build wide support for his
policies of aggressive militarism
abroad and suppression of Jews
and other minorities at home.
Getty Images.
1936, he sent troops into the Rhineland, a demilita- Although Nye’s committee failed to prove its charge
rized zone under the terms of Versailles. Again, France against weapon makers, its factual findings prompted
and Britain took no action. Later that year, Hitler and an isolationist-minded Congress to pass a series of acts
Mussolini formed the Rome-Berlin Axis, a political and to prevent the nation from being drawn into another
military alliance between the two fascist nations. Also overseas war. The Neutrality Act of 1935 imposed an
in 1936, Germany signed a pact to create a military alli- embargo on selling arms to warring countries and
ance with Japan against the Soviet Union. With these declared that Americans traveling on the ships of bel-
alliances in place, and with France and Great Britain ligerent nations did so at their own risk. In 1936,
reluctant to oppose him, Hitler had seized the military Congress banned loans to belligerents, and in 1937 it
advantage in Europe by 1937. imposed a “cash-and-carry” requirement: if a warring
country wanted to purchase nonmilitary goods from
the United States, it had to pay cash and carry them in
War Approaches its own ships, keeping the United States out of poten-
As Hitler pushed his initiatives in Europe, which was tially dangerous naval warfare.
mired in economic depression as deeply as the United Americans for the most part had little enthusiasm
States, the Roosevelt administration faced widespread for war, and a wide variety of groups and individuals
isolationist sentiment at home. In part, this desire to espoused isolationism. Many isolationists looked to
avoid European entanglements reflected disillusion Republican Ohio senator Robert Taft, who distrusted
with American participation in World War I. In 1934, both Roosevelt and European nations with equal con-
Gerald P. Nye, a progressive Republican senator from viction, or to the aviator hero Charles A. Lindbergh,
North Dakota, launched an investigation into the prof- who delivered impassioned speeches against inter-
its of munitions makers during that war. Nye’s commit- vention in Europe. Some isolationists, such as the
tee alleged that arms manufacturers (popularly labeled conservative National Legion of Mothers of Amer-
“merchants of death”) had maneuvered President ica, combined anticommunism, Christian morality,
Wilson into World War I. and even anti-Semitism. Isolationists were primarily
770 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
in 1914, Woodrow Wilson had told Americans to be the deal. In October 1940, a bipartisan vote in Con-
neutral “in thought as well as in action.” FDR, by con- gress approved a large increase in defense spending
trast, now said: “This nation will remain a neutral and instituted the first peacetime draft in American
nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain history. “We must be the great arsenal of democracy,”
neutral in thought as well.” The overwhelming majority FDR declared.
of Americans — some 84 percent, according to a poll in As the war in Europe and the Pacific expanded, the
1939 — supported Britain and France rather than United States was preparing for the 1940 presidential
Germany, but most wanted America to avoid another election. The crisis had convinced Roosevelt to seek
European war. an unprecedented third term. The Republicans nomi-
At first, the need for U.S. intervention seemed nated Wendell Willkie of Indiana, a former Democrat
remote. After Germany conquered Poland in Septem- who supported many New Deal policies. The two par-
ber 1939, calm settled over Europe. Then, on April 9, ties’ platforms differed only slightly. Both pledged aid
1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. to the Allies, and both candidates promised not to
In May, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg “send an American boy into the shambles of a Euro-
fell to the swift German army. The final shock came in pean war,” as Willkie put it. Willkie’s spirited campaign
mid-June, when France too surrendered. Britain now resulted in a closer election than that of 1932 or 1936;
stood alone against Hitler’s plans for domination of nonetheless, Roosevelt won 55 percent of the popu-
Europe. lar vote.
Having been reelected, Roosevelt now undertook
Isolationism and Internationalism What Time to persuade Congress to increase aid to Britain, whose
magazine would later call America’s “thousand-step survival he viewed as key to American security. In
road to war” had already begun. After a bitter battle in January 1941, he delivered one of
Congress in 1939, Roosevelt won a change in the neu- the most important speeches of PLACE EVENTS
trality laws to allow the Allies to buy arms as well as his career. Defining “four essen- IN CONTEXT
nonmilitary goods on a cash-and-carry basis. Interven- tial human freedoms” — freedom How did Roosevelt use
tionists, led by journalist William Allen White and his of speech, freedom of religion, the Four Freedoms speech
Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, freedom from want, and freedom and the Atlantic Charter
became increasingly vocal in 1940 as war escalated in from fear — Roosevelt cast the to define the war for
Europe. (Interventionists were also known as “interna- war as a noble defense of demo- Americans?
tionalists,” since they believed in engaging with, rather cratic societies. He then linked
than withdrawing from, international developments.) the fate of democracy in Western Europe with the new
In response, isolationists formed the America First welfare state at home. Sounding a decidedly New Deal
Committee (AFC), with well-respected figures such as note, Roosevelt pledged to end “special privileges for
Lindbergh and Senator Nye urging the nation to stay the few” and to preserve “civil liberties for all.” Like
out of the war. The AFC held rallies across the United President Wilson’s speech championing national self-
States, and its posters, brochures, and broadsides warn- determination at the close of World War I, Roosevelt’s
ing against American involvement in Europe suffused “Four Freedoms” speech outlined a liberal interna-
many parts of the country, especially the Midwest. tional order with appeal well beyond its intended
Because of the America Firsters’ efforts, Roosevelt European and American audiences.
proceeded cautiously in 1940 as he moved the United
States closer to involvement. The president did not To see a longer excerpt of the “Four Freedoms”
want war, but he believed that most Americans “greatly speech, along with other primary sources from this
period, see Sources for America’s History.
underestimate the serious implications to our own
future,” as he confided to White. In May, Roosevelt cre-
ated the National Defense Advisory Commission and Two months later, in March 1941, with Britain no
brought two prominent Republicans, Henry Stimson longer able to pay cash for arms, Roosevelt persuaded
and Frank Knox, into his cabinet as secretaries of war Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act. The legislation
and the navy, respectively. During the summer, the authorized the president to “lease, lend, or otherwise
president traded fifty World War I destroyers to Great dispose of ” arms and equipment to Britain or any other
Britain in exchange for the right to build military bases country whose defense was considered vital to the
on British possessions in the Atlantic, circumventing security of the United States. When Hitler abandoned
neutrality laws by using an executive order to complete his nonaggression pact with Stalin and invaded the
772 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
Soviet Union in June 1941, the United States extended however, set up potential conflict in Asia and Africa,
lend-lease to the Soviets. The implementation of lend- where European powers would be reluctant to aban-
lease marked the unofficial entrance of the United don their imperial holdings.
States into the European war. In the fall of 1941, the reality of U.S. involvement in
Roosevelt underlined his support for the Allied the war drew closer. By September, Nazi U-boats and
cause by meeting in August 1941 with British prime the American navy were exchanging fire in the Atlantic.
minister Winston Churchill (who had succeeded With isolationists still a potent force, Roosevelt hesi-
Chamberlain in 1940). Their joint press release, which tated to declare war and insisted that the United States
became known as the Atlantic Charter, provided the would defend itself only against a direct attack. But
ideological foundation of the Western cause. Drawing behind the scenes, the president openly discussed
from Wilson’s Fourteen Points and Roosevelt’s Four American involvement with close advisors and consid-
Freedoms, the charter called for economic coopera- ered war inevitable.
tion, national self-determination, and guarantees of
political stability after the war to ensure “that all men in
all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from The Attack on Pearl Harbor
fear and want.” It would become the basis for a new The crucial provocation came not from Germany
American-led transatlantic alliance after the war’s con- but from Japan. After Japan invaded China in 1937,
clusion. Its promise of national self-determination, Roosevelt had denounced “the present reign of terror
and international lawlessness” and suggested that Although the assault was devastating, it united the
aggressors be “quarantined” by peaceful nations. American people. Calling December 7 “a date which
Despite such rhetoric, the United States refused to will live in infamy,” President Roosevelt asked Congress
intervene later that year when Japanese troops sacked for a declaration of war against Japan. The Senate voted
the city of Nanjing, massacred 300,000 Chinese resi- unanimously for war, and the House concurred by
dents, and raped thousands of women. a vote of 388 to 1. The lone dissenter was Jeannette
FDR and other American officials prioritized events Rankin of Montana, a committed pacifist — she also
in Europe over those in East Asia, and without a coun- voted against entry into World War I — and the first
terweight, Japan’s military and imperial ambitions female member of Congress. Three days later, Germany
expanded. In 1940, General Hideki Tojo became war and Italy declared war on the United States, which in
minister. After concluding a formal military alliance turn declared war on the Axis powers. The long shad-
with Germany and Italy that year, Tojo dispatched Japa- ows of two wars, one in Europe and one in Asia, had at
nese troops to occupy the northern part of the French long last converged over the United States.
colony of Indochina (present-day Vietnam, Cambodia,
and Laos). Tojo’s goal, supported by Emperor Hirohito,
was to create a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”
under Japan’s control stretching from the Korean
Organizing for Victory
Peninsula south to Indonesia. Like Germany and Italy, The task of fighting on a global scale dramatically
Japan sought to match the overseas empires of Britain, increased the power of the federal government. Shifting
France, Holland, and the United States. from civilian to military production, raising an army,
The United States responded to the stationing of and assembling the necessary workforce required a mas-
Japanese troops in Indochina by restricting trade with sive expansion in government authority. When Congress
Japan. Roosevelt hoped that these economic sanctions passed the War Powers Act in December 1941, it gave
would deter Japanese aggression. But in July 1941, President Roosevelt unprecedented control over all
Japanese troops staged a full-scale invasion of Indo- aspects of the war effort. This act marked the beginning
china. Roosevelt then froze Japanese assets in the of what some historians call the imperial presidency: the
United States and stopped all trade with Japan, includ- far-reaching use (and sometimes abuse) of executive
ing vital oil shipments that accounted for almost 80 authority during the latter part of the twentieth century.
percent of Japanese consumption.
In October 1941, General Tojo became prime min-
ister and accelerated secret preparations for war against Financing the War
the United States. By November, American military Defense mobilization, not the New Deal efforts of the
intelligence knew that Japan was planning an attack 1930s, ended the Great Depression. Between 1940 and
but did not know where it would occur. Early on 1945, the annual gross national product doubled, and
Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese bomb- after-tax profits of American businesses nearly doubled
ers attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than (America Compared, p. 774). Federal spending on war
2,400 Americans. They destroyed or heavily damaged production powered this advance. By late 1943, two-
eight battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers, and thirds of the economy was directly involved in the war
almost two hundred airplanes. effort (Figure 24.1). The government paid for these
FIGURE 24.1
40
Government Military and Civilian Spending as
a Percentage of GDP, 1920–1980
Government military spending was about 30
Percentage of GDP
23 million
1,600
1,400
1,200
15 million
$ in billion in 1990 prices
1,000
800
600
6 million 6 million
400
3 million
200
2 million
K.
an
ina
via
.R
y
d
c
an
U.
lan
an
U.
S.S
Jap
sla
Ch
rm
Po
U.
go
Ge
Yu
Source: GDP data adapted From Mark Harrison, “The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers” in International Comparison (1998), 11. Copyright © 1998
Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
774
CHAPTER 24 The World at War, 1937–1945 775
military expenditures by raising taxes and borrowing industries would intensify during the Cold War and
money. The Revenue Act of 1942 expanded the num- continue to this day.
ber of people paying income taxes from 3.9 million to To secure maximum production, the WPB pre-
42.6 million. Taxes on personal incomes and business ferred to deal with major enterprises rather than with
profits paid half the cost of the war. The government small businesses. The nation’s fifty-six largest corpora-
borrowed the rest, both from wealthy Americans and tions received three-fourths of the war contracts; the
from ordinary citizens, who invested in long-term top ten received one-third. The best-known contractor
treasury bonds known as war bonds. was Henry J. Kaiser. Already highly successful from
Financing and coordinating the war effort required building roads in California and the Hoover and Grand
far-reaching cooperation between government and Coulee dams, Kaiser went from
private business. The number of civilians employed by government construction work to TRACE CHANGE
the government increased almost fourfold, to 3.8 mil- navy shipbuilding. At his ship- OVER TIME
lion — a far higher rate of growth than that during yard in Richmond, California, he How did the war affect the
the New Deal. The powerful War Production Board revolutionized ship construction relationship between pri-
(WPB) awarded defense contracts, allocated scarce by applying Henry Ford’s tech- vate corporations and the
resources — such as rubber, copper, and oil — for mili- niques of mass production. To federal government?
tary uses, and persuaded businesses to convert to mili- meet wartime production sched-
tary production. For example, it encouraged Ford and ules, Kaiser broke the work process down into small,
General Motors to build tanks rather than cars by specialized tasks that newly trained workers could do
granting generous tax advantages for re-equipping easily. Soon, each of his work crews was building a
existing factories and building new ones. In other “Liberty Ship,” a large vessel to carry cargo and troops
instances, the board approved “cost-plus” contracts, to the war zone, every two weeks. The press dubbed
which guaranteed corporations a profit, and allowed him the Miracle Man.
them to keep new steel mills, factories, and shipyards Central to Kaiser’s success were his close ties to
after the war. Such government subsidies of defense federal agencies. The government financed the great
Shipyards in Wartime
The shipyard workers shown
here are laying the keel of the
Joseph N. Teal, a 10,500-ton
“Liberty” freighter bound for
the war in the Pacific in 1942.
Amidst scaffolding, tools, and
wires, these workers at Henry J.
Kaiser’s shipyard in Portland,
Oregon, constructed the entire
ship in just ten days after the
keel was laid, to shatter all
previous shipbuilding records.
Kaiser was the king of ship-
building on the West Coast,
with massive yards in Portland
and the San Francisco Bay area.
In all, Kaiser’s workers built
nearly 1,500 ships in three
years, one-quarter of the
total constructed during the
war. © Bettmann/Corbis.
776 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
dams that he built during the depression, and the in uniform.” The military uniform, Hughes implied,
Reconstruction Finance Corporation lent him $300 was not assigned to African Americans so readily. Native
million to build shipyards and manufacturing plants Americans and Mexican Americans, on the other hand,
during the war. Working together in this way, American were never officially segregated; they rubbed elbows
business and government turned out a prodigious with the sons of European immigrants and native-born
supply of military hardware: 86,000 tanks; 296,000 air- soldiers from all regions of the country.
planes; 15 million rifles and machine guns; 64,000 Among the most instrumental soldiers were the
landing craft; and 6,500 cargo ships and naval vessels. Native American “code talkers.” In the Pacific theater,
The American way of war, wrote the Scottish histo- native Navajo speakers communicated orders to fleet
rian D. W. Brogan in 1944, was “mechanized like the commanders. Japanese intelligence could not decipher
American farm and kitchen.” America’s productive the code because it was based on the Navajo language,
industrial economy, as much as or more than its troops, which fewer than fifty non-Navajos in the world under-
proved the decisive factor in winning World War II. stood. At the battle of Iwo Jima, for instance — one of
The system of allotting contracts, along with the the war’s fiercest — Navajo code talkers, working around
suspension of antitrust prosecutions during the war, the clock, sent and received more than eight hundred
created giant corporate enterprises. By 1945, the largest messages without error. In the European theater, army
one hundred American companies produced 70 per- commanders used Comanche, Choctaw, and Cherokee
cent of the nation’s industrial output. These corpora- speakers to thwart the Nazis and exchange crucial mil-
tions would form the core of what became known as itary commands on the battlefield. No Axis nation ever
the nation’s “military-industrial complex” during the broke these Native American codes.
Cold War (Chapter 25). Approximately 350,000 American women enlisted
in the military. About 140,000 served in the Women’s
Army Corps (WAC), and 100,000 served in the navy’s
Mobilizing the American
Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service
Fighting Force (WAVES). One-third of the nation’s registered nurses,
The expanding federal bureaucracy also had a human almost 75,000 overall, volunteered for military duty. In
face. To fight the war, the government mobilized addition, about 1,000 Women’s Airforce Service Pilots
tens of millions of soldiers, civilians, and workers — (WASPs) ferried planes and supplies in noncombat
coordinated on a scale unprecedented in U.S. history. areas. The armed forces limited the duties assigned to
During World War II, the armed forces of the United women, however. Female officers could not command
States enlisted more than fifteen million men and men, and WACs and WAVES were barred from com-
women. In no other military conflict have so many bat duty, although nurses of both sexes served close to
American citizens served in the armed services. They the front lines, risking capture or death. Most of the
came from every region and economic station: black jobs that women did in the military — clerical work,
sharecroppers from Alabama; white farmers from the communications, and health care — resembled wom-
Midwest; the sons and daughters of European, Mexi- en’s jobs in civilian life.
can, and Caribbean immigrants; native men from Historians still debate how to characterize the
Navajo and Choctaw reservations and other tribal World War II American military. As an army of
communities; women from every state in the nation; “citizen-soldiers,” it represented a wide stratum of soci-
even Hollywood celebrities. From urban, rural, and ety. Military service gave a generation of men a noble
suburban areas, from working-class and middle-class purpose, following a decade of economic depression.
backgrounds — they all served in the military. And its ethic of patriotism further advanced the chil-
In contrast to its otherwise democratic character, dren of immigrants into mainstream American life.
the American army segregated the nearly one million Yet the military embodied the tensions and contradic-
African Americans in uniform. The National Asso- tions of American society as well. The draft revealed
ciation for the Advancement of Colored People appalling levels of health, fitness, and education among
(NAACP) and other civil rights groups reprimanded millions of Americans, spurring reformers to call
the government, saying, “A Jim Crow army cannot for improved literacy and nutrition. Women’s integra-
fight for a free world,” but the military continued to tion into the military was marked by deep anxieties
separate African Americans and assign them menial about their potentially negative effects on male sol-
duties. The poet Langston Hughes observed the irony: diers as well as the threat to “womanhood” posed by
“We are elevator boys, janitors, red caps, maids — a race service. The American army was like the nation itself.
CHAPTER 24 The World at War, 1937–1945 777
United in wartime purpose, the military reflected the operators (American Voices, p. 778). Women made up
strengths and weaknesses of a diverse, fractious society. 36 percent of the labor force in 1945, compared with
24 percent at the beginning of the war. War work did
not free women from traditional expectations and lim-
Workers and the War Effort itations, however. Women often faced sexual harass-
As millions of working-age citizens joined the military, ment on the job and usually received lower wages than
the nation faced a critical labor shortage. Consequently, men did. In shipyards, women with the most seniority
many women and African Americans joined the indus- and responsibility earned $6.95 a day, whereas the top
trial workforce, taking jobs unavailable to them before men made as much as $22.
the conflict. Unions, benefitting from the demand for Wartime work was thus bittersweet for women,
labor, negotiated higher wages and improved condi- because it combined new opportunities with old con-
tions for America’s workers. By 1943, with the economy straints. The majority labored in low-wage service jobs.
operating at full capacity, the breadlines and double- Child care was often unavailable, despite the largest
digit unemployment of the 1930s were a memory. government-sponsored child-care program in history.
When the men returned from war, Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter Government officials and corpo- was usually out of a job. Government propaganda now
rate recruiters urged women to take jobs in defense encouraged women back into the home — where, it
industries, creating a new image of working women. was implied, their true calling lay in raising families
“Longing won’t bring him back sooner . . . get a war and standing behind the returning soldiers. But many
job!” one poster urged, while artist Norman Rockwell’s married women refused, or could not afford, to put on
famous “Rosie the Riveter” illustration beckoned to aprons and stay home. Women’s participation in the
women from the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. paid labor force rebounded by the late 1940s and con-
The government directed its publicity at housewives, tinued to rise over the rest of the twentieth century,
but many working women gladly abandoned low- bringing major changes in family life (Chapter 26).
paying “women’s jobs” as domestic servants or secre-
taries for higher-paying work in the defense industry. Wartime Civil Rights Among African Americans, a
Suddenly, the nation’s factories were full of women work- new militancy prevailed during the war. Pointing to
ing as airplane riveters, ship welders, and drill-press parallels between anti-Semitism in Germany and racial
During World War II, millions of men served in the armed forces and millions
Women in the Wartime of women worked in war-related industries. A generation later, some of
these women workers recounted their wartime experiences to historians in oral
Workplace interviews.
778
My life took on a totally new perspective the longer I nothing but shooting and bucking rivets. You stood on
worked there. I saw many tragic accidents, none of which one side of the panel and your partner stood on this side
I care to talk about which haunt me to this day. and he would shoot the rivets with a gun and you’d buck
I couldn’t do much socializing as I had a small infant them with the bar. That was about the size of it. I just
at home to care for when off work and besides I was really didn’t like it . . . went over to the union and they told me
pooped. Those midnight shifts were “killers.” I hope I what to do. I went back inside and they sent me to
never have to do that again!! I tried to write weekly letters another department where you did bench work and I
to my husband in between my other duties. . . . liked that much better. . . .
Our community gathered together and collected scrap Some weeks I brought home twenty-six dollars . . .
metals and such to help in the war effort and thanks to a then it gradually went up to thirty dollars [about $420 in
good neighbor, who was growing a victory garden; we 2010]. . . . Whatever you make you’re supposed to save
managed to get gifts of potatoes and lettuce etc. The gov- some. I was also getting that fifty dollars a month from
ernment issued coupon books that allowed us two my husband and that was just saved right away. I was
bananas a week, one pound of sugar and so many gallons planning on buying a home and a car. . . . My husband
of gas. We traded back and forth depending on our indi- came back [from the war, and] . . . looked for a job in the
vidual needs. I had a 1934 Ford and fortunately, it wasn’t a cleaning and pressing place, which was just plentiful. . . .
gas eater and it managed to get me where I was going That’s why he didn’t bother to go out to North American.
when I needed it. . . . But what we both weren’t thinking about was that they
There were no unions there at that time and no baby [North American] have better benefits because they did
sitting service provided. The single people formed a club have an insurance plan and a union to back you up. Later
and they entertained themselves after work but I was a he did come to work there, in 1951 or 1952. . . .
married person with a child and so I didn’t participate in When North American called me back [after I left to
any of their activities. . . . have a baby,] was I a happy soul! . . . It made me live bet-
After the war was over, most people went back to their ter. It really did.We always say that Lincoln took the bale
previous jobs. I opened a beauty salon and when my hus- off of the Negroes. I think there is a statue up there in
band returned home from the service he got a job with Washington, D.C., where he’s lifting something off the
the Frontier Refinery. Negro. Well, my sister always said — that’s why you can’t
interview her because she’s so radical — “Hitler was the
Source: National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter: Women Working During World War II, one that got us out of the white folks’ kitchen.”
nps. gov/pwro/collection/website/donna.htm.
Source: Rosie the Riveter Revisited, by Sherna B. Gluck (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1987).
Used by permission of Susan Berger Gluck.
Fanny Christina (Tina) Hill
War Work: Social and Racial Mobility
After migrating to California from Texas and working as a
domestic servant, Tina Hill, an African American, got a ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
wartime job at North American Aircraft. After time off for 1. How did the war change the lives of these women?
a pregnancy in 1945, Hill worked there until 1980. 2. Consider how the themes of identity and work, technol-
ogy, and economic change, connect to the lives of these
Most of the men was gone, and . . . most of the women two women. How was their experience of the wartime
was in my bracket, five or six years younger or older. I industrial workplace tied to their class and gender iden-
was twenty-four. There was a black girl that hired in with tities? How did labor unions affect their conditions of
employment?
me. I went to work the next day, sixty cents an hour. . . . I
3. These interviews occurred long after the events they
could see where they made a difference in placing you in describe. How might that long interval have affected the
certain jobs. They had fifteen or twenty departments, but women’s accounts of those years?
all the Negroes went to Department 17 because there was
779
780 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
discrimination in the United States, black leaders creed, color, or national origin” and established the Fair
waged the Double V campaign: calling for victory over Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Mary
Nazism abroad and racism at home. “This is a war for McLeod Bethune called the wartime FEPC “a refresh-
freedom. Whose freedom?” the renowned black leader ing shower in a thirsty land.” This federal commitment
W. E. B. Du Bois asked. If it meant “the freedom of to black employment rights was unprecedented but
Negroes in the Southern United States,” Du Bois limited: it did not affect segregation in the armed
answered, “my gun is on my shoulder.” forces, and the FEPC could not enforce compliance
Even before Pearl Harbor, black labor activism was with its orders.
on the rise. In 1940, only 240 of the nation’s 100,000 Nevertheless, wartime developments laid the
aircraft workers were black, and most of them were groundwork for the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.
janitors. African American leaders demanded that the The NAACP grew ninefold, to 450,000 members, by
government require defense contractors to hire more 1945. In Chicago, James Farmer helped to found the
black workers. When Washington took no action, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942, a group
A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleep- that would become known nationwide in the 1960s
ing Car Porters, the largest black labor union in the for its direct action protests such as sit-ins. The FEPC
country, announced plans for a march on Washington inspired black organizing against employment dis-
in the summer of 1941. crimination in hundreds of cities and workplaces.
Roosevelt was not a strong supporter of African Behind this combination of government action and
American equality, but he wanted to avoid public black militancy, the civil rights movement would
protest and a disruption of the advance on multiple fronts in the postwar years.
UNDERSTAND nation’s war preparations. So the Mexican Americans, too, challenged long-standing
POINTS OF VIEW president made a deal: he issued practices of discrimination and exclusion. Throughout
How does the slogan “A Executive Order 8802, and in much of the Southwest, it was still common for signs to
Jim Crow army cannot June 1941 Randolph canceled the read “No Mexicans Allowed,” and Mexican American
fight for a free world” march. The order prohibited “dis- workers were confined to menial, low-paying jobs.
connect the war abroad crimination in the employment Several organizations, including the League of United
with the civil rights
of workers in defense industries Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Congress of
struggle at home?
or government because of race, Spanish Speaking Peoples, pressed the government
CHAPTER 24 The World at War, 1937–1945 781
A Family Effort
After migrating from the Midwest to Portland, Oregon, fifteen members of the family of John R. Brauckmiller
(sixth from left) found jobs at Henry Kaiser’s Swan Island shipyard. From 1943 to 1945, the shipyard turned
out 152 T-2 Tankers, mostly for use by the U.S. Navy to carry fuel oil. A local newspaper pronounced the
Brauckmillers as “the shipbuildingest family in America,” and because of the importance of shipbuilding to
the war effort, Life magazine featured the family in its issue of August 16, 1943. Ralph Vincent, The Journal,
Portland, Oregon/Picture Research Consultants & Archives.
broadcasts by Edward R. Murrow and Mary Marvin both federal dollars and migrants
EXPLAIN
Breckenridge, the first female radio correspondent on a large scale. CONSEQUENCES
for CBS. The growth of war industries What effects did wartime
For many Americans, the major inconvenience accelerated patterns of rural- migration have on the
during the war years was the shortage of consumer urban migration. Cities grew dra- United States?
goods. Beginning in 1942, federal agencies subjected matically, as factories, shipyards,
almost everything Americans ate, wore, or used to and other defense work drew millions of citizens
rationing or regulation. The first major scarcity was from small towns and rural areas. This new mobility,
rubber. The Japanese conquest of Malaysia and Dutch coupled with people’s distance from their hometowns,
Indonesia cut off 97 percent of America’s imports of loosened the authority of traditional institutions and
that essential raw material. To conserve rubber for the made wartime cities vibrant and exciting. Around-the-
war effort, the government rationed tires, so many of clock work shifts kept people on the streets night and
the nation’s 30 million car owners put their cars in stor- day, and bars, jazz clubs, dance halls, and movie the-
age. As more people walked, they wore out their shoes. aters proliferated, fed by the ready cash of war
In 1944, shoes were rationed to two pairs per person a workers.
year. By 1943, the government was rationing meat, but-
ter, sugar, and other foods. Most citizens cooperated Racial Conflict Migration and more fluid social
with the complicated rationing and coupon system, but boundaries meant that people of different races and
at least one-quarter of the population bought items on ethnicities mixed in the booming cities. Over one
the black market, especially meat, gasoline, cigarettes, million African Americans left the rural South for
and nylon stockings. California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania —
a continuation of the Great Migration earlier in the
century (Chapter 21). As blacks and whites competed
Migration and the Wartime City for jobs and housing, racial conflicts broke out in more
The war determined where people lived. When men than a hundred cities in 1943. Detroit saw the worst
entered the armed services, their families often fol- violence. In June 1943, a riot incited by southern-born
lowed them to training bases or points of debarkation. whites and Polish Americans against African Ameri-
Civilians moved to take high-paying defense jobs. cans left thirty-four people dead and hundreds injured.
About 15 million Americans changed residences dur- Racial conflict struck the West as well. In Los
ing the war years, half of them moving to another state. Angeles, male Hispanic teenagers formed pachuco
One of them was Peggy Terry, who grew up in Paducah, (youth) gangs. Many dressed in “zoot suits” —
Kentucky; worked in a shell-loading plant in nearby broad-brimmed felt hats, thigh-length jackets with
Viola; and then moved to a defense plant in Michigan. wide lapels and padded shoulders, pegged trousers,
There, she recalled, “I met all those wonderful Polacks and clunky shoes. Pachucas (young women) favored
[Polish Americans]. They were the first people I’d ever long coats, huarache sandals, and pompadour hairdos.
known that were any different from me. A whole new Other working-class teenagers in Los Angeles and else-
world just opened up.” where took up the zoot-suit style to underline their
As the center of defense production for the Pacific rejection of middle-class values. To many adults, the
war, California experienced the largest share of war- zoot suit symbolized juvenile delinquency. Rumors
time migration. The state welcomed nearly three mil- circulating in Los Angeles in June 1943 that a pachuco
lion new residents and grew by 53 percent during the gang had beaten an Anglo (white) sailor set off a four-
war. “The Second Gold Rush Hits the West,” announced day riot in which hundreds of Anglo servicemen
the San Francisco Chronicle in 1943. One-tenth of all roamed through Mexican American neighborhoods
federal dollars flowed into California, and the state’s and attacked zoot-suiters, taking special pleasure in
factories turned out one-sixth of all war materials. slashing their pegged pants. In a stinging display of
People went where the defense jobs were: to Los bias, Los Angeles police officers arrested only Mexican
Angeles, San Diego, and cities around San Francisco American youth, and the City Council passed an ordi-
Bay. Some towns grew practically overnight; within nance outlawing the wearing of the zoot suit.
two years of the opening of the Kaiser Corporation
shipyard in Richmond, California, the town’s popula- Gay and Lesbian Communities Wartime migra-
tion had quadrupled. Other industrial states — notably tion to urban centers created new opportunities for gay
New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio — also attracted men and women to establish communities. Religious
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
The U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) promoted everything from food
rationing to car-pooling during World War II, and the U.S. Treasury encouraged
Mobilizing the millions of Americans to buy war bonds. More than 20 million victory gardens
were planted by ordinary Americans. By 1944 they were producing more than
Home Front 40 percent of all vegetables grown in the United States. Through these and
other measures, those on the home front were encouraged to see themselves
as part of the war effort.
1. U.S. government advertisement from the of us after our boy takes over on the farm. For after ten
Minneapolis Star Journal, 1943. years, we get four dollars back for every three we have
invested.”
John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History, Duke
University.
“4-H club boys and girls” ID: 0016623, Special Collections Research Center,
North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, North Carolina.
5. Oral histories about life during the war. write V-mail. I had brother — brothers-in-law in the ser-
vice. We — we’d write V-mail to them. It was called V-mail.
Tessie Hickam Wilson, a young woman from Oklahoma. Victory mail. . . . We couldn’t put their address on because
It was a hard time, but we felt like we were doing our part, they were moved around a lot and we didn’t want the
and all the people we knew were doing their part. We had enemy to know. There were a lot of secrets. They would
rationing. Sugar, coffee, gasoline and meat were some of say “zip your lip was the” — was the word of the days
the items that were hard to come by. We had ration books then. “Zip your lip” because we didn’t want the enemy
every so often, and we had to use them sparingly. We to get information.
bought savings bonds to help in the war effort.
We also had radios and record players, and when we
Sources: (2) Digital Collections, Duke University Libraries; (4) National Park Service,
could afford it, we went to the movies. And even though Rosie the Riveter: Women Working During World War II, and the Library of Congress
there were hard times, we did what we could in the war Veterans History Project.
effort, and I will always be glad I was part of it.
morality and social conventions against gays and gay neighborhoods, sustained in part by a sudden
lesbians kept the majority of them silent and their sex- influx of migrants and the relatively open wartime
uality hidden. During the war, however, cities such as atmosphere. These communities became centers of
New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s (Chap-
even Kansas City, Buffalo, and Dallas developed vibrant ter 29).
The military tried to screen out homosexuals but Early in 1942, President
IDENTIFY CAUSES
had limited success. Once in the services, homosexuals Roosevelt responded to anti- Why were Japanese Ameri-
found opportunities to participate in a gay culture Japanese fears by issuing Execu- cans treated differently
often more extensive than that in civilian life. In the tive Order 9066, which autho- than German and Italian
last twenty years, historians have documented thriving rized the War Department to Americans during the war?
communities of gay and lesbian soldiers in the World force Japanese Americans from
War II military. Some “came out under fire,” as one his- their West Coast homes and hold them in relocation
torian put it, but most kept their sexuality hidden from camps for the rest of the war. Although there was no
authorities, because army officers, doctors, and psychi- disloyal or seditious activity among the evacuees, few
atrists treated homosexuality as a psychological disor- public leaders opposed the plan. “A Jap’s a Jap,” snapped
der that was grounds for dishonorable discharge. General John DeWitt, the officer charged with defense
of the West Coast. “It makes no difference whether he
is an American citizen or not.”
Japanese Removal The relocation plan shocked Japanese Americans,
Unlike World War I, which evoked widespread harass- more than two-thirds of whom were Nisei; that is, their
ment of German Americans, World War II produced parents were immigrants, but they were native-born
relatively little condemnation of European Americans. American citizens. Army officials gave families only a
Federal officials held about 5,000 potentially dangerous few days to dispose of their property. Businesses that
German and Italian aliens during the war. Despite the had taken a lifetime to build were liquidated overnight.
presence of small but vocal groups of Nazi sympathiz- The War Relocation Authority moved the prisoners to
ers and Mussolini supporters, German American and hastily built camps in desolate areas in California,
Italian American communities were largely left in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Arkan-
peace during the war. The relocation and temporary sas (Map 24.1). Ironically, the Japanese Americans who
imprisonment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese made up one-third of the population of Hawaii, and
American citizens was a glaring exception to this oth- presumably posed a greater threat because of their
erwise tolerant policy. Immediately after the attack on numbers and proximity to Japan, were not imprisoned.
