01/04/2022

Lucía Merino
ENGLISH CULTURE AND HISTORY
USA
THE EARLY DAYS
1. Europeans and Native Americans
2. Colonial America (17th-18th century America, white Europeans before the Revolution)
3. The War of Independence
“In a country whose history began with the meeting of Native Americans and European
colonists and continued through the importation of African slaves and several waves of
immigrants, there has never been a single national culture; although for centuries a majority of
Anglo-Americans made vigorous efforts to establish one.” (David Mauk and John Oakland, American Civilization. An
introduction)

1. Europeans and Native Americans

About 10 million Native Americans were living in America when the Europeans came.
About 6 million died during the following years.
Health: Americans and Europeans made each other sick. They had different immune systems.
Serious reason of the decrease of number of Native Americans.
Land/trade: The fighting focused on land and trade. They had different ideas about the
meaning of land. For Europeans, land in America meant a promise of economic profit. For NA
the earth has to with their religion, it was sacred. ‘Land is something that you borrow from your
children’ Meaning you must treat it with respect, it is not something to buy or sell.
Religion: Protestant people have a personal God, ‘the father’. NA they were pantheist. They
believed that everything takes part in a divine order. Divinity is sort of everywhere. In addition,
European settlers were individualist. NA thought in communal terms, the tribe, the family, the
group…
These 3 topics explained why that relationship between locals and immigrants a complete drama
and they has been always have been always fighting.
Europeans wanted the land because they wanted the gold.

 Indian Reservation System. Indians were driven off their land. It forced Indians off their
land and to live in reservations. The whole point was to make land available to white
people, so they could buy it and sell it.
 1830: Indian Removal Act (Andrew Jackson). This and the Indian Reservation System
(very close related) were causing a series of Indian Wars.
 The Trail of Tears. Indians were forced to leave their land and go to Oklahoma where
there were Indian Reservations. A forced march of Indian tribes and they were forced to
walk for days or even week towards Oklahoma and lots of Indians died.
 1890: Wounded Knee. Name of a place where white people overnight killed hundred of
Indians.
Painting: The last of the Race, 1931 by Tompkins Harrison Matteson. People is sitting at the
edge of a cliff in the western side of America, California.
2. Colonial America (The Founders)

 St. Augustin, Florida (1565)

 Jamestown, Virginia (1607)
Some important dates:
1619: first African laborers as indentured servants. Indentured servant is someone who signs
a deal with another individual in America and here is the deal: you pay for my passage to
America, so I work for you for free until I can pay you back the loan. Usually a few years.
Precursor to real slaves. Indentured servants “decide” (pushed by poverty etc) to work for that
individual.
1620: Pilgrims (separatists, Mayflower). Mayflower name of the ship that brough Pilgrims to
America in 1620. Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower they were religious separatists because
they were totally disappointed with the way religion was organized in Europe. They wanted to
start all over again in the New World. They wanted to create a religious utopia. Separatists had
no intention to return to Europe. That experiment completely failed. But 10 years later, another
set of protestants arrived in the Arbella…
1630: Puritans (reformers, Arbella) John Winthrop’s sermon>>> Puritans were another type
of protestants. They came to the new world to serve as an example to the old world. The
puritans saw it as their mission to be an example for the rest of the world. In the Arbella, there
was a local priest, John Winthrop, who gave a speech, a sermon. He told the people that they
should not start dreaming to soon, that this society is going to be just as England. They stayed;
they survived the first generation. They were able to bring more people.
Key terms:

 Patricians versus plebeians: “All men were created unequal” (G. Wood)
 A face-to-face society: People lived in small communities, villages, and basically
everyone knew everyone else. It also means that you were largely dependent on your
neighbors and villagers, in terms of social reputation and for work etc.
 Defamation. If your good name had been compromised, you take them to court.
 Friendship. Refers to this larger network of people living in a village that depended on
each other.
 Husbandry. Husband was a word used for a farmer. To husband means how to use
means, natural resources etc. effectively.
 Book accounts. That entire network of mutual dependencies in terms of financial
dependencies. Quite literally, the list of people that owes you money or vice versa.
 Proprietary wealth. How rich people became/stayed rich. It refers to the way rich
people enhance their wealth. And that was by lending money or land.
 Patronage. The entire society was still run by a family model.
Americans had no idea of the importance of structure in a society. They would individualize
responsibilities; they would not think of society as a network. A very simplistic role of society.
3 The War of Independence
  1763. The English had been in a war with France, 7 years’ war, it ended in 1763. The
war had cause England to double its debt. England had won and they inherited a lot of
land, mainly in Canada and eastern Mississippi. They were sort of money.
 Seven Years’ War
 George Greenville: He was basically the financial minister in England. He decided to
higher taxes in America and introduced for the first time a tax to make the colonist pay
a little more to financial the English gov; the sugar act.
 1764: Sugar Act. It led to protests.
 1765: Stamp Act (repealed February 1766). It was even more hated by the colonist.
they had to pay for the stamps that were necessary for the official documents. No
taxation without representation!
 (Townshend Act & Customs Commissioners)
 5 March 1770: Boston Massacre (March: all Townshend duties repealed, except
the one on tea) They sent their military to the colonies. Some of the locals threw
snowballs to the redcoats (English militaries). The soldiers opened fire and they killed
five people.
 May 1773: Tea Act (privileged the East India Company)
 16 December 1773: Boston Tea Party. They unloaded all the tea on the harbor.
 1774: Coercive Acts. They blocked the Boston harbor.
 September 1774: first Continental Congress (Philadelphia)

