Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1 ${bmicon} CREATED EQUAL Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 2 ${bmicon}   25,000 to 11,000 years ago Low ocean levels expose land bridge linking Siberia to Alaska. 14,000 years ago Early Paleo-Indians in Florida and Pennsylvania regions, and also in Monte Verde, Chile. 13,900 to 12,900 years ago Clovis hunters spread across North America. 10,000 to 3000 years ago Archaic Indians flourish in diverse settings. 4200 to 2700 years ago Poverty Point culture existing in Louisiana. 300 to 900 A.D. Mayan culture flourishes in Mesoamerica. 400 Polynesian explorers reach the Hawaiian Islands. 500 to 600 Teotihuacan in central Mexico becomes one of the world’s largest cities. 900 to 1100 Anasazi culture centered in Chaco Canyon in Southwest. 1000 Norse explorers establish a Vinland colony in Newfoundland. 1100 Cahokia in Illinois becomes one focus of Mississippian culture. 1250 to 1400 Mississippian culture reflected at Moundville in Alabama. 1400 Aztecs build capital at Tenochtitlán (site of modern Mexico City). 1405 to 1433 Chinese fleet of Admiral Zheng He reaches Indian Ocean and Africa’s east coast. 1420 to 1460 Prince Henry of Portugal sends ships to explore Africa’s west coast. 1492 First voyage of Columbus. 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas arranges division between overseas claims of Spain and Portugal. 1497 to 1499 Vasco da Gama completes trading voyage from Portugal to India. 1517 Martin Luther launches Protestant Reformation. 1519 Cortés invades Mexico. WE SOMETIMES CALL THE FRAMERS OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION America’s Founding Fathers, using capital letters for emphasis. The men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 were indeed founders in a political sense, having drafted our enduring frame of government. But the 1780s seem recent in relation to most of North America’s long human history. We must explore far back in time, long before the eighteenth century, to find the varied men and women who were the continent’s first founders. Two kinds of foundation builders emerge: the distant ancestors of today’s Native Americans and newcomers from abroad who colonized North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Our earliest human ancestors evolved in Africa and then spread across the landmass of Eurasia. In the Southern Hemisphere, they managed to cross to Australia some 40,000 years ago, but evidence suggests that they reached the Americas from Asia much later, probably less than 20,000 years ago. These first human arrivals took advantage of the land bridge that joined Siberia to Alaska when Ice Age glaciers prompted a dramatic decline in sea levels. Roughly 14,000 years ago, these hunters apparently bypassed melting glaciers to reach the North American interior. They came on foot, but additional newcomers may have skirted the Pacific coast in small boats or even drifted across the South Pacific. We still understand very little about these earliest Americans. What we do know is that they spread rapidly across North America over the next thousand years, and they continued to hunt mammoths and other large animals until these ancient species became extinct. Later, their descendants adapted to a wide range of different environments, learning to fish, hunt for smaller game, and gather berries. It has been 10,000 years since the extinction of the mammoths and 3000 years since the early signs of agriculture in the Americas. By 500 A.D. complex societies were beginning to appear in equatorial America, and a succession of diverse and rich societies had arisen in the Americas by the time a second set of founders appeared around 1500 A.D. Although Vikings from Scandinavia had preceded Christopher Columbus by five centuries, their small outpost on the coast of Newfoundland lasted only a few years. In contrast, when Columbus reached Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 3 ${bmicon}   the West Indies and returned to Spain in 1492, his voyage launched a human and biological exchange between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres that has never ceased. Spanish and Portuguese ships initiated this exchange, but they were soon followed by vessels from England, France, and Holland. Half a century after Columbus’s first voyage, Spanish overland expeditions had already pushed from Florida to Arkansas and from Mexico to Kansas. French explorers, hoping to find a Northwest Passage to Asia, had penetrated far up the St. Lawrence River in Canada. Europeans brought new materials such as iron and new animals such as horses, cattle, and pigs. They also brought deadly diseases previously unknown in the Americas, such as measles and smallpox, which had a catastrophic impact on Native American societies. By 1565 Europeans had established their first lasting outpost in the North American continent, the town of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida. Two decades later the English tried, unsuccessfully, to plant a similar colony at Roanoke Island along the coast of what is now North Carolina. In the first decades of the seventeenth century, permanent European settlements took hold at Quebec on the St. Lawrence River and at Santa Fe near the Rio Grande. A trans-Atlantic outpost of English society appeared at Jamestown on Chesapeake Bay in 1607. Farther north, behind the sheltering hook of Cape Cod, other settlers formed additional coastal outposts and renamed the region New England. Numbers were small at first, but these communities and others endured and expanded, often with crucial help from Native Americans who knew the keys to survival in their own domains. The gradual success of these European footholds prompted imitation and competition; colonizers clashed with each other and with long-time Indian inhabitants over control of the land and its resources. Disappointed in their early searches for easy mineral wealth, the new arrivals made do in various ways: cutting timber, catching fish, raising tobacco, or trading for furs. The French in particular, with aid once again from Native Americans, explored the interior of the continent. By 1700, they had laid claim to the entire Mississippi River valley and established a colony on the Gulf of Mexico. Each new colonizing enterprise in the seventeenth century took on a distinctive life of its own—or, rather, numerous lives. First of all, there was the internal life of the community: Who would be allowed to take part, how would participants govern themselves, and how would they subsist? In each instance, relations with the region’s native inhabitants constituted a second unfolding story. Complicated ties to Europe—economic, religious, social, and political—made a third crucial narrative. Furthermore, relations between colonies and between the distant European powers that backed them had a determining influence, as when England took over the Dutch colony at New Netherland in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. Finally, there was the compelling drama of the newcomers’ relationship to the environment itself. These founding generations labored to understand—or to subdue and exploit without fully understanding—the continent they had started to colonize. 1519 to 1522 Magellan’s ship circumnavigates the globe and returns to Spain. 1533 Pizarro overthrows Inca Empire in Peru. 1534 to 1543 Expeditions of Cartier (Canada), De Soto (Southeast), and Coronado (Southwest) probe North America. 1565 Spanish establish St. Augustine. 1577 to 1580 Voyage of Drake challenges Spanish dominance in the Pacific. 1585 to 1590 English attempt to establish Roanoke colony fails. 1588 Spanish Armada fails in an effort to invade England. 1599 Spanish colonize New Mexico. 1607 England’s Virginia Company launches colony at Jamestown. 1620 Mayflower passengers establish Plymouth Colony. 1630 English Puritans found Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1637 Pequot War in New England. 1660 Restoration of monarchy in England under Charles II. 1664 Charles II grants a charter to his brother James, Duke of York, sanctioning the takeover of the Dutch New Netherland colony and the creation of New York. 1675 to 1676 Metacom’s War in New England. 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico. 1681 Quaker William Penn receives charter for Pennsylvania. 1682 La Salle explores the Mississippi River and claims Louisiana for France. 1689 Dutch leader William of Orange and his wife Mary become joint English sovereigns in the Glorious Revolution, replacing King James II. 1691 Witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. 1699 Iberville begins colony in French Louisiana. 1711 to 1715 Tuscarora Indians in North Carolina, and then the Yamasee in South Carolina, resist English colonial expansion. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 4 ${bmicon}         Ancient America       A Thousand Years of Change: A.D. 500 to 1500       Linking the Continents       Spain Enters the Americas       The Protestant Reformation Plays Out in America       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 5 ${bmicon} ONE DAY IN 1908, A COWBOY NAMED GEORGE MCJUNKIN WAS CHECKING FENCES ON A cattle ranch near Folsom, New Mexico, when something strange caught his eye. McJunkin noticed several large bones protruding from the earth. Dismounting from his horse, he also spotted an old arrowhead, something common in these parts. But it was the bones beside it that seemed unusual. They were larger than cattle bones and buried under layers of dirt, so McJunkin decided to show them to others. Nearly 20 years later, ancient-bones expert Jesse Figgins came to Folsom after seeing McJunkin’s evidence. Soon Figgins unearthed an extensive bone bed containing the remains of 23 large Ice Age bison of a species that had been extinct for 10,000 years. He also uncovered a spear point, clearly fashioned by human hands, embedded between two bison ribs. Figgins’s finds confirmed McJunkin’s earlier discovery. The objects stirred first disbelief and then excitement, for they proved that human hunters had existed in North America 7000 years earlier than scientists had supposed. The discovery of the thin projectile tips, named Folsom points after the site, sparked a revolution in North American archaeology. In 1908, the year of McJunkin’s discovery, the nation still had a great deal to learn about the oldest chapters in American history. The United States had just commemorated the 300th anniversary of England’s Jamestown settlement in Virginia, and across the country, U.S. citizens memorialized Anglo-American beginnings. They expected newly arrived immigrants to learn English quickly and leave their Old World cultures behind. Textbooks of the era shared in the celebration of English colonization. They paid scant attention to the earlier Spanish and French arrivals in North America and none at all to the Native American inhabitants who had preceded them by thousands of years. The Beginner’s American History, like most popular texts of the time, opened by relating the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer who encountered America while sailing for the Indies in 1492. Even as far back as the sixteenth century, European newcomers to North America showed only occasional interest in the origins of the people who already lived there. Columbus, thinking he had reached the Asian islands close to India and China (“the Indies”), mistakenly lumped America’s peoples together as “Indians.” Europeans who were curious about Native Americans had little but the Bible to guide their inquiries. Christians speculated that North America’s original residents were descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel who had somehow wandered to these lands in Old Testament times. Whatever their origin, these inhabitants could hardly have been here more than 3000 years, the Europeans reasoned, for the world itself was thought to be scarcely 6000 years old. Such views had changed little by the nineteenth century when American settlers swarmed westward in search of farmsteads. The newcomers speculated on the origin of PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 6 ${bmicon} mysterious burial mounds they saw throughout much of the Mississippi valley. Impressed by the size of these structures but convinced that Indians could not have built them, these new settlers suggested that the hills had to be the work of another race. Perhaps the ancient builders were European in origin and had somehow fallen victim to ancestors of the Native Americans. By 1890, as decades of Indian wars on the Great Plains drew to a close, only a few scientists took an interest in who the earliest North Americans really were, where they came from, when they arrived on the continent, and how they lived. In the century since George McJunkin picked up a prehistoric bison bone, all of that has changed. Scholars who explore and debate the long history of early North America have steadily learned more about the continent’s first inhabitants. An expanding American history now stretches back in time far before the Jamestown settlement and reaches broadly from coast to coast. Its earliest roots lie with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent over many millennia. In addition, the foreigners who suddenly intruded into portions of the Native American world in the sixteenth century—speaking Spanish, French, and occasionally English—also represent a significant beginning. All these people now number, in different ways, among America’s first founders. The discoveries at Folsom more than doubled archaeologists’ estimates of the time span that humans had lived in North America. Clearly, they had resided on the continent for at least 10,000 years. After the Folsom find, collectors immediately began combing the Southwest for additional evidence. They soon found it at nearby Clovis, New Mexico, 170 miles south of Folsom and close to the Texas border. In 1929 a teenager reported spotting large, well-chipped spear heads near Clovis. Three years later, amateur collectors located more in the same vicinity, this time beside the tooth of an extinct mammoth. These so-called Clovis points lay beneath a soil layer containing Folsom points, so they were clearly older than McJunkin’s and Figgins’s finds. Ever since, scientists have unearthed Clovis-like points throughout much of North America. According to the latest calculations, humans started creating these weapons roughly 13,900 years ago and ceased about 12,900 years ago. This means that people were hunting widely on the continent nearly 14,000 years ago. Archaeologists continue to push back and refine the estimated date for the appearance of the first people in the Americas. Recently, they have unearthed evidence suggesting the possible presence of pre-Clovis inhabitants. Like all other peoples, the Indian societies whose ancestors have lived in America for at least 14,000 years retain rich and varied accounts of their own origins. No amount of scientific data can diminish or replace the powerful creation stories, in the Americas or elsewhere throughout the world, that have been passed down from distant ancestors and continue to serve an important cultural purpose. Nevertheless, modern researchers continue to compile evidence about the origin and migration of humans, very recent newcomers on a planet estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. Scientists have determined that multicelled organisms began to evolve less than 600 million years ago. The higher primates who were humans’ direct ancestors (that is, in the genus Homo, like today’s humans) first emerged in Africa some 2.5 million years ago. Some ancient members of the Homo family tree may have migrated out of Africa as far as the Black Sea region by 1.7 million years ago. But it was scarcely 70,000 years ago when the most recent Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 7 ${bmicon} full view MAP 1.1 THE EARLIEST AMERICANS The Ice Age ancestors of Native Americans crossed from Siberia when a land bridge linked Asia and Alaska. Some probably migrated south along an ice-free corridor 14,000 years ago. Others may have followed a Pacific coastal route, moving rapidly down the shores of North and South America by boat, with frequent stops along an ancient coastline that is now submerged. ancestors of modern humans moved from Africa to spread across the Eurasian landmass, the area comprising Europe and Asia. These more recent forebears possessed well-developed language capacities and hunting skills. By 40,000 years ago some of these Stone Age hunter–gatherers had already reached Australia, somehow crossing more than 40 miles of water. Others lived on the steppes of Central Asia and the frozen tundra of Siberia. They had perfected the tools they needed to survive in a cold climate: flint spear points for killing mammoths, reindeer, and the woolly rhinoceros; and bone needles to sew warm, waterproof clothes out of animal skin. Over thousands of years, bands of these northern hunters migrated east across Siberia in search of game. Eventually they arrived at the region where the Bering Strait now separates Russia from Alaska. The geography of this area has fluctuated over time because of dramatic changes in global weather. Between 25,000 and 11,000 years ago, cold conditions expanded arctic ice caps, trapping vast quantities of the earth’s water in the form of huge glaciers. As a result, ocean levels sank by 300 feet—enough to expose a bridge of land 600 miles wide between Asia and America. The Bering Land Bridge formed part of a frigid, windswept region known as Beringia. Small groups of people could have subsisted in this cold landscape by hunting mammoths and musk oxen. As the climate warmed and the ocean rose again, some might have headed farther east onto higher ground in Alaska. If so, these newcomers would have been cut off permanently from Siberia as water once more submerged the land bridge. But the same warming process also eventually opened a pathway through the glaciers blanketing northern America. This opening could account for the sudden appearance of Clovis hunters across much of North America nearly 14,000 years ago. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 8 ${bmicon} Geologists have shown that as Ice Age glaciers receded about 14,000 years ago, an ice-free corridor opened along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. For decades, scholars have conjectured that small bands of people probably moved south from Alaska through that route. Presumably these hunters, armed with razor-sharp Clovis points, spread rapidly across the continent, destroying successive herds of large animals that had never faced human predators before. Perhaps, according to this theory, generations of hunters moved swiftly south as local game supplies dwindled. They would have migrated as far as the tip of South America within several thousand years. full view Clovis Points Four Clovis projectile points from sites in New New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in row above a ruler for scale. In recent decades, intriguing developments have complicated the picture. At Cactus Hill, Virginia, and Topper, South Carolina, archaeologists have uncovered artifacts suggesting the presence of immediate predecessors to the Clovis people. At Florida’s Aucilla River, divers have recovered a 14,000-year-old cache of ivory and bone tools. Other pre-Clovis objects have surfaced at the Meadowcroft site southwest of Pittsburgh. The most provocative new discovery has come from South America. In an ancient campsite at Monte Verde, Chile, experts found knotted cords, and even a foot-print, dating back more than 14,000 years. Scholars agree that early inhabitants of North and South America—whether they arrived by land or sea—came primarily from distant Asian ancestry. We know that travelers in the Paleolithic era reached Australia from the Asian landmass by water. Could other small groups have used a coastal route around the North Pacific rim to reach the Americas? If so, bands of so-called Paleo-Indians may have migrated in boats down the Northwest Coast, pausing to fish or gather food. Such seaborne journeys, stretching over generations, could help explain the rapid diffusion of humans into South America. Most of their campsites beside the Pacific would now be several hundred feet under water, for the rising oceans have since covered America’s ancient coastlines. Perhaps Monte Verde, located on higher ground and preserved by a layer of peat moss, represents a revealing exception. Meanwhile, genetic comparisons of different peoples, present and past, are yielding increasingly specific, if controversial, details about ancient migrations and interactions. Advances in understanding DNA—the genetic material that determines our physical make-up and transmits it to our offspring—may someday sharpen or change our awareness regarding Native American origins. To date, they have confirmed one basic conclusion of the physical anthropologists who have examined blood types, dental formation, and other evidence for years. Scholars agree that early inhabitants of North and South America—whether they arrived by land or sea—came primarily from distant Asian ancestry. Some 10,000 years ago, the Paleo-Indian era in North America gradually gave way to the Archaic era, which lasted for roughly 7000 years. Changes in wildlife played a large part in the transition. As the continent warmed further and the great glaciers receded north, more than 100 of America’s largest species disappeared. These included mammoths, mastodons, horses, camels, and the great long-horned bison. Researchers debate whether these large animals were hunted to extinction, wiped out by disease, or destroyed by climate change. Whatever the causes—and probably there were many—human groups had to adapt to the shifting conditions. They developed new methods of survival. Inhabitants turned to the smaller bison, similar to modern-day ones, that had managed to survive and flourish on the northern plains. Hunters learned to drive herds over cliffs and use the remains for food, clothing, and tools. One such bison jump is located in eastern Colorado. Another mass kill site, known as Head-Smashed-In, is in western Alberta; native peoples used it for 7000 years. CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 9 ${bmicon} A weighted spear-throwing device, called an atlatl, let hunters bring down medium-sized game. Archaic peoples also devised nets, hooks, and snares for catching birds, fish, and small animals. By 4000 years ago, they were even using duck decoys in the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada. full view Bison Grazing Bison Grazing (Photodisc, Inc.) Though genetically similar, these far-flung bands of Archaic Indians developed diverse cultures as they adapted to very different landscapes and environments. Nothing illustrates this diversity more clearly than speech. A few early languages branched into numerous language families, then divided further into hundreds of separate languages. The Algonkian family of North American languages, which includes Wampanoag in the east and Cheyenne in the west, in turn has links to Choctaw, Chickasaw, and other southeastern languages of the Muskogean family. Similar cultural variations emerged in everything from diet and shelter to folklore and spiritual beliefs. All of these variations reflected local conditions, and each represented an experiment that might potentially lead to more elaborate social arrangements. Among hunting and gathering societies, subsistence was a way of life, and people lived in small and widely dispersed groups, moving regularly to take advantage of seasonal food sources. As a result, their social structure remained very simple. Eventually in the Americas, as elsewhere, the cultivation of domesticated plants led to settled horticultural societies. A more stable food supply allowed the creation of surpluses, prompting larger permanent villages, wider trade, and a greater accumulation of goods. With this settled lifestyle came greater social stratification and the emergence of hereditary chiefdoms. Frequently, a class of priests appeared near the top of the expanding hierarchy, mediating between the people and a god or gods who were intimately involved in human affairs. And slaves, unknown in hunting and gathering societies, appeared at the bottom of the hierarchy, since captives could be put to work for their conquerors, and an expanded population meant an increased labor force, not only to produce more food but also to create the public works that demonstrated, and enhanced, the power of the chiefs and priests. As the social structures became more complex, greater specialization ensued, allowing the development of more extensive communities with more elaborate political and religious activities and greater concentrations of power. But such developments were slow and uneven, depending on local conditions. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 10 ${bmicon} One condition remained common to all the various Archaic American groups, despite their emerging regional differences: they all shared a lack of domesticated animals. Diverse peoples living in the Eurasian landmass had managed to domesticate five important species—sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and horses—by 6000 years ago, leading to the creation of stable pastoral societies. But none of these mammals existed in the Americas, nor did camels, donkeys, or water buffalo. Archaic Indians, like their Asian forebears, did possess dogs, and settlers in the Andes domesticated the llama over 5000 years ago. Herds of buffalo and deer could be followed, and even managed and exploited in various ways. But no mammal remaining in the Americas could readily be made to provide humans with milk, meat, hides, and hauling power. full view Native American Agriculture Jacques Le Moyne traveled through Florida in 1564-65 and drew this picture of Native American agriculture there. To prepare the ground, the men used hoes of fishbone attached to wooden handles, and the women dug neatly spaced holes and dropped seeds into them. (Library of Congress) Although their prospects for domesticating animals were severely limited, early Americans had many more options when it came to the domestication of plants. Humans managed to domesticate plants independently in five different areas around the world, and three of those regions were located in the Americas. First, across parts of South America, inhabitants learned to cultivate root crops of potatoes and manioc (also known as cassava, which yields a nutritious starch). Second, in Mesoamerica (modern-day Mexico and Central America), people gradually brought squash, beans, and maize (corn) under cultivation—three foods that complement one another effectively in dietary terms. Maize agriculture became a crucial ingredient for the growth of complex societies in the Americas, but its development and diffusion took time. Unlike wheat, the Eurasian cereal crop which offered a high yield from the start, maize took thousands of years of cultivation in the Americas to evolve into an extremely productive food source. Moreover, most of Eurasia stretches east-west through a temperate climate that fosters the spread of similar agriculture. Because of this similarity of climate, a crop that succeeds in one place can readily be grown in another. The western hemisphere, in contrast, lies on a north-south axis; the Americas stretch through numerous different climate zones. Some experts speculate that this geographical fact of life made crop diffusion more difficult. For example, the differences between Mesoamerica and North America proved substantial when it came to mastering maize agriculture. Southwestern Indians in North America began growing thumb-sized ears of maize only about three thousand years ago (at a time of increasing rainfall), well after the crop had taken hold in Mesoamerica. More than a thousand years later, maize reached eastern North America, where it adapted slowly to the cooler climate and shorter growing season. Southwestern Indians in North America began growing thumb-sized ears of maize only about three thousand years ago. In the east, a different agriculture had already taken hold, centered on other once-wild plants. This was the third zone where the independent domestication of plants occurred in the Americas. As early as 4000 years ago, eastern Indians at dozens of Archaic sites were cultivating domesticated squash and sunflowers. The latter yielded edible seeds, as did several less familiar plants. Sumpweed, or marsh elder, flourished near lakes and rivers and produced an oily seed. Goosefoot, knotweed, and maygrass all produced starchy seeds that have been found near Archaic sites in Kentucky, Illinois, and elsewhere. These domesticated plants provided supplemental food sources for eastern communities that continued to subsist primarily by hunting and gathering until the arrival introduction of maize agriculture into the eastern woodlands during the first millennium A.D. About 3000 years ago, as maize cultivation began in the Southwest and gardens of squash and sunflowers appeared in the Northeast, the first of several powerful Mesoamerican cultures—the Olmecs—emerged in the lowlands along the southwestern edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Their name meant “those who live in the land of rubber,” for they had learned how to turn the milky juice of several plants into an unusual elastic substance. The Olmecs grew maize and manioc in abundance, and their surplus of food supported a hierarchical society. Its leaders built large burial mounds and pyramids, and they erected distinctive stone monuments—huge heads standing five to nine feet high. The Olmecs, who revered the jaguar CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 11 ${bmicon} in their religion, developed a complex calendar and played a distinctive game with a large ball of solid rubber. Since they traded widely with people across Mesoamerica, they passed on these cultural traits, which reappeared later in other societies in the region. Olmec traders, traveling by coastal canoe, may even have encountered and influenced the Poverty Point culture that existed near the lower Mississippi River 4,200 to 2,700 years ago. Numerous late Archaic locations near the Gulf Coast shed light on Poverty Point culture. It takes its name from the largest of these sites—a 500-acre complex in northeast Louisiana first rediscovered through aerial photography in the mid-twentieth century. Since then, archaeologists have determined that workers constructed Poverty Point between 3,500 and 2,700 years ago. This religious and political center consists of a vast semicircle of six concentric earthen ridges that span four-fifths of a mile. Researchers estimate that the complex required three million worker-hours to build. Each ridge, more than 80 feet wide and 8 feet high, may have served to raise human dwellings above the flood plain. The Poverty Point culture, with its trade network on the lower Mississippi and its tributaries, stands as a mysterious precursor to the mound-building societies of the Mississippi Valley that emerged much later. (In a similar way, the Olmecs prefigured the later Mayan, Toltec, and Aztec cultures in Mesoamerica.) Remnants of these more extensive Mississippian cultures still existed when newcomers from Europe arrived to stay, around A.D. 1500. But in many parts of North America, smaller and less stratified Archaic cultures, that combined hunting for a variety of animals with gathering and processing local plant foods, remained intact well into the era of European colonization. The millennium stretching from the fifth century to the explorations of Columbus in the fifteenth century witnessed dramatic and far-reaching changes in the separate world of the Americas. In the warm and temperate regions on both sides of the equator, empires rose and fell as maize agriculture and elaborate irrigation systems provided food surpluses, allowing the creation of cities and the emergence of hierarchical societies. full view Pre-Columbian Societies of the Americas There has been an enduring notion that Pre-Columbian societies consisted of mere nomads – hunter-gatherers who lived off the land and moved with the seasons. In fact, both farmers and city dwellers lived in these complex, early American societies, where population densities were often comparable to those in Europe and Asia. On the coast of Peru, for example, the Moche people excelled in delicate gold work, intricate pottery, and bright weavings made from domesticated cotton. The Moches built huge pyramids to honor the sun, and their realm prospered for centuries. But around A.D. 800 it collapsed suddenly, perhaps a victim of the periodic disturbance in Pacific weather known as El Niño. In the 1400s, centuries after the Moches and their neighbors disappeared, the expansive Inca empire emerged in their place. Inca emperors, ruling from the capital at Cuzco, prompted the construction of a vast road system throughout the Peruvian Andes. Stone-masons built large storage facilities at provincial centers to hold food for garrisons of soldiers and to store tribute items such as gold and feathers destined for the capital. Until the empire’s fall in the 1530s, officials leading pack trains of llamas ferried goods to and from Cuzco along mountainous roadways. Similarly, Mesoamerica also saw a series of impressive civilizations—from the Mayans to the Aztecs—in the millennium spanning A.D. 500 to 1500 in the western calendar. Developments in North America in the same millennium were very different but bear enough resemblance to patterns in Mesoamerica to raise intriguing and still unanswerable questions. Did significant migrations northward from Mesoamerica ever take place? And if not, were there substantial trade links at times, allowing distinctive materials, techniques, ideas, and seeds to reach North American peoples? Or did the continent’s distinctive societies, such as the Anasazi in the Southwest and the Cahokia mound builders on the Mississippi River, develop almost entirely independently? Not surprisingly, North American archaeologists continue to debate the extent of possible links to Mesoamerica in the centuries before Columbus. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 12 ${bmicon} In Mesoamerica, the Mayans and the Aztecs established rich empires where worship of the sun was central to their religious beliefs. Mayan culture flourished between A.D. 300 and 900. The Mayans controlled a domain stretching from the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula to the highlands of what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—an area half the size of Texas. They derived their elaborate calendar—a 52-year cycle made up of 20-day months—and many other aspects of their culture from the earlier Olmecs, but they devised their own distinctive civilization. The Mayan people built huge stone temples and held ritual bloodletting ceremonies to appease their gods. They also constructed narrow courts for a ball game—which some Mexicans still play—where opposing players hit a rubber ball with their hips. Recently, researchers have deciphered the complex glyphs that appear throughout Mayan art. These pictographs are yielding detailed information and precise dates for individual rulers. The Mayans, like the Moches in Peru, declined mysteriously, and dominance in Mesoamerica moved farther west, where great cities arose in the highlands of Central Mexico, first at Teotihuacan and then nearby at Tenochtitlán, the capital of the powerful but short-lived Aztec empire. The people who constructed the metropolis of Teotihuacan in the Mexican highlands remain an enigma. They appear to have traded with the Mayans and perhaps with the Olmecs before that. They laid out their immense city in a grid, dominated by the 200-foot Pyramid of the Sun. By A.D. 500, the city held more than 100,000 inhabitants, making it one of the largest in the world. But Teotihuacan’s society declined fast, for unknown reasons, succeeded first by the Toltecs and then by the Aztecs. Eager to expand their empire and to extend their rule, the Aztecs launched fierce wars against neighboring lands. The Aztecs (or Mexicas) had migrated to the central Valley of Mexico from the north in the twelfth century. Looked down upon at first by the local people, they swiftly rose to power through strategic alliances and military skill. According to legend, the Aztecs’ war god instructed their priests to locate the place where a great eagle perched on a cactus. They found such a spot, on a swampy island in Lake Texcoco. By the 1400s the Aztecs had transformed the island into Tenochtitlán, an imposing urban center, located on the site of modern Mexico City. full view The First Americans: Location of Major Indian Groups and Culture Areas in the 1600s Native Americans were not a homogenous group, for they did not all share the same religious system or societal structure. Many Native American groups had sophisticated agricultural systems and technology by the time the Europeans arrived on the continent. The impressive city of Tenochtitlán, surrounded by Lake Texcoco and linked to shore by causeways, became the Aztec capital. Its architecture imitated the ruined temple city of Teotihuacan, which lay 35 miles to the north, and exceeded it in grandeur. The Aztecs also adopted many other features of the cultures they had displaced. They used the cyclical 52-year Mesoamerican calendar, and they worshipped the great god Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent associated with wind and revered by the Toltecs, their predecessors in the Valley of Mexico. Schooled in hardship, pessimism, and violence, the Aztecs saw themselves as living in the World of the Fifth Sun, a final human era destined to end in cataclysm just as earlier epochs had. Eager to expand their empire and to extend their rule as long as possible, they launched fierce wars against neighboring lands. But their primary objective was not to kill enemies or gain more territory. Instead, Aztec warriors demanded tribute and took prisoners from the people they subdued. They then sacrificed numerous captives at pyramid temples to placate the gods. These deities, they believed, would in turn protect them as they conducted further wars of capture, leading to more tribute and sacrifices. The Aztecs’ grim cycle of conflict helped them ward off deep fears of extended drought and lasting destruction. But it also weakened their expanding realm. Like the Incas of Peru, the Aztecs imposed harsh treatment on the peoples they conquered, extracting heavy annual tributes. This harsh policy alienated the provinces from the Aztecs and made their centralized empire vulnerable to external attack. When a foreign assault prompted their downfall in the early sixteenth century, it came from a direction the Aztec priests and generals could not predict. CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 13 ${bmicon} The great urban centers of Peru and Mesoamerica had no counterparts farther north. The peoples inhabiting North America in the millennium before Columbus never developed the levels of social stratification, urban dynamism, architectural grandeur, astronomical study, or intensive corn agriculture that characterized the Mayans, Incas, or Aztecs. Yet elements of all these traits appeared in North America, especially in the Southwest and the Mississippi valley, with the emergence of increasingly settled societies and widening circles of exchange. Modern scholars wonder whether the maize, squash, and bean agriculture, sun worship, and astronomical knowledge found among North America’s southwestern peoples had roots farther south. After all, the Aztecs’ ancestors had apparently migrated down from this dry region to the interior of Mexico after A.D. 1100. Could other north–south movements back and forth have occurred, earlier or later, between Central Mexico and the American Southwest? Links of migration or trade would help to explain the dozens of ancient ball courts, similar to those in Mesoamerica, that archaeologists have excavated in Arizona. Recently, researchers have identified a north–south traffic in turquoise, highly prized in both Mexico and the Southwest. Three identifiably different cultures were already well established in the North American Southwest by A.D. 500. The Mogollons occupied the dry, mountainous regions of eastern Arizona and southern New Mexico. Mogollon women were expert potters who crafted delicate bowls from the fine clay of the Mimbres River. Families lived in sunken pit houses that were cool in summer and warm in winter. The Hohokams, their neighbors to the west in south-central Arizona, did the same. The Hohokams also constructed extensive canal and floodgate systems to irrigate their fields from the Gila and Salt rivers. According to their Native American successors, who still dwell in the Phoenix area, the name Hohokam means “those who have gone.” Farther north, in what is now the Four Corners Region, where Utah and Colorado meet Arizona and New Mexico, lived the people remembered as the Anasazi, or “ancient ones.” By A.D. 750 the Anasazi inhabited aboveground houses clustered around a central ceremonial room dug into the earth. They entered this circular space by descending a ladder through the roof. The climb back up from this sunken chamber, known as a kiva, symbolized the initial ascent of humans into the Upper World from below. European explorers used the Spanish word for town, pueblo, to describe the Anasazis’ multiroom and multistory dwellings of masonry or adobe. Beginning in the 850s, Chaco Canyon in the San Juan River basin of northwest New Mexico emerged as the hub of the Anasazi world. Wide, straight roads radiating out from Chaco let builders haul hundreds of thousands of logs for use as roof beams in the nine great pueblos that still dot the canyon. The largest of them, Pueblo Bonito, rises five stories high in places and has 600 rooms arranged in a vast semicircle. Yet the canyon’s population remained small, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 14 ${bmicon} full view MAP 1.2 AMERICA IN THE MILLENNIUM BEFORE COLUMBUS, A.D. 500–1500 A number of distinctive cultures emerged in the Americas during the ten centuries before 1500. Most learned from their predecessors—Mississippians from Hopewells and Aztecs from Mayans, for example—but debate continues over the full extent of trade and travel networks at any given time. perhaps dominated by priestly rulers who used violence to extract labor, food, and tribute from the region’s inhabitants. Violence and warfare played a significant part in Anasazi life, as they did in the Mesoamerican world of the same era. But in the end, environmental change exerted the greatest destructive force. Tree rings show that after 1130, a drought gripped the Colorado Plateau for half a century. The turquoise workshops of Chaco Canyon fell silent. Most of the inhabitants moved away. Some no doubt headed north, where dozens of Anasazi communities with access to better farming conditions dotted the landscape. Earlier, they had resided atop mesas (from the Spanish word meaning “table,” for the region’s distinctive hills with steep sides and level tops). But gradually—with populations growing, the climate worsening, and competition for resources stiffening—they moved into sheltered cliff dwellings built into the mesa walls. Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, with its 220 rooms and 23 kivas, remains the most famous today because of its ready access and careful preservation. Yet other sites were CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 15 ${bmicon} even larger. Reached only by ladders and steep trails, these pueblos offered protection from enemies and shelter from the scorching summer sun. Still, another prolonged drought (1276–1299) forced the Anasazi to move once again by 1300. Survivors dispersed south into lands later occupied by the Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande peoples. Earlier, in the Mississippi Valley, the Hopewell people had prospered for half a millennium before A.D. 500 (in the era of the Roman Empire in Europe). The Hopewell lived primarily in southern Ohio and western Illinois. But their network of trade extended over much of the continent. Archaeologists excavating ornate Hopewell burial sites have found a wide array of objects, including pipestone and flint from the Missouri River Valley, copper and silver from Lake Superior, mica and quartz from Appalachia, sea shells and shark teeth from Florida, and artwork made from Rocky Mountain obsidian and grizzly-bear teeth. Hopewell trading laid the groundwork for larger mound-building societies, known as the Mississippian cultures that emerged in the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast in roughly the same centuries as the great Mesoamerican civilizations and the Anasazi in the Southwest. The more elaborate and widespread Mississippian tradition developed gradually after A.D. 500. Then after A.D. 900, it flourished broadly for six centuries. Shifts in technology and agriculture facilitated the rise of the Mississippians. Bows and arrows, long used in arctic regions of North America but little known elsewhere, began to see widespread use in the eastern woodlands around A.D. 700. At the same time, maize underwent a transformation from a marginal oddity to a central staple crop. Growers as far east as northern Florida were producing it by the eighth century, and it soon appeared farther north with the spread of a more hardy variety. By 1300, maize and bean agriculture reached all the way to the Iroquoian peoples around Lake Ontario and in the St. Lawrence River valley. Across the east, food supplies expanded as Native American communities planted corn in the rich bottomland soil along the region’s many rivers. More and more people began settling in these fertile areas. Maize agriculture also spurred bureaucracy and hierarchy. With greater productivity, commercial and religious elites asserted greater control over farmers to take advantage of the community’s expanding resources. The largest mound at Cahokia—indeed, the largest ancient earthwork in North America—rises 100 feet in four separate levels. The extent of contacts, rivalries, and exchanges between separate Mississippian mound-building centers remains uncertain. Mississippian sites have been found as far apart as Spiro, in eastern Oklahoma, and Etowah, in northern Georgia. The largest complex was at Cahokia in American Bottom, the 25-mile floodplain below where the Illinois and Missouri rivers flow into the Mississippi. We will never know Cahokia’s full extent, for city planners expanding St. Louis in the nineteenth century flattened more than two dozen mounds on the Mississippi’s west bank, leaving little record of their work. Across the river, builders in East St. Louis, Illinois, and farmers eager to increase their acreage leveled more mounds. But nearby, on Cahokia Creek, dozens of rectangular, flat-topped temple mounds still remain after almost a thousand years. The largest mound at Cahokia—indeed, the largest ancient earthwork in North America—rises 100 feet in four separate levels, covering 16 acres and using nearly 22 million cubic feet of earth. A log palisade with gates and watchtowers once enclosed this temple mound and its adjacent plaza in a 200-acre central compound. In a separate construction nearby, residents used engineering and astronomy skills to erect 48 posts in a huge circle, 410 feet in diameter. This creation, now called Woodhenge after England’s Stonehenge, functioned as a calendar to mark the daily progression of the sun throughout each year. full view Reconstructed View of Cahokia Reconstructed view of Cahokia, the largest town in North America before the European arrival, painted by William R. Iseminger. (Cahokia Mounds Historical Site) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 16 ${bmicon} Cahokia’s mounds rose quickly in the decades after A.D. 1050, as the local population expanded beyond 10,000. A succession of powerful leaders reorganized the vicinity’s small, isolated villages into a strong regional chiefdom that controlled towns on both sides of the river. These towns provided the chiefdom’s centralized elite with food, labor, and goods for trading. The elaborate religious rituals and the wealth and power of the leaders are seen in a burial site opened by archaeologists in the 1970s. The body of one prominent figure, presumably a chief, was laid out on a surface of 20,000 shell beads. Near him lay six young adults who must have been relatives or servants sacrificed at the ruler’s funeral. They were supplied with hundreds of stone arrowheads—finely chipped and neatly sorted—plus antler projectile points, a rolled tube of sheet copper, bushels of glistening mica (a transparent mineral crystallized into very thin sheets), and 15 stone disks used in the popular spear-throwing game known as chunkey. Archaeologists found further evidence of sacrifice nearby. They uncovered the remains of four men, whose heads and hands had been cut off, and a pit filled with nearly four dozen young women who apparently had been strangled. The population of Cahokia perhaps exceeded 15,000 people around A.D. 1100. It then waned steadily over the next two centuries as the unstable hierarchy lost its sway over nearby villages. As Cahokia declined, other regional chiefdoms rose along other rivers. The most notable appeared at Moundville in west-central Alabama, 15 miles south of modern Tuscaloosa. A century of archaeological work at this site has revealed clear phases of development after A.D. 900. First, the inhabitants adopted corn agriculture. This in turn allowed them to intensify craft production, and a budding elite emerged. Before long, the leaders directed the creation of mounds in several small villages. Shortly before 1250, workers laid out an 80-acre rectangular plaza at the Moundville site. They began construction on more than 20 flat-topped mounds CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 17 ${bmicon} (some larger than football fields), which provided dwelling sites and burial locations for the small ruling class. Excavated burial objects—ceremonial axes, beads carved from conch shells, and distinctive copper spools worn as giant earrings—reveal evidence of long-distance trade and elaborate rituals. But by 1400, Moundville had started to lose its grip as a dominant ceremonial center. The causes of this decline remain unclear, but once again small villages became the norm. Estimates vary widely, but probably around one-sixth of the world’s population—as many as 60 to 70 million people—resided in the Americas when Columbus arrived in 1492. Most of them lived near the equator, where their ancient ancestors had developed efficient forms of tropical agriculture. But roughly one-tenth of the hemisphere’s population (6 to 7 million people) was spread across North America from coast to coast. We cannot rule out the appearance in America of ancient ocean travelers on occasion. Around A.D. 400, Polynesian mariners sailed their double-hulled canoes from the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific to the Hawaiian archipelago. Conceivably, in the millennium before 1500, one or two boats from Africa, Ireland, Polynesia, China, or Japan sailed—or were blown—to the American mainland. But any survivors of such a journey would have had little genetic or cultural impact, for no sustained back-and-forth contact between the societies occurred. Even the seafaring Norse from Scandinavia, known as Vikings, whose brief settlement on Canadian soil a thousand years ago is now well documented, remained for only a few years and never established a lasting colony. Native American societies, therefore, knew nothing of the people, plants, animals, and viruses of the Eastern Hemisphere. America’s near isolation ended dramatically, beginning in the late fifteenth century, after innovations in deep-sea sailing opened the world’s oceans as a new frontier for human exploration. Chinese sailors in the North Pacific or Portuguese mariners in the South Atlantic could well have been the first outsiders to establish ongoing contact with the peoples of the Western Hemisphere. But instead, it was Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator in the service of Spain, who became the agent of this sweeping change. He encountered the Americas by accident and misinterpreted what he had found. But his chance encounter with a separate realm would spark new patterns of human migration, cultural transfer, and ecological exchange, which would reshape the modern world. Scandinavian settlers had colonized Ireland in the 830s and Iceland in the 870s. A century later, these Norse seafarers—led by Erik the Red—reached Greenland in the 980s. When Erik’s son, Leif, learned that Vikings blown off course had sighted land farther west, he sailed from Greenland to the North American coast. Here he explored a region near the Gulf of St. Lawrence that he named Vinland. Around A.D. 1000, Leif Eriksson’s relatives directed several return voyages to Vinland, where the Vikings built an outpost called Straumfjord. The tiny colony of 160 people, including women and children, lived and grazed livestock in Vinland for several years until native peoples drove them away. For centuries, this Norse contact was known only through epic Icelandic tales called the Vinland Sagas—medieval transcriptions of oral traditions. But in the 1960s archaeologists found Viking artifacts at L’Anse aux Meadows, a coastal site in northern Newfoundland. Perhaps this secure base, today reconstructed with Viking-style sod houses, was Straumfjord. Researchers believe that Norsemen returned occasionally to cut timber and that they traded with inhabitants of northeastern Canada for generations. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 18 ${bmicon} For three centuries, the Viking community in Greenland endured. The Norse settlers shipped walrus tusks and hunting falcons to Europe in return for farm tools and livestock. But trade slumped in Europe after the plague known as the Black Death swept away a third of the continent’s population around 1350. Other factors made the settlement less viable as well. Climate changes brought colder, wetter weather, and conflict increased with Inuit natives. Soil erosion, caused by tree-cutting and overgrazing of sheep, goats, and cattle, also took a toll. By 1450 Viking settlements in Greenland had died out completely. Whether sailors elsewhere in Europe knew much about Norse exploits in the North Atlantic remains shrouded in mystery. What Europeans did know, vaguely, was the existence of the distant Chinese Empire. They called the realm Cathay, a term used by Italian merchant Marco Polo, who journeyed from Venice across Asia along the fabled Silk Road in the 1270s. Polo returned to Italy in 1292 to publish his Travels, an account of adventures in China during the reign of Kublai Khan. He told of many things unknown to Europeans, including rocks that burned like wood (coal) and spices that preserved meat. Lacking winter fodder for their herds, Europe’s farmers regularly slaughtered numerous cattle in the fall and pickled or salted the beef to preserve it. Asian spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, and cloves, if they could be obtained, would offer new preservatives. When renewed Islamic power in the Middle East cut off the Silk Road to Cathay, Europeans searched for other ways to reach that far-off region. The desire to obtain oriental spices at their source fueled European oceanic exploration, leading eventually to the transformation of the Americas, yet it was China, not Europe, that first mastered ocean sailing. In 1281, during Marco Polo’s sojourn in Beijing, Kublai Khan’s formidable navy sailed with 4500 ships to invade Japan, only to fall victim to a huge typhoon en route. Still, China increased its deep-sea commerce with Southeast Asia, India, and the Persian Gulf. Chinese strength in overseas exploration and trade reached its height in the early fifteenth century under Admiral Zheng He (pronounced “Jung Huh”). Between 1405 and 1433, this brilliant officer led seven large fleets to the Indian Ocean, sailing as far as east Africa. His squadron included immense treasure ships 400 feet long and equipped with 24 cannon. Then, abruptly, China turned away from the sea, losing its opportunity to become the first global maritime power and to play a leading role in shaping oceanic trade and the destiny of North America. Within a century of Zheng He’s accomplishments, the empire grew dismissive of foreign trade and turned inward. Chinese officials destroyed the log books of earlier voyages and curtailed production of oceangoing vessels. Instead of powerful China on the Pacific, it was tiny Portugal, overlooking the Atlantic from the Iberian peninsula, that emerged as the leader in maritime innovation and exploration in the fifteenth century. Geography and religious zeal helped to spur Portugal’s unlikely rise to world prominence. The tiny country faced the sea at the crossroads between Mediterranean commerce and the coastal traffic of Northern Europe. This strategic location also exposed Portugal to the ongoing conflict between Christianity and Islam. The religion founded by Muhammad (born at Mecca in 570) had spread rapidly across North Africa from Arabia. By the eighth century, followers of Islam (known as Muslims, Moslems, or Moors) had crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to establish a kingdom in southern Spain. Centuries later, Spanish and Portuguese Christians rallied to force Islam out of the Iberian peninsula—a campaign that concluded in 1492—and to join other militant Europeans in fighting against Islamic power in the Middle East. When Christian crusades to the holy land failed to defeat Islam and reopen overland trade routes to China, European strategists dreamed of skirting Africa by sea to reach Asia. The Portuguese were well positioned to lead this flanking movement around Islam. And if no such oceanic route to Asia existed, some speculated that Portuguese exploration south beyond the Sahara Desert, along the coast of sub-Saharan Africa, still might yield contact with strong Chris- CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 19 ${bmicon} tian allies. For generations, Europeans had fostered legends of a wealthy kingdom somewhere in Africa, said to be ruled by a black Christian known as Prester John. Even if Prester John’s imaginary realm could not be found, probes south from the Iberian Peninsula in ships might explore the full extent of Islamic influence in Africa and seek out fresh converts to Christianity. Intellectual and economic motives also existed for these ventures. Such journeys could boost European knowledge of the unknown, based upon observations of the real world, and they might well open new markets for trade if technical difficulties could be overcome. The Portuguese had fished and traded in Atlantic coastal waters and the Mediterranean for ages, but long voyages far from land presented new challenges in shipbuilding and navigation. The first step involved an investment of leadership and resources, before early efforts could bear fruit and give the exploration process a momentum of it own. Prince Henry of Portugal (1394–1460) provided these initial ingredients. The young prince—later honored as “Henry the Navigator”—had been appointed by the pope to head Portugal’s military Order of Christ, an elite and wealthy organization of knights committed to the campaign against Islam. In 1415, at age 22, he crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to fight Muslims at Ceuta in North Africa. For the next 45 years, Henry waged a religiously inspired crusade-at-sea. He built his headquarters at Sagres in southwest Portugal. The center overlooked the ocean near Cape St. Vincent, the western tip of Europe. From there, his sailors launched a far-reaching revolution in human communication and trade, perhaps the most momentous single step in a globalization process that continues to the present day. Henry’s small ships, known as caravels, pushed south along the African coast. Innovative in design, caravels boasted narrow hulls, deep keels, and high gunwales for ocean sailing. Most importantly, they used triangular lateen sails, an idea that Mediterranean sailors had borrowed from Arab boats on the Red Sea. The lateen sail let a vessel travel into the breeze, tacking back and forth on a zigzag course against a prevailing wind; traditional square sails could not do this. Henry’s experts at Sagres also drew on the work of Jewish cartographers from the island of Majorca to develop state-of-the-art charts, astronomical tables, and navigational instruments. His captains mastered the winds and currents off western Africa, but when he died in 1460, they PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 20 ${bmicon} had only sailed as far as what is now Sierra Leone. While skeptics wondered when the expensive ventures would see a tangible payoff, optimists noted that the African coast near Sierra Leone trended to the east and might eventually lead to Asia, despite the teaching of ancient scholars that no such route existed. The early voyages during Henry’s lifetime launched two developments that would have a lasting impact on the world. First, the Portuguese pioneered the course of European overseas colonization that would continue unabated for centuries. The harsh process began with the European discovery of three island groups off Northwest Africa—the Canaries, the Madeiras, and the Azores. Settlers sent to these islands from Portugal killed the native peoples; introduced crops such as sugar for export; and imported thousands of laborers to plant and process the sugar cane. Second, in the 1440s Portuguese mariners initiated the Atlantic slave trade. They began by seizing people who lived on the coast of West Africa and deporting them to the new Atlantic sugar islands. Portuguese captains also carried slaves back to Europe and sold them there to supplement the growing sub-Saharan trade in ivory and gold. Africans themselves already had their own domestic slave trade. But this new Atlantic traffic, which grew relentlessly, eventually proved far more elaborate and devastating. During the 1480s, following a war with Spain, the Portuguese continued their African designs. In 1482 they erected a trading fort called Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) to guard against Spanish competition and to support exploration toward the east. But they soon encountered a new obstacle: Africa’s long coastline turned abruptly south and continued in that direction for a vast distance. This led Portuguese captains below the equator, where they observed strange new constellations of stars in the night sky. Rather than sailing directly east toward China, as they had hoped, they had entered the unfamiliar Southern Hemisphere for the first time. Several years later, they reached the vast Congo River. Finally, in 1487, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the south-ernmost tip of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, proving that a link existed between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The Portuguese rejoiced: It now seemed possible to sail from Lisbon to India and tap into the rich spice trade flowing from the islands of Southeast Asia that Europeans vaguely called the Indies. Success came a decade later with the voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497–1499). When his ship returned to Portugal from India laden with pepper and cinnamon, Europeans realized they had finally opened a southeastern sea route to the silk and spice markets of the East. CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 21 ${bmicon} Meanwhile, the rulers of rival Spain, who were reconquering their realm from Muslim control at great expense, gambled on finding a profitable westward route to the Indies. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella finally succeeded in driving Islam from their realm by military means. The monarchs imposed Christian orthodoxy and forced Jews into exile. That same year, they agreed to sponsor an Atlantic voyage by Christopher Columbus. Leaving Spain with 90 men aboard three small vessels, the Italian-born navigator headed for the Canary Islands, eluding Portuguese caravels sent to stop him. From the Canaries, he sailed due west on September 6. After a voyage of three or four weeks, he expected to encounter the island of Cipangu (Japan), which Marco Polo had mentioned, or to reach the coast of Asia. After weeks without sight of any land, his crewmen worried that they might not have enough supplies for the long return home. So Columbus gave out a false, reduced estimate of each day’s headway, leading his sailors to believe they were still close to Europe. He recorded the much longer, more accurate distance in his own private log. Early on October 12, the distressed seamen finally sighted a small island, naming it San Salvador after their Christian savior. The inhabitants proved welcoming, and Columbus recorded pleasure over the “gold which they wear hanging from their noses. But I wish to go and see if I can find the island of Cipangu.” Within several weeks he located an impressively large island and found reason to hope that the mainland of the Great Khan was only “a 10 days’ journey” further west. He claimed a nearby island as La Isla Española, the Spanish island, or Hispaniola (current-day Haiti and the Domican Republic). He noted stories of hostile islanders further south called Caribs, or Caniba, who were said to devour their enemies. “I repeat,” he asserted, “the Caniba are no other than the people of the Grand Khan.” (Upon hearing of these fierce Caribs, Europeans soon fashioned the word cannibal and named the region the Caribbean.) full view Columbus Landing at Hispaniola - Woodcut A woodcut depicting Christopher Columbus’s landing on the island of Hispanola. Bolstered by these encounters, the explorers returned hastily across the Atlantic on a more northerly route. They weathered a horrendous winter storm to reach Spain in March 1493. Columbus told the Spanish court that he had reached the Indies off the Asian coast, and he displayed several natives he called “Indians” to prove it. His three later voyages did not shake this belief, which he clung to until his death in 1506. But in fact San Salvador, the tiny islet where Europeans had waded ashore on October 12, 1492, was not close to Asia but rather a PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 22 ${bmicon} full view MAP 1.3 THE EXPECTATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS The globe as Columbus understood it (upper map) was decidedly smaller than the actual earth (lower map). He also believed Asia to be wider than it is, and he imagined Japan, or Cipangu, too far east and south from the Asian coastline. He was unaware of the Western Hemisphere. Therefore, when he sailed west and encountered Cuba, he thought it was Japan. He believed the adjacent Caribbean islands were the spice-rich Asian Indies. part of the Bahamas (now called Watling’s Island). Columbus’s island of Hispaniola was half a world away from Cathay. The people who inhabited the region, Tainos and Caribs, were not subjects of the Great Khan. Nor was Cuba the land of Cipangu (Japan), which Marco Polo had mentioned. Why these huge misunderstandings? The mariner made several crucial mistakes. Columbus, born in Genoa, had grown up in a European generation eager to find access to the East. Like others, he knew the world was round, not flat. He also accepted the idea of ancient geographer Ptolemy that by using north–south lines, one could divide the globe into 360 degrees of longitude. But he questioned Ptolemy’s estimate that each degree measures 50 nautical miles at the equator. (Each actually measures 60 miles.) Instead, Columbus accepted an alternative figure of 45 miles, which made the circumference of his theoretical globe 25 percent smaller CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 23 ${bmicon} than the real distance around the earth. Although he underestimated the world’s circumference, he also compounded his error by overestimating two other crucial distances: the breadth of the Eurasian landmass and the extent of Japan’s separation from China. The first distance is actually 130 degrees of longitude, and the second is 20. Columbus used authorities who suggested 225 and 30 degrees, respectively. His estimates placed Japan 105 degrees closer to Europe, at the longitude that runs through eastern Lake Superior and western Cuba. Columbus’s errors came from relying on obscure passages in Christian scripture and dwelling on conflicting ancient geography treatises. But the navigator had practical familiarity with the Atlantic world. He visited the Madeiras, West Africa (Guinea), and perhaps even Iceland. He also benefited from the knowledge of his brother Bartolomew, a mapmaker. Both men heard stories from English and Portuguese fishermen about islands, real and imagined, that dotted the Atlantic. And they presented their unusual ideas in Portugal, England, and France before finding support. It was Columbus’s experience and knowledge that gained him the trust of Spain’s king and queen. The captain, one observer wrote in 1493, “has sailed …, as he believes, to the very shores of India,… even though the size of the earth’s sphere seems to indicate otherwise.” Columbus had not reached the lands he sought, but his exploits would have immediate and extraordinary consequences. Within months of Columbus’s return, the pope in Rome issued a papal bull, or decree. This pronouncement, titled Inter Caetera, viewed the world as the rightful inheritance of Christianity, ignoring the rights of non-Christians in all lands, whether known or unknown to Europeans. It brashly divided the entire world between two Christian powers, Spain and Portugal, by drawing a line down through the western Atlantic Ocean from the North Pole to the South Pole. For 180 degrees west of the line, the Spanish alone could continue to seek access to Asia. East of the line, on the other half of the globe, Portugal would have a monopoly in developing the route that Dias had opened around the Cape of Good Hope. The two Iberian powers affirmed this division of the earth in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which put the line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Within years, both parties realized that this agreement placed Brazil on the Portuguese side of the demarcation line, so Portugal quickly claimed the region. But by then, the Portuguese had already focused their attention on the African route to Asia, following da Gama’s successful voyage to India in 1497. Despite their new foothold in the Americas, they left further Atlantic exploration to other European countries. Spain and England acted swiftly. In 1494, Columbus led a huge venture back to Hispaniola, taking 1200 men aboard 17 ships. By employing only men at first to launch Spain’s overseas empire, the expedition initiated a pattern of warfare against native Caribbean men and intermarriage with indigenous women. A mestizo, or mixed-race, population emerged swiftly in Spanish settlements there. On his third Atlantic crossing (1498), Columbus glimpsed the wide mouth of Venezuela’s Orinoco River. Given the huge volume of fresh water entering the sea, he knew he had reached a large landmass, perhaps a part of Asia. When Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian in the service Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 24 ${bmicon} full view MAP 1.4 OPENING NEW OCEAN PATHWAYS AROUND THE GLOBE, 1420–1520 In the 1420s, ships from Portugal and China explored opposite coasts of Africa. But China withdrew from oceanic trade, and European mariners competed to explore the earth by sea. Within a century, Magellan’s ship had circled the globe for Spain. The colonization in North America is a chapter in this larger saga of exploration. of Spain, saw the same continent in 1499, he described it as a Mundus Novus, or New World. European geographers wrote his name, America, across their maps. Meanwhile, a third Italian navigator—John Cabot (or Caboto)—obtained a license from the English king, Henry VII, to probe the North Atlantic for access to Cathay. Cabot knew that English mariners from the port of Bristol had been fishing in the waters off Newfoundland for decades. In 1497, Cabot sailed west from Bristol across the Atlantic to Newfoundland and perhaps Nova Scotia, thinking he was viewing the coast of Asia. When Cabot died at sea during a follow-up voyage the next year, Henry VII, the founder of England’s new Tudor monarchy, lacked the resources to pursue the explorer’s claims. Nevertheless, the ventures of Columbus had sparked widespread excitement and curiosity in European ports about what lay to the west. Within a generation, navigators and cartographers began to comprehend the geographic reality that Columbus had so thoroughly misunderstood. Their increasing knowledge fueled greater contact. full view Cattle Arrive in New World European settlement brought animals such as longhaired domestic cattle to the Americas, thereby creating an entirely new ecology in the New World. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) After thousands of years, the long separation of the hemispheres had been broken. The destinies of the world’s most divergent continents swiftly became linked. Those links fostered human migrations of an unprecedented scale. With European ships came transfers of seeds and viruses, bugs and birds, plants and animals that forever reshaped the world. Scholars call this phenomenon the Columbian Exchange. The term also underscores the two-way nature of the flow. West across the Atlantic went horses, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and honeybees and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 25 ${bmicon} important foods such as sugar cane, coffee, bananas, peaches, lemons, and oranges. But Europeans’ westbound ships also carried devastating diseases unknown in the Americas such as smallpox, measles, malaria, and whooping cough. East in the opposite direction traveled corn, potatoes, pumpkins, chili peppers, tobacco, cacao, pineapples, sunflowers, turkeys—and perhaps syphilis. The planet and all its inhabitants would never be the same again. full view Early Botanical Illustration - New World Plants The Old World dandelion stepped off invaders’ ships in the crusted mud of English and Spanish boots and spread far beyond the newcomers’ initial cultural dominions, becoming today’s most familiar “weed.” Throughout the sixteenth century, European mariners, inspired by the feats of Columbus and da Gama, risked ocean voyaging in hopes of scoring similar successes. Those who survived brought back novelties for consumers, information for geographers, and profits for ship owners. New wealth prompted further investment in exploration, and expanding knowledge awakened cultural changes for both explorers and the people they met. The dynamic European era known as the Renaissance owed much to overseas exploration. Returning mariners brought reports of suprising places and people. Their experiences challenged the inherited wisdom of traditional authorities and put a new premium on rational thought, scientific calculation, and careful observation of the natural world. In turn, Europe’s Renaissance, or rebirth, stimulated ever wider exploration as breakthroughs in technology and navigation yielded practical results. Sailing south around Africa and then east, Portuguese caravels reached China by 1514 and Japan by 1543. Sailing west, Spanish vessels learned first that the Caribbean did not offer a passage to Asia and then later—through the voyage of Magellan (1519–1522)—that the ocean beyond America was enormous. In the West Indies, and then elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, Native Americans began to pay dearly for the exchange that ships from Spain had initiated. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 26 ${bmicon} Spanish arrival in the West Indies in 1492 triggered widespread ecological and human disaster within decades. Well-armed and eager for quick wealth, the early colonizers brought havoc to the Taino Indians and Caribs who inhabited the islands. The strange newcomers killed and enslaved native peoples and extracted tribute from the survivors in the form of gold panned from streams. Spanish livestock trampled or consumed native gardens, prompting severe food shortages. Worse, European diseases ravaged countless villages. The West Indian population plummeted as island societies totaling more than 1 million lost 19 of every 20 people within a generation. This near-extinction had three consequences. First, devout Catholics back in Spain protested the loss of potential American converts. When Dominican friars reached Cuba in Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 27 ${bmicon} 1510, they denounced Spanish brutality as sinful. The Indians, they argued, possessed souls that only Christian baptism could save. A Spanish soldier named Bartholomé de Las Casas, who repented and joined the Dominican order, led the outcry for reform. He published a scathing exposé titled The Devastation of the Indies. Second, in response to the steep drop in population, Spanish colonizers began importing slaves from Africa to replace the decimated Indian workforce. The same Christians who bemoaned Native American enslavement (including Las Casas) justified this initiative and overlooked the contradictions. The first importation of Africans came in 1502, following the Portuguese precedent in the Azores. Over the coming centuries, the African slave trade to the Americas slowly evolved into an enormous system of human exploitation. Third, decimation in the islands prompted the Spanish to intensify their explorations. They sought new sources of Indian labor close at hand, fresh lands to exploit, and easy PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 28 ${bmicon} passageways to the Pacific. They pushed out from the Caribbean in several directions. In 1510, they established a mainland outpost at Darien on the Atlantic coast of Panama. From there, Vasco Núñez de Balboa pressed south over the mountainous isthmus to glimpse the Pacific in 1513. That same year, Juan Ponce de León sailed northwest from Puerto Rico, where he had amassed a fortune as governor. Despite later tales that he sought a fountain of youth, he actually hoped the nearby land would yield new gold and slaves. “He named it Florida, because he discovered it on the Feast of the Resurrection, which is called Pasqua Florida” in Latin, explained Peter Martyr, an Italian humanist of the day who chronicled early European explorations of America in Decades of the New World. “They got a bad reception,” Martyr reported, for the peninsula’s Indians already were familiar with Spanish raiders. The Ais people near Cape Canaveral and the Calusas on Florida’s west coast turned Ponce de León away after he claimed the region for Spain. By 1519, the Spanish had determined that the Gulf of Mexico offered no easy passage to Asia. They needed fresh alternatives. In Spain, crown officials sought someone to sail southwest, around the South American continent that Columbus and Vespucci had encountered. For this perilous task, they recruited a Portuguese navigator named Ferdinand Magellan, who had sailed in the Indian Ocean. On his epic voyage (1519–1522), Magellan located a difficult passage through the tip of South America—now called the Strait of Magellan. But the journey also revealed the vast width of the Pacific. The crew nearly starved crossing its enormous expanse, which covers one-third of the earth’s surface. Warring factions in the Philippines killed Magellan and 27 of his men shortly after they reached the islands. However, one of his ships, the Victoria, made it back to Spain via Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first vessel to circumnavigate the globe. If the western route to Asia was far longer than Columbus had estimated, the New World itself soon proved more enticing than Europeans had first imagined. As news of Magellan’s voyage raced through Spain in 1522, word also arrived that a Spanish soldier, or conquistador, named Hernán Cortés had toppled the gold-rich empire of the Aztecs in Central Mexico. Like other ambitious conquistadores, Cortés had followed Columbus to the Caribbean. In 1519, hoping to march overland to the Pacific as Balboa had done, Cortés sailed along Mexico’s east coast and established a base camp at Vera Cruz. He quickly realized he had reached the edge of a powerful empire. At Tenochtitlán the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma, reacted with uncertainty to news that bearded strangers aboard “floating islands” had appeared off his coast. Ominous signs—shooting stars, fierce storms, unknown birds—had foretold an extraordinary arrival. If the newcomers’ leader was the returning god Quetzalcoatl, the court had to welcome him with the CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 29 ${bmicon} utmost care. The emperor sent basketloads of precious objects encrusted with gold to Cortés’s camp. But the elaborate gifts only alerted Cortés and his men to the Aztecs’ wealth. Although the Spanish numbered scarcely 600, they had several key advantages over the Aztecs. Their guns and horses, unknown in America, terrified the Indians. So did their ruthless European style of warfare, for the Spanish gained victory by killing enemies, whereas the Aztecs measured military success by taking captives. If European war making surprised the Aztecs, the Indians’ rituals of human sacrifice shocked the Spanish. The Europeans could now add moral indignation to their lust for gold as reasons to vanquish the Aztecs. When Cortés found coastal peoples staggering under heavy Aztec taxes, he recruited them as willing allies. Where Aztec leadership proved weak and divided, Cortés acted aggressively. He marched directly to the capital and seized Moctezuma as his hostage. An Indian woman (christened Doña Marina, or La Malinche) acted as his translator and companion. full view Aztec Rain God, Tlaloc Aztec worship of Tlaloc, their rain god, emphasized the importance of water for agriculture. (Library of Congress) To be sure, the Spanish still faced daunting obstacles. But sickness worked decisively to their advantage. Smallpox was a disease the Aztecs had never encountered before, so they lacked any immunity. The European illness reached the mainland with the invading army, and a crushing epidemic swept the Aztec capital in 1521. The disaster let Cortés conquer Tenochtitlán (which he renamed Mexico City) and claim the entire region as New Spain. He expanded his control by introducing the encomienda system, which became central to Spanish colonization. Cortés granted encomiendas to his restless lieutenants, expanding their power and control. Each grant “commended” a group of villages to an officer. The newcomers received payments of tribute and PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 30 ${bmicon} labor similar to those the Aztec overlords once demanded. In return, the Spanish agreed, at least in theory, to protect their villagers and convert them to Christianty. More often they exploited them as workers. Cortés’s conquest of Mexico raised Spain’s hopes of additional windfalls in the Americas. Moreover, the length of Magellan’s voyage spurred European interest in finding a shorter route to Asia. By 1524, the Spanish controlled the Pacific coast of Mexico, Guatemala, and the Isthmus of Panama, and they were building ships for further expansion. They explored the Pacific coastline north and south, and in 1531 Spanish raiders under Francisco Pizarro set sail from Panama for Peru, with plans to overthrow the Inca empire. Pizarro had limited resources (180 men and 37 horses), but smallpox assisted him, as it had helped Cortés, and his invaders accomplished their mission. Marching overland to Cuzco in 1533, they killed the emperor, Atahualpa, and sacked the mountain capital for the gold it contained. The Spanish also pressed west across the Pacific, emboldened by Magellan’s success. One of three ships dispatched by Cortés from Mexico for the Philippines actually reached its destination. Still, not until the 1560s did Spanish cargo ships, known as galleons, accomplish the arduous round trip from Acapulco to the Philippines and back across the Pacific. In 1524, Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing for the French, reached North America near modern Cape Fear, North Carolina, later cruising north to enter New York harbor and explore further along the coast. In 1526, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón led 500 men and women from the Spanish Caribbean to the Santee River region (near present-day Georgetown, South Carolina) to settle and explore. But Ayllón fell sick and died, and the colony proved short-lived. Two years later, Pánfilo de Narváez directed an even greater disaster. A rival of both Cortés and Ayllón, Narváez launched his expedition from Cuba in 1528. He landed near Florida’s Tampa Bay, intending to bring wealth and glory to his 400 soldiers. But disease, hunger, and Indian hostilities plagued the party’s journey along the Gulf Coast. Only four men—three Spanish and one north African black named Esteban—survived to make an extended trek on foot across the Southwest from Galveston Bay to Mexico City. Their leader, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, wrote about the odyssey after he returned to Spain in 1537. Scholars now recognize Cabeza de Vaca’s Relation (1542) as an early classic in North American literature. Even before Cabeza de Vaca published his narrative, Europeans initiated three more expeditions into North America. Each probed from a different direction, hoping to gauge the land’s dimensions, assess its peoples, and claim its resources. Competing with one another, the three parties entered separate regions of the continent. But together, the enterprises led by Jacques Cartier, Hernando de Soto, and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado made the brief span between 1534 and 1543 the most extraordinary decade in the early European exploration of North America, for Native Americans and newcomers alike. In the Northeast, Frenchman Jacques Cartier visited the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1534 and bartered for furs with the Micmac Indians. He returned the next year and penetrated southwest up the St. Lawrence River into Canada. (The name comes from kanata, the Huron–Iroquois word for “village.”) After a friendly reception at the large Indian town of Hochelaga near modern Montreal, the French returned downriver to camp at Stadacona, the future site of Quebec. Following a hard winter, in which he lost 25 men to scurvy, the explorer and his remaining crew sailed for France. Cartier came back to Quebec in 1541, seeking precious minerals and signs of a water passage farther west to the Pacific Ocean. He found neither. When he returned to France, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 31 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY “These Gods That We Worship Give Us Everything We Need” Three years after the army of Cortés captured the city of Tenochtitlán, a dozen missionaries from the Franciscan Order arrived in Mexico to preach Christianity to the conquered Aztecs. In several meetings with principal elders and priests from the city, they explained their beliefs and laid out their plans through a translator. Similar talks would take place throughout America in later generations. No transcript of the 1524 conversations exists, but another Franciscan, the famous preserver of Aztec culture Bernardino de Sahagún, gathered recollections of the encounter from both sides and reconstructed the dialogue. He published his version in 1564, creating parallel texts in Spanish and Nahuatl, the Aztec language. “Having understood the reasoning and speech of the twelve,” Sahagún reports, the city leaders “became greatly agitated and fell into a great sadness and fear, offering no response.” The next morning, they requested a complete repetition of the unsettling message. “Having heard this, one of the principal lords arose, asked the indulgence of the twelve,… and made the following long speech.” Our lords, leading personages of much esteem, you are very welcome to our lands and towns…. We have heard the words that you have brought us of the One who gives us life and being. And we have heard with admiration the words of the Lord of the World which he has sent here for love of us, and also you have brought us the book of celestial and divine words. You have told us that we do not know the One who gives us life and being, who is Lord of the heavens and of the earth. You also say that those we worship are not gods. This way of speaking is entirely new to us, and very scandalous. We are frightened by this way of speaking because our forebears who engendered and governed us never said anything like this. On the contrary, they left us this our custom of worshiping our gods…. They taught us how to honor them. And they taught us all the ceremonies and sacrifices that we make. They told us that … we were beholden to them, to be theirs and to serve countless centuries before the sun began to shine and before there was daytime. They said that these gods that we worship give us everything we need for our physical existence: maize, beans, chia seeds, etc. We appeal to them for the rain to make the things of the earth grow. These our gods are the source of great riches and delights, all of which belong to them…. They live in very delightful places where there are always flowers, vegetation, and great freshness, a place … where there is never hunger, poverty, or illness…. There has never been a time remembered when they were not worshiped, honored, and esteemed…. It would be a fickle, foolish thing for us to destroy the most ancient laws and customs left by the first inhabitants of this land…. We are accustomed to them and we have them impressed on our hearts…. How could you leave the poor elderly among us bereft of that in which they have been raised throughout their lives? Watch out that we do not incur the wrath of our gods. Watch out that the common people do not rise up against us if we were to tell them that the gods they have always understood to be such are not gods at all. It is best, our lords, to act on this matter very slowly, with great deliberation. We are not satisfied or convinced by what you have told us, nor do we understand or give credit to what has been said of our gods…. All of us together feel that it is enough to have lost, enough that the power and royal jurisdiction have been taken from us. As for our gods, we will die before giving up serving and worshiping them. This is our determination; do what you will. Source: Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1998), 21–22. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 32 ${bmicon} Parisians ridiculed his rock crystals as “Canada diamonds.” In Cartier’s wake came a colonizing party of several hundred in 1542, led by a nobleman named Roberval. This was the first French expedition to include women. But again, scurvy and cold took a heavy toll at the Quebec campsite, and the weakening colony withdrew after a single winter. Despite a decade of effort, the French still had not established a beachhead in the New World. Nevertheless, they had demonstrated their resolve to challenge Spain’s exclusive claim to American lands, sanctioned by the pope 50 years earlier. In the Southeast, news of Pizarro’s 1533 triumph over the Incas in Peru renewed the Spanish search for wealthy kingdoms to conquer. In 1537, Emperor Charles V of Spain granted one hardened veteran of the Peruvian campaign—Hernando de Soto—the right to explore and conquer in Florida. De Soto could divide all gold and jewels with the crown while establishing a hereditary domain for himself and his descendants. The conquistador spent most of his fortune assembling a force of more than 600 soldiers that reached Tampa Bay in 1539. The enterprise included several women and priests, along with scores of servants and African CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 33 ${bmicon} slaves, plus 200 horses. De Soto had also brought along a herd of 300 pigs that multiplied rapidly and provided food during the long march through the interior. During the next four years, de Soto’s party traversed a wide region, eventually traveling through ten modern southern states. They hoped to find a city as wealthy as Cuzco in Peru or Tenochtitlán in Mexico. Instead, they found scattered towns inhabited by surprised and frightened villagers. At Cofitachequi, in what is now central South Carolina, the invaders also found something else: evidence of Ayllón’s coastal visit in the form of Spanish axeheads, Catholic rosaries, and villages decimated by disease. Cofitachequi’s woman leader welcomed de Soto warmly but then watched in horror as the Spanish pillaged her town for pearls. Settlements that refused to provide the intruders with porters or guides met with brutal reprisals that included the use of attack dogs. After passing through Cherokee Indian country in the southern mountains, de Soto’s army descended into lands once dominated by Mississippian chiefdoms. Here, tensions between the foreigners and the North American inhabitants intensified. Violence escalated. On October 18, 1540, a native leader named Tuscaluza attacked the Spanish at the village of Mabila near modern-day Selma, Alabama. Tuscaluza’s bowmen proved no match for the mounted, armored riders brandishing swords and lances. Spanish accounts put Indian deaths at 2500 and de Soto’s losses at only 22 men. Still, the conquistador’s elaborate enterprise slowly unraveled as frustrations grew stemming from the difficult terrain, stiff Indian resistance, and failure to find riches. Exhausted and depressed, de Soto died of a fever in 1542 after exploring beyond the Mississippi River. His disheartened followers escaped downstream to the Gulf of Mexico the next year, leaving epidemic sickness in their wake. At the same time, an equally complex encounter was unfolding in the Southwest. By 1539, Spanish sailors voyaging up Mexico’s West Coast had explored the Gulf of California and skirted the Baja Peninsula. Over the next four years, similar expeditions cruised the coast of California and southern Oregon. Once again, they found no signs of a passage linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In Mexico, speculation about gold in the north intensified with the return of Cabeza de Vaca. His African companion, Esteban, guided a reconnaissance party north in 1539. Esteban was killed by the Zuni Indians, but exaggerated accounts of the region’s pueblos prompted rumors about the seven golden cities known as Cibola. Desperate to get rid of Coronado, the Pueblos told him stories of a far-off, wealthy land called Quivira. The next year, aspiring conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado set out from northern Mexico to reach these wealthy towns before de Soto could. He left his post as a frontier governor to lead a huge expedition. Only 30 years old, Coronado assembled more than 300 Spanish adventurers and a thousand Indian allies. However, his grandiose expectations were quickly dashed. The pueblos of the Zunis, he reported, “are very good houses, three and four and five stories high,” but the fabled “Seven Cities are seven little villages.” Hoping to gauge his distance from the Pacific, Coronado sent explorers northwest. They returned after reaching the impassable Grand Canyon and realizing they could go no farther. The presence of Spanish forces soon imposed a heavy burden on the Pueblo Indians, as the newcomers demanded food and burned helpless towns. Desperate to get rid of Coronado, the Pueblos told him stories of a far-off, wealthy land called Quivira. They secretly recruited a Plains Indian to lead the Spaniards to some place where men and horses “would starve to death.” In the spring of 1541, Coronado’s seemingly earnest guide led his party far out onto the Great Plains, repeating tantalizing tales of gold and silver. Coronado’s soldiers became the first Europeans to see this rolling ocean of grass and its endless herds of buffalo. But when Quivira proved to be a Wichita Indian village in what is now central Kansas, the Spanish strangled their deceitful guide and made their way back south to New Spain. They left several Indians and Africans behind in the Rio Grande valley. At one point, as they crossed northern Texas, they even came within 300 miles of de Soto’s ill-fated party in eastern Arkansas. But neither de Soto nor Coronado—nor Cartier in the north—ever discovered the wealthy cities or the passage to the Far East that had seemed such real and alluring possibilities. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 34 ${bmicon} In 1520, while Cortés vied with the Aztecs for control in Mexico and Magellan maneuvered around South America, the pope excommunicated a German monk named Martin Luther. Three years earlier, Luther had nailed to Wittenberg’s cathedral door a list of 95 theses, statements challenging long-standing church practices and papal authority. Luther’s followers questioned lavish church spending—construction of the ornate St. Peter’s Basilica was under way in Rome at the time—and the practice of selling religious pardons to raise money. They also rejected the church’s elaborate hierarchy and criticized its refusal to translate the Latin Bible into modern languages. Luther’s reform movement triggered sharp doctrinal disputes and the division of western Christianity into competing faiths. For their written protestations against the papacy, Luther and his fellow insurgents received the enduring name Protestants. Their movement became known broadly as the Reformation. Those who opposed it, siding with Rome, launched a Counter-Reformation to defend and revitalize the Roman Catholic church. For the first time in history, a controversy in Europe made waves that washed onto American shores. Throughout the remainder of the sixteenth century, European national and religious conflict played out in part overseas, a pattern that repeated itself in future centuries. France and Spain, competing in Europe, wrestled to claim control of Florida. And England, an upstart island nation with a rising population and an expanding navy, seized control of Ireland and launched its first attempt to plant a colony in North America. CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 35 ${bmicon} As zeal for Luther’s religious reforms spread across Europe, it split communities and even sparked armed conflict. In Switzerland, a priest named Ulrich Zwingli led the revolt. He abolished the practice of confession, condemned the church calendar full of fasts and saints’ days, and defied the tradition of a celibate clergy by marrying. Zwingli was killed in battle in 1531, but the Swiss Reformation soon found a new leader in John Calvin. A French Protestant, Calvin settled in Geneva and ruled the city as a church-centered state for more than two decades (1541–1564). Calvin imposed his own strict interpretation on Lutheranism and drew dedicated followers to his church. Offended by expensive vestments and elaborate rituals, he donned a simple black “Geneva” robe. He argued that faith alone, not “good works,” would lead Christians to be saved. Salvation, he preached, was determined by God, not bought by giving tithes to the church. Only a select few people, Calvin explained, were destined to be members of God’s chosen elect. Moreover, only an informed clergy and the careful study of scripture could reveal signs of a person’s status. Soon Calvinist doctrine helped shape Protestant communities across northern Europe: Huguenots in France, Puritans in England, Presbyterians in Scotland, and the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. The Protestant Reformation that Luther had ignited coincided roughly with another important change in Europe, the emergence of the modern nation-state. Kings and queens gradually expanded court bureaucracies and asserted greater control over their subjects and economies. They strengthened their armies, gaining a near-monopoly on the use of force, and they took full advantage of the new medium of printing. Monarchs also surveyed the boundaries of their kingdoms, claiming control over persons because they inhabited a particular territory, rather than because they held an established relationship to the ruler. As religious ferment spread and local allegiances gave way to a broader sense of national identity, strong sovereigns moved to distance themselves from papal authority in Rome. In 1542, Catholic authorities established a new religious-judicial proceeding, known as the Inquisition, to help resist the spread of Protestantism. The emergence of England as a nation-state under the Tudor dynasty (founded by Henry VII in 1485) illustrates this shift in power away from Rome. In 1533, when the pope refused to grant Henry VIII an annulment of his first marriage, the king wrested control of the English church from papal hands and had Parliament approve his divorce and remarriage. The new Church of England, or Anglican Church, continued to follow much of the Catholic Church’s doctrine. However, its “Protector and only Supreme Head” would now be the English monarch. During her long reign from 1558 to 1603, Henry VIII’s daughter Queen Elizabeth I managed to steer the Church of England on a middle course between advocates of Catholicism and extreme Protestants. Throughout Europe, as zealous believers on both sides of the debate staked out their positions, attempts to heal religious divisions gave way to confrontation. Challenges to the pope in Rome, whether from Christian parishes or powerful monarchs, met with stiff resistance as Catholic leaders mobilized opposition. Their followers rallied to defend Roman Catholicism in a variety of ways. Taken together, these efforts are known as the Counter-Reformation. One dimension of the Counter-Reformation is represented in the Jesuit order, founded by Ignatius Loyola. This Spanish soldier had studied alongside Calvin at a Paris college in the 1530s, but he took an opposite path from that of the Geneva preacher. By 1540, Loyola had organized a militant new Catholic religious community called the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits. Willing to give their lives for their beliefs, these dedicated missionaries and teachers helped to reenergize the Catholic faith and spread it to distant parts of the world. Another institution, the Inquisition, reflects a different side of the Counter-Reformation. In 1542, Catholic authorities established a new religious-judicial proceeding, known as the PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 36 ${bmicon} Inquisition, to help resist the spread of Protestantism. Heretics—persons accused of denying or defying church doctrine—were brought before the Inquisition’s religious courts. Anyone who refused to renounce heretical beliefs suffered severe punishment. These heresy trials made clear to Inquisition leaders that the advent of printing was helping to spread the works of Luther and his Protestant allies. In 1557, therefore, the Vatican issued an “Index” of prohibited books. Royalty also played a part in the Counter-Reformation. In France, where religious wars raged until the end of the century, struggles for control between competing dynasties became entwined with disputes over church doctrine. In Spain, King Philip II, who ruled from 1556 to 1598, led an Inquisition to root out Protestant heresy. His harsh policies sparked a lengthy revolt in the Spanish Netherlands that resulted in the creation of the United Provinces, Europe’s first Protestant republic. Philip expanded Spain’s power in 1581, when he acquired Portugal. The move combined Europe’s two great overseas empires until their separation in 1640. The Spanish monarch came close to acquiring England as well. In 1588 he sent a fleet of warships—the Spanish Armada—to England in hopes of reconquering it for the Catholic church. A timely storm and hasty mobilization by the island nation foiled the Spanish king’s invasion. But Philip II’s confrontation with the navy of Queen Elizabeth epitomized the sharp new division between Catholic and Protestant power in Europe. This deepened antagonism—religious, ideological, and economic—shaped events overseas in the second half of the sixteenth century. The struggle became especially clear in Florida, the vague region claimed by Spain that encompassed Indian lands from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. As Spain used force to obtain the dazzling wealth of New World societies, its European rivals looked on jealously. As early as 1523, French sea raiders had captured Spanish ships returning from Mexico with Cortés’s Aztec bounty: coffers of jewels and pearls, ingots of silver, and bags filled with 500 pounds of gold dust. Ten years later, French pirates made a similar haul. To protect the flow of riches from America, the Spanish soon initiated a well-armed annual convoy to escort their wealth from Havana to Seville. Each year, Spain’s huge West Indies treasure fleet made an enticing target as it followed the Gulf Stream along the Florida coast. “Thus it is a matter of great moment in the preservation of the Indies, and for its trade and commerce,” Spanish officials realized, “that Florida remain Spanish and be strongly guarded.” Each year, Spain’s huge West Indies treasure fleet made an enticing target as it followed the Gulf Stream along the Florida coast. But France had its own designs, furthered by the special concerns of French Huguenots. Unsure of their future in a religiously divided country, these Protestants took a leading role in the colonization efforts of France. When Gaspard de Coligny became admiral of the French Navy in 1552, he saw a way to help fellow Huguenots and the realm by encouraging the formation of anti-Catholic colonies in the New World. French Huguenots established a settlement in Brazil in 1555. But after the Portuguese uprooted it, Coligny turned his attention to the Florida region. In 1562 he supported a Protestant colony at Port Royal Sound (Parris Island, South Carolina), close to the route of Spain’s annual treasure fleet. The effort lasted only two years and aroused Spanish suspicions of “Lutheran” intruders. Undaunted, Admiral Coligny backed a larger colonizing effort to Florida in 1564. French Protestants erected Fort Caroline on the St. John’s River at present-day Jacksonville. This time, the Spanish crown took swift action against the Huguenots. In 1565 Philip II sent 300 soldiers and 700 colonists under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to oust the French and secure Florida. Menéndez carried out his assignment with zeal. He captured Fort Caroline and massacred hundreds of French settlers. The heretics, he feared, might attack the treasure fleet, forge alliances with Florida’s Indians, or provoke revolt among slaves in the Spanish Caribbean. CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 37 ${bmicon} To prevent further French incursions on Florida’s Atlantic coast, Menéndez established a new outpost at nearby St. Augustine. He also laid out ambitious plans to discover precious resources from Chesapeake Bay to the Mississippi. As part of this design, explorer Juan Pardo led several parties inland from the Carolina coast in the 1560s, establishing a post far up the Savannah River and crossing the southern Appalachian Mountains, as de Soto had done, but to no avail. Because the Spanish did not yet understand the magnitude of the distance between Florida and New Spain, they even discussed building a road for transporting silver from mines in northern Mexico to their posts on the Atlantic shoreline. With French threats defeated, the Spanish at St. Augustine attempted to plant strategic missions farther north to convert Native Americans to Christianity and secure Spain’s land claims. In 1570, eight missionaries from Loyola’s Society of Jesus sailed north from Florida to Chesapeake Bay. There, the Jesuits established a mission to convert local Indians and looked for “an entrance into the mountains and on to China.” But the friars’ rules and beliefs antagonized the Native Americans. All the missionaries had been killed by the time Menéndez visited the region in 1572. Spain’s failure to secure a foothold on Chesapeake Bay soon proved costly as a new European rival appeared on the scene. Almost Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 38 ${bmicon} full view MAP 1.5 THE EXTENT OF NORTH AMERICAN EXPLORATION BY 1592 By 1592, a century after Columbus’s initial voyage, European explorers and colonists had touched the edges of North America, and a few had ventured far inland. But they had not found riches or a passageway to the Pacific, and only the Spanish had managed to establish a lasting foothold along the Florida Coast. overnight, Protestant England emerged as a contending force in the Atlantic world. Now English adventurers began challenging Spanish dominance in the Caribbean and along North America’s southeastern coast. The voyages of John Cabot and the visits of Bristol fishing vessels to Newfoundland’s Grand Banks had stimulated an early English interest in the Atlantic. But for several reasons this curiosity intensified after 1550. Henry VIII had used his power, plus the wealth he had seized from the Catholic Church, to begin a fleet that would one day dominate the world’s oceans. Inheriting a navy of only 5 ships in 1509, the monarch added 85 vessels before he died in 1547. The merchant fleet grew as well, carrying English wool and cloth to Antwerp and other European ports. In addition, the English population, which had declined in the previous 150 years, grew steadily after 1500. Overall numbers more than doubled during the sixteenth century, cre- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 39 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Lost at Sea Lost at sea? Nowadays you can hold in your palm a marine global positioning system (GPS) receiver. It lets you know exactly where you are, which direction you are heading, what course you have traveled, and how fast you are moving. To increase your confidence, one maker of GPS devices uses the name of one of the world’s greatest navigators: Magellan. Thanks to GPS, we are getting used to knowing our precise location on the globe at any moment. Originally developed and operated by the U.S. Department of Defense for military purposes, GPS uses signals from satellites to determine an object’s latitude and longitude within a matter of inches. But it hasn’t always been that way. Before the 1400s, countless generations of sailors navigated only within sight of land, where they could take their bearings from familiar landmarks such as mountains and rivers. Captains on the Mediterranean Sea carried charts listing the visible guideposts along every coast. If fog surrounded them, a piece of lead lowered over the bow until it touched bottom told them whether they were in dangerously shallow water. Norse seafarers in the Atlantic and some ancient mariners in the Pacific learned to read ocean swells and follow the stars well enough to undertake long ocean voyages. But most Europeans avoided sailing out of sight of land until the fifteenth century. It took centuries for navigators to experience, and overcome, the numerous dilemmas associated with deep sea sailing. For one thing, a compass needle does not point to true north but to a slightly different magnetic north. And that difference varies from one place to another. Also, winds and currents imperceptibly nudge a boat off course, making it harder to estimate exact location. Position is relative and concerns relationships to known places. So it was important for mariners at sea to have a grid on which to fix their position. Ancient geographer Ptolemy had suggested that horizontal lines of latitude running parallel to the equator and meridians of longitude circling the earth vertically could provide that grid. Locating your position on such a grid proved simple in one way and impossibly hard in another. Latitude was the easy part, finding one’s north–south location between the pole and the equator. Sailors in the Northern Hemisphere could determine their latitude by measuring the angle of the North Star (or Pole Star) above the horizon at night. By keeping the Pole Star at the same height in the sky, they could steer along the same latitude, parallel to the equator. Columbus used this technique in sailing due west across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands. But finding east–west location, or longitude, at sea was a more difficult matter. Mariners had to guess at longitude, and often over the years those guesses proved fatal. A notorious example occurred in October 1707 when fog enveloped a British fleet returning home. Officers estimated that they were a safe distance west of the English coast. They were wrong, and nearly 2000 men drowned when the ships crashed ashore at night. The British Parliament responded in 1714 by offering a huge reward to anyone who could finally solve the vexing “longitude problem.” The solution came half a century later from English clockmaker John Harrison. He revolutionized navigation by creating a clock (using a spring instead of a pendulum) that could keep time at sea. From the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century, timepieces grew increasingly portable, durable, and accurate, helping sailors determine their positions. Now GPS has created yet another revolution, bringing a new technology to bear on the mariner’s ancient question: “Where am I?” Ferdinand Magellan would be amazed. ating pressure for limited resources, especially land. Adding to the squeeze, property owners, eager to enclose pastures for sheep grazing, pushed tenants off their land. This “enclosure movement” set even more people adrift to seek work in towns and cities. London’s population soared from 50,000 in 1500 to 200,000 a century later. And when Europe’s saturated woolen textile market collapsed suddenly, English cloth exports fell 35 percent in 1551. Merchants searched hastily for new avenues of foreign commerce. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 40 ${bmicon} Starting in the 1550s, therefore, England’s overseas exploration pushed in all directions. Investors in the new Muscovy Company sent ships north around Scandinavia through the Arctic Ocean as far as Archangel on the White Sea. They established contact with Czar Ivan the Terrible in Moscow and opened trade with Russia, but they failed to find a northeastern route above the Asian landmass to China. Other English vessels sailed south to Morocco and the Gold Coast, challenging the Portuguese monopoly of the African trade. English mariner John Hawkins conducted three voyages to west Africa during the 1560s. Horning in on the growing transatlantic slave traffic, he purchased Africans and then sold them in Caribbean ports to Spanish buyers. In doing so, he marked out a grim “triangular trade” linking England, west Africa, and the Americas. In later centuries this inhuman trade yielded untold profits for the owners and investors who funded thousands of slaving voyages. Philip II, having driven the French out of Florida, had had enough of Protestant interlopers. A Spanish fleet forced Hawkins and his young kinsman Francis Drake out of Mexican waters in 1568. But thereafter, English sea rovers stepped up their challenges to Spain on the high seas, with quiet support from Queen Elizabeth. Drake proved the most wide-ranging and successful. On a voyage to the Pacific (1577–1580) he plundered Spanish ports in Peru and landed near San Francisco Bay. He claimed California for England as New Albion and then sailed around the globe. In the 1580s, Drake continued, in his words, “to singe the Spaniard’s beard.” He sacked ports in the West Indies, encouraged slave uprisings against the Spanish, and attacked the settlement at St. Augustine. He also captured numerous treasure ships, sank two dozen enemy vessels in their home port at Cadiz, and helped to defeat Philip’s Spanish Armada in 1588. England’s anti-Catholic propagandists made Drake a national hero. Moreover, they painted Spanish cruelties toward Indians in the New World in the worst possible terms. To bolster their case, they translated the vivid writings of Las Casas into English. But the English were not blameless themselves. In their brutal conquest of Ireland, they established their own pattern of violence during the Elizabethan years. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and others who played leading roles in this bloody takeover came to view a colony in America as the next logical step in England’s aggressive overseas expansion. full view Cruel Conquistadores Torturing Native Amerindians Cruel Conquistadores Torturing Native Amerindians In 1576 Gilbert published his Discourse for a Discovery for a New Passage to Cathay. In it, he speculated on a short northwestern route to China. Martin Frobisher, another veteran of the Irish campaign, undertook voyages to locate such a route. He mistakenly thought he had found the passage, or strait, to Asia. As evidence, he brought back an Eskimo family he believed to be Chinese, and English artist John White drew their pictures. The next year, writing an essay on “How Her Majesty May Annoy the King of Spain,” Gilbert proposed a colony in Newfoundland. The queen granted him a patent—a license giving him exclusive rights—for such a project. But the venture failed because of shipwrecks and desertions. When Gilbert died at sea on the homeward voyage, his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, obtained a similar patent to plant a colony in North American lands “not actually possessed by any Christian prince.” In 1584 Raleigh sent explorers to the Outer Banks, the string of barrier islands below Chesapeake Bay that Verrazzano had glimpsed 60 years earlier. The men visited Roanoke Island and then returned to England in September. They brought back positive reports about the land and two Indian informants. The next month, Richard Hakluyt, England’s foremost advocate and chronicler of overseas expansion, handed Queen Elizabeth an advisory paper entitled “Western Planting.” The document called for the establishment of a strategic outpost on the North American coast, where the English could launch attacks against Spanish shipping, hunt for useful commodities, and convert Indians to Protestant Christianity. CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 41 ${bmicon} Raleigh’s three efforts to establish such an outpost failed in rapid succession. In 1585, he first sent Ralph Lane, a hardened veteran of the Irish campaigns, to build a fort at Roanoke Island. Like other Europeans who had preceded him to America, Lane anticipated “the discovery of a good mine, or a passage to the South Sea.” But storms at sea scattered his ships, and most of Lane’s initial force never arrived. Those who did, including artist John White, fared badly because of scarce food, bad discipline, and hostile relations with the Indians. Francis Drake, arriving in 1586 after harassing the Spanish in the West Indies and Florida, expected to find a thriving enterprise. Instead, he carried the disheartened soldiers back to England. They had paid a price, Hakluyt commented, “for the cruelty and outrages committed by some of them against the native inhabitants of that country.” A second expedition diverted to the Caribbean to prey on enemy shipping, after leaving a few men at Roanoke, who did not survive. In May 1587 John White led a third English venture to America, with 110 people, including women and children. They planned to settle on Chesapeake Bay, but a contentious captain refused to carry them farther north after an initial stop at Roanoke Island. So the settlers remained huddled at Roanoke, unseen by a Spanish ship from Florida sent north to check on rumors of English activity. In August they agreed to send White back to England for more supplies and to leave a message for him if they moved. When he finally returned in 1590—delayed by England’s clash with the Spanish Armada—he found the site deserted. The word Croatoan carved on a post suggested that survivors had joined the nearby Croatan Indians, but the Lost Colony’s fate remains a source of endless speculation. The Spanish, worried by the English foray, drew up plans for a fortification at Chesapeake Bay, but warfare between Spain and England kept both countries preoccupied elsewhere until Philip II and Elizabeth I had died. Over approximately 150 centuries, people of distant Asian ancestry had explored and settled the bountiful Western Hemisphere. In every region of North America, from the arctic North to the semitropical Florida Keys, they had adapted and prospered over countless generations. Then suddenly, in a single century, unprecedented intrusions brought newcomers from foreign lands to the coasts of the Americas, in wooden castles that floated on the sea. Their numbers only increased with time. In the next century, the contest for European control of the Atlantic seaboard began in earnest. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 42 ${bmicon} Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site Covering 2200 acres just south of Highway 40 near Collinsville, in East St. Louis, Illinois, Mississippian earthworks dot this World Heritage Site. The Cahokia Mounds Museum Society conducts an archaeological field school each summer. Chaco Culture National Historical Park The most striking structure in this park is Pueblo Bonito, the largest building in North America until 1882. Lying in Chaco Canyon northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico, these Anasazi ruins can be reached by driving south from Aztec (where there are several important museums) or north from Thoreau. Makah Cultural and Research Center This site, in Neah Bay, Washington, at the tip of Olympic Peninsula, houses thousands of artifacts from an ancestral Macah Indian village, at nearby Ozette, that was covered in a mudslide shortly before European contact and revealed by a 1970 winter storm. Mesa Verde National Park Located near Cortez, Colorado, this is the oldest archaeological national park in the United States. It covers 80 square miles in southwest Colorado, adjoining the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation. The park contains impressive Anasazi ruins, the most famous of which is Cliff Palace. Moundville Archaeological Park Located half a mile west of State Route 69, on the Black Warrior River outside Moundville, Alabama, just south of Tuscaloosa, this well-preserved Mississippian mound complex also contains an archaeological museum. Poverty Point State Commemorative Area A visitors’ center is located near the center of the geometric earthworks from the late Archaic era on this 400-acre site on State Route 577 near Epps, Louisiana. Pueblo Grande Museum This downtown Phoenix, Arizona, museum, just off State Route 143, contains artifacts of the Hohokam culture. A large platform mound, a ball court, and ancient irrigation canals are preserved within the park. Fort Raleigh National Historical Site This site is on Route 64 at the north end of Roanoke Island, in eastern North Carolina. A reconstructed Elizabethan ship at nearby Manteo suggests the experience of England’s sixteenth-century “lost colony.” A drive or walk on the sandy Outer Banks (Route 12) recalls the coastline seen by Verrazzano in 1524. Serpent Mound State Memorial Four miles northwest of Locust Grove, Ohio, on State Route 73, this site includes a small museum and a viewing tower that allows visitors to look down on the winding effigy mound, now thought to be roughly 1000 years old. L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site parkscanada.pch.gc.ca/parks/newfoundland/anse_meadows/anse_meadows_e.htm Take a tour of the reconstructed Viking settlement at this Web site. www.acs.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/index.html The University of Calgary has developed a course around this Web site titled “The European Voyages of Exploration: The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/one/cabeza.htm Read the narrative by Cabeza de Vaca of his journey across the Southwest in the 1530s. www.win.tue.nl/cs/fm/engels/discovery/ See the “Discoverers Web” for numerous links concerning the era of European exploration. John Logan Allen, North American Exploration, Volume 1, A New World Disclosed (1997). Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (1986; Canto edition, 1993). Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997). Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (1983). Brian M. Fagan, Ancient North America 3rd ed. (2000). William H. Goetzmann and Glyndwr Williams, The Atlas of North American Exploration: From the Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole (1992). J.C.H. King, First Peoples, First Contacts: Native Peoples of North America (1999). David B. Quinn, North America from Earliest Discovery to First Settlements: The Norse Voyages to 1612 (1977). David Hurst Thomas, Exploring Native North America (2000). CHAPTER 1 ###8226; FIRST FOUNDERS 43 ${bmicon} Brian M. Fagan, The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America (1987). Brian M. Fagan, The Journey from Eden: the Peopling of Our World (1990). Stuart J. Fiedel, Prehistory of the Americas (1987). Francis Jennings, The Founders of America (1993). Helen Roney Sattler, The Earliest Americans (1993). Robert Silverberg, Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth (1968). Sally A. Kitt Chappell, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos (2002). Brian M. Fagan, Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade: The Americas Before Columbus (1991). Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., ed., America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus (1992). Thomas C. Patterson, The Inca Empire: The Formation and Disintegration of a Pre-Capitalist State (1991). Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (1990). David Hurst Thomas, Exploring Native North America (2000). Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (1972). Zvi Dor-Ner, Columbus and the Age of Discovery (1991). William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward, eds., Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga (2000). Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Sea: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne (1994). Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500–1600 (1971). J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450–1650 (1963). Peter Russell, Prince Henry “The Navigator”: A Life (2000). Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (1969). Herbert E. Bolton, Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains (1990). Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, translated and edited by Anthony Pagden (1986). Cyclone Covey, trans. and ed., Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America (1961). W. J . Eccles, France in America (1972). Charles Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Kingdoms (1997). Miguel Leon-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (1962). Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe (1995). Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony (1984). Eugene Lyon, The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish Conquest of 1565–1568 (1976). John T. McGrath, The French in Early Florida: In the Eye of the Hurricane (2000). David Beers Quinn, Raleigh and the British Empire (1962). David Beers Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620 (1974). Carl Ortwin Sauer, Sixteenth Century America: The Land and the People as Seen by the Europeans (1971). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter1 To Chapter 1 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 44 ${bmicon}         Spain’s Ocean-Spanning Reach       France and Holland: Overseas Competition for Spain       English Beginnings on the Atlantic Coast       The Puritan Experiment       The Chesapeake Bay Colonies       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 45 ${bmicon} IN THE SUMMER OF 1621, AN ENGLISHMAN AND AN INDIAN LEFT PLYMOUTH VILLAGE ON foot to visit a Native American leader named Massasoit. Stephen Hopkins and Squanto had a threefold purpose: to “view the country,” to assess Massasoit’s military strength, and to secure his support for the struggling English colony. During their 40-mile journey, the two men saw numerous signs of a wave of disease that had swept the New England coast four years earlier, killing thousands of Indians. Weakened survivors had lacked the energy to bury the dead, whose skulls and bones still lay aboveground in many places. The two men who encountered these grim scenes had come together from strikingly different backgrounds. Back in 1609, Hopkins had boarded the Sea Adventure and left England in a fleet of nine vessels, all heading for Jamestown in Virginia. When a storm wrecked his ship on the uncharted island of Bermuda, Hopkins and others rebelled against their official leader. They refused to go further under his command. Accused of mutiny and sentenced to hang, Hopkins pleaded his case and narrowly escaped the noose. When the rest of the company finally managed to build two small boats and sail safely to Virginia, he went along. Soon after that, he managed to return to England and start a family, but he could not shake off the lure of America. In 1620 Hopkins decided to return. At the English port of Plymouth, Hopkins, his pregnant wife, Elizabeth, and several children and servants boarded another vessel: the Mayflower. Headed for Virginia, the Mayflower had been chartered to carry a group of English Protestants to America from their exile in Holland. Paying passengers such as the Hopkins family also joined the journey. Tensions mounted when a mid-passage decision changed the Mayflower’s destination from Virginia to New England. Hopkins, remembering his experiences in Bermuda, was among those who muttered “mutinous speeches” and argued that “when they came ashore, they should use their own libertie, for none had power to command them.” But after Elizabeth gave birth, Hopkins joined the other 40 men aboard in signing the Mayflower Compact. The agreement bound all the passengers together in a “Civil Body Politic” to be governed by laws “most meet and convenient for the general good.” They reached New England in early winter, and Hopkins and others laid out the village of Plymouth in the snow. There, the newcomers met Squanto, a Native American with a command of English who helped them negotiate with local Indians. Squanto had also endured great hardship and Atlantic travel. He remembered the first French and English fishing vessels, which had appeared when he was a small boy. The sailors mapped the coast, traded with local tribes for beaver pelts or corn, and occasionally took Indian hostages back to Europe. In 1614 Squanto was among 27 Indians seized by an Englishman departing with a cargo of fish for the Mediterranean port of Malaga. Rescued from certain slavery by Spanish friars, Squanto somehow reached England, voyaged to Newfoundland, and returned to his homeland in 1619, only to find his entire village swept away by disease. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 46 ${bmicon} The Mayflower pilgrims, arriving a year after Squanto’s return, would also suffer heavy losses. Of the 102 settlers who had begun the voyage, half of them died in Plymouth colony by the next spring. But in New England, as elsewhere in America, death seemed to play favorites in the following years. As colonization continued, recurrent epidemics took a particularly heavy toll on Native Americans, who lacked immunity when exposed to foreign diseases for the first time. In 1622 Squanto fell sick and died of a fever, leaving no relatives behind. In contrast, Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins lived on to see numerous children and grandchildren thrive. By the middle of the seventeenth century, English settlements had taken root in both Virginia and Massachusetts. The success of these colonies would exert a lasting influence on the future direction of American society. But their stories unfolded as part of a far wider North American drama. It embraced both the Atlantic and the Pacific shores, and it included a diversity of European groups besides the English settlements near Cape Cod and Chesapeake Bay. The French founded towns at Quebec and Montreal, while the Spanish held onto St. Augustine and established Santa Fe in the Southwest. Dutch traders built New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, overlooking the Hudson River, and Swedish colonists erected a fort near the mouth of the Delaware. CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 47 ${bmicon} Nor was the drama confined to the tiny colonies, struggling against steep odds to establish lasting footholds on the fringes of the continent. In each outpost the lives of the new arrivals remained linked to the broad religious struggles, economic ambitions, and imperial contests that absorbed the Atlantic powers in far-off Europe. And closer at hand, the wellbeing of Indian groups, near and far, proved to be linked with the lives of colonists such as the Hopkins family. As the story of Squanto illustrates, Native American communities faced their own set of new challenges that altered traditional ways of living and threatened their very survival. In 1580 Spain’s Philip II had laid claim to the throne of Portugal. This consolidation, (which endured until 1640) unified Europe’s two great richest seaborne empires, for Spain and Portugal had each been sanctioned by the pope nearly a century earlier to explore opposite sides of the globe. Both kingdoms had had remarkable success in these overseas endeavors. The Portuguese had established trade with India and Southeast Asia, and their traders and Catholic missionaries had even created a foothold in Japan. The Spanish, sailing in the opposite direction, had staked out huge claims in the Americas and had founded Manila in the Philippines as a Pacific port of trade. By the turn of the century, however, Spain faced two fresh problems. First, combining with Portugal put huge additional burdens on the overstretched Spanish bureaucracy. Second, the global success of the combined Iberian empires invited challenges from envious rivals in northern Europe. The new international competition came from the French, the Dutch, and the English. Each of these realms constituted an aspiring naval power with imperial ambitions of its own. In 1598, for example, ten Dutch ships found their way to the Pacific, defying Spanish claims for control of that ocean. One of these vessels, piloted by Englishman Will Adams, ended up in Japan, where the new Tokugawa dynasty (1600–1868) was consolidating its control. Adams visited Edo—the rising military town that would grow into modern Tokyo. He even built a ship for the shogun (ruler) and trained Japanese carpenters to become shipwrights. Adams’s experience in Japan serves as a reminder that in the decades before the Mayflower sailed the Atlantic, the issue of who would dominate Pacific sea lanes to America was anything but clear. In April 1607, a letter from the king of Spain reached Mexico City. The king commanded his viceroy in charge of affairs in Mexico (New Spain) to create an outpost on California’s Monterey Bay in order to aid Spanish galleons crossing the Pacific from Manila. The logical person to execute the plan for the viceroy was Sebastián Vizcaíno, a seasoned navigator who had already explored Monterey Bay on the California coast four years earlier. Vizcaíno understood the Pacific trade, having sailed between Acapulco on Mexico’s west coast and the new Spanish stronghold at Manila. His ships had carried American chocolate to the Philippines and brought back silks and spices from Asia. Vizcaíno knew that galleons returning through the North Pacific to the west coast of Mexico desperately needed a haven along the route, after crossing the immense ocean. As he had seen, Monterey Bay was well supplied with water, food, and timber. The sheltering harbor would provide a perfect way station, where ships could take on supplies and make repairs before heading south. The royal plan directed Vizcaíno to sail to Manila and then establish a new colony at Monterey during his return voyage. But the viceroy in Mexico City had other ideas. He diverted the necessary funds into a search for the fabled North Pacific isles of Rica de Oro (“Rich in Gold”) and Rica de Plata (“Rich in Silver”). In 1611, the viceroy authorized Vizcaíno to search for the mysterious islands. The venture took Vizcaíno to Japan. When he finally returned east in 1613 aboard a vessel built Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 48 ${bmicon} full view MAP 2.1 THE SPANISH SOUTHWEST IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY in Japan, he brought 180 Japanese with him to Mexico. This unique delegation was bound for Spain and Italy to open doors between East and West. However, the Tokugawas soon began to persecute the European traders and Christian missionaries who had been allowed in the Japanese islands for a generation. Because of this persecution, the frail link between Europe and Japan through Mexico never developed further. Tokugawa officials, it seems, feared that tolerating foreigners in Japan’s ports might foster the spread of Christianity and undermine their supremacy. Moreover, developing Japanese fleets might bring guns to warlords and disrupt hard-won peace. So Japan passed up an opportunity for naval expansion, just as Ming China had done two centuries earlier after the voyages of Cheng Ho. Instead, the new dynasty adopted a policy of commercial and cultural isolation that would last for more than two hundred years. Had Japanese society followed another route, co-opting Western technologies and aggressively exploring and colonizing the Pacific, the subsequent history of North America and the world would almost certainly have taken a very different path. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 49 ${bmicon} For the Spanish, Vizcaíno’s Pacific adventure also failed to open new prospects. His fruitless search for gold and silver consumed crucial funds, and the possibility of a Spanish settlement at Monterey quickly disappeared. Spanish mariners knew California’s rugged coastline only from the sea, and the steep cliffs discouraged them from approaching the mainland too closely. Moreover, fresh probes by ships sailing to the north along California’s coast might reveal the “Straits of Anian”—the mythic Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific that Spain’s rivals had been seeking. Concerned that their empire had already become overextended, Spanish officials postponed plans to colonize California’s coast. In addition, Spain wondered whether to maintain its existing North American colony in Florida and its newest frontier province: New Mexico. In 1598 Juan de Oñate renewed the northern efforts of Coronado’s expedition several generations earlier. Setting out from New Spain, he led 500 men, women, and children north into the upper Rio Grande valley to create the province of New Mexico. Oñate was a wealthy man—his father had discovered a major silver mine at Zacatecas—and he had bold ambitions. Aided by Franciscan friars (organized followers of St. Francis loyal to the Roman Catholic pope), Oñate and his colonists expected to convert the Indians to Christianity. (The newcomers called these local inhabitants the Pueblo people, using the Spanish word for town, since they lived in compact apartment-like villages.) Expanding outward from the native towns, or pueblos, the intruders hoped to open a vast new colonial realm. It would be a “new world,” they proclaimed, “greater than New Spain.” full view Pueblo Indian Ruins Pueblo Indian Ruins (Photodisc, Inc.) But Oñate drastically underestimated the difficulties. When embittered Indians at Acoma pueblo killed 11 of his soldiers in 1599, he retaliated by bombarding the mesa-top citadel, killing 800 inhabitants and enslaving nearly 600 others. Hearing of the brutal repression of the PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 50 ${bmicon} residents of Acoma, neighboring pueblos reluctantly submitted to Spanish demands for labor and food. Oñate had expended his entire personal fortune to establish a fragile toehold in the region. But reinforcements arriving in 1600 were dismayed by the harsh conditions; Oñate needed new discoveries if the colony were to prosper. In 1601, he launched an expedition east onto the Great Plains, mistakenly believing that the Atlantic Ocean was not far away. The venture proved as futile as Coronado’s earlier march had been. full view White House Ruins - Canyon De Chelly, AZ White House Ruins. Canyon De Chelly, AZ (Photodisc, Inc.) To make matters worse, 1601 proved to be a year of drought. When Oñate returned to the Rio Grande, he found that two-thirds of his tiny colony—including many of the recent reinforcements—had given up and departed. Instead of silver, they had found sand. The disillusioned settlers returned to Mexico in a pitiful condition. Asked why they had deserted the colony, they said that the region lacked woods, pastures, water, and suitable land. Foiled on the east and weakened along the Rio Grande, Oñate next pressed west to seek a link to the Pacific. When he reached the Gulf of California in 1605, he mistook it for the great ocean. He even inscribed a notice of his feat (still visible) on the great sandstone rock, El Morro, between Acoma and Zuni pueblos. But his new “Mexico” remained isolated and impoverished, with the remaining colonists strapped for clothing and food. The newcomers, desperate to survive, pressed hard on the native peoples they had harried into submission. They demanded tribute in the form of cotton blankets, buffalo hides, and baskets of scarce maize. In winter, ill-equipped Spanish soldiers stripped warm robes off the backs of shivering women and children; in summer, they scoured each pueblo for corn. Sometimes they tortured residents to find out where food was hidden. Meanwhile, a few hundred Pueblo Indians—intimidated by the Spanish, desperate for a share of the food they had grown, and fearful of attacks by neighboring Apaches—began to accept Christian baptism and seek Spanish protection. By 1608, when the crown threatened to withdraw support from the struggling province, the colony’s Franciscan missionaries appealed that their converts had grown too numerous to resettle and too dependent to abandon. Their argument may have been exaggerated, but it caught the attention of authorities. Besides, England and France were launching new colonies in Virginia and Canada. Since mapmakers still could not accurately calculate longitude (east-west distance on the globe), no one was sure whether these bases created by international rivals posed a threat that was dangerously close at hand. England’s failed Roanoke colony, after all, had the same latitude (or north-south position) as Santa Fe, and many Europeans still estimated the two points were not far apart. Worried Spanish officials finally agreed with the Franciscan friars that New Mexico must carry on. But, they replaced Oñate with a new governor and asserted royal control over the few dozen settlers who remained in the colony. The Spanish decision to hold on in New Mexico reshaped life for everyone in the region. At least 60,000 Indians living in nearly separate pueblos found their world transformed and their survival threatened over the next half-century. In 1610 the new governor, ruling over scarcely 50 colonists, created a capital at the village of Sante Fe. Every three years, a government supply train of 30 wagons made the long trip to the new capital from Mexico City. Within two decades, roughly 750 colonists inhabited the remote province, including Spanish, Mexican Indians, Africans, and mixed-race children. The racial and ethnic diversity of New Mexico repeated the colonial pattern established in New Spain. Similarly, labor practices and CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 51 ${bmicon} religious changes also followed models established after the conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico. As in New Spain, certain privileged people in the new colony received encomiendas; such grants entitled the holders (known as an encomenderos), to the labor of a set number of Native American workers. With labor in short supply throughout the Spanish colonies, other settlers led occasional raids against nomadic Plains Indians, keeping some captives and shipping others south to toil as slaves in the Mexican silver mines. full view Pueblo Bonito The largest of the prehistoric ruins which make up Chaco Canyon National Monument in northwestern New Mexico, Pueblo Bonito is an immense semi-circular structure, 520 feet long by 310 feet in its greatest north and south depth. This pueblo was build between 919 and 1130 AD, and contained about 800 rooms. The primitive architectural skill is considered the finest in the United States. Meanwhile, the number of missionaries rose rapidly, just as it had throughout Spain’s American empire. By the 1630s, 46 Franciscan friars staffed missions in 35 pueblos. They preached a mix of Christian religion and Hispanic cultural values. They forbade traditional Pueblo celebrations, known as kachina dances, and destroyed sacred kachina masks. Their combination of intense zeal and harsh punishments prompted many Indians to learn Spanish and become obedient converts. However, it also drove the Indians’ own religious practices underground—literally, into the hidden, circular kivas that had long been a focal point for Native American spiritual activities in the region. There, people kept their traditional faith alive in secret and passed sacred rituals along to the next generation. The Spanish brought more than Christianity to New Mexico. The newcomers also transferred novel crops (wheat, onions, chilies, peas) and planted new fruits (peaches, plums, cherries). Settlers introduced metal hoes and axes to the area as well, along with donkeys, chickens, and other domesticated animals previously unknown to the native inhabitants. Horses and cattle, led north from New Spain in small herds, eventually revolutionized life across the North American West. But Spanish sheep, well suited to the semi-desert conditions, exerted the most immediate impact. Each friar soon possessed a flock of several thousand. Pueblo artisans, skilled at spinning cotton, now wove woolen cloth for their own use and for export. full view Cliff Palace in Colorado Cliff Palace in Colorado (Photodisc, Inc.) But the Pueblo world, like Squanto’s world, was eroding under the onslaught of new European diseases. The large Pueblo population, cut in half in the 60 years after Coronado’s appearance, still numbered more than 60,000 in 1600, after the arrival of Oñate’s colonizing expedition. Yet sickness, along with warfare and famine, cut this number in half again by 1650 and in half once more by 1680. The flat, lush environment of the Florida peninsula contrasts sharply with the dry, rugged landscape of New Mexico. Yet by 1600, Spain’s Florida colony had also disappointed imperial officials. Dreams of gold-filled kingdoms and a strategic passage from the Southeast to the Orient had never materialized. The 500 needy soldiers, settlers, and slaves who resided in thatched huts at St. Augustine struck Spanish officials at home as an undue burden. The government planned to disband the colony and end its annual subsidy. But Franciscan missionaries won the day, as in New Mexico. They argued that scores of Indian towns appeared ready to receive Christianity. By 1608, the crown had decided to let the colony continue. A handful of missionaries fanned out among the Indians of northern Florida, erecting small churches, celebrating mass, and explaining the rudiments of the Catholic faith. However, the Franciscans soon realized that literacy itself held a more powerful appeal among Florida Indians than the Christian word. The friars therefore set up schools “for imprinting the Christian discipline and doctrine in those hearts and lands with letters.” At missions (known as doctrinas), where a resident friar taught church doctrine, they recruited Indian students aggressively without regard to age or sex. In 1612 Francisco de Pareja published an illustrated, bilingual confessional in Castilian and Timucuan, the earliest text in any North American Indian language. The book enabled wary friars to ask villagers, “Have you said suggestive words?” and “Have you desired to do some lewd act with some man or woman or kin?” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 52 ${bmicon} full veiw MAP 2.2 SITES OF CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN SPANISH FLORIDA IN THE MID-SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Contact with Christian beliefs and books came at a steep price, for each inland village was expected to help feed the colonial garrison at St. Augustine. Local women neglected their own household crops to grow additional maize and grind it into meal. Annually, the crown requisitioned the labor of Indian men from each village. Spanish officials compelled them to transport the cornmeal overland to the Atlantic coast and return to the mission bringing supplies back to the Franciscans. Imported candles, communion wine, and mission bells all had to be hauled inland from St. Augustine. The trip to and from the coast took several weeks, and each bearer shouldered a 75-pound load. When missions appeared in the western province of Apalachee (around modern-day Tallahassee) after 1633, the treks from the coast needed to cover even greater distances. Friars and Indian bearers traveling to the interior also carried sicknesses from St. Augustine. Epidemics of measles, bubonic plague, malaria, typhus, smallpox, and influenza took a devastating toll on the Native Americans. Harsh work conditions and poor diets lowered people’s resistance to illness. Indians expired more rapidly than the Spanish could convert them, and friars hastened to baptize the dying and claim their souls for Christ. In a letter to the Spanish king in 1617, a Franciscan reported that the local population had been cut in half in the five years since his arrival “on account of the great plagues and contagious diseases that CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 53 ${bmicon} the Indians have suffered.” But he reassured his majesty that “a very rich harvest of souls for heaven has been made in the midst of great numbers of deaths.” Even though the small cadre of friars grew, reaching a high of 70 after midcentury, the region’s overall population plummeted. A report from 1635, shortly after Spanish expansion into Apalachee, claimed 30,000 baptisms at 44 missions. But within a generation, the number of native Floridians, whether baptized or not, had plunged by nearly half. In 1655 the governor noted “high mortality” throughout Timucua caused by a “series of small-pox plagues which have affected the country for the last ten months” and by “the trials and hunger which these unfortunate people have suffered.” Two years later, he reported that the people of Timucua and Guale had been almost “wiped out with the sickness of the plague and small-pox which has overtaken them.” As whole villages disappeared, Spanish entrepreneurs began to expand cattle ranching across the newly vacated lands of northern Florida. Faced with encroaching farms, crushing labor demands, and frightful mortality, local native leaders saw their power reduced and their communities depleted. When the Spanish established a cattle ranch in Apalachee in 1645, a local chief protested that they drew in “all the men and the women, boys and girls,” to provide labor, and “what we gained from all this work was solely fatigue and nothing else.” Two years later, in 1647, Indians at Apalachee staged a revolt. They burned down seven of the area’s mission compounds, killing three friars, the deputy governor and his family, and a number of recent converts. But the garrison at St. Augustine reacted quickly, and when its soldiers arrived, they tried and executed 12 of the rebel leaders. In 1656 a wider Native American uprising shook Timucua in north central Florida. The rebellion occurred because the governor of Florida feared a possible attack by English ships on the garrison at St. Augustine. He therefore requisitioned 500 Indian warriors from the Timucua region to help fend off the rumored invasion, and he required each man to bring along 75 pounds of corn for the campaign. Insulted by the demand, Timucuan leaders staged a revolt that took months to suppress. In the end, the English threat to Spanish Florida did not materialize, but the rumor in 1656 underscored how much had changed in the preceding half-century. Two generations earlier, in 1600, no European power besides Spain had possessed a solid foothold in any portion of the Americas. Even Portuguese Brazil had recently come under the rule of Spain. But over the next six decades, France, Holland, and England all asserted claims on the American mainland. These rivals challenged Spain not only in the Atlantic but in the Pacific as well. At the turn of the seventeenth century, interlopers from Holland had challenged Spanish colonizers in the Philippines and Portuguese traders in Japan. These Dutch efforts illustrated the growing competition between European powers for control of the world’s oceans. In London, commercial leaders received a royal charter to create the English East India Company in 1600, and merchants in Amsterdam took a similar step. Hoping to capture Portugal’s lucrative Asian trade, they established the Dutch East India Company in 1602. Four years later, Dutchman Willem Jansz became the first European to glimpse Australia. Within a generation (as the Ming dynasty ended in China during the 1640s), Dutch sailors expanded their Asian reach still farther. They took Malacca (near Singapore) from the Portuguese in 1641, reached Tasmania and New Zealand in 1642, and charted the coast of northern Japan in 1643. By 1652 they had also founded a Dutch colony at Cape Town, on the southern tip of Africa. The united powers of Spain and Portugal proved even more vulnerable in the Atlantic. To be sure, Spanish convoys continued to transport Mexican gold and silver to Europe annually, PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 54 ${bmicon} along with Asian silks and spices shipped to Mexico via the Pacific trade. Portuguese vessels carried Africans to the New World at a profit. But ships from rival European nations preyed on these seaborne cargoes with increasing success. Defiantly, they also laid claim to numerous islands in the Caribbean. By 1660, the English had taken control of Barbados, Providence Island, Antigua, and Jamaica; the Dutch had acquired St. Maarten, St. Eustacius, Saba, and Curaçao; and the French had claimed Guadeloupe, Martinique, Grenada, and St. Lucia. For France, however, the most promising Atlantic prospects lay farther north in Canada. There, Spanish power was absent, hopes for a Northwest Passage persisted, and French imperial claims stretched back generations. Since the time of Jacques Cartier, fishing boats from the coast of France had crisscrossed Newfoundland’s Grand Banks. One old French salt claimed to have made the voyage for 42 consecutive years. The trade increased after 1580 as crews built seasonal stations along the American coast for drying codfish. These stations brought them into greater contact with Indians; soon both parties were exchanging metal goods for furs on terms that pleased all. A Native American could trade a worn-out robe made from beaver skins for a highly valued iron kettle. For a European, the older the robe the better, for its Indian owner wore it with the fur side in. Steady wear rubbed away the long guard hairs and left the soft underlayer of fur. Back home in Europe, workers removed these greasy short hairs and matted them into felt for the manufacture of beaver hats. (They used mercury in the process, not knowing that its poison made some of them insane, hence the phrase “mad as a hatter.”) The finished product proved warm, waterproof, and fashionable. Because one robe yielded felt for six to eight hats (each worth a steep three pounds), its high sale price let dealers purchase scores of kettles and knives for the next year’s exchange. As North Atlantic fishing and trading expanded, the domestic situation in France improved after 1600. In 1598, a generation of religious war between Catholics and Protestants in France ended when King Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes. The decree granted political rights and limited toleration to French Protestants, or Huguenots. With peace restored, the king could now afford to look favorably on new colonization initiatives in America. An experienced French soldier and sailor named Samuel de Champlain emerged as a key leader in this effort. Between 1599 and 1601, Champlain scouted Spain’s New World empire and brought back suggestions to Paris for overseas advancement of French interests. He even offered a proposal to create a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. But from 1602 until his death in 1635, Champlain devoted himself to the St. Lawrence River region, where Acadia on the Atlantic coast and Canada along the extensive river valley made up the anticipated realm of New France. Year-round French settlements in Acadia could support the Atlantic fisheries, extend the fur trade, and preempt the English, who were eyeing the same coast. Spurred by rumors of precious metals and western passages to Asia, Champlain explored and mapped the coast from Cape Breton to Cape Cod. But settlement efforts came to nothing, so the French directed their attention inland. In 1608 Champlain and several dozen other men established the outpost of Quebec at a narrow spot in the St. Lawrence River, where Cartier and Roberval had wintered generations earlier. In June 1609 Champlain joined a band of Algonquin and Huron Indians in a raid on the Iroquois. They journeyed south to a large lake in modern New York, which he proudly renamed as Lake Champlain. When they engaged their Iroquois enemies in battle, Champlain fired his gun to kill several war chiefs. A novelty in the region, the gun sparked a rout. For the powerful Iroquois League south of the St. Lawrence (the Five Nation confederation composed of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk Indians), the defeat spawned lasting bitterness. But the victory sealed good relations for the French with the Algonquins and Hurons, ensuring the survival of Quebec and spurring unprecedented commerce. Within 15 years, Native Americans were trading 12,000 to 15,000 beaver pelts annually via the St. Lawrence River valley. CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 55 ${bmicon} In 1627, the powerful first minister in France, Cardinal Richelieu, pressed for greater French settlement in Canada through a new private company. He banned Huguenots from participating and pushed to make sure that only Roman Catholics were allowed to migrate to Canada. But his expansive policies alarmed England, which began aggressive efforts to force out the French colonists. In 1628 English privateers (privately owned ships commissioned to seize enemy vessels for profit) captured an arriving convoy of 400 French Catholic settlers. The next year, they forced the surrender of Quebec. When restored to French control several years later, the tiny outpost contained fewer than a hundred people. In an effort to expand the meager settlement and populate the fertile valley upriver from Quebec, French authorities began granting narrow strips of land with river frontage to any Catholic lord who would take up residence there and bring French tenants to his estate. Cardinal Richelieu’s power in France epitomized the ongoing Counter-Reformation. Indeed, the effects of this outpouring of Catholic zeal reached as far as North America. In 1635 Jesuits from the Society of Jesus, created a century earlier by Ignatius Loyola to defend and spread the Catholic faith, founded a college in Quebec to educate the sons of colonists, and in 1639 six nuns arrived to begin a school and a hospital for Indian girls. Other religious workers established a station farther west in 1641. Their outpost where the Ottawa River joined the St. Lawrence, in territory recently dominated by the Iroquois, marked the beginnings of Montreal. This move upstream had strategic as well as religious significance. The French wanted to control the beaver trade as it expanded west. They also hoped to prevent the Iroquois League from diverting furs south to Holland’s new colony on the Hudson River. But the desperate Iroquois nations, facing collapse, took a stand. Increasing contact with Europeans and their contagious diseases had brought catastrophic epidemics to the Iroquois homelands below Lake Ontario. Beginning in 1633, sicknesses that were new to the region swept away some 10,000 people and cut the Five Nations’ population in half within a decade. The Mohawks—farthest east and most exposed to French, Dutch, and English newcomers—suffered the most, losing as many as three out of four people from the distinctive longhouses Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 56 ${bmicon} full view MAP 2.3 EUROPEAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN CONTACT IN THE NORTHEAST, 1600–1660 French and English colonization efforts brought devastating diseases to the Five Nations of the Iroquois League. Eager to take captives and profit from the growing trade in furs, the Iroquois ranged north and west to make war on the French and their Huron Indian allies. that made up Iroquois villages. According to Iroquois tradition, survivors must replace deceased individuals swiftly with captives to maintain the community’s strength and continuity. Pressed by grieving families, Iroquois warriors initiated a generation of violent campaigns intended to capture and absorb neighboring groups. These so-called mourning wars are also remembered as the Beaver Wars because they included a clear economic as well as cultural motive. Besides captives, the Iroquois aggressors sought furs. If they could seize pelts before the valuable items reached the French, they could trade them to the Dutch for guns and powder. Well armed, they could then engage in further wars for captives and furs. This spiral of aggression put the Iroquois on a collision course with the Hurons and their Catholic allies, a small band of Jesuit missionaries from France. These members of the militant Society of Jesus were willing to risk martyrdom to win converts in New France. But the seasonal mobility of most local Indians frustrated them. According to one discouraged priest, “Not much ought to be hoped for from the savages as long as they are wanderers.” Eager to find “a stable nation” for potential converts, the Jesuits focused their attention on Huronia, the region east of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. There, 30,000 Huron Indians lived in large, settled villages. The Jesuits erected chapels at four of these towns. And in 1639, they constructed a central base at St. Marie on the Wye River, part fort and part mission. Having volunteered for hardship, they witnessed far more of it than they ever imagined. First came the same foreign epidemics that had wasted the Iroquois; smallpox cut down roughly two-thirds of the Huron population, or 20,000 people, between 1635 and 1640. Then came the Iroquois themselves, bent on capturing Huron women and children to revitalize their longhouses, swept empty by disease in the 1630s. Armed by Dutch traders eager for furs, 1000 warriors descended on the weakened Hurons in March 1649. They burned villages, secured captives, tortured several priests to death, and seized large stocks of pelts. Some lucky survivors CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 57 ${bmicon} dispersed to neighboring tribes, and the 500 who remained behind took refuge near Quebec. The Iroquois then launched raids on the St. Lawrence valley, disrupting the fur trade and frightening the several thousand French inhabitants. By 1660, it seemed that New France—thinly settled, weakly defended, and poorly supplied—might face the same extinction that the much older and larger Huronia community had suffered. The Dutch traders who supplied firearms to the Iroquois in exchange for furs owed their start to English-born navigator and arctic explorer Henry Hudson. In 1608 the Dutch East India Company, eager to locate a northeastern route to China, hired Hudson and his crew to probe above Scandinavia. But when snowstorms blocked their way, Hudson sailed his vessel, the Half Moon, across the Atlantic in search of a western passage to the Orient. During the summer of 1609, the Half Moon visited Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay, then rediscovered modern-day New York harbor, the bay that Verrazzano had entered in 1524. Flying the Dutch flag, Hudson sailed north up the broad river that now bears his name. Along the way, he obtained food and furs from Algonkian Indians in exchange for knives and beads. He noted that saltwater and ocean tides pushed 60 miles upstream—Indians called the river “the water that flows two ways.” But no channel to the Pacific materialized. The Dutch moved quickly to gain a foothold in the region. Ships from Amsterdam soon appeared far up the Hudson, exchanging metal goods for beaver pelts and occasionally leaving men behind to engage in trading with the Indians. One Dutch captain arriving in 1613 encountered Juan Rodrigues, a mulatto from the West Indies who had jumped ship the previous year with 80 hatchets and other trade goods. The captain, in turn, left behind a young Amsterdam clerk and took away two sons of the principal Indian leader, or sachem. Soon the Dutch clerk had established a year-round trading post at Fort Orange (near present-day Albany). Mohawk traditions recall how the Indians “Planted the Tree of Good Understanding” with the Dutch newcomers, whom they called Kristoni, for “I am a metal maker.” In 1621, responsibility for New Netherland—the region claimed between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers—fell to the newly chartered Dutch West India Company (DWIC). PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 58 ${bmicon} Modeled on the Dutch East India Company, this enterprise made Holland a formidable force in the Atlantic, especially after the spectacular Dutch capture of the Spanish silver fleet off Cuba in 1628. The DWIC concentrated on piecing together an empire in the South Atlantic. Dutch ships seized part of sugar-rich Brazil (1632), the island of Curaçao near Venezuela (1634), and Portugal’s African outpost at Elmina, on the coast of modern-day Ghana (1637). But the DWIC also laid plans for a North American colony. To begin, company officials recruited a group of Walloon refugees, French-speaking Belgians who had hoped to found a community in English Virginia. They transported these people to New Netherland in 1624. To secure the boundaries of the province, they deposited farm families far up the Hudson at Fort Orange and along the Connecticut and Delaware rivers. However, Peter Minuit, the colony’s director from 1626 to 1631, saw danger in this dispersal. He worried that the widely scattered newcomers lacked defenses, trade, and community ties. To consolidate Dutch settlement, he purchased Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson from the local Indians. By 1630, the village of New Amsterdam boasted 270 settlers clustered in cottages around a waterfront fort at the southern tip of Manhattan. (When the inhabitants built a wall around the village to protect against Indian attacks, the road inside this palisade became known as Wall Street.) Next, the DWIC began granting land along the Hudson to wealthy patroons (patrons), similar to the French seigneurs along the St. Lawrence. Hoping that private investment would strengthen their colony, the company gave a huge tract with 18 miles of river frontage to any wealthy investor who could send 50 people to farm there as tenants. An Amsterdam merchant named Kiliaen van Rensselaer formed the first and most lucrative of these patroonships near Fort Orange. But this effort to promote migration faltered, and new conflicts began to appear on several fronts. When the company threw open the Indian trade to others besides its own agents, the careless and greedy actions of unregulated traders sparked a series of violent wars with coastal tribes. Settlers also squabbled with neighboring English settlers over fur-trading rights and other matters. The small colony of New Sweden, which materialized on the west side of the Delaware River in 1637, posed yet another problem. That short-lived venture was sponsored partly by Dutch capital, and Peter Minuit was put in charge. But the settlers who actually built Fort Christina (now Wilmington, Delaware) were Swedes and Finns hoping to establish their own trade with the Indians. But in 1655, these several hundred Scandinavian settlers were obliged to surrender to Dutch power. The symbol of Dutch power in the region, and the commander of the fleet that seized New Sweden, was Peter Stuyvesant. He ruled New Netherland aggressively for several decades before England seized the colony in 1664. His career reveals the close ties among the DWIC’s Atlantic ventures. Stuyvesant had served as governor of Dutch Curaçao (losing his right leg in an attack on the Spanish at St. Maarten). His next commission made him director general of several DWIC dependencies, including New Netherland and Curaçao. He married Judith Bayard in Holland, and the couple sailed from Amsterdam for New Netherland in 1647. Stuyvesant, age 37, moved swiftly to assert control. He limited beer and rum sales, fined settlers for promiscuity and knife fighting, and established a nine-member night watch. If disobeyed, he turned to whippings. “He proceeds no longer by words or writings,” a resident complained in 1651, “but by arrests and stripes.” When a group of English Quakers, members of the newly formed Society of Friends, arrived aboard a trading vessel in 1657, he attempted to expel the radical Protestants and fine any who gave them shelter. However, Dutch CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 59 ${bmicon} residents of Flushing, on Long Island, defied his ban and signed a public letter of objection stressing religious toleration. “Whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker,” they protested, “let every man stand and fall to his own.” To address the colony’s chronic labor shortage, Stuyvesant endorsed trade in African slaves, by now a mainstay in Holland’s South Atlantic commerce. He also used his Caribbean connections to expand this traffic. When the Portuguese forced Holland out of Brazil in 1654 and closed that sugar colony to Dutch slave vessels, some of the ships brought their cargoes to New Amsterdam instead. Like the Dutch-speaking blacks who already lived in the colony, most of these newcomers were enslaved for life. But the DWIC, the largest importer and owner of slaves in New Netherland, granted “half-freedom” to some people whom it could not employ year-round. These people, in return for an annual fee, could travel and marry freely, acquire property, and hire out their labor. By 1664, African arrivals made up more than 10 percent of New Netherland’s population, and at least half of them lived in Lower Manhattan. These 375 black New Amsterdam residents—most enslaved, some half-free, and at least 75 entirely free—made up 20 percent of the town’s populace. Compared with New France, New Netherland seemed far more populous, prosperous, and ethnically diverse. New Amsterdam, home to fewer than 2000 people, also had a small Jewish contingent, the first in mainland North America. In 1654, 23 Sephardic Jews (forced out of Brazil when the Portuguese took over) reached New Amsterdam aboard the French frigate Sainte Catherine. But Stuyvesant promptly asked the DWIC for permission to expel the refugees. Strident in his anti-Semitism, he claimed such “blasphemers of the name of Christ” would “infect and trouble this new colony.” The DWIC, which included Jewish stockholders and was eager for newcomers of all kinds, overruled the governor’s request. In the end, colony officials authorized a Jewish ghetto, or segregated neighborhood. They instructed the newcomers to build homes “close together in a convenient place on one or the other side of New Amsterdam.” Here, they could pray together freely in private. At first, however, they were not allowed to construct a synagogue for public worship. In the early 1660s, the colony continued to grow, “slowly peopled by the scrapings of all sorts of nationalities,” as Stuyvesant complained. Huguenots occupied New Paltz near the Hudson; farther north, other newcomers founded Schenectady in 1661. Swedes and Finns continued to prosper along the Delaware, and numerous English had settled on Long Island. Compared with New France, New Netherland seemed far more populous, prosperous, and ethnically diverse. But whereas the French colony to the north endured for another century, the Dutch enterprise soon was absorbed by England. For, despite a slow start and innumerable setbacks, the English managed to outdistance all their European rivals and establish thriving North American colonies in the first half of the seventeenth century. When Queen Elizabeth I passed away in 1603, several important elements were already in place to help England compete for colonial outposts. The so-called enclosure movement, where large landholders had fenced in their fields and turned to raising sheep, had pushed thousands of tenants off rural farms. These people, who roamed the countryside and flocked to urban centers in search of work, formed a restless supply of potential colonists. Also, the country had an expanding fleet of English-built ships, sailed by experienced mariners who had accumulated extensive knowledge of the North Atlantic. In addition, England had a group of seasoned and ambitious leaders. A generation of soldiers (many of them younger sons of the property-holding elite known as the gentry) had participated in the brutal colonization of Ireland or sailed as privateers in the conflict with Spain. Some, including John Smith, who later became a leader of the Jamestown Colony, had skipped school and fought Spanish forces in the Netherlands. Smith himself had even survived battles and enslavement in Hungary, Turkey, and Russia. full view English Colonies on the East Coast The early settlers in these colonies were as diverse as the land they occupied. They did not share the same heritage, set of religious beliefs, ideas about government organization, or economic goals. The societies they created would reflect those differences. Yet, in only a few generations, these disparate groups would fight together to found a new nation. full view Ships at the Jamestown Settlement Ships at the Jamestown Settlement (Photodisc, Inc.) PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 60 ${bmicon} Because Elizabeth died without heirs, the king of Scotland, James Stuart, succeeded her as ruler. During the reigns of James I (1603–1625) and his son Charles I (1625–1649), religious and economic forces in England prompted an increasing number of people to consider migrating overseas. With the expansion of the country’s Protestant Reformation, religious strife escalated toward civil war, which erupted in 1642. During the tumultuous 1630s, English public officials were glad to transplant Puritans and Catholics alike to foreign shores. In turn, many ardent believers—weary of conflict or losing hope for their cause at home—welcomed the prospect of a safe haven abroad. Others, eager to support their faith, saw an opportunity to spread their beliefs more widely. Economically, the development of joint stock organizations enabled merchants to raise capital and spread the high risk of colonial ventures by selling numerous shares to small investors. At the same time, the fluctuating domestic economy prompted many people to consider seeking their fortunes elsewhere. Nor had English geographers given up on finding a sea route somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere leading to the riches of Asia. Perhaps Virginia would prove no wider than the Isthmus of Panama, or a short passage to China would reveal itself farther north. With this latter prospect in mind, England pressed Henry Hudson into service in 1610, shortly after his promising voyage for the Dutch. The experienced explorer ventured far to the northwest, navigating the strait and bay in northern Canada that still bear his name. Mutinous crewmen set the captain adrift in a small boat—resulting in his death—and returned to England claiming they had found the Northwest Passage. But efforts to discover a northern “Passage into the South Sea” proved futile, and English attention moved elsewhere. For Richard Hakluyt, England’s leading publicist for overseas expansion, the proper focus seemed clear: “There is under our noses,” he wrote in 1599, “the great & ample countrey of Virginia.” Great and ample, indeed, especially before the rival Dutch established New Netherland. On paper, the enormous zone that England claimed as Virginia stretched north to south from the top of modern-day Vermont to Cape Fear on Carolina’s Outer Banks. From east to west, it spanned North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, however narrow or wide the continent might prove to be. In 1606 James I chartered the Virginia Company as a two-pronged operation to exploit the sweeping Virginia claim. Under the charter, a group of London-based merchants took responsibility for colonizing the Chesapeake Bay region. Meanwhile, merchants from England’s West Country, based in the seaports of Plymouth, Exeter, and Bristol, took charge of developing the northern latitudes of the American coast. In 1607, two ships from Plymouth deposited roughly a hundred colonists at the Sagadahoc (Kennebec) River in Maine. The Sagadahoc settlers erected a fort and buildings; they even constructed a small sailing vessel called the Virginia, the first of hundreds of ships that the English built from American forests. But frostbite, scurvy, and dwindling supplies prompted a retreat home in 1608, two decades after the Roanoke failures. full view Mural of Jamestown Settlement Twentieth-century mural by Stanley King of the Jamestown Settlement in its early years, based on archeological evidence. (Colonial National Historic Park) full view Powhatan in Longhouse Longhouses were typical of Eastern Woodland Indians, serving as residences of 8 to 10 related families, usually sisters with their husbands and children. Chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, is shown here. (Library of Congress) A parallel effort by the Londoners proved more enduring—but just barely. In April 1607, three ships from the Thames sailed into Chesapeake Bay carrying 105 men. They disembarked on what appeared to be a secluded island near a broad river. In fact, they had entered the territory of a large Indian confederation. The confederacy numbered more than 13,000 people living in dozens of villages spread across the Tidewater area. The paramount chief, Powhatan, had been steadily expanding his power in the region. Initially, his councilors wondered whether to view the new arrivals as dangerous intruders or as potential trading partners, military allies, and members of the confederacy. The isolated English proved equally unsure whether to offer friendship or defiance. Within months, these subjects of James I had named the waterway the James River and established a fortified village beside it called Jamestown. In June, hoping for quick rewards, they shipped to London various stones that they thought contained precious gems and gold ore. When the rocks proved worthless, the colonists’ dreams of easy wealth evaporated. So did ideas about pushing west beyond the watershed. During the outpost’s first winter, a fire CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 61 ${bmicon} destroyed the tiny settlement, and death from hunger, exposure, and sickness cut the garrison’s population in half. The governor and council appointed by the Virginia Company to oversee the enterprise bickered among themselves, providing poor leadership in the face of hardship. Fully one-third of the early arrivals claimed to be gentlemen, from England’s leisure class—a proportion six times higher than in England—and most proved unaccustomed to hard manual labor. Moreover, all the colonists were employees of the company, so any profits from their labor went to repay London investors. Despite the unsuitable make-up of the garrison and the stiff rules governing work, conditions improved briefly with the emergence of John Smith as an artful and vigorous leader who dealt forcefully with the Indians. (Later, he claimed to have been assisted and protected by Powhatan’s young daughter, Pocahontas.) Fears of Spanish attacks on the infant outpost came to nothing. Still, the poorly supported enterprise limped along. full view Scene from John Smith’s Memoirs One of Robert Vaughan’s scenes for John Smith’s memoirs (1624), showing Smith taking Powhatan by the scalp. Many scenes are more notable for their drama than their accuracy. (Library of Congress) full view Pocahontas Pleading For John Smith’s Life John Smith was an accomplished traveler and soldier by the time he took control of Jamestown in 1608. His stories of exploits include several rescues by beautiful women, but the incident in which Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, pleaded for his life has been substantiated. (Library of Congress) With hopes of a swift bonanza dashed, the London merchants decided to alter their strategy. They would salvage the venture by attracting fresh capital; then they would recoup their high initial costs by recruiting new settlers who could produce staple products suited for export—perhaps grapes, sugar, cotton, or tobacco. In 1609, amid much fanfare, the company began to sell seven-year joint stock options to the English public. Subscribers could invest money or, as “adventurers of person,” they could sign on for service in Virginia according to their needed skills. Company officials promised them at least a hundred acres of land when their investment matured in 1616. Surprising numbers responded, including Stephen Hopkins. In June 1609, he joined another 500 men and 100 women departing for the Chesapeake. In retrospect, Hopkins and the other passengers of the Sea Adventure who were shipwrecked on Bermuda appear to have been the lucky ones. When the fleet’s remaining vessels arrived at Jamestown, they found insufficient supplies to feed the hundreds of additional colonists. Moreover, the first round of settlers had failed to discover a profitable staple crop. Even the local tobacco proved “poor and weake, and of a byting tast.” The settlers, now numbering 500, depended heavily on the Native Americans for food, and Powhatan’s Confederacy proved increasingly unwilling and unable to supply it. As one Indian told them, “We know that you cannot live” without “our harvest” and the “reliefe we bring you.” Indeed, most of the settlers did not live. In a grim “starving time,” caused in large part by drought conditions, the ill-equipped newcomers scavenged for berries and bark. Extreme hunger drove a few to cannibalize the dead before dying themselves. By the spring of 1610, seven of every eight people had died; scarcely 60 remained alive. In June, these survivors abandoned their ghost town altogether. But they had scarcely set sail for England when they encountered three long-overdue ships entering Chesapeake Bay with fresh supplies and 300 new settlers. Reluctantly, they agreed to try again. More years of harsh discipline, Indian warfare, and scarce resources followed. The beleaguered colony continued to face mismanagement and factionalism, underfunding and misinformation, inexperience, and poor communication. But another force—a severe dry spell—also conspired against the hapless newcomers. Indian and English crops alike shriveled from 1607 through 1612. full view Armor from Jamestown The earliest English settlers to Virginia may have come with insufficient food and without enough practical tools, but they did supply themselves with arms and armor. This breastplate was recovered from James Fort, and is a reminder of England’s rivalry with Spain for territory in the Americas. (APVA) Relief came from an unexpected quarter: Nicotiana tabacum, or Orinoco tobacco, a variety of tobacco grown in parts of the West Indies and South America. John Rolfe and his pregnant wife had endured the wreck of the Sea Adventure with Stephen Hopkins in 1609. Their child died in infancy, and Mrs. Rolfe perished shortly after reaching Jamestown in 1610. But her husband survived and promptly joined in the colonists’ search for a viable staple. He found PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 62 ${bmicon} that local Indians cultivated an indigenous tobacco plant, Nicotiana rustica. Rolfe, a smoker himself, wondered whether better-tasting varieties might also prosper in Virginia soil. Within a year, Rolfe had somehow managed to obtain seeds for the sweet-flavored Orinoco tobacco. This “bewitching vegetable” had captured English taste in the previous generation. Sales of this New World product in England sent profits to the Spanish crown and prompted James I to launch a vigorous antismoking campaign in 1604. In his tract titled Counterblaste to Tobacco, the king condemned inhaling the noxious weed as a dangerous, sinful, and enfee-bling custom, “lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, daungerous to the Lungs.” But by 1612, Rolfe’s patch of West Indian tobacco was flourishing. The next year, he grew a sample for export. Desperate settlers and impatient London investors were delighted by Rolfe’s successful experiment with tobacco. Production of the leaf soared at Jamestown, to the neglect of all other pursuits. full view 1659 Tobacco Company Advertisement 1659 Tobacco Company Advertisement, lauding it as a medical ‘panacea.’ Tobacco became one of the leading cash crops of the early colonies. (Library of Congress) full view Tobacco Growing in a Field Tobacco Growing in a Field (Photodisc, Inc.) The colony’s tobacco exports rose exponentially from 2000 pounds in 1615 to 20,000 in 1617, 40,000 in 1620, 60,000 in 1622, 500,000 in 1626, and an astounding 1,500,000 pounds in 1629. That year, saturated markets and stiff taxes led to slumping prices. Profits declined in ensuing decades. A dubious luxury good rather than a crucial resource, tobacco nevertheless could yield a profit. Thus authorities in England began to regulate its sale to raise customs revenues and reduce foreign competition. The island of Bermuda also became a tobacco colony after 1613. A decade later, the crown gave Virginia and Bermuda a virtual monopoly on English tobacco sales, lowering import duties for the two colonies when they shipped tobacco to England and aiding them further by imposing limits on the same product from Spanish America. The Virginia Company went out of its way to assure its colonists access to established English freedoms. During Virginia’s initial tobacco boom, recently starving settlers saw handsome profits within reach. Because land was plentiful at first (a novelty for the English), the only limitations to riches were the scarcity of workers and the related high cost of labor. Any farmer who could hire half a dozen field hands could increase his profits fivefold, quickly earning enough to obtain more land and import more servants. The company transported several shiploads of apprentices, servants, and London street children to the labor-hungry colony. When a Dutch captain delivered 20 enslaved blacks in 1619, settlers eagerly purchased these first Africans to arrive in English Virginia. They also bid on the 100 women who disembarked the same year, shipped from England by the company to be sold as wives and workers. Still, men continued to outnumber women more than three to one for decades to come. full view First House of Burgesses Meeting in Jamestown The first English legislative assembly in the New World, the Virginia House of Burgesses, first met in 1619 in the Jamestown church. Business included the passage of several bills, including laws regulating church attendance. (Library of Congress) To encourage English migration further, the Virginia Company offered transportation and 50 acres to tenants, promising them ownership of the land after seven years of work. Men who paid their own way received 50 acres and an additional “headright” of 50 acres for each household member or laborer they transported. The Virginia Company went out of its way to assure its colonists access to such established English freedoms as the right to trial by jury and to a representative form of government. The company established civil courts controlled by English common law. It also instructed its appointed governor to summon an annual assembly of elected burgesses—the earliest representative legislature in North America. First convened in 1619, the House of Burgesses wasted no time in affirming its commitment to fundamental English rights. The governor, the house said, could no longer impose taxes without the assembly’s consent. To attract additional capital and people, the Virginia Company also began awarding patents (legal charters) to private groups of adventurers “to erect and build a town and settle and plant dyvers inhabitants there for the advancement of the general plantation of the country.” The newcomers would live independently on a large tract, with only minimal control from the governor and his council. Between 1619 and 1623, the company granted more than 40 such CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 63 ${bmicon} patents, with the exact location of each settlement to be determined on the colonists’ arrival. Two such small colonies originated among English Protestants who were living in exile in Holland because their separatist beliefs did not allow them to profess loyalty to the Church of England. The first group of 180, based in Amsterdam, obtained a patent late in 1618 and departed for America on a crowded ship. Winter storms, sickness, and a shortage of fresh water destroyed the venture; scarcely 50 survivors straggled ashore in Virginia. A second group of English Separatists, residing in the smaller Dutch city of Leiden, fared better. Most had migrated to Holland from northeast England in 1608, led by William Brewster, who had often hosted their prayer meetings at his home in Nottinghamshire. This group openly opposed the hierarchy, pomp, and inclusiveness of the Church of England. Instead, they wanted to return to early Christianity, where small groups of worthy (and often persecuted) believers formed their own communities of worship. After a decade in Holland, many of them had wearied of the foreign culture. Dismayed by the effect of worldly Leiden on their children, they also sensed, correctly, that warfare would soon break out in Europe. A few families pushed for a further removal to America, despite the obvious dangers of such a journey. Possible destinations ranged from Guiana in South America to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. Dutch entrepreneurs suggested the Hudson River. But in the end, still loyal to England, the Separatists decided to use a patent granted by the Virginia Company to a group of English capitalists. On the negative side, they had to work for these investors for seven years. They also had to take along outsiders who did not share their beliefs: paying passengers, as well as artisans assigned to the venture. On the positive side, they received financial support from backers who paid to rent a ship. Moreover, instead of having their daily affairs controlled from London, they could elect their own leader and establish civil authority as they saw fit. In short, they had the power to govern themselves. In September 1620, after costly delays, 35 members of the Leiden congregation and additional Separatists from England departed from Plymouth, along with other passengers (including the family of Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins). They were crowded aboard the Mayflower, a 160-ton vessel converted from the wine trade, and bound for Virginia. But a stormy two-month crossing brought them to Cape Cod, in modern-day Massachusetts, no longer considered part of the Virginia Company’s jurisdiction. Already sickly from their long journey, they feared pressing south with winter closing in. They decided to disembark and establish their Plymouth Plantation, having signed a compact aboard the Mayflower binding them together in a civil community. William Bradford, the chronicler and longtime governor of the Plymouth Colony, later recalled their plight: They had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to…. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent…. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness…. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world…. What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? full view Mayflower replica at Plymouth, MA The Mayflower at Plymouth, MA (Photodisc, Inc.) Bradford could scarcely exaggerate the challenge. His own wife drowned (an apparent suicide) shortly after the Mayflower dropped anchor. And by the time the ship departed for its return voyage in April, an illness had swept away half the colonists. When those remaining planted barley and peas, the English seeds failed to take hold. But settlers had abundant fish and wildlife, along with ample Indian corn, and soon reinforcements arrived from England bringing needed supplies. The newcomers also brought a legal patent for the Plymouth colony’s land. With Squanto’s aid, the settlers secured peaceful relations with Massasoit’s villages. When survival for another winter seemed assured, they invited Massasoit and his followers to join in a three-day celebration of thanksgiving so that, according to one account, all might “rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 64 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Colonization Then and Now You may not be set to blast off yet, but lots of people are ready. Before the first space shuttle lifted off a generation ago, a Tucson engineer named Keith Henson had formed the L–5 Society for people eager to live beyond the earth. By 2000 the Hilton Hotel chain was beginning to plan stays in space. Scientists talk hopefully of launching settlers on an eight-month voyage to Mars by October 2007, when Earth comes closest to the Red Planet’s orbit. A private advocacy group called the Mars Society is already conducting practice expeditions in the Arctic. Space attracts Americans in part because colonization played such a large part in our own beginnings. The “ships” look different, but basic issues remain the same. Motivation, for instance, may spring from scientific fascination, social necessity, or a desire for material success. “It’s raining gold,” Henson observed about space opportunities back in 1978, “and we’re trying to figure out how to get a bucket.” And what of saving souls? Because strange encounters between human beings proved a crucial aspect of earth-bound colonization, our Star Trek imaginings often turn on confrontations with life forms like our own. Will we be the colonizers or the colonized? Will we save the extraterrestrials or be saved by them? Financing remains crucial too. European governments once debated the proper mix of public and private funds to support colonization and argued the costs and benefits of each successive venture. They also developed new ways, such as joint stock companies, for mobilizing the capital to cover huge start-up costs and to spread enormous risks. U.S.