Pearl Harbor, the West Coast remained calm. Then, as They provided much of the unskilled labor in the island
residents began to fear spies, sabotage, and further territory, and the Hawaiian economy could not have
attacks, California’s long history of racial animosity functioned without them.
toward Asian immigrants surfaced. Local politicians Cracks soon appeared in the relocation policy. An
and newspapers whipped up hysteria against Japanese agricultural labor shortage led the government to fur-
Americans, who numbered only about 112,000, had no lough seasonal farmworkers from the camps as early
political power, and lived primarily in small enclaves in as 1942. About 4,300 students were allowed to attend
the Pacific coast states. colleges outside the West Coast military zone. Other
MAP 24.1
Japanese Relocation Camps
WASH.
In 1942, the government ordered ALASKA MONT. N. DAK. MINN.
112,000 Japanese Americans living on
the West Coast into internment camps ORE.
Heart WIS.
IDAHO S. DAK.
in the nation’s interior because of Mountain
their supposed threat to public safety.
Tule Lake
Minidoka
WYO. IOWA
Some of the camps were as far away NEBR.
as Arkansas. The federal government NEV.
Topaz
ILL.
rescinded the mass evacuation order in UTAH COLO.
KANSAS MO.
(Amache)
Granada
December 1944, but 44,000 people still HAWAII
Manzanar
internees were permitted to join the armed services. and much of Africa and the Middle East; Japan would
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit com- have controlled most of East and Southeast Asia. To
posed almost entirely of Nisei volunteers, served with prevent this outcome, which would have crippled
distinction in Europe. democracy in Europe and restricted American power
Gordon Hirabayashi was among the Nisei who to the Western Hemisphere, the Roosevelt administra-
actively resisted incarceration. A student at the Univer- tion took the United States to war. The combination of
sity of Washington, Hirabayashi was a religious pacifist American intervention, the perseverance of Britain,
who had registered with his draft board as a conscien- and the profound civilian and military sacrifices of the
tious objector. He refused to report for evacuation and Soviet Union decided the outcome of the conflict and
turned himself in to the FBI. “I wanted to uphold the shaped the character of the postwar world.
principles of the Constitution,” Hirabayashi later stated,
“and the curfew and evacuation orders which singled
out a group on the basis of ethnicity violated them.” Wartime Aims and Tensions
Tried and convicted in 1942, he appealed his case to the Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union
Supreme Court in Hirabayashi v. United States (1943). were the key actors in the Allied coalition. China,
In that case and in Korematsu v. United States (1944), France, and other nations played crucial but smaller
the Court allowed the removal of Japanese Americans roles. The leaders who became known as the Big
from the West Coast on the basis of “military neces- Three — President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister
sity” but avoided ruling on the constitutionality of the Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Premier
incarceration program. The Court’s decision under- Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union — set military strat-
scored the fragility of civil liberties in wartime. egy. However, Stalin was not a party to the Atlantic
Congress issued a public apology in 1988 and awarded Charter, which Churchill and Roosevelt had signed in
$20,000 to each of the eighty thousand surviving August 1941, and disagreed fundamentally with some
Japanese Americans who had once been internees. of its precepts, such as a capitalist-run international
trading system. The Allies also disagreed about mili-
tary strategy and timing. The Big Three made defeating
Fighting and Winning the War Germany (rather than Japan) the top military priority,
but they differed over how best to do it. In 1941, a
World War II was a war for control of the world. Had massive German force had invaded the Soviet Union
the Axis powers triumphed, Germany would have and reached the outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow,
dominated, either directly or indirectly, all of Europe and Stalingrad before being halted in early 1942 by
CHAPTER 24 The World at War, 1937–1945 789
ea
cS
North LATVIA Moscow
lti
Sea DENMARK
Ba
N UNITED
IRELAND KINGDOM LITHUANIA
–1943 Danzig Kursk
W 1942 East July 5–23,
Prussia 43 1943 Stalingrad
E 19
NETH. Berlin Aug. 21, 1942–
London
Warsaw
S 3 Jan. 31, 1943
1 94
POLAND 1943
BELG. GERMANY
Kiev 1943
Paris LUX. Prague
ATLANTIC Vienna
CZECH.
OCEAN FRANCE
SWITZ. AUSTRIA HUNGARY
Vichy ROMANIA
Ad
AL
ITALY
ria
UG
BULGARIA
tic
SPAIN Corsica Rome Se
RT
a IRAN
PO
Salerno ALBANIA
Sardinia Sept. 10, TURKEY
1943
19 4
2
GREECE
19
Algiers
42
Re
dS
Neutral nations
ea
MAP 24.2
World War II in Europe, 1941–1943
Hitler’s Germany reached its greatest extent in 1942, by which time Nazi forces had occupied
Norway, France, North Africa, central Europe, and much of western Russia. The tide of battle turned
in late 1942 when the German advance stalled at Leningrad and Stalingrad. By early 1943, the
Soviet army had launched a massive counterattack at Stalingrad, and Allied forces had driven the
Germans from North Africa and launched an invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland.
for a second front in France, the Allies launched a the Allied invasion. American and British divisions took
major counteroffensive in North Africa. Between Rome only in June 1944 and were still fighting German
November 1942 and May 1943, Allied troops under the forces in northern Italy when the European war ended
leadership of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and in May 1945 (Map 24.3). Churchill’s southern strategy
General George S. Patton defeated the German Afrika proved a time-consuming and costly mistake.
Korps, led by General Erwin Rommel.
From Africa, the Allied command followed D-Day The long-promised invasion of France came
Churchill’s strategy of attacking the Axis through its on D-Day, June 6, 1944. That morning, the largest
“soft underbelly”: Sicily and the Italian peninsula. armada ever assembled moved across the English
Faced with an Allied invasion, the Italian king ousted Channel under the command of General Eisenhower.
Mussolini’s fascist regime in July 1943. But German When American, British, and Canadian soldiers hit the
troops, who far outmatched the Allies in skill and orga- beaches of Normandy, they suffered terrible casualties
nization, took control of Italy and strenuously resisted but secured a beachhead. Over the next few days, more
CHAPTER 24 The World at War, 1937–1945 791
SLA
1 9 44
VIA BULGARIA
Rome liberated
–4
June 4, 1944
5
AL
194
GREECE
Anzio
Jan. 22, 1944 SYRIA
LEB. IRAQ
Tunis
SP. MOROCCO Algiers
MAP 24.3
World War II in Europe, 1944–1945
By the end of 1943, the Russian army had nearly pushed the Germans out of the Soviet Union, and
by June 1944, when the British and Americans finally invaded France, the Russians had liberated
eastern Poland and most of southeastern Europe. By the end of 1944, British and American forces
were ready to invade Germany from the west, and the Russians were poised to do the same from
the east. Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945.
than 1.5 million soldiers and thousands of tons of The Germans were not yet ready to give up, how-
military supplies and equipment flowed into France. ever. In December 1944, they mounted a final offensive
Much to the Allies’ advantage, they never faced more in Belgium, the so-called Battle of the Bulge, before
than one-third of Hitler’s Wehrmacht (armed forces), being pushed back across the Rhine River into
because the Soviet Union continued to hold down Germany. American and British troops drove toward
the Germans on the eastern front. In August, Allied Berlin from the west, while Soviet troops advanced east
troops liberated Paris; by September, they had driven through Poland. On April 30, 1945, as Russian troops
the Germans out of most of France and Belgium. massed outside Berlin, Hitler committed suicide; on
Meanwhile, long-range Allied bombers attacked Ger- May 7, Germany formally surrendered.
man cities such as Hamburg and Dresden as well
as military and industrial targets. The air campaign The Holocaust When Allied troops advanced into
killed some 305,000 civilians and soldiers and injured Poland and Germany in the spring of 1945, they came
another 780,000 — a grisly reminder of the war’s face-to-face with Hitler’s “final solution” for the Jewish
human brutality. population of Germany and the German-occupied
792 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
countries: the extermination camps in which 6 million At that dire moment, American naval forces scored
Jews had been put to death, along with another 6 mil- two crucial victories. These were possible because the
lion Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other attack on Pearl Harbor had destroyed several American
“undesirables.” Photographs of the Nazi death camps at battleships but left all aircraft carriers unscathed. In the
Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz showed bodies Battle of the Coral Sea, off southern New Guinea in
stacked like cordwood and survivors so emaciated that May 1942, they halted the Japanese offensive against
they were barely alive. Published in Life and other mass- Australia. Then, in June, at the Battle of Midway Island,
circulation magazines, the photographs of the Holo- the American navy severely damaged the Japanese
caust horrified the American public and the world. fleet. In both battles, planes launched from American
The Nazi persecution of German Jews in the 1930s aircraft carriers provided the margin of victory. The
was widely known in the United States. But when Jews U.S. military command, led by General Douglas
had begun to flee Europe, the United States refused MacArthur and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, now took
to relax its strict immigration laws to take them in. the offensive in the Pacific (Map 24.4). For the next
In 1939, when the SS St. Louis, a German ocean liner eighteen months, American forces advanced slowly
carrying nearly a thousand Jewish refugees, sought toward Japan, taking one island after another in the
permission from President Roosevelt to dock at an face of determined Japanese resistance. In October
American port, FDR had refused. Its passengers’ 1944, MacArthur and Nimitz began the reconquest of
futures uncertain, the St. Louis was forced to return to the Philippines by winning the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a
Europe, where many would later be deported to massive naval encounter in which the Japanese lost
Auschwitz and other extermination camps. American practically their entire fleet (Map 24.5).
officials, along with those of most other nations, con- By early 1945, victory over Japan was in sight.
tinued this exclusionist policy during World War II as Japanese military forces had suffered devastating
the Nazi regime extended its control over millions of losses, and American bombing of the Japanese home-
Eastern European Jews. land had killed 330,000 civilians and crippled the
Various factors inhibited American action, but the nation’s economy. The bloodletting on both sides was
most important was widespread anti-Semitism: in the horrendous. On the small islands of Iwo Jima and
State Department, Christian churches, and the public Okinawa, tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers fought
at large. The legacy of the immigration restriction leg- to the death, killing 13,000 U.S. Marines and wounding
islation of the 1920s and the isolationist attitudes of the 46,000 more. Desperate to halt the American advance
1930s also discouraged policymakers from assuming and short on ammunition, Japanese pilots flew suicidal
responsibility for the fate of the refugees. Taking a nar- kamikaze missions, crashing their bomb-laden planes
row view of the national interest, the State Department into American ships.
allowed only 21,000 Jewish refugees to enter the United Among the grim realities of war in the Pacific was
States during the war. But the War Refugee Board, the conflict’s racial overtones. The attack on Pearl
which President Roosevelt established in 1944 at the Harbor reawakened the long tradition of anti-Asian
behest of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, sentiment in the United States. In the eyes of many
helped move 200,000 European Jews to safe havens in Americans, the Japanese were “yellow monkeys,” an
other countries. inferior race whose humanity deserved minimal
respect. Racism was evident among the Japanese as
well. Their brutal attacks on China (including the rape
The War in the Pacific of Nanjing), their forcing of Korean “comfort women”
Winning the war against Japan was every bit as ardu- to have sex with Japanese soldiers, and their treatment
ous as waging the campaign against Germany. After of American prisoners in the Philippines flowed from
crippling the American battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, the their own sense of racial superiority. Anti-Japanese
Japanese quickly expanded into the South Pacific, with attitudes in the United States would subside in the
seaborne invasions of Hong Kong, Wake Island, and 1950s as the island nation became a trusted ally. But
Guam. Japanese forces then advanced into Southeast racism would again play a major role in the U.S. war in
Asia, conquering the Solomon Islands, Burma, and Vietnam in the 1960s.
Malaya and threatening Australia and India. By May As the American navy advanced on Japan in the
1942, they had forced the surrender of U.S. forces in late winter of 1945, President Roosevelt returned to the
the Philippine Islands and, in the Bataan “death march,” United States from the Yalta Conference, a major meet-
caused the deaths of 10,000 American prisoners of war. ing of the Big Three at Yalta, a resort town on the Black
CHAPTER 24 The World at War, 1937–1945 793
ALASKA
SOVIET UNION
MONGOLIA MANCHURIA N
W E
Beijing S
KOREA JAPAN
CHINA Tokyo Midway
June 3–6, 1942
PAC I F I C O C E A N
INDIA
Taiwan HAWAII
BURMA Hong Kong Wake I.
Bataan MARIANA IS. Pearl Harbor
Dec. 7, 1941
Jan.–Apr. 1942
THAILAND FRENCH
INDOCHINA Manila Guam
Bangkok MARSHALL IS.
PHILIPPINE
IS.
Area under
MALAYA CAROLINE IS. Japanese control, 1942
Sumatra GILBERT IS. Allied powers
Borneo NEW GUINEA SO
LO Neutral nations
M Allied response
ON
Singapore falls Java IS. Major battle
Feb. 15, 1942
Guadalcanal
Aug. 7, 1942–
Coral Sea Feb. 7, 1943
19
MAP 24.4
World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1942
After the attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese rapidly extended their
domination in the Pacific. The Japanese flag soon flew as far east as the Marshall and Gilbert
islands and as far south as the Solomon Islands and parts of New Guinea. Japan also controlled
the Philippines, much of Southeast Asia, and parts of China, including Hong Kong. By mid-1942,
American naval victories at the Coral Sea and Midway stopped further Japanese expansion.
Sea (Chapter 25). The sixty-three-year-old president Szilard, refugees from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,
was a sick man, visibly exhausted by his 14,000-mile produced the first controlled atomic chain reaction
trip and suffering from heart failure and high blood using highly processed uranium. With the aid of
pressure. On April 12, 1945, during a short visit to his German-born refugee Albert Einstein, the greatest the-
vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia, Roosevelt orist of modern physics and a scholar at Princeton,
suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. they persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to develop an
atomic weapon, warning that German scientists were
also working on such nuclear reactions.
The Atomic Bomb and the End
The Manhattan Project cost $2 billion, employed
of the War 120,000 people, and involved the construction of
When Harry Truman assumed the presidency, he thirty-seven installations in nineteen states — with all
learned for the first time about the top-secret Man- of its activity hidden from Congress, the American
hattan Project, which was on the verge of testing a new people, and even Vice President Truman. Directed
weapon: the atomic bomb. Working at the University by General Leslie Graves and scientist J. Robert
of Chicago in December 1942, Enrico Fermi and Leo Oppenheimer, the nation’s top physicists assembled the
794 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
ALASKA
SOVIET UNION
1945
1943
MONGOLIA MANCHURIA
194 N
5
45
19
PAC I F I C O C E A N W E
Beijing JAPAN
S
KOREA
Tokyo
CHINA Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945
Nagasaki Aug. 9, 1945 Midway I.
Okinawa
Apr. 1–June 22, 1945
INDIA Iwo Jima
194 Feb. 19–Mar. 16, 1945
3 Taiwan HAWAII
BURMA 19
–4
Hong Kong 45
19
4
MARIANA IS.
45
PHILIPPINE Guam Wake I.
THAILAND IS. Philippine Sea
FRENCH June 19–20, 1944
Bangkok INDOCHINA 194
4 1944
Leyte Gulf
Oct. 20–26, 1944
19 MARSHALL IS.
44
MALAYA CAROLINE IS.
Singapore 19 Tarawa Area under
Borneo 44 Nov. 20, 1943 GILBERT IS. Japanese control, 1942
NEW Allied powers
Sumatra GUINEA 19
Neutral nations
43
MAP 24.5
World War II in the Pacific, 1943–1945
Allied forces retook the islands of the central Pacific in 1943 and 1944 and ousted the Japanese
from the Philippines early in 1945. Carrier-launched planes had started bombing Japan itself in
1942, but the capture of these islands gave U.S. bombers more bases from which to strike Japanese
targets. As the Soviet army invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria in August 1945, U.S. planes took
off from one of the newly captured Mariana Islands to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The Japanese offered to surrender on August 10.
first bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and success- principal reason was straightforward: Truman and his
fully tested it on July 16, 1945. Overwhelmed by its American advisors, including Secretary of War Henry
frightening power, as he witnessed the first mushroom Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General George
cloud, Oppenheimer recalled the words from the Marshall, believed that Japan’s military leaders would
Bhagavad Gita, one of the great texts of Hindu scrip- never surrender unless their country faced national
ture: “I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” ruin. Moreover, at the Potsdam Conference on the
Three weeks later, President Truman ordered the outskirts of Berlin in July 1945, the Allies had agreed
dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities: that only the “unconditional surrender” of Japan was
Hiroshima on August 6 and Naga- acceptable — the same terms under which Germany
IDENTIFY CAUSES saki on August 9. Truman’s ratio- and Italy had been defeated. To win such a surrender,
What factors influenced nale for this order — and the an invasion of Japan itself seemed necessary. Stimson
Truman’s decision to use
implications of his decision — and Marshall told Truman that such an invasion would
atomic weapons against
have long been the subject of produce between half a million and a million Allied
Japan?
scholarly and popular debate. The casualties.
CHAPTER 24 The World at War, 1937–1945 795
Before giving the order to drop the atomic bomb, and 60,000 at Nagasaki prompted the Japanese govern-
Truman considered other options. His military advi- ment to surrender unconditionally on August 10 and
sors rejected the most obvious alternative: a nonlethal to sign a formal agreement on September 2, 1945.
demonstration of the bomb’s awesome power, perhaps Fascism had been defeated, thanks to a fragile alliance
on a remote Pacific island. If the demonstration between the capitalist nations of the West and the com-
failed — not out of the question, as the bomb had been munist government of the Soviet Union. The coming
tested only once — it would embolden Japan further. A of peace would strain and then destroy the victorious
detailed advance warning designed to scare Japan into coalition. Even as the global war came to an end, the
surrender was also rejected. Given Japan’s tenacious early signs of the coming Cold War were apparent, as
fighting in the Pacific, the Americans believed that were the stirrings of independence in the European
only massive devastation or a successful invasion colonies.
would lead Japan’s military leadership to surrender.
After all, the deaths of more than 100,000 Japanese
civilians in the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo and other The Toll of the War
cities in the spring of 1945 had brought Japan no closer After the battle of Iwo Jima, one of the fiercest and
to surrender. bloodiest of the Pacific war, a rabbi chaplain in the
In any event, the atomic bombs achieved the imme- Marine Corps delivered the eulogy for the fallen. “This
diate goal. The deaths of 100,000 people at Hiroshima shall not be in vain,” he said, surveying a battlefield that
796 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890–1945
witnessed the deaths of nearly 30,000 American and victors, Britain was no longer a global power. The inde-
Japanese soldiers. Speaking of American losses, he pendence movement in India was only the most obvi-
said, “from the suffering and sorrow of those who ous sign of its waning influence. Indeed, throughout
mourn this, will come — we promise — the birth of a the colonized world in Asia and Africa, people had
new freedom for the sons of man everywhere.” The toll taken the Atlantic Charter, and FDR’s insistence that
of “suffering and sorrow” from World War II was enor- this was a war for democracy, seriously. For them,
mous. Worldwide, more than 50 million soldiers and resumption of European imperialism was unaccept-
civilians were killed, nearly 2.5 percent of the globe’s able, and the war represented a step toward national
population. The Holocaust took the lives of 6 million self-determination.
European Jews, 2.6 million from Poland alone. Nearly In the United States, too, the toll of war was great.
100 million additional soldiers and civilians were More than 400,000 lives were lost, and nearly 300,000
wounded, and 30 million people across the globe were American soldiers were wounded. Yet millions
rendered homeless. It was one of the most wrenching, returned home, and in the coming decades veterans
disruptive, and terrible wars in human history. would play a central role in national life. Incredibly, in
Alongside the human toll stood profound eco- 1950 World War II veterans made up one-third of all
nomic and political transformations. Hundreds of cit- American men over the age of nineteen. Only the Civil
ies in Europe and Asia had been bombed. Some of War involved a comparable commitment of military
them, like Dresden, Warsaw, Hamburg, and Hiroshima, service from a generation. Americans paid dearly for
had been simply obliterated. Much of the industrial that commitment — though not, it must be noted, as
infrastructure of Germany and Japan, two of the world’s dearly as other peoples in Europe and Asia — and the
most important industrial economies before the war, legacies of the war shaped families, politics, and for-
lay in ruins. Moreover, despite emerging as one of the eign policy for the remainder of the century.
CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER REVIEW 797
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. World War II has popularly been called the “good 3. How did World War II affect the federal govern-
war.” Do you agree with this assessment? Why do ment’s regulating of the economy and its taxing
you think it earned that nickname? power?
2. Overall, what effects — positive or negative — did 4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
World War II have on social change in the United events listed under “America in the World” on the
States, particularly among women and minority thematic timeline on page 671. How did World
groups? War II change the relationship between the United
States and the rest of the world in the first half of
the twentieth century?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE For the United 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Compare the photographs
States, the period between World War I (1914– of soldiers and those contributing to the war effort.
1918) and World War II (1937–1945) was a pro- How do these images help us understand a major
longed series of conflicts and crises, both domesti- event like World War II from different perspec-
cally and internationally. What connections can be tives? How would their proximity to battle affect
drawn between World War I, the Great Depression, people’s experience of war?
and World War II? Did this “long” conflict draw the
United States and Europe closer together or drive
them further apart? How did American attitudes
toward involvement in European affairs change
over this period?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Ronald A. Goldberg, America in the Forties (2012). An from World War II” (archives.gov/exhibits/exhibits
engaging account of the home front during World -list.html); “Women Come to the Front: Journalists,
War II. Photographers, and Broadcasters During World
War II” (lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0001.html);
David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American
“The Japanese American Legacy Project” (densho.org
People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (1999). A
/densho.asp); and “Ansel Adams’s Photographs of
fascinating exploration of both the domestic and
Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar”
military experience of World War II.
(memory.loc.gov/ammem/aamhtml).
Elizabeth Mullener, War Stories: Remembering World
“The Enola Gay Controversy: How Do We Remember
War II (2002). Fifty-three personal stories of war.
a War That We Won?” at lehigh.edu/~ineng/enola.
Emily Yellin, Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Lehigh University professor Edward J. Gallagher’s site
Home and at the Front During World War II (2004). on the decision to drop the atomic bomb.
The war seen from the point of view of women.
For documents and images related to the war, see “A
People at War” and “Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art
CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER REVIEW 799
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9)
KEY TURNING POINTS: On the timeline, identify the key turning points for the Allies in the
European and Pacific campaigns.
8
The Modern State
and the Age of
Liberalism
1945–1980
P A R T
C H A P T E R 25 Between 1945 and 1980, the United States became the world’s leading
Cold War America, economic and military power. That development defines these decades as
1945–1963
a distinct period of American history. Internationally, a prolonged period
C H A P T E R 26 of tension and conflict known as the Cold War drew the United States
Triumph of the Middle into an engagement in world affairs unprecedented in the nation’s history.
Class, 1945–1963
Domestically, three decades of sustained economic growth, whose bene-
C H A P T E R 27 fits were widely, though imperfectly, distributed, expanded the middle
Walking into Freedom class and brought into being a mass consumer society. These international
Land: The Civil Rights
and domestic developments were intertwined with the predominance of
Movement, 1941–1973
liberalism in American politics and public policy. One might think of an
C H A P T E R 28 “age of liberalism” in this era, encompassing the social-welfare liberalism
Uncivil Wars:
that was a legacy of the New Deal and the rights liberalism of the 1960s,
Liberal Crisis and
both of which fell under the larger umbrella of Cold War liberalism.
Conservative Rebirth,
1961–1972 Global leadership abroad and economic prosperity at home were
conditioned on further expansions in government power. How that
C H A P T E R 29
power was used proved controversial. Immediately following World
The Search for Order
in an Era of Limits, War II, a national security state emerged to investigate so-called subver-
1973–1980 sives in the United States and, through the clandestine Central Intelli-
gence Agency (CIA), to destabilize foreign governments abroad. Mean-
while, American troops went to war in Korea and Vietnam. At home,
African Americans, women, the poor, and other social groups called for
greater equality in American life and sought new laws and government
initiatives to make that equality a reality. Here, in brief, are the three key
dimensions of this convulsive, turbulent era.
800
Global Leadership and the Cold War The Age of Liberalism
When the United States officially joined the combat- In response to the Great Depression, President Franklin
ants of World War II, it entered into an alliance with Roosevelt’s New Deal expanded federal responsibility
England and the Soviet Union. That alliance proved for the social welfare of ordinary citizens, sweeping
impossible to sustain after 1945, as the United States away much of the laissez-faire individualism of earlier
and the Soviet Union became competitors to shape eras (see Chapter 23). Legislators from both parties
postwar Europe, East Asia, and the developing world. embraced liberal ideas about the role of government
The resulting Cold War lasted four decades, during and undertook such measures as the GI Bill, subsidies
which the United States extended its political and for suburban home ownership, and investment in
military reach onto every continent. Under the presi- infrastructure and education. Poverty, however,
dency of Harry S. Truman, American officials developed affected nearly one-third of Americans in the 1960s,
the policy of containment — a combination of eco- and racial discrimination denied millions of nonwhites
nomic, diplomatic, and military actions to limit the full citizenship. Lack of opportunity became a driving
expansion of communism — that subsequent presi- force in the civil rights movement and in the Great
dents embraced and expanded. Society under President Lyndon Johnson.
Diplomatic and military intervention abroad was Inspired by African American civil rights, other social
a hallmark of the Cold War. Most American interven- movements sought equality based on gender, sexuality,
tions took place in developing countries, in recently ethnicity, and other identities. If “New Deal liberalism”
independent, decolonized nations, and in countries had focused on social welfare, this “rights liberalism”
where nationalist movements pressed for indepen- focused on protecting people from discrimination and
dence. In the name of preventing the spread of ensuring equal citizenship. These struggles resulted in
communism, the United States intervened directly new laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and
or indirectly in China, Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Indo- transformative Supreme Court decisions. Conservative
nesia, and the Dominican Republic, among many opponents, however, mobilized in the 1960s against
other nations, and fought major wars in Korea and what they saw as the excesses of liberal activism. The
Vietnam. This new global role for the United States resulting conflict began to reshape politics in the 1970s
inspired support but also spurred detractors. The latter and laid the groundwork for a new conservative resur-
eventually included the antiwar movement during the gence. These developments are discussed in Chapters
war in Vietnam. Chapter 25 focuses on the Cold War, 27 and 28.
and Vietnam is addressed in Chapter 28.
PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980 801
The Modern State
and the Age of
Liberalism
1945–1980
802
AMERICA IN POLITICS AND IDENTITY ENVIRONMENT WORK,
THE WORLD POWER AND EXCHANGE, AND
GEOGRPAHY TECHNOLOGY
1940 t Truman Doctrine t GI Bill (1944) t To Secure These Rights t Continued South-North t Bretton Woods system
(1947) migration of African established: World
t Israel created (1947) t Loyalty-Security Americans Bank, International
Program t Desegregation of armed
t Marshall Plan (1948) Monetary Fund
services (1948) t First Levittown opens
t Taft-Hartley Act (1947)
t Containment strategy (1947) t Baby boom establishes
t Shelley v. Kraemer
emerges t Truman reelected new consumer
(1948) t FHA and VA subsidize
(1948) generation
t NATO created; West suburbanization
Germany created t Truman’s Fair Deal
(1949) (1949)
1950 t Permanent mobilization t Cold War liberalism t Brown v. Board of t Disneyland opens t Treaty of Detroit (1950)
as a result of NSC-68 Education (1954) (1955)
t McCarthyism and Red t Military-industrial
t Korean War (1950– Scare t Montgomery Bus t National Highway Act complex begins to rise
1953) Boycott (1955) (1956)
t Eisenhower’s t National Defense
t Geneva Accords presidency (1953–1961) t Little Rock — Central t Growth of suburbia and Education Act (1958)
regarding Vietnam High School Sunbelt spurs development of
(1954) desegregation battle technology
t Atomic bomb testing
t Southern Christian in Nevada and Pacific
Leadership Conference Ocean
founded (1957)
1960 t Cuban missile crisis t John F. Kennedy’s New t Greensboro sit-ins t Great Society t Economic boom
(1962) Frontier environmental
t The Feminine Mystique t Government spending
initiatives
t Gulf of Tonkin t John F. Kennedy (1963) on Vietnam and Great
Resolution (1964) assassinated (1963) t Urban riots (1964– Society
t Civil Rights and Voting 1968)
t Johnson sends ground t Lyndon B. Johnson’s Rights Acts (1964– t Medicare and Medicaid
troops to Vietnam; war landslide victory (1964) 1965) t Kerner Commission created (1965)
escalates (1965) Report (1968)
t War on Poverty; Great t National Organization
t Tet offensive (1968); Society for Women founded
peace talks begin (1966)
t Riots at Democratic
National Convention t Alcatraz occupation
(1968) (1969)
t Black Power
1970 t Nixon invades t Richard Nixon’s t Equal Rights t First Earth Day (1970) t Energy crisis (1973)
Cambodia (1971) landslide victory (1972) Amendment (1972)
t Environmental t Inflation surges, while
t Paris Accords end t Watergate scandal; t Roe v. Wade (1973) Protection Agency economy stagnates
Vietnam War (1973) Nixon resigns (1974) established (1970) (stagflation)
t Bakke v. University of
t Camp David Accords t Jimmy Carter elected California (1978) t Endangered Species Act t Deindustrialization
between Egypt and president (1976) (1973)
t Harvey Milk t Tax revolt in California
Israel (1978)
t Moral Majority founded assassinated (1978) t Three Mile Island (1978)
t Iranian Revolution (1979) accident (1979)
(1979) and hostage
crisis (1979–1981)
25
C H A P T E R
1945–1963
I
CONTAINMENT AND n the autumn of 1950, a little-known IDENTIF Y THE BIG IDEA
A DIVIDED GLOBAL California congressman running for In the first two decades of the Cold
ORDER the Senate named Richard M. Nixon War, how did competition on the
Origins of the Cold War stood before reporters in Los Angeles. His international stage and a climate of
The Containment Strategy opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, was a fear at home affect politics, society,
Containment in Asia Hollywood actress and a New Deal Demo- and culture in the United States?
crat. Nixon told the gathered reporters
COLD WAR LIBERALISM
that Douglas had cast “Communist-leaning” votes and that she was “pink right down
Truman and the End of Reform
to her underwear.” Gahagan’s voting record was not much different from Nixon’s. But
Red Scare: The Hunt for
tarring her with communism made her seem un-American, and Nixon defeated the
Communists
“pink lady” with nearly 60 percent of the vote.
The Politics of Cold War
A few months earlier, U.S. tanks, planes, and artillery supplies had arrived in French
Liberalism
Indochina. A French colony since the nineteenth century, Indochina (present-day Viet-
CONTAINMENT IN THE nam, Laos, and Cambodia) was home to an independence movement led by Ho Chi
POSTCOLONIAL WORLD Minh and supported by the Soviet Union and China. In the summer of 1950, President
The Cold War and Colonial Harry S. Truman authorized $15 million worth of military supplies to aid France, which
Independence was fighting Ho’s army to keep possession of its Indochinese empire. “Neither national
John F. Kennedy and the independence nor democratic evolution exists in any area dominated by Soviet imperial-
Cold War
ism,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson warned ominously as he announced U.S. sup-
Making a Commitment port for French imperialism.
in Vietnam
Connecting these coincidental historical moments, one domestic and the other
international, was a decades-old force in American life that gained renewed strength
after World War II: anticommunism. The events in Los Angeles and Vietnam, however
different on the surface, were part of the global geopolitical struggle between the
democratic United States and the communist, authoritarian Soviet Union known as the
Cold War. Beginning in Europe as World War II ended and extending to Asia, Latin
America, the Middle East, and Africa by the mid-1950s, the Cold War reshaped interna-
tional relations and dominated global politics for more than forty years.
In the United States, the Cold War fostered suspicion of “subversives” in govern-
ment, education, and the media. The arms race that developed between the two
superpowers prompted Congress to boost military expenditures. The resulting military-
industrial complex enhanced the power of the corporations that built planes, munitions,
and electronic devices. In politics, the Cold War stifled liberal initiatives as the New Deal
coalition tried to advance its domestic agenda in the shadow of anticommunism. In
these ways, the line between the international and the domestic blurred — and that
blurred line was another enduring legacy of the Cold War.
804
The Perils of the Cold War Americans, like much of the world, lived under the threat of nuclear
warfare during the tense years of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. This
1951 civil defense poster, with the message “It can happen Here,” suggests that Americans should be
prepared for such a dire outcome. © Bettmann/Corbis.
805
806 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
presence of Soviet troops in those nations, FDR had to self-determination for nations in Eastern Europe was,
accept a pledge from Stalin to hold “free and unfettered from the American point of view, the precipitating
elections” at a future time. The three leaders also for- event of the Cold War.
malized their commitment to divide Germany into Germany represented the biggest challenge of all.
four administrative zones, each controlled by one of American officials at Potsdam believed that a revived
the four Allied powers, and to similarly partition the German economy was essential to ensuring the pros-
capital city, Berlin, which was located in the middle of perity of democratic regimes throughout Western
the Soviet zone. Europe — and to keeping ordinary Germans from
At Yalta, the Big Three also agreed to establish an turning again to Nazism. In contrast, Stalin hoped
international body to replace the discredited League merely to extract reparations from Germany in the
of Nations. Based on plans drawn up at the 1944 form of industrial machines and goods. In exchange
Dumbarton Oaks conference in Washington, D.C., the for recognizing the new German-Polish border,
new organization, to be known as the United Nations, Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes convinced
would have both a General Assembly, in which all the Soviet leader to accept German reparations only
nations would be represented, and a Security Council from the Soviet zone, which lay in the far eastern, and
composed of the five major Allied powers — the United largely rural, portion of Germany and promised little
States, Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union — wealth or German industry to plunder. As they had
and seven other nations elected on a rotating basis. done for Europe as a whole, the Yalta and Potsdam
The Big Three determined that the five permanent agreements paved the way for the division of Germany
members of the Security Council should have veto into East and West (Map 25.1).
power over decisions of the General Assembly. They Yalta and Potsdam had demonstrated that in pri-
announced that the United Nations would convene for vate negotiations the United States and the Soviet
the first time in San Francisco on April 25, 1945. Union had starkly different objectives. Subsequent
public utterances only intensified those differences.
Potsdam Following the Yalta Conference, develop- In February 1946, Stalin delivered
ments over the ensuing year further hardened relations a speech in which he insisted UNDERSTAND
between the Soviets on one side and the Americans that, according to Marxist- POINTS OF VIEW
and British on the other. At the Potsdam Conference Leninist principles, “the uneven- How did American and
outside Berlin in July 1945, Harry Truman replaced the ness of development of the Soviet viewpoints differ
deceased Roosevelt. Inexperienced in world affairs and capitalist countries” was likely over the postwar fate of
thrown into enormously complicated negotiations, to produce “violent disturbance” Europe?