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

19 April 1775: Battle on Lexington Green. The colonists were preparing to attack the red coats.
The colonists were defeated.
May 1775: Second Continental Congress.
4 July 1776: Declaration of Independence. It was a document; they stated their intentions, but
the war was still going on. Written by Thomas Jefferson.
17 November 1777: Articles of Confederation. It was too weak as a basis for a nation state. It
turned out to be problematic and insufficient for the political grounding of a new country.
1 March 1781: Confederation formally announced
17 October 1781: British surrender
1781 – 1789: “the Critical Period” The years in which the colonists were disagreeing in how to
make a new country but being independent states.
1786: Shay’s Rebellion. Another failed attempt to challenge the local authorities because they
were raising taxes.
May 1787: Constitutional Convention (signed 17 September). It took them 10 years to agree on
the terms and the grounds of this new country. It took them this long because they wanted to
create a federal government without having too much power. Constitutional Convention created
a nation where state power and federal power were organized.
22/04/2022
Lecture 2: Settlement and Immigration (chapters 3 and 4)
The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the United States, they were sister republics.
They had a political affinity. 1876. Americans had to build the concrete of the ground for the
statue. To get the money to finance the structure of the base of the statue, they asked a poet,
Emma Lazarus, so people could buy it and raise the money for the foundation of the statue. The
poem is called The New Colossus. Colossus was, indeed, another statue in the Greek island of
Rhodes. This statue was honoring the Greek god of Sun, Helios, celebrating a military victory.
The Statue of Liberty is referred to as Mother of Exiles.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” these lines
reflect the migration culture of the United States.
The poem starts with NOT, saying that they are not like Greece, not like the old world, not like
Europe.
This is the dream, like a utopia. But there are facts (America is full of puberty, etc.) and still the
dream is still intact.
4 waves of immigration
la población ha aumentado más de lo que pone en el libro.
1: 1680-1776 (colonial immigrants)
2: 1820-1890 (“old” immigrants)
3: 1890-1930 (“new’ immigrants)
4 : 1965-present (Latino & Asian)

1 wave: 1680-1776 (colonial immigrants)

There was not an American Dream at that time.
The influence of the Dutch. The Dutch were respected and maybe even admired for one thing in
particular, their tolerance. That is something that they brought to the new world. This is
important because Americans claim that they are a country that welcomes everyone, tolerance.
Most people were from Ireland.
In the myth, America was empty waiting for Europeans to found a free world, but Native
Americans already were there, and they always get wiped out of the myth.
Founder’s goal: economical + religious
“A new race of man” (de Crevecoeur).
Crevecoeur was a French immigrant, wrote Letters from an American farmer. He answers the
question of what is an American. (People were wondering what an America was, why they were
special if they all had European roots).
He wrote: In America, individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of man.
140.000 slaves (before America was the United States, slavery is as oldest as the colony because
they needed labor). They started their life as indentured servants.
Largest group:
Decrease English dominance: By 1776, the English population who spoke English drop by 52%.
There is no official language in the Constitution.
“a nation of nations” (Th. Paine)
African American slaves: 20% population

2 wave: 1820-1890 (“old” immigrants)

There is a time gap between the first wave and the second one. During this century less
immigrants came because of the war of Independence.
Why did Europeans flee to the US?

