A CONCISE SUMMARY OF US HISTORY, 1865-2008

The following material was taken from Into Your Hands, LLC
(http://www.intoyourhandsllc.com/), accessed July 10, 2018, and amended,
appended, and edited by Dr. Wood for the purposes of this course.

The period of United States history covered by this class essentially falls into 10 eras
between 1865 and 2016.

1. It begins with RECONSTRUCTION (1865-1877), the period following the Civil

War during which the nation rebuilt itself in the aftermath of that war.
2. A period of INDUSTRIALIZATION (1850s-1920s), which included a dramatic
rise in immigration, urbanization, and expansion. This era overlapped with
Reconstruction but extended into the early 20th Century.
3. Overlapping the second half the period of industrialization was THE ERA OF
POPULISM & PROGRESSIVISM, two movements that attempted to address the
conflicts and problems created by industrialization.
4. WORLD WAR I & THE ROARING 20’s. World War I (1914-1918, US
involvement 1917-1918) would bring an end to the period of populism &
progressivism and start the economic boom and cultural shifts associated with the
“Roaring (19)20s.”
5. World War I/Roaring 20s would end with THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1929-
1940) during which massive changes would take place in what Americans thought
the proper role for government was. During this era the United States government
would adopt a wide range of social welfare programs designed to end the
depression and make the lives of average Americans more secure.
6. The boom in industrial production in response to WORLD WAR II (1939-1945,
US involvement 1941-1945) ended the Great Depression and turned the United
States into a superpower.
7. The outcome of the US triumph in World War II equipped it to defend capitalism
and free enterprise from what was seen as the tyranny of communism1 during an
era known as THE COLD WAR (1946-1989). At the beginning of the Cold War,
prosperity and conformity defined American life for a wide swath of white and
middle class Americans, but widespread poverty, racial segregation, sexism, and
bigotry remained nagging problems.
8. A growing resistance to Cold War era racism characterized THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT that began the legal and activist battles against the segregationist
and white supremacist Jim Crow system. It spread as resistance to
institutionalized racism all across the nation (late 1940s-early 1960s).
9. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Civil Rights movement inspired the rise of a
series of COUNTERCULTURES (hippies, Chicano liberation, Asian-American

1
Communism is a political theory derived from the ideas of Karl Marx advocating class war and leading to
a society in which all property is publicly owned (or owned by the people and not an individual or group of
individuals) and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
A Concise Summary of US History, 1865-2008

liberation, women’s liberation, gay liberation etc.). Part of this was in response to
the US engagement in the war in Vietnam.
10. The upheavals of the fifties, sixties, and early seventies brought THE
CONSERVATIVE REACTION that began with the election of Ronald Reagan to
Presidency in 1980 and is very much a part of our national life to this day.

The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1860–1877

A series of tenuous constitutional compromises concerning slavery held the nation

together from 1788. In 1860 it suffered the ultimate test. Ten slave-holding states,
following South Carolina’s example, left the Union; the secessionists promptly formed
the Confederate States of America. Four years of Civil War (1861–1865) pitted American
against American in a contest that would determine not only the fate of four million
African American slaves, but also the future form of the American Republic. The
significance of the war had shifted in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation; no
longer did President Abraham Lincoln seek merely to restore the Union, but also to free
the slaves. Before his assassination in 1865, he had nearly accomplished both objectives.

The work of Reconstruction fell to President Andrew Johnson and the U.S. Congress.
His early attempts to reconstruct the nation (Known as Presidential Reconstruction)
allowed the same white, racist elite that had governed the South before the war to regain
power. Reacting to this, and acting frequently against Johnson’s veto, “Radical
Republicans” dominated Congress. They wanted the Southern elite to take responsibility
for starting the Civil War and wanted to empower the newly freed slaves with the rights
of American citizenship. After attempting to impeach and remove President Johnson,
they became dominant power in government. The policies they established were known
collectively as Congressional Reconstruction.