Truman’s instinct was to stand up to Stalin. “Unless and even another war. He seemed
Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language,” to blame any future war on the capitalist West. Churchill
he said, “another war is in the making.” But Truman responded in kind a month later. While visiting
was in no position to realign events in Eastern Europe, Truman in Missouri to be honored for his wartime
where Soviet-imposed governments in Poland, Hun- leadership, Churchill accused Stalin of raising an “iron
gary, and Romania were backed by the Red Army and curtain” around Eastern Europe and allowing “police
could not be eliminated by Truman’s bluster. In Poland government” to rule its people. He went further, claim-
and Romania, in particular, Stalin was determined to ing that “a fraternal association of English-speaking
establish communist governments, punish wartime peoples,” and not Russians, ought to set the terms of
Nazi collaborators, and win boundary concessions that the postwar world.
augmented Soviet territory (the Soviet leader sought The cities and fields of Europe had barely ceased to
eastern Polish lands for the Soviet Union and sought to run with the blood of World War II before they were
make far northeastern Germany part of Poland). menaced again by the tense standoff between the Soviet
Yalta and Potsdam thus set the stage for communist Union and the United States. With Stalin intent on
rule to descend over Eastern Europe. The elections establishing client states in Eastern Europe and the
called for at Yalta eventually took place in Finland, United States equally intent on reviving Germany and
Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, with varying ensuring collective security throughout Europe, the
degrees of democratic openness. Nevertheless, Stalin points of agreement were few and far between. Among
got the client regimes he desired in those countries the Allies, anxiety about a Nazi victory in World War II
and would soon exert near-complete control over had been quickly replaced by fear of a potentially more
their governments. Stalin’s unwillingness to honor cataclysmic war with the Soviet Union.
808 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
W
ICELAND E
S
FINLAN
NATO members Norwegian
Warsaw Pact members Sea
D
DEN
Neutral nations
AY
SWE
RW
0 250 500 miles
SOVIET UNION
NO
0 250 500 kilometers Leningrad
Sea
North
tic
UNITED Sea DENMARK Berlin Divided
al
IRELAND B American zone
KINGDOM
Berl i n
British zone
NETH. EAST
London Berlin Warsaw French zone
Wa
East
ATLANTIC GER. West
Soviet zone
ll (
Berlin
BELG. Bonn POLAND Berlin
19 6
OCEAN
1–8
WEST
9)
Paris LUX. GER. CZECH.
In 1947, America, Britain, and France merged
FRANCE their zones of occupation as West Berlin.
SWITZ. AUSTRIA HUNGARY
ROMANIA
YU
ITALY GO
SL Black Sea
L
AV
GA
IA BULGARIA
RTU
Constantinople IRAN
SPAIN Rome
PO
ALB.
TURKEY
GREECE
SYRIA
ALGERIA TUNISIA CYPRUS IRAQ
MOROCCO Mediterranean Sea (U.K.) LEB.
MAP 25.1
Cold War in Europe, 1955
This map vividly shows the Cold War division of Europe. The NATO countries (colored green) are
allies of the United States; the Warsaw Pact countries (in purple) are allied to the USSR. At that
point, West Germany had just been admitted to NATO, completing Europe’s stabilization into two
rival camps. But Berlin remained divided, and one can see from its location deep in East Germany
why the former capital was always a flash point in Cold War controversies.
Soviet Union was an “Oriental despotism” and that Mediterranean and embolden Communist parties in
communism was merely the “fig leaf ” justifying Soviet France and Italy. In response, the president announced
aggression. A year after writing this cable (dubbed the what became known as the Truman Doctrine. In a
Long Telegram), he published an influential Foreign speech on March 12, he asserted an American respon-
Affairs article, arguing that the West’s only recourse sibility “to support free peoples who are resisting
was to meet the Soviets “with unalterable counter-force attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by out-
at every point where they show signs of encroaching side pressures.” To that end, Truman proposed large-
upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.” scale assistance for Greece and Turkey (then involved
Kennan called for “long-term, patient but firm and vig- in a dispute with the Soviet Union over the Dardanelles,
ilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” a strait connecting the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Mar-
Containment, the key word, came to define America’s mara). “If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger
evolving strategic stance toward the Soviet Union. the peace of the world,” Truman declared (Thinking
Like a Historian, p. 810). Despite the open-endedness
To see a longer excerpt of the Long Telegram, of this military commitment, Congress quickly approved
along with other primary sources from this period, Truman’s request for $300 million in aid to Greece and
see Sources for America’s History. $100 million for Turkey.
Soviet expansionism was part of a larger story.
Kennan believed that the Soviet system was inher- Europe was sliding into economic chaos. Already dev-
ently unstable and would eventually collapse. Contain- astated by the war, in 1947 the continent suffered the
ment would work, he reasoned, as long as the United worst winter in memory. People were starving, credit
States and its allies opposed Soviet expansion in all was nonexistent, wages were stagnant, and the con-
parts of the world. Kennan’s attentive readers included sumer market had collapsed. For both humanitarian
Stalin himself, who quickly obtained a copy of the clas- and practical reasons, Truman’s advisors believed some-
sified Long Telegram. The Soviet leader saw the United thing had to be done. A global depression might ensue
States as an imperialist aggressor determined to replace if the European economy, the largest foreign market for
Great Britain as the world’s dominant capitalist power. American goods, did not recover. Worse, unemployed
Just as Kennan thought that the Soviet system was des- and dispirited Western Europeans might fill the ranks
potic and unsustainable, Stalin believed that the West of the Communist Party, threatening political stability
suffered from its own fatal weaknesses. Neither side and the legitimacy of the United States. Secretary of
completely understood or trusted the other, and each State George C. Marshall came up with a remarkable
projected its worst fears onto the other. proposal: a massive infusion of American capital to
In fact, Britain’s influence in the world was declin- rebuild the European economy. Speaking at the Har-
ing. Exhausted by the war, facing enormous budget vard University commencement in June 1947, Marshall
deficits and a collapsing economy at home, and con- urged the nations of Europe to work out a comprehen-
fronted with a determined independence movement in sive recovery program based on U.S. aid.
India led by Mohandas Gandhi and growing national- This pledge of financial assistance required con-
ist movements throughout its empire, Britain was wan- gressional approval, but the plan ran into opposition in
ing as a global power. “The reins of world leadership Washington. Republicans castigated the Marshall Plan
are fast slipping from Britain’s competent but now very as a huge “international WPA.” But in the midst of the
weak hands,” read a U.S. State Department report. congressional stalemate, on February 25, 1948, Stalin
“These reins will be picked up either by the United supported a communist-led coup in Czechoslovakia.
States or by Russia.” The United States was wedded to Congress rallied and voted overwhelmingly in 1948 to
the notion — dating to the Wilson administration — approve the Marshall Plan. Over the next four years,
that communism and capitalism were incompatible on the United States contributed nearly $13 billion to a
the world stage. With Britain faltering, American offi- highly successful recovery effort
cials saw little choice but to fill its shoes. that benefitted both Western PLACE EVENTS
It did not take long for the reality of Britain’s decline Europe and the United States. IN CONTEXT
to resonate across the Atlantic. In February 1947, European industrial production Why did the United States
enact the Marshall Plan,
London informed Truman that it could no longer increased by 64 percent, and the
and how did the program
afford to support the anticommunists in the Greek civil appeal of Communist parties
illustrate America’s new
war. Truman worried that a communist victory in waned in the West. Markets for role in the world?
Greece would lead to Soviet domination of the eastern American goods grew stronger
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Until 1950, the U.S. policy of containment was confined to economic measures,
such as financial assistance to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan, and
focused on Europe. That changed between 1950 and 1954. In those years, con-
The Global Cold War tainment became militarized, and its scope was expanded to include Asia and
Latin America. What had begun as a limited policy to contain Soviet influence in
war-torn Europe had by the mid-1950s become a global campaign against com-
munism and social revolution.
1. President Harry S. Truman, address before joint A few days ago one American friend said that if the
session of Congress, March 12, 1947. Known as the U.S. gave weapons to South Korea, she feared that South
Truman Doctrine, this speech outlined Truman’s Korea would invade North Korea. This is a useless worry
plan to give large-scale assistance to Greece and of some Americans, who do not know South Korea. Our
Turkey as part of a broader anticommunist policy. present war is not a Cold War, but a real shooting war.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free Our troops will take all possible counter-measures. . . .
from coercion, the United States has taken a leading In South Korea the U.S. has one foot in South Korea and
part in establishing the United Nations. The United one foot outside so that in case of an unfavorable situa-
Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom tion it could pull out of the country. I daresay that if the
and independence for all its members. We shall not real- U.S. wants to aid our country, it should not be only lip-
ize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help service.
free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their
3. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s testimony
national integrity against aggressive movements that seek
before the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign
to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. . . .
Relations Committee, 1951.
At the present moment in world history nearly every
nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The The attack on Korea was . . . a challenge to the whole
choice is too often not a free one. system of collective security, not only in the Far East,
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, but everywhere in the world. It was a threat to all
and is distinguished by free institutions, representative nations newly arrived at independence. . . .
government, free elections, guarantees of individual lib- This was a test which would decide whether our
erty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from collective security system would survive or would
political oppression. crumble. It would determine whether other nations
The second way of life is based upon the will of a would be intimidated by this show of force. . . .
minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies As a people we condemn aggression of any kind.
upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; We reject appeasement of any kind. If we stood with
fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. our arms folded while Korea was swallowed up, it
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States would have meant abandoning our principles, and it
to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subju- would have meant the defeat of the collective security
gation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. system on which our own safety ultimately depends.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out
4. Shigeru Yoshida, prime minister of Japan, speech
their own destinies in their own way.
before the Japanese Diet (parliament), July 14, 1950.
I believe that our help should be primarily through
economic and financial aid which is essential to economic It is heartening . . . that America and so many mem-
stability and orderly political processes. bers of the United Nations have gone to the rescue of
an invaded country regardless of the heavy sacrifices
2. Syngman Rhee, president of South Korea, criticiz- involved. In case a war breaks out on an extensive scale
ing U.S. policy in 1950. The Korean War, how would Japan’s security be preserved [since we are
1950–1953, represented the militarization of the disarmed]? . . . This has been hotly discussed. However,
Truman Doctrine. the measures taken by the United Nations have done
much to stabilize our people’s minds.
810
5. John Foster Dulles, secretary of state (1953–1959),
June 30, 1954, radio and television address to the
American people. In 1951, Jacobo Arbenz was
elected president of Guatemala. Arbenz pursued
reform policies that threatened large landholders,
including the United Fruit Company. In 1954, the
United States CIA engineered a coup that over-
threw Arbenz and replaced him with Carlos Castillo
Armas, a colonel in the Guatemalan military.
Tonight I should like to speak with you about Guatemala.
It is the scene of dramatic events. They expose the evil
purpose of the Kremlin to destroy the inter-American
system, and they test the ability of the American States
to maintain the peaceful integrity of the hemisphere.
For several years international communism has been
probing here and there for nesting places in the Americas.
It finally chose Guatemala as a spot which it could turn
into an official base from which to breed subversion
which would extend to other American Republics.
This intrusion of Soviet despotism was, of course,
a direct challenge to our Monroe Doctrine, the first
and most fundamental of our foreign policies.
811
812 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
in 1946, the line dividing the two stretched “from language used by George Kennan, NSC-68 cast Soviet
Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” cutting ambitions as nothing short of “the domination of the
off tens of millions of Eastern Europeans from the rest Eurasian landmass.”
of the continent. Stalin’s tactics had often been ruthless, To prevent that outcome, the report proposed “a
but they were not without reason. The Soviet Union bold and massive program of rebuilding the West’s
acted out of the sort of self-interest that had long defensive potential to surpass that of the Soviet world”
defined powerful nations — ensuring a defensive perim- (America Compared, p. 814). This included the devel-
eter of allies, seeking access to raw materials, and press- opment of a hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear device
ing the advantage that victory in war allowed. that would be a thousand times more destructive than
the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, as well as dra-
NSC-68 Atomic developments, too, played a critical matic increases in conventional military forces. Criti-
role in the emergence of the Cold War. As the sole cally, NSC-68 called for Americans to pay higher taxes
nuclear power at the end of World War II, the United to support the new military program and to accept
States entertained the possibility of international con- whatever sacrifices were necessary to achieve national
trol of nuclear technology but did not wish to lose its unity of purpose against the Soviet enemy. Many histo-
advantage over the Soviet Union. When the American rians see the report as having “militarized” the Ameri-
Bernard Baruch proposed United Nations oversight of can approach to the Cold War, which had to that point
atomic energy in 1946, for instance, the plan assured relied largely on economic measures such as aid to
the United States of near-total control of the technology, Greece and the Marshall Plan. Truman was reluctant to
which further increased Cold War tensions. America’s commit to a major defense buildup, fearing that it
brief tenure as sole nuclear power ended in September would overburden the national budget. But shortly
1949, however, when the Soviet Union detonated an after NSC-68 was completed, events in Asia led him to
atomic bomb. Truman then turned to the U.S. National reverse course.
Security Council (NSC), established by the National
Security Act of 1947, for a strategic reassessment.
In April 1950, the NSC delivered its report, known Containment in Asia
as NSC-68. Bristling with alarmist rhetoric, the docu- As with Germany, American officials believed that
ment marked a decisive turning point in the U.S. restoring Japan’s economy, while limiting its military
approach to the Cold War. The report’s authors influence, would ensure prosperity and contain com-
described the Soviet Union not as a typical great power munism in East Asia. After dismantling Japan’s military,
but as one with a “fanatic faith” that seeks to “impose American occupation forces under General Douglas
its absolute authority.” Going beyond even the stern MacArthur drafted a democratic constitution and
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
Arming for the To fight the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union increased overall
military spending and assembled massive arsenals of nuclear weapons.
Cold War
TABLE 25.1
Worldwide Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–1975
Country 1945 1955 1965 1975
United States 2 3,057 32,135 27,235
USSR 0 200 6,129 19,443
United Kingdom 0 10 310 350
France 0 0 32 188
China 0 0 5 185
Israel 0 0 0 20*
*Estimated
SOURCES: Adapted from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, National Resources Defense Council,
and Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation (2007).
paved the way for the restoration of Japanese sover- forces held the advantage. Truman reasoned that to
eignty in 1951. Considering the scorched-earth war save Jiang, the United States would have to intervene
that had just ended, this was a remarkable achieve- militarily. Unwilling to do so, he cut off aid and left the
ment, thanks partly to the imperious MacArthur but Nationalists to their fate. The People’s Republic of
mainly to the Japanese, who embraced peace and China was formally established under Mao on Octo-
accepted U.S. military protection. However, events on ber 1, 1949, and the remnants of Jiang’s forces fled to
the mainland of Asia proved much more difficult for Taiwan.
the United States to shape to its advantage. Both Stalin and Truman expected Mao to take an
independent line, as the Communist leader Tito had
Civil War in China A civil war had been raging in just done in Yugoslavia. Mao, however, aligned himself
China since the 1930s as Communist forces led by Mao with the Soviet Union, partly out of fear that the United
Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) fought Nationalist forces States would re-arm the Nationalists and invade the
under Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). Fearing a Com- mainland. As attitudes hardened, many Americans
munist victory, between 1945 and 1949 the United viewed Mao’s success as a defeat for the United States.
States provided $2 billion to Jiang’s army. Pressing The pro-Nationalist “China lobby” accused Truman’s
Truman to “save” China, conser- State Department of being responsible for the “loss” of
COMPARE AND vative Republican Ohio senator China. Sensitive to these charges, the Truman adminis-
CONTRAST Robert A. Taft predicted that “the tration refused to recognize “Red China” and blocked
How did U.S. containment Far East is ultimately even more China’s admission to the United Nations. But the
strategy in Asia compare
important to our future peace United States pointedly declined to guarantee Taiwan’s
to containment in Europe?
than is Europe.” By 1949, Mao’s independence, and in fact accepted the outcome on the
814
CHAPTER 25 Cold War America, 1945–1963 815
Communist China
People in Beijing raise their
clenched fists in a welcoming
salute for Chinese Communist
forces entering the city after
the Nationalists surrendered
on January 31, 1949. The
center portrait behind them
is of General Mao Zedong, the
leader of the Communist Party
of China. Mao’s victory in the
civil war (1946–1950) meant
that from East Germany to
the Pacific Ocean, much of
the Eurasian landmass (includ-
ing Eastern Europe, the Soviet
Union, and China) was ruled
by Communist governments.
AP Images.
mainland. (Since 1982, however, the United States has dividing the former Japanese colony at the 38th paral-
recognized Taiwanese sovereignty.) lel. As tensions rose in Europe, the 38th parallel hard-
ened into a permanent demarcation line. The Soviets
The Korean War The United States took a stronger supported a Communist government, led by Kim Il
stance in Korea. The United States and the Soviet Sung, in North Korea; the United States backed a right-
Union had agreed at the close of World War II to wing Nationalist, Syngman Rhee, in South Korea. The
occupy the Korean peninsula jointly, temporarily two sides had waged low-level war since 1945, and
both leaders were spoiling for a more definitive fight. to authorize a “police action” against the invaders. The
However, neither Kim nor Rhee could launch an all- Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council to
out offensive without the backing of his sponsor. protest China’s exclusion from the United Nations and
Washington repeatedly said no, and so did Moscow. could not veto Truman’s request. With the Security
But Kim continued to press Stalin to permit him to Council’s approval of a “peacekeeping force,” Truman
reunify the nation. Convinced by the North Koreans ordered U.S. troops to Korea. The rapidly assembled
that victory would be swift, the Soviet leader finally UN army in Korea was overwhelmingly American,
relented in the late spring of 1950. with General Douglas MacArthur in command. At
On June 25, 1950, the North Koreans launched a first, the North Koreans held a distinct advantage, but
surprise attack across the 38th parallel (Map 25.2). MacArthur’s surprise amphibious attack at Inchon
Truman immediately asked the UN Security Council gave the UN forces control of Seoul, the South Korean
Chinese troops entered the conflict (4), pushing battle lines SOVIET UNION
back into South Korea (5). United States, United Nations, and 9ODGLYRVWRN
South Korean forces quickly regained most of the territory to North Korean forces
the 38th parallel. The armistice of July 1953 created a
demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two armies, making the U.S. and UN forces
38th parallel the border separating the two Koreas, a boundary Farthest North Korean advance, Sept. 1950
that remains heavily militarized on both sides. Farthest U.S. advance, Oct.–Nov. 1950
R.
Chinese intervention, Oct. 1950
lu
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0 50 100 miles
4
N
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W E
Sea
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of
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NORTH :RQVDQ
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$UPLVWLFHOLQH
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5 troops crossed the 38th parallel (1),
the post–World War II boundary
38th Parallel .DHVRQJ &KXQFKRQ 1 between occupation zones. Northern
3DQPXQMRP
forces pushed until stopped at the
defense perimeter around the port
86ODQGLQJ 6HRXO of Pusan on the southern tip of the
6HSW ,QFKRQ Korean peninsula (2).
3 SOUTH
KOREA
Yellow
Sea 7DHMRQ 3RKDQJ
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In a surprise move, United States Naktong 7DHJX
forces under General Douglas R.
MacArthur landed at Inchon, near 2 JAPAN
Seoul (3), threatening to cut off 3XVDQ
supply routes of the North Koreans.
As North Korean forces retreated, Tsushima
(JAPAN)
South Korean, United States, and
United Nations forces pushed them
deep into North Korea.
Cheju Do
(KOREA)
MAP 25.2
The Korean War, 1950–1953
The Korean War, which the United Nations officially deemed a “police action,” lasted three years
and cost the lives of more than 36,000 U.S. troops. South and North Korean deaths were estimated
at more than 900,000. Although hostilities ceased in 1953, the South Korean Military (with U.S.
military assistance) and the North Korean Army continue to face each other across the demilitarized
zone, more than fifty years later.
CHAPTER 25 Cold War America, 1945–1963 817
capital, and almost all the territory up to the 38th Dwight D. Eisenhower, left Korea divided at the origi-
parallel. nal demarcation line. North Korea remained firmly
The impetuous MacArthur then ordered his troops allied with the Soviet Union; South Korea signed a
across the 38th parallel and led them all the way to mutual defense treaty with the United States. It had
the Chinese border at the Yalu River. It was a major been the first major proxy battle of the Cold War, in
blunder, certain to draw China into the war. Sure which the Soviet Union and United States took sides in
enough, a massive Chinese counterattack forced a civil conflict. It would not be the last.
MacArthur’s forces into headlong retreat back down The Korean War had far-reaching consequences.
the Korean peninsula. Then stalemate set in. With Truman’s decision to commit troops without congres-
weak public support for the war in the United States, sional approval set a precedent for future undeclared
Truman and his advisors decided to work for a negoti- wars. His refusal to unleash atomic bombs, even when
ated peace. MacArthur disagreed and denounced the American forces were reeling under a massive Chinese
Korean stalemate, declaring, “There is no substitute attack, set ground rules for Cold War conflict. The
for victory.” On April 11, 1951, Truman relieved war also expanded American involvement in Asia,
MacArthur of his command. Truman’s decision was transforming containment into a truly global policy —
highly unpopular, especially among conservative and significantly boosting Japan’s struggling postwar
Republicans, but he had likely saved the nation from economy. Finally, the Korean War ended Truman’s
years of costly warfare with China. resistance to a major military buildup. Defense expen-
Notwithstanding MacArthur’s dismissal, the war ditures grew from $13 billion in 1950, roughly one-
dragged on for more than two years. An armistice in third of the federal budget, to $50 billion in 1953,
July 1953, pushed by the newly elected president, nearly two-thirds of the budget (Map 25.3). American
MAP 25.3
The Military-Industrial Complex
Defense spending gave a big boost
to the Cold War economy, but, as the
upper map suggests, the benefits were
by no means equally distributed. The Washington,
big winners were the Middle Atlantic D.C.
0 5 10 miles
Naval
Weapons
0 5 10 kilometers Naval Station Station
(after Scott; Lotchin) Todd Shipyards Marine Air Base
818 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
FIGURE 25.1
150
National Defense Spending, 1940–1965
In 1950, the U.S. defense budget was $13 billion, less than
125 a third of total federal outlays. In 1961, U.S. defense
spending reached $47 billion, fully half of the federal
budget and almost 10 percent of the gross domestic
100 product.
Total federal spending
$ Billions
75
50
Defense spending
25
0
1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965
foreign policy had become more global, more milita- postwar Europe and Asia, combined with the spectac-
rized, and more expensive (Figure 25.1). Even in times ular rise of anticommunism in the United States, forced
of peace, the United States now functioned in a state of him to take a different path. In the end, Truman went
permanent military mobilization. down in history not as a New Dealer, but as a Cold
Warrior. The Cold War consensus that he ultimately
The Munich Analogy Behind much of U.S. foreign embraced — the notion that resisting communism at
policy in the first two decades of the Cold War lay the home and abroad represented America’s most impor-
memory of appeasement (Chapter 24). The generation tant postwar objective — shaped the nation’s life and
of politicians and officials who designed the contain- politics for decades to come.
ment strategy had come of age in the shadow of
Munich, the conference in 1938 at which the Western
democracies had appeased Hitler by offering him part Truman and the End of Reform
of Czechoslovakia, paving the road to World War II. Truman and the Democratic Party of the late 1940s
Applying the lessons of Munich, American presidents and early 1950s forged what historians call Cold War
believed that “appeasing” Stalin (and subsequent Soviet liberalism. They preserved the core programs of the
rulers Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev) would New Deal welfare state, developed the containment
have the same result: wider war. Thus in Germany, policy to oppose Soviet influence throughout the
Greece, and Korea, and later in Iran, Guatemala, and world, and fought so-called subversives at home. But
Vietnam, the United States staunchly resisted the there would be no second act for the New Deal. The
Soviets — or what it perceived as Soviet influence. The Democrats adopted this combination of moderate
Munich analogy strengthened the U.S. position in a liberal policies and anticommunism — Cold War
number of strategic conflicts, particularly over the fate liberalism — partly by choice and partly out of neces-
of Germany. But it also drew Americans into armed sity. A few high-level espionage scandals and the
conflicts — and convinced them to support repressive, Communist victories in Eastern Europe and China
right-wing regimes — that compromised, as much as reenergized the Republican Party, which forced
supported, stated American principles. Truman and the Democrats to retreat to what histo-
rian Arthur Schlesinger called the “vital center” of
American politics. However, Americans on both the
Cold War Liberalism progressive left and the conservative right remained
dissatisfied with this development. Cold War liberal-
Harry Truman cast himself in the mold of his prede- ism was a practical centrist policy for a turbulent era.
cessor, Franklin Roosevelt, and hoped to seize the But it would not last.
possibilities afforded by victory in World War II Organized labor remained a key force in the Demo-
to expand the New Deal at home. But the crises in cratic Party and played a central role in championing
CHAPTER 25 Cold War America, 1945–1963 819
Cold War liberalism. Stronger than ever, union mem- the party fell into disarray. The left wing split off and
bership swelled to more than 14 million by 1945. formed the Progressive Party, nominating Henry A.
Determined to make up for their wartime sacrifices, Wallace, an avid New Dealer whom Truman had fired
unionized workers made aggressive demands and as secretary of commerce in 1946 because Wallace
mounted major strikes in the automobile, steel, and opposed America’s actions in the Cold War. A right-
coal industries after the war. Republicans responded. wing challenge came from the South. When northern
They gained control of the House in a sweeping repu- liberals such as Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey of Min-
diation of Democrats in 1946 and promptly passed — neapolis pushed through a strong
over Truman’s veto — the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), an civil rights platform at the Demo- PLACE EVENTS
overhaul of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. cratic convention, the southern IN CONTEXT
Taft-Hartley crafted changes in procedures and delegations bolted and, calling How was the Democratic
language that, over time, weakened the right of work- themselves Dixiecrats, nominated Party divided in 1948, and
ers to organize and engage in collective bargaining. for president South Carolina gov- what were its primary
Unions especially disliked Section 14b, which allowed ernor Strom Thurmond, an ardent constituencies?
states to pass “right-to-work” laws prohibiting the union supporter of racial segregation.
shop. Additionally, the law forced unions to purge com- The Republicans meanwhile renominated Thomas E.
munists, who had been among the most successful Dewey, the politically moderate governor of New York
labor organizers in the 1930s, from their ranks. Taft- who had run a strong campaign against FDR in 1944.
Hartley effectively “contained” the labor movement. Truman surprised everyone. He launched a strenu-
Trade unions would continue to support the Demo- ous cross-country speaking tour and hammered away
cratic Party, but the labor movement would not move at the Republicans for opposing progressive legislation
into the largely non-union South and would not extend and, in general, for running a “do-nothing” Congress.
into the many American industries that remained By combining these issues with attacks on the Soviet
unorganized. menace abroad, Truman began to salvage his troubled
campaign. At his rallies, enthusiastic listeners shouted,
The 1948 Election Democrats would have dumped “Give ’em hell, Harry!” Truman won, receiving 49.6
Truman in 1948 had they found a better candidate. But percent of the vote to Dewey’s 45.1 percent (Map 25.4).
Truman Triumphant
In one of the most famous photographs
in U.S. political history, Harry S. Truman
gloats over an erroneous headline in
the November 3 Chicago Daily Tribune.
Pollsters had predicted an easy victory
for Thomas E. Dewey. Their primitive
techniques, however, missed the dra-
matic surge in support for Truman
during the last days of the campaign.
© Bettmann/Corbis.
820 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
passing secrets to another country, even a wartime HUAC The Truman administration had legitimized
ally, was simply indefensible to many Americans. the vague and malleable concept of “disloyalty.” Others
The lines between U.S. and Soviet interests blurred proved willing to stretch the concept even further,
for some; for others, they remained clear and definite. beginning with the House Un-American Activities Com-
After World War II, however, most suppliers of mittee (HUAC), which Congressman Martin Dies of
information to the Soviets apparently ceased spying. Texas and other conservatives had launched in 1938.
For one thing, the professional apparatus of Soviet spy- After the war, HUAC helped spark the Red Scare by
ing in the United States was dismantled or disrupted by holding widely publicized hearings in 1947 on alleged
American counterintelligence work. For another, most Communist infiltration in the movie industry. A
of the well-connected amateur spies moved on to other group of writers and directors dubbed the Hollywood
careers. Historians have thus developed a healthy skep- Ten went to jail for contempt of Congress after they
ticism that there was much Soviet espionage in the refused to testify about their past associations. Hun-
United States after 1947, but this was not how many dreds of other actors, directors, and writers whose
Americans saw it at the time. Legitimate suspicions names had been mentioned in the HUAC investigation
and real fears, along with political opportunism, com- were unable to get work, victims of an unacknowl-
bined to fuel the national Red Scare, which was longer edged but very real blacklist honored by industry
and more far-reaching than the one that followed executives.
World War I (Chapter 22). Other HUAC investigations had greater legitimacy.
One that intensified the anticommunist crusade in
Loyalty-Security Program To insulate his adminis- 1948 involved Alger Hiss, a former New Dealer and
tration against charges of Communist infiltration, State Department official who had accompanied
Truman issued Executive Order 9835 on March 21, Franklin Roosevelt to Yalta. A
1947, which created the Loyalty-Security Program. The former Communist, Whitaker IDENTIFY CAUSES
order permitted officials to investigate any employee of Chambers, claimed that Hiss was What factors led to the
the federal government (some 2.5 million people) for a member of a secret Communist postwar Red Scare, and
“subversive” activities. Representing a profound central- cell operating in the government what were its ramifications
ization of power, the order sent shock waves through and had passed him classified for civil liberties in the
every federal agency. Truman intended the order to documents in the 1930s. Hiss United States?
apply principally to actions designed to harm the denied the allegations, but Cali-
United States (sabotage, treason, etc.), but it was broad fornia Republican congressman Richard Nixon dog-
enough to allow anyone to be accused of subversion for gedly pursued the case against him. In early 1950, Hiss
the slightest reason — for marching in a Communist- was found guilty not of spying but of lying to Congress
led demonstration in the 1930s, for instance, or sign- about his Communist affiliations and was sentenced to
ing a petition calling for public housing. Along with five years in federal prison. Many Americans doubted
suspected political subversives, more than a thousand at the time that Hiss was a spy. But the Venona tran-
gay men and lesbians were dismissed from federal scripts in the 1990s corroborated a great deal of
employment in the 1950s, victims of an obsessive Chambers’s testimony, and though no definitive proof
search for anyone deemed “unfit” for government work. has emerged, many historians now recognize the
Following Truman’s lead, many state and local gov- strong circumstantial evidence against Hiss.
ernments, universities, political organizations, churches,
and businesses undertook their own antisubversion McCarthyism The meteoric career of Senator Joseph
campaigns, which often included loyalty oaths. In the McCarthy of Wisconsin marked first the apex and then
labor movement, charges of Communist domination the finale of the Red Scare. In February 1950, McCarthy
led to the expulsion of a number of unions by the delivered a bombshell during a speech in Wheeling,
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1949. West Virginia: “I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a
Civil rights organizations such as the National Assoc- list of names that were made known to the Secretary of
iation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) State as being members of the Communist Party and
and the National Urban League also expelled Commu- who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in
nists and “fellow travelers,” or Communist sympa- the State Department.” McCarthy later reduced his num-
thizers. Thus the Red Scare spread from the federal bers, gave different figures in different speeches, and
government to the farthest reaches of American orga- never released any names or proof. But he had gained
nizational, economic, and cultural life. the attention he sought (American Voices, p. 822).
AMERICAN
VOICES
The onset of the Cold War created an opportunity for some conservatives to use
anticommunism as a weapon to attack the Truman administration. In Senator
Joseph McCarthy’s case, the charge was that the U.S. government was harboring
Hunting Communists Soviet spies. There was also a broader, more amorphous attack on people
accused not of spying but of having communist sympathies; such “fellow travel-
and Liberals ers” were considered “security risks” and thus unsuitable for government posi-
tions. The basis of suspicion for this targeted group was generally membership
in organizations that supported policies that either overlapped with or seemed
similar to policies supported by the Communist Party.
822
. . . The defenders of Dr. Graham today offered House Un-American Activities Committee
the apology that during the time he joined the various Report on Frank Graham, February 4, 1949
subversive and Communist front organizations [like
the Southern Conference for Human Welfare] — Because of the controversy, HUAC released a report on
organizations so listed by the Attorney General of the Graham.
United States — this country was a co-belligerent with A check of the files, records and publications of the
Soviet Russia, and numerous people joined such groups Committee on Un-American Activities has revealed the
and causes. That argument is going to sound very thin following information: Letterheads dated September 22,
to most American citizens, because the overwhelming 1939, January 17, 1940, and May 26, 1940, as well as the
majority of us would have no part of any Communist “Daily Worker” of March 18, 1939, . . . reveal that Frank P.
or Communist front connections at any time. Graham was a member of the American Committee for
Democracy and Intellectual Freedom. . . . In Report
2277, dated June 25, 1942, the Special Committee on
Frank Porter Graham
Un-American Activities found that “the line of the
Telegram to Fulton Lewis Jr., January 13, American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual
1949 Freedom has fluctuated in complete harmony with the
One can imagine Graham’s shock at hearing himself pillo- line of the Communist Party.” The organization was again
ried on national radio. (He had not even been aware of cited by the Special Committee . . . as a Communist front
the AEC’s investigation of him.) The following is from his “which defended Communist teachers.” . . .
response to Lewis. A letterhead of February 7, 1946, a letterhead of June 4,
1947 . . . and an announcement of the Third Meeting, April
In view of your questions and implications I hope you 19–21, 1942, at Nashville, Tennessee, reveal that Frank P.
will use my statement to provide for my answers. . . . I Graham was honorary President of the Southern Confer-
have always been opposed to Communism and all totali- ence for Human Welfare. . . .
tarian dictatorships. I opposed both Nazi and Communist In a report on the Southern Conference for Human
aggression against Czechoslovakia and the earlier Russian Welfare, dated June 16, 1947, the Committee on Un-
aggression against Finland and later Communist aggres- American Activities found “the most conclusive proof
sion against other countries. . . . of Communist domination of the Southern Conference
During the period of my active participation, the for Human Welfare is to be found in the organization’s
overwhelming number of members of the Southern strict and unvarying conformance to the line of the
Conference were to my knowledge anti-Communists. Communist Party in the field of foreign policy. It is
There were several isolationist stands of the Conference also a clear indication of the fact that the real purpose
with which I disagreed. The stands which I supported as of the organization was not ‘human welfare’ in the South,
the main business of the Conference were such as the fol- but rather to serve as a convenient vehicle in support of
lowing: Federal aid to the states for schools; abolition of the current Communist Party line.”
freight rate discrimination against Southern commerce,
agriculture, and industry; anti–poll tax bill; anti-lynching Source: # 1819 Frank Porter Graham Papers. Courtesy of the Southern Historical
bill; equal right of qualified Negroes to vote in both pri- Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
maries and general elections; the unhampered lawful
right of labor to organize and bargain collectively in our QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
region; . . . minimum wages and social security in the 1. On what grounds did Fulton Lewis Jr. and HUAC assert
Southern and American tradition. . . . that Frank Graham was a security risk? Did they charge
I have been called a Communist by some sincere people. that he was a Communist? Is there any evidence in these
documents that Graham might have been a security risk?