–Russian competition fueled the initial space race, but resources dried up with the end of the Cold War. An elaborate 1989 proposal to put Americans on Mars fell through because the 30-year price tag approached half a trillion dollars. Hoping to spread costs, 16 nations are now cooperating to complete the International Space Station by 2006. But will the first space colonies orbit close to Earth, inhabit the nearby moon, or travel much further to Mars, a planet with its own atmosphere? Bret Drake, head of mission studies at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, believes that by 2025, “we could have human exploration of Mars being conducted routinely.” In the twenty-first century, as in the seventeenth, the progression from initial landings to lasting colonization has a logic, a timetable, and a price tag of its own. And no one can predict the outcome in advance. Last time, successful colonies more than paid for themselves by providing crucial resources for their mother country—at least until they sought independence. Space colonies, like the overseas colonies, may well become self-sufficient. After much costly trial and error, they may even send vital supplies of minerals and food back to Earth. A quarter century ago, planetary scientist T. A. Heppenheimer wrote Colonies in Space: A Factual and Comprehensive Account of the Prospect for Human Colonization of Space (1977). He predicted that in the weightless, sun-filled environment of an orbiting colony, “It is entirely reasonable to plan to grow grain in the space farm at a rate of 850 pounds per acre per day.” Heppenheimer may well be exaggerating, to make the challenge of launching a colony appear more plausible. In 1600 English propagandist Richard Hakluyt was doing the same thing. To most seventeenth-century Europeans, overseas settlement sounded quite unreasonable—intriguing to fantasize and debate about, but dangerous to undertake. Still, for thousands of people, overseas settlement became their life. Some argue that colonization may happen again, sooner than we think. If so, who will go into space and under what conditions? Will we depart voluntarily or be forced to move? Will we go with our family and like-minded friends, or will we leave them behind and migrate with strangers? Will some economic or military elite lead the way, or will misfits and dissenters be the first aboard? Will we stay in close touch and plan to return, or will we endure in remote isolation, telling stories of the old country to our children? After more than a generation of costly colonization attempts, England still had little to show for its efforts when Charles I inherited the throne in 1625. Then two forces prompted rapid change: positive publicity about America and negative developments at home. John Smith, long a key promoter of overseas settlement, drew inspiration from the early efforts at Jamestown, Plymouth, and Bermuda. His book The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England and the Summer Isles (1624) predicted future success for these regions. Smith’s volume heralding overseas adventures went through six printings in eight years. Ironically, however, its popularity depended in large measure on a combination of worsening conditions in England—religious, political, and economic—that suddenly gave such literature a broad appeal. European Christianity had taken a number of different forms since the religious upheaval sparked by Luther a century earlier. The first Protestants had demanded a reformation of the Roman Catholic church and had questioned papal authority over Christians. Now many non-Catholic English worshippers doubted whether the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church) had gone far enough toward rejecting the beliefs and practices of Rome. They lamented what they saw as the church’s bureaucratic hierarchy, ornate rituals, and fail- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 65 ${bmicon} ure to enforce strict observance of the Christian Sabbath each Sunday. They scoffed at the gaudy vestments of Anglican bishops, elaborate church music, and other trappings of worship unjustified by biblical Scripture. Instead, they praised the stark simplicity that John Calvin had brought to his church in Geneva. As English Calvinists grew in number, their objections to the Church of England increased. They protested that the Anglican Church, like the Catholic Church, remained inclusive in membership rather than selective. They argued for limiting participation to the devout rather than assuming general access for all. They accused the Church of England of corruption and argued that it should be independent and self-governing rather than tied to the monarchy. This keen desire for further cleansing and purity, so common to reformers, spurred the movement known as Puritanism. Some of the most radical members of this broad religious coalition (including Bradford and the Plymouth pilgrims) became known as Separatists because they were committed to an extreme position: complete separation from what they saw as the corrupt Church of England. But many more Puritans (including most of the reformers who migrated to Massachusetts Bay) resisted separation. They hoped to stay technically within the Anglican fold while taking increased control of their own congregations—a practice known as congregationalism. Unwilling to conform to practices that offended them, these nonseparating Congregationalists remained determined to save the Anglican Church through righteous example, even if it meant migrating abroad for a time to escape persecution and demonstrate the proper ways of a purified Protestant church. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 66 ${bmicon} An emphasis on instructive preaching by informed leaders lay at the heart of the Puritan movement. Translation of scripture from Latin and its publication into everyday languages the people spoke or read, using the newly invented printing press, had been a central theme of the Reformation. An improved English translation of the Bible in 1611, known as the King James version, provided further access to scripture for all who could read or listen. But James and his bishops, realizing that a “priesthood of all believers” threatened their power, moved to control who could preach and what they could say. A 1626 law prohibited preaching or writing on controversial religious topics such as the conduct of the clergy, the nature of church hierarchy, and the interpretation of Scripture. “There should be more praying and less preaching,” wrote one royal supporter, “for much preaching breeds faction, but much praying causes devotion.” Such laws and sentiments only strengthened Puritans’ arguments that the religious and political establishment had no interest in allowing people full access to God’s word. Why else would the elite encourage sports and recreation on the Sabbath rather than restricting the Lord’s Day to religious study and devotion? Puritans believed that the sermon, not the communion sacrament (in which bread and wine signify the presence of the crucified Christ), should form the center of the Christian worship service. Their churches resembled lecture halls, emphasizing the pulpit more than the altar. In preaching, Puritans stressed a “plain style” that all listeners could understand. Moreover, they urged listeners to play an active role in their faith—to master reading and engage in regular study and discussion of scripture. In response to mounting public interest in these practices, Puritan ministers intensified their preaching and published their sermons. In effect, they dared authorities to silence them. Reprisals came swiftly, led by William Laud, bishop of London, whom Charles I elevated to Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Laud instructed all preachers to focus their remarks on biblical passages and avoid writing or speaking about controversial religious matters. The bishop’s persecution of Puritan leaders who appeared to disobey these orders only broadened their movement at a time when the king himself was arousing Protestant suspicions. In 1625 Charles I had married Henrietta Maria, Catholic sister of the French king, and had granted freedom of worship to English Catholics, disturbing a wide array of Protestants in the realm. When the House of Commons refused to approve finances for his policies, he arrested its leaders and disbanded Parliament in 1629. He governed on his own for 11 years by levying taxes without parliamentary approval. As England’s church grew more rigid and its monarchy more controlling, the nation’s economy also took a CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 67 ${bmicon} turn for the worse. Rents and food costs had risen more rapidly than wages, and workers paid dearly. Jobs grew more scarce after 1625, and several years later, unemployed workers staged local revolts. In 1629 entrepreneurs who viewed New England as a potential opportunity teamed up with disaffected Puritans to obtain a charter for a new entity: the Massachusetts Bay Company. Through a generation of costly trial-and-error experiments, the English had amassed great expertise in colonization. And given the worsening conditions at home, especially among the Puritan faithful, proposals for overseas settlement attracted widespread attention. During the next dozen years, more than 70,000 people left England for the New World. Two-thirds of them sailed to the West Indies, attracted by the prospect of a warmer climate and a longer growing season. But a large contingent of Puritans (many from the eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex) embarked from England for the new Massachusetts Bay colony, adjacent to the Plymouth settlement. A loophole in the king’s grant permitted them to take the actual charter with them and to hold their company meetings in America. This maneuver took them out from under the usual control of London investors and let them turn the familiar joint stock structure into the framework for a self-governing colony. In 1629 five vessels anchored at Salem. Three years earlier, an advance party had established a post there “for such as upon the account of religion would be willing to begin a foreign plantation.” full view Page from The New England Primer The most popular vehicles for educating youth in the colonies were primers, which incorporated reading, writing, and math lessons with the scripture. In The New England Primer, each letter is associated with a person or event from the Bible, and reading lessons came in the form of prayers and scripture. (New York Public Library) In England, meanwhile, a Suffolk squire named John Winthrop, whose Puritan commitment had cost him his government post, assumed leadership of the Massachusetts Bay Company. “God will bringe some heavy Affliction upon this lande,” he predicted to his wife, but the Lord “will provide a shelter & a hidinge place for us and others.” In exchange, God would expect great things from these chosen people, as from the Old Testament Israelites. “We are entered into covenant with him for this work,” Winthrop told his companions aboard the Arbella en route to America in 1630. Winthrop laid out this higher Calvinist standard in a memorable shipboard sermon titled “A Model of Christian Charity.” The values that others merely profess, he explained, “we must bring into familiar and constant practice,” sharing burdens, extending aid, and demonstrating patience. “For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one,” regardless of social rank. If we fail, he warned, “the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.” Far from hiding in obscurity, dedicated Puritans must set a visible example for the rest of the world. Winthrop’s listeners understood the biblical reference to Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:14) when he concluded, “We shall be as a city upon a hill.” The Arbella was one of 17 ships that brought more than 1000 English people to New England in 1630. Choosing Winthrop as governor, the newcomers established Boston and laid out counties with names recalling their homeland: Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. By 1634, English arrivals totaled 4000. By the time civil war erupted in England eight years later, nearly 20,000 people had made the journey, eager to escape the religious persecution and denial of parliamentary rights that inflamed partisans against the Royalist forces of Charles I. Whole congregations migrated with their ministers; other people (more than 20 percent) crossed as servants. But most came as independent families with young children. On average, of every 100 newcomers, roughly half PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 68 ${bmicon} were adults (30 men to 20 women); the other half were all below age 18, divided about evenly between boys and girls. full view Colonial Families - Adult and Child Reading This picture shows a common scene in early New England family life: A child learns to read with the help of an elder male family member. Notice the adult-like features of the child and apparent advanced age of the adult. (New York Public Library) Earlier settlers traded food, lodging, and building materials to fresh arrivals in exchange for textiles, tools, money, and labor. When new groups of church members wanted to establish a village, they applied for land to the General Court, a legislature made up of representatives elected from existing towns. By 1640, English settlements dotted the coast and had cropped up inland along the Connecticut River, where smallpox had decimated the Indians in 1633. There, English outposts rose at Hartford and Springfield, where English traders hoped to attract furs away from the French and Dutch. The sheer number of land-hungry settlers drove this rapid expansion. So did friction among newcomers, who competed for scarce resources and complained about price controls and other economic constraints intended to impose civic order. In his initial call to “work as one,” Winthrop had worried that migrants would neglect the duties of spiritual regeneration. However, the sharpest dissents came from zealous people who feared that the religious experiment had not gone far enough. Challenging authority lay at the heart of radical Protestantism, for its practitioners stressed inner conviction and personal belief over outward conformity and deference to wealth and status. The more seriously New England’s believers took their “errand into the wilderness,” the more contentious they became about the proper ways to fulfill God’s covenant. Like the biblical Hebrews before them, the Puritans—self-appointed saints—believed that God had chosen them for a special mission in the world. The Almighty, they believed, would watch carefully, punish harshly, and reward mightily. Inevitably, some devout people, raised to question careless ministers or excessive hierarchy, continued to advocate dissenting beliefs in New England. Not everyone accepted the idea that Puritans should dominate Indians or that women should defer to men. Roger Williams, a recent graduate of Cambridge University, and Anne Hutchinson, the talented eldest daughter of an English minister, stand out as two of the earliest and most effective challengers to leadership in the Massachusetts Bay colony. When Williams arrived in Boston, his Separatist leanings angered Bay Colony authorities, who still hoped to reform the Anglican Church rather than renounce it. But Williams’s other contentions proved equally distressing. The young minister argued that civil authorities, inevitably corrupt, had no right to judge religious matters. He even pushed for an unprecedented separation of church and state—to protect the church. He also contended that the colony’s land patent from the king had no validity. The settlers, he said, had to purchase occupancy rights from the Native Americans. Unable to silence him, irate magistrates banished Williams from Massachusetts Bay in the winter of 1635. Moving south, he took up residence among the Narragansett Indians and built a refuge for other dissenters, which he named Providence. Still subject to arrest in Boston, he sailed home from New Amsterdam in 1643. Once back in London, he persuaded leaders of England’s rising Puritan Revolution to grant a charter (1644) to his independent colony of Rhode Island. A more explosive popular challenge centered on Anne Hutchinson, who had grown up in England with a strong will, a solid theological education, and a thirst for spiritual perfection. She married a Lincolnshire textile merchant and took an active part in religious discussions while also bearing 15 children. When her Puritan minister, John Cotton, departed for New England, Hutchinson claimed that God, in a private revelation, had instructed her to follow. In 1634 the family migrated to Boston, where Hutchinson attended Cotton’s church and hosted religious discussions in her home. The popularity of these weekly meetings troubled authorities, as did her argument that the “Holy Spirit illumines the heart of every true believer.” Hutchinson downplayed outward conformity—modest dress or regular church attendance— Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 69 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Anne Bradstreet: “The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America” The Puritans who migrated to America stressed literacy and education as part of their faith. They wrote down a great deal, and they left extensive records for posterity. But most of their sermons, diaries, and chronicles were drafted by men; few documents about the thoughts and experiences of New England’s early migrants come from the pens of women. The poems and reflections of Anne Bradstreet provide a notable exception. “Here you may find,” she reminded her children shortly before her death in 1672, “what was your living mother’s mind.” The lifelong poet was born Anne Dudley in Lincolnshire, England, in 1612. She already “found much comfort in reading the Scriptures” by age seven. “But as I grew to be about 14 or 15,” she recalled, “I found my heart more carnal, and … the follies of youth took hold of me. About 16, the Lord … smote me with the smallpox … and again restored me.” That same year, she married Simon Bradstreet, the son of a minister. Two years later, despite a frail constitution, she sailed for Massachusetts Bay with her husband and her father (both future governors of the colony) aboard the Arbella. Having left England at age 18, Anne Bradstreet was alert to all that seemed strange and different in America. When I “came into this country,” she related, “I found a new world and new manners.” The young couple set up housekeeping in the town of Cambridge, on the Charles River, but life was difficult at first. Anne suffered from “a lingering sickness like a consumption.” Moreover, “It pleased God to keep me a long time without a child, which was a great grief to me and cost me many prayers and tears.” Finally, she bore a son in 1633, and seven more children followed. As the family grew and moved about, “Mistress Bradstreet” wrote poems and meditations, although detractors hinted that she should put down her quill pen and take up a sewing needle. “If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,” she lamented in rhyme; “They’l say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.” Nevertheless, a book of her poems was published in England in 1650, hailing her as “The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America.” As a writer, Anne Bradstreet was more interested in spiritual improvement than literary grace. “Many speak well,” she observed, “but few can do well.” Throughout life, she followed a simple creed: “There is no object that we see; no action that we do; no good that we enjoy; no evil that we feel or fear, but we may make some spiritual advantage” of it. Nothing epitomizes this belief more clearly than “some verses upon the burning of our house, July 10th, 1666.” Bradstreet composed the lines on an unburned scrap of paper as she groped to make sense of the calamity. The poem helped her to mourn her loss, take stock of her blessings, and renew her faith. In part, it reads, In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow neer I did not look, I waken’d was with thundring nois And Piteous shreiks of dreadfull voice…. I, starting up, the light did spye, And to my God my heart did cry…. Then coming out beheld a space The flame consume my dwelling place. And, when I could no longer look, I blest his Name that gave and took, That layd my goods now in the dust: Yea so it was, and so ‘twas just…. When by the Ruines oft I past, My sorrowing eyes aside did cast, And here and there the places spye Where oft I sate, and long did lye. Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest; There lay that store I counted best: My pleasant things in ashes lye, And them behold no more shall I…. Then streight I gin my heart to chide, And did thy wealth on earth abide? Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust, The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?…. Thou hast a house on high erect Fram’d by that mighty Architect…. The world no longer let me Love, My hope and Treasure lyes Above. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 70 ${bmicon} as a route to salvation. Instead, she stressed direct communication with God’s inner presence as the key to individual forgiveness. Most Puritans sought a delicate balance in their lives between respected outer works and inner personal grace. Hutchinson tipped that balance dangerously toward the latter. To the colony’s magistrates, especially Winthrop, such teaching pointed toward dangerous anarchy—more dangerous when it came from a woman. These officials labeled Hutchinson and her followers as Antinomians (from anti, “against,” and nomos, “law”). But the vehement faction grew, attracting merchants who chafed under economic restrictions, women who questioned men’s domination of the church, and young adults who resented the strict authority of their elders. By 1636, this religious and political coalition had gained enough supporters to turn Winthrop out as governor. Facing complete overthrow, members of the Puritan establishment fought back. They divided the opposition to win reelection for Winthrop, they established Harvard College to educate ministers who would not stray from the fold, they staged a flurry of trials for contempt and sedition (inciting resistance to lawful authority), and they made a special example of Hutchinson herself. After a two-day hearing in which she defended herself admirably, Winthrop sentenced his antagonist to banishment as “a woman not fit for our society.” Forced into exile, Hutchinson moved first to Rhode Island and later to the vicinity of Dutch settlements near the Hudson. There she and most of her family were killed by Indians in 1643. A river and a parkway in Bronx, New York, still bear her name. Immigration to New England slowed during the 1640s because of religious and political upheaval at home. In England, Puritans and supporters of Parliament formed an army and openly challenged royal authority during the English Civil War. After seizing power, these revolutionaries beheaded Charles I in 1649, abolished monarchy, and proclaimed England a republican Commonwealth. The dramatic struggle preoccupied Puritans in England. Those across the ocean also took heart when they heard news of events at home favorable to their cause. Nevertheless, word that English Puritans had established a revolutionary commonwealth in their absence shook the settlers’ faith that their venture remained at the center of God’s plan. They struggled to square such sweeping developments in England with Winthrop’s earlier assurance that the eyes of God and humankind would be fixed on New England. Making matters worse, religious and economic controversies intensified as the next generation quickly came of age. Needing new farmland and intellectual breathing room, fresh congregations began to “hive off ” from the original settlements like swarms of bees. By 1640, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut each had at least four new towns that would provide the beginnings for independent colonies. CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 71 ${bmicon} But the northeastern forest was not an empty wilderness, any more than the Chesapeake tidewater, the Florida interior, or the mesas of New Mexico had been. As the Hutchinsons discovered, newcomers who pushed inland were co-opting the land of longtime residents. Pressure on New England’s Native Americans erupted in armed conflict in the Pequot War of 1637, at the height of the Antinomian Crisis. The neighboring Pequot Indians near the mouth of the Connecticut River had been English allies for several years, and a recent smallpox epidemic had weakened them dramatically. But Winthrop, whose son was leading a settlement effort in the area, fanned fears that the Pequots “would cause all the Indians in the country to join to root out all the English.” Recruiting Narragansett and Mohegan Indians to the English side, the colonists unleashed all-out war against the Pequots. The campaign culminated in a dawn raid on a stockaded Pequot town that sheltered noncombatants. The invaders torched the village (at Mystic, Connecticut) and shot or put to the sword almost all who tried to escape. Some 400 Indian men, women, and children died. The Puritans’ Indian allies, accustomed to campaigns of capture, adoption, and ritual torture, were shocked by the wholesale carnage. English warfare, they protested, “is too furious, and slaies too many men.” Chastened by this intimidating display of terror and weakened by recurrent epidemics, the tribes of southern New England negotiated away much of their land over the next generation, trading furs to the expanding colonists and seeking to understand their perplexing ways. Having gained the upper hand, the Bible-reading English made gestures to convert their Native American neighbors. Whether the Indians were descended from the Lost Tribe of Israel, as scholars suggested, Puritans believed that “saving the heathen” would almost certainly help them raise funds in London. It would also demonstrate England’s zeal to compete with the Catholic Spanish and French in converting souls to Christ. Enthusiastic about these possibilities, the Massachusetts General Court took steps to encourage missionary work. It forbade the worship of Indian gods, mandated the religious and social conversion of local tribes, and set aside land for “praying towns” to encourage “the Indians to live in an orderly way amongst us.” On the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Reverend Thomas Mayhew, Jr., converted a man named Hiacoomes, who in turn converted several Wampanoag sachems during a 1645 epidemic. In Roxbury, another minister, John Eliot, created a 1200-page Indian Bible. And in Cambridge, officials at Harvard, committed by their charter to the “education of the English and Indian youth of this Country,” erected a well-publicized Indian College. On Chesapeake Bay, settlers’ relations with the Indians remained strained at best during the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1608, in an effort to secure the support of Indian leadership, the English performed an elaborate ceremony granting a scarlet cloak and a copper crown to Chief Powhatan. But two years later, suspicious that he was harboring runaway colonists, the English burned the nearest Indian villages and unthinkingly destroyed much-needed corn. One Indian woman leader, taken as a captive, watched English soldiers throwing her children in the river and shooting them in the head before she herself was stabbed to death. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 72 ${bmicon} For both sides, hopes of reconciliation rose briefly in 1614 with the match between Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, and John Rolfe, the prominent widower who had introduced tobacco. But the marriage proved brief; Pocahontas died in England three years later, after bearing one child. If leaders intended the wedding alliance as a diplomatic gesture toward peace, it did little to curtail the settlers’ bitterness over their lingering dependence on Indian supplies. For their part, the Native Americans resented the encroaching tobacco fields and belligerent tactics of their arrogant neighbors. Powhatan’s death in 1618 brought to power his more militant younger brother, Opechancanough, the leader of the Pamunkey tribe. His encounters with the English had been frequent and unfriendly. John Smith had even taken him captive at gunpoint to extort food supplies. By 1618, the English tobacco crop was booming, and more newcomers were arriving annually. Over the next three years, 42 ships brought 3500 people to the Chesapeake colony. The influx disheartened the Indians, and Opechancanough and his followers in the Powhatan Confederacy sought ways to end the mounting intrusion. Briefly, disease seemed to work in the Indians’ favor. Immigrants who made the long sea voyage with poor provisions often fell ill in the swampy and unhealthy environment of Jamestown. By 1622, the colony’s inhabitants were dying almost as rapidly as newcomers arrived. Sickness had carried off 3000 residents in the course of only three years. Opechancanough sensed a chance to deliver the finishing blow. He planned a sudden and coordinated offensive against all the settler communities stretched out along the lower James River. On March 22, 1622, his forces attacked the English, surprising the outlying settlements and sparing no one. Of the 1240 colonists, nearly 350 lost their lives. Warned by an Indian, Jamestown survived the uprising, but hope for peaceful relations ended. The attack of 1622 launched a ten-year war in which the Indians showed their versatility by capturing muskets and using them as well as or better than the English. full view Native American Population Loss to 1700 Though Native American population loss was widespread during the first two hundred years of contact with Europeans, the highest percentages were generally found in areas that were initially under Spanish control. In addition to the areas shown on this map, population loss in Central America and the West Indies was approximately 80 percent. In London, tales of the disaster fueled opposition to the Virginia Company among disgruntled investors. In 1624 King James annulled the company’s charter, making Virginia a royal colony controlled by the crown. In the colony’s first 17 years, more than 8500 people, almost all of them young, had embarked for the Chesapeake. By 1624, only 15 of every 100 remained alive. The colonists placed a bounty on Opechancanough’s head, but attempts to ambush or poison him failed. The Indian leader lived on, nursing his distrust of the English. In 1644 he inaugurated a second uprising that killed some 500 colonists. But the English settlement had grown too large to eradicate. By this time old age forced the “Great General” to be carried on a litter. When the English finally captured him and brought him to Jamestown in 1646, Opechancanough was too old to walk unassisted. Still, he remained defiant until shot in the back by one of the Englishmen guarding him. After two years of brutal warfare, the Pamunkeys and their allies in the Powhatan Confederacy conceded defeat and submitted to English authority. From then on, they would pay a token annual tribute for the privilege to remain on lands that had once belonged to them. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 73 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 2.2 THE TOUGH CHOICE TO START OVER With the way cleared for expansion, land-hungry English settlers appeared in ever-increasing numbers in Virginia and neighboring Maryland. By 1660, roughly 25,000 colonists lived near the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Maryland, the smaller and the younger of the two English colonies on the Chesapeake, owed its beginnings to George Calvert. In a Protestant country, Calvert rose to become a respected Catholic member of England’s government. He was named the first Baron of Baltimore, in Ireland, in 1625. Calvert had a keen interest in colonization, and he established a short-lived colony of his own in Newfoundland, welcoming all religious groups. But when attacks by the French defeated that scheme, he sought a safer location. Calvert (now Lord Baltimore) had followed events in the Chesapeake, and in 1632 he petitioned Charles I for land there. The king granted him 10 million acres adjacent to Virginia, to be named Maryland in honor of the Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria. The Maryland charter, like the one that had governed the Newfoundland colony, gave the proprietor and his heirs unprecedented personal power, especially in the granting of lands to colonists without limitations based on religious belief. Because Calvert died before the royal charter took effect, his eldest son, the second Lord Baltimore, took charge of the settlement effort. In 1634, the Ark and the Dove carried more than 200 settlers—both Protestants and Catholics—to the new colony. There, they established a capital at St. Mary’s, near the mouth of the Potomac River. With the execution of the king in 1649 and the creation of an anti-Catholic commonwealth in England, the Calvert family provided a haven in Maryland for their coreligionists. However, Catholics never became a majority in the Chesapeake colony. In 1649, Maryland’s assembly passed an Act Concerning Religion, guaranteeing toleration for all settlers who professed a belief in Jesus Christ. This assertion of religious toleration, though limited, proved too broad for many to stomach. In the 1650s supporters of the English Puritan cause seized power in Maryland, repealed the act, and briefly ended the Calverts’ proprietorship. But by 1660, with the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in England, proprietary rule returned to the prosperous farming colony. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 74 ${bmicon} full view MAP 2.4 CULTURES MEET ON THE CHESAPEAKE When the English founded Jamestown in 1607, the numerous tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy controlled a wide region south of the Potomac River. In 1632, King Charles I granted all of Virginia north of the Potomac River to Lord Baltimore for his Maryland colony. This domain, with its capital at St. Mary’s, stretched from the headwaters of the Potomac to the Delaware River. It reached north to 40 degrees (above the current boundary of Maryland), and it included the settlement of New Sweden on the Delaware (1637–1655). By midcentury, European settlement remained confined along main waterways. During half a century, the French, Dutch, and English had all moved to challenge Spanish claims in North America. By 1660, all four of these maritime powers of western Europe had taken aggressive steps to establish permanent footholds on the fringes of the enormous continent. In each instance, the European colonizers benefited first from the presence of knowledgeable Native Americans and then from the sharp decline of those same people through warfare and the onslaught of new diseases. Granted, warfare with foreign invaders and death from unknown diseases had become a part of Native American history in the preceding century. One need only think of the destruction that followed in the path of Hernando de Soto’s expedition through the Southeast. But for the most part, the sixteenth century was an era of intermittent European exploration that was as tentative as it was sweeping. In contrast, the first half of the seventeenth century saw Europeans move from occasional forays to persistent attempts at permanent colonization. As these foreign intruders competed with one another, their tenacious efforts began to yield lasting results. CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 75 ${bmicon} Except for several small pockets on the edges of the continent, Native American societies still held the upper hand. Most had not seen the alien newcomers, learning about them only indirectly, if at all. But on the fringes, stark confrontations had started to occur—small in number but huge in their implications. They involved vastly different languages, lifeways, and beliefs about the world. Confrontations had also begun among the invaders themselves. After all, they represented rival nations and competing versions of the Christian faith. Although it was clear by 1660 that none would withdraw from North America without a fight, it was also clear that no single nation had decisively obtained the upper hand as yet. Spain, France, Holland, and England PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 76 ${bmicon} each had formidable assets in Europe and on the high seas. All had sponsored colonial settlements that had endured for several generations, and each had begun to taste the seductive fruits of empire in America and elsewhere. The English, slowest to become involved in overseas colonization, had caught up with their competitors by 1660. Among European countries, England had proven the most aggressive in forming expansive family-based colonies rather than military garrisons or trading outposts. Elizabeth Hopkins and Anne Hutchinson, embarking from England with their husbands and families, exemplified a migration pattern that included thousands of women. Their presence led to the formation of stable households, especially in New England, where the balance of women and men was most even. Women took an immediate role in crucial aspects of domestic manufacture and production, and their numerous children provided additional hands where labor was in short supply. As a result, by 1660 the population of England’s fledgling North American colonies had already outstripped that of its rivals, and it was growing at an increasing rate. This emerging superiority in numbers was advantageous in the imperial clashes that lay ahead. Acoma Pueblo Located near Highway 40 west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, within the Acoma Indian Reservation, the Acoma Pueblo Visitors’ Center offers guided tours of “Sky City” that leave in vans from the center. Once on top of the 420-foot mesa, visitors can walk the streets of one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in North America. Mission San Luis Park After the state of Florida acquired 50 acres in northwest Tallahassee in 1983, archaeologists excavated the Apalachee Indian town and Spanish mission that existed there in the seventeenth century. Mission San Luis Park, between Rt. 10 and Rt. 90, contains an outdoor museum with reconstructed buildings, exhibits, and guided tours. Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons Museum Overlooking the Wye River near Midland, Ontario, 80 miles north of Toronto on Canada’s Georgian Bay, this reconstructed seventeenth-century Jesuit mission site offers canoe trips and candlelight tours in the summer. The New Netherland Museum and Half Moon Visitor Center Located in Albany, New York, the museum maintains a fullscale replica of Henry Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, which is usually docked at Albany and open for visitors. For information, contact the Main Office at 518-443-1609. Plimoth Plantation www.plimoth.org This living history museum of seventeenth-century Plymouth is located off Route 3 along the coast south of Boston, Massachusetts. It recreates the pilgrim village as it appeared in 1627, with a Wampanoag Indian site nearby. Visit the Mayflower II at State Pier on Water Street. Take a virtual tour of the site at www.plimoth.org. Historic Jamestown www.history.org/nche/www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_james.html At Historic Jamestown you can tour ruins, visit a glass-blowing exhibition, and see excavations of the original fort. Nearby, the Jamestown–Yorktown Foundation runs Jamestown Settlement, with reconstructed ships, fortifications, and Indian dwellings. These sites are seven miles from Williamsburg on Virginia’s Colonial Parkway; they can also be approached by ferry across the James River. All are gearing up for the 400th anniversary in 2007. The link to “Virtual Jamestown” is http://www.history.org/nche/. For recent evidence on the severe seven-year Jamestown drought (1606–1612), visit www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_james.html. Wolstenholme Towne Archaeologists have excavated this palisaded village, located near Jamestown, which was destroyed in the 1622 Indian attack. The site is located at Carter’s Grove Plantation, near Williamsburg. The Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeology Museum next door contains impressive exhibits on English settlement in Virginia. Historic St. Mary’s City The site of Maryland’s first capital lies off Route 5, near the mouth of the Potomac River, in southern Maryland, several hours’ drive from Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington, D.C. Since 1971, an annual summer archaeology field school has worked to excavate additional elements of the town. CHAPTER 2 ###8226; EUROPEAN FOOTHOLDS ON THE FRINGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1600###8211;1660 77 ${bmicon} Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1985). David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989). Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (1996). Alan Taylor, American Colonies (2001). David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992). Amy Turner Bushnell, Situado and Sabana: Spain’s Support System of the Presidio and Mission Provinces of Florida (1994). Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (1991). John H. Hann, A History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (1996). W. Michael Mathes, Vizcaíno and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific Ocean (1968). Jerald T. Milanich, Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians (1999). Denys Delâge, Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600–1664 (1993). W. J. Eccles, France in America (1972). Michael Kammen, Colonial New York: A History (1975). Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (1986). Bruce G. Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (1985). John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (1970). Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (2000). Ivor Noël Hume, The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne, An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey (1994). Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (1982). Alden T. Vaughan, American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia (1975). David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987). William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983). Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (1999). Philip F. Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660 (1984). Alan Heimert and Andrew Delbanco, eds., The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology (1985). Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (1958). Wesley Frank Craven, The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607–1689 (1949). James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (1994). Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975). James R. Perry, The Formation of a Society on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1615–1655 (1990). Helen C. Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia (1989). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter2 To Chapter 2 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 78 ${bmicon}         France and the American Interior       The Spanish Empire on the Defensive       England’s American Empire Takes Shape       Bloodshed in the English Colonies: 1670–1690       Consequences of War and Growth: 1690–1715       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 79 ${bmicon} MARGUERITE MESSIER MADE AN IMPRESSIVE FIGURE ON THE MONTREAL WATERFRONT in April 1704 as she loaded a large canoe. Surrounded by her five children, she worked with her brother, Jean-Michel, to stow food and belongings for their strenuous journey to meet her husband at a new French outpost on the Gulf of Mexico. They were assisted by the guide they had hired to carry them on this daunting wilderness expedition. At 28, Messier had already been married half her life, having wed explorer–trader Pierre-Charles Le Sueur in 1690 when he was 34 and she was only 14. While her husband traveled often and far, she raised their boy and four girls. She was deeply involved, through family ties, in the dramatic changes taking place throughout the vast North American hinterland claimed by France. Messier’s cousin, an adventurous Canadian named Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, had established the French colony of Louisiana near the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1699, and three years later Iberville and his younger brother (Bienville) had started the village of Mobile (near present-day Mobile, Alabama) to serve as the first capital. Messier’s husband had long been active in Canada’s far-flung western fur trade with the Ojibwe and Sioux Indians living near the Great Lakes. In 1700 he had ascended the Mississippi to the Blue Earth River in what is now Minnesota. Two years later he paddled down the Mississippi with minerals and furs and made his way to the new outpost at Mobile. There he constructed a house for his family; then he accompanied Iberville back to France. In 1704, confident about the future success of the Louisiana venture, Le Sueur sent word to his wife in Montreal to attempt the inland journey of nearly 2000 miles to Mobile. He himself departed from France aboard the Pelican for the same destination, hoping to reunite with his family. With the ice gone from the St. Lawrence, Messier and her party set out from Montreal on April 30, 1704, making their way up river and passing through Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. A year later, they reached the outpost at Kaskaskia in southern Illinois. Heat and sickness took their toll as they descended the Mississippi River. Messier’s brother, Jean-Michel, and a daughter, Louise-Marguerite, died in June, two months before the party got to its destination. More bad news awaited them when they finally reached Mobile in August 1705, having covered nearly 2000 miles in 16 months. The voyage of the Pelican had met with disaster. Pierre-Charles Le Sueur had boarded the ship in France, joining missionaries, soldiers, and potential brides recruited to go to Mobile. But at a stopover in Cuba, he had caught yellow fever and died before the ship left Havana. Sixty other passengers also fell ill, and several more died before the immigrants reached Mobile. The town—home to just 160 men and a dozen women—hardly had enough food and shelter for the sickly newcomers, and yellow fever spread quickly. The epidemic swept away 40 residents in two months and decimated nearby Indian villages. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 80 ${bmicon} Still, life at the outpost persisted. Townsmen welcomed the Pelican’s eligible young women, ages 14 to 18, and priests celebrated 13 marriages within the first three weeks. By 1705, when Marguerite Messier arrived from Montreal, new children were being born. Moving into the house her late husband had built, Messier determined to stay on and help the colony endure. She sent instructions back to Canada for friends to sell her property and forward the proceeds to her. Meanwhile, she managed a storehouse for her cousins, Iberville and Bienville who had survived the ordeal of the Pelican, she made a fresh start in the Louisiana colony. Many of the changes that took place in North America during Marguerite Messier’s lifetime occurred within a broad international context. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the English, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Portuguese were caught up in a race to expand and protect their overseas empires, and they were waging the contest on a global scale. Backed by growing economic and military strength at home, the French planted their flag in the West Indies, West Africa, Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. The Dutch, meanwhile, established a settlement at Cape Town in South Africa in 1652 that helped them challenge Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean and the Spice Islands of the East Indies. But expansion in one region often coincided with contraction somewhere else. By the 1670s, Dutch authorities had been forced to withdraw entirely from North America, leaving that arena of commercial and military competition to their rivals. With the departure of the Dutch from North America, the three remaining European powers intensified their competition to control the fringes of the continent. In the East, England expanded the number and size of its coastal colonies, and English port towns multiplied along the Atlantic seaboard. On Chesapeake Bay, Anne Arundel (later Annapolis), became Maryland’s port of entry in 1668. English newcomers also pressed inland along numerous rivers to found trading towns at the “fall line,” the point where falls and rapids provided water power to run grist mills. In the 1670s, a London goldsmith’s son named William Byrd established one such town at the falls of the James River on a site that grew to become Richmond, Virginia. Pushing up from the south, meanwhile, Spain struggled to retain its foothold in Florida and New Mexico and to lay claim to parts of Arizona and Texas as well. New Spanish towns appeared at Albuquerque, El Paso, and Pensacola. Of the three competing powers only France, pressing in from the St. Lawrence Valley, managed to penetrate the interior of the continent extensively. Its government created a string of forts from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico: Detroit, Peoria, and Mobile all came into being under the French flag. But the clash between empires would not be the only dynamic at work throughout the continent in these years. The religious strife among Christians that had marked the previous century in Europe continued in North America. Catholic missionaries labored diligently to recruit Native American converts in Canada, Florida, New Mexico, and numerous points in between. Opposed to such activities, Protestants in the English-speaking colonies remained on the alert for any threat—external or internal, real or imagined—that they could decry as a “popish plot”. It was a term they used frequently to express their continuing hostility toward the Catholic Church and its leader, the pope in Rome. Behind all these tensions, one fundamental question recurred in numerous places during the decades after 1660: Who has the right to govern? The structures of control were tenuous almost everywhere, and dissenters and rebels who felt jealous, excluded, or exploited could openly question the legitimacy of those in charge. In congregations, towns, and whole colonies, challenges to authority arose repeatedly, and often they could only be settled by resort to arms. Disruptions, violence, and sudden death were familiar experiences for thousands of people inhabiting North America during these years. CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 81 ${bmicon} For decades before Marguerite Messier traveled from Montreal to Mobile with her family, the potential wealth of the North American interior had intrigued government ministers in France. If French fur traders based in Canada (known as voyageurs) could explore and map this vast domain, discovering its resources and befriending its Indian inhabitants, France might control some of the continent’s most fertile farmland and keep its extensive natural assets out of the hands of European rivals. If the French could recruit enough Native Americans as loyal allies, they might even threaten the rich mines of the Spanish empire in Mexico and challenge the growing English colonies lying to the east of the Appalachian mountains. But for France to realize such wide ambitions, the French king, Louis XIV, would need to make North American colonization a national priority, and the extent of his commitment remained uncertain. King Louis XIV stood at the center of France’s expanding imperial sphere. Indeed, so much seemed to revolve around him that he became known as the “Sun King.” He had inherited the French throne in 1643, as a child of five, and in 1661, at age 22, he assumed personal control of a realm of 20 million people. During most of his long rule—from 1661 to his death in 1715 at age 77—Louis dominated European affairs. Always a builder of monuments, he expanded the Louvre in Paris and then dazzled the French nobility and clergy with his opulent new palace at Versailles. In religion, the Sun King challenged the authority of the Catholic pope on one hand and suppressed the dissent of French Protestants (known as Huguenots) on the other. In politics, he centralized the monarchy’s power as never before. His administration consolidated the laws of France, strengthened the armed forces, and expanded commerce. As the government ministries grew in strength, they foreshadowed the modern nation-state, regulating industry, promoting road building, and imposing tariffs and taxes. Throughout Louis XIV’s reign, his officials followed a set of policies known as mercantilism. According to this general system, a government stressed economic self-sufficiency and the importance of a favorable balance of trade. By avoiding foreign debts and drawing in precious metals and other resources from its competitors and its own colonies, a state could pay for wars abroad and costly projects at home. The French mercantilist strategy was to exploit labor efficiently and import raw materials cheaply, while exporting expensive manufactured products, such as glassware, wine, silk, and tapestries, in exchange for foreign gold and silver. France’s colonies, like those of Spain and England, were expected to generate much-needed natural resources and to provide eager consumers for the mother country’s manufactured goods. In Paris, finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert emerged as the chief architect of this strategy of aggressive mercantilism. At home he taxed foreign imports, removed domestic trade barriers, and improved internal transportation. Moreover, he reduced worker holidays and outlawed strikes. With an eye toward colonial expansion, Colbert improved France’s ports and created a code to regulate maritime shipping. He expanded the naval fleet and pressed French sailors into its service. Pushing still harder, he organized overseas trading companies and provided insurance for their expensive ventures. In addition, he sanctioned France’s involvement in the African slave trade. Colbert yearned to acquire new territory to increase the empire’s self-sufficiency and keep overseas resources out of enemy hands. To that end, he and his successors encouraged French exploration of North America on an unprecedented scale. The government of Louis XIV assumed direct control over New France (Canada and neighboring Acadia on the Atlantic coast) from a private company in 1663. Colbert hoped to diversify production away from the fur trade and limit settlers from dispersing widely. Therefore, PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 82 ${bmicon} he shipped livestock and tools to help build up the colony’s tenuous agricultural base. To establish the power of the king, Colbert dispatched a military governor general to Quebec, along with shiploads of artisans and indentured servants. To promote domestic life and population growth, the government also transported young single women and announced cash incentives for early marriages and large families. Many of the soldiers sent to protect New France from Iroquois and English threats stayed on to establish farms. On balance, however, Colbert’s plans for a prosperous, well-populated colony failed. The small population of New France—ten thousand by 1680—never grew as rapidly as French imperial strategists desired. The harsh winters and short growing seasons hindered the expansion of agriculture. Also, concerns on the part of the king and his ministers played a role in limiting growth. Colbert worried that too much emigration to Canada could depopulate and thereby weaken France at home. In addition, he tried to make sure that the few whom he sent abroad had “suitable” backgrounds as pious and loyal Catholics. “In the establishment of a country,” he declared, it was important “to plant good seed.” In contrast to the English, the French did not elect to use their overseas colonies as useful havens for social outcasts, political troublemakers, and religious dissidents. This became clear in 1685, when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted French Protestants their legal rights for nearly a century. The king explicitly forbade these dissenters from traveling to France’s colonies. Faced with rising persecution at home, more than 150,000 Huguenots migrated abroad by the early eighteenth century. Several thousand of them found refuge in the new English colonies on America’s Atlantic seaboard. Encouraged by the government of Louis XIV, French Canadian explorers probed steadily across the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River. (They mastered the interior waterways by learning to handle Native American canoes, just as Indian hunters soon learned to ride European horses on the Great Plains.) As early as 1634, some 70 years before Marguerite Messier and her family journeyed through the continental interior, Champlain had sent explorer Jean Nicolet west across Lake Huron to find a route to China. Thinking that Asia might be close at hand, Nicolet even carried a letter of introduction to the Chinese emperor as he paddled through the Straits of Mackinac with his Huron Indian companions. Instead of finding the salt water of the Pacific, they came upon the fresh water of Lake Michigan. They ended up near modern-day Green Bay, Wisconsin. There, Winnebego Indians (today’s Ho-Chunk Nation) told of a river called the “Messisipi.” When they claimed that the mighty waterway led to a distant sea, Nicolet wondered whether it might flow southwest into the Pacific Ocean. Rumors of this river circulated among the French on the Great Lakes for a generation. Finally, in 1673, trader Louis Joliet and his associate Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest from the St. Ignace mission near Mackinac, entered the upper Mississippi via the Wisconsin River. The two men embarked on what Father Marquette described as a “voyage toward New Mexico.” They descended the great stream to the mouth of the Arkansas River, far enough south to suspect that the waterway flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. If it was not an outlet to the Pacific, perhaps the river could still prompt a viable “southern strategy.” That is, it might give France a path to the wealth of New Spain and provide French settlers with access to a warm-water port. “The worst thing about Canada,” Colbert observed from France, is that the St. Lawrence, “being so far to the north, allows ships to enter only during four, five or six months of the year.” The new governor general in Quebec, Comte de Frontenac, moved to exploit these western prospects, making effective use of an experienced young adventurer: René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. In 1673, to secure control of the growing fur trade on the Great Lakes, La Salle erected Fort Frontenac at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. From there, inspired by word of Joliet’s exploits, he and his men pushed west through the Great Lakes to southern Lake Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 83 ${bmicon} full view MAP 3.1 FRANCE IN THE AMERICAN INTERIOR, 1670–1720 Michigan. After carrying their canoes overland to the Illinois River, they erected several forts on that tributary of the Mississippi. These outposts strengthened French trading ties with local Indians and provided a launching point for more exploration. In 1680 one party dispatched by La Salle traveled down the Illinois River to the Mississippi, which the French called the Colbert. Then turning north, they paddled 500 miles against the Mississippi’s strong current all the way to the Falls of St. Anthony: modern-day Minneapolis. Two years later La Salle himself led a contingent of French and Indians south from the Illinois to explore the lower Mississippi. He returned to confirm that the great river indeed emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed the rich land drained by all its tributaries for Louis XIV, naming the entire river basin “Louisiana” after his king. Hindered by poor maps and crude navigational instruments, La Salle miscalculated the location of the mouth of the Mississippi. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 84 ${bmicon} Therefore, when he tried to return by sea, sailing from France with four ships and several hundred colonists, he disembarked on the Texas coast early in 1685, mistakenly believing that he was close to the entrance to the river. Slowly, the entire colonization plan unraveled. When one ship sank near shore, the hapless settlers lost valuable supplies and any hope of relocating. Jealous French lieutenants eventually killed La Salle before he could discern the nature of his mistake and locate the whereabouts of the Mississippi River. Most of the colonists he had brought perished in the Texas wilderness, lost like the English settlers at Roanoke a century before. The French colonizers had overreached themselves. They had failed to find a route to the Pacific, to challenge Spanish power in Mexico, or to establish a southern port. Spread thin by the widening fur trade, French Canadians were in a weak position to repel renewed Iroquois attacks along the St. Lawrence River in the 1680s. Moreover, a strengthened Protestant regime emerged in London with the ascent of William III to the English throne in 1689. This transition set in motion more than 100 years of bitter struggle between Protestant England and Catholic France. In North America, the ideological and military contest of these two superpowers stretched out over several generations. The American conflict began in the Northeast with the outbreak of King William’s War in 1689. In that year the Iroquois, well supplied with English arms, launched raids on the French near Montreal. Governor Frontenac struck back against the Iroquois’ allies, sending separate forces south to terrorize the English frontier. In February 1690, a force of French and Indians traveling on snowshoes attacked the snowbound village of Schenectady, New York. Farther east, other French joined local Abenaki Indians in setting fire to outposts in northern New England. At Fort Loyal (modern Portland, Maine) raiders butchered 100 English men, women, and children after they surrendered and took others captive. Leaving their dead unburied, the survivors fled south toward Salem and Boston in Massachusetts. Many who experienced the attack viewed it as part of a wider design to undo the Reformation and expand the authority of the Catholic Church, led by the pope in Rome. One wrote fearfully, that there must be “a popish design against the Protestant interest in New England as in other parts of the world.” As the frontier war raged on, bitter New Englanders tried unsuccessfully to seize Quebec. In turn, the French Canadians and their Huron allies conducted punishing raids against Iroquois villages. After eight years of bloodshed, King William’s War ended in a stalemate in 1697. The Iroquois realized that staying out of European conflicts would improve their lot. In 1701, therefore, the Iroquois League promised to remain neutral during any future colonial wars between France and England, a pledge they generally honored for more than half a century. The French, having strengthened their position in Canada, could now revive the “southern strategy” of colonization that had so intrigued Colbert and obsessed the adventurer La Salle. As King William’s War closed, a turn in European events opened the door for renewed French efforts in the American heartland. King Carlos II of Spain fell ill without an immedi- CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 85 ${bmicon} ate heir, and the royal courts of Europe competed to determine his successor. Louis XIV, eager to acquire Spain’s European realm and American dominions for France, proposed that his grandson, Philip of Anjou, receive the Spanish crown. But England supported an opposing candidate, so the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714) broke out soon after Carlos died. Even before new hostilities erupted in Europe in 1701, Louis XIV and his ministers took steps to secure French claims in the Gulf of Mexico. Given Spain’s naval dominance throughout the area, the gulf had long been considered a “Spanish Sea” among the rival colonial powers. By renewing La Salle’s plan to create a Louisiana colony, France could strengthen its hand in the impending war over succession to the Spanish throne. A colony on the Gulf of Mexico would provide much more than a southern outlet for the French fur trade; it could serve as a strategic outpost as well. The Spanish had just built a permanent Gulf Coast fortification at Pensacola in western Florida. The French realized that a settlement farther west along the same coast would help them hold onto any new territories in New Spain or the West Indies that might suddenly fall to France through a royal inheritance or a military conquest. Caught up in the same competition, England also saw advantages to establishing a base on the lower Mississippi. Such a post could challenge Spanish and French claims to the gulf region and increase English trade with the Chickasaws and other southern Indians. In 1698 a London promoter quietly made plans to transport a group of Huguenot refugees to the mouth of the Mississippi. Catching wind of this scheme, the French naval minister, Comte de Pontchartrain, organized his own secret expedition to the Gulf of Mexico under an aspiring Canadian officer, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 86 ${bmicon} During King William’s War, Iberville had led the winter raid on Schenectady in 1690 and had later opposed the English at Hudson’s Bay and Newfoundland. Coming from a large and well-connected Montreal family, the Le Moynes, Iberville quickly drew several siblings into the gulf colonization plan, including his teenage brother, Bienville. Iberville and his party sailed for the Gulf of Mexico from the French port of Brest in 1699. Their ship entered the mouth of the Mississippi in time to repel the English expedition at a site on the river still known as English Turn. They also managed to build a fort at nearby Biloxi Bay before returning to France. The two brothers were now well on their way to creating the gulf coast colony that La Salle and his followers had failed to establish. A second voyage let Iberville conduct further reconnaissance of the lower Mississippi. On a third trip, in 1702, he established Fort Louis, near Mobile Bay, giving French traders access to the Choctaw Indians. Young Bienville, placed in charge of Fort Louis, labored to sustain the tiny outpost at Mobile (where the Pelican would arrive in 1704). Iberville himself left to pursue other schemes and died an early death in 1706. Enmeshed at home in the lengthy War of Spanish Succession, France largely ignored its new gulf colony. Epidemics took a heavy toll on the newcomers and an even heavier toll on their Indian neighbors. Sharp divisions separated settlers drawn from Canada and other colonists sent from France. The former had prior wilderness experience, maintained close ties with local Native Americans, and resented the incompetence and haughtiness of newcomers from across the Atlantic. The latter missed the comforts of life in France, complained about the poor living conditions, and looked down on their Canadian counterparts as lacking in education and religious training. However, despite social friction and a chronic lack of supplies from France, the small community at Mobile survived. North of Mobile, additional French posts began to dot the American interior. They reinforced the territorial claims of France and offered increased trade and protection to neighboring Indians. French traders built the village of Peoria on the Illinois River in 1691. Not far away, Catholic missions sprang up at Cahokia (1697) and Kaskaskia (1703). Between these two missions, the French would later erect Fort de Chartres (1719) overlooking the Mississippi in southern Illinois. Further north, the French established two strategic posts at opposite ends of Lake Huron. In 1689, they laid out a garrison where Lake Huron joins Lake Michigan, expanding their foothold there in 1715 with the construction of Fort Michilimackinac. In 1701, they also created a lasting town on the strait (le détroit in French) connecting Lake Erie to Lake Huron. The founder of this outpost—called Detroit—was a Monsieur Cadillac, who foresaw a prosperous future for the village. The powerful Iroquois had pledged their neutrality in 1701, and the new trading post, Cadillac wrote, lay open “to the most distant tribes which surround these vast sweet water seas.” Over two generations, the French had established a solid claim on the American interior. In 1712 the French crown, its resources depleted by a decade of warfare in Europe granted control over Louisiana to a powerful Paris merchant, Antoine Crozat. Drawing Cadillac from Detroit to the Gulf of Mexico to serve as Louisiana’s governor general, Crozat hoped to develop connections to mineral-rich Mexico and to discover precious metals in the Mississippi watershed. But probes on the upper Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Red rivers yielded no easy bonanza. Instead, explorers established three new trading posts among the Indians: Natchitoches on the Red River, Fort Rosalie on the Mississippi (at Natchez), and Fort Toulouse (near modern Montgomery, Alabama) where two streams join to form the Alabama River, flowing southwest to Mobile. When Louis XIV died in 1715, the colonial population of Louisiana stood at scarcely 300 people. But over two generations, the French had established a solid claim on the American interior. Their position was an ongoing challenge to English and Spanish competitors, for the crescent of wilderness outposts arcing north and then east from the Gulf Coast offered a useful network for additional exploration, Indian trade, and military conquest. French control of the Mississippi Valley remained a real possibility until the era of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte nearly a century later. CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 87 ${bmicon} Where as France’s power expanded during Louis XIV’s reign, Spain’s overextended empire continued to weaken. This decline opened the door for Louis (leader of the House of Bourbon) to maneuver his own grandson onto the Spanish throne in 1700 as Philip V. Eventually, the resulting new line of Bourbon monarchs brought much-needed changes to the administration of Spain’s overseas empire. However, these so-called Bourbon reforms took several generations to devise and implement. Meanwhile, Spanish colonizers struggled to defend vast territorial claims that spread—on paper—from the Gulf of California to the Florida peninsula. In its remote colonies of New Mexico and Florida, Spain had weak imperial oversight at best. Local administration often proved corrupt, and communication with officials in Spain remained slow and cumbersome. For several generations, the Indian majority had resented the harsh treatment and strange diseases that came with colonial contact. Now, cultural disruptions and pressures from hostile Indian neighbors fanned the flames of discontent. In the late seventeenth century, a wave of Native American rebellions swept the northern frontier of New Spain. The largest and most successful revolt took place along the upper Rio Grande. There, Pueblo Indians from dozens of separate communities (or pueblos) united in a major upheaval in August 1680. They murdered 21 of the 40 friars serving in New Mexico, ransacked their churches, and killed more than 350 settlers. After laying siege to Santa Fe, the rebels drove the remaining Spanish colonists and their Christian Indian allies south out of the province and kept them away for more than a decade. Several thousand refugees ended up at El Paso del Norte, a crossing point on the Rio Grande where the Franciscans had constructed a mission in 1659. These stunned survivors, at what is now El Paso, soon began questioning Indian informants to find an explanation for the fearsome rebellion they had just endured. No single answer existed for the rebellion’s source since diverse pressures combined to ignite the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In retrospect, several factors, stretching back over decades, stand out clearly as providing fuel for the fire. First, a severe drought beginning in 1666 had inflicted a five-year famine with long-lasting effects on the peoples of New Mexico. Second, around the same time, neighboring Apaches and Navajos stepped up their hostilities against the small colonial population and the numerous Pueblo Indians who had been linked with the Spanish over several generations. The attackers were embittered by the continuing Spanish slave raids that took Indian captives to work in the Mexican silver mines. In retaliation these raiding parties, riding stolen Spanish horses, killed livestock and seized scarce food. When Spanish soldiers proved unable to fend off the hit-and-run attacks, their credibility among the Pueblo Indians living alongside the colonists weakened. Third, a smoldering controversy over religion flared during the 1670s. The mystique surrounding Christianity was damaged when an epidemic struck in 1671 and Spanish missionaries could not stem the sickness through prayer. In response, traditionalist Indian priests regained favor, and they fostered a revival of age-old Pueblo religious customs. Horrified, the Spanish friars and government officials united to punish what they saw as backsliding within a Pueblo population that seemed to have accepted key elements of the Catholic faith. At Santa Fe in 1675, they hanged three Indian leaders for idolatry and whipped and imprisoned 43 others. The Spanish intended to sell the offenders—including a militant leader from San Juan pueblo named Popé—into slavery. However, armed Indians confronted the New Mexico governor and successfully demanded the release of Popé and the other prisoners. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 88 ${bmicon} full view MAP 3.2 CHANGES IN THE SOUTHWEST The 1680 Pueblo Revolt (green) overwhelmed Spain’s small New Mexico colony. In the next three decades, Father Kino and other Jesuits moved the mission frontier north into what is now Arizona. Over time, the Navajo relocated their homelands; they remain an important presence in the region. This confrontation over religion only deepened the divisions within local Indian communities and families. Over several generations, thousands of Pueblo people had converted to the Christian faith and the Spanish way of life. They had accepted the colonizers’ promises of heavenly rewards, and they feared the reprisals that had followed previous acts of resistance. But many others felt embittered, especially against the despised encomienda system that granted control over Native American labor to Spanish newcomers who backed up their claims by force. These Pueblo malcontents believed that the time for successful opposition was slipping away. Popé himself, banned from San Juan for disturbing the peace, withdrew to Taos, the northernmost pueblo in New Mexico. From there, he negotiated secretly with like-minded factions CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 89 ${bmicon} in other pueblos, unifying resistance to Spanish domination. He invoked the spirits of the Pueblo deities, especially the powerful sun spirit known as Po he yemu. He also killed those who threatened to reveal his plot, including his own brother. Popé’s militant resolve helped him build an underground movement. In part, he built support around widespread resentment of the encomienda system, used by the Spanish to require Indian communities to supply labor or pay tribute. But two other long-term issues contributed to his success as well. One involved sex and gender; the other combined race and class. From their earliest encounters, nothing divided the Spanish and Indians more sharply than their contrasting notions of sexuality. For example, Native Americans, like members of most societies around the world, accepted homosexuality. But many Christians considered it an abomination deserving death. More generally, whereas the Pueblos viewed sexuality as a crucial ingredient in social and spiritual life, Christians saw it as a source of sin and embarrassment. Indeed, Franciscans forbade traditional Indian religious ceremonies in part because they included erotic symbols and acts. The ban threatened the very essence of life for the Pueblos, who believed that sexual intercourse yielded not only human children but also bountiful crops, prompting male rains to join with female corn seeds to produce sustenance. Who were these friars who professed celibacy and punished themselves and others with whips for their natural sexual desires? The Pueblos had learned from experience that the same people who prohibited open displays of Indian sexuality occasionally practiced and condoned private acts of rape and molestation. The Indian women whom Spanish priests or soldiers had abused took Popé’s side in this cultural clash, covertly supporting his militant design. The movement also received secret support from numerous mestizos and mulattos, mixed-race people whose dark skin and lack of “pure” Spanish blood cost them any chance to rise in the colonial hierarchy. Members of this class included the elderly Pedro Naranjo, son of an Indian woman and a mulatto former slave who had received his freedom in return for joining an early expedition of colonists to New Mexico. At 80 years of age, the bilingual Naranjo could still sign his name in Spanish. He or some other family member may well have worked with Popé behind the scenes to plot the 1680 uprising. Historians have noted a “common report among all the Indians” about an inspirational letter written by a “very tall” and “black” Indian—likely Naranjo. This person was considered a “lieutenant” of the sun spirit, Po he yemu. His letter ordered that “all of them in general should rebel” and threatened destruction on “any pueblo that would not agree to it.” Along with such threats, Popé and his organizers sent runners to each conspiring pueblo in the summer of 1680. The runners delivered knotted ropes so all would know (by untying one knot each day) that the date for the rebellion was August 11. When several messengers were captured on August 9, Popé moved the revolt ahead one day, and his Pueblo warriors swiftly routed their adversaries. Unified in triumph, the zealous victors smeared excrement on Christian altars and bathed themselves to remove the stigma of baptism. But initial cohesion soon gave way to friction. The successful rebels soon quarreled over who should hold power and how best to return to ancient ways. Kivas would replace churches, and the cross would give way to the kachina. But what other parts of the imported culture should the Indians abandon after eight decades of intermingling with the newcomers? Various Pueblo groups could not agree on which Spanish words, tools, and customs to discard or on which foreign crops and animals they would retain. In 1681, the Pueblos fended off a Spanish attempt at reconquest. But they remained divided among themselves and more vulnerable than ever to Apache raids. Within a decade, rival factions had deposed Popé, and another Spanish army, under Governor Diego de Vargas, had entered New Mexico. It took the new governor several years to subdue the province, and the Pueblos managed another full-scale rebellion in 1696. But Vargas anticipated the revolt and crushed the opposition with overwhelming force, just as Oñate had done a century earlier. In 1706, several soldiers and their families established the town of Albuquerque on its present site. Learning from previous mistakes, Spanish officials did not reimpose the hated encomienda, with its demand for Native PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 90 ${bmicon} American labor or tribute. A new generation of Franciscan missionaries tolerated indigenous Pueblo traditions as long as the Indians also attended Catholic mass. The repercussions of rebellion and reconquest along the upper Rio Grande echoed throughout the Southwest. To the north, the Navajos benefited from Pueblo refugees who joined their communities. The Pueblo newcomers had valuable experience as corn farmers. Already known to the Navajos, corn now became an increasingly important food and sacred symbol for them. Moreover, the new arrivals had learned from the Spanish how to plant peach orchards and raise sheep. Pueblo men, long skilled at weaving textiles on stationary looms, showed their Navajo neighbors how to shear sheep, then how to wash the fleece, dye it, card it, and spin it into woolen yarn. Long before the arrival of sheep, Navajo women had always been the weavers in their society. Soon, therefore, women owned the expanding flocks and created wool blankets on their traditional portable looms. The Pueblos also brought more Spanish horses, a key asset that let the Navajos spread their domain west into fine grazing country in what is now northeast Arizona. Farther north, the Utes and Comanches also acquired horses after the Pueblo Revolt. After 1700, the Comanches pressed southeast onto the plains of present-day Texas and honed new skills as mounted buffalo hunters. The Pueblo Revolt also brought reprcussions for the Spanish, since they had clearly overextended themselves along New Spain’s wide northern frontier. Most worried officials agreed that the remote colony of New Mexico needed protection from further upheavals. So, despite their limited resources, authorities in Mexico City sent a few missionary-explorers north near the Gulf of California to spread Christianity and pacify hostile Indians. If possible, they were to extend Spain’s geographic knowledge and discover new sources of wealth. In addition, they were to warn of any moves by imperial rivals, for hostile French ships had appeared in the Gulf of California in 1689. Year by year, these friar–explorers edged north toward what is now southern Arizona until they reached the cactus-studded landscape of the Sonoran Desert in the 1690s. Eusebio Kino, CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 91 ${bmicon} a tireless Jesuit missionary born in Italy and educated in Germany, spearheaded the early exploration of the Arizona region. In 1701, this padre on horseback established a mission at San Xavier del Bac, near the Santa Cruz River below modern Tucson, Arizona. But his incessant travels continued, and the mission fell into disuse after his death in 1711. During one of his extended explorations, Father Kino visited the Yuma Indians, where the Gila River meets the lower Colorado. He noticed blue seashells that he knew had to have come via overland trade from coastal California. From this he reasoned that California was not an island, as European mapmakers had long supposed. Rather, it was a part of the continent that might be reached by traveling west across the desert above the Gulf of California. Hearing this news, Philip V ordered an outpost to be established on California’s upper coast beyond the Baja peninsula. It was the very charge that Sebastián Vizcaíno had failed to complete a century earlier, and once again it went unfulfilled. The Spanish did not take advantage of their improved understanding of the coastal geography until the 1760s. Meanwhile, Kino’s missions languished after his death in 1711. Warfare and sickness eroded the local population of Pima Indians, and attacks by Apache raiders destabilized the entire frontier region. The Spanish finally reinstalled priests at San Xavier del Bac and other missions along the Santa Cruz River in 1732. Four years later, a silver strike at “Arizonac,” near present-day Nogales on the U.S.–Mexican border, provided a new name for the region, which would eventually become the state called Arizona. The encounters on Spain’s other North American borderland frontiers took different forms, in part because European rivals appeared on the scene. Conflict with the French led the Spanish to found missions in Texas, a land they named after the local Tejas Indians. Still farther east, Indian resentments and war with the English weakened Spanish missions in Florida. After 1685, Spanish expeditions probed the Gulf Coast region, eager to find and destroy La Salle’s French colony. But Indians had already burned the short-lived outpost when the Spanish discovered its whereabouts. (Modern archaeologists have recently rediscovered the site.) In 1693, with any immediate European competition removed, the Spanish postponed attempts to establish a mission in Texas. They renewed their wholehearted commitment to the effort two decades later, when Louisiana’s Governor Cadillac (the founder of Detroit) proved eager to open a trade across Texas with the Spanish frontier. Governor Cadillac sent the Frenchman Louis Saint-Denis from Louisiana to forge ties with Spanish communities south of the Rio Grande. Saint-Denis and two dozen men set out from Natchitoches on the Red River and crossed East Texas, reaching the longtime Spanish outpost at San Juan Bautista, below the modern U.S.-Mexican border, in 1714. Surprised by this intrusion, Spanish authorities swiftly dusted off their plans for colonizing Texas. By 1717 they had established half a dozen small missions on both sides of the Sabine River, the boundary between modern Texas and Louisiana. The next year, the Spanish took steps to expand their missionary activities and secure the supply route from San Juan Bautista to their distant outposts in east Texas. They built a second cluster of settlements at a midpoint in the trail beside the San Antonio River. Within two decades, a string of missions stretched along the river. Indian converts tended herds of cattle and sheep and constructed aqueducts to irrigate new fields of wheat and corn. The earliest mission, San Antonio de Valero (1718), provided a nucleus for the town of San Antonio. It also strengthened Spanish claims to Texas against the threat of French intrusion. (The same mission, converted into a military post known as the Alamo, became known far and wide for the battle fought there in 1836, when Anglo-Texans pushed for independence from Mexican rule.) During the second half of the seventeenth century, the Indians of Florida, like the Pueblos in New Mexico, debated whether to reject generations of Spanish rule. The Columbian Exchange had altered their lives in dramatic ways. They ate new foods such as figs, oranges, PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 92 ${bmicon} peas, cabbages, and cucumbers. They used Spanish words such as azucár (sugar), botija (jar), and caballo (horse). The acquisition of metal hoes allowed them to produce more corn than ever before. But expanding contact with missionaries had major drawbacks as well. By 1660 devastating epidemics had whittled away at Native American towns. The Indians still outnumbered the newcomers more than ten to one, but they had to expend enormous energy raising, processing, and hauling food for the Spanish. When colonists at St. Augustine grew fearful of French and English attacks after 1670, they forced hundreds of Indians to perform even more grueling labor: constructing the stone fortress of San Marcos. Nothing proved more troubling to Florida’s Indians than the spread of livestock farming. St. Augustine’s elite had established profitable cattle ranches on the depopulated savannas of Timucua, near present-day Gainesville in north central Florida. These entrepreneurs could ship hides to Havana from both Florida coasts. They ignored the colony’s requirements to keep cows away from unfenced Indian gardens, and they enforced harsh laws to protect their stock. Any Florida Indian who killed cattle faced four months of servitude; people caught raiding Spanish herds had their ears cut off. Any Florida Indian who killed cattle faced four months of servitude; people caught raiding Spanish herds had their ears cut off. Resentment grew among the converts living in Florida’s scattered mission villages. Restless Indians wondered whether the English, who had founded their Carolina colony on the Ashley River near modern Charleston in 1670, might make viable allies. The English, less committed to establishing missions than their Spanish rivals, seemed eager to trade for deerskins. In return, they offered the Native Americans a steadier supply of desirable goods than the Spanish could provide. Several Indian communities moved closer to Carolina to test this new alternative for trade. But disillusionment soon set in. When France and Spain joined forces against the English after 1700, Florida’s Indians suddenly found themselves caught up in a struggle far larger than they had bargained for. Ever since the days of Francis Drake, the English had schemed to oust the Spanish from St. Augustine. In 1702 English raiders from Carolina, under Governor James Moore, rampaged through the town. Yet the new stone fortress of San Marcos held firm, protecting the inhabitants. Two years later, Moore devised a more profitable way to disrupt the Spanish colony. With native allies, he invaded Apalachee (near modern Tallahassee). His troops crushed the mission towns, killing hundreds and carrying away more than 4000 Indian captives. Most of them were women and children, whom the English sold as slaves in Carolina and the Caribbean. By 1706 the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine endured, but numerous mission villages in Apalachee and Timucua lay in ruins. “In all these extensive dominions,” wrote a troubled Spanish official from St. Augustine, “the law of God and the preaching of the Holy Gospel have now ceased.” In 1660, as Louis XIV began his long reign in France and Spanish missionaries labored in obscurity in New Mexico and Florida, England experienced a counterrevolutionary upheaval that influenced American colonial affairs dramatically. In the 1640s, amid violent civil war, rebels supporting Puritans and the Parliament had overthrown the ruling Stuart family, beheaded Charles I, and abolished hereditary monarchy altogether. For a brief period, England became a republican commonwealth without a king. But Oliver Cromwell, the movement’s dictatorial leader and self-styled Lord Protector, died in 1658. Pressures quickly mounted to undo the radical Puritan Revolution and return to monarchical government. In May 1660, a strong coalition of conservative interests welcomed the late king’s son back from exile and “restored” him to the throne as King Charles II. For this reason, the last three decades of the Stuart dynasty (1660–1688) are remembered in English politics and culture as the Restoration Era. CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 93 ${bmicon} England’s efforts in North America after the restoration of the Stuart monarchy differed sharply from the strivings of France and Spain. Europe’s two Catholic powers emphasized geographic exploration and religious conversion. They stretched their claims across vast areas but had less success planting self-sustaining colonial populations. The English, in contrast, focused on precisely this goal along the Atlantic coast. The shift in London’s political winds could hardly have been more sudden, and Charles II moved quickly in 1660 to underscore the end of England’s Puritan experiment. He ordered his hangman to burn the revolutionary constitution and parliamentary acts of the preceding government. He also commanded the execution of those responsible for beheading his father in 1649. Several of these individuals (known as regicides) escaped to find sanctuary in Puritan New England, and many who had served the “Good Old Cause” by fighting to end monarchy and strengthen parliament likewise sought refuge across the Atlantic. The American colonies grew with the arrival of people whose religious and political beliefs had suddenly fallen out of favor at home. But other elements of colonial demographics—early marriage, high birth rates, and a low level of mortality in most places—did even more to prompt expansion up and down the Atlantic coast. Because most colonists still lived within 50 miles of the shoreline, this increase in people steadily broadened the opportunities for seaborne trade. Growing ship traffic, in turn, sparked government desires to regulate colonial navigation to bring mercantilist advantages to the realm. In 1660 Parliament passed a major Navigation Act designed to promote British shipping and trade. The new law laid out important conditions that shaped England’s colonial commerce for generations. First, merchants could not conduct trade to or from the English colonies in foreign-owned ships. Second, key non-English products imported from foreign lands—salt, wine, oil, and naval stores (the tar, pitch, masts, and other materials used to build boats)—had to be carried in English ships or in ships with mostly English crews. Third, the law contained a list of “enumerated articles” produced overseas. The items listed—tobacco, cotton, sugar, ginger, indigo, and dyewoods—could no longer be sent directly from a colony to a foreign European port. Instead, merchants had to ship them to England first and then reexport them, a step that directly boosted England’s domestic economy. Another Navigation Act, in 1663, required that goods from the European continent to England’s overseas colonies also needed to pass through the island. Moreover, they had to arrive and depart on English ships. Ten years later, yet another navigation measure—the Plantation Duty Act of 1673—tried to close loopholes regarding enumerated articles. The new act required captains to pay a “plantation duty” before they sailed between colonial ports with enumerated goods. Otherwise, colonial vessels carrying such goods had to post bond before leaving harbor to ensure that they would sail directly to England. To enforce these rules, the government sent customs officers to the colonies for the first time. These officials’ income depended on the fees they collected and goods they confiscated. Not surprisingly, colonists resented these new intruders as meddling parasites. But almost a century passed before fights over imperial customs collection finally helped spark a revolution. Backed by the Navigation Acts, English shipbuilding prospered at home and in the tree-rich North American colonies. England’s naval and merchant fleets burgeoned. A report to the king claimed that Chesapeake tobacco produced more revenue for the crown “than the East Indies four times over” and boasted that England’s growing colonies in America “are his majesty’s Indies,” for “without charge to him” they had been “raised and supported by the English subjects, who employ above two hundred sail of good ships every year, breed abundance of mariners, and begin to grow into commodities of great value and esteem.” Colonial trade, with all its related activities, became a major sector in England’s economy. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 94 ${bmicon} Even the Great Plague, which swept England in 1665, could not blunt this mercantile growth. And when a catastrophic fire destroyed most of London the next year, the huge loss also provided an opportunity. Planners redesigned the city with the broad streets and impressive buildings that suited the prosperous hub of an expanding empire. The fashionable coffee shops that sprang up as a novelty in late-seventeenth-century London became common meeting places for exchanging news and views about England’s increasingly wide and profitable activities overseas. Much of what transpired in English North America was hashed out here, over pipes filled with Virginia tobacco. At the beginning of his reign, Charles II knew he had to build loyalty and strengthen an economy weakened by civil war. The king, with expensive tastes and an impoverished treasury, found that he could reward loyal family members and supporters, at no cost to the crown, by granting them control over pieces of England’s North American domain. With this prospect in hand, he and his ministers sought to bolster foreign trade, strengthen the royal navy, and out-strip England’s commercial rivals, focusing first on the Dutch. As London stepped up its search for new profits, English officials moved to strengthen control over existing colonies and establish (or seize) new ones wherever possible. The Navigation Acts cut sharply into the Dutch carrying trade and spurred a decade of renewed warfare between England and Holland. For the most part, these intermittent Anglo–Dutch Wars ended in stalemate. But at the final Peace of Westminster in 1674, the English emerged with two gains in Africa and America that quickly took on huge and lasting significance. In west Africa, the English captured and held several key coastal outposts: an island at the mouth of the river Gambia (renamed James Fort for the Duke of York) and Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast (near Elmina, the African headquarters of the Dutch West India Company). This encroachment challenged Dutch dominance of commerce with Africa for gold and ivory. It also gave England the footholds it needed to force its way into the Atlantic slave trade. Charles II moved quickly to take advantage of the situation. He granted a monopoly to the Royal Adventurers into Africa (1663) and then the Royal Africa Company (1672) to exploit the grim but highly profitable slave traffic. Within several generations, this ruthless initiative reshaped England’s American colonies at enormous human cost. Across the Atlantic, the English had seized the Dutch colony of New Netherland and its poorly defended port of New Amsterdam. Charles II claimed that the land had belonged to England from the time his grandfather endorsed the Virginia Company in 1606. In 1664, the king used his royal prerogative to regain control of this domain. He issued a charter putting the entire region between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers under the personal control of his brother James, Duke of York. That same year, James sent a fleet to claim his prize. When Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered the Dutch colony without a fight, both the province and its capital on Manhattan Island each received the name New York. Fort Orange on the Hudson became Albany because England’s traditional name was Albion. James now controlled an enormous domain that included the Dutch and English settlements on Long Island. He wielded nearly absolute powers over his new dukedom. He never visited New York. But as proprietor, he chose the colony’s governor. That official ruled with an appointed council and enforced “the Duke’s Laws” without constraint by any assembly. Eng- CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 95 ${bmicon} lish newcomers to the colony resented the absence of an elected legislature, and the governor finally authorized an elected body in 1683. But the new assemblymen promptly approved a Charter of Liberties, in which they endorsed government by consent of the governed, so the Duke of York disallowed the legislature. Married women living in the New York colony lost ground in the transition to English rule. Dutch law codes had ensured their full legal status, whereas English common law assigned wives to an inferior status (known as coverture or feme covert). They could not own property or keep control over money they earned, and they lacked any independent standing before the law. As the English asserted political control over New York, the Dutch presence remained evident everywhere. Many English married into Dutch families and worshipped in the Dutch Reformed Church. The village of Harlem built a proper road to lower Manhattan in 1669, but an effort to change the town’s Dutch name to Lancaster failed. English-speaking New Yorkers borrowed such Dutch words as waffle, cookie, coleslaw, and baas (boss). Anyone who was bilingual, such as Albany merchant Robert Livingston, had a special advantage. Livingston, an immigrant from Scotland, had learned to speak Dutch in Holland in his youth. His marriage in Albany linked him to powerful Dutch families in the Hudson Valley, and much of his early wealth came from his ability to translate important commercial documents between English and Dutch. Charles II had spurred England’s seizure of New Netherland by issuing a charter for control of the contested region to his brother, the Duke of York. To reward supporters, he continued to issue royal charters granting American land. By drawing on England’s early claims in North America that dated back to the explorer John Cabot, the king hoped to expand trade and colonization at no cost to the crown. In 1670, for example, he granted a charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The deal gave the company’s proprietors a monopoly on trade, minerals, and land across northern Canada. Farther south, Charles used charters to redistribute control along major portions of the Atlantic coast. His actions prompted an unprecedented scramble for colonial property and profits. Within decades, the English launched important settlement clusters in two regions: the Delaware River valley and the Carolina coast. Each offered lucrative charters to a small network of friends. Most of these well-placed people belonged to the Councils for Trade and Plantations in London. Created in 1660, these advisory groups linked England’s powerful merchants with crown officials. When Charles II issued a charter for Carolina in 1663, five of its eight initial proprietors served on those councils. In 1665, two of these same eight men became the proprietors of New Jersey. In addition, three of the eight played an active role in the Royal African Company, four became founders of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and five became initial proprietors of the Bahamas. But Charles reached beyond this small group as well. In 1679 he made New Hampshire a proprietorship (an ill-fated experiment that lasted to 1708). In 1681 he paid off a debt to Quaker aristocrat William Penn by granting him a charter for Pennsylvania. (The generous arrangement included the “Lower Counties” that became Delaware in 1704.) Charles II had spurred England’s seizure of New Netherland by issuing a charter for control of the contested region to his brother, the Duke of York. Penn’s “holy experiment” to create a Quaker refuge benefited from earlier colonization south of New York. Dutch and Swedish settlers had inhabited the lower Delaware Valley for more than a generation. In 1665 the Duke of York carved off a portion of his vast proprietorship, granting the area between the Delaware and the Hudson to two friends: Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. They named the area New Jersey because Carteret had been born on the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel and had harbored Charles II when he took refuge there in 1649. Berkeley and Carteret promptly announced liberal “Concessions”—a representative assembly and freedom of worship—to attract rent-paying newcomers from England and the existing colonies. But their plans for profit made little headway. In 1674 the proprietors divided these fertile lands into two separate provinces. East Jersey—where Newark was established in 1666—attracted Puritan families from New England, PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 96 ${bmicon} Dutch farmers from New York, and failed planters from Barbados. West Jersey was sold to members of the Society of Friends (including William Penn) who inaugurated a Quaker experiment along the Delaware River. Filled with egalitarian beliefs, the Quakers created a unicameral (single body) legislature, used secret ballots, and gave more power to juries than to judges. Their idealistic effort foundered within decades, and by 1702 all New Jersey came under crown control as a royal colony. But by then, the Quakers had established a foothold in the neighboring colony of Pennsylvania. Its capital, the market town of Philadelphia, laid out by proprietor William Penn in 1682, already had more than 2000 inhabitants. An earnest Quaker, Penn professed pacifism. He made it a point to deal fairly with the Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) Indians. After purchasing their land, he resold it on generous terms to English, Dutch, and Welsh Quakers who agreed to pay him an annual premium, called a quitrent. He also emphasized religious toleration. A growing stream of German Protestants and others facing persecution in Europe began to flow into Pennsylvania after 1700. Penn drew inspiration from James Harrington, the English political philosopher. Harrington’s book Oceana (1656) argued that the best way to create an enduring republic was for one person to draft and implement its constitution. After endless tinkering, Penn devised a progressive “Frame of Government” that allowed for trial by jury, limited terms of office, and no use of capital punishment except in cases of treason and murder. But he remained ambivalent about legislative democracy. Settlers resented his scheme for a lower house that could approve acts drafted by the governor but could not initiate laws. In a new Charter of Privileges in 1701, Penn agreed to the creation of a unicameral legislature (that is, having only one chamber, or house) with full lawmaking powers. Disillusioned, Penn then departed for England, writing, “The Lord forgive them their great ingratitude.” Penn’s expansive proprietorship belonged to his descendants until colonial rule ended in 1776. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, leader of the Carolina proprietors, also drew inspiration from Harrington, but for a very different undertaking. Oceana had stressed that distribution of land determined the nature of any commonwealth, and Ashley-Cooper (later the first earl of Shaftesbury) was eager to establish a stable aristocratic system. With his young secretary, John Locke (later an influential political philosopher), he drew up a set of “Fundamental Constitutions” in 1669. They proposed a stratified society in which hereditary nobles controlled much of the land and wealthy manor lords employed a lowly servant class of “leetmen.” Their unrealistic document tried to revive the elaborate feudal hierarchy of medieval times. The new government framework also endorsed racial slavery, declaring that “Every Freeman of Carolina shall have absolute Power and Authority over his Negro Slaves.” This endorsement was not surprising, given the proprietors’ involvement with England’s new slave-trading monopoly in Africa and their initial recruitment of settlers in 1670 from the sugar island of Barbados. When Carolina colonists founded Charlestown (later Charleston) between the Ashley and Cooper rivers in 1680, the proprietors had already modified aspects of their complicated scheme, setting aside feudalism to encourage greater immigration. Nevertheless, their endorsement of slavery shaped the region’s society for hundreds of years. The appearance of isolated English settlements along the Atlantic coast did little in most places, to alter the traditional rhythms of life. Year after year, the daily challenges of subsistence dominated American life for Indians and colonists alike. The demanding seasonal tasks of clearing fields, planting seeds, and harvesting crops remained interwoven with the incessant chores of providing clothing, securing shelter, and sustaining community. Over time, however, changing circumstances in America and Europe introduced new pressures up and down the Atlantic seaboard. On occasion after 1670, familiar routines gave way Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 97 ${bmicon} full view MAP 3.3 METACOM’S WAR IN NEW ENGLAND, 1675–1676 In 14 months of war, New England Indians destroyed more than two dozen colonial towns and suffered their own heavy losses. The brutal conflict ended after the death of Metacom (the Wampanoag leader, also known as King Philip), near Mt. Hope, on August 12, 1676. to episodes of bloodshed that threatened to tear whole colonies apart. Elsewhere in North America, Pueblo rebels were resisting the Spanish in New Mexico, and Iroquois warriors were challenging the French in Illinois country. The English, with their larger numbers, posed an even greater cultural and economic problem for Indian inhabitants. In 1675, the Wampanoags and their allies rose up across southern New England in Metacom’s War (or King Philip’s War). The next year, frontier tensions in Virginia sparked the upheaval known as Bacon’s Rebellion. A decade later, events in England prompted further tremors. In London, mounting opposition forced the unpopular James II to surrender the English throne to William of Orange, and Parliament emerged from the “Glorious Revolution” with enhanced powers. In America, the end of rule by the Stuart dynasty was punctuated by controversy and violence in one colony after another. Colonial isolation had already diminished, and European events intruded more forcefully in the decades ahead. By 1675 the Native Americans of southern New England, like the Pueblos in New Mexico, had endured several generations of colonization. Yet they disagreed over how much English culture they should adopt. Many Indians used English words for trading, English pots for cooking, and English weapons for hunting. Some had converted to Christianity, living in protected “praying towns.” Several young men had enrolled in Harvard’s Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 98 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Homeland Security and Deep Fears of the Enemy Within After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, Americans wondered whether extremists operating inside the United States might take additional lives. Because all the original suicide hijackers were young Muslim men with Middle Eastern backgrounds and appearances, would it be “racial profiling” to check the credentials closely for thousands of people in the country who fit that broad description? Could a person be suspected solely on the basis of identification—real or perceived—with a particular nationality, religion, or ethnic group? And what kinds of patriotic acts, if any, must one perform to overturn such suspicions? In a nation learning to take pride in its immigrant origins and diverse make-up, the problem seemed deeply troubling. Feelings ran high, but most citizens could see both sides of the question. National safety, perhaps even survival, appeared to hang in the balance, weighed against cherished constitutional rights and fundamental American presumptions of individual innocence. The problem also seemed novel, as symbolized by the creation of a new government bureaucracy: the Office of Homeland Security. The name itself sounded strange to Americans who remembered war only as something that occurred far away: Europe, the South Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf. However, “homeland security” issues were older than the Constitution itself. When Metacom’s War erupted in 1675, it was the Christian Indians living among the English who looked like the enemy and aroused sharp suspicion among Massachusetts colonists. Anxious officials relocated whole “praying towns” of Indian converts to windswept Deer Island in Boston Harbor. “When the Indians were hurried off to an iland at half an hours warning,” recalled their advocate, John Eliot, the “pore soules,” overcome with terror, left behind almost all “their goods, books, bibles.” After Metacom’s attackers burned the villages of Medford and Lancaster, Daniel Gookin noted that the grim events “gave opportunity to the vulgar to cry out, ‘Oh, come, let us go down to Deer Island, and kill all the praying Indians.’” Bitter townsfolk never followed through, but they threatened Gookin and Eliot for protecting the Indians. The two men visited the relocation camp in the dead of winter, where they reported seeing 500 people in need of food and shelter: “The Island was bleak and cold, their wigwams poor and mean, their clothes few and thin.” Half the detainees died before spring. With little likelihood that the survivors could “plant or reap any corn” on the barren island, authorities finally freed them. Despite the painful internment, some of the Christian Indians joined the colonial forces in the final months of the war. For more than two centuries, Native Americans, no matter what their political or religious beliefs, remained subject to recurrent suspicion while Indian Wars raged across the West. In the twentieth century, racial suspicions in wartime shifted to other groups, especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. Fearful of nonwhites in the Pacific War Zone, the U.S. Army removed Aleutian Islanders from their homes in Alaska. And President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that sanctioned the forced relocation of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent living on the West Coast. Hastily, the U.S. government transported the Japanese Americans to ten barren internment camps in eight western states, trampling the rights of its citizens. Like the Christian Indians in colonial Massachusetts, these victims of wartime hysteria had little time to pack their belongings. Miné Okubo, an art student at Berkeley, remembered being shipped by train to the Central Utah Detainment Center near Topaz Mountain. Finding it “impossible to see anything through the constant dust,” Okubo and others sarcastically took to calling the Topaz camp “the jewel of the desert.” Reduced to a number by her own government, Okubo made pictures and kept notes of her experience, which she later published as a book: Citizen 13660. Some were allowed out to become soldiers, and many lost their lives fighting in Europe. As World War II neared its end, Roosevelt rescinded his order, and the camps emptied. But it took the government a generation to admit that, in this instance, ideas of homeland security had gone badly awry. Indian College, where they learned to write English, Latin, and Greek with an eye toward entering the ministry. Massasoit, the Wampanoag sachem (leader) who had assisted the Pilgrims at Plymouth, made sure that his two sons, Wamsutta and Metacom, learned English ways. The two men raised pigs and fired guns, and the colonists called them Alexander and Philip, after the kings of ancient Macedon. But when Wamsutta died in the 1660s, shortly after succeeding his father, Metacom (now called King Philip) suspected foul play by the English. Metacom’s grievances mounted over the next decade. Colonial traders made the Indians drunk and then cheated them. English livestock trampled Wampanoag corn, and if Indians shot the cattle, colonial courts imposed punishments. Worst of all, colonists now outnumbered the remaining 20,000 Indians in southern New England by more than two to one. When Rhode Island delegates visited Metacom’s stronghold near Narragansett Bay, he told them bitterly that “the English should do for us as we did when we were too strong for the English.” His own father, Massasoit, had “let them have a hundred times more land” than he now “had for his own people.” The mysterious death of a Christian Indian named John Sassamon sparked open warfare. Sassamon had learned to write English during a brief stint at Harvard. He then crossed back into the Wampanoag world to serve as a secretary for Metacom, who could write his English name only as a labored P, for Philip. Caught between two cultures, Sassamon alerted the English to Metacom’s war plans in January 1675. Within days, his corpse was found in a pond near Plymouth. The English accused three Wampanoags of Sassamon’s murder, convicted them, and hanged them in early June. Outraged Indians protested that Sassamon’s betrayal of his people and his subsequent death were their own affairs. When a white man shot and wounded a Native American, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 99 ${bmicon} the long-expected war was under way in earnest. Irate braves raided the town of Swansea, killing nine residents. In the summer and fall, Metacom’s warriors ravaged town after town along the Connecticut River valley and closer to the coast. Metacom used the victories to recruit additional Indian allies. The colonists, unprepared after 40 years of peace and unchallenged dominance, were caught off guard. Distrusting even the Christian Indians, Massachusetts officials relocated whole praying towns of Indian converts to windswept islands in Boston Harbor. By December, the Connecticut and Rhode Island colonies, terrified of being wiped out, united with Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay to create a force of more than a thousand men. An Indian captive led them to a stronghold of the still-neutral Narragansetts in a remote swamp a dozen miles west of Newport, Rhode Island. The colonists surprised and overwhelmed the fortified village, setting it ablaze during the fierce fighting. Indian survivors fled, leaving behind more than 600 dead. Many of the men, women, and children were “terribly Barbikew’d,” minister Cotton Mather later recorded. This “Great Swamp Fight,” reminiscent of an earlier battle in the Pequot War, infuriated the Narragansetts, who joined Metacom’s growing alliance. During the late winter of 1676, this loose confederacy continued to wreak havoc on New England villages. But as spring arrived, the coalition weakened and the tide turned. Sickness broke out among the fighters, who lacked food and gunpowder. The powerful Mohawks of the Iroquois Confederacy opposed Metacom from the west. In Boston, Christian Indians joined the colonial forces, despite their painful internment. As Metacom’s situation worsened, defections and betrayals increased. In August, a former ally shot the resistance leader and delivered the sachem’s head to the English. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 100 ${bmicon} As the horrific struggle ground to a close, the colonists captured Metacom’s wife and child, selling them into slavery in the West Indies along with hundreds of other prisoners of war. New England’s remaining Indians became second-class inhabitants, confined to enclaves in the areas they had once dominated. The colonists soon rebuilt and extended their domain. However, the trauma of the war lived on in the minds of the survivors and the sermons of their ministers. For years afterward, Metacom’s severed head was displayed on a pole at Plymouth. While smoke still billowed over New England, new flames broke out in Virginia. Social unrest had been growing under the stern governorship of Sir William Berkeley. England’s wars with the Dutch cut into the tobacco trade and drew enemy ships into Chesapeake Bay. Unfree tobacco workers—more than 6000 indentured Europeans and nearly 2000 enslaved Africans—chafed against their harsh treatment. On the frontier, colonists resented the dependent Indians (Occaneechis, Pamunkeys, and others) who traded furs in exchange for protection from other tribes. Settlers also feared the well-armed Susquehannocks living near the Potomac River. “Consider us,” Berkeley wrote to the king in 1667, “as a people press’d at our backes wth Indians, in our Bowills with our Servants … and invaded from without by the Dutch.” By 1676 tensions in Virginia reached the breaking point. Officials had increased taxes to pay for fortifications, servant plots and mutinies abounded, and corruption ran rampant among Berkeley’s close associates. The aging governor ruled from Green Spring, his huge estate near the capital, Jamestown. Fearing the hostile views of free men who did not own property, Berkeley had revoked their right to vote. He had not dared to call an election in 14 years. He also dreaded outspoken preachers, free schools, and printing presses. “How miserable that man is,” he wrote, “that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed.” Even wealthy newcomers such as Nathaniel Bacon had trouble gaining access to Berkeley’s tight inner circle. When Bacon arrived from England in 1674 at age 27, he received a council seat because of his connections and money. But rivals denied the ambitious gentleman a license to engage in the profitable fur trade. Impatient, Bacon soon condemned Berkeley’s ruling Green CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 101 ${bmicon} Spring faction as sponges who “have sukt up the Publique Treasure.” When frontier tensions erupted into racial violence, Bacon threw himself into the conflict, challenging Berkeley’s leadership and launching aggressive campaigns. His frontier followers, eager for Indian land, killed friendly Occaneechis as well as hostile Susquehannocks. The governor, aware of the damage that Metacom’s War had inflicted on New England, refused to sanction these raids. He feared “a Generall Combination of all the Indians against us.” But Bacon’s army continued to grow as backcountry leaders joined landless poor and runaway workers—both black and white—to support his anti-Indian cause. When the desperate governor called for a rare election to assert his strength, Bacon’s supporters dominated the new House of Burgesses. Berkeley retreated across Chesapeake Bay and hid on Virginia’s eastern shore. Throughout the summer of 1676, rumors swirled that Bacon might join with malcontents in Maryland and in the newly settled Albemarle region of northeastern North Carolina to carve out an independent enclave and seek aid from the Dutch or the French. The new assembly quickly restored the vote to propertyless men and forbade excessive fees. It limited sheriffs to one year in office and passed other measures to halt corruption and expand participation in government. As an incentive for enlistment in the frontier war, the assembly granted Bacon’s recruits the right to sell into slavery any Indians they captured. For their part, slaves and indentured servants took advantage of the breakdown in public controls to leave their masters and join Bacon. Networks of “news wives” (women who used facts and rumors effectively to fan worker discontent) spread stories of oppressive conditions. In June rebel soldiers talked openly of sharing estates among themselves, and in August they took over Green Spring Plantation, where Berkeley kept 60 horses and 400 head of cattle. A month later, Bacon’s army burned Jamestown to the ground. But by October Bacon was dead, struck down by dysentery, and reinforcements for Berkeley were on the way from England. With armed vessels patrolling the rivers, Berkeley worked up enough nerve to return from the eastern shore. Soon propertied men who had joined with Bacon were changing sides again and receiving amnesty from the governor. The revolt had been crushed, but the impact of the tumult proved huge. On the frontier, Bacon’s violent campaign against the Indians had killed or enslaved hundreds and fostered bitter hatreds. In the Tidewater, the uprising had raised a frightening prospect for wealthy tobacco planters: a unified and defiant underclass of white and black workers. From then on, Virginia’s gentry applied themselves to dividing the races and creating a labor force made up of African slaves. In London, the recently formed Royal Africa Company stood ready to further such a design. No sooner had peace returned to New England and Virginia than Stuart policies brought a new round of turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic. In England, debate revived over who would succeed Charles II on the throne. The irreligious Charles, an Anglican in name only, had no legitimate children. Therefore, his brother James, a convert to Catholicism, was first in line to inherit the crown. In 1678, rumors spread regarding a “Popish Plot” by Catholics to kill the king so that James could take power. The House of Commons, fearful of rule by a Catholic king, urged that James be excluded from the line of succession. Instead of James, House members argued, why not consider James’s Protestant daughters by his first marriage: either Mary (recently wedded to her Dutch cousin, William of Orange) or Anne? Angered by such interference, Charles II dissolved Parliament in 1681 and ruled on his own for the last four years of his life. When he died, the traditional rule of succession prevailed: James II took over the throne in 1685. In France that same year, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had protected French Protestants. Fear spread among England’s Protestant majority that their country’s new Catholic ruler, James II, might also sanction persecution of non-Catholics. These concerns mounted when James disbanded Parliament, raised a standing army, and placed a Catholic in command of the navy. Then in 1688, James’s queen gave birth to a male PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 102 ${bmicon} heir. Protestant anxieties about a pending Catholic dynasty erupted into open resistance. United by their fear of Catholicism, rival factions among England’s political elite (known for the first time as “Whigs” and “Tories”) papered over their differences temporarily. They invited the Protestant William of Orange, James’s Dutch son-in-law, to lead an army from Holland and take the English crown. In November 1688, he crossed the English Channel with 15,000 men. Confronting a successful invasion of England (it has never happened since), James abdicated the throne, threw the great seal into the Thames, and escaped into exile. William and Mary were proclaimed joint sovereigns in 1689, accepting a Bill of Rights that limited royal power. Its position now enhanced, Parliament moved to grant toleration to Protestant dissenters, establish limited freedom of the press, and ensure regular parliamentary sessions. It also imposed limits on any permanent, paid military forces, known as standing armies, because they could accrue their own power and jeopardize civil authority. The English had thus preserved Protestantism and curtailed royal absolutism, all without bloodshed. Parliament hailed King William III as “our great Deliverer from Popery and Slavery.” The propertied classes, who benefited most from the peaceful transition, hailed it as “The Glorious Revolution.” The succession of James II in 1685 did not bode well for England’s American colonies. The new king not only professed the Catholic faith, he also cherished absolute monarchy and distrusted elected assemblies. In colonial affairs, James favored revenue-generating reforms and direct obedience to the crown. He detested the powerful leaders in Massachusetts, for, as Congregationalists, they believed in a decentralized Protestant church. James also resented the fact that they disobeyed the Navigation Acts and asserted their right to self-rule, even after the crown revoked their charter in 1684. Moreover, he rejected the notion that colonists possessed the precious right claimed by the English at home: not to be taxed without giving their consent. The king envisioned an extensive reorganization of the American colonies. When James assumed the throne, his own colony of New York automatically became a royal province. Convinced of his divine right to set policy, the king nullified the charters of certain colonies in order to bring them under his control. As the cornerstone of his reorganization plan, James linked the New England colonies (plus New York and New Jersey in 1688) into one huge Dominion of New England. This consolidation, under an appointed governor general, would make it easier for England to suppress dissent, enforce shipping regulations, and defend the Dominion’s frontiers—at least in theory. In practice, the effort to forge a Dominion of New England proved a disaster. The move met such stiff resistance in America that a similar design for England’s southern colonies never materialized. Control of the Dominion went to a military officer, Sir Edmond Andros. The heavy-handed Andros attempted to rule from Boston through a council he appointed, made up of loyal associates, without aid or interference from any elected legislature. He asserted the crown’s right to question existing land patents, and he requisitioned a Congregational church for Anglican services. Worse, he offended local leaders by strictly enforcing the Navigation Acts to collect revenue. When participants in democratic town meetings raised objections, he jailed the leaders. CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 103 ${bmicon} Colonists seethed with resentment toward this revival of Stuart absolutism, which claimed total obedience to the king and his officers as a divine right for the Stuart monarchy. Rumors of French invasions and Catholic plots swirled among staunch Protestants. In April 1689, welcome news that the Protestant William of Orange had invaded England inspired a revolt in Boston. Mobs showed public support for overthrowing the Stuart regime, and local leaders locked Governor Andros in jail. The success of William and the demise of the Dominion of New England did not end royal efforts to tighten imperial control over New England. The new Massachusetts charter of 1691 consolidated neighboring Plymouth and Maine into the Massachusetts Bay colony. Moreover, it proclaimed that future governors would be appointed by the monarchy, as in other colonies. The men of Massachusetts, who had elected their own governor since the days of John Winthrop, would no longer have that right. Emboldened by Boston’s actions in 1689, New Yorkers ousted their own Dominion officials and set up a temporary government headed by militia captain Jacob Leisler. In Leisler’s Rebellion, long-standing ethnic and economic rivalries between English and non-English New Yorkers merged with wider issues of empire. A German Calvinist, Leisler played on Protestant fears of “Popish Doggs & Divells” and on Dutch residents’ resentment of English domination to attack the Dominion government. Leisler’s movement also drew on lower-class hostility toward the town’s growing elite. His supporters resented their treatment at the hands of the rich. They freed imprisoned debtors and attacked the houses of leading merchants. After a new governor arrived to take charge in 1691, the elite fought back. They lowered artisan wages and executed Leisler as a rebel, although they could find no carpenter willing to provide a ladder for the gallows. Similar tremors shook the Chesapeake region. In Maryland, where the Catholic proprietor ruled over a large and restive Protestant population, the governing Calvert family waited too long to proclaim its loyalty to King William. Fearing a “Popish” plot, assemblyman John Coode and a force of 250 armed Protestants marched on St. Mary’s City and seized the government by force. The “happy Change in England” had replaced divine right rule with a more balanced constitutional monarchy, and Maryland settlers were determined to show their support. The success of the Glorious Revolution hardly brought peace to England or its empire. On the contrary, warfare marked the reign of William and Mary and also that of Mary’s sister, Queen Anne, who ruled from 1702 until her death in 1714. William immediately became involved in bloody campaigns to subdue highland clans in Scotland and overpower Catholic forces in Ireland. Moreover, English involvement against France in two protracted wars on the European continent had implications for colonists and Indians living in eastern North America. The War of the League of Augsburg in Europe became known to English colonists in America as King William’s War (1689–1697), and the protracted War of Spanish Succession was experienced in America as Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713). Nowhere was the impact of these imperial wars more evident than in the rapidly growing colonies of the Northeast. Indeed, the earlier bloodshed of Metacom’s (King Philip’s) War, starting in 1675, had already aroused consternation and soul-searching in Bible-reading New England, and the violent decades that followed were viewed by many as a harsh test or a deserved punishment from the Almighty. They believed that the initial Puritan errand into the wilderness had been closely watched by God. Could it be, ministers now asked from the pulpit, that the Lord had some special controversy with the current generation? As communities grew more prosperous and became caught up in the pursuit of worldly success, were PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 104 ${bmicon} church members forgetting their religious roots and leading less pious lives? Invoking the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, clerics interpreted personal and collective troubles as God’s punishment for the region’s spiritual decline. But such a sweeping explanation of misfortune only raised deeper questions. New Englanders could see clearly that the consequences of rapid change were not spread equally among all towns, congregations, and families. As in most war eras—and moments of economic and demographic growth—some people and localities suffered more than others. Certain individuals and groups seemed to benefit while others fell behind. Some anxious believers saw the hand of Satan in the day-to-day struggles of village life. Others argued that the worldly success and wartime profits of an expanding elite had undermined the community ideals of earlier generations. While flames engulfed isolated Massachusetts communities such as Deerfield and portions of the Maine frontier, fiery passions were also being aroused in older settlements, such as Salem and Boston. One of the most memorable disruptions, the Salem witch hunt, occurred in Essex County, Massachusetts, a two-day ride on horseback from the embattled Maine frontier. In 1692 an outburst of witchcraft accusations engulfed Salem Village (now Danvers), a farm community formed as a separate parish in 1672 from the prosperous port of Salem Town, six miles east. The strange episode remains one of the most troubling in American history. Numerous premodern cultures in Asia, Africa, Europe, and America believed in varieties of witchcraft. Among Christians, the assumption that there are witches who possess supernatural power to inflict harm stretched back for centuries. In the 1600s, witchcraft trials abounded in Europe, and in New England zealous believers had prosecuted scores of supposed witches. They had even executed several dozen people in isolated cases. Three-fourths of those accused (and even more of those executed) were women. Most were beyond childbearing age, often poor or widowed, with limited power to protect themselves in the community. But the hysteria in Salem went far beyond other colonial incidents, with more than 200 people accused and 20 put to death. Early in 1692, more than half a dozen young women in Salem Village, ranging in age from 9 to 20, began to suffer violent convulsive fits. With reduced appetites and temporary loss of hearing, sight, and memory, they also experienced choking sensations that curtailed their speech. Vivid hallucinations followed. “These calamities first began in my family,” wrote Reverend Samuel Parris. A Harvard dropout, Parris had failed as a merchant in Barbados and had later agreed to lead the parish. It was “several weeks before such hellish operations as witchcraft were suspected.” The first to appear tormented were Parris’s daughter and niece, ages 9 and 11. The children had spent time with Tituba and John, a slave couple of uncertain Indian or African origin whom Parris had brought from Barbados. Tituba often spoke of the supernatural, and soon several of the afflicted girls accused her and two elderly Salem women of witchcraft. CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 105 ${bmicon} By April the girls had accused seven more people. Then some of the seven named others in their elaborate confessions, and the hysteria snowballed. In a world where people considered satanic influence very real, frightened authorities seriously weighed the girls’ stories of people appearing to them as devilish specters and apparitions. Overriding tradition, jurists allowed such “spectral evidence” in court. And because all believed that the devil could not inhabit a pious person, protests of innocence from those accused only seemed to confirm the enemy’s diabolical ways. The court ordered public hangings of the condemned on Gallows Hill. The hangings continued through September. One poor and elderly farmer, Giles Cory, was pressed to death under heavy stones. Only when accusations reached too high in the social hierarchy and when several accusers recanted their stories did the new governor finally intervene. He emptied the jails, forbade further imprisonments, and pardoned the surviving accused until the tremor could subside. full view A Further Account of the Tryals of the New England Witches This is the title page of A Further Account of the Tryals of the New England Witches (1693) by Increase Mather. His arguments have been credited with bringing an end to the witchcraft executions in Salem. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) Why this terrible outburst? Some writers wonder whether the girls’ symptoms suggest food poisoning (perhaps from a fungus on rye used in baking bread) or an epidemic of mosquitoborne encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain). Others note political factions within the village. Strained relations between farm families and the more prosperous urban residents of nearby Salem Town may have influenced the craze. Still others emphasize the zeal and gullibility of those first assigned to investigate. Some speculate that the absence of central authority, until Governor Phips arrived in the colony in May, allowed a troubled situation to spin out of control. Finally, commentators stress a perverse psychological dynamic that arises in any witch hunt, ancient or modern. In such cases, accused suspects often can save their own lives by supplying damaging and vivid confessions implicating others rather than by offering heartfelt denials of guilt. One or more of these factors surely came into play. Yet devastation on the Maine frontier also contributed to what happened in Salem Village. The little Massachusetts town had numerous links to the war zone. George Burroughs, Parris’s much-disliked predecessor as minister, had come from Maine. He had returned there when the contentious parish refused to pay him. Traumatized survivors from King William’s War—the current conflict with the Abenaki and French—had trickled into the community. Significantly, more than half the young women who had accused others of witchcraft had lost one or both parents in the brutal frontier wars. On February 5, just weeks before the first accusations, attackers had burned the Maine village of York 80 miles north of Salem. The raiders destroyed livestock, killed 48 people, and took 73 captives. Word of the renewed violence no doubt triggered shocking memories among Salem’s war refugees, especially the orphans who worked as servants in local households. full view Woodcut of Witch Hangings Woodcut of witch hangings from Grievances Discovered, a 1655 book on injustices in England’s coal industry. The picture identifies the hangman (A), the town crier (B), the sheriff (C), and the magistrate (D). Fears deepened in April when one of the accused confessed that the Devil had tempted her while she had been living in Maine. Then the specter of Reverend Burroughs “appeared” to an accuser. Charged with promoting witchcraft and encouraging the hostile Indians (whom the colonists saw as Satan’s helpers), Burroughs was arrested in Maine and hanged on Gallows Hill. In Boston, a 17-year-old servant named Mercy Short told of disturbing dreams of the Devil. Short had been captured and orphaned by Indians. She told minister Cotton Mather that in her dreams Satan and his minions had made “hideous assaults” upon her. And, she said, they were “of a tawney, or an Indian colour.” Much of what Mather and others recorded as the work of Satan may have spun from posttraumatic stress in a frayed community during wartime. Throughout the 1690s and beyond, England remained entangled in imperial conflict abroad and dynastic struggles at home. The Act of Settlement, passed by Parliament in 1701, ensured that King William, who died the next year, would be succeeded by his wife’s sister Anne, who ruled until her death in 1714. King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War made conflict a constant element in both reigns, and colonists found themselves subject to these winds. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 106 ${bmicon} As in all wars, the burdens fell unevenly. For many colonial families, incessant warfare brought only death and dislocation. But for others, it offered new opportunities. Farmers with access to port towns shifted away from subsistence agriculture and grew crops for commercial sale. In doing so, they exposed themselves to greater financial risks, given transportation costs and market fluctuations. But they hoped to reap large profits. Overseas trade and wartime smuggling offered investors even higher gains and larger risks. These activities, in turn, boosted demand for sailing vessels. Boston alone supported more than a dozen busy shipyards. They employed hundreds of shipwrights, caulkers, and other skilled workers who crafted hulls, ropes, masts, and sails. Military campaigns, such as the successful ones against the French at Port Royal in Acadia in 1690 and again in 1710, engaged hundreds of colonial soldiers and sailors. When an English fleet of 60 ships carrying 5000 men docked at Boston in 1711, local provisioners (those who sold food and other provisions) reaped the rewards. The crews of privateers (boats licensed to harass enemy shipping in wartime) made money if they captured a foreign vessel as a prize, and many chose to become buccaneers, pirates who operated for their own gain while avoiding the arm of the law. Englishman Edward Teach (known as Blackbeard) won notoriety as a privateer-turned-pirate, haunting the Carolina coast until his death in 1718. In the brief heyday of buccaneers, numerous colonial sailors also shifted from privateering to pirating. Everywhere, poorer families were most likely to sink under the burdens of war. Regressive taxes, requiring the same amount from a poor carpenter as from a rich merchant, obviously hurt impoverished people the most. So did high wartime prices for food and other basic necessities. Furthermore, many of the poor men recruited by the military became casualties of combat or disease, increasing the number of widows living in poverty. Such conditions bred discouragement, and struggling communities were struck by the growing distance between rich and poor as towns expanded and interests diverged. The moral ties and community obligations—known as the social covenant—that Puritan elders had emphasized two generations earlier were loosening. In their place emerged a CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 107 ${bmicon} focus on secular priorities and a new, individualistic spirit. In Boston, troubled ministers decried the hunger and poverty that they saw deepening in their parishes alongside unprecedented displays of wealth. Between 1685 and 1715, the share of all personal wealth in the town controlled by the poorest 60 percent of the population fell from 17 percent to 13 percent. At the same time, the portion belonging to the richest 5 percent climbed from 26 percent to 40 percent. Printers began to publish irate pamphlets protesting these troubling conditions. Angry writers encouraging working people to take political action and charged once-respected elites with studying “how to oppress, cheat, and overreach their neighbours.” No Bostonian wielded more economic power than Andrew Belcher, who first made money supplying provisions to troops during Metacom’s War. Each succeeding war brought Belcher larger contracts and greater profits. To the dismay of devout churchgoers and the working poor, he built a mansion on State Street and rode in an imported coach, attended by black slaves dressed in fancy livery. He owned 22 ships and invested in many more. He also repeatedly cornered the wartime grain market, spawning food shortages and raking in inflated profits as prices rose. In 1710 Belcher asserted his right to ship 6000 bushels of grain on the open market rather than sell flour at home, where people desperately needed bread. Indignant residents rebelled against Belcher’s outright defiance of traditional community values. In the dark of night, they disabled his ship by sawing through the rudder. A grand jury declined to indict the protesters. Did ambitious and aggressive merchants such as Belcher cause the city’s calamities, or did the townsfolk bring on their own troubles? Using a refrain that recurred in later generations, one godly conservative pointed a finger at the poor and implied they must be sinful if they could not subsist. “There was Corn to be had,” he argued; “if they had not impoverished themselves by Rum, they might buy Corn.” Only “the Devil’s people” lacked food. Peace returned to New England’s frontier villages and port towns in 1711, as negotiations began for ending Queen Anne’s War in America and the related War of Spanish Succession in Europe. British diplomats managed to gain favorable terms from France and Spain when they signed a treaty at Utrecht two years later. (The formal union of England and Scotland in 1707 under the name Great Britain had transformed the English empire into the British empire.) But London officials could not prevent fresh violence in North America, given the steady expansion of their British colonies. The Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and Abenaki Indians had attempted to roll back the advancement of northeastern settlers into Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine. Now Native Americans in the Southeast sought to counter the encroachments of newcomers along the Carolina coast. By the 1670s, settlers were filtering into what would become the colony of North Carolina. Some were radicals fleeing the Restoration in England. Others, such as John Culpeper, had moved north from the Carolina settlement on the Ashley River, where they disapproved of the hierarchical plans drawn up by Shaftsburg and Locke giving the Carolina proprietors firm control over the new colony. Still others were runaway servants from Virginia and refugees escaping the aftermath of Bacon’s uprising. In 1677 these newcomers, led by Culpeper, seized control in the Albemarle region. The proprietors suppressed “Culpeper’s Rebellion,” but in 1689 they agreed to name a separate governor for the portion of Carolina “That Lies north and east of Cape Feare.” Another disturbance, “Cary’s Rebellion” in 1710, led to official recognition of “North Carolina, independent of Carolina,” the next year. (Surveyors marked off the dividing line with Virginia in 1728.) In 1680 Native Americans still outnumbered newcomers in eastern North Carolina by two to one, but within 30 years that ratio had been reversed. The Naval Stores Act of 1705, passed by Parliament to promote colonial production of tar and pitch for shipbuilding, drew a stream of settlers to the pine forests of eastern North Carolina. By 1710, English communities existed on Albemarle Sound, at what is now Edenton, and on Pamlico Sound, at Bath (where Blackbeard and other pirates were frequent visitors). Further south, on the site of a Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 108 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY “They Are Really Better to Us Than We Are to Them”: Tension on the North Carolina Coast On one frontier after another from New Mexico to New England, tensions mounted between Indian inhabitants and European intruders. In North Carolina, English settlers William Powell and John Lawson watched as animosities grew from verbal exchanges to open conflict in the Tuscarora War (1711–1713). As colonizers, the two contributed to the escalation and left behind revealing documents about it. John Lawson provided a published record. In 1700, the young explorer–naturalist made an extensive tour through North and South Carolina, living among the Indians and assessing the land for colonization. His narrative of the journey, A New Voyage to Carolina; Containing the Exact History and Natural History of That Country; Together with the Present State Thereof (London, 1709) became a popular tool for recruiting settlers. William Powell, Lawson’s acquaintance, lacked the skill to be a published writer. But he could look out for his interests. So when angry Indians threatened his household and cursed him for invading their land, he scrawled an account to the governor, with a plea for action. His blunt appeal gives a front-line view of the mounting tensions from one perspective. Some punctuation has been improved, but the spelling and language remain as written to the governor. October ye 20 1704 Honorable Sir: These Comes to aquaint your honour about the … Indians That Came on Thursday Last to my house. There was about sixteen with King Louther all with there guns. I was att worke in the Woods with one Cristopher Gold. I made what hast I could, but they ware to quick for me: for my wife & Children had Left the house. They took away Severall Things that we miss: they have Taken all my Aminition. King Louther strook me with a how. I told him I would Tell yr honour of itt. He said you might kiss his arse. They stod with there guns Cocked So yt I could not gett into my house Tell They had Done what they pleased. I beleve itt is through the Instegation of one John Elderedge for he Told the Indians when I Brought a Letter to your honour from Mr Lawson that It was to Cutt them of[f] which made them lay [in] wait for me att Seder Island. This they told me & then They Called me sonn of a Bitch & said they would burne my house & when itt was Light Moone the[y] would gather my corne & ye Englishmen’s corne. Elderedge Told them further yt the Englishmen would … not sell them no Amunition because they would Cutt them of[f]. So we humbly crave that your honour would Take Some Corse or Other with them or Else here will be no Living…. Wiliam Powell Lawson, like Powell, was unsure what the proper “Corse” should be. On one hand, he seems to have been sending messages to the governor urging the English to curtail trade with the Indians. On the other hand, he could write sympathetically about the troubles of Native Americans, whose aggressive new neighbors showed little respect for them: They are really better to us than we are to them; they always give us Victuals [food] at their Quarters, and take care we are arm’d against Hunger and Thirst: We do not do so by them (generally speaking) but let them walk by our Doors Hungry, and do not often relieve them. But eventually, Lawson threw in his lot with Powell and the other settlers. Named surveyor general of North Carolina, he laid out the towns of Bath and New Bern and sketched a precise map of the entire Carolina region to assist further settlement. He soon became a focus of the Indians’ resentment. They believed that the naturalist and promoter, “under Colour of being a Surveyor Gen’l, had encroacht too much upon their Territories.” When the Tuscarora War erupted in 1711, “they were so enrag’d” that they took Lawson prisoner and put him to death. CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 109 ${bmicon} full view MAP 3.4 VIRGINIA AND THE CAROLINAS, c. 1710 After John Lawson made a 1,000-mile journey through the Carolina interior (1700–1701), he became an advocate for colonial growth. The expanding settlements of North Carolina and South Carolina pressed the Tuscarora and Yamasee Indians, who staged wars of resistance after 1710. Native American village at the mouth of the Neuse River, Protestant immigrants from Bern, Switzerland, had staked out the town of New Bern. All this was too much for the Tuscarora Indians. Frustrated by corrupt traders and land encroachment, they launched a war in 1711 to drive out the intruders. But they had waited too long. Within two years, the settlers—aided by a South Carolina force of several dozen whites and nearly 500 Yamasee Indians—had crushed Tuscarora resistance. Most of the Tuscarora survivors migrated north, where they became the sixth nation within the powerful Iroquois Confederacy. Yamasee warriors from the Savannah River region helped British colonists quell the Tuscarora uprising. But in 1715 they led their own rebellion against advancing settlers and corrupt traders linked to Charleston. They received support from neighboring Creek Indians, Spanish settlers in Florida, and French traders at the new Alabama outpost of Fort Toulouse. The still-powerful Cherokees in southern Appalachia opted not to join in the Yamasee War. Otherwise, the Indians might have overwhelmed the South Carolina colony. PART 1 ###8226; NORTH AMERICAN FOUNDERS 110 ${bmicon} Along the length of eastern North America, from the Kennebec River to the Savannah, hundreds of settlers and Indians perished during the half-century before 1715. Often the frontier struggles became entwined with wider conflicts between the rival European empires. These wilderness skirmishes seem minute compared with the battles raging in Europe at the same time. (One hundred thousand soldiers clashed when England’s Duke of Marlborough defeated the French at Blenheim near the Danube River in 1704. Battle lines stretched for 4 miles, and casualties ran to more than 40,000 killed or wounded.) Despite the small scale of the conflicts in North America, Europe’s imperial wars had started to influence developments in the English colonies. Another element of Europe’s expansion overseas—the trans-Atlantic slave trade—had also begun to alter the shape of England’s North American colonies. What had seemed only a small cloud on the horizon in the early seventeenth century had grown into an ominous force, with a momentum of its own, by the early eighteenth century. The storm hit hardest along the Southeast Coast, where the arrival of thousands of Africans soon shaped a distinctive and depressing world of enslavement and exploitation that endured for generations. No sooner had the English gained control along the Atlantic edge of North America than they orchestrated a “terrible transformation” that placed thousands in bondage and altered the shape of American history. Mission San Xavier del Bac Lying 7 miles south of Tucson, Arizona, off Interstate 19 is the mission Father Eusebio Kino founded in 1700. The current church was created in 1783. A short drive south on Highway 19, the Tumacacori National Historical Park preserves ruins of three early Spanish missions. Jesuit Missionary Records puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/ In the late nineteenth century, Reuben Gold Thwaites compiled and edited more than 70 volumes titled The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Creighton University has made almost the entire English translation of these valuable documents available on this Web site. The documents are also available on CD-ROM from Quintin Publications. Fort Toulouse In 1717, the French built Fort Toulouse where the Coosa and Talapoosa rivers converge, just north of Montgomery, Alabama. On the third weekend each month between April and November, volunteers conduct a French Colonial Living History program in and around the reconstructed French fort, with displays of blacksmithing and musket firing. The Straits of Mackinac The Straits of Mackinac joining lakes Huron and Michigan was once a strategic spot. Here, Interstate 75 now links Upper and Lower Michigan. North of the Mackinac Bridge, a memorial at St. Ignace honors Father Marquette. At the south end, Colonial Michilimackinac is a reconstructed village reflecting French and English frontier life. Castillo de San Marcos This stone fort guarding St. Augustine, Florida, was built in 1672–1695. The National Park Service maintains this fortress as a national monument and also provides a virtual tour online at www.nps.gov/casa/home/home.htm The Old Deerfield National Historic Landmark This site lies just east of Interstate 91 and surrounds a beautiful village in the hills of northwestern Massachusetts. Historic Deerfield, incorporated in 1952, maintains 14 restored houses, open for a self-guided walking tour, and the Flynt Center of Early New England Life displays New England life from 1650 to 1850. Salem Village Witchcraft www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/salemwc.htm A good Web introduction to “Witchcraft in Salem Village” appears as part of a project on “Religion and the National Culture” at this Web site of the National Humanities Center. Salem Village (Danvers, Massachusetts) has a memorial to victims of the 1692 witchcraft persecutions. Eastern North Carolina www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/bath/bath.htm North Carolina’s earliest colonial ports at Edenton, Bath, and New Bern (ranging from north to south) still contain rich evidence of eighteenth-century life. This Web site for Historic Bath has links on explorer–naturalist John Lawson, Blackbeard the Pirate, and the Tuscarora War. CHAPTER 3 ###8226; CONTROLLING THE EDGES OF THE CONTINENT, 1660###8211;1715 111 ${bmicon} Elaine G. Breslaw, Witches of the Atlantic World: A Historical Reader and Primary Source Book (2000). Wesley Frank Craven, The Colonies in Transition, 1660–1713 (1968). Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795 (1975). Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of AmericanIndian Resistance (1969). John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina (1967). Marcel Giraud, A History of French Louisiana, Volume One: the Reign of Louis XIV, 1698–1715 (1974). Jay Higginbotham, Old Mobile, Fort Louis de la Louisiane, 1702–1711 (1977). Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (1997). Robert S. Weddle, The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle (2001). Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (1991). Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (1991). John H. Hann, A History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (1996). Andrew L. Knaut, The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico (1995). Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe (1995). David J. Weber, editor, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt? (1999). Joyce D. Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664–1730 (1992). J. R. Jones, Country and Court: England, 1658–1714 (1978). Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (1999). Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681–1726 (1968). Robert M. Weir, Colonial South Carolina: A History (1983). John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (1994). Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (1998). David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (1972). Stephen S. Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (1984). Stephen S. Webb, Lord Churchill’s Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered (1995). Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (1974). Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732 (1928). Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Name of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (1987). James H. Merrell, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal (1989). Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution (1986, abridged edition). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter3 To Chapter 3 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 112 ${bmicon}   1672 Royal African Company (RAC) formed in London. 1676 Virginia and Maryland slaves join in Bacon’s Rebellion. 1700 Shoshone Indians obtain horses; Sioux obtain guns. 1705 Virginia Negro Act passes. 1712 New York City slave revolt. 1713 British receive the contract (asiento) to supply African slaves to Spanish colonies. 1715 First whaling ventures from Nantucket. 1718 French lay out New Orleans; Spanish start San Antonio. 1721 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters. 1728 Vitus Bering explores the strait between Siberia and Alaska. 1734 James Oglethorpe founds Georgia as a nonslave colony. Jonathan Edwards leads religious revival in Northampton, Massachusetts. 1737 Delaware Indians lose land to Pennsylvania through the Walking Purchase. 1739 Slave revolt in Stono, South Carolina. George Whitefield’s preaching tour sparks Great Awakening. 1741 Bering’s second voyage reaches coast of Alaska from Asia. Alleged slave plot in New York City. British forces capture Louisburg. 1749 Spanish sign treaty with Apaches at San Antonio. 1751 Slavery is legalized in Georgia. 1753 Moravians establish Bethabara in North Carolina. 1754 War breaks out in America between French and British. ON APRIL 19, 1775, NEW ENGLAND FARMERS BATTLED BRITISH SOLDIERS at Concord Bridge. The confrontation marked the start of the American Revolution. (Each spring in Massachusetts, the date is still set aside as Patriots’ Day and celebrated with the running of the Boston Marathon.) But how did colonies that remained weak outposts before 1700 become strong enough to challenge the power of the British empire in the second half of the eighteenth century? The answer is not a simple one. Life changed in dramatic ways during the century before 1775, not only in New England but throughout much of North America. The rapid spread of Spanish horses across the West allowed Native Americans, such as the Comanche and Sioux, to become mounted buffalo hunters on the Great Plains. The arrival of Russian fur traders disrupted traditional cultures on the Aleutian Islands and the coast of Alaska. At the same time, the gradual success of the new Louisiana colony gave France access to much of the Mississippi River valley. But the potential for a dominant French-speaking empire in America evaporated with the stunning defeat of French forces by the British in the Seven Years’ War. As that global conflict ended in 1763, the Spanish also lost ground in North America. After claiming Florida for 200 years, they finally ceded the peninsula to the British, even as they began to extend Spanish missions up the coast of California. Other changes were even more dramatic. In the eighteenth century race slavery became an established aspect of colonial society in North America. The process began early, well before 1660, and evolved over several generations. In the coastal Southeast, it rapidly took hold as a dominant institution. The English had come late to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but they became aggressive participants in the lucrative traffic in human beings. English colonizers fashioned harsh slave-based societies in the Caribbean, then in the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland, next in North and South Carolina, and finally, after 1750, in the recently established colony of Georgia. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 113 ${bmicon}   This terrible transformation to mainland colonies based on race slavery had far-reaching results. Thousands of Africans arrived in North American ports in the eighteenth century. Strikingly, they were only a small fraction of the much greater transport of Africans to the Caribbean and Central and South America. Nevertheless, by 1750 there were nearly 250,000 African Americans living in North America. Most lived in the South, and most were enslaved, including several hundred in Spanish East Florida and several thousand in French Louisiana. By 1775 the number exceeded half a million. By then, blacks made up more than 20 percent of the population of the British colonies, and the legal and social constraints that bound them remained tighter than ever. Newcomers from Europe, as well as from Africa, altered the make-up of Atlantic colonies that had once been almost entirely English. Many of these newly arrived Europeans, unable to afford the cost of passage, had to pledge their labor for a period of years. But in contrast to the Africans, most European migrants came to America voluntarily and were free from obligations within a few years. The Atlantic crossing could be harrowing, of course, but for thousands the long-term advantages outweighed the short-term drawbacks. Artisans of all kinds were in high demand, and land was cheap. Colonial governments ruled with a light hand in comparison to the monarchies of Europe, and they competed with one another to attract newcomers. This competition, in turn, bred relative religious and ethnic tolerance. Pushed by events in Europe and drawn by opportunities in America, non-English families flocked to Britain’s North American colonies. Combined with the African slave trade, this new flow from Europe and the British Isles quickly generated a far more diverse colonial society on the foundations laid by earlier English immigrants. Prior generations of colonists had laid out towns, formed governments, and founded the rudimentary institutions of colonial social life. They had established an ambiguous pattern of interaction with Native Americans that involved warfare and displacement as well as trade and intermarriage. Also, they had located harbors, carved out roads, and started to build an economic infrastructure. As numbers rose and diversity increased, a series of regional economies emerged along the eastern seaboard. Each sustained the local inhabitants while also serving the wider needs of the British empire. For much of the eighteenth century, the British crown promoted economic growth in the colonies through a workable combination of protectionist controls and benign neglect. But the British victory over the French brought drastic new problems to eastern North America after 1763. Native Americans lost a valued trading partner and military ally when the French withdrew. Britain faced an enormous war debt and looked to its burgeoning colonies as a source of much-needed revenue. Within little more than a decade, Britain’s North American colonists went from resentment and resistance to overt rebellion and an anticolonial war of independence. 1755 Braddock is defeated near Fort Duquesne. 1758 Comanches attack Spanish at San Saba Mission. 1759 Quebec falls to the British. 1760 George III becomes king of England. French surrender Montreal to British. 1763 Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian War. Proclamation Line limits expansion of British colonies. Pontiac’s Rebellion. 1764 Sugar Act; Currency Act. 1765 Quartering Act; Stamp Act. Virginia Resolves; Stamp Act demonstrations. Tenant riots in Hudson Valley. 1766 Stamp Act repealed. Declaratory Act. Bougainville explores the South Pacific. 1767 Townshend Acts. 1768 James Cook makes first of three voyages to explore the Pacific. Massachusetts Circular Letter. 1770 Boston Massacre. 1771 Battle of Alamance ends the Regulator Movement in North Carolina. 1772 Burning of the Gaspée. 1773 Boston Tea Party. 1774 Intolerable Acts. First Continental Congress meets. The Suffolk Resolves. 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord. Spanish enter San Francisco Bay. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 114 ${bmicon}         The Descent into Race Slavery       The Growth of Slave Labor Camps       England Enters the Atlantic Slave Trade       Survival in a Strange New Land       The Transformation Completed       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 115 ${bmicon} ON A COOL DAY IN JANUARY 1656, A MULATTO SERVANT NAMED ELIZABETH KEY WENT before the local court in Northumberland County, Virginia. She was 25 years old. The late Colonel John Mottrom, a justice of the peace, had held Elizabeth as a slave, kept in perpetual bondage. She objected strongly, and she wanted to sue the executors of Mottom’s estate for her freedom and back pay. Bess, as she was known, presented a threefold argument. First, as the daughter of a free man, she should inherit her father’s legal status according to English law. Second, as a baptized Christian, she should not be enslaved. And third, she could produce a document showing that as a small child she had been “put out” to work until she was 14, following local custom. Such contracts for apprenticing a child for a fixed number of years were common in America, where labor was in short supply. But her term of work had expired long ago. Key was accompanied in court by her white attorney and lover, William Greensted. They had had two children together and would marry six months later, when they finally won a favorable verdict. The executors of Mottrom’s estate, eager to show that Bess’s father was neither free nor Christian, implied that a Turkish crewman off a visiting ship was the girl’s father. But the young couple produced witnesses who testified that Bess was indeed the daughter of Thomas Key, a white man serving in the Virginia General Assembly, and his “Negro woman.” One witness, though only 13 at the time of Elizabeth’s birth in 1631, told the jury she remembered Bess’s mother well. The witness knew that she lived openly with Mr. Key and had heard her say that the girl was Key’s daughter. Other witnesses recalled that Bess Key’s mixed parentage “was a common Report amongst the Neighbours.” Mrs. Newman, the 80-year-old midwife who had delivered Bess’s own children, contributed additional testimony. She recalled that 25 years earlier, Mr. Key was brought to court and “fined for getting his Negro woman with child.” Further testimony established that in 1636, not long before he died, Key had bound little Bess to Humphrey Higginson, a member of the Council of State. Higginson “promised to use her as well as if shee were his own Child”; that is, “more Respectfully than a Comon servant or slave.” He even stood as her godfather when Bess was christened. To be raised in a Christian church was no small matter at a time when Europeans viewed non-Christians captured in wars to be uniquely vulnerable to legal enslavement. For Bess, this circumstance helped her cause greatly, for she proved “able to give a very good account of her fayth.” Furthermore, she produced clear evidence that her father had sold her to Higginson for nine years. Mr. Key had demanded that Higginson not dispose of her to any other person, such as to Colonel Mottrom. Rather, he was to give her the usual “freedom portion” of corn and clothes “and lett her shift for her selfe,” either in England or Virginia, when her term expired. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 116 ${bmicon} The local jury accepted Elizabeth Key’s three-part argument and pronounced her free. But the General Court overturned the verdict on appeal, only to be overruled in turn by a committee of the General Assembly. In the end, the committee determined that “Elizabeth ought to bee free.” The assemblymen also argued that her last master owed her a “freedom portion,” plus back pay “for the time shee hath served longer than Shee ought to have done.” Still, the matter generated debate among settlers. Several decades later, Elizabeth’s case would have been decided differently. Moreover, the courts of Virginia might well have enslaved her children for life. And their own offspring would have inherited slavery status as well. A terrible transformation was under way in English colonial culture that would warp American society for centuries to come. It did not become obvious overnight. Instead, it spread gradually, like a cancer, revealing a different pace and pattern in each mainland colony. During the 1620s and 1630s, a few black servants were working alongside white servants in Virginia and New England. All worked for fixed periods of service, with equal expectations of eventually becoming free residents and property holders. But well before the end of the century, a fateful transition had occurred, and the grandchildren of those workers had been separated into two distinct categories based upon skin color and physical appearance, or race. Free blacks persisted in the English colonies, but in most communities they became anomalies, for the tide was flowing against them. From now on, people of African ancestry were to be legally enslaved for life. The earliest signs of lifetime enslavement definitely predate 1660, and the dark consequences would play out across American history down to the present day. But in scarcely half a century, during the late 1600s and early 1700s, this malignant condition developed from possibility to reality. Elizabeth Key and her children and grandchildren experienced the painful transition first-hand and glimpsed its horrendous consequences. Some grim transitions in human affairs evolve slowly, even imperceptibly. In the midtwentieth century, western societies recovering from World War II looked back at the havoc that fascism had spawned in Europe and wondered how Germany had moved from anti-Jewish prejudice, to hatred, to death camps in just two generations. In the mid–twenty-first century, we may look back and wonder how global warming, population expansion, religious fanaticism, weapon proliferation—or some difficulty we cannot now see—went from a negligible problem to a debatable issue to a rampant disaster during our lifetimes. How North American society sank into the pit of race slavery is just such a difficult topic. But the slippery slope sanctioning perpetual servitude based on race demands attention. Nothing shaped colonial cultures more forcefully than the European colonists’ gradual commitment to the legalized enslavement of hundreds of thousands of people and their descendants. The roots of race slavery in the Americas extend back to the era of Columbus, when warfare, sickness, and exploitation quickly decimated the native populations of the Caribbean after 1492. Hungry for human labor, the Spanish intruders began to import people from Africa to grow crops and dig for gold in the Caribbean islands. As the native population declined sharply through epidemics, the traffic in black newcomers expanded. Spanish pressure for labor in the New World intensified further with the discovery of additional mines in Mexico and Peru. To meet the growing demand, Spain’s king even issued a con- CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 117 ${bmicon} tract (called the asiento) that allowed other European powers—such as Portugal, France, or the Netherlands—to import African slaves to the Spanish colonies. High profits drew eager participation. In the half-century between 1590 and 1640, more than 220,000 people arrived in chains from Africa at the empire’s ports in Central and South America. Meanwhile, the Portuguese purchased enslaved Africans to work their own expanding sugar plantations. They imported more than 75,000 slaves, mostly from the Congo Rver region of West Central Africa, to the Atlantic island of São Tomé in the sixteenth century. And when Portuguese sugar production spread to coastal Brazil, so did the exploitation of African labor. By 1625 Brazil imported the majority of slaves crossing the Atlantic each year and exported most of the sugar consumed in Europe. Long before the 1660s, therefore, Europeans had set a precedent for exploiting African workers in New World colonies. Over more than a century, Spain and Portugal had learned to purchase, transport, market, and exploit enslaved workers from ports along the West African coast. Moreover, they had found ways to justify in their own minds a deep involvement in this brutal but lucrative system. Religious and secular authorities frowned on actively enslaving people, especially if they were fellow Christians, but purchasing so-called infidels (those who followed other religions or opposed Christianity) could be tolerated, particularly if slavery had already been imposed on them by someone else. These West African victims were non-Christians, and most had already been enslaved by others, captured by fellow Africans in war. As late as 1660, it was not at all clear that African slavery would gain a prominent place, or even a lasting foothold, in any North American colonies. Confident in this rationale, the Spanish and Portuguese adapted their laws to accept the enslavement of Africans. Moreover, the condition would be hereditary, passed on from mother to child, and the new labor system had backing from the Catholic Church. Catholic priests occasionally worked to alleviate suffering among Africans in the Americas, and they reached out regularly for the conversion of souls, but the papacy did nothing to condemn the growing traffic. Nor did the Protestant Reformation have a dampening effect. On the contrary, the rising Protestant sea powers of northern Europe proved willing to assist in the slave trade and compete in what historians call the “sugar revolution,” growing sugar on a massive scale for expanding Atlantic markets. Ships of the Dutch West India Company, for example, played an increasing role in the Brazilian trade, transporting both slaves and sugar. Indeed, for a generation in the first half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch ruled the South American colony. When the Portuguese regained control of Brazil at mid-century, they pushed out Dutch settlers who had long experience in managing sugar plantations. These outcasts traveled the islands of the Caribbean, bringing their knowledge with them. Some appeared in the new English possessions of Barbados and Jamaica, and soon they were directing African slaves in cutting, pressing, and boiling sugar cane to make molasses. The thick molasses could then be processed further to make the rum and refined sugar that these English colonies exported. By the 1650s slavery and sugar production were engulfing England’s West Indian possessions, just as these twin features had already become central to the New World colonies controlled by Spain and Portugal. But as late as 1660, it was not at all clear that African slavery would gain a prominent place, or even a lasting foothold, in any North American colonies. As far back as the sixteenth century, African men had participated in Spanish explorers’ forays into the Southeast, and some had remained, fathering children with Indian women. African slaves had helped to establish the small Spanish outpost at St. Augustine in 1565, but a century later no additional coastal colonies had yet appeared on the mainland anywhere south of Chesapeake Bay. Granted, Africans were present farther north in the fledgling settlements of the French, Dutch, and English. But their numbers remained small—several thousand at PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 118 ${bmicon} most—in comparison to the expanding black populations of the older sugar colonies near the equator. In addition, few of these newcomers had come directly from Africa. Most had lived for years in the Caribbean or on the mainland, absorbing the languages, customs, and beliefs of the majority population. So they and their children, like Bess Key, were not viewed as complete outsiders by the European colonists. The legal and social standing of these few early African Americans remained vague before the 1660s. Local statutes regarding labor were crude and contradictory; their interpretation and enforcement varied widely. Everywhere, workers were in demand, and most black newcomers found themselves indentured for a period of years alongside European servants in a similar unfree condition. In the Massachusetts Bay colony, early Puritan settlers, casting about for sources of labor and for markets, exchanged goods for slaves in the Caribbean. In 1644, seafaring New Englanders even attempted direct trade with Africa. But the following year, Massachusetts authorities ordered a New Hampshire resident to surrender a black worker he had purchased in Boston. They argued that the man had been stolen from Africa, not captured in war, and should be returned to his home. For the earliest handful of black New Englanders, their standing proved uncertain in a region where religious status mattered far more than language, dress, or outward physical appearance. In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law clearly limiting all involuntary service—whether for Europeans or Africans—to no more than 10 years. Along the Hudson River, the Dutch colonists had close ties with the sugar islands of the West Indies where race slavery was already an accepted system. In New Netherland, therefore, the laws discriminated against black workers and limited their rights. But the statutes also provided loopholes that permitted social and economic advancement to the community’s Africans, most of whom spoke Dutch. Chesapeake Bay lay even closer to the main routes of the Atlantic slave traffic. In 1619 a Dutch warship that had acquired slaves during a season of raiding in the Caribbean brought more than 20 African men and women to Virginia. They were put up for sale as servants, along with people deported from England to build up the Chesapeake’s labor force. Terms of service varied, and some black newcomers earned their freedom quickly and kept it. But others saw their terms extended arbitrarily. In 1640 Virginia’s General Court considered punishment for “a negro named John Punch” and two other servants who had escaped to Maryland and had been apprehended together. The Dutchman and the Scotsman each received four additional years of service, but the African was sentenced to unending servitude “for the time of his natural life.” That same year, Virginia passed a law that prevented blacks from bearing arms. And a 1643 law taxing productive field hands included African American women but not white women. These early efforts to separate Africans from Europeans by law set an ominous precedent in the use of skin color as a distinguishing marker. Throughout the 1640s and 1650s, aggressive English tobacco farmers in Virginia and Maryland, in imitation of planters in Barbados, attempted to purchase the labor of Indians and Africans for life. They even claimed rights to the future children of nonwhite women in their possession. Still, rules governing the lives of people of color and their offspring remained ambiguous for several decades, and (as the case CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 119 ${bmicon} of Bess Key makes clear) efforts at exploitation could often be undone in court. But new forces would come into play in the mainland American colonies after 1660, consolidating the transition to hereditary African slavery. For African newcomers to English North America, their legal status became distinctly clearer and less hopeful in the decades after 1660. This shift was linked to the fact that colonial efforts to exploit two other supplies of affordable workers—captured Native Americans and impoverished Europeans—were running into increasing difficulty. The transatlantic slave trade, already more than a century old, provided certain English colonies with a ready source of African workers at a time when more obvious streams of inexpensive labor were dwindling or drying up. For labor-hungry colonists, Native Americans had much to recommend them, since they were close at hand and knew the country well. Throughout the century, English newcomers often paid an Indian hunter to keep them supplied with fresh meat. But it was a different matter if European strangers tried to force that neighbor to cut down trees and cultivate unfamiliar crops endlessly, with little or no reward. Native Americans took captives when fighting one another, so colonists could buy Indian prisoners or seize them in frontier warfare. Europeans felt they could enslave such people in good conscience, since they were non-Christians who had been taken captive in war. But Native American numbers were declining steadily, owing to epidemics. And those who did become enslaved knew the countryside well enough to escape. Besides, traffic in Indian slaves worked against other goals of the colonists. It disrupted the profitable deerskin trade, undermined wilderness diplomacy, and sparked conflict on the frontier. Efforts to maintain a steady flow of cheap labor from Europe ran into different problems. The Great Plague of 1665 devastated the English population, and the London Fire the following year created a new need for workers of all kinds to rebuild the capital. England’s labor surplus, which had been a boon to the initial colonies half a century earlier, rapidly disappeared. Those who made their living in English ports by procuring labor for America were forced to nab youngsters off the streets. But even this practice (called by the new word, kidnapping) was soon outlawed. The use of indentures persisted, whereby the poor could buy their passage by agreeing to sell their labor for a fixed term. But when these workers reached America, they served for only a few years and then had to be replaced. Moreover, when their terms of indenture expired, they expected “freedom dues” (clothes, tools, and food from their former master) and their own land to farm. Once free, therefore, they competed for acreage that large planters hoped to control. Equally important, when indentured servants were mistreated, they had little difficulty in relaying their complaints home to other potential workers. The flow of ships back and forth between Europe and North America grew steadily in the century after 1660, so word of places where indentured servants were regularly abused or swindled quickly reached the other side of the Atlantic. As Europeans mulled over private letters, coffeehouse gossip, and sailors’ reports, they could adjust their own plans for migration. Depending on what they heard or read, they might postpone a voyage or seek a more promising destination. In contrast, the African slave trade lacked any similar “feedback loop.” People swept up in the growing stream of unfree African labor had no access to information regarding New World conditions. On New World plantations—as in Siberian slave labor camps and German extermination centers in the twentieth century—people and information flowed in only one direction. A mere handful, among hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans, ever managed to communicate with their homeland. One can only speculate how different the procurement and treatment of colonial labor might have been if generations of Europeans had received no knowledge of conditions in North America, or if Africans had received a great deal. As it was, the brutal treatment of black workers across the Atlantic never had a chance, through accurate feedback, to influence the future flow of deportations from Africa. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 120 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Reparations for Slavery? The small plaque reads, “In memory of the courage, pain and suffering of enslaved African people.” But you probably will never see it. In 1993, members of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers lowered it to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off Key West, Florida. There it marks the resting place of the Henrietta Marie, an English slave ship built in 1699 that sank the next year, during its second voyage. Similarly, civic leaders in South Carolina unveiled a marker at Sullivan’s Island in Charleston Harbor. It honors thousands of eighteenth-century Africans who faced enslavement, rather than opportunity, when they arrived at “the Ellis Island of Black America.” Other markers will follow as Americans continue to reexamine the country’s long involvement with slavery and the slave trade. But many people now say that memorials, even official apologies, are not enough. Instead, they believe, formal reparations are overdue. The passions stirred by their suggestion show that the matter of slavery in America has not yet been laid to rest. Payment of reparations—repairing a wrong through some compensation for damages—is an old and honored concept. It can sometimes bring legal satisfaction and moral closure to both the abused and the abuser. And it applies whether individuals, groups, or nations are involved. Germany has paid extensive reparations for Nazi atrocities during World War II, and the German government and private industries are compensating people who were forced to work without pay in slave labor camps. Inevitably, the issue of reparations sparks controversy whenever it appears. It applies most readily to offenses that are short-lived and recent. For example, after much deliberation, Congress began paying reparations in 1991 to U.S. citizens of Japanese descent who were placed in internment camps during World War II. But reparations have also been argued for human wrongs that lasted much longer and lie buried deeper in the past, such as the enslavement of African Americans over centuries. Talk of slavery reparations is hardly new. English lawyer James Grahame published a book in 1842 criticizing U.S. hypocrisy and claiming reparations on behalf of African Americans. A generation later it looked as though the country’s 4 million slavery survivors might at least get the simple “freedom dues” that had gone to indentured servants in colonial times for beginning free life after servitude. But promises of “40 acres and a mule” fell through when the federal government refused to redistribute the land of planters who had declared war against the United States. Congressional aid offered through the Freedmen’s Bureau proved small and uneven. It was also short-lived. Congress cut off funds for the agency in 1872. In recent years, opposition to renewed talk of slavery reparations has been swift and varied. How do you calculate such a huge price tag, and who foots the bill? Should compensation go to slavery’s descendants (numerous and not always easy to define) or to the African lands that suffered such colossal losses? Would a token payment, spread widely, be useless and insulting all at once? And doesn’t the entire notion reopen old wounds and revive talk of victim status long after it is time to move on? Not so, says John Conyers, a black representative from Michigan who has been prodding Congress for more than a decade to form a commission to study the issue. Frustrated on Capitol Hill, he points to a coalition of lawyers who hope to force the issue in court. They see the primary obstacle not as money but as public ignorance and apathy. Most Americans, they argue, are still in denial about the true nature of slavery and its enormous scope. “We just want the history to be told a little more accurately,” Conyers observes. “I think if it’s told, we’ll have our day in court and we’ll win.” In general, powerful Chesapeake tobacco planters had opposed challenges to the monarchy from Puritans and Parliament during England’s recent civil wars. Many had close ties to the royalists and courtiers (known as “Cavaliers”) who had remained faithful to the Stuart cause after King Charles I had been executed and his son had gone into exile. They were encour- CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 121 ${bmicon} aged in 1660 by news of the Restoration of Charles II, since he was likely to support their interests and reward their loyalty. These men had noticed the rising profits that sugar growers were making by using slaves in the Caribbean. In Virginia and Maryland, therefore, planters passed a series of laws that sharpened distinctions between servants working for a fixed period and slaves consigned to labor for life. Officials who had objected to the verdict that freed Elizabeth Key in 1656 moved in the following decade to implement their own harsher views as law. In shaping new legislation, they even challenged long-standing English legal traditions, such as the right of children to inherit their father’s status. In 1662 Virginia’s General Assembly considered whether any child fathered “by an Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or Free.” In a crucial reversal of precedent, the legislature said that in such cases “all children borne in this country” shall be “held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.” From now on, the infant of any female slave would be enslaved from birth, an obvious boon for masters who wanted additional long-term labor at little cost. Slavery was becoming a hereditary condition. If enslaved persons accepted Christianity, could they receive their freedom, as sometimes happened in Spanish colonies? A Maryland law of 1664 closed off that prospect. The act made clear that the legal status of non-Christian slaves did not change if they experienced religious conversion. Three years later, Virginia’s government agreed that “the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage.” By taking religion out of the question, legislators shifted the definition of who could be enslaved from someone who was not Christian to someone who did not look European. In 1680, Reverend Morgan Godwyn observed that the “two words, Negro and Slave,” had already “by custom” grown interchangeable in Virginia. Because nobody could alter their skin color but anyone could change faith, planters moved to categorize colonial workers by their appearance rather than their religion. In scarcely a generation, black bondage had become a hereditary institution, and the conditions of life had grown markedly worse for African Americans. Europeans receiving wages for work could pay fines for misbehavior; servants indentured for a term could be required to work additional months or years as a punishment. But enslaved Africans, condemned to unpaid labor for life, had no money or time to give up when disciplined for misdeeds, whether real or imagined. Therefore, they found themselves subjected increasingly to corporal punishments: whippings, torture, and even mutilation. In the generation after Elizabeth Key, black slaves—and often free blacks as well—lost their right to accuse, or even testify against, a white person in a court of law. “And further,” stated Virginia’s formative slave law of 1680, “if any Negro” so much as raises a hand, even in self-defense, “against any Christian, he shall receive thirty lashes, and if he absent himself … from his master’s service and resist lawful apprehension, he may be killed.” In the second half of the seventeenth century, those who ran the South’s emerging staple crop economies undertook a drastic change of course. Step by step, over two generations, tobacco growers in the Chesapeake and rice producers in the new colony of South Carolina embraced the system of hereditary race slavery that had developed in the Caribbean. Within a matter of decades, they made it central to their way of life. Traditionally, historians had described this change as the rise of plantation agriculture. But for those forced to cut the trees, drain the swamps, and harvest the crops, the shift in production strategy represented—in modern terminology—the emergence of slave labor camps. After all, the plantations of varying sizes that came to dot the southern coastline and the interior river valleys exploited a captive workforce. These people received no wages for their labor, had no legal rights, and could be deported to some other location at any time. This deterioration in PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 122 ${bmicon} conditions occurred first, and most dramatically, in Virginia, where several thousand African Americans lived and labored by the 1670s. Nothing did more to consolidate Virginia’s slide toward race slavery than Bacon’s Rebellion, the major uprising that shook the Chesapeake region in 1676 (see chapter 3). The episode pitted aspiring gentry, led by Nathaniel Bacon, against beleaguered Indian groups on the frontier and an entrenched oligarchy in Jamestown. The rebellion underscored the dilemmas inherent in Virginia’s reliance on a steady flow of white indentured servants to cultivate tobacco. That labor supply was uneven at best, and employers constantly needed new recruits, since terms of service lasted only several years. Workers who earned their freedom—hundreds every year—were young, armed men who demanded property of their own. Whether they had to take it from rich landholders or neighboring Indians made little difference to them. These free men, would-be farmers in search of land, made up part of Bacon’s following, but a diverse group of unfree workers also proved eager recruits. These ill-treated individuals remained legally bound to large landholders for varying terms, and many of the Africans were undoubtedly bound for life. Together, they raised much of the colony’s annual tobacco crop. The backbreaking labor—planting, hoeing, suckering, topping, picking, curing, and packing tobacco—prompted frequent unrest. These ragged workers, however long their term of CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 123 ${bmicon} service might be, had the most to gain and the least to lose from Bacon’s revolt. According to the Virginia Assembly, “many evill disposed servants … taking advantage of the loosenes of the tymes … followed the rebells in rebellion.” When Bacon fell ill and died in October 1676, many of his wealthier supporters reasserted their loyalty to the colonial government in order to emerge on the winning side. But bound workers who had escaped from their masters continued the fight. A letter reaching London that fall suggested that at the height of the rebellion Bacon had “proclam’d liberty to all Servants and Negro’s.” Whether or not Bacon had actually declared freedom to servants and slaves of all sorts, the widespread unrest clearly had given hope to the most downtrodden tobacco pickers, about a quarter of whom were black. As a Royal Commission put it, “sundry servants and other persons of desperate fortunes” had “deserted their masters and run into rebellion on the encouragement of liberty.” When military reinforcements arrived in Chesapeake Bay from England in November, their commanding officer, Captain Thomas Grantham, found hundreds of laborers still in active revolt. Impressed by their strength, Grantham chose to use deceit when he met with eight hundred heavily armed rebels, both white and black, at their headquarters near the York River in Virginia. By distributing brandy and making vague promises regarding pardons and freedom, he persuaded most of the white men to surrender and return home. Only about “Eighty Negroes and Twenty English … would not deliver their Armes.” According to Grantham, they threatened to kill him, asserting that they wanted “their hoped for liberty and would not quietly laye downe their armes.” But when these last holdouts boarded a sloop to head down river, Grantham managed to lure them within range of his ship’s cannons. He disarmed the rebels and chained them below decks for return to their masters. With Bacon’s death and the arrival of British ships, propertied Virginians had narrowly averted a successful multiracial revolution, fueled from below by workers who resented their distressed condition. But it was clear that another revolt might succeed in the future, and the great planters of the Chesapeake region moved to tighten their hold on political and economic power. After Bacon’s Rebellion, a strategy of divide and conquer seemed in order. They moved to improve conditions for poor whites in ways that would reduce tension between classes and ensure deference and racial solidarity among Europeans. At the same time, they moved to reduce further the legal status of blacks and solidify their full enslavement. Africans would regularly be forced to serve for life, with increasingly harsh penalties for any show of opposition or dissent. For precedent, the planters had the model provided by slavery-based colonial societies in the West Indies, including the English sugar island of Barbados. The notion of treating Africans separately, based on their customs, speech, and appearance, became an article of faith among aspiring planters. Their uneasiness continued over importing non-Christian strangers who spoke little, if any, English. But such doubts were more than offset by the prospect of laying claim to the children of slaves and to the lives and labor of all generations to come. In short, enslaved African women gave birth to additional workers, acquired by the master at no extra cost. These same women, moreover, were often more familiar with agricultural tasks than their European counterparts. Besides, planters could exploit black women and men more ruthlessly than they could whites without affecting future labor supplies. Increasing life expectancy in the Chesapeake region, resulting from sturdier dwellings and more stable living conditions, further motivated planters to move away from a workforce of indentured servants. For a self-interested planter, longer lives meant that a white indentured person, after serving only a few years, would become yet another long-term competitor in the crowded tobacco market. In contrast, Africans enslaved for life would yield profitable service for an increasingly long time. And they would be more likely than ever to produce healthy offspring. Boys and girls who survived childhood could then be forced to clear more land to grow additional crops. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 124 ${bmicon} Among a circle of wealthy investors, the enticement of such an economic bonanza overcame any cultural anxieties or religious scruples. Seizing the moment, these aggressive entrepreneurs established themselves as the leading families of Virginia. William Byrd was an apt example. The son of an English goldsmith, Byrd took over his uncle’s trading post near the falls of the James River at age 18 and soon married into a prominent family. As a frontier resident, he joined briefly in Bacon’s uprising. But by the 1680s, he occupied a seat on Virginia’s council and held several high financial posts. With his salary, he bought up his neighbors’ tobacco and shipped it to England. He then used the proceeds to purchase cloth, kettles, muskets, and beads for the Indian trade. After exchanging these goods for deerskins, he exported the skins at a profit. In return, he imported trade goods from London and slaves and rum from the Caribbean, all of which he sold to small planters for more tobacco so the lucrative cycle could begin again. In the 1690s, Byrd moved his operations closer to the seat of power, which remained at Jamestown until the capital shifted to nearby Williamsburg in 1699. He established a large estate at Westover, on the north bank of the James River, where he used scores of imported slaves to expand his wealth and launch a family dynasty. By the 1730s, Byrd’s son, like other wealthy slave owners, came to fear a “servile war” so violent that it would “tinge our rivers, as wide as they are, with blood.” But for early merchant-planters, the enormous profits offered by slavery outweighed the calculated risks. These ambitious men expected that the English-speaking Africans already present could assist in teaching newcomers to receive orders. They also assumed that slave laborers from diverse African societies could not communicate well enough with one another to cause dangerous disturbances. And of course, having now made skin color a determining feature of social order, they knew that black runaways could be spotted and apprehended readily in the free white community. As the profitability of the slavery option increased, so did its appeal. In 1664 Maryland’s governor had been unable to find a hundred planters whose “purses would endure” a scheme in which each bought one slave per year. As yet, there were “nott men of estates good enough to undertake such a buisnesse.” But 40 years later, some 4500 people were enslaved in Maryland in a total population of 35,000. And the colony’s assembly was taking further measures to encourage the importation of slaves. Growing demand meant that merchants and sea captains who had only occasionally dabbled in the transportation of slaves now devoted more time and larger ships to the enterprise. Expansion of the slave-trading infrastructure made African workers readily available and affordable. As the supply of enslaved black newcomers grew larger, planters eager to strengthen their position manipulated the established headright system. Traditionally, under this system, the colonial government granted to any arriving head of household 50 acres for every family mem- CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 125 ${bmicon} ber or hired hand he brought into the colony. The incentive was intended to spur emigration from Europe, expand the free population, and develop the land through the establishment of family farms. But the wealthy planters who saw African slavery as a profitable labor source also controlled Virginia’s legal system. For their own benefit, therefore, they extended the headright system so that a land bonus also went to anyone who purchased an African arrival as a lifelong slave. Thus, before the seventeenth century closed, a Virginia investor buying 20 slaves could also lay claim to headrights worth 1000 acres of land. To consolidate their new regime, planters worked through the church and the legislature to separate whites from blacks legally and socially. They stigmatized interracial ties and undermined the position of free blacks. A 1691 Virginia statute decried the “abominable mixture and spurious issue” that resulted from “Negroes, mulattoes and Indians intermarrying” with English or other white people, as Bess Key and William Greensted had done. All such couples were “banished from this dominion forever.” It also prohibited masters from granting freedom to any black or mulatto unless they provided that person’s transportation out of the colony within six months. Virginia’s Negro Act of 1705 further underscored the stark new boundaries. It mandated that white servants who were mistreated had the right to sue their masters in county court. Slaves, in contrast, had no such right. Any enslaved person who tried to escape could be tortured and even dismembered in hopes of “terrifying others from the like practices.” When masters or overseers killed a slave while inflicting punishment, they were automatically free of any felony charge, “as if such accident had never happened.” And if slaves were killed or put to death by law, the owners would be paid public funds for the loss of their “property.” In scarcely 40 years, a dire and long-lasting revolution had transformed the labor system of the Chesapeake with the full backing of the law. By the time planters in North America began to consider aggressively importing African labor in the last decades of the seventeenth century, the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been operating for more than a hundred years. The scope and duration of this forced exodus from Africa remain difficult to conceive. In nearly four centuries, more than 10 million people full view FIGURE 4.1 GOODS TRADED IN AFRICA As European ship captains expanded trade along the African coast, they tailored their cargoes to suit the demands of local markets. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 126 ${bmicon} were torn from their homelands against their will and transported to the Caribbean and to Central, South, and North America. Several million more perished during their abduction. The Atlantic slave trade remains the largest and longest-lasting deportation in human history. By 1700, more Africans than Europeans had already crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. Their numbers grew over the following century as the traffic reached its height and North America became an added destination in the trade. England took little part in the trade at first. However, the development of Barbados as a lucrative sugar colony and the expansion of English overseas ambitions changed matters quickly after 1640. In 1652 Prince Rupert, a nephew of the late Charles I, visited Gambia in sub-Saharan Africa and saw profits to be made. With the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, Rupert’s cousin Charles II immediately granted a monopoly on African trade to a small group of adventurers, and in 1672 he chartered the powerful new Royal African Company (RAC). The RAC dispatched a steady flow of merchant ships to West Africa. Reaching English outposts along the coast on the first leg of a triangular trade pattern, the ships exchanged textiles, guns, and iron bars for gold, ivory, and enslaved Africans. After a trans-Atlantic “middle passage” of one to three months, the captains sold slaves and took on sugar in the West Indies before returning to England on the final leg of the triangle. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 127 ${bmicon} full view MAP 4.1 REGIONS OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE IN 1700 Demand for labor in the English Caribbean often exceeded supply, so the price of African workers rose. The lure of profits prompted interlopers to horn in on the RAC monopoly with increasing success. Of 76,000 Africans delivered in English vessels during the 1690s, scarcely 16,000 boarded RAC ships. All the others were carried by independent traders. When the company’s monopoly ended officially in 1698, English slave trading ballooned. In the mainland colonies, boat builders and ship owners from Boston to Charleston sought out a portion of the trade, concentrating first on links to the Caribbean. In 1713 England obtained the lucrative contract to deliver Africans to Spain’s colonies in America. By the 1730s, British ships controlled the largest share of the Atlantic slave trade. They continued to dominate the traffic for the next 70 years. By the 1680s, it had been two centuries since Portuguese sailors had visited Africa’s western shores on both sides of the equator and established a factory at Elmina, in modern-day Ghana. Dozens of depots controlled by rival European powers and their local allies dotted the sub-Saharan coastline. In the northwest, this string of primary ports and secondary “entrepots” (trading posts) began at the mouth of the Senegal River, just above Cape Verde, the continent’s westernmost point. It ended more than 3000 miles to the southeast at outposts below the mouth of the Congo River, in present-day Angola. In between, the coastline curved some 5000 miles from the southwestern edge of the Sahara Desert almost to the Skeleton Coast in present-day Namibia. It embraced diverse geographic environments—from open savannas to thick forests— PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 128 ${bmicon} and scores of distinctive cultures. All along this coastline, villagers caught fish and gathered salt for trade with herders and farmers living farther inland. Generations of contact with oceangoing ships brought new pressures and opportunities to African coastal communities. Local merchants, who traded gold and ivory to sea captains for imported textiles and alcohol, expanded their wealth and power. Some formed alliances with European trading partners. As sugar production expanded across the Atlantic, African traders responded to the growing demand for human labor. They consolidated their positions near suitable harbors and navigable rivers. From there, they bartered local servants and war captives to white agents (factors). In return, they obtained linen, beads, metalwares, and muskets, items that enhanced their prestige and let them extend their inland trading networks. Inland traders, alert to the rising demand for slaves in the port towns, annually brought thousands of captives from the backcountry to the coast. The traders traveled by land and water, binding their prisoners together in small groups to form a coffle (from the Arabic word for “caravan”). The overseas goods they received as payment included firearms, gunpowder, and knives, which they used to prosecute additional wars and raids in their homelands and to secure more captives. By the 1660s and 1670s, the pace of deportation across the Atlantic had doubled from the previous generation to an average rate of nearly 15,000 people each year. It rose steadily to a high of more than 65,000 people per year a century later. As the traffic grew, it became increasingly organized, competitive, and routine. Shrewd African traders played one European vessel against another for the best deals and hid illness among captives. When they saw that a ship was eager to depart, they increased their prices. Hardened European agents stockpiled the wares that African traders most wanted. They also learned to curry favor with local officials and to quell unrest among captives, confined in the holding pens known as barracoons. Experienced captains mastered prevailing winds and currents and modified the holds of their ships to pack in larger cargoes. Increasingly, they timed their ventures to avoid the months when sickness was most rampant in the tropics. Through repeated voyages, improved charts, and accumulated lore, they came to differentiate and exploit half a dozen major slaving regions along Africa’s Atlantic coast. On occasion, they even ventured to Mozambique in southeast Africa and the nearby island of Madagascar. CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 129 ${bmicon} The closest market where Europeans bargained for goods and slaves was Senegambia, or the northern parts of Guinea, between the Senegal River and the Gambia River. Gorée Island, off the coast of Senegal, and James Fort, located in the mouth of the Gambia, served as slave trading centers. The long Windward Coast extending to the southeast beyond Sierra Leone became known for its pepper and grain and for ivory in the south beyond Cape Palmas. Due east on both sides of Cape Three Points stretched the Gold Coast. There, the Portuguese had established Elmina to draw trade from the Asante gold fields in the interior. Farther east, the Slave Coast reached along the Bight of Benin to the huge delta of the Niger River. Trading depots at Whydah, Ardra, and Lagos drew captives from secondary ports in between. Beyond the Niger, where the African coast again turns south near Cameroon, lay the Bight of Biafra. English captains quickly learned the preferences for trade goods in each district, carrying textiles to the Gold Coast, cowrie shells to the Slave Coast, and metals to the Bight of Biafra. The largest and most southerly region, known as Congo-Angola or West Central Africa, was the only one below the equator. Elsewhere, Europeans did not exert direct control beyond an isolated coastal fortress or trading depot. But here, they held sway over a wider reach. Catholic missionaries had established early footholds. And Portuguese traders had exported slave labor for sugar production, first on the Atlantic island of São Tomé and later in Brazil and the Caribbean. Before 1700, more than half of all Atlantic slaves departed from West Central Africa. In the eighteenth century the proportion remained over one-third. North of the Congo River, French and English interests came to dominate the slave traffic out of Loango and Cabinda. South of the great waterway, the Portuguese continued to hold the upper hand at Luanda and Benguela. During the entire span of the slave trade, the Congo-Angola hinterland furnished roughly 40 percent of all Atlantic deportees: more than 4.5 million men, women, and children. For every person the exodus was different, a harrowing personal story that depended on the particulars of how old the captives were, where they had lived, and how they were captured. Nevertheless, the long nightmare of deportation contained similar elements for all who fell victim to the trans-Atlantic trade. The entire journey, from normal village life to enslavement beyond the ocean, could last a year or two. It unfolded in at least five stages, beginning with capture and deportation to the African coast. The initial loss of freedom—the first experience of bound hands, harsh treatment, and forced marches—was made worse by the encounters with strange landscapes and unfamiliar languages. Attempts to escape usually proved futile, and initial thoughts of returning home gave way to worries about immediate survival. Hunger, fatigue, and anxiety took a steady toll as coffles of young and old were conveyed slowly toward the coast through a network of traders. full view Diagram of Slave Ship Filled for Middle Passage This diagram shows how slaves were packed into cargo holds for the notorious Middle Passage to the Americas. The plan was a model of efficiency, for slave traders sought to maximize profits. The next phase, sale and imprisonment, began when a contingent reached the sea. During this stage, which could last several months, African traders transferred “ownership” of the captives to Europeans. Many buyers subjected their new property to demeaning inspections and burned brands into their skin. In the confusion, prisoners often lost sight of kinfolk or fellow villagers for a final time. When the buyer was an independent trader, he had the Africans transported through the surf to his waiting vessel. (Their hands were bound, so if a canoe capsized in the waves, it meant certain drowning.) Once aboard, they might languish in the sweltering hold for weeks while the captain cruised the coast in search of additional human cargo. Often, however, the European purchaser was an agent for a large company. His assignment was to gather up prisoners at small ports and carry them by coastal vessel to a major trade fort. There they were put in irons alongside hundreds of other captives and guarded in a secure spot to prevent escape. For example, the underground dungeon at Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast had walls 14 feet thick. A visitor in 1682 observed that the RAC’s fortress provided Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 130 ${bmicon} full view MAP 4.2 ONE CENTURY IN THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE (1700–1800): AFRICAN ORIGINS, EUROPEAN CARRIERS, AMERICAN DESTINATIONS The Atlantic slave trade reached its greatest size in the eighteenth century, and Britain replaced Portugal as the largest transporter. Between 1700 and 1800, ship captains purchased more than 6.6 million Africans. Of these, nearly 800,000, or 12 percent, died during the middle passage. Therefore, just over 5.8 million captives survived the Atlantic crossing during the century. Of these middle passage survivors, only about 9 percent (over half a million Africans) were sent to North America during the eighteenth century. Their ethnic backgrounds varied from colony to colony. In South Carolina, people from Senegambia and West Central Africa made up nearly two-thirds of the new black population; in the Chesapeake region, 38 percent of African arrivals came from the Bight of Biafra. “a good security … against any insurrection” before a ship arrived and the prisoners could be loaded aboard. According to one English trader, “the negroes were so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that they often leap’d out of the canoos, boat and ship, into the sea, and kept under water till they were drowned.” Crew members sometimes raised nets surrounding the deck to prevent such attempts at escape or suicide. The ship’s captain decided when to begin crossing the Atlantic, the harrowing third phase that constituted the middle passage. Drawing on his sponsors’ instructions, advice from local agents, and his own experience, he weighed the variables. If he lingered too long to obtain more Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 131 ${bmicon} slaves at lower prices, he risked depleting his food supplies and raising the death toll among his crew and prisoners. If he departed too soon in an effort to shorten the voyage and preserve lives, including his own, he risked missing a drop in prices or a new contingent of slaves that could absorb his remaining stock of trade goods and bring more profits. He had to balance the danger of late summer hurricanes in the Caribbean against the need to arrive in America when harvests were complete—the time when planters had crops to send to Europe and money or credit to invest in African workers. The Africans aboard each ship knew nothing of such calculations. Even those who had spent time as slaves among fellow Africans or as fishermen in coastal waters now faced an utterly alien plight, trapped in a strange wooden hull. When the crew finally raised anchor and unfurled the vessel’s huge sails, the captives could only anticipate the worst. Already the crowded hold had become foul, and the large wooden buckets used as latrines had taken on a loathsome smell. Now the rolling of the ship on ocean swells brought seasickness and painful chafing from lying on the bare planks. Alexander Falconbridge, who sailed as a surgeon on several slave ships, recorded that “those who are emaciated frequently have their skin and even their flesh entirely PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 132 ${bmicon} rubbed off, by the motion of the ship, from the … shoulders, elbows and hips so as to render the bones quite bare.” In its details, every crossing from Africa to the Americas was different. Historians have documented more than 27,000 slave voyages, and in each one an array of variables came into play to shape the Atlantic crossing. These included the exact point of departure, the planned destination, the season of the year, the length of the journey, the supplies of food and fresh water, the temperament of the captain and crew, the condition of the vessel, the health and resolve of the prisoners, the vagaries of piracy and ocean warfare, the ravages of disease, and the challenges of weather and navigation. A change in weather conditions or in the captain’s mood could mean the difference between life and death. The Emperor, crossing from Angola to South Carolina in 1755 with 390 Africans aboard, encountered a storm that lasted for a week. By the time the heavy seas subsided, 120 people had died in the hold. The surgeon sailing aboard the brig Ruby described the repeated flogging of one African man “for two or three days by both the captain and the chief mate until his body was so lacerated that it was a gory mass of raw flesh.” While the grim details varied, the overall pattern remained the same. Ship after ship, year after year, the attrition continued. The constant rolling of the vessel; the sharp changes in temperature; the crowded, dark, and filthy conditions; and the relentless physical pain and mental anguish took a heavy toll on people already weakened by their earlier ordeals. Pregnant mothers gave birth or miscarried; women were subjected to abuse and rape by the crew. Crews threw the bodies of those who died to the sharks or, worse still, used them as bait to catch sharks, which they fed to the remaining captives. For the emaciated survivors of the Atlantic ordeal, two further stages remained in their descent into slavery: the selling process and the so-called time of seasoning. The selling process on American soil varied widely and could drag on for weeks or months. The colonial slave merchant or his agent came aboard soon after the ship dropped anchor, eager to inspect the human cargo. Once he assessed their origins, numbers, and condition, he saw to it that the crew washed and nourished the prisoners, oiled their bodies, and disguised their scars. Then the healthiest were paraded on deck for wealthy buyers or preferred customers. Those not sold immediately were transported to dockside holding pens, where they languished while advertisements circulated announcing their arrival and date of sale. Prospective owners examined and prodded the newcomers. Those purchased were wrenched away from their compatriots and the shipmates with whom they had formed strong links during their shared miseries at sea. Slaves often were auctioned off in groups, or parcels, to ensure sale of the weak along with the strong. Then another journey brought them to the particular slave labor camp where they were fated to work and probably to die. If slaves arrived in the fall or winter, when spring planting was still a good way off, most newcomers did not begin their forced labor immediately. Instead, they entered a final stage, CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 133 ${bmicon} known as seasoning, which lasted several months or longer. The strangers were distinguished as “saltwater slaves”—in contrast to “country-born slaves” who had grown up in America from birth—and seasoning gave them time to mend physically, regain their strength, and begin absorbing the rudiments of a new language. Inevitably, many suffered from what we would now describe as posttraumatic stress syndrome. As adults and children recovered from the trauma of the middle passage, they faced a series of additional shocks. Around them they found other Africans who had survived earlier voyages and still spoke their traditional languages. In conversation, they gradually learned where they were and what lay in store for them. They confronted strange foods, unfamiliar tasks, and even new names. They faced alien landscapes and unfamiliar diseases. Worst of all, they encountered a master or his overseer who viewed the seasoning phase as a time to test the spirit of the saltwater newcomers. He made every effort to break the wills of these fresh arrivals and to turn them into compliant bond-servants. Repeatedly, the powerful stranger used arbitrary force to demand the slaves’ obedience, destroy their hope, and crush any thoughts of resistance. By 1700 race slavery was accepted throughout the mainland colonies, so Africans found themselves scattered from northern New England to the Carolinas. But their distribution was far from even, for northern locations received only a small portion of the slave traffic to the North American continent. Among roughly 247,000 slaves in the colonies in 1750, only 30,000 (or 12 percent) resided in the North, where they made up just 5 percent of the overall population from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire. More than one-third of these northerners (11,000) lived in the colony of New York, where they made up as much as 14 percent of the inhabitants. All the rest of the people of African descent in North America—some 217,000 men, women, and children by the mid-eighteenth century—lived and worked in the Chesapeake region and the lower South. (Fewer than 5000 of these black southerners resided in French Louisiana.) Throughout the eighteenth century, by far the most North American slaves lived in Virginia or Maryland: 150,000 African Americans by 1750. But the highest proportion of enslaved workers lived in South Carolina, where Africans began outnumbering Europeans as early as 1708. By 1750 this black majority (40,000 people) constituted more than 60 percent of the colony’s population. Almost all had arrived through the deepwater port of Charleston. Sullivan’s Island, near the entrance to the harbor, with its so-called pest house to quarantine incoming slaves and reduce the spread of shipborne disease, has been called the Ellis Island of black America. What explains the emergence of South Carolina’s slave concentration? For one thing, the colony was closer than Virginia to Africa and to the Caribbean. Moreover, it had been founded in 1670, just as the English were embracing plantation slavery and the African trade. Indeed, some of the colony’s original proprietors had a stake in the Royal African Company. Also, some of Carolina’s influential early settlers came directly from Barbados, bringing enslaved Africans and planter ambitions with them. In the earliest days of colonization in South Carolina, however, workers of any kind were few in number. The colonists lacked sufficient labor to clear coastal forests and plant crops. Instead, they let their cattle and pigs run wild. With easy foraging and warm winters, the animals reproduced rapidly. The settlers slaughtered them and shipped their meat to the Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 134 ${bmicon} full view MAP 4.3 ENSLAVED PEOPLE LIVING IN NORTH AMERICA IN 1750: DISTRIBUTION BY COLONY, PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION By 1750 nearly a quarter of a million people lived as slaves in eastern North America—more than 21 percent of the colonial population. Almost all were Africans or the descendants of Africans, along with a few thousand Native American and mixed-race slaves. In the North, slaves made up a small fraction of a large population. By far the greatest number of slaves lived in the Chesapeake area, where they made up more than a third of the total population. Enslaved people were less numerous but much more concentrated in the lower South, making up a clear majority of the overall inhabitants. White settlers had already smuggled several hundred slaves into the fledgling colony of Georgia, even though the exploitation of slave labor did not become legal there until 1751. Caribbean, along with firewood for boiling sugar cane and barrels for transporting sugar. Ship captains also carried enslaved Native Americans to the West Indies and brought back African slaves. The new arrivals understood South Carolina’s subtropical climate, with its alligators and palmetto trees, better than their European owners did. Many of these enslaved newcomers were already familiar with keeping cattle. Others, obliged to feed themselves, began growing rice in the fertile swamplands just as they had in West Africa. Slave owners quickly realized that this plant, unfamiliar to much of northern Europe, held the answer to their search for a profitable staple CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 135 ${bmicon} crop. Soon, people who had tended their own irrigated rice crops near the Gambia River were obliged to clear cypress swamps along the Ashley and Cooper rivers to grow rice for someone else. Women who had prepared small portions of rice daily for their families in West Africa—pounding the grains with a wooden pestle to remove the husks, then tossing them in a broad, flat basket to winnow away the chaff—now had to process vast quantities of rice for export. Before long, people in England had developed a taste for rice pudding, and London merchants were shipping tons of Carolina rice to other European countries, where it proved a cheap grain for feeding soldiers, orphans, and peasants. By the middle of the eighteenth centruy, South Carolina’s white minority had the most favorable trade balance of any mainland colonists. Their fortunes improved even more when indigo, another African crop, joined rice as a profitable export commodity. Outnumbered by their enslaved workers, South Carolina’s landowners passed strict Negro Acts patterned on those of the Caribbean. Legislation prohibited slaves from carrying guns, meeting in groups, raising livestock, or traveling without a pass. Statutes controlled everything from how they dressed to when they shoveled the dung off of Charleston streets. Everywhere, mounted patrols enforced the regulations with brutal severity. In South Carolina and elsewhere, enslaved African Americans pushed against the narrow boundaries of their lives. Like any other imprisoned population, they pressed steadily for small indulgences. Then they worked, individually and collectively, to turn occasional concessions into customary rights. And like others held prisoner, they used every possible means to negotiate slivers of freedom, including spreading rumors, refusing to work, breaking tools, feigning illness, and threatening violence. In response, their owners tried to divide them in order to control them. Masters rewarded workers who acted obedient and diligent or who informed on fellow slaves. They imposed harsh punishments—whipping, mutilation, sale, or death—on those suspected of taking food, sowing dissent, or plotting revolt. And they encouraged the formation of black families, not only to gain another generation of laborers at no cost but also to create the emotional ties that they knew would hold individuals in check for fear of reprisals against loved ones. Owners confined residents in the slave labor camps with curfews and pass systems and kept them from learning to read and from communicating freely with neighbors and relatives. They also refused to allow any impartial system for expressing grievances or appealing arbitrary punishments. Faced with such steep odds, many slaves submitted to the deadening routine of the prison camp to survive. But others resorted to diverse strategies to improve their situation or undermine their masters’ dominance. Running away, even for a brief period, provided relief from forced work and deprived owners of the labor they depended on. Frequent newspaper advertisements regarding runaways reveal that thousands risked their lives, alone or in groups, in attempts to escape. Because arson created serious damage and was difficult to detect, some slaves burned down barns at harvest time. Others succeeded in killing their masters or overseers. Such acts of pent-up rage usually proved suicidal, but they also confirmed slave owners’ worst fears. Aware that Africans knew how to communicate with one another with drums and could concoct poisons from herbs, white planters became even more fearful of blacks. Above all, the prospect of open rebellion kept burning in the minds of prisoners and jailers alike. In light of this constant tension, it is hard to untangle episodes of white paranoia from incidents of actual revolt. Many innocent slaves were falsely accused. But countless others did discuss plans for resistance, and a few freedom fighters avoided detection or betrayal long enough to launch serious uprisings. Word of one upheaval, real or imagined, could spark others. An early wave of slave unrest erupted in the dozen years after 1710, highlighted by violence in New York City in the spring of 1712. The leaders of the conspiracy were “Coromantee,” or PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 136 ${bmicon} Akan people from Africa’s Gold Coast region. Several dozen enslaved Africans and Indians, determined to obtain their freedom and kill all the whites in the town, set fire to a building. As citizens rushed to put out the blaze, the rebels attacked them with guns, clubs, pistols, staves, and axes, killing eight and wounding more. When the militia finally captured the insurgents, six of them committed suicide. Authorities condemned 21 others and executed 18. They burned several at the stake, hanged others, and left their bodies on display. Eager to curtail slavery CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 137 ${bmicon} following such unrest, the governor called for “the Importation of White Servants.” New York’s elected colonial assembly, expressing growing racial hatred, chastised free blacks and prohibited freed slaves from owning property. A second wave of black resistance swept the mainland colonies after 1730, fueled by the largest influx of Africans to date. In Louisiana, the French had moved their capital to the new town of New Orleans on the Mississippi River (1722) and had joined their Choctaw allies in a devastating war to crush the Natchez Indians and seize their lands (1729–1731). As French landowners staked out riverfront plantations, they also imported African slaves. The several thousand black workers soon outnumbered European settlers. Fearful of attack, the whites broke up two presumed slave plots in 1731. One involved a scheme to rebel while Catholic colonists attended a midnight mass on Christmas. Another apparent plot was revealed by the careless boast of a black servant woman in New Orleans. It included several hundred Bambara newcomers from Senegal who were determined to massacre whites, enslave other Africans, and take control of the region. The leader among eight captured plotters was a man known as Samba Bambara. A former interpreter at Galam on the Senegal River, Bambara had recently lost that post and been deported to Louisiana. There, he became a trusted slave, supervising workers owned by the French Company of the Indies. When torture by fire failed to force confessions from the captives, officials hanged the servant woman and broke Bambara and half a dozen other men on the wheel. The largest slave uprising in colonial North America broke out in 1739 near the Stono River, 20 miles southwest of Charleston. Several factors fueled the Stono Rebellion. By 1739, blacks exceeded whites nearly two to one among South Carolina’s 56,000 people. The proportion of recently imported slaves had reached an all-time high. In addition, working conditions had worsened steadily as rice production expanded. Moreover, for several decades the Spanish in Florida had been luring slaves from South Carolina, knowing that the promise of freedom might destabilize Carolina’s profitable slave regime. More than a hundred fugitives had escaped to Florida by 1738, when Florida’s governor formed them into a free black militia company at St. Augustine. Hoping to win more defections, he allowed 38 African American households to settle north of the city and build a small fortress—Fort Mose. Meanwhile, the wider commercial rivalries of the British and Spanish continued elsewhere, leading to open warfare between the two Atlantic empires in 1739. The slave uprising at Stono erupted just after word reached Charleston that war had broken out between Spain and Britain. Perhaps this was mere coincidence. Or perhaps the news sparked hopes among slaves that Carolina authorities would be preoccupied and vulnerable, or that Spanish neighbors would assist a revolt in the colony. Other factors may also have influenced the rebels’ timing. An epidemic in Charleston had disrupted public activities, and a new Security Act requiring all white men to carry arms to church was to take effect before the end of September. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 138 ${bmicon} Early on Sunday, September 9, 1739, 20 slaves from a work crew near the Stono River broke into a local store. There they seized weapons and executed the owners. Led by a man named Jemmy, they raised a banner and marched south, beating drums and shouting “Liberty!” The insurgents burned selected plantations, killed a score of whites, and gathered more than 50 new recruits. But armed colonists overtook them near the Edisto River and blocked their escape to St. Augustine. Dozens of rebels died in the ensuing battle. In the next two days militia and hired Indians killed 20 more and captured an additional 40 people, whom they immediately shot or hanged. Yet even these reprisals could not quell black hopes. In June 1740 several hundred slaves plotted to storm Charleston and take arms from a warehouse. However, a comrade revealed the plan. According to a report, “The next day fifty of them were seized, and these were hanged, ten a day, to intimidate the other negroes.” In November, a great fire of suspicious origin consumed much of Charleston. Fire also played a role in hysteria that broke out in New York City in 1741. Britain’s ongoing conflict with Spain (1739–1743) fanned wild Protestant fears that Jesuit spies and Catholic slaves planned to burn the major towns in English North America. In March, a blaze consumed the residence of New York’s governor and a local fort. Other fires soon focused suspicions on a white couple, John and Sarah Hughson, who had often entertained blacks at their alehouse. The Hughsons—thought to fence stolen goods for a black crime ring, the Geneva Boys—were accused of inciting working-class unrest. In exchange for her freedom, Mary Barton, a 16-year-old Irish indentured servant at the Hughsons’ tavern, testified that she had overheard the planning of an elaborate “popish plot.” In a gruesome spiral of arrests and executions, New York authorities put to death 34 people, including 4 whites, and banished 72 blacks. On one hand, the debacle recalled the Salem witch trials, as a fearful community engaged in judicial proceedings and killings on the basis of rumors and accusations. On the other hand, the New York Slave Plot recalled Bacon’s Rebellion, for evidence emerged of cooperation between impoverished blacks and whites eager to see a redistribution of property. According to his accusers, a slave named Cuffee had often observed that “a great many people had too much, and others too little.” He predicted that soon his master “should have less, and that he (Cuffee) should have more.” Instead, he was burned at the stake. Word of the Stono Rebellion and the New York Slave Plot, plus rumors of uprisings in the West Indies, brought renewed hope to enslaved Americans and renewed fear to their captors. The mechanisms for extorting labor from tens of thousands of people were firmly in place. But to maintain this repressive system, local governments and the white population had to keep up constant vigilance and continually threaten blacks. In South Carolina, officials displayed the heads of slain rebels on poles, stepped up night patrols, and passed an even harsher Negro Law. Some colonists saw slavery as too morally degrading and physically dangerous to maintain, but others found it too rewarding to give up. As in later generations, powerful supporters of the institution suggested modifications in response to calls for outright abolition. For example, white officials in Charleston imposed a heavy duty on new African arrivals for several years, hoping to increase the ratio of white to black slaves in the lowcountry of coastal South Carolina. They also opened a school to provide rudimentary education to a handful of obedient black Christians. At a time of growing humanitarian concerns in Enlightenment Europe, it took great effort to maintain the rationale for enslavement in America. But free people who Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 139 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY “Releese Us out of This Cruell Bondegg” As researchers pay increasing attention to African bondage in the colonial era, new pieces of evidence continue to appear. This appeal, written in Virginia in 1723 by a mulatto Christian slave, was rediscovered in a London archive in the 1990s and transcribed by historian Thomas Ingersoll. It is addressed to Edward Gibson, the newly appointed bishop of London, whose position gave him religious oversight over all the Anglican parishes in England’s American colonies, including Virginia. Gibson, through his pamphlets, had shown an interest in the Christianization of enslaved Africans, but like many contemporary church leaders, he had less interest in the liberation of slaves. This heartfelt document, prepared with great labor and at enormous risk, was simply filed away with the bishop’s vast correspondence. It never received a response or prompted any further inquiry into conditions in Virginia. August the forth 1723 to the Right Raverrand father in god my Lord arch Bishop of Lonnd…. this coms to sattesfie your honour that there is in this Land of verJennia a Sort of people that is Calld molatters which are Baptised and brouaht up in the way of the Christian faith and followes the ways and Rulles of the Chrch of England and sum of them has white fathars and sum white mothers and there is in this Land a Law or act which keeps and makes them and there seed Slaves forever…. wee your humbell and poore partishinners doo begg Sir your aid and assisttancce in this one thing … which is that your honour will by the help of our Sufvering [i.e., sovereign] Lord King George and the Rest of the Rullers will Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg…. /and here it is to bee notd that one brother is a Slave to another and one Sister to an othe which is quite out of the way and as for mee my selfe I am my brothers Slave but my name is Secrett/ wee are commandded to keep holey the Sabbath day and wee doo hardly know when it comes for our task mastrs are has hard with us as the Egypttions was with the Chilldann of Issarall…. wee are kept out of the Church and matrimony is deenied us and to be plain they doo Look no more upon us then if wee ware dogs which I hope when these Strange lines comes to your Lord Ships hands will be Looket in to…. And Sir wee your humble perticners do humblly beg … that our childarn may be broatt up in the way of the Christtian faith and our desire is that they may be Larnd the Lords prayer the creed and the ten commandements and that they may appeare Every Lord’s day att Church before the Curatt to bee Exammond for our desire is that godllines Shoulld abbound amongs us and wee desire that our Childarn be putt to Scool and Larnd to Reed through the Bybell My Riting is vary bad…. I am but a poore Slave that writt itt and has no other time butt Sunday and hardly that att Sumtimes…. wee dare nott Subscribe any mans name to this for feare of our masters for if they knew that wee have Sent home to your honour wee Should goo neare to Swing upon the gallass tree. Source: Thomas N. Ingersoll, “’Releese Us out of This Cruell Bondegg’: An Appeal from Virginia in 1723,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 51 (October 1994):776–782. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 140 ${bmicon} questioned the institution met stiff resistance from those with vested interests, as the experience of the new colony of Georgia demonstrates. As race-based slavery expanded numerically and geographically, white colonists treated the continuing presence of free blacks as a contradiction and a threat. As early as 1691, the Virginia assembly passed an act restricting manumissions (grants of individual freedom by masters) because “great inconvenience may happen to this country by setting of negroes and mulattoes free.” According to the act, such people fanned hopes of freedom among enslaved blacks by their mere presence. Since most free blacks were quite poor, they were often accused of having links to the slave community and trafficking in stolen goods. Besides, when they grew old and infirm, their care at public expense could constitute “a charge upon the country.” By 1723, additional Virginia statutes prevented free people of color from voting, taxed them unfairly, and prevented them from owning or carrying firearms. Lawmakers went on to prohibit manumissions altogether, except when the governor rewarded “meritorious service,” such as informing against other enslaved workers. While the southern slave colonies labored to intimidate, divide, and reduce their free black communities, free blacks in the North faced growing discrimination in their efforts to hold jobs, buy land, obtain credit, move freely, and take part in civic life. Northern slave populations, though small in comparison to those in the South, were growing steadily. As the North’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade expanded, its economic and legal commitment to race slavery increased. Rhode Island’s slave ranks jumped from 500 in 1720 to more than 3000 in 1750. Everywhere, new laws made manumission more difficult and African American survival more precarious. In Philadelphia, only 90 slaves gained their freedom between 1698 and 1765. Of the few hundred free blacks living in Boston in 1742, 110 resided in the church-supported almshouse and another 36 in the public workhouse. Only in the century after 1760 did northern free black communities gain the numerical and social strength to offer effective opposition to enslavement. Whereas free blacks lacked the means to oppose slavery, prominent white Christians lacked the will. Even in Massachusetts, where religion remained a dominant force at the turn of the century and the number of slaves had scarcely reached 1000 people, many leaders already owned black servants. They used them more to flaunt their prosperity than to expand their wealth. When Boston merchants purchased black attendants to serve as coachmen, few citizens objected. The protests that did appear were ambivalent at best. In 1700 Judge Samuel Sewell questioned African enslavement in a tract titled The Selling of Joseph. But he also revealed his sense of superiority and his skepticism that blacks could play a part in “the Peopling of the Land.” African Americans, Sewell commented, “can seldom use their freedom well; yet their continual aspiring after their forbidden Liberty, renders them unwilling servants.” Reverend Cotton Mather, a slave owner who once berated Sewell as one who “pleaded much for Negroes,” was even more ambivalent. In The Negro Christianized (1706), the influential Puritan stressed that conversion and Christian instruction, far from earning African slaves their freedom, would make them into “better servants.” The conversion and instruction of slaves, rather than the abolition of slavery, also became a mission for pious English philanthropist Thomas Bray, a well-to-do Anglican committed to religious education and prison reform. In 1699, Bray founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to organize libraries in the fledgling colonies. The following year, the bishop of London sent Bray to Maryland. He soon returned to England with a desire to train better ministers and to spread the Anglican faith in America among Europeans, Indians, and Africans. In 1701 Bray established the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 141 ${bmicon} The SPG strengthened the Church of England abroad in the eighteenth century by providing dozens of ministers to serve in the colonies. But this improved foothold came at a steep price. Southern planters made SPG ministers agree that any promise they offered to slaves regarding heavenly salvation would not include hints of earthly freedom. With few exceptions, the Anglican clergy gave in, strengthening religious support of race slavery. In 1723 a heartfelt petition from a mulatto slave to the bishop of London, in which the author protested “Cruell Bondegg” in Virginia, went unanswered. That same year, Bray set up a trust of “Associates” to carry on his work. With limited success, they focused on converting blacks in the British plantation colonies. By the 1730s, only a few whites in Europe or America dared to press publicly for an end to slavery. Christian Priber, who arrived in the South in 1735, was one such activist. The idealistic German hoped to start a utopian community in southern Appalachia. But his radical proposal for a multiracial “Paradise” uniting Indians, Africans, and Europeans posed a huge threat to South Carolina authorities. “He enumerates many whimsical Privileges and natural Rights, as he calls them, which his citizens are to be entitled to,” wrote a scornful detractor, “particularly dissolving Marriages and allowing Community of Women and all kinds of Licentiousness.” Worst of all, according to the coastal elite, this egalitarian haven at the “Foot of the Mountains among the Cherokees” was to be “a City of Refuge for all Criminals, Debtors, and Slaves who would fly thither from [the] Justice of their Masters.” Priber’s brief career as a social agitator challenging the status quo ended in 1743, when he was arrested and brought to jail in Charleston. He died—or was killed—before his case could be heard in court. At the same time, a New Jersey tailor and bookkeeper named John Woolman posed a less defiant but more enduring threat to race slavery. In 1743, at age 23, this shy Quaker began to question his role in writing out bills of sale when his fellow Quakers purchased slaves. It struck him forcefully that “to live in ease and plenty by the toil of those whom violence and cruelty have put in our power” was clearly not “consistent with Christianity or common justice.” Woolman traveled widely to Quaker meetings, north and south, pressing an issue that most Quakers preferred to ignore. “The Colour of a Man avails nothing,” Woolman insisted, “in Matters of Right and Equity.” When he drafted Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754), members of the Quaker Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia published his booklet and circulated it widely in several editions. Four years later, led by Anthony Benezet, this group outlawed slaveholding among its local members. They set a precedent that many Quakers followed in the next generation, and they challenged other denominations to do the same. The most sustained early challenge to the slavery system in the American South came in the Georgia colony. In 1732 a group of well-connected London proprietors (known as trustees) obtained a 20-year charter for the region between English South Carolina and Spanish Florida. Ten of the 21 initial trustees were members of Parliament. They included James Oglethorpe, who had recently organized and chaired a “committee on jails” to investigate the condition of debtors in English prisons. The trustees foresaw three related purposes—charitable, commercial, and military—for their experimental colony, which they named after King George II. Georgia would provide a haven for England’s worthy poor, selected members of the neediest classes who could be transported across the Atlantic and settled on small farms. These grateful newcomers would PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 142 ${bmicon} then produce warm weather commodities—olives, grapes, silk—to support the empire. And their prosperity would create a growing market for English goods. Finally, their presence would provide a military buffer to protect South Carolina from further warfare with the Yamasee and Creek Indians and from possible invasion by the Spanish in St. Augustine. With Oglethorpe as their governor, an initial boatload of 114 settlers arrived in 1733 and began building a capital at Savannah. By 1741 the town, located on a bluff 15 miles up the Savannah River, boasted more than 140 houses. It also had a wharf, a jail, a courthouse (which doubled as a church), and a building for receiving delegations of neighboring Indians. By then, more than a thousand needy English, plus 800 German, Swiss, and Austrian Protestants, had journeyed to Georgia at the trustees’ expense. Another thousand immigrants had paid their own way. Like earlier colonizers, Georgia’s first arrivals had trouble adjusting to a strange environment. Alligators, rattlesnakes, and hurricanes tested their resolve. Tension over governance only deepened their discouragement. The idealistic trustees in London declined to accumulate property and profits for themselves in the colony, but they felt justified in controlling every aspect of Georgia’s development. For example, they knew that gin was becoming a source of debt and disruption in Europe and that rum and brandy sold by traders was poisoning colonial relations with southeastern Indians. So in 1735 they outlawed the use of every “kind of Spirits or Strong Waters” while still allowing consumption of wine and beer. Georgia’s early experiment with prohibition of hard liquor proved difficult to implement, and officials quietly stopped enforcing the law in 1742. Other efforts at control from above went further. The trustees refused to set up a legislature or to let settlers buy and sell land. Instead, they gave 50 acres to each family they sent over, including a house lot in town to ensure defense for each new village. But they parceled out land with little regard for variations in soil fertility. They also stipulated that owners could pass land on to CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 143 ${bmicon} sons only. Denying daughters the right to inherit, the trustees reasoned, would prevent men from creating large estates simply by marrying women who were likely to inherit big tracts of land. In a further effort to prevent the concentrations of wealth that they saw developing in other colonies, the trustees said that no one could own more than 500 acres. Prohibiting massive estates would allow for thicker settlement and therefore greater manpower to defend the colony militarily. But the most important prohibition, by far, involved slavery. Oglethorpe began his career as a deputy governor of the Royal African Company, but he died in 1785 opposing the slave trade. His sojourn in Georgia turned him against slavery. In neighboring South Carolina, he saw first-hand how the practice degraded African lives, undermined the morals of Europeans, and laid that colony open to threats of revolt and invasion. More friendly to Indians than to African Americans, Oglethorpe persuaded the trustees to create a free white colony. Specifically, he convinced them to enact a law in 1735 that prohibited slavery and also excluded free blacks. He believed that this mandate would protect Georgia from the corruptions of enslavement while also making it easier to apprehend black runaways heading to Florida from South Carolina. The Stono Rebellion, and the outbreak of war between England and Spain in 1739, strengthened Oglethorpe’s belief that slavery undermined the security of the English colonies by creating internal enemies who would support any foreign attackers. He saw further evidence in 1740, when he failed in a wartime attempt to capture St. Augustine from Spain. Unable to take the Florida stronghold, the governor managed to seize neighboring Fort Mose, which had been erected by anti-English slaves who had escaped from Carolina. But a Spanish force regained the fort, relying heavily on Indian and African American fighters to win a fierce dawn battle. Oglethorpe’s army withdrew in disarray, but he had seen the intensity with which ex-slaves would fight the English, their former masters. The next year, fearing a counterattack, Oglethorpe issued a warning to imperial officials. He predicted that if Spanish soldiers captured Georgia, a colony inhabited by “white PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 144 ${bmicon} full view MAP 4.4 ENGLISH–SPANISH COMPETITION AND THE EXPANSION OF SLAVERY INTO GEORGIA The Spanish and the British had competing land claims along the southeast coast after 1670. Creation of the Georgia colony in 1732 intensified the rivalry. The Spanish in Florida offered freedom to any slaves who escaped from South Carolina to St. Augustine, sparking the Stono Revolt in 1739. During the war between Britain and Spain (1739–1743) Georgians defeated the Spanish at Bloody Marsh and secured the disputed “Sea Island” region for the British. Within a decade, slavery became legal in Georgia, and scores of new labor camps appeared between the Savannah and the St. Mary’s River, producing rice for export. Protestants and no Negroes,” they would then send agents to infiltrate the vulnerable colonies farther north and stir black rebellion. The Spanish, he argued, understood that the thousands of embittered slaves “would be either Recruits to an Enemy or Plunder for them.” No sooner had he written his wartime prediction in 1741 than suspicious fires broke out in New York and Charleston. As Britain’s war with Spain continued, few whites could deny the Georgia governor’s assertion that slavery elsewhere in British America was a source of internal weakness and strategic danger. In 1742, as the governor had predicted, Spain pushed from Florida into Georgia with an eye toward destabilizing the colonies farther north. Oglethorpe’s troops repulsed the invading Spanish force in the crucial Battle at Bloody Marsh on St. Simon’s Island. The victory reduced the immediate threat to Britain’s North American colonies, especially neighboring South Carolina, where Oglethorpe and his idealistic policies had numerous powerful opponents. These opponents now joined a group of so-called Malcontents in Savannah to question Georgia’s continued prohibition against slavery. When this coalition challenged the trustees’ antislavery stance, it prompted the first protracted North American debate about enslavement. It dragged on for more than a decade. In the face of numerous ills—including a sickly climate, poor soil, restrictive land policies, and lack of representative government—a well-organized Georgia faction argued that slavery was the one thing needed for the colony to prosper, since it would provide profits to slaveowners regardless of Georgia’s many drawbacks. Not everyone agreed. In 1739 Scottish Highlanders CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 145 ${bmicon} living at Darien on the Altamaha River had contacted Oglethorpe to lay out their practical arguments against importing Africans. Their petition expressed shock “that any Race of Mankind, and their Posterity, Should be sentenced to perpetual slavery.” Immigrants from Salzburg, Germany, residing at Ebenezer on the Savannah River drafted a similar statement. But Georgia’s Malcontents pushed back. These several dozen English and Lowland Scot adventurers, led by the disgruntled son of a colonial official, wrote letters and circulated petitions demanding the right to import slaves. They drew encouragement and support from powerful merchant-planters in South Carolina. Eager to expand their trade in slaves from Africa and to open up new lands for profitable plantations, these well-to-do Carolinians dreamed of extending their successful rice operations into coastal Georgia. Oglethorpe warned that the proslavery lobby, hungry to create large estates, seemed bent on “destroying the Agrarian Equality” envisioned in Georgia’s initial plan. But the colony’s trustees in London grew less unified, committed, and informed over time. Eventually, the persistent efforts of the proslavery pamphleteers bore fruit. In 1750 the trustees gave in on the matter of land titles. They allowed acreage to be bought and sold freely in any amount, which opened the door for the creation of large plantations. From there, it was just one more step to allowing slavery. The trustees finally gave in on the question of bondage, letting Georgians exploit slaves after January 1, 1751. The 1750 law permitting slavery made futile gestures to ensure kind treatment and Christian education for slaves, but the dam had broken. Hundreds of slave-owning South Carolinians streamed across the Savannah River to invest in land. In 1752 the trustees disbanded, their patent expiring, their vision undone. By 1754 Georgia had become a royal colony. Some argued that Georgia should simply be incorporated into South Carolina. In a sense it was: slave labor camps producing rice and indigo for export soon dotted the lowcountry on both sides of the Savannah River. Georgia’s assembly passed a harsh slave code in 1755, based on South Carolina’s. Two years later, it legislated a system of patrols to keep the brutal new regime in place. Georgia’s effort to counter race slavery in North America had failed, a case of too little too late. After holding out for nearly two decades, the colony fell victim to the same divisive institution that had already taken root more slowly elsewhere along the Atlantic seaboard. Two final observations provide a wider Atlantic context regarding the people swept up in the North American portion of the gigantic African traffic. First, their odyssey began comparatively late, for this dimension of the trade did not expand rapidly until after the 1670s. In the broader history of North American immigration, of course, their forced migration from Africa came relatively early. Indeed, the proportion of blacks in the colonial population on the eve of the American Revolution (over 20 percent) was higher than it has ever been in the United States since then. But in terms of the entire African slave diaspora, or dispersion, the influx to English North America occurred long after the traffic to Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean was well established. Second, even at its height, the North American trade remained marginal in relation to the wider Atlantic commerce in African labor. For example, whereas roughly 50,000 enslaved men and women reached all the docks of North America between 1721 and 1740, the small West Indian islands of English Barbados and French Guadeloupe each received more than 53,000 Africans during the same period. In the next two decades, while Britain’s mainland colonies purchased just over 100,000 Africans, Caribbean Islands such as English Jamaica (120,000) and French Saint Domingue (159,000) absorbed many more slaves. During this single 40-year span (1721–1760), Brazil bought 667,000 African workers—more than would reach North America during the entire slave trade. All told, scholars currently estimate that some 650,000 Africans were brought to North America over several PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 146 ${bmicon} centuries. They represented roughly 6 percent of the total Atlantic commerce in enslaved people. Still, the number of mainland slaves expanded from scarcely 7000 in 1680 to nearly 29,000 in 1700 and to more than 70,000 in 1720. Half a century later in 1770, because of importation and natural increase, 470,000 individuals were confined to enslavement from New Hampshire to Louisiana. A century had passed since Elizabeth Key’s generation saw the terrible transformation begin. Relative openness had given way to systematic oppression, and slavery’s corrosive effects were felt at every level of society. An English visitor to the South in 1759 found provincial planters “vain and imperious,” subject “to many errors and prejudices, especially in regard to Indians and Negroes, whom they scarcely consider as of the human species.” It took another century before pressures developed that could unseat race slavery, sanctioned by law, as a dominant institution in the land. Colonial Williamsburg More than half the residents of colonial Williamsburg were black. Increasingly, their lives are being explored and discussed at this reconstructed historic town in tidewater Virginia. The Slave Quarters at nearby Carter’s Grove Plantation contain four cabins and provide an interpretation of African American life before the Revolution. Fort Mose www.fortmose.org/ Under Spanish protection, slaves who had escaped from colonial South Carolina built Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, or Fort Mose, on the eastern edge of a marsh, 2 miles north of St. Augustine, Florida. Archaeologists rediscovered the site of this early free black community, and it is being made into an exhibition area. Africans in America www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html This four-part television series prepared for PBS provides an overview of slavery from its beginnings to the end of the Civil War. Part One deals with “The Terrible Transformation,” offering resources and insights on the era from 1450 to 1750. SeacoastNH.com Billed as “the biggest website for America’s smallest seacoast,” this site contains an excellent section on New Hampshire’s black history, which stretches back more than 350 years. Links connect to the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, which leads to two dozen sites in Portsmouth, describing where black New Englanders lived and worked. Drayton Hall This National Trust historic site on the Ashley River outside Charleston, South Carolina, features the oldest plantation house in America open to the public, built by Europeans and African Americans at the time of the 1739 Stono Rebellion. The staff has developed a “Gullah Connection” to explore black culture with local schools. The Cultural Landscape of the Plantation www.gwu.edu/∼folklife/bighouse/intro.html American studies professor John Michael Vlach has created this online exhibition using images of plantation buildings from the Library of Congress and linking them with the testimonies of former slaves recorded during the 1930s. Somerset Place This is just one of many historic plantations across the South steadily improving the ways in which they present the slave experience. Somerset Place is a huge estate created after the American Revolution beside Lake Phelps, in Creswell, North Carolina. The site has reconstructed slave buildings, and it hosts a biannual black homecoming. Mel Fisher Maritime Museum This museum in Key West, Florida, has a Traveling Trunk of artifacts relating to the slave ship Henrietta Marie, which sank near Key West in 1700. For rental of these materials, go to www.melfisher.org. Pictorial Images of the Transatlantic Slave Trade gropius.lib.