During Congressional Reconstruction, Southern states could be readmitted only after

abolishing slavery and guaranteeing equal rights of citizenship to African Americans via
ratifying Amendment XIII to the Constitution, which abolished slavery; Amendment
XIV, which guaranteed all native born or naturalized people the rights of American
citizens; and Amendment XV, which guaranteed the right to vote to all adult male
citizens. They also had to support a series of civil rights bills. A new model of ordered
liberty thereby was established, with blacks participating alongside whites in the process
of self-government; indeed, several blacks were elected to public office—local, state, and
national. Would this Reconstruction last?

No.

Most white Southerners simply could not accept that the people who had once been slave
property could ever be equal citizens before the law. Some went so far as to organize
terrorist groups, like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), that used violence and extortion to thwart

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the ambitions of freed blacks. This would ultimately result in the segregationist, white
supremacist social and legal order known as Jim Crow.

America in the Gilded Age, 1877–1901

During the decades following the Civil War, the U.S. population shifted from east to west
as homesteaders settled the frontier. By the end of the nineteenth century, cities also were
expanding rapidly as millions of immigrants sought work in factories. This intensive era
of industrialization brought unprecedented wealth to a new class of shareholders and
corporate officers during this period that author Mark Twain dubbed “the Gilded Age.”
The government mostly left businesses to compete against each other under the principle
of laissez faire—French for “let it be.” The main regulation the government placed on
commerce was the protective tariff, a tax on imports that guarded local producers from
foreign competitors.

Who prospered in the political economy of the Gilded Age? Clearly the captains of
industry and finance. Arguably, the laborers whom they hired also benefited. Senator
(and later President) William McKinley supported a high protective tariff that would
make imported goods more expensive in comparison to those same goods manufactured
in the US. Congress passed this law not only because it was supposed to favor domestic
business owners, but also because it was supposed to foster broader employment even as
the efficiency of “scientific management” reduced the costs charged to consumers. In
practice the extra profits gained from protective tariffs were not often shared with
workers, but rather were kept by owners or distributed among stockholders. In times of
economic growth, people at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum prospered, but the
wealthiest Americans prospered to a far greater degree than the poorest, thus creating a
tremendous divergence of prosperity between the richest and poorest Americas. In times
of economic contraction (there were 2 economic depressions and 3 recessions between
1870 and 1909) wageworkers were especially hard hit by declining wages and
unemployment.

Was there a better way? On the farms of the American West and South and in some
industrial centers the concept of populism took hold. Populists believed that the
industrializing economy had given the American people a bad deal. They wanted to see
economic policies reshaped so that the welfare of the people was made paramount over
support for American industry. Populists identified “the people” as those who actually
got their hands dirty working America’s farms and factories; the growing elite urban
middle and upper classes seemed out of touch and heedless of the needs of the people, or
so the populists would claim. Progressives in the early 20th Century, especially
Democratic Party progressives, would absorb many of their ideas as populism faded.

Meanwhile, other ideas were advanced to cure ills of industrialization. Popular writer
Edward Bellamy foretold the coming of a socialist utopia if only Americans would learn
to accept government regulation for the common good. At the other extreme, Yale

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economist William Graham Sumner promoted “social Darwinism,” an unregulated

market in which successful companies became monopolies and unsuccessful ones went
bankrupt—just as species survive or else go extinct under the fierce law of the jungle.
Seeking to negotiate within the capitalist system rather than overthrow it, Samuel
Gompers paved a middle path when founding the American Federation of Labor, a
national labor union. But neither his union movement nor anyone else’s carried much
weight in the laissez-faire Gilded Age.