I have been called a spokesman of American capitalism
2. How did Graham defend himself? Are you persuaded by
by Communists and repeatedly called a tool of imperial- his argument?
ism by the radio from Moscow. I shall simply continue to 3. Compare McCarthy’s famous speech at Wheeling, West
oppose Ku Kluxism, imperialism, fascism, and Commun- Virginia, and the suspicions voiced against Graham by
ism whether in America . . . or behind the “iron curtain.” Lewis and HUAC a year earlier. What similarities do
you see?
823
824 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
For the next four years, from his position as chair the Hiss case, documents released decades later pro-
of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investiga- vided some evidence of Julius Rosenberg’s guilt, though
tions, McCarthy waged a virulent smear campaign. not Ethel’s. Their execution nevertheless remains
Critics who disagreed with him exposed themselves controversial — in part because some felt that anti-
to charges of being “soft” on communism. Truman Semitism played a role in their sentencing. Also fueling
called McCarthy’s charges “slander, lies, [and] charac- McCarthy’s charges were a series of trials of American
ter assassination” but could do nothing to curb him. Communists between 1949 and 1955 for violation of
Republicans, for their part, refrained from publicly the 1940 Smith Act, which prohibited Americans from
challenging their most outspoken senator and, on the advocating the violent overthrow of the government.
whole, were content to reap the political benefits. Though civil libertarians and two Supreme Court jus-
McCarthy’s charges almost always targeted Democrats. tices vigorously objected, dozens of Communist Party
Despite McCarthy’s failure to identify a single Com- members were convicted. McCarthy was not involved
munist in government, several national developments in either the Rosenberg trial or the Smith Act convic-
gave his charges credibility with the public. The dra- tions, but these sensational events gave his wild charges
matic 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, some credence.
followed around the world, fueled McCarthy’s allega- In early 1954, McCarthy overreached by launching
tions. Convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet an investigation into subversive activities in the U.S.
Union, the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953. As in Army. When lengthy hearings — the first of their kind
America Under Eisenhower The global power Washington” combined to give the war-hero general an
realities that had called forth containment guided easy victory. In 1956, Ike won an even more impressive
Eisenhower’s foreign policy. New developments, how- victory over Stevenson, an eloquent and sophisticated
ever, altered the tone of the Cold War. Stalin’s death in spokesman for liberalism but no match for Eisenhower’s
March 1953 precipitated an intraparty struggle in the popularity with the public.
Soviet Union that lasted until 1956, when Nikita During Eisenhower’s presidency, new political
Khrushchev emerged as Stalin’s successor. Khrushchev forces on both the right and the left had begun to stir.
soon startled communists around the world by denounc- But they had not yet fully transformed the party system
ing Stalin and detailing his crimes and blunders. He itself. Particularly at the national level, Democrats and
also surprised many Americans by calling for “peaceful Republicans seemed in broad agreement about the
coexistence” with the West and by dealing more flexi- realities of the Cold War and the demands of a mod-
bly with dissent in the Communist world. But the new ern, industrial economy and welfare state. Indeed,
Soviet leader had his limits, and when Hungarians rose respected commentators in the 1950s declared “the
up in 1956 to demand independence from Moscow, end of ideology” and wondered if the great political
Khrushchev crushed the incipient revolution. clashes that had wracked the 1930s were gone forever.
With no end to the Cold War in sight, Eisenhower Below the apparent calm of national party politics,
focused on limiting the cost of containment. The pres- however, lay profound differences among Americans
ident hoped to economize by relying on a nuclear arse- over the direction of the nation. Those differences were
nal and deemphasizing expensive conventional forces. most pronounced regarding the civil rights of African
Under this “New Look” defense policy, the Eisenhower Americans. But a host of other issues had begun to
administration stepped up production of the hydrogen emerge as controversial subjects that would soon
bomb and developed long-range bombing capabili- starkly divide the country and, in the 1960s, bring an
ties. The Soviets, however, matched the United States end to the brief and fragile Cold War consensus.
weapon for weapon. By 1958, both nations had inter-
continental ballistic missiles. When an American
nuclear submarine launched an atomic-tipped Polaris
missile in 1960, Soviet engineers raced to produce an Containment in the
equivalent weapon. This arms race was another critical
feature of the Cold War. American officials believed the
Postcolonial World
best deterrent to Soviet aggression was the threat of an As the Cold War took shape, the world scene was
all-out nuclear response by the United States, which changing at a furious pace. New nations were emerg-
was dubbed “massive retaliation” by Secretary of State ing across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, created in
Dulles. the wake of powerful anticolonial movements whose
origins dated to before World War II. Between 1947
To see a longer excerpt of the Dulles document, and 1962, the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian
along with other primary sources from this period, empires all but disintegrated in a momentous collapse
see Sources for America’s History. of European global reach. FDR had favored the idea
of national self-determination, often to the fury of his
Although confident in the international arena, British and French allies. He expected emerging democ-
Eisenhower started out as a novice in domestic affairs. racies to be new partners in an American-led, free-
Doing his best to set a less confrontational tone after market world system. But colonial revolts produced
the rancorous Truman years, he was reluctant to speak many independent- or socialist-minded regimes in
out against Joe McCarthy, and he was not a leader on the so-called Third World, as well. Third World was
civil rights. Democrats meanwhile maintained a strong a term that came into usage after World War II to
presence in Congress but proved weak in presidential describe developing or ex-colonial nations in Asia,
elections in the 1950s. In the two presidential contests Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East that were
of the decade, 1952 and 1956, Eisenhower defeated not aligned with the Western capitalist countries led
the admired but politically ineffectual liberal Adlai by the United States or the socialist states of Eastern
Stevenson. In the 1952 election, Stevenson was ham- Europe led by the Soviet Union. The Truman and
pered by the unpopularity of the Truman adminis- Eisenhower administrations often treated Third World
tration. The deadlocked Korean War and a series countries as pawns of the Soviet Union to be opposed
of scandals that Republicans dubbed “the mess in at all costs.
CHAPTER 25 Cold War America, 1945–1963 827
UNITED PACIFIC
TURKEY JAPAN
STATES OCEAN
IRAN
ATLANTIC PAKISTAN Philippines Mutual
MEXICO OCEAN Defense Treaty: signed 1951
THAILAND
PHILIPPINES
VENEZUELA
COLOMBIA
PACIFIC
OCEAN
BRAZIL INDIAN OCEAN
PERU
N BOLIVIA
W E
AUSTRALIA
S NEW
ARGENTINA ZEALAND
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, signed in 1949
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, ANZUS: Australia, New
Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Zealand, U.S. signed 1951
Rio Treaty: Inter-American Treaty Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain,
of Reciprocal Assistance, signed 1947 Turkey, United Kingdom,
United States, West Germany
Argentina, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican SEATO: Southeast Asia Treaty
Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Organization, signed 1954;
Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, disbanded in 1977
Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Australia, France, New Zealand,
Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand,
0 1,000 2,000 miles
United Kingdom, United States
0 1,000 2,000 kilometers
MAP 25.5
American Global Defense Treaties in the Cold War Era
The advent of the Cold War led to a major shift in American foreign policy — the signing of mutual
defense treaties. Dating back to George Washington’s call “to steer clear of permanent alliances
with any portion of the foreign world,” the United States had avoided treaty obligations that
entailed the defense of other nations. As late as 1919, the U.S. Senate had rejected the principle of
“collective security,” the centerpiece of the League of Nations established by the Treaty of Versailles
that ended World War I. But after World War II, in response to fears of Soviet global expansion, the
United States entered defense alliances with much of the non-Communist world.
828 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
secretary of state Dulles often resorted to covert doctrine — guided U.S. policy in Southeast Asia for the
operations against governments that, in his opinion, next twenty years. The United States eventually pro-
were too closely aligned with the Soviets. vided most of the financing for the French war, but
For these covert tasks, Dulles used the newly cre- money was not enough to defeat the determined
ated (1947) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), run by Vietminh, who were fighting for the liberation of their
his brother, Allen Dulles. When Iran’s democratically country. After a fifty-six-day siege in early 1954, the
elected nationalist premier, Mohammad Mossadegh, French were defeated at the huge fortress of Dien Bien
seized British oil properties in 1953, CIA agents helped Phu. The result was the 1954 Geneva Accords, which
depose him and installed the young Mohammad Reza partitioned Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel
Pahlavi as shah of Iran. Iranian resentment of the coup, and called for elections within two years to unify the
followed by twenty-five years of U.S. support for the strife-torn nation.
shah, eventually led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution The United States rejected the Geneva Accords and
(Chapter 30). In 1954, the CIA also engineered a coup set about undermining them. With the help of the CIA,
in Guatemala against the democratically elected presi- a pro-American government took power in South
dent, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, who had seized land Vietnam in June 1954. Ngo Dinh Diem, an anticom-
owned by the American-owned United Fruit Company. munist Catholic who had been residing in the United
Arbenz offered to pay United Fruit the declared value States, returned to Vietnam as premier. The next year,
of the land, but the company rejected the offer and in a rigged election, Diem became president of an inde-
turned to the U.S. government. Eisenhower specifically pendent South Vietnam. Facing certain defeat by the
approved those CIA efforts and expanded the agency’s popular Ho Chi Minh, Diem called off the scheduled
mandate from gathering intelligence to intervening in reunification elections. As the last French soldiers left
the affairs of sovereign states. in March 1956, the Eisenhower administration propped
up Diem with an average of $200 million a year in aid
Vietnam But when covert operations and coups and a contingent of 675 American military advisors.
failed or proved impractical, the American approach to This support was just the beginning.
emerging nations could entangle the United States in
deeper, more intractable conflicts. One example was The Middle East If Vietnam was still of minor con-
already unfolding on a distant stage, in a small country cern, the same could not be said of the Middle East, an
unknown to most Americans: Vietnam. In August area rich in oil and political complexity. The most vol-
1945, at the close of World War II, the Japanese occupi- atile area was Palestine, populated by Arabs but also
ers of Vietnam surrendered to China in the north and historically the ancient land of Israel and coveted by
Britain in the south. The Vietminh, the nationalist the Zionist movement as a Jewish national homeland.
movement that had led the resistance against the Jap- After World War II, many survivors of the Nazi exter-
anese (and the French, prior to 1940), seized control in mination camps resettled in Palestine, which was still
the north. But their leader, Ho Chi Minh, was a Com- controlled by Britain under a World War I mandate.
munist, and this single fact outweighed American On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly
and British commitment to self-determination. When voted to partition Palestine between Jewish and Arab
France moved to restore its control over the country, sectors. When the British mandate ended in 1948,
the United States and Britain sided with their European Zionist leaders proclaimed the state of Israel. A coali-
ally. President Truman rejected Ho’s plea to support tion of Arab nations known as the Arab League
the Vietnamese struggle for nationhood, and France invaded, but Israel survived. Many Palestinians fled or
rejected Ho’s offer of a negotiated independence. were driven from their homes during the fighting. The
Shortly after France returned, in late 1946, the Vietminh Arab defeat left these people permanently stranded in
resumed their war of national liberation. refugee camps. President Truman recognized the new
Eisenhower picked up where state immediately, which won him crucial support
IDENTIFY CAUSES Truman left off. If the French from Jewish voters in the 1948 election but alienated
How did the Cold War failed, Eisenhower argued, all the Arab world.
between the United States non-Communist governments in Southeast of Palestine, Egypt began to assert its
and the Soviet Union the region would fall like domi- presence in the region. Having gained independence
affect disparate regions
noes. This so-called domino from Britain several decades earlier, Egypt remained a
such as the Middle East
theory — which represented an monarchy until 1952, when Gamal Abdel Nasser led a
and Southeast Asia?
extension of the containment military coup that established a constitutional republic.
CHAPTER 25 Cold War America, 1945–1963 829
Caught between the Soviet Union and the United Lebanon. The Eisenhower Doctrine was further evi-
States, Nasser sought an independent route: a pan- dence that the United States had extended the global
Arab socialism designed to end the Middle East’s colo- reach of containment, in this instance accentuated by
nial relationship with the West. When negotiations the strategic need to protect the West’s access to steady
with the United States over Nasser’s plan to build a supplies of oil.
massive hydroelectric dam on the Nile broke down in
1956, he nationalized the Suez Canal, which was the
lifeline for Western Europe’s oil. Britain and France, in John F. Kennedy and the Cold War
alliance with Israel, attacked Egypt and seized the Charisma, style, and personality — these, more than
canal. Concerned that the invasion would encourage platforms and issues, defined a new brand of politics in
Egypt to turn to the Soviets for help, Eisenhower urged the early 1960s. This was John F. Kennedy’s natural
France and Britain to pull back. He applied additional environment. Kennedy, a Harvard alumnus, World
pressure through the UN General Assembly, which War II hero, and senator from Massachusetts, had
called for a truce and troop withdrawal. When the inherited his love of politics from his grandfa-
Western nations backed down, however, Egypt thers — colorful, and often ruthless, Irish Catholic
reclaimed the Suez Canal and built the Aswan Dam on politicians in Boston. Ambitious and deeply aware of
the Nile with Soviet support. Eisenhower had likely style, the forty-three-year-old Kennedy made use of
avoided a larger war, but the West lost a potential ally his many advantages to become, as novelist Norman
in Nasser. Mailer put it, “our leading man.” His one disadvan-
In early 1957, concerned about Soviet influence tage — that he was Catholic in a country that had never
in the Middle East, the president announced the Eisen- elected a Catholic president —
hower Doctrine, which stated that American forces he masterfully neutralized. And COMPARE AND
would assist any nation in the region that required aid thanks to both media advisors CONTRAST
“against overt armed aggression from any nation con- and his youthful attractiveness, How was Kennedy’s
trolled by International Communism.” Invoking the Kennedy projected a superb tele- approach to the Cold War
similar to and different
doctrine later that year, Eisenhower helped King vision image.
from Eisenhower’s and
Hussein of Jordan put down a Nasser-backed revolt At heart, however, Kennedy
Truman’s?
and propped up a pro-American government in was a Cold Warrior who had
830 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
come of age in the shadow of Munich, Yalta, and renowned systems analyst and former head of Ford
McCarthyism. He projected an air of idealism, but his Motor Company, as secretary of defense. A host of
years in the Senate (1953–1960) had proved him to be trusted advisors and academics flocked to Washington
a conventional Cold War politician. Once elected pres- to join the New Frontier — Kennedy’s term for the
ident, Kennedy would shape the nation’s foreign policy challenges the country faced. Included on the team
by drawing both on his ingenuity and on old-style Cold as attorney general was Kennedy’s younger brother
War power politics. Robert, who had made a name as a hard-hitting inves-
tigator of organized crime. Relying on an old American
The Election of 1960 and the New Frontier trope, Kennedy’s New Frontier suggested masculine
Kennedy’s Republican opponent in the 1960 presi- toughness and adventurism and encouraged Americans
dential election, Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard to again think of themselves as exploring uncharted
Nixon, was a seasoned politician and Cold Warrior terrain. That terrain proved treacherous, however, as
himself. The great innovation of the 1960 campaign the new administration immediately faced a crisis.
was a series of four nationally televised debates.
Nixon, less photogenic than Kennedy, looked sallow Crises in Cuba and Berlin In January 1961, the
and unshaven under the intense studio lights. Voters Soviet Union announced that it intended to support
who heard the first debate on the radio concluded that “wars of national liberation” wherever in the world
Nixon had won, but those who viewed it on television they occurred. Kennedy took Soviet premier Nikita
favored Kennedy. Despite the edge Kennedy enjoyed Khrushchev’s words as a challenge, especially as they
in the debates, he won only the narrowest of electoral applied to Cuba, where in 1959 Fidel Castro had over-
victories, receiving 49.7 percent of the popular vote thrown the right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista and
to Nixon’s 49.5 percent. Kennedy attracted Catholics, declared a revolution. Determined to keep Cuba out
African Americans, and the labor vote; his vice- of the Soviet orbit, Kennedy followed through on
presidential running mate, Texas senator Lyndon Eisenhower administration plans to dispatch Cuban
Baines Johnson, helped bring in southern Democrats. exiles to foment an anti-Castro uprising. The invaders,
Yet only 120,000 votes separated the two candidates, trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, were ill-
and a shift of a few thousand votes in key states would prepared for their task. On landing at Cuba’s Bay of
have reversed the outcome. Pigs on April 17, 1961, the force of 1,400 was crushed
Kennedy brought to Washington a cadre of young, by Castro’s troops. Kennedy prudently rejected CIA
ambitious newcomers, including Robert McNamara, a pleas for a U.S. air strike. Accepting defeat, Kennedy
CHAPTER 25 Cold War America, 1945–1963 831
went before the American people and took full respon- planes had spotted Soviet-built bases for intermediate-
sibility for the fiasco (Map 25.6). range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Some of those weap-
Already strained by the Bay of Pigs incident, U.S.- ons had already been installed, and more were on the
Soviet relations deteriorated further in June 1961 when way. Kennedy announced that the United States would
Khrushchev stopped movement between Communist- impose a “quarantine on all offensive military equip-
controlled East Berlin and the city’s Western sector. ment” on its way to Cuba. As the world held its breath
Kennedy responded by dispatching 40,000 more troops waiting to see if the conflict would escalate into war, on
to Europe. In mid-August, to stop the exodus of East October 25, ships carrying Soviet missiles turned back.
Germans, the Communist regime began constructing After a week of tense negotiations, both sides made
the Berlin Wall, policed by border guards under shoot- concessions: Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba, and
to-kill orders. Until the 12-foot-high concrete barrier Khrushchev promised to dismantle the missile bases.
came down in 1989, it served as the supreme symbol of Kennedy also secretly ordered U.S. missiles to be
the Cold War. removed from Turkey, at Khrushchev’s insistence. The
A perilous Cold War confrontation came next, in risk of nuclear war, greater during the Cuban missile
October 1962. In a somber televised address on Octo- crisis than at any other time in the Cold War, prompted
ber 22, Kennedy revealed that U.S. reconnaissance a slight thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations. As National
Dallas S.C.
MISS. ALA.
TEXAS GA.
Charleston
ATLANTIC OCEAN
LA.
Savannah
San Antonio
FLA. N
Houston New Orleans
E
Tampa Orlando W
S
Gulf of Mexico Miami BAHAMAS
Key West
LE
Bay of Pigs
Guantánamo Bay
SS
April 17, 1961
ER
VIRGIN IS.
ANTI LLES
BELIZE JAMAICA HAITI
PACIFIC
OCEAN HONDURAS Caribbean Sea TRINIDAD
GUATEMALA & TOBAGO
0 250 500 miles EL SALVADOR NICARAGUA Panama
Canal
0 250 500 kilometers Zone
V E N E ZUELA
U.S. military sites
COSTA
Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961 RICA
PANAMA
Soviet missile sites in 1962 COLOMBIA
MAP 25.6
The United States and Cuba, 1961–1962
Fidel Castro’s 1959 Communist takeover of Cuba brought Cold War tensions to the Caribbean. In
1961, the United States tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Castro’s regime by sponsoring the Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuban exiles launched from Nicaragua and other points in the Caribbean. In 1962,
the United States confronted the Soviet Union over Soviet construction of nuclear missile sites in
Cuba. After President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of the island, the Soviets backed down
from the tense standoff and removed the missiles. Despite the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union
and the official end of the Cold War, the United States continues to view Cuba, governed in 2012
by Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, as an enemy nation.
832 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy put it, both sides States into space with the 1957 Sputnik satellite and the
were chastened by “having come so close to the edge.” 1961 flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Capitalizing on
America’s fascination with space, Kennedy persuaded
Kennedy and the World Kennedy also launched a Congress to increase funding for the government’s
series of bold nonmilitary initiatives. One was the space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space
Peace Corps, which embodied a call to public service Administration (NASA), enabling the United States to
put forth in his inaugural address (“Ask not what your pull ahead of the Soviet Union. Kennedy’s ambition
country can do for you, but what you can do for your was realized when U.S. astronauts arrived on the moon
country”). Thousands of men and women agreed to in 1969.
devote two or more years as volunteers for projects
such as teaching English to Filipino schoolchildren or
helping African villagers obtain clean water. Exhibiting Making a Commitment in Vietnam
the idealism of the early 1960s, the Peace Corps was Despite slight improvements, U.S.-Soviet relations
also a low-cost Cold War weapon intended to show stayed tense and containment remained the corner-
the developing world that there was an alternative to stone of U.S. policy. When Kennedy became president,
communism. Kennedy championed space exploration, he inherited Eisenhower’s commitment in Vietnam.
as well. In a 1962 speech, he proposed that the nation Kennedy saw Vietnam in Cold War terms, but rather
commit itself to landing a man on the moon within the than practicing brinksmanship — threatening nuclear
decade. The Soviets had already beaten the United war to stop communism — Kennedy sought what at
CHAPTER 25 Cold War America, 1945–1963 833
the time seemed a more intelligent and realistic southern government and prevent victory for Ho Chi
approach. In 1961, he increased military aid to the Minh and the North, the United States had to support
South Vietnamese and expanded the role of U.S. Diem’s authoritarian regime. But the regime’s political
Special Forces (“Green Berets”), who would train the repression of its opponents made Diem more unpopu-
South Vietnamese army in unconventional, small- lar. He was assassinated on November 3, 1963. Whether
group warfare tactics. one supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam or not, the
South Vietnam’s corrupt and repressive Diem elemental paradox remained unchanged: in its efforts
regime, propped up by Eisenhower since 1954, was los- to win, the United States brought defeat ever closer.
ing ground in spite of American aid. By 1961, Diem’s
opponents, with backing from North Vietnam, had
formed a revolutionary movement known as the
National Liberation Front (NLF). NLF guerrilla
SUMMARY
forces — the Vietcong — found allies among peasants The Cold War began as a conflict between the United
alienated by Diem’s “strategic hamlet” program, which States and the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe and
had uprooted entire villages and moved villagers the fate of post–World War II Germany. Early in the
into barbed-wire compounds. Furthermore, Buddhists conflict, the United States adopted a strategy of con-
charged Diem, a Catholic, with religious persecution. tainment, which quickly expanded to Asia after China
Starting in May 1963, militant Buddhists staged became a communist state under Mao Zedong. The
dramatic demonstrations, including self-immolations first effect of that expansion was the Korean War, after
recorded by reporters covering the activities of the which, under Dwight D. Eisenhower, containment of
16,000 U.S. military personnel then in Vietnam. communism became America’s guiding principle
These self-immolations, shown on television to an across the developing world — often called the Third
uneasy global audience, powerfully illustrated the dilem- World. Cold War tensions relaxed in the late 1950s but
mas of American policy in Vietnam. To ensure a stable erupted again under John F. Kennedy with the Cuban
834 PART 8 CHAPTER REVIEW
missile crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, and major Cold War–inspired development was a climate of fear
increases in American military assistance to South over internal subversion by Communists that gave rise
Vietnam. Cold War imperatives between 1945 and the to McCarthyism. Truman’s successor, Eisenhower,
early 1960s meant a major military buildup, a massive brought the Republicans back into power. Although
nuclear arms race, and unprecedented entanglements personally conservative, Eisenhower actually proved a
across the globe. New Dealer in disguise. When Eisenhower left office
On the domestic front, Harry S. Truman started and Kennedy became president, it seemed that a “lib-
out with high hopes for an expanded New Deal, only to eral consensus” prevailed, with old-fashioned, laissez-
be confounded by resistance from Congress and the faire conservatism mostly marginalized in American
competing demands of the Cold War. The greatest political life.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What factors led to the Cold War? 4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
events listed under “Politics and Power” and
2. What was the domestic impact of the anticommu-
“Identity” on the thematic timelines on pages 671
nist crusade of the late 1940s and 1950s?
and 803. Radicalism played a significant role in
3. Why did the United States become involved in American history between 1890 and 1945. What
Vietnam? radical politics took root in the United States dur-
ing this time, and how did the government, the
business community, and different social groups
respond to that radicalism?
CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER REVIEW 835
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE How was and the map of population changes (Chapter 26,
America’s Cold War foreign policy an extension of Map 26.2) on page 862. Where were the majority
principles and policies from earlier eras, and in of military weapons manufactured? What were
what ways was it a break with those traditions? Was the connections between weapons and geography?
the Cold War inevitable? Why or why not? How did those connections affect population dis-
tribution in the United States and within individual
2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Look at the map of the
metropolitan areas?
military-industrial complex (Map 25.3) on page 817
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History The Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest’s
(2005), and Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the site, “The Cold War and Red Scare in Washington
Cold War, 1945–2006, 10th ed. (2008). Excellent State,” at washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn
overviews of the Cold War from distinct perspectives. /Website/Classroom Materials/Curriculum Packets
/Cold War & Red Scare/Cold War and Red Scare
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decod-
.html, provides detailed information on how the Red
ing Soviet Espionage in America (1999). A thoughtful
Scare operated in one state.
analysis of Soviet espionage.
The Woodrow Wilson International Center has
W. J. Rorabaugh, Kennedy and the Promise of the
established the Cold War International History
Sixties (2002). A good starting point for Kennedy’s
Project at wilsoncenter.org/cwihp.
presidency.
Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism
in America (1998). An excellent, detailed account of
the McCarthy period.
836 PART 8 CHAPTER REVIEW
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
t U.S. sides with French in war between French and Vietminh over control of Vietnam
1961 t Kennedy orders the first contingent of Special Forces (“Green Berets”) to Vietnam
KEY TURNING POINTS: What turning points and crises defined American containment pol-
icy between 1946 and 1953? Explain your answer with evidence from the timeline and chapter.
Triumph of the Middle Class
26
C H A P T E R
1945–1963
A
POSTWAR PROSPERITY t the height of the Cold War, in IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
AND THE AFFLUENT 1959, U.S. vice president Richard Why did consumer culture become
SOCIETY Nixon debated Soviet premier such a fixture of American life in
Economy: From Recovery Nikita Khrushchev on the merits of Pepsi- the postwar decades, and how did it
to Dominance
Cola, TV dinners, and electric ovens. Face- affect politics and society?
A Nation of Consumers to-face at the opening of an American
Youth Culture exhibition in Moscow, Nixon and Khrushchev strolled through a model American home,
Religion and the Middle Class assembled to demonstrate the consumer products available to the typical citizen of the
United States. Nixon explained to Khrushchev that although the Soviet Union may
THE AMERICAN
FAMILY IN THE ERA have had superior rockets, the United States was ahead in other areas, such as color
OF CONTAINMENT television.
The Baby Boom This was Cold War politics by other means — a symbolic contest over which coun-
Women, Work, and Family try’s standard of living was higher. What was so striking about the so-called kitchen
Challenging Middle-Class debate was Nixon’s insistence, to a disbelieving Khrushchev, that a modern home filled
Morality with shiny new toasters, televisions, and other consumer products was accessible to
the average American worker. “Any steelworker could buy this house,” Nixon told the
A SUBURBAN NATION Soviet leader. The kitchen debate settled little in the geopolitical rivalry between the
The Postwar Housing Boom United States and the Soviet Union. But it speaks to us across the decades because it
Rise of the Sunbelt reveals how Americans had come to see themselves by the late 1950s: as home owners
Two Nations: Urban and and consumers, as a people for whom the middle-class American Dream was a com-
Suburban mercial aspiration.
The real story of the postwar period was the growing number of Americans who
embraced that aspiration. In the two decades following the end of World War II, a
new middle class was born in the United States. Fortune magazine estimated that in
the 1950s, the middle class — which Fortune defined as families with more than $5,000
in annual earnings after taxes (about $40,000 today) — was increasing at the rate of
1.1 million people per year. Riding a wave of rising incomes, American dominance in the
global economy, and Cold War federal spending, the postwar middle class enjoyed the
highest standard of living in the world.
However, the success of the middle class could not hide deeper troubles. This was
an era of neither universal conformity nor diminishing social strife. Jim Crow laws, con-
tradictions in women’s lives, a rebellious youth culture, and changing sexual mores were
only the most obvious sources of social tension. Suburban growth came at the expense
of cities, hastening urban decay and exacerbating racial segregation. Nor was prosperity
ever as widespread as the Moscow exhibit implied. The suburban lifestyle was beyond
the reach of the working poor, the elderly, immigrants, Mexican Americans, and most
African Americans — indeed, the majority of the country.
838
The Middle-Class Family Ideal A family eats breakfast at a campground in Zion National Park,
Utah. Americans embraced a middle-class, nuclear family ideal in the postwar decades. Photo by Justin Locke/
National Geographic/Getty Images.
839
840 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
As permanent mobilization took hold, science, grew explosively after 1945. Postwar corporate culture
industry, and government became intertwined. Cold inspired numerous critics, who argued that the obedi-
War competition for military supremacy spawned both ence demanded of white-collar workers was stifling
an arms race and a space race as the United States and creativity and blighting lives. In The Lonely Crowd
the Soviet Union each sought to develop more explo- (1950), the sociologist David Riesman mourned a lost
sive bombs and more powerful rockets. Federal spend- masculinity and contrasted the independent business-
ing underwrote 90 percent of the cost of research for men and professionals of earlier years with the mana-
aviation and space, 65 percent for electricity and elec- gerial class of the postwar world. The sociologist
tronics, 42 percent for scientific instruments, and even William Whyte painted a somber picture of “organiza-
24 percent for automobiles. With the government foot- tion men” who left the home “spiritually as well as
ing the bill, corporations lost little time in transform- physically to take the vows of organization life.” Andrew
ing new technology into useful products. Backed by Hacker, in The Corporation Take-Over (1964), warned
the Pentagon, for instance, IBM and Sperry Rand that a small handful of such organization men “can
pressed ahead with research on integrated circuits, draw up an investment program calling for the expen-
which later spawned the computer revolution. diture of several billions of dollars” and thereby “deter-
When the Soviet Union launched the world’s first mine the quality of life for substantial segments of
satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, the startled United States society.”
went into high gear to catch up in the Cold War space Many of these “investment programs” relied on
competition. Alarmed that the United States was fall- mechanization, or automation — another important
ing behind in science and technology, Eisenhower factor in the postwar boom. From 1947 to 1975, worker
persuaded Congress to appropriate additional money productivity more than doubled across the whole of
for college scholarships and university research. The the economy. American factories replaced manpower
National Defense Education Act of 1958 funneled with machines, substituting cheap fossil energy for
millions of dollars into American universities, helping human muscle. As industries mechanized, they could
institutions such as the University of California at turn out products more efficiently and at lower cost.
Berkeley, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Insti- Mechanization did not come without social costs, how-
tute of Technology, and the University of Michigan ever. Over the course of the postwar decades, millions
become the leading research centers in the world. of high-wage manufacturing jobs were lost as machines
replaced workers, affecting entire cities and regions.
Corporate Power Despite its massive size, the Corporate leaders approved, but workers and their
military-corporate partnership was only one part of the union representatives were less enthusiastic. “How are
nation’s economy. For over half a century, the consoli- you going to sell cars to all of these machines?” won-
dation of economic power into large corporate firms dered Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto
had characterized American capitalism. In the postwar Workers (UAW).
decades, that tendency accelerated. By 1970, the top
four U.S. automakers produced 91 percent of all motor The Economic Record The American economy
vehicles sold in the country; the top four firms in tires produced an extraordinary postwar record. Annual
produced 72 percent; those in cigarettes, 84 percent; GDP jumped from $213 billion in 1945 to more than
and those in detergents, 70 percent. Eric Johnston, for- $500 billion in 1960; by 1970, it exceeded $1 trillion
mer president of the American Chamber of Commerce, (Figure 26.1). This sustained economic growth meant a
declared that “we have entered a period of accelerating 25 percent rise in real income for ordinary Americans
bigness in all aspects of American life.” Expansion into between 1946 and 1959. Even better, the new prosper-
foreign markets also spurred corporate growth. During ity featured low inflation. After a burst of high prices
the 1950s, U.S. exports nearly doubled, giving the in the immediate postwar period, inflation slowed to
nation a trade surplus of close to $5 billion in 1960. By 2 to 3 percent annually, and it stayed low until the
the 1970s, such firms as Coca-Cola, Gillette, IBM, and escalation of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s.
Mobil made more than half their profits abroad. Feeling secure about the future, Americans were eager
To staff their bureaucracies, the postwar corporate to spend and rightly felt that they were better off than
giants required a huge white-collar army. A new gener- ever before. In 1940, 43 percent of American families
ation of corporate chieftains emerged, operating in a owned their homes; by 1960, 62 percent did. In that
complex environment that demanded long-range fore- period, moreover, income inequality dropped sharply.
casting. Companies turned to the universities, which The share of total income going to the top tenth — the
CHAPTER 26 Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963 843
1,000
GDP in constant (1972) dollars help to ensure “full employment and improved living
500 standards for the rest of the nation.”
GDP
0
1930 1940 1950 1960 1970
The GI Bill The new ethic of consumption appealed
to the postwar middle class, the driving force behind
the expanding domestic market. Middle-class status
FIGURE 26.1
Gross Domestic Product, 1930–1972
was more accessible than ever before because of the
After a sharp dip during the Great Depression, the GDP
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly
rose steadily in both real and constant dollars in the known as the GI Bill. In the immediate postwar years,
postwar period. more than half of all U.S. college students were veterans
attending class on the government’s dime. By the
middle of the 1950s, 2.2 million veterans had attended
richest Americans — declined by nearly one-third college and another 5.6 million had attended trade
from the 45 percent it had been in 1940. American school with government financing. Before the GI Bill,
society had become not only more prosperous but also commented one veteran, “I looked upon college edu-
more egalitarian. cation as likely as my owning a Rolls-Royce with a
However, the picture was not as rosy at the bottom, chauffeur.”
where tenacious poverty accompanied the economic Government financing of education helped make
boom. In The Affluent Society (1958), which analyzed the U.S. workforce the best educated in the world in the
the nation’s successful, “affluent” middle class, econo- 1950s and 1960s. American colleges, universities, and
mist John Kenneth Galbraith argued that the poor trade schools grew by leaps and bounds to accommo-
were only an “afterthought” in the minds of economists date the flood of students — and expanded again when
and politicians, who largely celebrated the new growth. the children of those students, the baby boomers,
As Galbraith noted, one in thirteen families at the time reached college age in the 1960s. At Rutgers University,
earned less than $1,000 a year (about $7,500 in today’s enrollment went from 7,000 before the war to 16,000 in
dollars). Four years later, in The Other America (1962), 1947; at the University of Minnesota, from 15,000 to
the left-wing social critic Michael Harrington chron- more than 27,000. The GI Bill trained nearly half a mil-
icled “the economic underworld of American life,” and lion engineers; 200,000 doctors, dentists, and nurses;
a U.S. government study, echoing a well-known sen- and 150,000 scientists (among many other profes-
tence from Franklin Roosevelt’s second inaugural sions). Better education meant higher earning power,
address (“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and higher earning power translated into the con-
ill-nourished”), declared “one-third of the nation” to be sumer spending that drove the postwar economy. One
poorly paid, poorly educated, and poorly housed. It observer of the GI Bill was so impressed with its
appeared that in economic terms, as the top and the achievements that he declared it responsible for “the
middle converged, the bottom remained far behind. most important educational and social transformation
in American history.”
