Chap 1

• In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrated to the US. They were fleeing crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes and famine. Many came to the US as it was perceived as the land of economic opportunity or seeking personal freedom or relied from political and religious persecution.
• In 1773, 13 colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America declared their independence from Great Britain. Britain was defeated in the American Revolution, or the War of Independence, in 1783. The shape of the new nation was defined by the constitution, which laid out the system and structures of of the government.
• The American population quadrupled between 1820 and 1860, and by the end of the 19th century the country had stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The US had turned into a global sea power.
• The prospect of free land and new opportunities drew migrants to the west, into the new territory. The expansion supported the idea that America would be an agrarian society made up of independent farmers. Western Expansion also reflected America's belief in 'Manifest Destiny', the belief that Americans had a moral duty and right to a acquire new lands, and to impose its political, social and economic systems onto others.
• Democrats - Est 1792, one of the oldest political parties in the world; conservative; belief in small government with power to the states.

  Republicans - Formed after a split in the Democratic party over the issue of slavery; after the defeat of the south, they dominated American politics.


  These parties remain the two main political parties, however, as a result of major policy changes in the 20th century, Republicans have been more closely associated with conservative while the Democrats are more socially progressive.
• During the 1850s, tension grew between the northern, industrial states and the more agricultural slave-owning south. When the federal government resisted the introduction of slavery into new states, the Civil war was fought from 1861 to 1865, in 1863 President Lincoln freed slaves in captured territories.
• The civil war stimulated the industrial development in the north. In the aftermath of the war, the American economy entered a period known as the second industrial revolution. This was a technological revolution with a number of inventions in manufacturing, transport and communication. The growing immigration population provided workers, they would work in harsher conditions for less pay.
• The second industrial revolution could not have occurred without railways. The government awarded massive land grants to private investors to build railways, new settlements developed around railway stations and siding. Telegraph lines also followed the railways, resulting in faster and more efficient communication.
• The Gilded Age


  This era was named by a book, it satires American society in the post-civil war period and exposed the greed and political corruption that occurred as land speculators scrambled for wealth.
• During the late 19th century, major powers extended their influence across the globe as they acquired colonies in Africa, Asia, The Middle East and the Pacific. They sought to extend their sphere of influence over other nations, both politically and economically.
• In 1910, an era of mass consumption emerged, in which Americans aspired to an American standard of living and a share of their resource abundance. Freedom meant having access to consumer goods, this promoted more workers to join unions and fight for higher wages.
• The Progressive Agenda described American individuals and groups who worked to bring about change in the political, social, and economic systems. They pursued a political agenda of reform, one of their main aims was to expose the corruption in the American government and political system. Their desire to protect everyday people did not extend to America's black population. Most whites were indifferent to racism and discrimination faced by African Americans, and accepted racial segregation as natural.
• While slavery had been outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the lives of African Americans were shaped by racism and indifference. In the south former slave states passed laws called Black Codes, placing freemen under white control.
• At the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the Republican North placed the South under military control and introduced the Reconstruction Act 1867. This Act was established to rebuild the South into a free-labour economy, enfranchising African Americans, establishing schools and medical care, and renegotiating labour contracts. The South continued oppose any laws that gave white men the same rights as white men.

  Terror organisations such as the KKK used intimidation to African Americans from voting. The North gradually withdrew from the South and Reconstruction officially ended in 1877.
• When challenged in the Supreme Court, Jim Crow laws were not found to have breached the 14th amendment, legitimising them. Progressive reformers accepted the view that the Constitution did not require social equality between races.The Supreme Court's judgement argued that the 14th amendment did not require two races to intermingle, and if one race is 'socially inferior', it was not the place of the Constitution to make them equal
• In the 1890s, the Jim Crow laws were passed in the South, restricting the freedom of African Americans, segregating schools, hospitals, universities, hotels, and workplaces
• A series of qualifications for voting, such as literary tests and property qualification were introduced in the South from the beginning of the 1890s. These effectively disenfranchised black voters. African Americans were also banned from membership of unions, and from skilled employment.
• When the first world war broke out in Europe in 1914, many Americans were opposed to the US's involvement so President Woodrow Wilson declared America neutral. Only when American territories were deemed to be in danger did the US declare war in 1917.
• The Committee of Public Information was formed in 1917 and immediately began a propaganda war. They used techniques developed by the advertising industry to shape public opinion and foster patriotism and support for the war. American democracy and liberty were compared to the German regime of Tyranny. Germany became the antitheses of democracy, and the anti-German feeling was stirred up by posters depicting Germans as brutal and inhumane.
• After WW1 the US did not experience war damage, hunger or the collapse of economic and political structures. It was, however, a time of violence as well as social and political turmoil.
• Between 1918 and 1920, the world experienced an influenza pandemic, which killed 50 million people worldwide. The first American outbreak occurred in 1918 in army training camps in Kansas.
• Woodrow Wilson encouraged the US to look beyond its own borders and overseas economic interests and instead develop foreign policy within the context of ideas, morality and the spread of democracy abroad.
• The Paris Peace Conference was a set of formal and informal diplomatic meetings in 1919 and 1920 after the end of World War I, in which the victorious Allies set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. These peace treaties failed to meet Wilson's goals as he provided to be a less able negotiator than Britain and France. The defeated parties in WW1 were not represented at this conference.
• When Woodrow Wilson returned to the US in February of 1919, he presented the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate. The Treaty was challenged by the Senate, the chair man at the time, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, argued that the US membership of the League of Nations would commit America to involvement in the affairs of other countries and would deprive the country of its freedom.