 Politics
 Religion
 Economics
Always the same reasons, people were not content with the situation of their own country,
in Europe there was a lot of religious persecution…etc.
America did make lives of many people better than the lives they had before. Spite of the
racism, puberty, poor conditions, etc.
Stage migration: People in Europe often migrated twice, that is to say, there was a movement in
many Europeans country of people living in the countryside who had very little economic
means and moved first to the cities. So, people went to live in cities because that was where the
jobs were. Then, they moved from these cities in Europe to America.
15,5 million people > Americans
1862: Homestead Act. People were seduced by America because of the ability of the land, it
was easy to live off land. The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862, provided
that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S.
government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to
live on and “improve” their plot by cultivating the land. Later, the frontier was closed because
the country was completely discovered. (En clase, él dijo 65 acres, pero en internet pone 160)
Nativism (+ anti-Semitism). Nativism is what we call xenophobia now. Jews were
discriminated from the early days. They were excluded from education, jobs… (antisemitism)
The more immigrants the more rejection to immigrants.
Know Nothing (or American) Party: they were a nativist political party. They targeted the Irish.
Because the Irish were predominately catholic. Protestants would claim that Catholics had
another authority, not only the President, but also the Pope, and the Pope is not American. So,
Catholics cannot be trusted. First Catholic President: John F. Kennedy.
Idea: we are an immigrant country, but we hate immigrants :/
1882: Chinese Exclusion Act. It forbid any immigration from China
3 wave: 1890-1930 (“new’ immigrants)

 More Slavic, Asian and East-European people (15.5 million in 24 years)

 Larger urban immigrant quaerters > “alarm and reform
 1908 : The Melting Pot by Israel Zangwill. It advocated the idea of people of different
cultural background will become a new people through intermarriage. It was very
controversial, some loved it and some others hated it.
  Fear of ‘mongrelization’ versus ‘cultural pluralism’:

People were divided between these two thoughts.

Mongrelization: derogatory term. To mix a superior identity with an inferior identity.
Cultural pluralism: America is fundamentally plural from day 1, nobody can claim the
American identity.
 E pluribus unum >< Naturalization Act
Motto: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. De muchos, uno. We are going to make from
different identities and cultures, a new identity.

 1892: Ellis Island (government control of immigration waves)

 Eugenics: The idea that some genes are better than others. Even science were enlisted to
defend racism.
 1924: Asian Exclusion Act (origins quota)

4 wave: 1965-present (Latino & Asian)

Late 1990’s: A lot of immigration because of mainly the war of Syria
Estimated number of illegal immigrants in 2010: 10.8 million (result of government control of
immigration waves)
Lus Solis: ground right. If you are born in America, you obtained the nationality, with all the
rights that that implies.
Restrictions favor “highly skilled workers, professionals (…) and entrepreneurs with capital.”
(M&0, 73)
Situation in 2018:

 Ca 200.000 immigrations (=70% decline from 2017)>>> the “Trump” effect?

 45 million foreign-born people living in the US
 Immigrants’ share of total population: 13.7%
“Hispanics”: All Spanish speaking people. A word that was introduced by the government
to blend together all the people coming from Central and South America in the statistics.
Income inequality:
Restricting Immigration
1890-1914: 15,5 million (in 24 years) ‘new’ immigrants
1875: federal government began listing ‘banned groups’ (contract laborers, convicts, prostitutes,
lunatics, idiots, paipers, polygamist, political radicals, the Chinese, the Japanese, illiterates)
1892: Ellis Island
1908: The melting pot
1921: Emergency Quota Act
1924: Asian Exclusion Act + National Origins…
1965
(…)
Women in America
Civil death: when they married a man. By marrying, lost more rights than she won. A married
woman was not allowed to own property, nothing to say over your wages and you could not
sign a contract. In addition, in case of a divorce, children were almost always given to the
father.
Declaration of Sentiments (1848): In Seneca falls. They asked for the right to vote, to education,
employment, property, and divorce. They wrote this down in a document called Declaration of
Sentiments, and it is written exactly like the declaration of independence, in terms of structure
and main elements.
Nineteenth Amendment (1920):
Equal Rights Amendment (1923/1972)
Row vs Wade (1973). The Supreme Court passed this law. Under certain circumstances
abortion should be legal. It became possible to have an abortion in America. Row refers to the
name of a woman from Texas, Jane Row. She used this name when she took on the state of
Texas. Henry Wade was the general attorney of Texas. The woman was really named Norma
McCorvey.
Violence against Women Act (1994)
Women’s role in politics:
Women’s economic position

29/04/2022
Lecture 3: Slavery and The Civil War
The word ‘nation’ does not appear in the Constitution nor in the Declaration of Independence.
Because they felt like 13 very different states. The United States. Separated states.
White America, from the very early days, relied on slaves.
The peculiar institution = slavery.
The Civil War was a fundamental struggle over the meaning of America. What does this
country stand for? Chances were that was very possible that after the CW America would break
because slavery had become a polarizing issue, the South relied heavily on slavery. The South
was, the so called, one crap economy, plantations, and you need a lot of people to work on a
plantation. The North, in the 19th century, was more industrial. So, there was a growing tension.
It could’ve split the country, but the man who prevented this from happening was Abraham
Lincoln. Lincoln against all odds achieved to keep the country together.
The Confederacy vs. The Union
The KKK: After the War, (the war ended in 1865), a lot of people in the South was extremely
resentful about the fact that the South lost, so many white men did not want to lay down their
weapons. Out of this racist resentment, grew a militia going around farms and houses in the
South lynching and killing black people out of revenge, fear, and frustration. The KKK still
exists to this day.
Reconstruction: period after the war when America tried to be reunified.
Some figures:

 Population in the South in 1860: 8 099 000 whites, 3 953 850 slaves (owned by 384 000
whites)
 Number of slaves states in 1860: 15
 Free states: 19
 Approx. number of American soldiers killed: 750 000
 Approx. percentage of American population that died: 2,5
 Numbers of Northerners mobilized to fight for the Union army: 2,1 million
 Numbers of Southerners mobilized for the Confederacy: 880 000
 Estimated percentage of Civil War dead who were never identified: 40+

What caused the Civil War?

1) Cultural incompatibility?
2) Economic rivalry?
3) Constitutional disagreement?
It is about who really represents America as a country. The South or the North. The
south was like we work the land we care about the country and you guys in the North
only care about money.
4) Controversy Negro slavery?
The South’s “peculiar institution”

 1793/1850: Fugitive Slave Acts. The south was dominated by the Democrats. The
Democrats in the old days were totally pro-slavery, completely opposite from today’s
perspective. The slaves in the South run away to the North, so the South imposed the
law where if they could catch them, they had to return to the South.
 1803: Louisiana Purchase
 1820: Missouri Compromise. Main and Missouri both applied for statehood. Main
applied to be a free state and Missouri for a slave state. So, to get things even Missouri
was added to the Union as the last state allowed slavery. No slavery above this line,
slavery below this line.
 1850: Compromise of 1850. It allowed another state to enter the Union as a free state.
In this year, slavery was officially banned in D.C, the capital.
 1854: Kansas-Nebraska Act. Similar idea. These two states wanted to be a state. The
idea of popular sovereignty was introduced because they let the people from the states
decide if they want to have slavery or not.
These are failed efforts to avoid the war.
Dred Scott vs Sanford (1857)
Dred Scott was a Missouri slave. Sanford was his owner. Sanford moved from a slave state
to a free one, so Dred lived for four years in a free state, and then, they come back, so Dred
is basically forced to live a in a plantation, again. So, someone, said to him that he shouldn’t
become a slave again. So, he claimed to the State of Missouri saying that he couldn’t be a
slave again because he had been a free man. This was taken all the way up to the Supreme
Court. And one judge, Mr. Towny, he ruled against Dred Scott. These were the arguments:
1 a n*gro is not a citizen, a n*gro is a piece of property. 2 you are suing in Missouri, but
implying things that happened in Illinois. 3 a temporary stay in a free territory does not
 make you free. 4 The Missouri compromise is unconstitutional because it deprives people
out of their property.

 S: Plantation economy vs. N: Manufacture

 One-crop economy
 1850s: cotton price went down
 Black inferiority and paternalism
 Josiah Nott’s history theory: polygenesis. Pseudo-science that some genes were
better than others.

 From 600 000 in 1790 to more than three million in 1850!

 Slave protest:
 1831: Nat Turner Insurrection
 1857: Dred Scott vs Sandford
 1859: Harpers Ferry Raid (John Brown)
 Song from a Cotton Field (Bessie Brown)
The political protagonists:
Abraham Lincoln: The Union. Born in Kentucky. He was from a very early age against slavery
because he though it was an insult to humanity. But another part is Lincoln was also a racist.
During all his fighting against slavery, he never thought black and white people were equal. He
fought against it because it was tearing apart America. The Republicans were against
slavery, Lincoln found the Republican party to fight against slavery. He run against Douglass.
The point of his struggle was to maintain the Union, to keep America as one.
Jefferson Davis: The Confederacy
November 1860:
Lincoln wins presidential elections on a minority vote: 39,9%
December 1860:
South Carolina declares it’s leaving the Union
February 1861:
SC, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama are out. Jefferson David elected
president of the Confederacy
11 (out of 15) slave states constituted the Confederacy (+Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, NC,
Virginia)
19 Union states
4 border states (Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland) stayed in the Union.

 The central paradox of the Civil War:

In leaving the Union, the Southern states created the only way in which slavery could be abolish
legally. They left the seats in Congress empty. So, the Northers abolished slavery because they
were the majority.

 12 April 1861, Fort Summer

Lincoln is empowered. Jefferson Davis become the President of the Confederacy (this
“country” only existed for 4 years) Fort Summer is the official beginning of the
violence of the war, where the southern states, the Confederate states shot people in the
South Carolina.