The GI Bill stimulated the economy and expanded
A Nation of Consumers the middle class in another way: by increasing home
The most breathtaking development in the postwar ownership. Between the end of World War II and
American economy was the dramatic expansion of the 1966, one of every five single-family homes built in
domestic consumer market. The sheer quantity of con- the United States was financed through a GI Bill
sumer goods available to the average person was with- mortgage — 2.5 million new homes in all. In cities and
out precedent. In some respects, the postwar decades suburbs across the country, the Veterans Administra-
seemed like the 1920s all over again, with an abun- tion (VA), which helped former soldiers purchase new
dance of new gadgets and appliances, a craze for auto- homes with no down payment, sparked a building
mobiles, and new types of mass media. Yet there boom that created jobs in the construction industry
was a significant difference: in the 1950s, consumption and fueled consumer spending in home appliances and
became associated with citizenship. Buying things, once automobiles. Education and home ownership were
a sign of personal indulgence, now meant participating more than personal triumphs for the families of World
844 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
War II veterans (and Korean and Vietnam War veter- Motors, balked at that demand, the two sides seemed
ans, after a new GI Bill was passed in 1952). They were set for a long struggle. Between 1947 and 1950, how-
concrete financial assets that helped lift more Americans ever, a broad “labor-management accord” gradually
than ever before into a mass-consumption-oriented
middle class.
40
Nonagricultural workers belonging to unions (%)
emerged across most industries. This was not indus- reveal the interior of the brand-new house, stocked
trial peace, because the country still experienced many with the latest consumer products: accessories for the
strikes, but a general acceptance of collective bargain- baby’s room; a new stove, oven, and refrigerator; and a
ing as the method for setting the terms of employment. washer and dryer, along with cleaning products and
The result was rising real income. The average worker other household goods. The article does not mention
with three dependents gained 18 percent in spendable automobiles, but the photo of the house’s exterior
real income in the 1950s. makes the point clear: father drives home from work in
In addition, unions delivered greater leisure (more a new car.
paid holidays and longer vacations) and, in a star- Consumption for the home, including automo-
tling departure, a social safety net. In postwar Europe, biles, drove the postwar American economy as much
America’s allies were constructing welfare states. But as, or more than, the military-industrial complex did.
having lost the bruising battle in Washington for If we think like advertisers and manufacturers, we can
national health care during Truman’s presidency, Amer- see why. Between 1945 and 1970, more than 25 million
ican unions turned to the bargaining table. By the end new houses were built in the United States. Each
of the 1950s, union contracts commonly provided required its own supply of new appliances, from refrig-
pension plans and company-paid health insurance. erators to lawn mowers. In 1955 alone, Americans pur-
Collective bargaining, the process of trade unions chased 4 million new refrigerators, and between 1940
and employers negotiating workplace contracts, had and 1951 the sale of power mowers increased from
become, in effect, the American alternative to the Euro- 35,000 per year to more than 1 million. Moreover, as
pean welfare state and, as Reuther boasted, the pass- American industry discovered planned obsolescence —
port into the middle class. the encouragement of consumers to replace appliances
The labor-management accord, though impressive, and cars every few years — the
was never as durable or universal as it seemed. Vul- home became a site of perpetual EXPLAIN
nerabilities lurked. For one thing, the sheltered domes- consumer desire. CONSEQUENCES
tic markets — the essential condition for generous Children also encouraged How did the tastes and
contracts — were quite fragile. In certain industries, the consumption. The baby boomers values of the postwar
lead firms were already losing market share. Second, born between World War II and middle class affect the
generally overlooked were the many unorganized work- the late 1950s have consistently, country?
ers with no middle-class passport — those consigned throughout every phase of their
to unorganized industries, casual labor, or low-wage lives, been the darlings of American advertising and
jobs in the service sector. A final vulnerability was the consumption. When they were infants, companies
most basic: the abiding antiunionism of American focused on developing new baby products, from dis-
employers. At heart, managers regarded the labor- posable diapers to instant formula. When they were
management accord as a negotiated truce, not a per- toddlers and young children, new television programs,
manent peace. The postwar labor-management accord board games, fast food, TV dinners, and thousands of
turned out to be a transitory event, not a permanent different kinds of toys came to market to supply the
condition of American economic life. rambunctious youth. When they were teenagers, rock
music, Hollywood films, and a constantly marketed
Houses, Cars, and Children Increased educational “teen culture” — with its appropriate clothing, music,
levels, growing home ownership, and higher wages all hairstyles, and other accessories — bombarded them.
enabled more Americans than ever before to become Remarkably, in 1956, middle-class American teenagers
members of what one historian has called a “consumer on average had a weekly income of more than $10,
republic.” But what did they buy? The postwar empha- close to the weekly disposable income of an entire fam-
sis on nuclear families and suburbs provides the answer. ily a generation earlier.
In the emerging suburban nation, three elements came
together to create patterns of consumption that would Television The emergence of commercial television
endure for decades: houses, cars, and children. in the United States was swift and overwhelming. In
A feature in a 1949 issue of McCall’s, a magazine the realm of technology, only the automobile and the
targeting middle-class women, illustrates the connec- personal computer were its equal in transforming
tions. “I now have three working centers,” a typical everyday life in the twentieth century. In 1947, there
housewife explains. “The baby center, a baking center were 7,000 TV sets in American homes. A year later, the
and a cleaning center.” Accompanying illustrations CBS and NBC radio networks began offering regular
846 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
Teenagers
These teenage girls and boys are being restrained
by police outside an Elvis Presley concert in Florida
in 1956. Elvis, who was instrumental in popularizing
rock ’n’ roll music among white middle-class teenag-
ers in the mid-1950s, was one example of a broader
phenomenon: the creation of the “teenager” as a
distinct demographic, cultural category and, perhaps
most significantly, consumer group. Beginning in the
1950s, middle-class teenagers had money to spend,
and advertisers and other entrepreneurs — such as
the music executives who marketed Elvis or the
Hollywood executives who invented the “teen
film” — sought ways to win their allegiance and
their dollars. Photo by Charles Trainor/Time Life Pictures/
Getty Images.
programming, and by 1950 Americans owned 7.3 mil- show popular in the mid-1950s, women competed to
lion sets. Ten years later, 87 percent of American homes see who could tell the most heartrending story of trag-
had at least one television set. Having conquered the edy and loss. The winner was lavished with household
home, television would soon become the principal products: refrigerators, toasters, ovens, and the like. In
mediator between the consumer and the marketplace. a groundbreaking advertisement for Anacin aspirin, a
Television advertisers mastered the art of manufac- tiny hammer pounded inside the skull of a headache
turing consumer desire. TV stations, like radio stations sufferer. Almost overnight, sales of Anacin increased
before them, depended entirely on advertising for prof- by 50 percent.
its. The first television executives understood that as By the late 1950s, what Americans saw on televi-
long as they sold viewers to advertisers they would stay sion, both in the omnipresent commercials and in the
on the air. Early corporate-sponsored shows (such as programming, was an overwhelmingly white, Anglo-
General Electric Theater and U.S. Steel Hour) and Saxon, Protestant world of nuclear families, suburban
simple product jingles (such as “No matter what the homes, and middle-class life. A typical show was Father
time or place, let’s keep up with that happy pace. 7-Up Knows Best, starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt.
your thirst away!”) gave way by the early 1960s to slick Father left home each morning wearing a suit and
advertising campaigns that used popular music, movie carrying a briefcase. Mother was a full-time housewife
stars, sports figures, and stimulating graphics to capti- and stereotypical female, prone to bad driving and
vate viewers. tears. Leave It to Beaver, another immensely popular
By creating powerful visual narratives of comfort series about suburban family life, embodied similar
and plenty, television revolutionized advertising and late-fifties themes. Earlier in the decade, however, tele-
changed forever the ways products were sold to Amer- vision featured grittier realities. The Honeymooners,
ican, and global, consumers. On Queen for a Day, a starring Jackie Gleason as a Brooklyn bus driver, and
CHAPTER 26 Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963 847
The Life of Riley, a situation comedy featuring a partly in jest, the CBS radio commentator Eric Sevareid
California aircraft worker, treated working-class lives. questioned “whether the teenagers will take over the
Two other early-fifties television series, Beulah, starring United States lock, stock, living room, and garage.”
Ethel Waters and then Louise Beavers as an African Sevareid was grumbling about American youth cul-
American maid, and the comedic Amos ’n’ Andy, were ture, a phenomenon first noticed in the 1920s and with
the only shows featuring black actors in major roles. its roots in the lengthening years of education, the role
Television was never a showcase for the breadth of of peer groups, and the consumer tastes of young
American society, but in the second half of the 1950s people. Market research revealed a distinct teen market
broadcasting lost much of its ethnic, racial, and class to be exploited. Newsweek noted with awe in 1951 that
diversity and became a vehicle for the transmission of a the aggregate of the weekly spending money of teenag-
narrow range of middle-class tastes and values. ers was enough to buy 190 million candy bars, 130 mil-
lion soft drinks, and 230 million sticks of gum. Increas-
ingly, advertisers targeted the young, both to capture
Youth Culture their spending money and to exploit their influence on
One of the most striking developments in American family purchases.
life in the postwar decades was the emergence of the Hollywood movies played a large role in fostering a
teenager as a cultural phenomenon. In 1956, only teenage culture. Young people made up the largest
848 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
audience for motion pictures, and by playing what were called “race” records. “If I could
UNDERSTAND
Hollywood studios learned over find a white man who had the Negro sound and the
POINTS OF VIEW
How did rebellion become
the course of the 1950s to cater Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars,” a record
an integral part of con- to them. The success of films company owner is quoted as saying. The performer
sumer culture in the such as The Wild One (1953), star- who fit that bill was Elvis Presley, who rocketed into
postwar period? ring Marlon Brando; Blackboard instant celebrity in 1956 with his hit records “Hound
Jungle (1955), with Sidney Poitier; Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel,” covers of songs origi-
and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), starring James nally recorded by black artists such as Big Mama
Dean, convinced movie executives that films directed Thornton. Between 1953 and 1959, record sales
at teenagers were worthy investments. “What are you increased from $213 million to $603 million, with rock
rebelling against?” Brando is asked in The Wild One. ’n’ roll as the driving force.
“Whattaya got?” he replies. By the early 1960s, Holly- Many unhappy adults saw in rock ’n’ roll music an
wood had retooled its business model, shifting empha- invitation to interracial dating, rebellion, and a more
sis away from adults and families to teenagers. The flagrant sexuality. The media featured hundreds of sto-
“teenpic” soon included multiple genres: horror, rock ’n’ ries on problem teens, and denunciations of the new
roll, dangerous youth, and beach party, among others. music poured forth from many corners. Such condem-
nation only deflected off the new youth culture or, if
Rock ’n’ Roll What really defined the youth culture, anything, increased its popularity. Both Hollywood
however, was its music. Rejecting the romantic ballads and the music industry had learned that youth rebel-
of the 1940s, teenagers discovered rock ’n’ roll, which lion sold tickets.
originated in African American rhythm and blues. The
Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed took the lead in Cultural Dissenters Youth rebellion was only one
introducing white America to the black-created sound aspect of a broader discontent with the sometimes
Motown
Mary Wilson, Diana Ross, and Florence
Ballard (from left to right) were the founding
members of the Motown singing group the
Supremes (shown here in concert in 1964),
which produced twelve number-one singles.
Motown, a record label owned by African
American entrepreneur Berry Gordy, special-
ized in so-called cross-over acts: black singers
who sold records to white audiences. In the
era of Jim Crow, Motown represented a
small but noteworthy step toward a less
racially segregated American culture. Photo
by RB/Redferns/Getty Images.
CHAPTER 26 Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963 849
saccharine consumer culture of the 1950s. Many art- therapeutic use of religion as an antidote to life’s trials
ists, writers, and jazz musicians embarked on powerful and tribulations. Peale taught that with faith in
new experimental projects in a remarkable flowering God and “positive thinking,” anyone could overcome
of intensely personal, introspective art forms. Black obstacles and become a success. Graham, Schuller,
musicians developed a hard-driving improvisational Peale, and other 1950s evangelicals laid the foundation
style known as bebop. Whether the “hot” bebop of sax- for the rise of the televangelists, who created popular
ophonist Charlie Parker or the more subdued “cool” television ministries in the 1970s.
sound of the influential trumpeter Miles Davis, post- The postwar purveyors of religious faith cast Amer-
war jazz was cerebral, intimate, and individualistic. As icans as a righteous people opposed to communist
such, it stood in stark contrast to the commercialized, atheism. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sen-
dance-oriented “swing” bands of the 1930s and 1940s. tenced to death in 1953, the judge criticized them for
Black jazz musicians found eager fans not only in “devoting themselves to the Russian ideology of denial
the African American community but also among of God.” Cold War imperatives drew Catholics,
young white Beats, a group of writers and poets cen- Protestants, and Jews into an influential ecumenical
tered in New York and San Francisco who disdained movement that downplayed doctrinal differences. The
middle-class materialism. In his poem “Howl” (1956), phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of
which became a manifesto of the Beat generation, Allegiance in 1954, and U.S. coins carried the words
Allen Ginsberg lamented: “I saw the best minds of my
generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets
at dawn looking for an angry fix.” In works such as Jack
Kerouac’s novel On the Road (1957), the Beats glorified
spontaneity, sexual adventurism, drug use, and spiritu-
ality. The Beats were apolitical, but their cultural rebel-
lion would, in the 1960s, inspire a new generation of
young rebels disenchanted with both the political and
cultural status quo.
“In God We Trust” after 1956. These religious initia- having babies. Everyone expected to have several chil-
tives struck a distinctly moderate tone, however, in dren — it was part of adulthood, almost a citizen’s
comparison with the politicized evangelism that responsibility. After a century and a half of decline, the
emerged in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapter 29). birthrate shot up. More babies were born in the six
years between 1948 and 1953 than in the previous
thirty years (Figure 26.3).
One of the reasons for this baby boom was that
The American Family in the people were having children at the same time. A sec-
Era of Containment ond was a drop in the average marriage age — down to
twenty-two for men and twenty for women. Younger
Marriage, family structure, and gender roles had been parents meant a bumper crop of children. Women who
undergoing significant changes since the turn of the came of age in the 1930s averaged 2.4 children; their
twentieth century (Chapter 18). Beginning in the nine- counterparts in the 1950s averaged 3.2 children. Such a
teenth century, middle-class Americans increasingly dramatic turnaround reflected couples’ decisions dur-
saw marriage as “companionate,” that is, based on ing the Great Depression to limit childbearing and
romantic love and a lifetime of shared friendship. Com- couples’ contrasting decisions in the postwar years to
panionate did not mean equal. In the mid-twentieth have more children. The baby boom peaked in 1957
century, family life remained governed by notions of and remained at a high level until the early 1960s. Far
paternalism, in which men provided economic sup- from “normal,” all of these developments were anoma-
port and controlled the family’s financial resources, lies, temporary reversals of long-standing demographic
while women cared for children and occupied a sec- trends. From the perspective of the whole of the twen-
ondary position in public life. tieth century, the 1950s and early 1960s stand out as
The resurgent postwar American middle class was exceptions to declining birthrates, rising divorce rates,
preoccupied with the virtues of paternalism. Everyone and the steadily rising marriage age.
from professional psychologists to television advertis- The passage of time revealed the ever-widening
ers and every organization from schools to the popular impact of the baby boom. When baby boomers com-
press celebrated nuclear families. Children were prized, peted for jobs during the 1970s, the labor market
and women’s caregiving roles were valorized. This view became tight. When career-oriented baby boomers
of family life, and especially its emphasis on female belatedly began having children in the 1980s, the birth-
“domesticity,” was bolstered by Cold War politics. rate jumped. And in our own time, as baby boomers
Americans who deviated from prevailing gender and
familial norms were not only viewed with scorn but
were also sometimes thought to be subversive and
50
politically dangerous. The word containment could
46
apply to the home as easily as to foreign policy. The
family had become politicized by the Cold War. 42
38
postwar middle-class morality hid deeper, longer-term 34
changes in the way marriage, gender roles, women’s 30
work, and even sex were understood. To comprehend 26
the postwar decades, we have to keep in mind both the 22
value placed on domesticity and the tumultuous
18
changes surging beneath its prescriptions.
14
At the dawn of the postwar era, Americans faced new opportunities and new
anxieties. Many former soldiers attended college and purchased new homes on
the GI Bill, which forever changed their lives. Women faced new pressures to
Coming of Age in the realize the ideal role of housewife and mother. On the horizon, both in reality
and in the American imagination, lurked communism, which Americans feared
Postwar Years but little understood. And racial segregation continued to shape the ordinary
lives of Americans. Recorded here are several different reactions to these post-
war tensions, distinct experiences of coming of age in the 1940s and 1950s.
853
854 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
between the ages of six and seventeen. In that same women’s pay, which averaged 60 percent of men’s pay
year, 30 percent of wives worked, and by 1970, it was in 1963.
40 percent. For working-class women, in particular, Contrary to stereotype, however, women’s paid
the economic needs of their families demanded that work was not merely supplementary. It helped lift
they work outside the home. families into the middle class. Even in the prosperous
Despite rising employment rates, occupational seg- 1950s, many men found that their wages could not pay
mentation still haunted women. Until 1964, the classi- for what middle-class life demanded: cars, houses,
fied sections of newspapers separated employment vacations, and college education for the children. Many
ads into “Help Wanted Male” and “Help Wanted families needed more than one wage earner just to get
Female.” More than 80 percent of all employed by. Among married women, the highest rates of labor-
women did stereotypical women’s force participation in the 1950s were found in families
TRACE CHANGE work as salesclerks, health-care at the lower end of the middle class. Over the course of
OVER TIME technicians, waitresses, steward- the postwar decades, from 1945 to 1965, more and
What transformations in esses, domestic servants, recep- more women, including married women, from all class
women’s economic role tionists, telephone operators, and backgrounds, entered the paid workforce.
took place in the 1950s secretaries. In 1960, only 3 per- How could American society steadfastly uphold
and 1960s? cent of lawyers and 6 percent of the domestic ideal when so many wives and mothers
physicians were women; on the were out of the house and at work? In many ways, the
flip side, 97 percent of nurses and 85 percent of librari- contradiction was hidden by the women themselves.
ans were women. Along with women’s jobs went Fearing public disapproval, women would explain
CHAPTER 26 Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963 855
their work in family-oriented terms — as a way to save Alfred Kinsey Yet beneath the surface of middle-
money for the children’s college education, for instance. class morality, Americans were less repressed than
Moreover, when women took jobs outside the home, confused. They struggled to reconcile new freedoms
they still bore full responsibility for child care and with older moral traditions. This was especially true
household management, contributing to the “double with regard to sex. Two controversial studies by an
day” of paid work and family work. As one overbur- unassuming Indiana University zoologist named
dened woman noted, she now had “two full-time jobs Alfred Kinsey forced questions about sexuality into the
instead of just one — underpaid clerical worker and open. Kinsey and his research team published Sexual
unpaid housekeeper.” Finally, the pressures of the Cold Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and followed it up
War made strong nuclear families with breadwinning in 1953 with Sexual Behavior in the Human Female —
fathers and domesticated mothers symbols of a healthy an 842-page book that sold 270,000 copies in the
nation. Americans wanted to believe this even if it did first month after its publication.
not perfectly describe the reality of their lives. Taking a scientific, rather than EXPLAIN
moralistic, approach, Kinsey, who CONSEQUENCES
became known as “the sex doc- What were the con-
Challenging Middle-Class Morality tor,” documented the full range of tradictions in postwar
In many ways, the two decades between 1945 and 1965 sexual experiences of thousands domesticity and middle-
were a period of cultural conservatism that reflected of Americans. He broke numer- class morality?
the values of domesticity. At the dawn of the 1960s, ous taboos, discussing such topics
going steady as a prelude to marriage was the fad in as homosexuality and marital infidelity in the detached
high school. College women had curfews and needed language of science.
permission to see a male visitor. Americans married Both studies confirmed that a sexual revolution,
young; more than half of those who married in 1963 although a largely hidden one, had already begun to
were under the age of twenty-one. After the birth con- transform American society by the early 1950s. Kinsey
trol pill came on the market in 1960, few doctors pre- estimated that 85 percent of men had had sex prior to
scribed it to unmarried women, and even married marriage and that more than 25 percent of married
women did not enjoy unfettered access to contracep- women had had sex outside of marriage by the age of
tion until the Supreme Court ruled it a “privacy” right forty. These were shocking public admissions in the
in the 1965 decision Griswold v. Connecticut. late 1940s and early 1950s, and “hotter than the Kinsey
report” became a national figure of speech. Kinsey was were encouraging juvenile delinquency, the U.S. Senate
criticized by statisticians — because his samples were not held nationally televised hearings in 1954. The Senate’s
randomly selected — and condemned even more fer- final report, written largely by the Tennessee Democrat
vently by religious leaders, who charged him with Estes Kefauver, complained of the “scantily clad women”
encouraging promiscuity and adultery. But his research and “penchant for violent death” common in comic
opened a national conversation with profound impli- books aimed at teenagers. Kefauver’s report forced the
cations for the future. Even if Kinsey’s numbers were off, comics industry to tame its wildest practices but did
he helped Americans learn to talk more openly about sex. little to slow the growing frankness about both sex and
violence in the nation’s printed media and films.
The Homophile Movement Among the most con-
troversial of Kinsey’s claims was that homosexuality To see a longer excerpt from the Senate hearing
on juvenile delinquency, along with other primary
was far more prevalent than most Americans believed. sources from this period, see Sources for America’s
Although the American Psychiatric Association would History.
officially define homosexuality as a mental illness in
1952, Kinsey’s research found that 37 percent of men A magazine entrepreneur from Chicago named
had engaged in some form of homosexual activity by Hugh Hefner played a leading role in that growing
early adulthood, as had 13 percent of women. Even frankness. Hefner founded Playboy magazine in 1953,
more important, Kinsey claimed that 10 percent of in which he created a countermorality to domesticity: a
American men were exclusively homosexual. These fictional world populated by “hip” bachelor men and
claims came as little surprise, but great encouragement, sexually available women. Hefner’s imagined bachelors
to a group of gay and lesbian activists who called them- condemned marriage and lived in sophisticated apart-
selves “homophiles.” Organized primarily in the ments filled with the latest stereo equipment and other
Mattachine Society (the first gay rights organization in consumer products. While domesticated fathers bought
the country, founded in 1951) and the Daughters of lawn mowers and patio furniture, Hefner’s magazine
Bilitis (a lesbian organization founded in 1955), homo- encouraged men to spend money on clothing and jazz
philes were a small but determined collection of activ- albums for themselves, and for the “scantily clad
ists who sought equal rights for gays and lesbians. “The women” that filled its pages. Hefner and his numerous
lesbian is a woman endowed with all the attributes of imitators became powerful purveyors of sex in the
any other woman,” wrote the pioneer lesbian activist media. But Hefner was the exception that proved the
Del Martin in 1956. “The salvation of the lesbian lies in rule: marriage, not swinging bachelorhood, remained
her acceptance of herself without guilt or anxiety.” the destination for the vast majority of men. Millions of
Building on the urban gay and lesbian communities men read Playboy, but few adopted its fantasy lifestyle.
that had coalesced during World War II, homophiles
sought to change American attitudes about same-sex
love. They faced daunting obstacles, since same-sex
sexual relations were illegal in every state and scorned,
or feared, by most Americans. To combat prejudice and
A Suburban Nation
change the laws, homophile organizations cultivated a Prosperity — how much an economy produces, how
respectable, middle-class image. Members were encour- much people earn — is more easily measured than is
aged to avoid bars and nightclubs, to dress in conserva- quality of life. During the 1950s, however, the American
tive shirts and ties (for men) and modest skirts and definition of the good life emerged with exceptional
blouses (for women), and to seek out professional psy- distinctness: a high value on consumption, a devotion
chologists who would attest to their “normalcy.” Only to family and domesticity, and preference for suburban
in the 1960s did homophiles begin to talk about the living. In this section, we consider the third dimension
“homophile vote” and their “rights as citizens,” laying the of that definition: suburbanization. What drove the
groundwork for the gay rights movement of the 1970s. nation to abandon its cities for the suburbs, and what
social and political consequences did this shift have?
Media and Morality The homophile movement
remained unknown to most Americans. But other
challenges to traditional morality received national The Postwar Housing Boom
media attention, and the media themselves became a Migration to the suburbs had been going on for a hun-
controversial source of these challenges. Concerned dred years, but never before on the scale that the coun-
that excessive crime, violence, and sex in comic books try experienced after World War II. Within a decade,
CHAPTER 26 Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963 857
farmland on the outskirts of cities filled up with tract Asian Americans as well.) Levittowns were hardly
housing and shopping malls. Entire counties that had alone. Suburban developments from coast to coast
once been rural — such as San Mateo, south of San exhibited the same age, class, and
Francisco, or Passaic and Bergen in New Jersey, west of racial homogeneity (Thinking PLACE EVENTS
Manhattan — went suburban. By 1960, one-third of Like a Historian, p. 858). IN CONTEXT
Americans lived in suburbs. Home construction, hav- In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), Place postwar suburban-
ing ground to a halt during the Great Depression, the Supreme Court outlawed ization in the context
surged after the war. One-fourth of the country’s entire restrictive covenants, but racial dis- of the growing size and
housing stock in 1960 had not even existed a decade crimination in housing changed influence of the federal
earlier. little. The practice persisted long government. How did
after Shelley, because the FHA and the national government
William J. Levitt and the FHA Two unique postwar VA continued the policy of redlin- encourage suburbaniza-
developments remade the national housing market ing: refusing mortgages to African tion?
and gave it a distinctly suburban shape. First, an inno- Americans and members of other
vative Long Island building contractor, William J. minority groups seeking to buy in white neigh-
Levitt, revolutionized suburban housing by applying borhoods. Indeed, no federal law — or even Court
mass-production techniques and turning out new decisions like Shelley — actually prohibited racial dis-
homes at a dizzying speed. Levitt’s basic four-room crimination in housing until Congress passed the Fair
house, complete with kitchen appliances, was priced at Housing Act in 1968.
$7,990 when homes in the first Levittown went on sale
in 1947 (about $76,000 today). Levitt did not need to Interstate Highways Without automobiles, subur-
advertise; word of mouth brought buyers flocking to ban growth on such a massive scale would have been
his developments (all called Levittown) in New York, impossible. Planners laid out subdivisions on the
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Dozens of other devel- assumption that everybody would drive. And they
opers were soon snapping up cheap farmland and did — to get to work, to take the children to Little
building subdivisions around the country. League, to shop. With gas plentiful and cheap (15 cents
Even at $7,990, Levitt’s homes would have been a gallon), no one cared about the fuel efficiency of their
beyond the means of most young families had the tra- V-8 engines or seemed to mind the elaborate tail fins
ditional home-financing standard — a down payment and chrome that weighed down their cars. In 1945,
of half the full price and ten years to pay off the bal- Americans owned twenty-five million cars; by 1965,
ance — still prevailed. That is where the second post- just two decades later, the number had tripled to
war development came in. The Federal Housing seventy-five million (America Compared, p. 860).
Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration American oil consumption followed course, tripling as
(VA) — that is, the federal government — brought the well between 1949 and 1972.
home mortgage market within the reach of a broader More cars required more highways, and the federal
range of Americans than ever before. After the war, the government obliged. In 1956, in a move that drastically
FHA insured thirty-year mortgages with as little as 5 altered America’s landscape and driving habits, the
percent down and interest at 2 or 3 percent. The VA National Interstate and Defense Highways Act autho-
was even more generous, requiring only a token $1 rized $26 billion over a ten-year period for the con-
down for qualified ex-GIs. FHA and VA mortgages struction of a nationally integrated highway system —
best explain why, after hovering around 45 percent for 42,500 miles (Map 26.1). Cast as a Cold War necessity
the previous half century, home ownership jumped to because broad highways made evacuating crowded
60 percent by 1960. cities easier in the event of a nuclear attack, the law
What purchasers of suburban houses got, in addi- changed American cities forever. An enormous public
tion to a good deal, were homogeneous communities. works program surpassing anything undertaken dur-
The developments contained few elderly people or ing the New Deal, and enthusiastically endorsed by
unmarried adults. Even the trees were young. Levitt’s the Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, federal
company enforced regulations about maintaining highways made possible the massive suburbanization
lawns and not hanging out laundry on the weekends. of the nation in the 1960s. Interstate highways rerouted
Then there was the matter of race. Levitt’s houses came traffic away from small towns, bypassed well-traveled
with restrictive covenants prohibiting occupancy “by main roads such as the cross-country Route 66, and
members of other than the Caucasian Race.” (Restrictive cut wide swaths through old neighborhoods in the
covenants often applied to Jews and, in California, cities.
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
Between the end of World War II and the 1980s, Americans built and moved into
suburban homes in an unprecedented wave of construction and migration that
changed the nation forever. New home loan rules, and government backing
The Suburban under the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration, made
new suburban houses cheaper and brought home ownership within reach of a
Landscape of Cold larger number of Americans than ever before. Commentators cheered these
developments as a boon to ordinary citizens, but by the 1960s a generation of
War America urban critics, led by journalist Jane Jacobs, had begun to find fault with the
nation’s suburban obsession. The following documents provide the historian
with evidence of how these new suburban communities arose and how they
began to transform American culture.
1. “Peacetime Cornucopia,” The New Yorker, 2. Life magazine, “A Life Round Table on Housing,”
October 6, 1945. January 31, 1949.
The most aggressive member of Life’s Round Table, whether
as builder or debater, was William J. Levitt, president of
Levitt and Sons, Inc. of Manhasset, NY. He feels that he
has started a revolution, the essence of which is size.
Builders in his estimation are a poor and puny lot, too
small to put pressure on materials manufacturers or the
local czars of the building codes or the bankers or labor. A
builder ought to be a manufacturer, he said, and to this
end must be big. He himself is a nonunion operator.
The Levitt prescription for cheaper houses may be
summarized as follows: 1) take infinite pains with infinite
details; 2) be aggressive; 3) be big enough to throw your
weight around; 4) buy at wholesale; and 5) build houses
in concentrated developments where mass-production
methods can be used on the site.
858
4. William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man, 1956. 6. Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners, 1967. One of
Whyte, a prominent journalist, wrote about the the first sociological studies of the new postwar
decline of individualism and the rise of a national suburbs and their residents.
class of interchangeable white-collar workers. The strengths and weakness of Levittown are those of
And is this not the whole drift of our society? We are not many American communities, and the Levittowners
interchangeable in the sense of being people without dif- closely resemble other young middle class Americans.
ferences, but in the externals of existence we are united They are not America, for they are not a numerical
by a culture increasingly national. And this is part of the majority of the population, but they represent the
momentum of mobility. The more people move about, the major constituency of the latest and more powerful
more similar American environments become, and the economic and political institutions in American
more similar they become, the easier it is to move about. society — the favored customers and voters whom
More and more, the young couples who move do so these seek to attract and satisfy. . . .
only physically. With each transfer the décor, the architec- Although they are citizens of a national polity and
ture, the faces, and the names may change; the people, the their lives are shaped by national economic, social, and
conversation, and the values do not — and sometimes the political forces, Levittowners deceive themselves into
décor and architecture don’t either. . . . thinking that the community, or rather the home, is the
Suburban residents like to maintain that their subur- single most important unit of their lives. . . .
bia not only looks classless but is classless. That is, they In viewing their homes as the center of life, Levi-
are apt to add on second thought, there are no extremes, towners are still using a societal model that fit the rural
and if the place isn’t exactly without class, it is at least a America of self-sufficient farmers and the feudal Europe
one-class society — identified as the middle or upper of self-isolating extended families.
middle, according to the inclination of the residents.
“We are all,” they say, “in the same boat.”
Sources: (2) Life, January 31, 1949, 74; (4) William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 276, 299; (5) Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of
5. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Great American Cities (Westminster, MD: Vintage, 1992), 145–147; (6) Herbert J. Gans,
Cities, 1961. A classic celebration of vibrant urban The Levittowners (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 417–418.
859
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
One of Israel’s foremost writers and journalists, Hanoch Bartov spent two years
Hanoch Bartov: in the United States working as a correspondent for the newspaper Lamerchav.
As a newcomer to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, he was both fascinated and
Everyone Has a Car appalled by Americans’ love affair with the automobile.
Our immediate decision to buy a car sprang from healthy town, where they can hear their neighbors, smell their
instincts. Only later did I learn from bitter experience that cooking, and suffer frayed nerves as trains pass by bed-
in California, death was preferable to living without one. room windows. Instead, they get a piece of the desert, far
Neither the views from the plane nor the weird excursion from town, at half price, drag a water hose, grow grass,
that first evening hinted at what I would go through that flowers, and trees, and build their dream house.
first week. The result? A widely scattered city, its houses far apart,
Very simple — the nearest supermarket was about its streets stretched in all directions. Olympic Boulevard
half a kilometer south of our apartment, the regional from west to east, forty kilometers. Sepulveda Boulevard,
primary school two kilometers east, and my son’s from Long Beach in the south to the edge of the desert,
kindergarten even farther away. A trip to the post forty kilometers. Altogether covering 1,200 square kilo-
office — an undertaking, to the bank — an ordeal, meters. As of now.
to work — an impossibility. . . .
There are no tramways. No one thought of a subway.
Source: “Measures of Affluence” by Hanoch Bartov (1963) in Chapter 16 from The
Railroads — not now and not in the future. Why? Because Outer World, edited by Oscar Handlin and Lilian Handlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
everyone has a car. A man invited me to his house, saying, University Press, 1997). © 1997. Reprinted by permission of Oscar and Lillian Handlin.
