Topic 52A – The historic evolution of the united

states: From a. Lincoln to f.d. roosevelt

During the four decades preceeding the civil war, the united states saw the arising
of deep and rooted economic, social and political differences between the states of
the South and the north.

The South was basically agricultural, it produced excellent garvests of cotton,

tobaco and sugar, which were exported to the states of the North or Europel
However, it depended on the North for the obtention of manufactures and financial
and commercial services necessary for the comercial development. Besides, the
work labour in the south, comprised almost 4 millions of slaves. The preservation of
slavery was the main reason for the entering of the Southern states in the Union.

There were two main points of disagreement related to this situation:

Custom duties: the South, not being self sufficient, wanted free trade to import
industrial goods from Europe. The North wanted to prevent the industry, imposing
taxes on foreign goods.

Slavery: It was essential for Southern economy, while the North wanted to abolish
it. A key fact in the development of this conflict was the Missouri Compromise
(1820). It established that slavery continued in the southern states, but it would be
limited to the Mississippi river. This implied that, the more the country expanded its
territories, the more power the South had. The North was bound to grow, and the
South would be always limited to the limits they had.

It was very important because during the period from the signing of the
compromise, to the starting of the war, the country grew enormously:

By 1837, there were 26 states.

Through the war against mexico (1848), they were adhered TEXAS, NEW
MEXICO, ARIZONA, CALIFORNIA, NEVADA, UTAH, part of COLORADO.

FLORIDA ceded by Spain

1846-1861: KANSAS, IOWA, WISCONSIN, MINNESOTA, OREGON

The inmediate cause of the civil war was the election of Abraham Lincoln in the
elections of 1860. He wasn´t going to abolish slavery, but he was decided to
respect the Missouri Compromise, and to protect the industrial interests of the
North. The South viewed Lincoln as a direct threat to their interests.

That same year South Carolina secedes from the United States, and the following
year, the Confederate States of America are formed by 7 States (South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Lousiana, and Texas).

In 1861, the war begins in Fort Sumter, and 4 more states join the confederacy:
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

Neither the North nor the South were prepared to support a war in 1861. The North
had a bigger military potential, more soldiers, with a population of 22 million
persons. The South had a population of 9 million people, but 4 of them were black
slaves, whose loyalty to the confederacy was obviously very doubtful. At the
beginning, both bands were formed exclusively by volunteers, but the necessity
forced to make a recruitment to form an army. The Union had a strong central
power, with authority over the states. The Southern states had self-government,
and from 1863 they refused to send men to war.

Besides, the North had clear material advantages (money, credits, food,
transports), which turned out to be decissive. The South always suffered from the
continuous lack of food, clothes, medicines and heavy weapons.

El sentimiento antiesclavista en Francia y Gran Bretaña, cuyos gobiernos eran

favorables a la Confederación Sudista, alcanzó tal fuerza que impidió la posibilidad
de intervención de estos países en favor de la Confederación.

However, the South, had a stronger military tradition, and men more expert in the
use of weapons. They formed an efficient group of officials, among which Robert E.
Lee excelled. Lincoln only could find military officers of the same value in Ulisses S.
Grant and William T. Sherman.

Although in the first two years the war seemed favorable for the South, these
conditionals enabled the Union to blockade the coast of Georgia and the Carolines,
isolating the Southern states.

In 1865, the Confederacy surrenders at Appomatox Courthouse, Virginia. 5 days

later Abraham Lincoln is assasinated by a former Southern officer.

RESULTS OF THE WAR

620.000 people were killed during the war. Wide territories were reduced to ruins.
The fields on which the armies fought, were a series of destroyed plantations,
barns, and houses, most harvests were lost, and many cattle died. The doctrine of
secession was discarted, and a relative freedom was achieved for almost 4 million
black people.

THE RECONSTRUCTION

The law of reconstruction imposed the military occupation of southern states.

New laws were imposed, and the freed men bureau was created to improve the
situations of slaves.