 The crucial battle of the Civil War

The Gettysburg Address (November 1863)

Lincoln came by to the opening of a new military cemetery and Lincoln gave a speech, probably
his most important speech.
The Emancipation Proclamation

The end of the War

9 April 1865: General Lee surrenders to General Grant
15 April: Lincoln and his wife go to Ford’s Theater: Our American Cousin
John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865)

Reconstruction (1865-1877)

 Why 1877? Return of the white supremacist Democratic party to power >>> Jim Crow
laws.
 4 million freed slaves
 “Naked, hungry and destitute to the open sky” (Frederick Douglass)
 Two challenged of Reconstruction:
 Andrew Johnson: impeached
 Black codes
 “Social engineering”
 Ku Klux Klan (“kuklos”)

The Gilded Age (1877-1893)

Origin of the term: a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dusley Warner (The Gilded Age: A tale
of Today)
(The Golden Age)
Progress and Crisis
By calling it the Gilded Age, Twain suggested that America looked from the outside looks like
paradise, like gold but it is only gilded, a thin layer, when you see through it, it is a rotten
corrupted capitalist society.

The Incorporation of America

It is a legal body with one goal, profit seeking.
That an association of people constituted a single entity, which might hold property, sue and be
sued, enter contracts and continue in existence beyond the lifetime of membership of any of its
participants.
To make more money, the people agreed to join the corporation ruled by different people, so the
individual agreed to no longer be an individual.
Labor versus Capital

 Charters
 Joint-stock companies
 1869: Knights of Labor (first national labor organization)
 1873: Wall Street Crash
 1877: great railroad strike
 1886, May 1: Haymarket Riots, Chicago (Knights of Labor: 700 000 members)

Social Darwinism (Herbert Spencer). The survival of the strongest, those who can adapt
Technological determinism. You should organize society as a machine.
The cultural paradox of incorporation.
“The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return.” (J.D.
Rockefeller, Standard Oil Company of Ohio)
Knights of Labor: “An injury to one is the concern of all”
By the end of the 19th century has become the type of country that we know.

06/05/2022
America: Political Institutions
A state is extremely independent from each other
Part One: The Federal government
1. The Constitution
2. The Ratification Process
3. Key Elements Constitution
4. The Electoral College
5. Legislative and Executive Branch
1The Constitution

 Articles of Confederation (1781-8): loose league, very weak central government, one-
house legislation.
 A new Constitution? (1787)
 Federalists vs anti-federalists (anti: again the formation of a strong federal government)
Federalist fought for a new constitution; this constitution made it possible for
Washington to be the first president.

2 The Ratification Process

The constitution had to be ratified to become a law. 9 out of 13 states had to ratify it, then it will
become valid. The Constitution has hardly changed through the years, most of it is the same,
but they have added amendments. The Constitution was only ratified after they had agreed upon
the Bill of Rights.

 The Federalist Papers (1788)

 Bill of Rights (1789). The first ten amendments to the Constitution. They are written in
stone. Certain rights must be absolute. It was a king of guaranteed that those 10
amendments will never change.
Amendment II: Makes the abolition of guns in America impossible.

 Every state has two senators. Political balance to get all states to sign the
Constitution.
 Will the slaves be counted as a representative? No. The Constitution refers as them
as a 3/5 of a person. This was deleted after the Civil War.
 The US could ban the importation of slaves after 1808. Huge economic
disagreements between the North (industrialized and manufactured) and the South
(one crop plantation economy, slave labor). Congress will be permitted to tax
imports but not exports. Imports were of course mainly manufacturing goods from
England, not cows. They protected the Northern economy against competitors in
Europe. By allowing congress to not tax exports, that made it cheaper for
Southerners to export their goods. These 3 points were crucial to get them to agree
to sign the constitution.
3. Key elements of the Constitution

 States accepted federal government thanks to three compromises: m&o, 157 (explained
above)
 The four principles of the American Constitution:
 US not= parliamentary form of government! (m&o 160,171)
 Popular vote vs electoral college: (m&o, 177-9, 182-7)

Delegated powers: Delegated (sometimes called enumerated or expressed) powers

are specifically granted to the federal government in Article I, Section 8 of the
Constitution. This includes the power to coin money, to regulate commerce, to declare war, to
raise and maintain armed forces, and to establish a Post Office.
Reserved powers: all the zones that are not explicitly signed over the federal government.
Concurrent: issues sort of in the middle.
The separation of powers
America is not a parliamentary democracy.
In America, they have 3 branches of government. Judiciary, legislative body, and the executive
branch of government. In a parliamentary democracy, after the election the leader of the biggest
party shortly of automatically becomes president or prime minister, which means he becomes
the number one of the executive and the legislative body. Mostly the executive branch consists
of people who are also in the legislative branch. In America, none of the minister are in the
House of representatives. Executive and legislative branch are completely different. The Vice
President is the only exception. The Vice president is the head of the Senate.
The separation of power is to prevent people to have too much power. In America: ‘As a result,
one party often controls one or both houses of Congress while another holds the presidency’
Page: 160.