The federal government also took an increasingly laissez-faire attitude toward racial
conflicts in the South. As southern whites regained control of the South, the regime of
“Jim Crow” barred blacks from voting through a combination of manipulative laws and
intimidating mobs. The Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1894) marked
irrefutable establishment of this order when it ruled that “separate but equal” would be
the law of the land regarding racial matters. Of course, separate was never equal. This
legal dictum would be used to justify the ongoing subordination and oppression of black
Americans for the next sixty years. Although most presidents following Reconstruction
at least paid lip-service to the rights of equal citizenship (including the right to vote) for
African Americans, rarely did the federal government take steps to ensure that the
Reconstruction Amendments would be honored nationwide.

After the Civil War, Americans continued to move into the trans-Mississippi West (the
territory west of the Mississippi River). So called “free land” was available to these
emigrants because of the Homestead Act of 1862, but the land they moved into was
actually anything but free. Hundreds of thousands of Amerindians called this place
home. Much of this “free land” was guaranteed to the Amerindians via a number of
treaties. At the same time, many of these Amerindians lived in the Trans-Mississippi
West only because US government Indian removal policies had forced them out of their
homelands east of the Mississippi River. Conflicts arose between the newcomers and the
established populations causing a series of wars known collectively as the Plains Indian
Wars (1864-1890). The government’s relationship to Native Americans suffered from a
disconnect between promise and fulfillment, in part because of racism but also in part
because layers of bureaucracy and broad spans of geography separated policymakers in
Washington from western citizens, Indian agents, and diverse tribal groups who
negotiated on their own terms. Ultimately, the U.S. military intervened, forcing most
Native Americans onto reservations.

Starting in the 1870s, American expansion also began overseas, with American
enterprises taking hold and influencing events across the Pacific Basin and in the
Caribbean. The US backed up this expansion with military power when, in 1898, the
United States annexed Hawaii and went to war against Spain concerning human rights
and world trade interests in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. At the same time,
elements of the nation’s leadership wanted to see the US become a world power capable
of the same imperial enterprises that the great powers of Europe were already engaged in
at the time. The United States—now an industrial giant—thereby exchanged the internal
and isolationist focus it had maintained in its early history for an international

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interventionist posture that would remain characteristic throughout much of the following
century.

Progressive Reform and Human Nature, 1901–1929

The early decades of the twentieth century marked a firm rejection of the laissez-faire
economy of the Gilded Age. Leaders from both the Republican and Democratic Parties
now championed “progressivism,” a set of political ideas calling upon the government to
regulate corporations in the name of the common good and to re-engineer society on the
basis of modern social science. A key undergirding of this call was a morality derived
from a Judeo-Christian sense of justice and that Americans should love their neighbors
and care for the widows and orphans.

Under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, the federal government
attempted to break up the large monopolies that had been responsible for the great
division of wealth between rich and poor. Other progressive reformers were optimistic
that immigration, urbanization, and industrialization all could be guided by experts who
knew what it took for civilization to evolve to new heights. Woodrow Wilson, whose
presidency marked the pinnacle of progressivism, called for a reading of the U.S.
Constitution according to which the strict limitations placed on government could be
adapted into a looser interpretation allowing for greater regulation of the economy. In
Wilson’s first year, 1913, the constitution was formally amended to permit a federal
income tax. Another amendment established the direct election of U.S. senators by the
people of each state, rather than by the state legislatures. Thus, America transitioned from
a republican federation of states into a grand democracy of national citizens. With the
national government assuming new responsibilities for individual prosperity, it seemed
that anything was possible.

The progressives finally met their match in World War I—an intercontinental
conflagration revealing that government policy cannot so easily re-engineer human
nature. Wilson, however, learned this lesson slowly. He hoped that the war would make
the world “safe for democracy.” He envisioned the postwar League of Nations as a
cooperative enterprise by which nations could peaceably settle their differences. He
found instead that the U.S. Senate rejected the League. The remainder of the twentieth
century would reveal that the sources of militant conflict run too deep in the human heart
to be controlled by well-minded policymakers. Americans also discovered that
prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol by a constitutional amendment, as was
attempted in 1919, cannot end drunkenness or other vices associated with it.