“We are neighbors, within ten minutes of each other.”
After walking for an hour and a half I realized what he
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
meant — “ten minute drive within the speed limit.” Simply
1. From Bartov’s observations, what are the pluses and
put, he never thought I might interpret his remark to refer
minuses of America’s car culture? In what ways was the
to the walking distance. The moment a baby sees the light automobile changing American society?
of day in Los Angeles, a car is registered in his name in 2. Why did Bartov find that owning a car was necessary,
Detroit. . . . especially in southern California?
At first perhaps people relished the freedom and inde- 3. How would suburbanization have contributed to the
construction of new highways in the United States?
pendence a car provided. You get in, sit down, and grab
How would highway construction have facilitated
the steering wheel, your mobility exceeding that of any suburbanization?
other generation. No wonder people refuse to live down-
Fast Food and Shopping Malls Americans did not “crystallization points for suburbia’s community life.”
simply fill their new suburban homes with the latest He romanticized the new structures as “today’s village
appliances and gadgets; they also pioneered entirely green,” where “the fountain in the mall has replaced the
new forms of consumption. Through World War II, downtown department clock as the gathering place for
downtowns had remained the center of retail sales and young and old alike.” Romanticism aside, suburban
restaurant dining with their grand department stores, shopping centers worked perfectly in the world of sub-
elegant eateries, and low-cost diners. As suburbanites urban consumption; they brought “the market to the
abandoned big-city centers in the 1950s, ambitious people instead of people to the market,” commented
entrepreneurs invented two new commercial forms the New York Times. In 1939, the suburban share of
that would profoundly shape the rest of the century: total metropolitan retail trade in the United States was
the shopping mall and the fast-food restaurant. a paltry 4 percent. By 1961, it was an astonishing 60
By the late 1950s, the suburban shopping center percent in the nation’s ten largest metropolitan regions.
had become as much a part of the American landscape No one was more influential in creating suburban
as the Levittowns and their imitators. A major devel- patterns of consumption than a Chicago-born son of
oper of shopping malls in the Northeast called them Czech immigrants named Ray Kroc. A former jazz
860
CHAPTER 26 Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963 861
MAP 26.1
Connecting the Nation: The Interstate Highway System, 1930 and 1970
The 1956 National Interstate and Defense Highways Act paved the way for an extensive network of
federal highways throughout the nation. The act not only pleased American drivers and enhanced
their love affair with the automobile but also benefitted the petroleum, construction, trucking,
real estate, and tourist industries. The new highway system promoted the nation’s economic
integration, facilitated the growth of suburbs, and contributed to the erosion of America’s distinct
regional identities.
musician and traveling salesman, Kroc found his call- the McDonald brothers and proceeded to turn it into
ing in 1954 when he acquired a single franchise of the the largest chain of restaurants in the world. Based on
little-known McDonald’s Restaurant, based in San inexpensive, quickly served hamburgers that hungry
Bernardino, California. In 1956, Kroc invested in families could eat in the restaurant, in their cars, or at
twelve more franchises and by 1958 owned seventy- home, Kroc’s vision transformed the way Americans
nine. Three years later, Kroc bought the company from consumed food. “Drive-in” or “fast” food became a
staple of the American diet in the subsequent decades. California contained one-tenth of the nation’s popula-
By the year 2000, fast food was a $100 billion industry, tion and surpassed New York as the most populous
and more children recognized Ronald McDonald, the state. At the end of the century, California’s economy
clown in McDonald’s television commercials, than was among the top ten largest in the world — among
Santa Claus. nations.
A distinctive feature of Sunbelt suburbanization
was its close relationship to the military-industrial
Rise of the Sunbelt complex. Building on World War II expansion, mili-
Suburban living, although a nationwide phenomenon, tary bases proliferated in the South and Southwest in
was most at home in the Sunbelt (the southern and the postwar decades, especially in Florida, Texas, and
southwestern states), where taxes were low, the climate California. In some instances, entire metropolitan
was mild, and open space allowed for sprawling subdi- regions — such as San Diego County, California, and
visions (Map 26.2). Florida added 3.5 million people, the Houston area in Texas — expanded in tandem with
many of them retired, between 1940 and 1970. Texas nearby military outposts. Moreover, the aerospace,
profited from expanding petrochemical and defense defense, and electronics industries were based largely
industries. Most dramatic was California’s growth, in Sunbelt metropolitan regions. With government
spurred especially by the state’s booming defense- contracts fueling the economy and military bases pro-
related aircraft and electronics industries. By 1970, viding thousands of jobs, Sunbelt politicians had every
Seattle
Minneapolis- Boston
St. Paul
Detroit New York
Chicago Cleveland
Pittsburgh Population Size
Philadelphia (in millions)
Baltimore
Houston
Change in State
Tampa Population,
1950–1980
Miami
200–400%
100–200%
50–100%
0 250 500 miles 0–50%
0 250 500 kilometers Loss
MAP 26.2
Shifting Population Patterns, 1950–1980
This map shows the two major, somewhat overlapping, patterns of population movement between
1950 and 1980. Most striking is the rapid growth of the Sunbelt states. All the states experiencing
increases of over 100 percent in that period are in the Southwest, plus Florida. The second pattern
involves the growth of metropolitan areas, defined as a central city or urban area and its suburbs.
The central cities were themselves mostly not growing, however. The metropolitan growth shown
in this map was accounted for by the expanding suburbs. And because Sunbelt growth was primarily
suburban growth, that’s where we see the most rapid metropolitan growth, with Los Angeles the
clear leader.
CHAPTER 26 Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963 863
incentive to support vigorous defense spending by the concentrated,” noted the civil rights activist Bayard
federal government. Rustin.
Sunbelt suburbanization was best exemplified by
Orange County, California. Southwest of Los Angeles, The Urban Crisis The intensification of poverty, the
Orange County was until the 1940s mostly just that — a deterioration of older housing stock, and the persis-
land of oranges, groves of them. But during World War tence of racial segregation produced what many at the
II, boosters attracted new bases and training facilities time called the urban crisis. Unwelcome in the shiny
for the marines, navy, and air force (at the time the new suburbs built by men such as William J. Levitt,
army air corps). Cold War militarization and the Korean African Americans found low-paying jobs in the city
War kept those bases humming, and Hughes Aircraft, and lived in aging, slumlike apartment buildings.
Ford Aeronautics, and other defense-related manufac- Despite a thriving black middle class — indeed, larger
turers built new plants in the sunny, sprawling groves. than ever before — for those without resources, upward
So did subdivision developers, who built so many new mobility remained elusive. Racism in institutional forms
homes that the population of the county jumped from frustrated African Americans at every turn: housing
130,760 in 1940 to 703,925 in 1960. Casting his eye on restrictions, increasingly segregated schools, and an
all this development in the early 1950s, an entrepre- urban infrastructure that stood underfunded and
neurial filmmaker and cartoonist named Walt Disney decaying as whites left for the suburbs.
chose Anaheim in Orange County as the place for a Housing and job discrimination were compounded
massive new amusement park. Disneyland was to the by the frenzy of urban renewal that hit black neigh-
new generation of suburbanites what Coney Island had borhoods in the 1950s and early
been to an earlier generation of urbanites. 1960s. Seeking to revitalize COMPARE AND
declining city centers, politicians CONTRAST
and real estate developers pro- In what sense was the
Two Societies: Urban and Suburban posed razing blighted neighbor- United States becoming,
While middle-class whites flocked to the suburbs, an hoods to make way for modern in the language of the
opposite stream of working-class migrants, many of construction projects that would Kerner Commission report,
them southern African Americans, moved into the cit- appeal to the fleeing middle class. “two societies”?
ies. In the 1950s, the nation’s twelve largest cities lost In Boston, almost one-third of the
3.6 million whites while gaining 4.5 million nonwhites. old city — including the historic West End, a long-
These urban newcomers inherited a declining econ- established Italian neighborhood — was demolished to
omy and a decaying infrastructure. To those enjoying make way for a new highway, high-rise housing, and
prosperity, the “other America,” as the social critic government and commercial buildings. In San Fran-
Michael Harrington called it, remained largely invis- cisco, some 4,000 residents of the Western Addition, a
ible. In 1968, however, a report by the National Advisory predominantly black neighborhood, lost out to an
Commission on Civil Disorders (informally known as urban renewal program that built luxury housing, a
the Kerner Commission and formed by the president to shopping center, and an express boulevard. Between
investigate the causes of the 1967 urban riots), deliv- 1949 and 1967, urban renewal nationwide demolished
ered to President Lyndon Johnson, warned that “our almost 400,000 buildings and displaced 1.4 million
nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one people.
white, separate and unequal.” The urban experts believed they knew what to do
American cities had long been the home of pov- with the dislocated: relocate them to federally funded
erty, slum housing, and the hardships and cultural housing projects, an outgrowth of New Deal housing
dislocations brought on by immigration from over- policy, now much expanded. However well intended,
seas or migration from rural areas. But postwar Amer- these grim projects too often took the form of cheap
ican cities, especially those in the industrial Northeast high-rises that isolated their inhabitants from sur-
and Midwest, experienced these problems with new rounding neighborhoods. The impact was felt espe-
intensity. By the 1950s, the manufacturing sector was cially strongly among African Americans, who often
contracting, and mechanization was eliminating thou- found that public housing increased racial segrega-
sands upon thousands of unskilled and semiskilled tion and concentrated the poor. The Robert Taylor
jobs, the kind traditionally taken up by new urban Homes in Chicago, with twenty-eight buildings of six-
residents. The disappearing jobs were the ones “in teen stories each, housed 20,000 residents, almost all
which [African Americans] are disproportionately of them black. Despite the planners’ wish to build
864 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
Urban Crisis
This Pittsburgh neighborhood,
photographed in 1955, typified
what many came to call the
“urban crisis” of the 1950s and
1960s. As suburbanization drew
middle-class residents, investment,
and jobs away from the core of
older cities, those cities began to
rot from the inside. Urban neglect
left many working-class neighbor-
hoods, increasingly occupied by
the nation’s poor, with few jobs,
little industry, and dilapidated
housing. W. Eugene Smith/Black Star/
Stockphoto.com.
decent affordable apartments, the huge complex poverty or to earn money to return home and purchase
became a notorious breeding ground for crime and land for farming.
hopelessness. As generations of immigrants had before them,
Mexicans gravitated to major cities. Mostly, they
Urban Immigrants Despite the evident urban crisis, settled in Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Jose, El Paso,
cities continued to attract immigrants from abroad. and other southwestern cities. But many also went
Since the passage of the National Origins Act of 1924 north, augmenting well-established Mexican American
(Chapter 22), U.S. immigration policy had aimed communities in Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, and
mainly at keeping foreigners out. But World War II and Denver. Although still important to American agricul-
the Cold War began slowly to change American policy. ture, Mexican Americans were employed in substantial
The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 permitted the entry numbers as industrial and service workers by 1960.
of approximately 415,000 Europeans, many of them Another major group of Spanish-speaking migrants
Jewish refugees. In a gesture to an important war ally, came from Puerto Rico. American citizens since 1917,
the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. More Puerto Ricans enjoyed an unrestricted right to move to
far-reaching was the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, which the mainland United States. Migration increased dra-
ended the exclusion of Japanese, Koreans, and South- matically after World War II, when mechanization of
east Asians. the island’s sugarcane agriculture left many Puerto
After the national-origins quota system went into Ricans jobless. Airlines began to offer cheap direct
effect in 1924, Mexico replaced Eastern and Southern flights between San Juan and New York City. With the
Europe as the nation’s labor reservoir. During World fare at about $50 (two weeks’ wages), Puerto Ricans
War II, the federal government introduced the Bracero became America’s first immigrants to arrive en masse
Program to ease wartime labor shortages (Chapter 24) by air. Most Puerto Ricans went to New York, where
and then revived it in 1951, during the Korean War. they settled first in East (“Spanish”) Harlem and then
The federal government’s ability to force workers to scattered in neighborhoods across the city’s five bor-
return to Mexico, however, was strictly limited. The oughs. This massive migration, which increased the
Mexican immigrant population continued to grow, Puerto Rican population to 613,000 by 1960, trans-
and by the time the Bracero Program ended in 1964, formed the ethnic composition of the city. More Puerto
many of that group — an estimated 350,000 — had Ricans now lived in New York City than in San Juan.
settled permanently in the United States. Braceros were Cuban refugees constituted the third-largest group
joined by other Mexicans from small towns and vil- of Spanish-speaking immigrants. In the six years after
lages, who immigrated to the United States to escape Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in 1959 (Chapter 25), an
CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER REVIEW 865
estimated 180,000 people fled Cuba for the United marked by the dominance of big corporations and
States. The Cuban refugee community grew so quickly defense spending.
that it turned Miami into a cosmopolitan, bilingual After years of depression and war-induced insecu-
city almost overnight. Unlike other urban migrants, rity, Americans turned inward toward religion, home,
Miami’s Cubans quickly prospered, in large part because and family. Postwar couples married young, had sev-
they had arrived with money and middle-class skills. eral children, and — if they were white and middle
Spanish-speaking immigrants — whether Mexican, class — raised their children in a climate of suburban
Puerto Rican, or Cuban — created huge barrios in comfort and consumerism. The profamily orientation
major American cities, where bilingualism flourished, of the 1950s celebrated traditional gender roles, even
the Catholic Church shaped religious life, and families though millions of women entered the workforce in
sought to join the economic mainstream. Though dis- those years. Not everyone, however, shared in the
tinct from one another, these Spanish-speaking com- postwar prosperity. Postwar cities increasingly became
munities remained largely segregated from white, or places of last resort for the nation’s poor. Black
Anglo, neighborhoods and suburbs as well as from migrants, unlike earlier immigrants, encountered an
African American districts. urban economy that had little use for them. Without
opportunity, and faced with pervasive racism, many of
them were on their way to becoming an American
SUMMARY underclass, even as sparkling new suburbs emerged
outside cities to house the new middle class. Many
We have explored how, at the same time it became of the smoldering contradictions of the postwar
mired in the Cold War, the United States entered an period — Cold War anxiety in the midst of suburban
unparalleled era of prosperity in which a new middle domesticity, tensions in women’s lives, economic and
class came into being. Indeed, the Cold War was one of racial inequality — helped spur the protest movements
the engines of prosperity. The postwar economy was of the 1960s.
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. What factors led to the economic prosperity of the 4. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
postwar era? events listed under “America in the World” and
“Work, Exchange, and Technology” for the period
2. Why did the suburbs become so significant for
1930–1945 on the thematic timeline on page 671
Americans in the 1950s? How was suburban life
and for 1945–1960 on page 803. Explain how the
related to middle-class consumption?
United States began the 1930s in deep depression
3. Who were the people left out of the postwar boom? with unemployment near 25 percent and ended
How do you account for their exclusion? the 1950s with an expanded middle class and a
consumption-driven economy.
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Think back to 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Examine the Motorola TV
earlier chapters that discussed gender roles, mar- advertisement featured on page 847. What different
riage, and American family life in the late nine- types of appeals does this advertisement make, and
teenth and early twentieth centuries (Chapters 18, what do they suggest about family and gender roles
19, 22, 24). How had the American family changed in this period? How many distinct themes from the
by the 1950s? What aspects of family life remained chapter can you explain using this image?
similar across many decades? For example, how did
the working-class immigrant family of the 1890s
differ from the middle-class family of the 1950s?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV (1996). An
Mass Consumption in Postwar America (2003). An insightful explanation of the impact of television.
important interpretation of the United States as a
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound (1988). The
consumer society.
classic introduction to postwar family life.
James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Searching for
Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis:
Masculinity in the 1950s (2005). An engaging account
Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996). The
of cultural figures from the 1950s, including Billy
best account of the urban crisis.
Graham and John Wayne.
David Halberstam, The Fifties (1993). An engaging
and accessible introduction to postwar American
society.
CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER REVIEW 867
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
1946 t First edition of Dr. Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
t Shelley v. Kraemer
KEY TURNING POINTS: What were the major turning points in the creation of postwar
suburbia?
Walking into Freedom Land:
27
C H A P T E R
The Civil Rights Movement
1941–1973
I
THE EMERGING CIVIL n June 1945, as World War II was IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
RIGHTS STRUGGLE, ending, Democratic senator James O. How did the civil rights movement
1941–1957 Eastland of Mississippi stood on the evolve over time, and how did com-
Life Under Jim Crow floor of the U.S. Senate and brashly told peting ideas and political alliances
Origins of the Civil Rights his colleagues that “the Negro race is an affect its growth and that of other
Movement inferior race.” Raising his arms, his tie askew social movements?
World War II: The Beginnings from vigorous gesturing, Eastland ridiculed
Cold War Civil Rights black troops. “The Negro soldier was an utter and dismal failure in combat,” he said.
Mexican Americans and Eastland’s assertions were untrue. Black soldiers had served honorably; many won
Japanese Americans medals for bravery in combat. All-black units, such as the 761st “Black Panther” Tank
Fighting for Equality Before Battalion and the famous Tuskegee Airmen, were widely praised by military command-
the Law ers. But segregationists like Eastland were a nearly unassailable force in Congress, able
FORGING A PROTEST to block civil rights legislation and shape national opinion.
MOVEMENT, 1955–1965 In the 1940s, two generations after W. E. B. Du Bois famously wrote that “the prob-
Nonviolent Direct Action lem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” few white Americans
Legislating Civil Rights, believed wholeheartedly in racial equality. Racial segregation remained entrenched
1963–1965 across the country. Much of the Deep South, like Eastland’s Mississippi, was a “closed
society”: black people had no political rights and lived on the margins of white society,
BEYOND CIVIL RIGHTS, impoverished and exploited. Northern cities proved more hospitable to African Ameri-
1966–1973
cans, but schools, neighborhoods, and many businesses remained segregated and
Black Nationalism
unequal in the North as well.
Poverty and Urban Violence
Across the nation, however, winds of change were gathering. Between World War
Rise of the Chicano Movement II and the 1970s, slowly at first, and then with greater urgency in the 1960s, the civil
The American Indian Movement rights movement swept aside systematic racial segregation. It could not sweep away
racial inequality completely, but the movement constituted a “second Reconstruction”
in which African American activism reshaped the nation’s laws and practices. Civil rights
was the paradigmatic social movement of the twentieth century. Its model of nonviolent
protest and its calls for self-determination inspired the New Left, feminism, the Chicano
movement, the gay rights movement, the American Indian movement, and many others.
The black-led civil rights movement, joined at key moments by Latinos, Asian Amer-
icans, and Native Americans, redefined liberalism. In the 1930s, New Deal liberalism had
established a welfare state to protect citizens from economic hardship. The civil rights
movement forged a new rights liberalism: the notion that individuals require state
protection from discrimination. This version of liberalism focused on identities — such as
race or sex — rather than general social welfare, and as such would prove to be both a
necessary expansion of the nation’s ideals and a divisive force that produced political
backlash. Indeed, the quest for racial justice would contribute to a crisis of liberalism
itself.
868
The March from Selma to Montgomery, 1965 Leading a throng of 25,000 marchers, Martin
Luther King Jr. holds the hand of his wife, Coretta Scott King, as they enter downtown Montgomery,
Alabama, at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march. Bob Adelman/Magnum Photos, Inc.
869
870 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
Struggle, 1941–1957
As it took shape during World War II and the early Life Under Jim Crow
Cold War, the battle against racial injustice proceeded Racial segregation and economic exploitation defined
along two tracks: at the grass roots and in governing the lives of the majority of African Americans in the
institutions — federal courts, state legislatures, and ulti- postwar decades. Numbering 15 million in 1950, Afri-
mately the U.S. Congress. Labor unions, churches, and can Americans were approximately 10 percent of the
protest organizations such as the Congress of Racial U.S. population. In the South, however, they consti-
Equality (CORE) inspired hundreds of thousands of tuted between 30 and 50 percent of the population of
ordinary citizens to join the movement. But grassroots several states, such as South Carolina and Mississippi.
struggle was not African Americans’ only weapon. Segregation, commonly known as Jim Crow (Chap-
They also had the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruc- ter 18), prevailed in every aspect of life in the southern
tion amendments to the Constitution. Civil rights states, where two-thirds of all African Americans lived
lived in those documents — especially in the Fourteenth in 1950. African Americans could not eat in restaurants
Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection patronized by whites or use the same waiting rooms at
under the law to all U.S. citizens, and in the Fifteenth, bus stations. All forms of public transportation were
which guaranteed the right to vote regardless of “race, rigidly segregated by custom or by law. Public parks
color, or previous condition of servitude” — but had and libraries were segregated. Even drinking fountains
been ignored or violated for nearly a century. The task were labeled “White” and “Colored.”
was to restore the Constitution’s legal force. Neither This system of segregation underlay economic and
track — grassroots or legal/legislative — was entirely political structures that further marginalized and
independent of the other. Together, they were the disempowered black citizens. Virtually no African
Postwar Desegregation
Picketers outside the July 1948 Democratic National Convention demand that the party include equal
rights and anti–Jim Crow planks in its official platform and desegregate the armed services. Leading
the pickets is A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Randolph
headed the March on Washington Movement that pressured President Roosevelt to desegregate
defense employment during World War II, and he led the committee that convinced President
Truman to desegregate the armed forces in 1948. © Bettmann/Corbis.
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 873
the earliest challenges to southern segregation, the joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 — but the grow-
1947 Journey of Reconciliation. Meanwhile, after the ing black vote in northern cities proved more decisive.
war, hundreds of thousands of African American vet- During World War II, more than a million African
erans used the GI Bill to go to college, trade school, or Americans migrated to northern and western cities,
graduate school, placing themselves in a position to where they joined the Democratic Party of Franklin
push against segregation. At the war’s end, Powell Roosevelt and the New Deal (Map 27.1). This new-
affirmed that “the black man . . . is ready to throw him- found political leverage awakened northern liberals,
self into the struggle to make the dream of America many of whom became allies of civil rights advocates.
become flesh and blood, bread and butter.” Ultimately, the Cold War produced mixed results, as
the nation’s commitment to anticommunism opened
some avenues for civil rights while closing others.
Cold War Civil Rights
Demands for justice persisted in the early years of the Civil Rights and the New Deal Coalition African
Cold War. African American efforts were propelled by American leaders were uncertain what to expect from
symbolic victories — as when Jackie Robinson broke President Truman, inheritor of the New Deal coalition
through the color line in major league baseball by but not opposed to using racist language himself.
C A N A D A
Seattle
WA
Portland ME
MT ND
OR
VT
MN NH
ID NY
SD MA
WI
MI CT
WY Detroit RI
IA Cleveland New York
Chicago
NE PA NJ
OH
IL Philadelphia
NV
San Francisco UT MD DE
IN
CA CO KS WV VA ATLANTIC
OCEAN
8 10
MO
1.7 M
850,000
KY
,000
580
1M
ILLION
NC
,000
TN
1.8 MILLION
IL
Los Angeles LI N
AZ ON
OK
NM AR SC W E
S
MS AL GA
PACIFIC 0 150 300 miles
OCEAN LA
TX
0 150 300 kilometers
FL
MAP 27.1
Internal Migrations
The migration of African Americans from the South to other regions of the country produced
one of the most remarkable demographic shifts of the mid-twentieth century. Between World
War I — which marked the start of the Great Migration — and the 1970s, more than 6 million
African Americans left the South. Where they settled in the North and West, they helped
change the politics of entire cities and even states. Seeking black votes, which had become
a key to victory in major cities, liberal Democrats and Republicans alike in New York, Illinois,
California, and Pennsylvania, for instance, increasingly made civil rights part of their platform.
In this way, migration advanced the political cause of black equality.
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 875
Though he did not immediately support social equality wrote. International tensions between the United States
for African Americans, Truman supported civil rights and the Soviet Union thus appeared to strengthen the
because he believed in equality before the law. hand of civil rights leaders, because America needed to
Moreover, he understood the growing importance of demonstrate to the rest of the world that its race rela-
the small but often decisive black vote in key northern tions were improving (America Compared, p. 876).
states such as New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and However, the Cold War strengthened one hand
Michigan. Civil rights activists Randolph and while weakening the other. McCarthyism and the hunt
Powell — along with vocal white liberals such as Hubert for subversives at home held the civil rights movement
Humphrey, the mayor of Minneapolis, and members of back. Civil rights opponents charged that racial inte-
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal gration was “communistic,” and the NAACP was
organization — pressed Truman to act. banned in many southern states as an “anti-American”
With no support for civil rights in Congress, organization. Black Americans
Truman turned to executive action. In 1946, he who spoke favorably of the Soviet UNDERSTAND
appointed the Presidential Committee on Civil Rights, Union, such as the actor and POINTS OF VIEW
whose 1947 report, “To Secure These Rights,” called for singer Paul Robeson, or had been How did the Cold War
robust federal action to ensure equality for African “fellow travelers” in the 1930s, work in the favor of civil
Americans. With the report fresh in his mind, in such as the pacifist Bayard Rustin, rights? How did it work
1948 Truman issued an executive order desegregating were persecuted. Robeson, whose against the movement?
employment in federal agencies and, under pressure career was destroyed by such
from Randolph’s Committee Against Jim Crow in Mil- accusations, told House Un-American Activities
itary Service, desegregated the armed forces. Truman Committee (HUAC) interrogators, “My father was a
then sent a message to Congress asking that all of the slave, and my people died to build this country, and
report’s recommendations — including the abolition of I am going to . . . have a part of it just like you.” The
poll taxes and the restoration of the Fair Employment fate of people like Robeson showed that the Cold War
Practices Commission — be made into law. It was the could work against the civil rights cause just as easily as
most aggressive, and politically bold, call for racial for it.
equality by the leader of a major political party since
Reconstruction.
Mexican Americans and
Truman’s boldness was too much for southern
Democrats. Under the leadership of Strom Thurmond, Japanese Americans
governor of South Carolina, white Democrats from African Americans were the most prominent, but not
the South formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party, the only, group in American society to organize against
known popularly as the Dixiecrats, for the 1948 elec- racial injustice in the 1940s. In the Southwest, from
tion (Chapter 25). This brought into focus an internal Texas to California, Mexican immigrants and Mexican
struggle developing within the Democratic Party and Americans endured a “caste” system not unlike the
its still-formidable New Deal coalition. Would the civil Jim Crow system in the South. In Texas, for instance,
rights aims of the party’s liberal wing alienate southern poll taxes kept most Mexican American citizens from
white Democrats, as well as many suburban whites in voting. Decades of discrimination by employers in
the North? It was the first hint of the discord that would agriculture and manufacturing — made possible by
eventually divide the Democratic Party in the 1960s. the constant supply of cheap labor from across the
border — suppressed wages and kept the majority of
Race and Anticommunism The Cold War shaped Mexican Americans barely above poverty. Many lived
civil rights in both positive and negative terms. In a in colonias or barrios, neighborhoods separated from
time of growing fear of communist expansionism, Anglos and often lacking sidewalks, reliable electricity
Truman worried about America’s image in the world. and water, and public services.
He reminded Americans that when whites and blacks Developments within the Mexican American com-
“fail to live together in peace,” that failure hurt “the munity set the stage for fresh challenges to these con-
cause of democracy itself in the whole world.” Indeed, ditions in the 1940s. Labor activism in the 1930s and
the Soviet Union used American racism as a means of 1940s, especially in Congress of Industrial Organiza-
discrediting the United States abroad. “We cannot tions (CIO) unions with large numbers of Mexican
escape the fact that our civil rights record has been an Americans, improved wages and working conditions
issue in world politics,” the Committee on Civil Rights in some industries and produced a new generation of
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D
Martin Luther King Jr. Source: Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (New
York: Praeger, 1961), ix.
Here, the American civil rights leader celebrates the inde-
pendence of the African nation of Ghana in 1957.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
And it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it that . . . [Ghana] is now 1. Wolde-Giorghis is especially critical of southern “integra-
free and is free without rising up with arms and ammuni- tion.” As an African, what kind of perspective would he
tion. It is free through nonviolent means. Because of that bring to this question?
the British Empire will not have the bitterness for Ghana 2. What values and goals do King and Nkrumah seem to
share? How were their circumstances and goals different?
that she has for China, so to speak. Because of that when
3. Compare the circumstances of African Americans in the
the British Empire leaves Ghana she leaves with a differ- United States and Africans in nations colonized by Euro-
ent attitude than she would have left with if she had been peans. What were the similarities and differences?
driven out by armies. We’ve got to revolt in such a way
876
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 877
progress there was persistent job and housing discrim- President Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme
ination. The states with the largest African American Court — the first African American to have that honor.
populations, and hence the largest share of black Marshall, Houston, Hastie, and six other attorneys
Democratic Party voters, became testing grounds for filed suit after suit, deliberately selecting each one from
state legislation to end such discriminatory practices. dozens of possibilities. The strategy was slow and time-
Winning antidiscrimination legislation depended consuming, but progress came. In 1936, Marshall and
on coalition politics. African American activists forged Hamilton won a state case that forced the University
alliances with trade unions and liberal organizations of Maryland Law School to admit qualified Afri-
such as the American Friends Service Committee (a can Americans — a ruling of obvious significance to
Quaker group), among many others. Progress was slow Marshall. Eight years later, in Smith v. Allwright (1944),
and often occurred only after long periods of unglam- Marshall convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that all-
orous struggle to win votes in state capitals such as white primaries were unconstitutional. In 1950, with
Albany, New York; Springfield, Illinois; and Lansing, Marshall once again arguing the case, the Supreme
Michigan. The first fair employment laws had come in Court ruled in McLaurin v. Oklahoma that universities
New York and New Jersey in 1945. A decade passed, could not segregate black students from others on
however, before other states with significant black pop- campus. None of these cases produced swift changes in
ulations passed similar legislation. Antidiscrimination the daily lives of most African Americans, but they
laws in housing were even more difficult to pass, with confirmed that civil rights attorneys were on the right
most progress not coming until the 1960s. These leg- track.
islative campaigns in northern states received little
national attention, but they were instrumental in laying Brown v. Board of Education The NAACP’s legal
the groundwork for legal equality outside the South. strategy achieved its ultimate validation in a case
involving Linda Brown, a black pupil in Topeka,
Thurgood Marshall Because the vast majority of Kansas, who had been forced to attend a distant segre-
southern African Americans were prohibited from gated school rather than the nearby white elementary
voting, state legislatures there were closed to the kind school. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
of organized political pressure possible in the North. (1954), Marshall argued that such segregation was
Thus activists also looked to federal courts for leverage. unconstitutional because it denied Linda Brown the
In the late 1930s, NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall, “equal protection of the laws” guaranteed by the
Charles Hamilton Houston, and William Hastie had Fourteenth Amendment (Map 27.2). In a unanimous
begun preparing the legal ground in a series of cases decision on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court agreed,
challenging racial discrimination. The key was prod- overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine at last.
ding the U.S. Supreme Court to use the Fourteenth Writing for the Court, the new chief justice, Earl
Amendment’s “equal protection” clause to overturn its Warren, wrote: “We conclude that in the field of public
1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no
segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. place. Separate educational facilities are inherently
Marshall was the great-grandson of slaves. Of mod- unequal.” In an implementing 1955 decision known as
est origins, his parents instilled in him a faith in law Brown II, the Court declared simply that integration
and the Constitution. After his 1930 graduation from should proceed “with all deliberate speed.”
Lincoln University, a prestigious African American In the South, however, Virginia senator Harry F.
institution near Philadelphia, Marshall applied to the Byrd issued a call for “massive resistance.” Calling
University of Maryland Law School. Denied admission May 17 “Black Monday,” the Mississippi segregationist
because the school did not accept black applicants, he Tom P. Brady invoked the language of the Cold War to
enrolled at all-black Howard University. There Marshall discredit the decision, assailing the “totalitarian gov-
met Houston, a law school dean, and the two forged a ernment” that had rendered the decision in the name
friendship and intellectual part- of “socialism and communism.” That year, half a mil-
TRACE CHANGE nership that would change the lion southerners joined White Citizens’ Councils dedi-
OVER TIME face of American legal history. cated to blocking school integration. Some whites
How did the NAACP go Marshall, with Houston’s and revived the old tactics of violence and intimidation,
about developing a legal
Hastie’s critical strategic input, swelling the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan to levels not
strategy to attack racial
would argue most of the NAACP’s seen since the 1920s. The “Southern Manifesto,” signed
segregation?
landmark cases. In the late 1960s, in 1956 by 101 members of Congress, denounced the
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 879
Gulf of Mexico
FL
Smith v. Allwright (1944),
U.S. Supreme Court:
0 150 300 miles MEXICO Case originated in Harris County, TX.
0 150 300 kilometers Outcome: Ruled that the white
primary was unconstitutional.
MAP 27.2
Desegregation Court Cases
Desegregation court battles were not limited to the South. Note the important California
cases regarding Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans. Two seminal decisions, the
1948 housing decision in Shelley v. Kraemer and the 1954 school decision in Brown v. Board
of Education, originated in Missouri and Kansas, respectively. This map helps show that racial
segregation and discrimination were a national, not simply a southern, problem.
Brown decision as “a clear abuse of judicial power” and troops to Little Rock and nationalized the Arkansas
encouraged local officials to defy it. The white South National Guard, ordering them to protect the black
had declared all-out war on Brown. students. Eisenhower thus became the first president
Enforcement of the Supreme Court’s decision was since Reconstruction to use federal troops to enforce
complicated further by Dwight Eisenhower’s presence the rights of African Americans. But Little Rock also
in the White House — the president was no champion showed that southern officials had more loyalty to local
of civil rights. Eisenhower accepted the Brown decision custom than to the law — a repeated problem in the
as the law of the land, but he thought it a mistake. Ike post-Brown era.
was especially unhappy about the prospect of commit-
ting federal power to enforce the decision. A crisis in
Little Rock, Arkansas, finally forced his hand. In
September 1957, when nine black students attempted Forging a Protest Movement,
to enroll at the all-white Central High School, Governor
Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to bar
1955–1965
them. Angry white mobs appeared daily to taunt the Declaring racial segregation integral to the South’s
students, chanting “Go back to the jungle.” As the “habits, traditions, and way of life,” the Southern
vicious scenes played out on television night after Manifesto signaled that many whites would not accept
night, Eisenhower finally acted. He sent 1,000 federal African American equality readily. As Americans had
880 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
witnessed in Little Rock, the unwillingness of local offi- Till’s body in Jet magazine brought national attention
cials to enforce Brown could render the decision invalid to the heinous crime.
in practice. If legal victories would not be enough, citi- Two white men were arrested for Till’s murder. Dur-
zens themselves, black and white, would have to take to ing the trial, followed closely in African American com-
the streets and demand justice. Following the Brown munities across the country, the lone witness to Till’s
decision, they did just that, forging a protest movement kidnapping — his uncle, Mose Wright — identified
unique in the history of the United States. both killers. Feeling “the blood boil in hundreds of
white people as they sat glaring in the courtroom,”
Wright said, “it was the first time in my life I had the
Nonviolent Direct Action courage to accuse a white man of a crime.” Despite
Brown had been the law of the land for barely a year Wright’s eyewitness testimony, the all-white jury found
when a single act of violence struck at the heart of black the defendants innocent. This miscarriage of jus-
America. A fourteen-year-old African American from tice — later, the killers even admitted their guilt in a
the South Side of Chicago, Emmett Till, was visiting Look magazine article — galvanized an entire genera-
relatives in Mississippi in the summer of 1955. Seen tion of African Americans; no one who lived through
talking to a white woman in a grocery store, Till was the Till case ever forgot it.
tortured and murdered under cover of night. His muti-
lated body was found at the bottom of a river, tied with Montgomery Bus Boycott In the wake of the Till
barbed wire to a heavy steel cotton gin fan. Photos of case, civil rights advocates needed some good news.