2/3 in the Congress to change the Constitution. You need the approval of 75% to modify an
amendment to the Constitution.
America has staggered elections. We want to fracture powers. All the members of the house are
up for real election up to every two years. To make the people in control as much as they can of
who they are represented by. President limited for two terms of 4 years.
Redistricting
States are divided into districts, only one person can be elected for a district. Some states are
huge. So sometimes, people move in within these states. So, what parties do is they try to
reorganize these districts so they coincide with who you think will vote for you. So, they’re
draw the line of the districts. Political parties try to realign the borders of districts in order to
gain political success. Very important, the country keeps going. Inn 1929, it was decided that
the House was going to be 435. In America, every 10 years, there is a census, so they hire
people to go all the houses in America and count the people. They reassign, if people have
moved out from Texas to California, that means that in the next year Texas should have less
representatives. To keep the representation without moving the number of total representatives.
The structure of the Government is repeated at state level. All states mirror the political
structure of the country, except Nebraska.
4 Popular vote vs electoral college pg. 177
In America, the people do not vote for the President.
Presidential election, in each state there are electors. Electors count the popular vote. The result
of the state translates. No lo entiendo, buscar en internet.

The legislative branch

Differences House/Senate m&o 165-7
Reapportionment m&0 170
The executive branch
The presidency: m&o 173-9
Reform the system? M&o 186-7

Amendment XIV: abortion.

Part Two: State and local government

1. “Delegated”, “Reserved”, “Concurrent”
2. Dual/Cooperative/new federalism
3. State judiciary vs federal judiciary

Part One: the legal system

Three reasons why Americans are “into law” (242-3)

 Individualism
 Constitutionalism
 Legalism
Two types of law (242)

 Civil law. Civil law is compensation. Financial supplement.

 Criminal law. Criminal is about trial and punishment.

Two most important sources of American law (246-47)

 Common law. Imported from England. Common law is precedence law. In England, is the
history of the certain law decision, how was this case decided in the 19 th century, for
example. Louisiana has no common law system because it used to be French.
 Statuary law. Law based on legal writings, legal prescriptions, they tell you what to do in
that case. Judges are not supposed to elaborate, they only apply the law.

(247) The Federal court system

94 District courts
12 US courts of appeal
US Supreme Court

Part two: the economy

 From colonial times to mid-nineteenth century: agriculture

 From 1865 to First World War: industrialization: the Gilded Age
 The incorporation of America
The roaring twenties: economy overheated (overproduction, speculation) > Wall Street, October
1929 (273)
Great Depression>New Deal (F.D Roosevelt)
Bretton Woods Conference (1944): IMF + Worldbank.
The Gold standard was the way to control the different speculations. The Gold Standard was a
system under which nearly all countries fixed the value of their currencies in terms of a
specified amount of gold or linked their currency to that of a country which did so.
1945-1960s: growth, prosperity, global dominance
2007/8: sub-prime credit crisis > financial market/banking implosions > Great Recession.
American banks had been guaranteeing loans to buy houses knowing they were to poor to ever
pay them back. A toxic loan. Huge banks collapse because they thought they could get their
money back, but houses prices dropped because there were a lot of houses for sale.
Social class and economic inequality. (276-7)
It got worse after Obama.
Pg 279-inflation.
3 causes.
Disruptions in the global supply chain.
Term oil in different labor markets. (?)
Sudden strong consumer demand raises after covid.

13/05/2022
The sixties in America
8 dimensions of the Sixties

 The anti-Vietnam War Movement

 The Civil Rights Movement
 The Free Speech Movement
 The counterculture Movement
 The Beat Movement
 The Black Arts Movement
 The Woman’s Movement
 The Environmental Movement

1. The central event: the Vietnam War

 February 1965: Beginning of Operation “Rolling Thunder”: sustained American

bombing raids of North Vietnam. The nearly continuous air raids would go on
for three years.
  America sends ground troops. The first conventional battle of the Vietnam war
takes place as American forces clash with North Vietnamese units in the la
Drang Valley. End of 1965: more than 200 000 American troops in Vietnam.
End of 1966: 385 000. End of 1967: 486 000

 1966: American 8-52s bomb North Vietnam for the first time. Huge American
bombers. Most advanced guns to fight the North Vietnamese.