During the 1920s, a revival of laissez-faire economics coincided with full employment,
rising wages, falling prices, lower tax rates, and unprecedented profits on the stock
market, the latter subsidized by an enormous amount of debt made possible by the
virtually unregulated banking industry working in cahoots with dealers in stocks.
Meanwhile, fundamentalist Christians warned against Darwinism, pushed for (and

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succeeded in getting) prohibitions on the sale of alcohol, and called America back to
religious devotion. Many women flouted the conventions called for by this religious
revival by adopting “flapper” fashions – figure-revealing clothing, shorter skirts, make
up, and short “bobbed” hairstyles. In 1919, women won the right to vote all across
America. Jazz, with its African roots, was the music of the day. Gangsters monopolized
the illegal liquor market. Consumers found material pleasure in buying an array of
products from mouthwash to automobiles, their desires stoked by advertising and the new
national media markets created by radio and the movies. The good economy and the
growth of consumerism had a homogenizing effect on the nation, but because of the
speed of the changes happening, America was as turbulent as ever during the “roaring
twenties.”

The Emergence of the American Superpower, 1929–1953

In October 1929 the debt that fueled the Roaring Twenties came crashing down on the
era’s prosperity. Between 1929 and 1932 the values of stocks lost more than100% of the
value gained during the stock boom that began in 1922. The nation found itself in the
midst of a Great Depression. Unemployment touched one out of four Americans. A
worldwide depression manifested itself in similar symptoms elsewhere. In Germany, the
people embraced Adolph Hitler, a right wing cult figure, who, along with his National
Socialist Workers, or Nazi, Party, wormed their way into power promising a return to
Germany’s former glory. Hitler would become a notorious dictator by 1936.

Americans, on the other had, threw conservative Republicans out of office because of
what was seen as their role in bringing on the Great Depression. Democrat Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, backed by a newly elected Democratic majority in Congress, enacted a
barrage of progressive reforms, collectively called the New Deal. President Roosevelt
resisted the urging of leftist pundits who advocated full-scale socialism and contented
himself simply to place the capstone on the progressive edifice that had been constructed
before World War I. Capitalism survived both the Great Depression and the New Deal,
but henceforth it would be a mixed form of capitalism—an entrepreneurial market
regulated by government agencies chartered to restore and maintain economic balance.
The people’s perception of the proper role of government had been changed.

As for recovery, the New Deal had few immediate effects, though a number of programs
created as part of the New Deal to this day work to make life for Americans less risky
(e.g. Social Security). By the time full recovery was underway, another contributing
factor had upstaged FDR’s recipe of reform. American factories were mobilizing to
support the Allies against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in World War II.

After the Empire of Japan bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the
United States entered the war against all three Axis Powers: Japan, Germany, and Italy.
U.S. and British forces together liberated northern Africa, southern Europe, and France.

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Meanwhile, the Soviet Union2 repelled Germany from Stalingrad through Poland. By the
spring of 1945, the western Allies occupied one side of Europe and the Soviets occupied
the other, with Germany squished into surrender. Japan proved more recalcitrant, as her
soldiers fought to the bitter end and resisted until the combined onslaught of Soviet
troops against Japanese forces in Manchuria and the dropping of atom bombs on the
Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki convinced the Japanese they had no choice
but to surrender.

Victorious on three continents, and with a booming economy at home, the United States
had become a world leader—a superpower. However, the Soviet Union also wielded
considerable power. With its military still occupying eastern Europe and parts of Asia,
communist governments appeared in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Romania, and Bulgaria with other nations also falling behind the “Iron Curtain.” These
compromised what was known as the Soviet bloc. By 1950, both North Korea and China
had communist governments, thereby amplifying the threat posed to the free world by the
Soviet Union. Determined to prevent the communists from conquering the globe, the
United States committed itself to a policy of containment—a promise to intervene
anytime and anywhere that communism was spreading. In instances where diplomacy
failed, the so-called “Cold War” turned hot, as, for example, in Korea, where U.S. troops
fought from 1950 through 1953 to preserve the borderline between the communist north
and the democratic south.