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 881
They received it three months later, as southern black Reconciliation had first used in the 1940s. After Rosa
leaders embraced an old tactic put to new ends: nonvi- Parks’s arrest, King endorsed a plan proposed by a local
olent protest. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a civil black women’s organization to boycott Montgomery’s
rights activist in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to bus system. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was inspired
give up her seat on a bus to a white man. She was by similar boycotts that had taken place in Harlem in
arrested and charged with violating a local segregation 1941 and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1953.
ordinance. Parks’s act was not the spur-of-the-moment For the next 381 days, Montgomery’s African
decision that it seemed: a woman of sterling reputation Americans formed car pools or walked to work.
and a longtime NAACP member, she had been con- “Darling, it’s empty!” Coretta Scott King exclaimed to
templating such an act for some time. Middle-aged and her husband as a bus normally filled with black riders
unassuming, Rosa Parks fit the bill perfectly for the rolled by their living room window on the first day of
NAACP’s challenge against segregated buses. the boycott. The transit company neared bankruptcy,
Once the die was cast, the black community turned and downtown stores complained about the loss of
for leadership to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., business. But only after the Supreme Court ruled in
the recently appointed pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter November 1956 that bus segregation was unconstitu-
Street Baptist Church. The son of a prominent Atlanta tional did the city of Montgomery finally comply. “My
minister, King embraced the teachings of Mahatma feets is tired, but my soul is rested,” said one woman
Gandhi. Working closely, but behind the scenes, with boycotter.
Bayard Rustin, King studied nonviolent philosophy, The Montgomery Bus Boycott catapulted King to
which Rustin and others in the Fellowship of national prominence. In 1957, along with the Reverend
882 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
on interstate bus lines throughout the South. The aim by southern Democrats in Con-
TRACE CHANGE
was to call attention to blatant violations of recent gress. Only a weak, largely sym- OVER TIME
Supreme Court rulings against segregation in inter- bolic act was passed in 1957 What lessons did activists
state commerce. The activists who signed on — mostly during the Eisenhower adminis- learn from the evolution
young, both black and white — knew that they were tration. But by the early 1960s, of the civil rights move-
taking their lives in their hands. They found courage in with legal precedents in their ment between 1957 and
song, as civil rights activists had begun to do across the favor and nonviolent protest awak- 1961?
country, with lyrics such as “I’m taking a ride on the ening the nation, civil rights lead-
Greyhound bus line. . . . Hallelujah, I’m traveling down ers believed the time had come for a serious civil
freedom’s main line!” rights bill. The challenge was getting one through a
Courage they needed. Club-wielding Klansmen still-reluctant Congress.
attacked the buses when they stopped in small towns.
Outside Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed; The Battle for Birmingham The road to such a bill
the Freedom Riders escaped only moments before began when Martin Luther King Jr. called for demon-
it exploded. Some riders were then brutally beaten. strations in “the most segregated city in the United
Freedom Riders and news reporters were also viciously States”: Birmingham, Alabama. King and the SCLC
attacked by Klansmen in Birmingham and Montgom- needed a concrete victory in Birmingham to validate
ery. Despite the violence, state authorities refused their strategy of nonviolent protest. In May 1963, thou-
to intervene. “I cannot guarantee protection for this sands of black marchers tried to picket Birmingham’s
bunch of rabble rousers,” declared Governor John department stores. Eugene “Bull” Connor, the city’s
Patterson of Alabama. public safety commissioner, ordered the city’s police
Once again, local officials’ refusal to enforce the law troops to meet the marchers with violent force: snarl-
left the fate of the Freedom Riders in Washington’s ing dogs, electric cattle prods, and high-pressure fire
hands. The new president, John F. Kennedy, was cau- hoses. Television cameras captured the scene for the
tious about civil rights. Despite a campaign commit- evening news.
ment, he failed to deliver on a civil rights bill. Elected While serving a jail sentence for leading the march,
by a thin margin, Kennedy believed that he could ill King, scribbling in pencil on any paper he could find,
afford to lose the support of powerful southern sena- composed one of the classic documents of nonviolent
tors. But civil rights was unlike other domestic issues. direct action: “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” “Why
Its fate was going to be decided not in the halls of direct action?” King asked. “There is a type of con-
Congress, but on the streets of southern cities. Although structive, nonviolent tension that is necessary for
President Kennedy discouraged the Freedom Rides, growth.” The civil rights movement sought, he contin-
beatings shown on the nightly news forced Attorney ued, “to create such a crisis and establish such a creative
General Robert Kennedy to dispatch federal marshals. tension.” Grounding his actions in equal parts Christian
Civil rights activists thus learned the value of nonvio- brotherhood and democratic liberalism, King argued
lent protest that provoked violent white resistance. that Americans confronted a moral choice: they could
The victories so far had been limited, but the “preserve the evil system of segregation” or take the
groundwork had been laid for a civil rights offensive side of “those great wells of democracy . . . the Consti-
that would transform the nation. The NAACP’s legal tution and the Declaration of Independence.”
strategy had been followed closely by the emergence of Outraged by the brutality in Birmingham and
a major protest movement. And now civil rights lead- embarrassed by King’s imprisonment for leading a
ers focused their attention on Congress. nonviolent march, President Kennedy decided that it
was time to act. On June 11, 1963, after newly elected
Alabama governor George Wallace barred two black
Legislating Civil Rights, 1963–1965 students from the state university, Kennedy denounced
The first civil rights law in the nation’s history came in racism on national television and promised a new civil
1866 just after the Civil War. Its provisions were long rights bill. Many black leaders felt Kennedy’s action
ignored (Chapter 15). A second law was passed during was long overdue, but they nonetheless hailed this
Reconstruction in 1875, but it was declared unconsti- “Second Emancipation Proclamation.” That night,
tutional by the Supreme Court. For nearly ninety years, Medgar Evers, president of the Mississippi chapter of
new civil rights legislation was blocked or filibustered the NAACP, was shot in the back in his driveway in
AMERICAN
VOICES
Among the many challenges historians face is figuring out the processes by
which long-oppressed ordinary people finally rise up and demand justice. Dur-
Challenging White ing the 1950s, a liberating process was quietly under way among southern
blacks, bursting forth dramatically in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and
Supremacy then, by the end of the decade, emerging across the South. Here are excerpts of
the testimony of two individuals who stepped forward and took the lead in
those struggles.
Franklin McCain him to resort to violence. And I think this is just killing
Desegregating Lunch Counters him; you can see it all over him.
If it’s possible to know what it means to have your
Franklin McCain was one of the four African American stu- soul cleansed — I felt pretty clean at that time. I probably
dents at North Carolina A&T College in Greensboro, North felt better on that day than I’ve ever felt in my life. Seems
Carolina, who sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter like a lot of feelings of guilt or what-have-you suddenly
on February 1, 1960, setting off a wave of student sit-ins left me, and I felt as though I had gained my manhood. . . .
that rocked the South and helped initiate a national civil Not Franklin McCain only as an individual, but I felt as
rights movement. In the following interview, McCain though the manhood of a number of other black persons
describes how he and his friends took that momentous had been restored and had gotten some respect from just
step. that one day.
The planning process was on a Sunday night, I remem- The movement started out as a movement of nonvio-
ber it quite well. I think it was Joseph who said, “It’s lence and a Christian movement. . . . It was a movement
time that we take some action now. We’ve been getting that was seeking justice more than anything else and not
together, and we’ve been, up to this point, still like most a movement to start a war. . . .We knew that probably the
people we’ve talked about for the past few weeks or so — most powerful and potent weapon that people have liter-
that is, people who talk a lot but, in fact, make very little ally no defense for is love, kindness. That is, whip the
action.” After selecting the technique, then we said, “Let’s enemy with something that he doesn’t understand. . . .
go down and just ask for service.” It certainly wasn’t titled The individual who had probably the most influence on
a “sit-in” or “sit-down” at that time. “Let’s just go down to us was Gandhi. . . . Yes, Martin Luther King’s name was
Woolworth’s tomorrow and ask for service, and the tactic well-known when the sit-in movement was in effect,
is going to be simply this: we’ll just stay there.” but . . . no, he was not the individual we had upmost
. . . Once getting there . . . we did make purchases in mind when we started the sit-in movement.
of school supplies and took the patience and time to get
receipts for our purchases, and Joseph and myself went Source: My Soul Is Rested by Howell Raines, copyright 1977 Howell Raines. Used by
permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. and Russell
over to the counter and asked to be served coffee and & Volkening as agents for the author.
doughnuts. As anticipated, the reply was, “I’m sorry,
we don’t serve you here.” And of course we said, “We John McFerren
just beg to disagree with you. We’ve in fact already
Demanding the Right to Vote
been served.” . . . The attendant or waitress was a little
bit dumbfounded, just didn’t know what to say under In this interview, given about ten years after the events he
circumstances like that. . . . describes, John McFerren tells of the battle he undertook
At that point there was a policeman who had walked in 1959 to gain the vote for the blacks of Fayette County,
in off the street, who was pacing the aisle . . . behind us, Tennessee. By the time of the interview, McFerren had
where we were seated, with his club in his hand, just sort risen in life and become a grocery-store owner and prop-
of knocking it in his hand, and just looking mean and erty holder, thanks, he says, to the economic boycott
red and a little bit upset and a little bit disgusted. And imposed on him by angry whites. Unlike Greensboro, the
you had the feeling that he didn’t know what the hell to struggle in Fayette County never made national headlines.
do. . . . Usually his defense is offense, and we’ve provoked It was just one of many local struggles that signaled the
him, yes, but we haven’t provoked outwardly enough for beginning of a new day in the South.
884
My name is John McFerren. I’m forty-six years old. I’m a then that’s when the White Citizens Council and the Ku
Negro was born and raised in West Tennessee, the county Klux Klan started shootin in the tents to run us out.
of Fayette, District 1. My foreparents was brought here Tent City was parta an economic squeeze. The local
from North Carolina five years before the Civil War . . . merchants run me outa the stores and said I went to
because the rumor got out among the slaveholders that Washington and caused this mess to start. . . . They had a
West Tennessee was still goin to be a slaveholdin state. blacklist . . . And they had the list sent around to all mer-
And my people was brought over here and sold. And chants. Once you registered you couldn’t buy for credit or
after the Civil War my people settled in West Tennessee. cash. But the best thing in the world was when they run
That’s why Fayette and Haywood counties have a great me outa them stores. It started me thinkin for myself. . . .
number of Negroes. The southern white has a slogan: “Keep em niggers
Back in 1957 and ’58 there was a Negro man accused happy and keep em singin in the schools.” And the biggest
of killin a deputy sheriff. This was Burton Dodson. He mistake of the past is that the Negro has not been teached
was brought back after he’d been gone twenty years. J. F. economics and the value of a dollar. . . . Back at one time
Estes was the lawyer defendin him. Myself and him both we had a teacher . . . from Mississippi — and he pulled up
was in the army together. And the stimulation from the and left the county because he was teachin the Negroes to
trial got me interested in the way justice was bein used. buy land, and own land, and work it for hisself, and the
The only way to bring justice would be through the county Board of Education didn’t want that taught in the
ballot box. county.
In 1959 we got out a charter called the Fayette County And they told him, “Keep em niggers singin and keep
Civic and Welfare League. Fourteen of us started out in em happy and don’t teach em nothin.” . . . You cannot be
that charter. We tried to support a white liberal candidate free when you’re beggin the man for bread. But when you’ve
that was named L. T. Redfearn in the sheriff election and got the dollar in your pocket and then got the vote in your
the local Democrat party refused to let Negroes vote. pocket, that’s the only way to be free. . . . And I have been
We brought a suit against the Democrat party and successful and made good progress because I could see
I went to Washington for a civil-rights hearing. Myself the only way I could survive is to stay independent.
and Estes and Harpman Jameson made the trip. It took . . . The Negro is no longer goin back. He’s goin forward.
us twenty-two hours steady drivin. . . . I was lookin all
up — lotsa big, tall buildins. I had never seen old, tall Source: From Looking for America, second edition, 2 volumes, edited by Stanley I. Kutler
(New York: Norton, 1979). Reprinted with permission of Stanley Kutler.
buildins like that before. After talkin to [John Doar] we
come on back to the Justice Department building and we
sat out in the hall while he had a meetin inside the attor-
ney general’s office. And when they come out they told QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
us they was gonna indict the landowners who kept us 1. McCain took a stand on segregated lunch counters.
McFerren took a stand on the right to vote. How did
from voting. . . . these targets represent two different goals of the civil
Just after that, in 1960, in January, we organized a rights movement?
thousand Negroes to line up at the courthouse to register 2. McCain speaks of the sense of “manhood” he felt as he
to vote. We started pourin in with big numbers — in this sat at that Woolworth’s counter. What does his personal
county it was 72 percent Negroes — when we started to feeling suggest about the civil rights movement as a
whole?
register to vote to change the situation.
3. Almost certainly, McCain and McFerren never met. Sup-
In the followin . . . October and November they pose they had. What would they have had in common?
started puttin our people offa the land. Once you regis- Would what they had in common have been more
tered you had to move. Once you registered they took important than what separated them?
your job. Then after they done that, in November, we had 4. McCain speaks knowingly of the figures and ideas that
influenced him. Why do you suppose McFerren is silent
three hundred people forced to live in tents on Shepard about such matters?
Towles’s land. And when we started puttin em in tents,
885
886 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
Jackson by a white supremacist. Evers’s martyrdom at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at
became a spur to further action (Map 27.3). last!” — that captured the nation’s imagination. The
sight of 250,000 blacks and whites marching solemnly
The March on Washington and the Civil Rights together marked the high point of the civil rights move-
Act To marshal support for Kennedy’s bill, civil ment and confirmed King’s position as the leading
rights leaders adopted a tactic that A. Philip Randolph spokesperson for the cause.
had first advanced in 1941: a massive demonstration in To have any chance of getting the civil rights bill
Washington. Under the leadership of Randolph and through Congress, King, Randolph, and Rustin knew
Bayard Rustin, thousands of volunteers across the they had to sustain this broad coalition of blacks and
country coordinated car pools, “freedom buses,” and whites. They could afford to alienate no one. Reflecting
“freedom trains,” and on August 28, 1963, delivered a a younger, more militant set of activists, however,
quarter of a million people to the Lincoln Memorial for SNCC member John Lewis had prepared a more pro-
the officially named March on Washington for Jobs and vocative speech for that afternoon. Lewis wrote, “The
Freedom (Thinking Like a Historian, p. 888). time will come when we will not confine our marching
Although other people did the planning, Martin to Washington. We will march through the South,
Luther King Jr. was the public face of the march. It was through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did.”
King’s dramatic “I Have a Dream” speech, beginning Signaling a growing restlessness among black youth,
with his admonition that too many black people lived Lewis warned: “We shall fragment the South into a
“on a lonely island of poverty” and ending with the thousand pieces and put them back together again in
exclamation from a traditional black spiritual — “Free the image of democracy.” Fearing the speech would
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 887
PENNSYLVANIA
NEBRASKA IOWA N.J.
8 1963: Thousands from every state join protest
1 1954: In Brown v. Board of Education, March on Washington. Martin Luther King Jr. MD.
the United States Supreme Court rules public delivers “I have a dream” speech. DEL.
school segregation unconstitutional. :DVKLQJWRQ'&
ILLINOIS INDIANA OHIO
WEST
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5 1961: Sponsored by the Congress of NORTH
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Racial Equality (CORE), the Freedom Ride 1DVKYLOOH CAROLINA
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meets with violence in Alabama.
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SOUTH
OKLAHOMA 0HPSKLV CAROLINA
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5RFN 4 1960: Sit-in movement begins in
3 1957: President Eisenhower sends 2[IRUG $QQLVWRQ Greensboro, North Carolina, and
$WODQWD quickly spreads to Nashville, Atlanta,
federal troops to enforce integration
of Central High School. ARKANSAS %LUPLQJKDP and other places.
ALA.
GEORGIA
MISS. 0RQWJRPHU\
6 1962: James Meredith integrates 6HOPD 7 1962: Meeting stiff local resistance,
the University of Mississippi under SCLC and Martin Luther King's
$OEDQ\ attempt at desegregation fails.
the protection of federal troops. -DFNVRQ
ATLANTIC
LA. OCEAN
TEXAS 2 1955–56: Rosa Parks refuses to
move to back of the bus, launching 10 1965: Protest march from Selma to
Montgomery Bus Boycott. Montgomery following “Bloody Sunday.”
N
Gulf of Mexico
W E
S
0 150 300 miles
MEXICO 0 150 300 kilometers
MAP 27.3
The Civil Rights Struggle, 1954–1965
In the postwar battle for black civil rights, the first major victory was the NAACP litigation
of Brown v. Board of Education, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional.
As indicated on this map, the struggle then quickly spread, raising other issues and seeding
new organizations. Other organizations quickly joined the battle and shifted the focus away
from the courts to mass action and organization. The year 1965 marked the high point, when
violence against the Selma, Alabama, marchers spurred the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
alienate white supporters, Rustin and others implored legislation. Georgia senator Richard Russell, a leader
Lewis to tone down his rhetoric. With only minutes to of the opposition, refused to support any bill that
spare before he stepped up to the podium, Lewis would “bring about social equality and intermingling
agreed. He delivered a more conciliatory speech, but and amalgamation of the races.” Then, suddenly, trage-
his conflict with march organizers signaled an emerg- dies piled up, one on another. In September, white
ing rift in the movement. supremacists bombed a Baptist church in Birmingham,
Although the March on Washington galvanized killing four black girls in Sunday school. Less than two
public opinion, it changed few congressional votes. months later, Kennedy himself lay dead, the victim of
Southern senators continued to block Kennedy’s assassination.
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN
and Ideology
1. Martin Luther King Jr., “If the Negro Wins, Labor 3. Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics,”
Wins” speech, 1962. King, speaking to a meeting Commentary, February 1965.
of the nation’s trade union leaders, explained the . . . it would be hard to quarrel with the assertion that
economic objectives of the black freedom struggle. the elaborate legal structure of segregation and discrimi-
If we do not advance, the crushing burden of centuries nation, particularly in relation to public accommodations,
of neglect and economic deprivation will destroy our has virtually collapsed. On the other hand, without making
will, our spirits and our hopes. In this way labor’s his- light of the human sacrifices involved in the direct-action
toric tradition of moving forward to create vital people tactics (sit-ins, freedom rides, and the rest) that were so
as consumers and citizens has become our own tradition, instrumental to this achievement, we must recognize
and for the same reasons. that in desegregating public accommodations, we
This unity of purpose is not an historical coincidence. affected institutions which are relatively peripheral
Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are both to the American socio-economic order and to
pitifully few Negro millionaires and few Negro employers. the fundamental conditions of life of the Negro people.
Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, In a highly-industrialized, 20th-century civilization, we
fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, hit Jim Crow precisely where it was most anachronistic,
health and welfare measures, conditions in which families dispensable, and vulnerable — in hotels, lunch counters,
can grow, have education for their children and respect terminals, libraries, swimming pools, and the like. . . . At
in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s issue, after all, is not civil rights, strictly speaking, but
demands and fight laws which curb labor. . . . social and economic conditions.
The two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces
in the country are the labor movement and the Negro 4. James Farmer, Freedom, When?, 1965.
freedom movement. Together we can be architects of “But when will the demonstrations end?” The perpetual
democracy in a South now rapidly industrializing. question. And a serious question. Actually, it is several
questions, for the meaning of the question differs,
2. Police in Birmingham, Alabama, use trained depending upon who asks it.
German shepherds against peaceful African Coming from those whose dominant consideration
American protesters, 1963. is peace — public peace and peace of mind — the question
means: “When are you going to stop tempting violence
and rioting?” Some put it more strongly: “When are you
going to stop sponsoring violence?” Assumed is the nec-
essary connection between demonstration and violence. . . .
“Isn’t the patience of the white majority wearing thin?
Why nourish the displeasure of 90 percent of the popula-
tion with provocative demonstrations? Remember, you
need allies.” And the assumptions of these Cassandras
of the backlash is that freedom and equality are, in the
last analysis, wholly gifts in the white man’s power to
bestow. . . .
What the public must realize is that in a demonstra-
tion more things are happening, at more levels of human
activity, than meets the eye. Demonstrations in the last
Bill Hudson / AP Images.
888
few years have provided literally millions of Negroes with Sources: (1) “If the Negro Wins, Labor Wins,” by Martin Luther King delivered
their first taste of self-determination and political self- February 12, 1962. Reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin
Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, NY.
expression. Copyright © 1962 Martin Luther King Jr. Copyright renewed 1991 Coretta Scott
King; (3) Commentary, February 1965; (4) James Farmer, Freedom, When? (New
5. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black York: Random House, 1965), 25–27, 42–47; (5) Stokely Carmichael and Charles V.
Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (New York: Vintage, 1992,
Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, 1967.
orig. 1967), 37, 44.
Black people must redefine themselves, and only they
can do that. Throughout this country, vast segments of
the black communities are beginning to recognize the ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
need to assert their own definitions, to reclaim their 1. Compare sources 1 and 3. What does Rustin mean when
history, their culture; to create their own sense of com- he says that ending segregation in public accommoda-
munity and togetherness. There is a growing resentment tions has not affected the “fundamental conditions” of
African American life? How does King’s point in docu-
of the word “Negro,” for example, because this term is the ment 1 address such issues?
invention of our oppressor; it is his image of us that he 2. Examine the two photographs. What do they reveal
describes. . . . about different kinds of protest? About different
The concept of Black Power rests on a fundamental perspectives among African Americans?
premise: Before a group can enter the open society, it 3. What does “self-determination” mean for Farmer and
Carmichael and Hamilton?
must first close ranks. By this we mean that group soli-
darity is necessary before a group can operate effectively PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
from a bargaining position of strength in a pluralistic
Compose an essay in which you use the documents above,
society. in addition to your reading of the chapter, to explore and
explain different approaches to African American rights in
6. Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico the 1960s. In particular, think about how all of the docu-
City. Tommie Smith and John Carolos (right) won ments come from a single movement, yet each expresses
a distinct viewpoint and a distinct way of conceiving what
gold and bronze medals in the 200 meters. The
“the struggle” is about. How do these approaches compare
silver medalist, Australian Peter Norman (left), is to the tactics of earlier struggles for civil rights?
wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights
badge to show his support.
AP images.
889
890 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
On assuming the presidency, Freedom Summer The Civil Rights Act was a law
COMPARE AND
Lyndon Johnson made passing with real teeth, but it left untouched the obstacles to
CONTRAST
In what ways did white
the civil rights bill a priority. A black voting rights. So protesters went back into the
resistance hinder the civil southerner and former Senate streets. In 1964, in what came to be known as Freedom
rights movement? In what majority leader, Johnson was Summer, black organizations mounted a major cam-
ways did it help? renowned for his fierce persuasive paign in Mississippi. The effort drew several thousand
style and tough political bargain- volunteers from across the country, including nearly
ing. Using equal parts moral leverage, the memory of one thousand white college students from the North.
the slain JFK, and his own brand of hardball politics, Led by the charismatic SNCC activist Robert Moses,
Johnson overcame the filibuster. In June 1964, Congress the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC,
approved the most far-reaching civil rights law since CORE, NAACP, and SCLC) spread out across the state.
Reconstruction. The keystone of the Civil Rights Act of They established freedom schools for black children
1964, Title VII, outlawed discrimination in employ- and conducted a major voter registration drive. Yet so
ment on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and determined was the opposition that only about twelve
sex. Another section guaranteed equal access to public hundred black voters were registered that summer, at a
accommodations and schools. The law granted new cost of four murdered civil rights workers and thirty-
enforcement powers to the U.S. attorney general and seven black churches bombed or burned.
established the Equal Employment Opportunity Com- The murders strengthened the resolve of the
mission to implement the prohibition against job Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which
discrimination. had been founded during Freedom Summer. Banned
from the “whites only” Mississippi Democratic Party, tests and other devices that prevented African Amer-
MFDP leaders were determined to attend the 1964 icans from registering to vote, and authorized the attor-
Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New ney general to send federal examiners to register voters
Jersey, as the legitimate representatives of their state. in any county where registration was less than 50 per-
Inspired by Fannie Lou Hamer, a former sharecropper cent. Together with the Twenty-fourth Amendment
turned civil rights activist, the MFDP challenged the (1964), which outlawed the poll tax in federal elec-
most powerful figures in the Democratic Party, includ- tions, the Voting Rights Act enabled millions of Afri-
ing Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats’ presidential nom- can Americans to vote for the first time since the
inee. “Is this America?” Hamer asked party officials Reconstruction era.
when she demanded that the MFDP, and not the all- In the South, the results were stunning. In 1960,
white Mississippi delegation, be recognized by the con- only 20 percent of black citizens had been registered
vention. Democratic leaders, however, seated the white to vote; by 1971, registration reached 62 percent
Mississippi delegation and refused to recognize the (Map 27.4). Moreover, across the nation the number
MFDP. Demoralized and convinced that the of black elected officials began to climb, quadrupling
Democratic Party would not change, Moses told televi- from 1,400 to 4,900 between 1970 and 1980 and
sion reporters: “I will have nothing to do with the polit- doubling again by the early 1990s. Most of those
ical system any longer.” elected held local offices — from sheriff to county
commissioner — but nonetheless embodied a shift in
Selma and the Voting Rights Act Martin Luther political representation nearly unimaginable a genera-
King Jr. and the SCLC did not share Moses’s skepti- tion earlier. As Hartman Turnbow, a Mississippi farmer
cism. They believed that another confrontation with who risked his life to register in 1964, later declared, “It
southern injustice could provoke further congressional won’t never go back where it was.”
action. In March 1965, James Bevel of the SCLC called Something else would never go back either: the lib-
for a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital, eral New Deal coalition. By the second half of the
Montgomery, to protest the murder of a voting-rights 1960s, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party had
activist. As soon as the six hundred marchers left won its battle with the conservative, segregationist
Selma, crossing over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, wing. Democrats had embraced the civil rights move-
mounted state troopers attacked them with tear gas ment and made African American equality a corner-
and clubs. The scene was shown on national television stone of a new “rights” liberalism. But over the next
that night, and the day became known as Bloody generation, between the 1960s and the 1980s, southern
Sunday. Calling the episode “an American tragedy,” whites and many conservative northern whites would
President Johnson went back to Congress. respond by switching to the Republican Party. Strom
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was signed by Thurmond, the segregationist senator from South
President Johnson on August 6, outlawed the literacy Carolina, symbolically led the revolt by renouncing the
MAP 27.4
Black Voter Registration in the South,
1964 and 1975 VA.
After passage of the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, black registration in
N.C.
the South increased dramatically. TENN.
The bars on the map show the S.C.
ARK.
number of African Americans N
Democrats and becoming a Republican in 1964. The had emphasized the differences between blacks and
New Deal coalition — which had joined working-class whites as well as black people’s power (and right) to
whites, northern African Americans, urban profes- shape their own destiny. In the late nineteenth century,
sionals, and white southern segregationists together in nationalists founded the Back to Africa movement,
a fragile political alliance since the 1930s — was begin- and in the 1920s the nationalist Marcus Garvey
ning to crumble. inspired African Americans to take pride in their racial
heritage (Chapter 22).
In the early 1960s, the leading exponent of black
nationalism was the Nation of Islam, which fused a
Beyond Civil Rights, rejection of Christianity with a strong philosophy of
1966–1973 self-improvement. Black Muslims, as they were known,
adhered to a strict code of personal behavior; men
Activists had long known that Supreme Court deci- were recognizable by their dark suits, white shirts, and
sions and new laws do not automatically produce ties, women by their long dresses and head coverings.
changes in society. But in the mid-1960s, civil rights Black Muslims preached an apocalyptic brand of Islam,
advocates confronted a more profound issue: perhaps anticipating the day when Allah would banish the
even protests were not enough. In 1965, Bayard Rustin white “devils” and give the black nation justice.
wrote of the need to move “from protest to politics” in Although its full converts numbered only about ten
order to build institutional black power. Some black thousand, the Nation of Islam had a wide popular fol-
leaders, such as the young SNCC activists Stokely lowing among African Americans in northern cities.
Carmichael, Frances Beal, and John Lewis, grew frus-
trated with the slow pace of reform and the stubborn Malcolm X The most charismatic Black Muslim was
resistance of whites. Still others believed that address- Malcolm X (the X stood for his African family name,
ing black poverty and economic disadvantage remained lost under slavery). A spellbinding speaker, Malcolm X
the most important objective. Neither new laws nor preached a philosophy of militant separatism, although
long marches appeared capable of meeting these varied he advocated violence only for self-defense. Hostile to
and complex challenges. mainstream civil rights organizations, he caustically
The conviction that civil rights alone were inca- referred to the 1963 March on Washington as the
pable of guaranteeing equality took hold in many minor- “Farce on Washington.” Malcolm X said plainly, “I
ity communities in this period. African Americans believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t
were joined by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want
and American Indians. They came at the problem of brotherhood with me.” Malcolm X had little interest in
inequality from different perspectives, but each group changing the minds of hostile whites. Strengthening
asked a similar question: As crucial as legal equality the black community, he believed, represented a surer
was, how much did it matter if most people of color path to freedom and equality.
remained in or close to poverty, if white society still In 1964, after a power struggle with founder Elijah
regarded nonwhites as inferior, and if the major social Muhammad, Malcolm X broke with the Nation of
and political institutions in the country were run by Islam. While he remained a black nationalist, he mod-
whites? Black leaders and representatives of other non- erated his antiwhite views and began to talk of a class
white communities increasingly asked themselves this struggle uniting poor whites and blacks. Following an
question as they searched for ways to build on the inspiring trip to the Middle East, where he saw Muslims
achievements of the civil rights decade of 1954–1965. of all races worshipping together, Malcolm X formed
the Organization of Afro-American Unity to promote
black pride and to work with traditional civil rights
Black Nationalism groups. But he got no further. On February 21, 1965,
Seeking answers to these questions led many African Malcolm X was assassinated while delivering a speech
Americans to embrace black nationalism. The philoso- in Harlem. Three Black Muslims were later convicted
phy of black nationalism signified many things in the of his murder.
1960s. It could mean anything from pride in one’s com-
munity to total separatism, from building African Black Power A more secular brand of black nation-
American–owned businesses to wearing dashikis in alism emerged in 1966 when SNCC and CORE activ-
honor of African traditions. Historically, nationalism ists, following the lead of Stokely Carmichael, began to
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 893
Malcolm X
Until his murder in 1965, Malcolm X was
the leading proponent of black nationalism
in the United States. A brilliant and dynamic
orator, Malcolm had been a minister in the
Nation of Islam for nearly thirteen years,
until he broke with the Nation in 1964. His
emphasis on black pride and self-help and
his unrelenting criticism of white supremacy
made him one of the freedom movement’s
most inspirational figures, both in life and
well after his death. ©Topham/The Image
Works.
call for black self-reliance under the banner of Black open jobs in police and fire departments and in con-
Power. Advocates of Black Power asked fundamental struction and transportation to black workers, who
questions: If alliances with whites were necessary to had been excluded from these
achieve racial justice, as King believed they were, did occupations for decades. Others UNDERSTAND POINTS
that make African Americans dependent on the good worked to end police harass- OF VIEW
intentions of whites? If so, could black people trust ment — a major problem in urban Why were Black Power
those good intentions in the long run? Increasingly, black communities — and to help and black nationalism
those inclined toward Black Power believed that black entrepreneurs to receive compelling to many
African Americans should build economic and politi- small-business loans. CORE leader African Americans?
cal power in their own communities. Such power Floyd McKissick explained, “Black
would translate into a less dependent relationship with Power is not Black Supremacy; it is a united Black
white America. “For once,” Carmichael wrote, “black Voice reflecting racial pride.”
people are going to use the words they want to use — not The attention to racial pride led some African
the words whites want to hear.” Americans to reject white society and to pursue more
Spurred by the Black Power slogan, African authentic cultural forms. In addition to focusing on
American activists turned their attention to the pov- economic disadvantage, Black Power emphasized black
erty and social injustice faced by so many black people. pride and self-determination. Those subscribing to
President Johnson had declared the War on Poverty, these beliefs wore African clothing, chose natural
and black organizers joined, setting up day care cen- hairstyles, and celebrated black history, art, and lit-
ters, running community job training programs, and erature. The Black Arts movement thrived, and musi-
working to improve housing and health care in urban cal tastes shifted from the crossover sounds of Motown
neighborhoods. In major cities such as Philadelphia, to the soul music of Philadelphia, Memphis, and
New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, activists sought to Chicago.