The president after Kennedy being shot Lyndon B. Johnson.

(President Lyndon Johnson signs Gulf of Tonkin resolution (1964))
This is the beginning of the operation: Rolling Thunder.
The Vietnam war kind of started with a series of fake news.

The Tet Offensive (1968)

It was an effort by the North Vietnamese to take the South Vietnamese and the American by
surround. Tet means lunar new year. They figured that if they attacked the south in new year’s,
they would get them by surprise, in January 1968. It was a miscalculation, the South defended
themselves extremely well. The Tet Offensive backfired.

My Lai Massacre (March 16, 1968)

American wanted revenge for the Tet Offensive. My Lai is the name of a Vietnamese town. 500
unarmed were killed. It was a military revenge; it didn’t have any military purpose in revenge.
News travelled much slower at the time, so months later, it really galvanized protests against the
War.

A cease-fire (1973)
Nixon, Kissinger, Le Duc Tho.
Johnson is not longer president. Nixon became president after Johnson, appointed Henry
Kissinger as his secretary. Nixon initiated peace stops. 1973: a cease-fire.
In 1971, some top-secret documents were leaked to the New York Times. It was basically an
overview of the American military involvement in Vietnam starting in 1964. The Pentagon
Papers. Americans learned from these papers, that they had been involver in this war for longer
than they thought, they also learned that they had been involved outside Vietnam, they had also
bombed Cambodia. In 1973, Watergate leaked documents about the corruption in elements.
1974, he resigned. He did end the war, pushed by the public opinion, by the publication of the
Pentagon papers, he was pushed by the circumstances to end the longest war of the American
history and also the least popular war.
2. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
President Kennedy, January 1961 took office, he was elected in 1960.
Kennedy casts his presidency in terms of the defense of human rights. Martin Luther King
was not invited to Kennedy’s inauguration ball. Kennedy was very slow in understanding
the civil rights movement. Segregation was going since the Civil War and was still during
50’s. He appointed as secretary of justice, his own brother, Robert Kennedy. Robert
Kennedy was who draw his brother attention to the Civil Rights movement.
Martin Luther King: I have a Dream (Washington, August 26, 1963)
Only one woman spoke, the rest were men. She was Josephine Baker. She was an American
singer who suffered big time for racism in America, poor family in the south, she fled to
Europe and became a star in Paris. Because of her sensual dance in the clubs in Paris. That
was kind of troubling. She went back to America. She spoke right after Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King: The fierce urgence of Now. It was almost a century since the civil war.
We are not going to wait another century for it to happen, not even a day. American typical
sermon. They all start blaming something. (President? presence?)
Martin Luther King was a peacemaker. He was considered a modern.? There was another
man who was a lot more radical. Perhaps, the most radical critical America has ever had.
Malcom X: The Ballot or the Bullet. Malcom X did not exclude the use of violence to
accomplish the goals of the civil rights movement.
Malcom X was killed in 1965, by the Nation of Islam. He belonged to that group but he left.
He was giving a speech and he was shot.
Dallas, November 22, 1963:
Kennedy shot in Dallas, Texas. By members of Nation of Islam. A lot of the political
individuals who seem to embody the movements were being eliminated, murdered. Lee
Harvey was the one who shot, and then he was also shot.
Students step in and starting organizing protests the War of Vietnam. They had reasons
because the draft was reintroduced again. Importantly, the students’ activities implied
violence and were arrested.
1964, Kennedy murder. Johnson became president and he passed the Civil Rights Act. It
finally prohibited discrimination based on race, employment, public accommodation…That
did not prevent white supremacists to keep harassing black people, thought.
The black panthers were really organized, it was kind of the antecedent of the Black Lives
Matter movement.
In 1967, Martin Luther King gives a speech called Beyond Vietnam, in which he basically,
merged the Civil Rights Movement with the antiwar movement. In this speech he explicitly
linked the goals, the states of both movements. He invited Americans to see these two
issues as one.
Martin Luther King assassinated in April in Tennessee.
October 21, 1967: anti-war demonstration on the Mall, DC.
They had planned to organize biannual demonstrations like this. It was also the time when
Americans in this movement, increasingly committed acts of civil disobedience. For
instance, Henry David Thoreau in the 19th century he was against the war in Mexico, so he
decided not to pay his taxes, he was sent to jail. He committed an act of civil disobedience.
In 1967, at this demonstration, one of the most bizarre acts of civil disobedience took place.
Levitate the Pentagon…fifty thousand people went to the Pentagon from the Mall and when
they got there, they were organized by yippies (not hippies yet) countercultural
provocateurs, to basically confuse the government and the police. They surrounded the
pentagon; they circled the pentagon with a huma chain and then all of them started singing
and chanting until the pentagon starts levitating and turn orange. The pentagon did not
move. The cops were totally confused.
1968, presidential elections, took place in Chicago. Memphis, 4 April 1968 moments before
Martin L.K was shot. Kennedy had been shot in 63. His brother runs for presidency
basically to make up the unfinished presidency of his brother, and on the way to the
elections, he was shot.
August of that year, Democratic Convention, Chicago. The yippies nominated Pegasus the
Pig for president. Pegasus was arrested and so were the yippies. It illustrates that the
American government was losing it.
Kent State university, May 1970. National students strike, they fought in their campuses
against the involvement on the wars. This marks the end of the 60’s as a period of protests.
The national forces appeared on campus and opened fire. Students were killed.