The 13th amendement of the constitution abolished formally slavery in all the

territories, being the final point of a series of measures brought about by Abraham
Lincoln.

The states that had seceeded in 1861, had to adopt constitutions abolishing slavery
to be allowed to enter the Union again.

The supreme court required that individuals had to swear loyalty to the Union to
practise their professions. This allowed former secessionists to regain political
power in the North.

The political administrations are runned by Northern Republicans , called

carpetwaggers and scalawags, because of their corrupt methods. But what
annoyed southerns most was that blacks were involved in government.

Black politicians began to be intimidated by confederate simpathizers and by the

Kukuxklan, formed by ex -confederate officers.

Freedom for blacks was only a relative one, since almost all blacks, and many poor
whites were disenfranchised (not allowed to vote) by means of

Segregation laws

Poll taxes

Literacy tests

Property qualifications.

THE GILDED AGE

From the end of the reconstruction period to the beginning of the XX, capitalism
transforms an agricultural country into an industry society.
The period is characterized by a general growing of the country:

There is an enormous grown of population.

The enormous and quick expansion of the rail road, and with it of all kinds of
industry, was possibilited by 5 factors:

FREE LANDS:

New states are incorporated: WEST VIRGINIA, COLORADO, WYOMING,

MONTANA, NEBRASKA, DAKOTASSSSS, IDAHO, WASHINGTON.

The Homestead Act, offered the Indian land, almost for free to the settlers who
wanted to begin the adventure of going west. The obstacle of the Indians was
removed by means of broken treaties, war, extermination, and life in reservations.

RAW MATERIALS:

CHEAP LABOUR:

The economic growing of the country attracted many inmigrants who leaved their
countries because of economical difficulties:

1845: Irish potato famine

Jews from Russian pogroms

Collapse of the kingdom of Sicilia (sicilian and napolitan)

Farming in cold and narrow fields (Norwegians and Swedes)

Japanese and chinese people

NEW TECHNOLOGY: telegraph, telephone, light bulb

COMBINATION OF COMPANIES IN TRUSTS: the congress passes a tariff in

imports so high that there is no foreign competition. The combinations grow so
large that they become monopolies.

As in many other places, a high social price had to be paid for the Industrial
Revolution. Despite this unprecedented growing:

Workers were not paid enough to support their families, which leads to ressistance
and provokes many strikes. The common law considered a crime of conspiracy that
one worker joined to another to ask for high wages. The most serious of these
strikes was that of the employees of Pullman Company, a manufacturer of railroad
sleeping cars, led by the American Railway Union. (violence , death of workers,
destruction of property).

THE BIRTH OF US IMPERIALISM

The US had passed, in 120 years, from being a new born country to be one of the
wealthiest and largest in the world. After the westward expansion, US promoted
several wars to acquire more land. Using as a pretext the blown of the US
battleship Maine, they declared the war on Spain, aiding Cuba to achieve
independence. In the treaty signed on 1898, Cuba was given to Spain temporarily,
until the country achieved its independence. By means of the intervention in
Philippines, US got a basis in asiatic waters, what open the access to Asia and,
above all, its markets. These two acquisitions, inaugurated an age of self-
consciousness as a world player. It was the birth of US imperialism.

THE FIRST WAR WORLD

At the begining of the war the president Wilson proclaimed formally the neutrality of
the US. With the object of preventing food, munitions and other supplies to Great
Britain, Germany declared area of war the waters that surrounded Great Britain and
Ireland, ordering his submarines that they sink all the enemy ships. In 1915, a
German submarine torpedoed a passengers ship, the lusitania, without warning
125 northamerican passengers died. In 1917, Germany declared the submarine
war without restrictions in an area larger than the previously established. Germany
continued torpedoing neutral ships, and in the same year, the president Wilson
asked the Congress to declare the war on Germany.

The entering of the US in the war tipped the balance in favour of the allies.

In 1918 Germany surrenders. The treaty of Versailles would redraw the map of
Europe.