The Cold War and Civil Rights, 1953–1981

The containment-of-communism policy shaped America’s course of foreign relations for

decades. After Korea, there was Vietnam. Whereas Korea ended in a stalemate, Vietnam
was a slow and painful defeat. After a decade of fruitless military efforts, the United
States withdrew and the North Vietnamese communists took over the entire country in
1975. The Vietnamese people had their own reasons for fighting, but more than anything
they had gotten caught up into a global chess match between the Soviet Union and the
United States. Other “pawns” in this game included Cuba in 1962, where the Soviets
planted an arsenal of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. Unfortunately, it was
not always clear that the United States was on the side of freedom. In Greece, for
example, America supported a monarchy against a democratic movement due to evidence
that the “democracy” had been fostered by Soviet communists in 1945 and 1946.
Similarly, the United States supported a harsh regime in South Vietnam in the 1950s and
1960s simply because the alternative was to allow the communists from the North to take
over. According to President Dwight Eisenhower, Vietnam was not so much a chess
pawn as a domino—and if the communists knocked over one domino, then all of Asia

2
Soviet Union was the common name for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), a federation of
communist states in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The dominant state in this union was the Socialist
Republic of Russia, hence the USSR was often simply referred to as “Russia” and its citizens as
“Russians.”

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would topple. Therefore, communism had to be contained at all costs. Much of this did
not ultimately turn out to be true, but it was the way the world was seen at the time.

The paradoxes of the Cold War also touched upon domestic matters. Even while America
was fighting for freedom overseas, African Americans suffered a systematic denial of
their liberties at home. The Declaration of Independence had claimed that “all men are
created equal.” The U.S. Constitution had guaranteed, in its Fourteenth Amendment,
“equal protection of the laws” to all persons. Why, then, in many states could black
children not attend the same schools as white children? Why did black adults have to
work, shop, or eat in different places than white adults? Why were hardly any blacks in
the Deep South registered to vote? Why did local law enforcement authorities look the
other way when lynch mobs hunted down blacks who dared to assert their rights?

The civil rights movement that began in the 1950s sought to restore the benefits of
Reconstruction and ensure equality before the law for all people regardless of race.
Lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn the Court’s decision in Plessy v.
Ferguson and that schools and bus stations should be racially integrated. Ministers such
as Martin Luther King, Jr., won over the sympathy of northern whites in a non-violent
crusade to evict Jim Crow from the South. The civil rights movement managed to gain
favor among the national leadership of the Democratic Party. In 1964, Democratic
President Lyndon B. Johnson persuaded Congress to adopt legislation outlawing racial
discrimination in education, employment, and public accommodations of all sorts.

Seeing the federal government as the best solution to almost any problem, Johnson
envisioned the Great Society, in which poverty would be eradicated and Americans
would live peaceably with one another. Though the rate of poverty did decline in the
1960s, racial violence increased due to the slow pace of change. During the 1970s,
America struggled over its identity as inflation and unemployment conquered people at
home and the military suffered defeat in Vietnam.

Another significant characteristic of what became known as the Long Sixties (1954-
1972) was the variety of liberation movements that grew out of the Civil Rights
Movement. Chief among these were the rise of the counterculture, the women’s
liberation movement, and the gay rights movements. The counterculture arose partly in
reaction to the slow pace of political change in the 1950s and 1960s, especially regarding
race relations. Young activists who had participated in the Civil Rights movement began
to see themselves as an oppressed classes akin to the conditions that had blighted black
Americans. This was especially true after the Vietnam War made so many young men
vulnerable to the draft. These young people adopted a life style (often identified as
hippies) that rejected much of mainline American culture. People of color other than
blacks, women as well as lesbians and gays would begin to conceive of their own status
in terms of being a subordinated class. They pressed, not always successfully, for
changes to laws and customs that had relegated them to a subordinated status.