3. The Counter Culture Movement.

Theodore Roszak was the man who invented this concept.
Cultural events:
The pill. The pill liberated people’s and women’s sexualities.
Music: Love Me Do: first single of The Beatles. This was controversial at the time.
1963: The Times They Are A-changing. Bob Dylan.

The Haight-Ashbury counterculture. The hippies movement took off in San France, Haight-
Ashbury.
The Mime Troupe. It was like theater club. They would stage improvised performances in
the streets. Satirical performances.
The Diggers was a protest movement in San Francisco with radical ideas, they wanted to
abolish private property, they advocated an agrarian lifestyle.
1970 the summer of love. LSD was still allowed until 67-68. It was used by some very
serious people who sided to the counterculture. One of them was Timothy Leary, who was a
Harvard professor, who experimented with the students with LSD. LSD was also used by
the police and the CIA.
The Summer of Love also refers to the musical ‘Hair’.
The Beatles: Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Woodstock, August 15-18, 1969. It’s a huge festival.
The Who at Woodstock.

To this day the 60’s had an important ideological impact. When people talk about the sixties
you immediately now in which sides they are. The 60s is a source of nostalgia for some
people, perhaps more to the left in the political spectrum. On the other hand, there is a
talking down about the sixties. You could say that in the history of dissent that after the 60s
nothing similar happened in America until Trump. What he says is that trump managed to
channel unrest in society, and frustration and anger and translate it into a political
movement, the political party.

20/05/2022
Is the America Dream dead?
United States: geopolitical institution. Geographical reality. It involves lands, institutions,
laws, schools. Genocide, slavery, poverty.
America: The United States religion. The story, narrative that keeps this country together,
provides some kind of union. America is an idea. Dreams, Beliefs, Expectations.
America was going to be the first culture based on individualism. America is based on the
mutual desire to be left alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. “America is a poem in our eyes”. Leaves of grass. When you look
at a grass, it looks like one thing, like one sheet. When you look closer, it is made of single,
individual blades, leaves of grass. American culture is like this huge lawn. American is a
future culture. America is not based on common memories; it is based on common
expectations. They share the desire and the belief that they will be happy eventually. The
future plays the same role in America culture than the past does in European culture.

Vietnam war monument: on the ground because it was something not really to celebrate.

Origin of the term ‘American Dream’ James Truslow Adams. The epic of America (1931)
He wanted to write a book about American history to common people. The epic of America.
The America dream is used 20/30 times. The term stuck on peoples mind. Ç
The American dream mateines its power because of its ambiguity. It is no completely facts
nor completely legend.
Rodney King. Rodney Glen King fue un taxista estadounidense conocido por haber sido
agredido brutalmente por varios agentes de policía de Los Ángeles el 3 de marzo de 1991,
después de haber sido perseguido mientras estaba en libertad condicional por robo.

The black community decided to trust the American legal system to judge the cops. It didn’t
work and the African America community exploded. They went up in arms, violence,
lynching’s, One important incident. Stores in that neighborhood were owned by Asians. One of
those stores was burnt and the man looks into the camera and he’s crying and points at what
going on behind him and says this is not the real America. What he meant is that this is not the
ideal America.

Version of the American Dream

The Puritans. Predestinarians. Pensaban que el destino estaba escrito y que no se podía cambiar
(iornia) They did not believe in the individual freedom. They thought they were responsible for
the state of the world. You had to create god’s utopia in the world.

The Declaration of Independence

Upward mobility

Quest for equality (Civil Rights). Benjamin Franklin

Home ownership. 1862: Homestead Act. Everybody who moved there could get land. 1893:
Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The significance of the Frontier in American History’ (Chicago
Columbian Exhibition). The suburb.

Hollywood. Hollywood 1888 First movie stars: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks “a
democracy pf desire” (Cullen).

The great Gatsby is a book about the dream.