It was negotiated during the Conference of Peace hold in Versailles. In the

conference they were represented US, Great Britain, France, and Italy. Germany,
was excluded from the conversations.

The first section of the Treaty established the formation of the society of nations,
which the US didn´t join.
The treaty followed the 14 points of the US president, Woodrow Wilson. Germany
had to suppress the obligatory military service, reduce its army to 100 000 men,
and pay a high amount of money as indemnization to the alliated powers for the
damages made during the conflict. They also have to give ships, trains, cattle and
valuable natural resources

Germany recognized the soberany of Belgium, Poland, Czecoslovaquia, and

Austria. Alsacy and Lorene were given back to France.

The hard conditions of the treaty raised angered protests in Germany, and gave
place to a nationalistic feeling and movement which would be the germ for the
ascenssion to the power of the nazi party in the 1930s.

For the US, the treaty represented its position in the world as a bank of the world
and world leader. A period of great prosperity would be inaugurated under the
presidence of Calvin Coolidge, from 1923 to 1929.

THE BLACK FRIDAY

This period of prosperity and optimism, the happy 20s, produced a blind confidence
on the economy of the country, and in the possibility of obtaining great benefits with
a sure inversion in Wall Street.

In 1927, the financial operators of Wall Street, centered in the interior market. The
more they bought, the bigger the increase in prices was, what attracted to more
and more investers. In 1929, 9 million of citizens (out of a population of 122
millions), had invested their savings in the national market, adviced by incompetent
or interested economical advicers. At fierst, their shares incresased their price, but
soon after, some proffesionals began to sell their shares. It provoked a massive
reaction. Millions of shares were sold. The price of the shares fell so rapidly that the
market collapsed. In one week, the money of million of people just vanished. Not
even the biggest companies, as General electric or Woolworth, resisted the crisis.

It was the end of a period characterized by optimism, employement and prosperity.

The confidence in the market and bank system disappeared. The bankruptcy was
generalized. In less than 6 months, 2 millions of people got out of work.. the middle
class was reduced, and the poorest class, increased. The hardest crisis lasted until
1933, when F:D. Roosevelt put in practice his famous new deal.

F.D. ROOSEVELT
Before being elected president, when the great crisis was deeper, F. D Roosevelt
convinced the so called Brain Trust, (a group of teachers of the university of
Columbia, to elaborate an official program to solve the economic crisis begun in
1929.

In 1932, he beated easily Hoover and was elected president.

The congress passed a series of emergency measures designed by Roosevelt to

solve the crisis:

National Industry Recovery Act: it fixed prices and wages, and limited competition.

Frazier-Lemke Act: it provided that a farmer could obtain favorable treatment in

resolving his bankruptcy problem.

Agricultural adjustment act: force tenants and sharecroppers to leave the land
where they had a farm income of less than $300 a year. It also gave aids to enable
the tenants to reduce the production.

National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act): It guaranteed the right of the workers to
form Trade Unions.

The Tennessee Valley Authority: It established the building of channels to generate

electric energy, the improvement of agricultural tecniques and fluvial navigation,
and the building of hospitals and schools

the Social Security Act, gave him the unconditional support of the working class.

The politics of the New Deal, attracted the black and other urban minorities, as well
as the Laborist Movement,the Democratic Party, which formed the new deal
alliance.

Roosevelt had to face the opposition of a conservative section of the congress.

SECOND WORLD WAR

At the end of the 1930s, given the operations of Hitler and Europe, and the
Japanes expansionism in the Pacific Ocean, Roosevelt led the country to get
involved in international matters. However, he met the oposition of the congress,
which passed a series of laws of neutrality. Anyway, the japanese attack to Pearl
Harbour in 1941 made US to enter the conflict, joining Great Britain and the URSS.
Roosevelt couldn´t see the end of the conflict, since he died in April of 1945.
However, his diplomatic actions in the conferences held during the war,
(Casablanca, Quebec, Yalta), helped to get the inconditional surrender of Germany
and the creation of the United Nations Organization to assure the prevalence of
peace after the war.