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The Vulnerability of the World’s Only Superpower, 1981–Present

In reaction to the radical activism of the Long 1960s, President Ronald Reagan, elected in
1980, persuaded Americans that they could regain the greatness of America’s pre-
Vietnam past. He argued this would happen if the nation summoned forth the laissez-
faire policies of the past, cut taxes, slimmed down federal regulations, and devoted most
of America’s energy to winning the Cold War. Like FDR, Reagan had a gift for
communication. His words instilled confidence, but the early years of the Reagan
administration saw a recession. Following a reversal of Reagan-supported tax cuts that
ballooned the national debt, the economy rebounded offering a stark contrast to the
failing economies of the communist Soviet Bloc countries. In 1989, communist East
Germany caved in, allowing a democratic reunification with West Germany. Two years
later, the Soviet Union disintegrated into several independent states. The United States
now stood alone as the world’s only superpower.

Democrats learned a lesson from Reagan: the liberal-progressive agenda had to be

moderated in order to remain in step with the American people. In 1992, Bill Clinton won
election to the presidency by styling himself a “New Democrat.” He promised to slim
down the social welfare programs that had been fostered by Democrats since the New
Deal. During the Clinton administration, Congress also balanced the budget.
Economically speaking, it seemed American prosperity would have no end. However,
three problems lingered beneath the veneer of success.

First, American politics increasingly became a point of interest for fundamentalist

evangelical Christians dissatisfied with much of the liberalization that had taken place
during the 1960s and 1970s. American conservatives with an interest in reducing the
power of the federal government, deregulating capitalism and industry, and reducing
taxes found willing allies among fundamentalist Christians who wanted to limit or
eliminate access to abortion and birth control, and who wanted to see religious practice
(specifically fundamentalist Christian religious practice) become a more dominant part of
American political and civil life. They would argue they were protecting “traditional
family values”, and thus opposed changes that would legitimate gay rights or promote
alternatives to a woman’s “traditional” role as wife and mother.

Second, Congress had achieved a balanced budget in part by downsizing the military.
Although this may have appeared prudent insofar as communism no longer posed the
threat it once had, a reshuffling of the geopolitical deck now put America at risk against
other parties. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists attacked both New York City
and Washington, DC. In response, President George W. Bush declared a “war on
terrorism,” vowing the United States would uproot terrorist groups anywhere in the world
where they may be found. This meant invading Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. As
renewed militarism pushed the budget back into the red, Democratic challengers faulted
Bush for squandering America’s prosperity.

Third, in 2007 housing prices began to plummet, revealing mistakes dating back to the
1990s. Subprime mortgage lending, low interest rates, and tax incentives for both home-

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buyers and home-sellers had stimulated a frenzy of real estate transactions, resulting in
many American families owning homes they could not afford. These people found
themselves owing banks more than their homes were worth. Many would eventually
default on their loans. Wall Street, which had become increasingly de-regulated under
the Republican dominated Congress (starting 1992), exacerbated this risk. It did so by
“bundling” these bad loans with good loans and selling them as investment instruments
that as a “bundle” had a tendency to disguise the riskiness of the investment. As
foreclosures and bank failures filled newspaper headlines, the Federal Reserve Board
dropped the target interest rate virtually to zero, still the economy slipped into recession.
Congress appropriated what soon amounted to trillions of dollars to bail out major banks,
insurance companies, and large industrial enterprises like the automobile manufacturers
who were the source of tens of thousands of American jobs. Fortunately, the federal
government bailout under George W. Bush and Barack Obama (America’s first African
American President) pulled these companies back from the brink. Unfortunately, having
to do so doubled the amount of federal debt at the beginning of the 21st Century.

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