894 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
Black Panther Party One of the most radical nation- officer, several Panthers were killed by police, and doz-
alist groups was the Black Panther Party, founded in ens went to prison. Moreover, under its domestic coun-
Oakland, California, in 1966 by two college students, terintelligence program, the Federal Bureau of Invest-
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. A militant organiza- igation (FBI) had begun disrupting party activities.
tion dedicated to protecting African Americans from
police violence, the Panthers took their cue from the Young Lords Among those inspired by the Black
slain Malcolm X. They vehemently opposed the Panthers were Puerto Ricans in New York. Their ve-
Vietnam War and declared their affinity for Third hicle was the Young Lords Organization (YLO), later
World revolutionary movements and armed struggle renamed the Young Lords Party. Like the Black
(Map 27.5). In their manifesto, “What We Want, What Panthers, YLO activists sought self-determination for
We Believe,” the Panthers outlined their Ten Point Puerto Ricans, both those in the United States and
Program for black liberation. those on the island in the Caribbean. In practical terms,
The Panthers’ organization spread to other cities in the YLO focused on improving neighborhood condi-
the late 1960s, where members undertook a wide range tions: city garbage collection was notoriously poor in
of community-organizing projects. Their free breakfast East Harlem, where most Puerto Ricans lived, and
program for children and their testing program for slumlords had allowed the housing to become squalid.
sickle-cell anemia, an inherited disease with a high Women in the YLO were especially active, protesting
incidence among African Americans, were especially sterilization campaigns against Puerto Rican women
popular. However, the Panthers’ radicalism and belief and fighting to improve access to health care. As was
in armed self-defense resulted in violent clashes with true of so many nationalist groups, immediate victories
police. Newton was charged with murdering a police for the YLO were few, but their dedicated community
ICELAND
1944
LEBANON 1943
ATLANTIC CYPRUS 1960
KOREA
1948 PACIFIC
SYRIA 1946
OCEAN MOROCCO 1956 MALTA
1961 JORDAN 1946 PAKISTAN BHUTAN 1949 OCEAN
ISRAEL 1948 1947 BANGLADESH 1971
BAHAMAS WESTERN SAHARA MYANMAR
TUNISIA 1956 LIBYA KUWAIT 1961
1973 ANTIGUA AND MAURITANIA 1960 BAHRAIN 1971 (BURMA) 1948
JAMAICA ALGERIA 1951 QATAR 1971 MICRONESIA
BARBUDA 1981 1962 INDIA
1962 ST. KITTS UNITED ARAB 1986
SENEGAL 1960 1947
BELIZE 1981 AND NEVIS MALI NIGER EMIRATES 1971 OMAN 1970 LAOS 1949 PHILIPPINES MARSHALL
GAMBIA 1965 ISLANDS
ST. LUCIA 1979 1983 1960 1960 ERITREA 1993 1946
GUINEA- YEMEN 1967 CAMBODIA 1986
ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES 1979 DOMINICA BISSAU 1974 BURKINA -FASO CHAD SUDAN 1953 MALAYSIA 1957
1978 1960 NIGERIA 1960 DJIBOUTI 1977 VIETNAM
GRENADA 1974 GUINEA 1958 1956
BARBADOS SOMALIA 1960 SRI LANKA 1945
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO 1962 1966 SIERRA LEONE 1961 1960 CENTRAL 1948 BRUNEI
CÔTE D'IVOIRE 1960 AFRICAN UGANDA 1962 DARUSSALAM NAURU
GHANA 1957 REP.1960 MALDIVES 1984 PAPUA 1968
GUYANA 1966 KENYA 1963
TOGO 1960 CONGO RWANDA 1962 1965 NEW GUINEA
SURINAME 1975 BENIN 1960 1960 D.R. of BURUNDI 1962 SINGAPORE 1965 1975
CAMEROON 1960 CONGO TANZANIA SEYCHELLES 1976 INDONESIA 1949
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE 1975 1960 1961
EQUATORIAL GUINEA 1968 ANGOLA MALAWI 1964
GABON 1960 1975 COMOROS 1975
ZAMBIA SOLOMON
1964 ISLANDS
PACIFIC NAMIBIA
MADAGASCAR 1960
INDIAN 1978
OCEAN 1990 MAURITIUS 1968
OCEAN VANUATU
BOTSWANA 1966 MOZAMBIQUE 1975 1980
N ZIMBABWE 1980 SWAZILAND 1968
LESOTHO 1966
W E
MAP 27.5
Decolonization and the Third World, 1943–1990
In the decades after World War II, African nations threw off the yoke of European colonialism.
Some new nations, such as Ghana, the former British colony of Gold Coast, achieved indepen-
dence rather peacefully. Others, such as Algeria and Mozambique, did so only after bloody
anticolonial wars. American civil rights activists watched African decolonization with great
enthusiasm, seeing the two struggles as linked. “Sure we identified with the blacks in Africa,”
civil rights leader John Lewis said. “Here were black people, talking of freedom and liberation
and independence thousands of miles away.” In 1960 alone, the year that student sit-ins swept
across the American South, more than a dozen African nations gained independence.
organizing produced a generation of leaders (many of Having met with some political success, black
whom later went into politics) and awakened commu- leaders gathered in Gary for the 1972 National Black
nity consciousness. Political Convention. In a meeting that brought together
radicals, liberals, and centrists, debate centered on
The New Urban Politics Black Power also inspired whether to form a third political party. Hatcher recalled
African Americans to work within the political system. that many in attendance believed that “there was going
By the mid-1960s, black residents neared 50 percent of to be a black third party.” In the end, however, dele-
the population in several major American cities — such gates decided to “give the Democratic Party one more
as Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. chance.” Instead of creating a third party, the conven-
Black Power in these cities was not abstract; it counted tion issued the National Black Political Agenda, which
in real votes. Residents of Gary, Indiana, and Cleveland, included calls for community control of schools in
Ohio, elected the first black mayors of large cities in black neighborhoods, national health insurance, and
1967. Richard Hatcher in Gary and Carl Stokes in the elimination of the death penalty.
Cleveland helped forge a new urban politics in the Democrats failed to enact the National Black
United States. Their campaign teams registered thou- Political Agenda, but African Americans were increas-
sands of black voters and made alliances with enough ingly integrated into American political institutions.
whites to create a working majority. Many saw Stokes’s By the end of the century, black elected officials had
victory, in particular, as heralding a new day. As one of become commonplace in major American cities. There
Stokes’s campaign staffers said: “If Carl Stokes could were forty-seven African American big-city mayors by
run for mayor in the eighth largest city in America, the 1990s, and blacks had led most of the nation’s most
then maybe who knows. We could be senators. We prominent cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Los Ange-
could be anything we wanted.” les, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
896 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
These politicians had translated black power not into a These Rights.” “Our nation is moving toward two soci-
wholesale rejection of white society but into a revital- eties,” the Kerner Commission Report concluded, “one
ized liberalism that would remain an indelible feature black, one white — separate and unequal.” The report
of urban politics for the rest of the century. did not excuse the brick-throwing, firebombing, and
looting of the previous summers, but it placed the riots
in sociological context. Shut out of white-dominated
Poverty and Urban Violence society, impoverished African Americans felt they had
Black Power was not, fundamentally, a violent political no stake in the social order.
ideology. But violence did play a decisive role in the Stirred by turmoil in the cities, and seeing the limi-
politics of black liberation in the mid-1960s. Too many tations of his civil rights achievements, Martin Luther
Americans, white and black, had little knowledge or King Jr. began to expand his vision beyond civil rights
understanding of the rage that existed just below the to confront the deep-seated problems of poverty and
surface in many poor northern black neighborhoods. racism in America as a whole. He criticized President
That rage boiled over in a wave of riots that struck the Johnson and Congress for prioritizing the war in
nation’s cities in mid-decade. The first “long hot sum- Vietnam over the fight against poverty at home, and he
mer” began in July 1964 in New York City when police planned a massive movement called the Poor People’s
shot a black criminal suspect in Harlem. Angry youths Campaign to fight economic injustice. To advance that
looted and rioted there for a week. Over the next four cause, he went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support a
years, the volatile issue of police brutality set off riots in strike by predominantly black sanitation workers.
dozens of cities. There, on April 4, 1968, he was assassinated by escaped
In August 1965, the arrest of a young black motor- white convict James Earl Ray. King’s death set off a fur-
ist in the Watts section of Los Angeles sparked six days ther round of urban rioting, with major violence break-
of rioting that left thirty-four people dead. “There is a ing out in more than a hundred cities.
different type of Negro emerging,” one riot participant Tragically, King was murdered before achieving the
told investigators. “They are not going to wait for the transformations he sought: an end to racial injustice
evolutionary process for their rights to be a man.” The and a solution to poverty. The civil rights movement
riots of 1967, however, were the most serious, engulf- had helped set in motion permanent, indeed revolu-
ing twenty-two cities in July and August. Forty-three tionary, changes in American race relations. Jim Crow
people were killed in Detroit alone, nearly all of them segregation ended, federal legislation ensured black
black, and $50 million worth of property was destroyed. Americans’ most basic civil rights, and the white
President Johnson called in the National Guard and monopoly on political power in the South was broken.
U.S. Army troops, many of them having just returned However, by 1968, the fight over civil rights had also
from Vietnam, to restore order. divided the nation. The Democratic Party was splitting,
Johnson, who believed that the Civil Rights Act and and a new conservatism was gaining strength. Many
the Voting Rights Act had immeasurably helped Afri- whites felt that the issue of civil rights was receiving too
can Americans, was stunned by the rioting. Despondent much attention, to the detriment of other national con-
at the news from Watts, “he refused to look at the cables cerns. The riots of 1965, 1967, and 1968 further alien-
from Los Angeles,” recalled one aide. Virtually all black ated many whites, who blamed the violence on the
leaders condemned the rioting, though they understood inability of Democratic officials to maintain law and
its origins in poverty and deprivation. At a meeting in order.
Watts, Martin Luther King Jr. admitted that he had
“failed to take the civil rights movement to the masses
of the people,” such as those in the Los Angeles ghetto. Rise of the Chicano Movement
His appearance appeased few. “We don’t need your Mexican Americans had something of a counterpart to
dreams; we need jobs!” one heckler shouted at King. Martin Luther King: Cesar Chavez. In Chavez’s case,
Following the gut-wrenching riots in Detroit and however, economic struggle in community organiza-
Newark in 1967, Johnson appointed a presidential tions and the labor movement had shaped his approach
commission, headed by Illinois governor Otto Kerner, to mobilizing society’s disadvantaged. He and Dolores
to investigate the causes of the violence. Released in Huerta had worked for the Community Service
1968, the Kerner Commission Report was a searing Organization (CSO), a California group founded in the
look at race in America, the most honest and forthright 1950s to promote Mexican political participation and
government document about race since the Presidential civil rights. Leaving that organization in 1962, Chavez
Committee on Civil Rights’ 1947 report “To Secure concentrated on the agricultural region around Delano,
CHAPTER 27 Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973 897
California. With Huerta, he organized the United Farm Younger Mexican Americans grew impatient with
Workers (UFW), a union for migrant workers. civil rights groups such as MAPA and MALDF, how-
Huerta was a brilliant organizer, but the deeply ever. The barrios of Los Angeles and other western
spiritual and ascetic Chavez embodied the moral force cities produced the militant Brown Berets, modeled on
behind what was popularly called La Causa. A 1965 the Black Panthers (who wore black berets). Rejecting
grape pickers’ strike led the UFW to call a nationwide their elders’ assimilationist approach (that is, a belief in
boycott of table grapes, bringing Chavez huge publicity adapting to Anglo society), fifteen
and backing from the AFL-CIO. In a bid for attention hundred Mexican American stu- COMPARE AND
to the struggle, Chavez staged a hunger strike in 1968, dents met in Denver in 1969 to CONTRAST
which ended dramatically after twenty-eight days with hammer out a new political and What did the Chicano and
Senator Robert F. Kennedy at his side to break the fast. cultural agenda. They proclaimed American Indian move-
Victory came in 1970 when California grape growers a new term, Chicano (and its fem- ments have in common
signed contracts recognizing the UFW. inine form, Chicana), to replace with the black freedom
Mexican Americans shared some civil rights con- Mexican American, and later movement?
cerns with African Americans — especially access to organized a political party, La
jobs — but they also had unique concerns: the status of Raza Unida (The United Race), to promote Chicano
the Spanish language in schools, for instance, and interests. Young Chicana feminists formed a number
immigration policy. Mexican Americans had been of organizations, including Las Hijas (The Daughters),
politically active since the 1940s, aiming to surmount which organized women both on college campuses and
factors that obstructed their political involvement: in the barrios. In California and many southwestern
poverty, language barriers, and discrimination. Their states, students staged demonstrations to press for
efforts began to pay off in the 1960s, when the Mexican bilingual education, the hiring of more Chicano teach-
American Political Association (MAPA) mobilized ers, and the creation of Chicano studies programs. By
support for John F. Kennedy and worked successfully the 1970s, dozens of such programs were offered at
with other organizations to elect Mexican American universities throughout the region.
candidates such as Edward Roybal of California and
Henry González of Texas to Congress. Two other orga-
nizations, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund The American Indian Movement
(MALDF) and the Southwest Voter Registration and American Indians, inspired by the Black Power and
Education Project, carried the fight against discrimina- Chicano movements, organized to address their unique
tion to Washington, D.C., and mobilized Mexican circumstances. Numbering nearly 800,000 in the 1960s,
Americans into an increasingly powerful voting bloc. native people were exceedingly diverse — divided by
Cesar Chavez
Influenced equally by the
Catholic Church and Mahatma
Gandhi, Cesar Chavez was one
of the leading Mexican Ameri-
can civil rights and social
justice activists of the 1960s.
With Dolores Huerta, he
cofounded the United Farm
Workers (UFW), a union of
primarily Mexican American
agricultural laborers in
California. Here he speaks
at a rally in support of the
grape boycott, an attempt by
the UFW to force the nation’s
grape growers — and, by exten-
sion, the larger agriculture
industry — to improve wages
and working conditions and to
bargain in good faith with the
union. © Jason Laure/The Image
Works.
898 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
language, tribal history, region, and degree of integra- Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and proclaimed:
tion into American life. As a group, they shared a stag- “We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty-four
gering unemployment rate — ten times the national dollars in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by
average — and were the worst off in housing, disease the white man’s purchase of a similar island [Manhattan]
rates, and access to education. Native people also had about 300 years ago.” In 1972, AIM members joined the
an often troubling relationship with the federal govern- Trail of Broken Treaties, a march sponsored by a number
ment. In the 1960s, the prevailing spirit of protest swept of Indian groups. When AIM activists seized the head-
through Indian communities. Young militants chal- quarters of the hated Bureau of Indian Affairs in
lenged their elders in the National Congress of Amer- Washington, D.C., and ransacked the building, older
ican Indians. Beginning in 1960, the National Indian tribal leaders denounced them.
Youth Council (NIYC), under the slogan “For a Greater
Indian America,” promoted the ideal of Native Ameri- To see a longer excerpt of the “Proclamation To the
Great White Father and All His People,” along with
cans as a single ethnic group. The effort to both unite other primary sources from this period, see Sources
Indians and celebrate individual tribal culture proved a for America’s History.
difficult balancing act.
The NIYC had substantial influence within tribal However, AIM managed to focus national media
communities, but two other organizations, the militant attention on Native American issues with a siege at
Indians of All Tribes (IAT) and the American Indian Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in February 1973. The
Movement (AIM), attracted more attention in the larger site of the infamous 1890 massacre of the Sioux,
society. These groups embraced the concept of Red Wounded Knee was situated on the Pine Ridge Reser-
Power, and beginning in 1968 they staged escalating vation, where young AIM activists had cultivated ties
protests to draw attention to Indian concerns, especially to sympathetic elders. For more than two months, AIM
the concerns of urban Indians, many of whom had been members occupied a small collection of buildings, sur-
encouraged, or forced, to leave reservations by the fed- rounded by a cordon of FBI agents and U.S. marshals.
eral government in earlier decades. In 1969, members of Several gun battles left two dead, and the siege was
the IAT occupied the deserted federal penitentiary on finally brought to a negotiated end. Although upsetting
to many white onlookers and Indian elders alike, AIM under the law for all Americans, regardless of race. This
protests attracted widespread mainstream media cov- required patient work through the judicial system and
erage and spurred government action on tribal issues. the more arduous task of winning congressional legis-
lation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Second, grassroots activists,
SUMMARY using nonviolent protest, pushed all levels of govern-
ment (from city to federal) to abide by Supreme Court
African Americans and others who fought for civil rights decisions (such as Brown v. Board of Education) and
from World War II through the early 1970s sought equal civil rights laws. Third, the movement worked to open
rights and economic opportunity. That quest was also economic opportunity for minority populations. This
inspired by various forms of nationalism that called for was embodied in the 1963 March on Washington for
self-determination for minority groups. For most of the Jobs and Freedom. Ultimately, the civil rights movement
first half of the twentieth century, African Americans successfully established the principle of legal equality,
faced a harsh Jim Crow system in the South and a segre- but it faced more difficult problems in fighting poverty
gated, though more open, society in the North. Segrega- and creating widespread economic opportunity.
tion was maintained by a widespread belief in black infe- The limitations of the civil rights model led black
riority and by a southern political system that denied activists — along with Mexican Americans, Native
African Americans the vote. In the Southwest and West, Americans, and others — to adopt a more nationalist
Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Americans stance after 1966. Nationalism stressed the creation of
of Asian descent faced discriminatory laws and social political and economic power in communities of color,
practices that marginalized them. the celebration of racial heritage, and the rejection of
The civil rights movement attacked racial inequal- white cultural standards.
ity in three ways. First, the movement sought equality
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.
TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.
1. Why did the civil rights movement begin when it 5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING One of the
did? most significant themes of the period from 1945
to the 1980s is the growth of the power of the fed-
2. How would you explain the rise of the protest
eral government. (See “Politics and Power” and
movement after 1955? How did nonviolent tactics
“Identity” on the thematic timeline on p. 803.) In
help the movement?
what ways is the civil rights movement also part of
3. How did the civil rights movement create a crisis in that story?
liberalism and in the Democratic Party?
4. How did the civil rights movement and other
activist groups cause changes to government and
society?
1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE Why is the 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Examine the photograph
decade of the 1960s often referred to as the “second of a confrontation at North Little Rock High School
Reconstruction”? Think broadly about the century on page 881. How does this photograph reveal
between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the the role that the media played in the civil rights
passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. What are struggle? Can you find similar evidence in other
the key turning points in African American history photographs from this chapter?
in that long period?
MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Peniel Joseph, Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour: A Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom
Narrative History of Black Power in America (2006). Movement (2003). A powerful biography of a key
An important history of Black Power. activist.
Ian F. Haney López, Racism on Trial: The Chicano Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgot-
Fight for Justice (2003). An exceptional case study ten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (2008). A
of the Chicano movement in Los Angeles. significant, readable overview of the civil rights
movement.
Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The
Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom The Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive, at
Struggle (1995). A detailed case study that provides digilib.usm.edu/crmda.php, offers 150 oral histories
a local view of movement activism. relating to Mississippi.
CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER REVIEW 901
TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.
KEY TURNING POINTS: The history of the civil rights movement is more than a list of sig-
nificant events. Pick two or three events from this timeline and explain how their timing and
the broader historical context contributed to the precise role each played in the movement as
a whole.
Uncivil Wars: Liberal Crisis and
28
C H A P T E R
Conservative Rebirth
1961–1972
T
LIBERALISM AT he civil rights movement stirred IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
HIGH TIDE American liberals and pushed them What were liberalism’s social and
John F. Kennedy’s Promise to initiate bold new government political achievements in the 1960s,
Lyndon B. Johnson and the policies to advance racial equality. That and how did debates over liberal
Great Society progressive spirit inspired an even broader values contribute to conflict at home
Rebirth of the Women’s reform agenda that came to include and reflect tension abroad?
Movement women’s rights, new social programs for
THE VIETNAM WAR the poor and the aged, job training, environmental laws, and other educational and
BEGINS social benefits for the middle class. All told, Congress passed more liberal legislation
Escalation Under Johnson between 1964 and 1972 than in any period since the 1930s. The great bulk of it came
Public Opinion and the War during the 1965–1966 legislative session, one of the most active in American history.
Liberalism was at high tide.
Rise of the Student Movement
It did not stay there long. Liberals quickly came under assault from two directions.
DAYS OF RAGE, First, young activists became frustrated with slow progress on civil rights and rebelled
1968–1972 against the Vietnam War. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago,
War Abroad, Tragedy at Home police teargassed and clubbed antiwar demonstrators, who chanted (as the TV cameras
The Antiwar Movement and the rolled), “The whole world is watching!” Some of them had been among the young
1968 Election idealists inspired by Kennedy’s inaugural address and the civil rights movement. Now
The Nationalist Turn they rejected everything that Cold War liberalism stood for. Inside the convention hall,
Women’s Liberation the proceedings were chaotic, the atmosphere poisonous, the delegates bitterly divided
Stonewall and Gay Liberation over Vietnam.
A second assault on liberalism came from conservatives, who found their footing
RICHARD NIXON AND
after being marginalized during the 1950s. Conservatives opposed the dramatic expan-
THE POLITICS OF THE
SILENT MAJORITY sion of the federal government under President Lyndon B. Johnson and disdained the
Nixon in Vietnam “permissive society” they believed liberalism had unleashed. Advocating law and order,
belittling welfare, and resisting key civil rights reforms, conservatives leaped back to
The Silent Majority Speaks Out
political life in the late sixties. Their champion was Barry Goldwater, a Republican sena-
The 1972 Election
tor from Arizona, who warned that “a government big enough to give you everything
you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
The clashing of left, right, and center made the decade between the inauguration
of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and the 1972 landslide reelection of Richard Nixon
one of the most contentious, complicated, and explosive eras in American history. There
were thousands of marches and demonstrations; massive new federal programs aimed
at achieving civil rights, ending poverty, and extending the welfare state; and new voices
among women, African Americans, and Latinos demanding to be heard. With heated,
vitriolic rhetoric on all sides, these developments overlapped with political assassinations
and violence both overseas and at home. In this chapter, we undertake to explain how
the rekindling of liberal reform under the twin auspices of the civil rights movement and
the leadership of President Johnson gave way to a profound liberal crisis and the resur-
gence of conservatism.
902
“I Want Out” Protest movements of all kinds shook the foundations of American society and national
politics in the 1960s. No issue was more controversial and divisive than the war in Vietnam. Private Collection/
Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library.
903
904 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
because he would move so fast on civil rights they focused on spurring economic growth in impover-
would be running to catch up. Politically, the choice ished areas. On balance, the 1964 legislation provided
was risky. Johnson would please the Democratic Party’s services to the poor rather than jobs, leading some
liberal wing, but because most northern African critics to charge the War on Poverty with doing too
Americans already voted Democratic, the party would little.
gain few additional votes. Moreover, southern white
Democrats would likely revolt, dividing the party at a The 1964 Election With the Civil Rights Act passed
time when Johnson’s legislative agenda most required and his War on Poverty initiatives off the ground,
unanimity. But Johnson pushed ahead, and the 1964 Johnson turned his attention to the upcoming presi-
Civil Rights Act stands, in part, as a testament to the dential election. Not content to govern in Kennedy’s
president’s political risk-taking. shadow, he wanted a national mandate of his own.
More than civil rights, what drove Johnson hardest Privately, Johnson cast himself less like Kennedy than
was his determination to “end poverty in our time.” as the heir of Franklin Roosevelt and the expansive lib-
The president called it a national disgrace that in the eralism of the 1930s. Johnson had come to Congress
midst of plenty, one-fifth of all Americans — hidden for the first time in 1937 and had long admired FDR’s
from most people’s sight in Appalachia, urban ghettos, political skills. He reminded his advisors never to for-
migrant labor camps, and Indian reservations — lived get “the meek and the humble and the lowly,” because
in poverty. But, Johnson declared, “for the first time in “President Roosevelt never did.”
our history, it is possible to conquer poverty.” In the 1964 election, Johnson faced Republican
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which cre- Barry Goldwater of Arizona. An archconservative,
ated a series of programs to reach these Americans, Goldwater ran on an anticommunist, antigovernment
was the president’s answer — what he called the War on platform, offering “a choice, not an echo” — meaning
Poverty. This legislation included several different ini- he represented a genuinely conservative alternative to
tiatives. Head Start provided free nursery schools to liberalism rather than the echo of liberalism offered
prepare disadvantaged preschoolers for kindergarten. by the moderate wing of the Republican Party (Chap-
The Job Corps and Upward Bound provided young ter 25). Goldwater campaigned against the Civil Rights
people with training and employment. Volunteers in Act of 1964 and promised a more vigorous Cold War
Service to America (VISTA), modeled on the Peace foreign policy. Among those supporting him was for-
Corps, offered technical assistance to the urban and mer actor Ronald Reagan, whose speech on behalf
rural poor. An array of regional development programs of Goldwater at the Republican convention, called “A
906 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
Time for Choosing,” made him a rising star in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act authorized
party. $1 billion in federal funds for teacher training and
But Goldwater’s strident foreign policy alienated other educational programs. Standing in his old Texas
voters. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” schoolhouse, Johnson, a former teacher, said: “I believe
he told Republicans at the convention. Moreover, there no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to
remained strong national sentiment for Kennedy. the future of America.” Six months later, Johnson
Telling Americans that he was running to fulfill signed the Higher Education Act, providing federal
Kennedy’s legacy, Johnson and his running mate, scholarships for college students. Johnson also had the
Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, won in a landslide votes he needed to achieve some form of national
(Map 28.1). In the long run, Goldwater’s candidacy health insurance. That year, he also won passage of two
marked the beginning of a grassroots conservative new programs: Medicare, a health plan for the elderly
revolt that would eventually transform the Republican funded by a surcharge on Social Security payroll taxes,
Party. In the short run, however, Johnson’s sweeping and Medicaid, a health plan for the poor paid for by
victory gave him a popular mandate and, equally general tax revenues and administered by the states.
important, congressional majorities that rivaled FDR’s The Great Society’s agenda included environmental
in 1935 — just what he needed to push the Great reform as well: an expanded national park system,
Society forward (Table 28.1). improvement of the nation’s air and water, protection
for endangered species, stronger land-use planning,
Great Society Initiatives One of Johnson’s first and highway beautification. Hardly pausing for breath,
successes was breaking a congressional deadlock on Johnson oversaw the creation of the Department of
education and health care. Passed in April 1965, the Housing and Urban Development (HUD); won fund-
ing for hundreds of thousands of units of public hous-
ing; made new investments in urban rapid transit such
as the new Washington, D.C., Metro and the Bay Area
9 4
Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco; ush-
4 4
10
34
14 ered new child safety and consumer protection laws
6 43
4
3
4 12
21
8
4 through Congress; and helped create the National
9 29
3
5
26 11
25 17 Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment
4 7 12 3
40
6 7 12 9 10 for the Humanities to support the work of artists, writ-
13
8 6
11
8
ers, and scholars.
5 4 12
7 10 It even became possible, at this moment of reform
25 10
14
zeal, to tackle the nation’s discriminatory immigration
policy. The Immigration Act of 1965 abandoned the
3
quota system that favored northern Europeans, replac-
3 Washington, D.C.
ing it with numerical limits that did not discriminate
4 among nations. To promote family reunification, the
law also stipulated that close relatives of legal resi-
Candidate
Electoral
Vote
Popular
Vote
Percent of
Popular Vote
dents in the United States could be admitted outside
Lyndon B. Johnson 486 43,121,085 61.1
the numerical limits, an exception that especially
(Democrat)
benefitted Asian and Latin American immigrants.
Barry M. Goldwater
(Republican)
52 27,145,161 38.5 Since 1965, as a result, immigrants from those regions
have become increasingly visible in American society
MAP 28.1 (Chapter 31).
The Presidential Election of 1964
This map reveals how one-sided was the victory of Assessing the Great Society The Great Society
Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964. Except enjoyed mixed results. The proportion of Americans
for Arizona, his home state, Goldwater won only five
states in the Deep South — not of much immediate living below the poverty line dropped from 20 percent
consolation to him, but a sure indicator that the to 13 percent between 1963 and 1968 (Figure 28.1).
South was cutting its historic ties to the Democratic Medicare and Medicaid, the most enduring of the
Party. Moreover, although soundly rejected in 1964,
Great Society programs, helped millions of elderly and
Goldwater’s far right critique of “big government”
laid the foundation for a Republican resurgence in poor citizens afford necessary health care. Further, as
the 1980s. millions of African Americans moved into the middle
CHAPTER 28 Uncivil Wars: Liberal Crisis and Conservative Rebirth, 1961–1972 907
TABLE 28.1
Major Great Society Legislation
Civil Rights
1964 Twenty-fourth Amendment Outlawed poll tax in federal elections
Civil Rights Act Banned discrimination in employment and public accommoda-
tions on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin
1965 Voting Rights Act Outlawed literacy tests for voting; provided federal supervision
of registration in historically low-registration areas
Social Welfare
1964 Economic Opportunity Act Created Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer
War on Poverty programs such as Head Start, Job Corps, and
Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)
1965 Medical Care Act Provided medical care for the poor (Medicaid) and the elderly
(Medicare)
1966 Minimum Wage Act Raised hourly minimum wage from $1.25 to $1.40 and expanded
coverage to new groups
Education
1965 Elementary and Secondary Granted federal aid for education of poor children
Education Act
National Endowment for the Provided federal funding and support for artists and scholars
Arts and Humanities
Higher Education Act Provided federal scholarships for postsecondary education
Housing and Urban Development
1964 Urban Mass Transportation Act Provided federal aid to urban mass transit
Omnibus Housing Act Provided federal funds for public housing and rent subsidies for
low-income families
1965 Housing and Urban Created Department of Housing and Urban
Development Act Development (HUD)
1966 Metropolitan Area Designated 150 “model cities” for combined programs of public
Redevelopment and housing, social services, and job training
Demonstration Cities Acts
Environment
1964 Wilderness Preservation Act Designated 9.1 million acres of federal lands as “wilderness
areas,” barring future roads, buildings, or commercial use
1965 Air and Water Quality Acts Set tougher air quality standards; required states to enforce
water quality standards for interstate waters
Miscellaneous
1964 Tax Reduction Act Reduced personal and corporate income tax rates
1965 Immigration Act Abandoned national quotas of 1924 law, allowing more non-
European immigration
Appalachian Regional and Provided federal funding for roads, health clinics, and other
Development Act public works projects in economically depressed regions
908 PART 8 THE MODERN STATE AND THE AGE OF LIBERALISM, 1945–1980
50
45
40
35
30
Percentage
25
20
Poverty rate
15
10
5
1959 ’61 ’63 ’65 ’67 ’69 ’71 ’73 ’75 ’77 ’79 ’81 ’83 ’85 ’87 ’89 ’91 ’93 ’95 ’97 ’99
Year
FIGURE 28.1
Americans in Poverty, 1959–2000
Between 1959 and 1973 the poverty rate among American families dropped by more than
half — from 23 percent to 11 percent. There was, however, sharp disagreement about the
reasons for that notable decline. Liberals credited the War on Poverty, while conservatives
favored the high-performing economy, with the significant poverty dip of 1965–1966 caused
by military spending, not Johnson’s domestic programs.
class, the black poverty rate fell by Labor Feminists The women’s movement had not
PLACE EVENTS
half. Liberals believed they were languished entirely in the postwar years. Feminist
IN CONTEXT
on the right track. concerns were kept alive in the 1950s and early 1960s
What new roles did the
federal government
Conservatives, however, gave by working women, who campaigned for such things
assume under Great Soci- more credit for these changes to as maternity leave and equal pay for equal work. One
ety initiatives, and how did the decade’s booming economy historian has called these women “labor feminists,”
they extend the New Deal than to government programs. because they belonged to unions and fought for equal-
tradition? Indeed, conservative critics ity and dignity in the workplace. “It became apparent
accused Johnson and other liber- to me why so many employers could legally discrimi-
als of believing that every social problem could be nate against women — because it was written right into
solved with a government program. In the final analy- the law,” said one female labor activist. Trade union
sis, the Great Society dramatically improved the finan- women were especially critical in pushing for, and win-
cial situation of the elderly, reached millions of chil- ning, congressional passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act,
dren, and increased the racial diversity of American which established the principle of equal pay for equal
society and workplaces. However, entrenched poverty work.
remained, racial segregation in the largest cities wors- Labor feminists were responding to the times.
ened, and the national distribution of wealth remained More women — including married women (40 percent
highly skewed. In relative terms, the bottom 20 percent by 1970) and mothers with young children (30 percent
remained as far behind as ever. In these arenas, the by 1970) — were working outside the home than ever
Great Society made little progress. before. But they faced a labor market that undervalued
their contributions. Moreover, most working women
faced the “double day”: they were expected to earn a
Rebirth of the Women’s Movement paycheck and then return home to domestic labor. One
The new era of liberal reform reawakened the American woman put the problem succinctly: “The working
women’s movement. Inspired by the civil rights move- mother has no ‘wife’ to care for her children.”
ment and legislative advances under the Great Society,
but frustrated by the lack of attention both gave to Betty Friedan and the National Organization for
women, feminists entered the political fray and Women When Betty Friedan’s indictment of subur-
demanded not simply inclusion, but a rethinking of ban domesticity, The Feminine Mystique, appeared in
national priorities. 1963, it targeted a different audience: college-educated,
CHAPTER 28 Uncivil Wars: Liberal Crisis and Conservative Rebirth, 1961–1972 909
middle-class women who found themselves not in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
IDENTIFY CAUSES
working for wages but rather stifled by their domestic Women suddenly had a power- What factors accounted
routine. Tens of thousands of women read Friedan’s ful legal tool for fighting sex for the resurgence of femi-
book and thought, “She’s talking about me.” The Fem- discrimination. nism in the 1960s?
inine Mystique became a runaway best-seller. Friedan To force compliance with the
persuaded middle-class women that they needed more new act, Friedan and others, including many labor
than the convenience foods, improved diapers, and feminists from around the country, founded the
better laundry detergents that magazines and tele- National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966.
vision urged them to buy. To live rich and fulfilling Modeled on the NAACP, NOW intended to be a civil
lives, they needed education and work outside the rights organization for women, with the aim of bring-
home. ing “women into full participation in . . . American
Paradoxically, the domesticity described in The society now, exercising all the privileges and responsi-
Feminine Mystique was already crumbling. After the bilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.”
postwar baby boom, women were again having fewer Under Friedan’s leadership, membership grew to fif-
children, aided now by the birth control pill, first teen thousand by 1971, and NOW became, like the
marketed in 1960. And as states liberalized divorce NAACP, a powerful voice for equal rights.
laws, more women were divorcing. Educational levels One of the ironies of the 1960s was the enormous
were also rising: by 1970, women made up 42 percent strain that all of this liberal activism placed on the New
of the college population. All of these changes under- Deal coalition. Faced with often competing demands
mined traditional gender roles and enabled many from the civil rights movement, feminists, the poor,
women to embrace The Feminine Mystique’s liberating labor unions, conservative southern Democrats, the
prescriptions. suburban middle class, and urban political machines,
Government action also made a difference. In 1961, the old Rooseveltian coalition had begun to fray.
Kennedy appointed the Presidential Commission on Johnson hoped that the New Deal coalition was strong
the Status of Women, which issued a 1963 report doc- enough to negotiate competing demands among its
umenting job and educational discrimination. A big- own constituents while simultaneously resisting con-
ger breakthrough came when Congress added the word servative attacks. In 1965, that still seemed possible. It
sex to the categories protected against discrimination would not remain so for long.