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/index.html This database from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy contains numerous images relating to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. CHAPTER 4 ###8226; AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT 147 ${bmicon} Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998). David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (2000). A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process, the Colonial Period (1978). Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, The Harvard Guide to African-American History (2001). John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (1992). Peter H. Wood, Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America (2002). T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640–1676 (1980). Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (1996). Edward Countryman, ed., How Did American Slavery Begin? (1999). Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (1968). Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975). Madeleine Burnside, Spirits of the Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century (1997). Clifford Dowdey, The Virginia Dynasties: The Emergence of “King” Carter and the Golden Age (1969). Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (1998). Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (1986). Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the American Slave Trade, 1700–1807 (1981). Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969). Douglas Grant, The Fortunate Slave: An Illustration of African Slavery in the Early Eighteenth Century (1968). Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (New Approaches to the Americas) (1999). James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (1981). James Walvin, Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery (1994). Kathleen Deagan and Darcie MacMahon, Fort Mose: Colonial America’s Black Fortress of Freedom (1995). Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998). Jane Landers, Black Society in the Spanish Florida (1999). Daniel Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (1981). Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1998). Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (1974). Harold E. Davis, The Fledgling Province: Social and Cultural Life in Colonial Georgia, 1733–1776 (1976). Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1992). Kenneth A. Lockridge, On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century (1992). Phillips P. Moulton, ed., The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (1997). Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730–1775 (1984). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter4 To Chapter 4 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 148 ${bmicon}         New Cultures on the Western Plains       Britain’s Mainland Colonies: A New Abundance of People       The Varied Economic Landscape       Matters of Faith: The Great Awakening       The French Lose a North American Empire       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 149 ${bmicon} IN 1749, PEACE SEEMED A WELCOME PROSPECT IN THE SPANISH SETTLEMENT OF SAN Antonio in south-central Texas. On an August morning, hundreds of people gathered in the plaza in front of the town’s presidio, or military post. Captain Turibio de Urrutia, the presidio’s commander, was there with a contingent of soldiers. Father Santa Ana, who had presided over the local missions for 16 years, was also present, along with other missionaries and lay residents. Across from them stood four Apache Indian chiefs with several hundred of their people. Between the two groups, in the center of the plaza, Spanish and Indian workers began to dig a deep pit with steep sides. Those attending were about to witness one of the most important events in the town’s brief history. Three decades earlier, in the spring of 1718, a small expedition of Spanish soldiers, missionaries, women, and children had built the presidio and a mission next to the San Antonio River. They constructed rough houses and excavated irrigation ditches to divert river water onto their fields. But they had occupied contested ground, on which the French and Indians also had designs. Undaunted by the failure of LaSalle’s Texas colony, the French had established Natchitoches on the Red River in 1716 and New Orleans on the lower Mississippi in 1718. French explorers began probing west along Louisiana’s western frontier and trading with Indians in eastern Texas. Then in 1720, Apache bands, moving down from the north under pressure from the Comanches, suddenly made their presence known. When they attacked two San Antonians out looking for missing horses, it marked the start of warfare. Fresh support for the beleaguered settlers arrived at San Antonio in 1731, and additional friars laid out four new missions. But other conflicts arose. Sixteen families who had migrated all the way from the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean received little support from local authorities. Religious leaders jostled with military personnel over how to use scarce resources and deal with raiding parties of neighboring Native Americans. An outbreak of smallpox in 1739 killed scores of mission Indians and forced others to depart in fear, but the cycle of war intensified. When Apache bands stole horses and killed settlers, Spanish officers responded with raids of their own. They captured Apache women and children and sold them into slavery in Mexico. Captain Urrutia conducted one such campaign northwest from San Antonio in 1745, taking enough captives to earn a profit. Father Santa Ana protested such harsh tactics. When the Apaches retaliated against the presidio, Santa Ana’s mission Indians from small local tribes helped fend off the attack. But in the end, the cleric hoped not only to make peace with the Apaches but to draw them into the expanding mission system, where they would accept Christianity, learn Spanish, and take up agriculture under the direction of missionaries. He called on Urrutia to stop selling slaves and provoking reprisals. At Santa Ana’s urging, the captain modified his approach in 1749. During the spring raids and counter-raids, Urrutia used mission Indians as fighters and translators, and he issued orders for humane treatment of the 175 prisoners brought back to San Antonio. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 150 ${bmicon} Rather than sell them as slaves, the Spanish locked up the men and dispersed the women and children among the missions and local households for “safe-keeping.” Then Urrutia and Santa Ana chose two women and a man from among the captives and sent them back to Apache country with a proposal for peace. When the messengers returned with word that four important Apache chiefs were prepared to negotiate, preparations began for a major parley. On August 16, 1749, Captain Urrutia and Father Santa Ana rode north from San Antonio, accompanied by most of the townsfolk, to welcome the Apache delegation. Both sides were eager for peace, and the negotiations went smoothly. There was ceremonial feasting, important for such occasions, and the four chiefs attended a mass conducted by Father Santa Ana. After two days of discussion through translators, the Spanish released some of their Apache prisoners as a goodwill gesture, and both sides agreed to hold a formal peace ceremony in the presidio plaza the next morning. The next day all gathered to watch the workers digging the deep pit. Then the longtime adversaries buried their differences in an elaborate symbolic ritual. They lowered a live horse into the hole, along with other emblems of warfare: a lance, a hatchet, and a bundle of arrows. Next, the four chiefs linked hands and walked solemnly around the pit, accompanied first by Captain Urrutia, then by the missionaries, and finally by a resident of the town. Suddenly, at a set moment, all the onlookers grabbed up loose earth and tossed it into the hole. The horse was soon completely buried—a sacrifice for peace in the region—and the ceremony broke up with shouts and celebration. Though striking, the encounter between the Spanish and Apaches at San Antonio was not unique. During the same era, Europeans and Native Americans met to parley and trade in other colonial towns such as Albany, Philadelphia, Charleston, St. Augustine, Mobile, and New Orleans. Such formal occasions highlight a far wider process of contact and interaction that was going on throughout the North American colonies in the half-century between 1713 and 1763. Everywhere, on a daily basis, the process of colonial expansion brought together Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans in surprising new contacts. Equally important, it forced different peoples within each of these three categories, despite contrasting backgrounds and customs, to rub shoulders with one another in unprecedented and unfamiliar ways. These constant encounters had all been set in motion by the colonization process itself. Spanish missionaries lived among Tejas Indians in eastern Texas; French explorers dominated, and then lost, the Mississippi Valley; escaped African slaves fought militiamen from Georgia on the outskirts of St. Augustine. Some day-to-day meetings proved rewarding—a sound bargain, a helpful remedy, or a happy marriage. But other mixing was strained and uneasy at best—full of verbal misunderstandings, competing claims, and harsh commands. CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 151 ${bmicon} Everywhere, motives differed, accents jarred, and cultures clashed. In Philadelphia, printer Benjamin Franklin, himself a newcomer from Boston, protested the way in which German-speaking Europeans “swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manner to the exclusion of ours.” For many Christians, the new confusions recalled the story of Babel. Despite ambitious plans, the people in that biblical city could not understand one another well enough to work together. Eventually, they scattered abroad across the face of the earth. Bible-reading European-Americans no doubt recalled that tale, especially during the great religious awakening that shook the English colonies in the 1740s, when the prospect of building something new and transcendent seemed close at hand. The German-born utopian Christian Priber even attempted to establish an egalitarian realm in Appalachia where Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans could live peaceably together. Such dreams were not to be, however. Instead, the existing colonies continued to build up regional economies of their own, under British protection, and elements of a dominant Anglo-American culture began to emerge amid the Atlantic Babel’s many voices. It makes sense that the Apaches chose to bury a horse during their elaborate ceremony at the Spanish presidio in 1749. By this time, the horse, recently introduced to the Indians was transforming life on the Great Plains. It also makes sense that they buried arrows and hatchets rather than guns. Traditionally, the Spanish aspired to make the Indians into loyal subjects and Christian converts. From the time of Spain’s arrival in the New World, therefore, official policy had forbidden the sale of firearms to Native Americans. In contrast, the French, Dutch, and English desired trade at almost any cost. From the beginning, they showed less hesitation about supplying Indians with guns in exchange for furs. Firearms had become familiar to many eastern Indians in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, guns began to spread across the Mississippi River as well. Combined with the PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 152 ${bmicon} movement of horses from the south, this development had enormous consequences. New patterns of warfare altered Indian cultures, and more powerful hunting techniques affected the regional economies and ecologies of the Native American West. Although small horses once roamed the ancient West, they migrated into Asia thousands of years ago and became extinct in America. They returned with the early Spanish explorers, but Coronado’s soldiers preferred to ride male horses. Only around 1600, when New Mexico’s early colonists brought mares north for breeding, did horse herds develop in the Rio Grande valley. After the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, horses taken from the Spanish entered Indian trading networks and rapidly moved north from one culture to another. By 1690 the Utes had obtained horses and traded them to the Shoshones. Before the mid-eighteenth century, horses had moved west of the Rocky Mountains to the Nez Perce and north to the Blackfeet. The Apaches brought horses east along other routes to the Caddoan cultures near the Red River and then north to the Pawnees, Arikaras, and Hidatsas. Even tribes in the Southeast acquired Spanish horses from the West before they obtained English horses from the Atlantic coast. When La Salle descended the Mississippi in 1682, he met Indians who had heard rumors from the West about a mysterious animal. And when a Chickasaw leader drew a regional map on deerskin in 1723, he showed a Native American leading a horse east of the Mississippi River. For all Indians, the first horses seemed utterly strange. One elder recalled that “the people did not know what they fed on. They would offer the animals pieces of dried meat.” “He put us on mind of a Stag that had lost his horns,” another remembered, “and we did not know what name to give him. But as he was a slave to Man, like the dog, which carried our things, he was named the Big Dog.” For generations, Native Americans had used dogs to pull provisions and bedding on a travois, an A-frame device made with tent poles. A larger animal could haul bigger loads, including longer tent poles. The long poles, in turn, allowed each family to live in a more spacious tipi. Whether or not a tribe used tipis as dwellings, it could readily use the horse as a new source of tasty food and as an aid in hunting. The first few horses were far too valuable to risk in warfare. As herds expanded, however, warriors rode into battle, adapting their tactics to take advantage of their new swiftness. On horses, they could conduct lightning raids over long distances to attack rivals. They could also earn respect by stealing horses or by riding close enough to touch an enemy warrior, an act of bravery known as counting coup. Soon, raising and trading horses became important activities, and a family’s wealth and status depended partly on the number of horses at its command. By the time of the American Revolution in the 1770s, mounted Comanche warriors commanded respect and fear across a vast domain. Their territory stretched south nearly 600 miles from western Kansas to central Texas, and it spanned 400 miles from eastern New Mexico to what is now eastern Oklahoma. This area, known as the Comanchería, roughly equaled all the English settlements on the Atlantic coast in size, but its origins were recent and humble. The Comanches’ ancestors had been hunter–gatherers on the high plains of Wyoming, living on small game, roots, and berries. The arrival of the horse around 1690 changed everything. It allowed family bands to migrate southeast from the Rockies. They joined with other Shoshone-speakers to hunt the buffalo herds that grazed along the western edges of the Great Plains. From there, it was not a long ride through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to northern New Mexico, where they could trade buffalo hides for additional horses at Taos and Santa Fe. The Spanish noted the Shoshone-speaking arrivals in 1706, referring to them as Comanches in their records. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 153 ${bmicon} full view MAP 5.1 THE RAPID SPREAD OF SPANISH HORSES ACROSS THE WESTERN PLAINS, 1675–1750 The Comanches were not the first to make their homes in what is now eastern Colorado. For generations, groups of Apaches had settled in the region near the upper reaches of the Platte and Arkansas rivers. Their ancestors had been Athapascan-speakers who had migrated south from Alaska centuries earlier and adjusted well to the warmer climate. Eventually, they had adopted some of the agricultural ways of the Pueblos and learned to ride horses from the Spanish. For Comanche newcomers, the Apache settlements—with their irrigated gardens and herds of horses—provided easy targets. Soon, Comanche raids caused such destruction that the Apaches sought assistance from the Spanish in the New Mexico colony to protect their homeland. Officials in Santa Fe, fearful about their own defenses, looked for ways to halt Comanche aggression. They also hoped to convert the Apaches to Christianity and stop French traders from moving up the Missouri River onto the Plains. In 1720 the Spanish sent soldiers northeast from Santa Fe to check the latest rumors of French incursions. But they pushed too far. An Indian war party, with French support, routed the force somewhere near present-day North Platte, Nebraska. The Spanish defeat only encouraged the Comanches to launch further attacks on Apache settlements. Within two decades, the Comanches had hammered their enemies south through one river valley after another: the Arkansas, the Red, the Brazos, the Colorado. Desperate Apache bands Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 154 ${bmicon} soon reached the vicinity of San Antonio, where they stole livestock from the new Spanish settlement to survive. Comanche power also pressed the Apaches west, where they raided Spanish outposts in New Mexico. As in Texas, Spanish campaigns against Apache intruders netted captives for the colonial slave trade. When Comanches visited a trade fair at Taos in 1731, they saw first-hand the commerce in Native American captives at the annual rescate, or ransoming. Comanche bands then stepped up raids on Apaches and carried the captives to market. At first, New Mexico resisted the additional trade in slaves. The colony had not been able to protect Apache families or convert them; now it was being asked to buy them. But in the 1740s, officials in Santa Fe discovered that if they turned away Comanche traders, they faced the increasing power of Comanche war parties. So they granted the Comanches access to the rescate at Taos in exchange for assurances of peace. With a secure market for their hides, meat, and captives, the Comanches could now focus their raids on central Texas, where their hard-pressed Apache enemies had sealed a pact with the Spanish in 1749. Not long after they buried the horse in the plaza, the Spanish began plans for a mission and presidio among their new Apache allies. The outpost would lie 150 miles northwest of San Antonio on the San Saba River, near present-day Menard, Texas. But the post had been established for less than a year when the Comanches attacked it in 1758. They returned the next year, capturing 700 horses. “The heathen of the north are innumerable and rich,” exclaimed a Spanish officer at San Saba. “They dress well, breed horses, [and] handle firearms with the greatest skill.” Over the next eight years, the Comanche onslaught continued. Their raiders even stole a horse herd from San Antonio itself. Repeated attacks finally forced the Spanish to withdraw from San Saba in 1767. In less than two decades, the Comanches had overrun most of Texas. They continued to absorb smaller Native American groups and swell in numbers. By 1780 they had grown into a proud Indian nation of more than 20,000 people. Their domain, the so-called Comanchería, remained a powerful entity in the Southwest for decades. Comanche strength depended not only on mounted warfare but also on using the horse as a trade commodity to obtain guns. Because Spanish policy prohibited the sale of firearms to Native Americans, the Comanches looked east for weapons. They quickly discovered that by Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 155 ${bmicon} selling horses to their eastern allies, such as the Wichita Indians along the Arkansas River, they could receive French muskets from Louisiana in return. But the Comanches were not the only Indian nation to take advantage of the gun frontier as it inched steadily west. By 1720 the French had established settlements at Peoria, Cahokia, and Kaskaskia in Illinois and at New Orleans, Natchez, and Natchitoches in Louisiana. French traders at these sites provided guns and other metal goods to Indians in exchange for salt, deerskins, beaver pelts, horses, or even war captives to serve as laborers and concubines. Native American groups that took advantage of this trade included the Tunicas beside the lower Mississippi, the Caddos and Wichitas along the Red and Arkansas rivers, and the Osage, Pawnee, and Omaha tribes near the Missouri. Further north, muskets carried west from French posts on the Great Lakes and south from English bases in subarctic Canada proved more significant than any traffic from Louisiana or Illinois. This northern trade was especially important among the Sioux peoples, who trapped game and gathered wild rice by the lakes of their northern Minnesota homeland. The Comanches had mastered horses and then acquired guns; the Sioux, given their different location, first absorbed firearms and then adopted the horse. But the results proved equally dramatic. When the Sioux first encountered a gun from French voyageurs in the mid-seventeenth century, they called it mazawakan, meaning “mysterious or sacred iron.” Initially, they used the few muskets they could obtain to fight their less well-armed Indian neighbors to the north. But in 1682, English agents established an outpost at the mouth of the Nelson River on Hudson Bay, trading muskets to Native Americans for furs. Supplied with shiploads of guns by the Hudson’s Bay Company, Cree and Assiniboine Indians pushed southwest, expanding their hunting territory as they depleted the fur supply. Pressured by these northern rivals, several Sioux bands (the Teton and Yanktonai) migrated to the prairie country of southwest Minnesota, learning to hunt for buffalo on foot. They also sought beaver for an expanding European market. Ready access to firearms facilitated the Sioux migration, giving them a military advantage over tribes to their west. By 1700 French traders, moving from the east, had established direct trade with the Sioux, offering a steady supply of guns and powder in exchange for furs. For several generations, the Sioux walked between two worlds. In the summers, they followed the buffalo onto the prairies, with dogs pulling travois and women carrying heavy burdens. As cold weather approached, they retreated to the edge of the woodlands to gather PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 156 ${bmicon} full view MAP 5.2 THE HORSE FRONTIER MEETS THE GUN FRONTIER, 1675–1750 firewood and seek beaver. In the spring, after trading meat and pelts to the French for guns and ammunition, they returned to the edge of the plains. They glimpsed their first horses not long after 1700. But it was several generations before the western Sioux had acquired enough mounts and developed sufficient confidence to drop their old customs and adopt a horse-centered way of life. By midcentury, the horse frontier on the northern Great Plains had met the gun frontier, just as it had in what is now Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Saukamappee, a Cree Indian CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 157 ${bmicon} living with the Blackfeet, remembered vividly the surprise of the initial encounter. When he was a young man, his war party—well armed and on foot—had gone into battle against the Shoshones. “We had more guns and iron headed arrows than [ever] before,” he recalled years later. “But our enemies . . . and their allies had Misstutim [Big Dogs, that is Horses] on which they rode, swift as the Deer.” Indian women remembered the arrival of the horse and the gun with ambivalence. These new assets improved food supplies and made travel less burdensome, but the transition brought disadvantages as well. Violent raids became more common, and young men who fought as warriors gained status in the community compared to older men and women. Also, the hard task of processing slain buffalo increased, creating new work for women even as it provided fresh resources for the whole community. As the overlap of horse and gun proceeded after 1750, Sioux men bearing muskets continued to acquire mounts and fight for control of the buffalo grounds. Their competitors, all of whom had recently acquired horses, now had guns as well. But within several decades, the Sioux had pushed their domain west to the Missouri River. Like the Comanches farther south, they had emerged as the dominant power across a wide portion of the Great Plains—a force to be reckoned with in the century ahead. East of the Rockies, horses and guns brought dramatic shifts as the eighteenth century progressed. But east of the Appalachian Mountains, a different force prompted striking change: population growth. Several factors came together to push the demographic curve upward at an unprecedented rate after 1700. From our vantage point in the twenty-first century, the colonial seaports and villages appear tiny, and rural settlement seems sparse. But by the mid-eighteenth century, the coastal colonies represented the largest concentration of people that had ever occupied any portion of the continent. On both sides of the North Atlantic, steady population growth characterized eighteenth-century life. In Europe, improvements in agriculture led to larger harvests and more fodder for keeping livestock alive through long winters. These changes prompted better diets, and they were accompanied by improvements in food distribution and sanitation that also assisted population growth. But as European numbers rose at a more or less steady pace, the population of Atlantic North America surged. A comparison with England demonstrates how astounding American demographic growth was along the eastern seaboard. England in 1700 had 5.1 million people, and that figure increased a mere 14 percent to 5.8 million by 1750. In the same half century, the colonial population in British North America more than quadrupled, from 260,000 to nearly 1.2 million. This enormous expansion in numbers contained an additional change. During the first two thirds of the eighteenth century, the Atlantic seaboard colonies made a permanent and dramatic shift away from a population that was almost entirely of English origin. Never before had North America seen such extensive ethnic and racial diversity. As the numerous cultures and languages indigenous to western Europe, western Africa, and eastern North America mixed and mingled, they gave rise to an American Babel. Natural increase—more births than deaths—played an important role in colonial population growth. Marriages occurred early, and the need for labor created an incentive for couples to have large families. Benjamin Franklin, who rose to become the best-known colonist of his generation, was born in Boston in 1706. He grew up in a household of 17 children. Large PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 158 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 5.1 COMPARISON OF OVERALL POPULATION STRUCTURE BY GENDER AND AGE: BRITISH MAINLAND COLONIES, 1760s, AND UNITED STATES, 1980s families had long been commonplace, to compensate for frequent deaths among children. What made the Franklin family unusual was that all the children survived childhood and started families of their own. (Such success would have been highly unlikely in the previous century, when 28 percent of young people in New England died before age 20, and the mortality rate was far higher in Virginia.) Although a high birth rate typified most preindustrial cultures, it was the low death rate and long average life span that pushed up American population numbers. With no huge urban centers, the colonial populace remained dispersed, so epidemics proved less devastating and of shorter duration than in Europe. Food was plentiful, and housing improved steadily. New-borns who survived infancy could live a long life. Franklin himself lived 84 years, and his publications, the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanack, offered frequent advice and encouragement for readers to become healthy as well as “wealthy and wise.” The 1720s and 1730s proved generally peaceful, in contrast to most earlier decades, so soldiering did not disrupt work and endanger lives among men of military age. For women, death related to pregnancy and childbirth still loomed as a constant threat. (Franklin’s own mother was his father’s second wife; the first wife died after bearing seven children.) Yet women still outnumbered men among people living into their sixties, seventies, and eighties. Although grandparents often endured far into old age, the average age for the total population stayed remarkably young. In the mid-eighteenth century, fully a third of all people in the British mainland colonies were under age 10, and more than half were under age 20. In the late twentieth century, in contrast, barely one-seventh of all living Americans were below 10 ten years of age, and fewer than one-third were below 20. The reasons for such a young overall population seem clear. The ratio between men and women was becoming more even over time, the marriage rates for women remained extremely high, and there was no effective means of contraception. Women could resort to sexual abstinence to avoid pregnancy, and mothers could extend the time between births by nursing their infants for a long period (since lactation reduces the chances of conception). Not surprisingly, children abounded. CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 159 ${bmicon} Frequent births and improving survival rates were only part of the population story. Immigration—both forced and free—also contributed mightily to the colonies’ growth. The unfree arrivals came in two different streams from two separate continents and faced very different prospects. The largest flow of unfree arrivals came from Africa, and these forced migrants faced a bleak new life with few options for improvement. Well before the 1720s, the system of race-based slavery was sanctioned by law. By the 1730s, the expanding trans-Atlantic slave trade brought at least 4000 Africans to the colonies every year, and the rate increased steadily. In 1756, Charleston, South Carolina, received more than 2200 slaves aboard 14 ships (including vessels that bore grimly ironic names such as Relief, Hope, and Success). A separate stream of unfree laborers came to the colonies from Europe. It included prisoners forced from crowded jails and also indentured servants unable to pay their own way to America. By comparison to enslaved Africans, the long-term prospects of these European migrants were far more promising. Every year, hundreds of detainees in British jails were offered transportation to the colonies and a term of service laboring in America as an alternative to prison time or execution. In Daniel Defoe’s romance Moll Flanders (1722), English authorities deport the fictional heroine to Virginia for her crimes as a pickpocket, and she ends up inheriting considerable wealth. Most real-life convicts had no such luck, but most earned their freedom and found ways to blend in to colonial society. Deported felons joined the larger flow of unfree migrants from Europe: poor people, unable to pay for their own passage, who accepted transportation to America as indentured servants. All were sold to employers to serve as workers, with scant legal rights, until their indenture expired, usually after three to six years. In the 1720s, Philadelphia shippers devised a variation on indentures known as the redemption contract. Under this redemption system, agents in Europe recruited migrants by contracting to loan them money for passage and provisions. On arrival in America, the recruits could then sign a pact with an employer of their own choosing. That person agreed to pay back the shipper, “redeeming” the original loan that had been made to the immigrant. In exchange, the newcomer (called a redemptioner) promised to work for the employer for several years, receiving no more than room and board. After that, the redemptioners were on their own, and their prospects usually improved. Detainees in British jails were offered transportation to the colonies and a term of service as an alternative to prison time or execution. Besides Africans who remained unfree for life and Europeans who gained freedom after a period of service, a smaller stream of newcomers involved free families arriving from Europe who could pay their own way. Poor conditions at home pushed these risk-takers to try their luck in the New World, and glowing descriptions of abundant land at bargain rates caught their attention. American land speculators hoped to rent or sell forest tracts to immigrant farmers who would improve the value of the land by clearing acreage, constructing fences, and building homes. For example, Boston merchant Samuel Waldo, infected by this “speculative fever,” induced several hundred Germans and Scots to come to America in the 1740s. He transported them to his extensive wilderness lands east of the Damariscotta River, where they became the early inhabitants of what is now Waldoboro, Maine. Britain’s imperial administrators also sought to recruit Europeans to the American colonies. The settlements these immigrants established could bolster colonial defenses against foreign rivals and provide a buffer on the frontier to ward off Indian attacks. In one of many pamphlets for German immigrants, Joshua von Kocherthal explained how South Carolina’s proprietors would give a 65-acre plot to each head of household, with the promise of more land if they needed it or if they came with a large group. Even with such enticements, South Carolina’s enslaved African community expanded faster than its free population. By 1760 blacks outnumbered whites 58,000 to 39,000. The next year, fearing the prospect of a slave revolt, the South Carolina government offered a bounty of £4 sterling ($360) to anyone importing a Protestant European, and it provided a smaller amount Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 160 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY “Pastures Can Be Found Almost Everywhere”: Joshua von Kocherthal Recruits Germans to Carolina Joshua von Kocherthal grew up near Heidelberg, capital of the Electoral Palatinate in southern Germany, and trained to be a Lutheran minister. On a visit to London at the start of the eighteenth century, he learned of England’s desire to recruit settlers to its American colonies. Because fellow Germans faced hard times at home, he led several groups to New York, where they established Neuberg (Newburgh) on the Hudson River. In 1706, Kocherthal also published a German-language tract promoting migration to South Carolina. The popular booklet went through several editions in his Palatinate homeland east of the Rhine River. The winter of 1708–1709 was especially harsh in the Palatinate. In the spring of 1709, a stream of desperate refugee families migrated north along the Rhine and then west to England. From there, they hoped to obtain passage across the Atlantic to South Carolina. Many carried Kocherthal’s simple pamphlet, and they focused on the numerous advantages outlined in his brochure, especially the abundance of land. According to Kocherthal, the colonial government registered all land grants “to prevent errors or future arguments,” and it exempted newcomers from taxes for several years. Best of all, food was plentiful, no feudal obligations or serfdom existed, and members of Protestant denominations had “freedom of religion and conscience.” South Carolina is one of the most fertile landscapes to be found … preferable in many respects to the terrain in Germany, as well as in England…. Game, fish, and birds, as well as waterfowl such as swans, geese, and ducks, occur there in such plentiful numbers that … newcomers can sustain themselves if necessary … until they have cleared a piece of land, sown seeds, and gathered in a harvest…. Among other things, there can be found in the wild so-called “Indian chickens” [turkeys], some of which weigh about 40 pounds or even more. These exist in incredible numbers…. Hunting game, fishing, and bird-catching are free to anyone, but one shouldn’t cross the borders of neighbors or of the Indians [who] live in complete peace and friendship with our families. In addition, their number decreases while the number of our people (namely the Europeans) increases…. Lumber can be found there in abundance, especially the most beautiful oaks, but also many of the nicest chestnuts and nut trees which are used by many for building and are considered better than oaks. One can also find beeches, spruces, cypresses, cedars, laurels, myrtle, and many other varieties. Hogs can be raised very easily in great numbers at little cost, because there are huge forests everywhere and the ground is covered with acorns…. Above all, the breeding of horses, cows, sheep, hogs and many other kinds of domestic livestock proceeds excellently, because pastures can be found almost everywhere, and the livestock can remain in the fields the whole year, as it gets no colder in Carolina in the middle of winter than it does in Germany in April or October…. Because of the multiplication of livestock, almost no household in Carolina (after residing there a few years) can justifiably be called poor. As far as vegetables and fruits are concerned, Indian corn predominates, thriving in such a way that one can harvest it twice a year and grow it wherever one wants to. Our local cereals such as wheat, rye, barley, and oats do well, but above all, rice thrives there as excellently as in any other part of the world, and it grows in such amounts that it can be loaded on ships and transported to other places. And as the inhabitants use rice so much and make much more profit from it than any other cereal, they are most keen on growing rice and there has been very little cultivation of other cereals. All kinds of our fruits can be planted there, but … future arrivals would do well to bring along seedlings of any kind, or at least the seeds…. There can already be found different kinds of our local apples…. As far as cabbage, beets, beans, peas, and other garden plants are concerned, not only do our local plants grow very well, but there are also many other varieties with excellent taste that are completely unknown to us…. Newcomers will do well to acquire all sorts of iron tools and bring these along…. If someone has lived in Carolina for a time and he wants to go to another country, he may do so freely at any time. Source: Translations by Dorothee Lehlbach from Joshua von Kocherthal, Ausfeuhrlicher und umstaendlicher Bericht von der beruehmten Landschaft Carolina, in dem engellaendischen American gelegen (Frankfurt: Georg Heinrich Oehrling, 2nd ed., 1709), in the Special Collections Library of Duke University. ($90) to help the new immigrant get started. These incentives prompted importers to seek out migrants, using kidnapping if necessary, and move them at the least possible expense. Importers’ only aim, according to one local observer, was “to deliver as many as possible alive on Shoar upon the cheapest terms, and no matter how they fared upon their Voyage nor in what condition they were landed.” More than 3000 newcomers reached South Carolina under this system, but the abuses proved so shocking that it was discontinued after seven years. Even for those who could pay their own way, the Atlantic passage was a life-threatening ordeal. “The people are packed densely, like herrings,” Lutheran minister Gottlieb Mittelberger recorded after a voyage to Pennsylvania. “During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress—smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions.” Despite such hardships, newcomers found economic opportunities awaiting them in America. They often wrote home glowing accounts of colonial life, and their letters helped boost the rising population further. In 1773 English customs officials quizzed 29-year-old Elizabeth McDonald about why she was departing for Wilmington, North Carolina. The unmarried Scottish servant replied that she was setting out “because several of her friends, having gone to Carolina before her, had assured her that she would get much better service and greater encouragement in Carolina than in her own country.” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 161 ${bmicon} Colonies that were thoroughly English at their origin became decidedly more varied after 1700. By far the largest and most striking change came from North America’s increasing involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. By 1750, some 240,000 African Americans made up 20 percent of the population of the British colonies. Native Americans had been drawn into the mix in small numbers as slaves, servants, spouses, and Christian converts. But roughly four out of five colonists were of European descent. Among them, as among the Africans and Indians, many spoke English with a different accent, or as a second language, or not at all. No area went untouched by this change. The New England colonies remained the most homogenous, but even there, 30 percent of the residents had non-English roots by 1760. The new diversity, which increasingly characterized American society in future centuries, was most visible in New York because of the colony’s non-English origins. A 1703 census of New York City shows that the town had no single ethnic majority. It remained 42 percent Dutch, with English (30 percent) and Africans (18 percent) making up nearly half the population. The rest of the population included a small Jewish community (1 percent) and a growing number of French Protestants (9 percent). The French New Yorkers had fled to America after Louis XIV ended protection for the Protestant minority of France. When the king revoked the long-standing Edict of Nantes in PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 162 ${bmicon} 1685, he also prohibited Huguenot emigration, but several thousand French Protestants escaped illegally and sought refuge in America. They established small communities such as those at New Rochelle in New York and along South Carolina’s Santee River. South Carolina’s governor protested against the Huguenots’ early political activity: “Shall the Frenchmen, who cannot speak our language, make our laws?” But everywhere, they intermarried with the English and prospered in commerce. By the 1760s, several families with humble Huguenot origins—among them the Faneuils in Boston and the Laurenses, Manigaults, and Ravenels in Charleston—had amassed enormous fortunes. At a time when France and Great Britain were at war, another infusion of French-speaking refugees, the Acadians, fared less well. In 1755, authorities evicted French colonials from Acadia in British Nova Scotia, fearing they might take up arms for France. Officials burned their homes and deported more than 6000 of them further south, allotting shiploads to the various coastal colonies so that widely dispersed groups could pose no threat. Mistreated for their Catholicism and feared as enemies during wartime, the Acadians struggled to make ends meet. Most had lost all their property. Some, who could not support themselves, were sold into indentured servitude, adults and children alike. Feeling unwelcome in their new homes, many eventually moved on to French Louisiana, where the Acadians, or Cajuns, became a lasting cultural force. Scotland provided a much larger flow of migrants than France, stemming from two different sources. A growing stream of families, at least 30,000 people by 1770, came from Scotland itself. They were pushed by poverty, land scarcity, famines, and a failed political rebellion in 1745. In addition, a larger group known as the Scots-Irish came from Ulster in Ireland. The British had encouraged these Scottish Presbyterians to settle in Northern Ireland in the seventeenth century, displacing rebellious Irish Catholics. But the Scottish newcomers in Ulster soon faced commercial and political restrictions from Parliament and the Anglican church. By 1770 nearly 60,000 Scots-Irish had opted to leave Ireland for America. Scottish immigrants became farmers and traders throughout the colonies. In Georgia, for example, they established New Inverness (now Darien) on the southern coastal frontier in 1736. Another stream, German-speaking immigrants from the heart of Europe, nearly equaled the combined flow of Scots and Scots-Irish settlers. They began to arrive shortly after 1700 as religious persecution, chronic land shortages, and generations of warfare pushed whole communities out of the so-called Palatinate in southern Germany and also neighboring Switzerland. Roughly 30,000 migrated in the 1750s alone, and by 1770 the total had reached 85,000. Even more than other European newcomers, these refugees generally came as whole families, and they usually took up farmland on the fringes of the colonies. Germans occupied the Mohawk Valley in New York and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, and they fanned out from Germantown across the rich farmland of Pennsylvania. Swiss founded New Bern, North Carolina, in 1710, and migrants from Salzburg established New Ebenezer near Savannah, Georgia, in 1734. Almost all of the white, non-English newcomers, including several thousand migrants from Wales, were Protestant Christians. Many clung to their language and traditions. (Because the new Pennsylvanians spoke CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 163 ${bmicon} German, or Deutsch, they became known as Pennsylvania Dutch.) But most arrivals learned English, and many of their children intermarried with the English settlers. An eighteenth-century Frenchman wrote of meeting a typical American “whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife is Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations.” Population growth had consequences, and the changes began at the water’s edge. Ships carrying newcomers docked most often at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Charleston. Each of these deepwater ports grew from a village to a bustling commercial hub, absorbing manufactured goods from Britain and shipping colonial produce abroad. All four towns spawned secondary ports located on neighboring rivers, where small boats carried on an active coastal trade. Chesapeake Bay, with no single dominant port, was the exception. There, Baltimore, Annapolis, Alexandria, and Newport all expanded. But given the bay’s many rivers, Atlantic ships often visited separate riverside plantations and villages to do business. In Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere, inland commerce was conducted by boat wherever possible. Hartford and Springfield on the Connecticut River, Kingston and Albany on the Hudson, Wilmington and Trenton on the Delaware, and Savannah and Augusta on the Savannah all become active riverside trading centers. Richmond, Virginia, which began as a trading post at the falls of the James River, already had 250 inhabitants when it incorporated as a town in 1742. Trails PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 164 ${bmicon} and former Indian paths connected these river-based communities, easing the way for travelers in the hinterland. By the 1740s, a pathway known as the Great Wagon Road headed southwest from Philadelphia to Winchester in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and then south through gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Piedmont region of central Carolina. Widening networks of contact, using boats and wagons, extended inland from the primary ports. And expanding fleets of ships tied each major hub to distant Atlantic ports. As a result, farmsteads and villages that had been largely self-sufficient before 1710 gradually became linked to wider markets. Local production still met most needs. But increasingly, the opportunity existed to obtain a new tool, a piece of cloth, or a printed almanac from far away. These and scores of other items might come from a larger town in the colony or from abroad. The new possibility of obtaining such goods lured farmers to grow crops for market rather than plant only for home consumption. As local commercial systems gained coherence and strength, a string of regional economies developed along the Atlantic seaboard. Coastal vessels and a few muddy roads linked them tenuously to one another. But geographical and human differences caused each to take on a character of its own, and this distinctiveness increased over the years. Migration patterns reinforced this diversity, since arrivals from Europe often sought out areas where others already spoke their language or shared their form of worship. The growing influx of German farmers through Philadelphia, for example, gave unique traits to life in colonial Pennsylvania. Likewise, the rising importation of Africans helped shape the economy and culture of Chesapeake Bay, and the same held true for coastal South Carolina. Besides the diversity among arriv- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 165 ${bmicon} full view MAP 5.3 ECONOMIC REGIONS OF THE BRITISH COLONIES ing peoples, American ecological differences played a role as well. Variations in land and climate contributed to the emergence of five distinctive economic regions along the Atlantic coast. Two related but distinctive regions took shape along the southeastern coast, linked respectively to the two Carolina colonies. The larger of the two centered on the lowcountry of coastal South Carolina. There, the warm current of the Gulf Stream moving north from Florida along the PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 166 ${bmicon} Sea Islands provided a long growing season. It also assured very mild winters, in contrast to Europe, and this meant that cattle and hogs could forage in the woods unattended for most of the year. As livestock multiplied, settlers sold meat, barrel staves, and firewood to the sugar islands of the West Indies, purchasing African slave labor in return. Some of the newcomers had grown rice in Africa before their enslavement, and in planting it for their own use they soon demonstrated that the crop, unfamiliar to the English, could thrive in Carolina. Once African know-how made clear the potential for rice cultivation, a system of plantation agriculture, imported from Barbados, took hold quickly after 1700. Rice production spread to Georgia after that colony legalized slavery in 1751. Another African plant, indigo, also took root as a money-making staple crop. For several generations after 1740, cakes of indigo from South Carolina provided the blue dye for England’s rising textile industry. On Charleston’s busy docks, casks of deerskins piled up beside the barrels of rice and indigo. The extensive deerskin trade in South Carolina and Georgia depended on the Creek and Cherokee men who hunted the animals and the women who processed the hides. Keeping some skins for domestic use, the Indians sold the rest to traders in exchange for guns, blankets, cloth, knives, kettles, and rum. Native American bearers, often women, carried the heavy packs of skins to the trading posts until packhorses became available in the region. At the height of the trade in the 1730s, Indian and white hunters killed more than a million deer per year, often leaving the meat and selling the skin. When colonial laws against overhunting failed to stem the onslaught, the deer population and the southern deerskin trade declined. In North Carolina, a second regional economy evolved. North of Cape Fear, the sandy barrier islands known as the Outer Banks prevented easy access for oceangoing vessels and gave protection to pirates who harassed Atlantic shipping. Because the coastal geography hindered efforts to promote staple crop agriculture, colonists turned to the pine forest to make a living. An extensive band of longleaf pine rimmed the southern coastal plain from Virginia to Texas, and in North Carolina it stretched inland for a hundred miles. With labor, this longleaf forest yielded an abundance of naval stores: the tar and pitch used by sailors to protect their ships and rigging. Workers hauled the finished products to Wilmington on the Cape Fear River, the colony’s best outlet to the sea. By the 1770s, the port was well known for exporting naval stores, and a dozen sawmills dotted the river. Further inland, Scots-Irish and German families moved down the Great Wagon Road after 1740 to carve out farms across the Carolina Piedmont on lands controlled largely by several absentee owners in Britain. By 1763 Ben Franklin estimated that Pennsylvania had lost 10,000 families to North Carolina. Typical of this migration were the Moravians, a German-speaking religious group who established towns at Nazareth and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the 1740s. In 1753 members of the expanding Moravian community bought a tract of 100,000 acres near modern-day Winston-Salem, North Carolina. They named it Wachovia, meaning “Peaceful Valley,” and within several years they had developed prosperous farms, a pottery shop, and a tannery around their initial settlement, called Bethabara. The newcomers bartered seeds and tools with one another and shipped extra produce overland to South Carolina and Virginia. North of the Carolinas, farmers in the colonies bordering Chesapeake Bay committed to tobacco production in the seventeenth century. They clung to that staple crop despite a long decline in its market price. After 1710, demand for tobacco revived and prices rose again, in part because snuff (pulverized tobacco inhaled through the nostrils) became increasingly popular among Europeans. An additional boost came from the French government. It granted a monopoly to a company that bought large amounts of Chesapeake tobacco and distributed it efficiently across Europe. Tobacco prices remained strong, and the leaf continued to dominate the Chesapeake economy. But local conditions in parts of Virginia and Maryland prompted crop diversification as the century progressed. CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 167 ${bmicon} For one thing, constant tobacco planting depleted the soil and reduced yields. For another, certain soils proved poorly suited for the crop. In addition, most new farmland lay far from any navigable river, and rolling huge casks of tobacco many miles to market became an expensive chore. Wheat and corn thus emerged as important secondary staples. These new crops, along with flax, hemp, and apples for making cider, provided a buffer against poor tobacco harvests. They also spurred related economic activities such as building wagons, making barrels, and constructing mills. These trades, in turn, produced widening networks of local exchange and prosperity for white yeoman families, with or without slaves. Before 1700, all the mainland colonies could be described as societies with slaves. After that, the northern colonies continued to allow enslavement, but they never relied on it. In contrast, the southern colonies, except for certain inland farmlands settled from the north, shifted early in the eighteenth century to become something different: full-fledged slave societies, tied economically and culturally to slavery. The system of forced labor created constant tension and violence. But it also created widespread wealth in the white community. In a circular fashion, planters exporting staple crops to Britain reaped sufficient profits to invest in additional African labor to grow more tobacco and rice. By midcentury, plantation owners remained less wealthy than their counterparts in the West Indies who lived off the profits of slave-grown sugar. But on average, members of the southern elite controlled far more wealth than their counterparts in the North. The profits of the plantation system spread widely through the rest of the European American community. By the 1770s, whites in the South averaged more than twice as much wealth per person as whites in the North. An estimate for 1774 puts the white southerner’s average net worth at £93, a sharp contrast to their counterparts in the middle colonies (£46) and New England (£38). North of Chesapeake Bay, two overlapping economic regions emerged: the long-established New England colonies and the somewhat newer and more prosperous middle colonies. New England faced peculiar disadvantages, beginning with the rocky soil. Ancient glaciers had strewn stones across the landscape, and it was tedious work to haul them off the fields to build endless stone walls. As imports from London increased, New Englanders found no staple crop that could be sold back directly to Britain to create a balance of trade. All the beaver had been hunted, and much of the best land had been occupied. The region’s farm families had adapted well to the challenging environment and short growing seasons. Both men and women worked on handicrafts during the long, hard winters, and networks of community exchange yielded commercial prosperity in many towns. But with a rapidly growing population, each successive generation of parents had less land to pass on to their children. Increasingly, New England’s young men with little prospect of inheriting prime farmland turned to the sea for a living. In timber-rich New England, shipbuilding prospered. Colonists established shipyards at the mouth of nearly every river, drawing skilled carpenters and willing deckhands to the PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 168 ${bmicon} coast. By 1763, Marblehead, Massachusetts, with a fleet of a hundred ships, had grown to 5000 people. That made it the sixth largest town in the 13 colonies, behind only Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charleston, and Newport, Rhode Island. By 1770, three out of every four ships sailing from New England to a British port was owned by colonial residents. In contrast, in the southern colonies from Maryland to Georgia, the proportion was only one in eight. On Nantucket Island off Cape Cod, whaling became a new source of income. For generations, the islanders had cooked the blubber of beached whales to extract oil for lamps. In 1715, they outfitted several vessels to harpoon sperm whales at sea and then return with the whale blubber in casks to be rendered into oil. In the 1750s, they installed brick ovens on deck and began cooking the smelly blubber at sea in huge iron vats. This change turned the whaling vessel into a floating factory, and it allowed longer voyages in larger ships. By the 1760s, Nantucket whalers were cruising the Atlantic for four or five months at a time and returning loaded with barrels of oil. The fishing industry prospered as well. All along the coast, villagers dispatched boats to the Grand Banks, the fishing grounds off Newfoundland. When the vessels returned, laden with fish, the townspeople graded, dried, and salted the catch. They sent the best cod to Europe in exchange for wine and dry goods. Yankee captains carried the lowest grade to the Caribbean sugar islands, where planters bought “refuse fish” as food for their slaves. In return, skippers brought back kegs of molasses to be distilled into rum. By 1770, 140 American distilleries, most of them in New England, produced 5 million gallons of rum annually. Much of it went to colonial taverns and Indian trading posts. But some also went to Africa, aboard ships from Britain and New England. American rum, along with various wines and spirits from Europe, made up one-fifth of the total value of goods utilized to purchase African slaves. As the New England economy stabilized, it became a mixed blessing for women. On the farm, their domestic labors aided the household economy and helped to offset bad harvests. Mothers taught their daughters to spin yarn, weave cloth, sew clothes, plant gardens, raise chickens, tend livestock, and churn butter. The products from these chores could be used at home or sold in a nearby village to buy consumer goods. While the husband held legal authority over the home, a good wife served as a “deputy husband,” managing numerous household affairs, or perhaps earning money as a midwife to help make ends meet. She took charge entirely if her husband passed away or went to sea. But for all their labors, women seemed to lose economic and legal standing to men as New England towns became larger and more orderly. The creation of public buildings meant that community business was no longer conducted in the home, and so women did not get to participate as frequently as they once had. Networks of local officials, consisting entirely of men, drafted statutes and legal codes that reinforced male privileges. Women found it difficult to obtain credit or receive a business license. In addition, the law barred married women from making contracts, limiting the chance for independent activities outside the home. Increasingly, male apothecaries and physicians with a smattering of formal training shouldered traditional midwives away from the bedside. Even in the port towns, where women outnumbered men, their rights were limited, and poor women faced particular scrutiny. Selectmen and Overseers of the Poor had the power to remove children from a widowed mother and place them in the almshouse. The fifth regional economy, the one that flourished in the middle colonies between New England and Chesapeake Bay, represented the best of two worlds. The Europeans who resettled Indian lands in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York found a favorable climate, rich soil, and an abundance of millstreams. Unlike New Englanders, they developed a reliable staple by growing an abundance of grain. They exported excess wheat, flour, and bread as effectively as southerners shipped tobacco and rice. But unlike the planters in Virginia and South Carolina, middle-colony farmers did not become locked in the vicious cycle of mak- CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 169 ${bmicon} ing large investments in enslaved workers and exporting a single agricultural staple. Instead, they developed a more balanced economy, using mostly free labor. Besides grain products, they also exported quantities of flaxseed, barrel staves, livestock, and pig iron. Large infusions of money from Britain during its long war against France in the 1750s gave a further lift to this prosperous economy. Whereas the Chesapeake had no dominant seaport, the middle colonies boasted two major ports of entry. Europeans eager to ply their crafts in America saw little likelihood of competing with unpaid slave artisans in the south. So they flocked to the middle colony seaports instead. Both Philadelphia and New York grew faster than rival ports in the mid-eighteenth century, passing Boston in size in the 1750s. Each city doubled its number of dwellings in the two decades after 1743 as brick structures with slate roofs replaced older wooden homes covered with inflammable cedar shingles. But new houses could not meet the ever-increasing demand. By 1763, Philadelphia had more than 20,000 people, New York had nearly as many, and both cities faced a set of urban problems that had already hit Boston. As the port towns grew, they became more impersonal, with a greater economic and social distance between rich and poor. Large homes and expensive imports characterized life among the urban elite. In contrast, the poorest city dwellers increasingly lacked property and the means to subsist. By the 1760s, Philadelphia’s almshouse and the new Pennsylvania Hospital for the Sick Poor were overflowing. In response to the crisis, Philadelphia’s Quaker leaders established a voluntary Committee to Alleviate the Miseries of the Poor, handing out firewood and blankets to the needy. They also built a “Bettering House,” patterned on Boston’s workhouse, that provided poor Philadelphians with food and shelter in exchange for work. In an effort to limit urban poverty, authorities in New York and Philadelphia continued to move newcomers to the countryside. Dutch and German settlers had already established an efficient farming tradition in the area over several generations. With rising immigration after 1730, the burgeoning region slowly expanded its economic reach far up the Hudson Valley, east into much of Connecticut and Long Island, and south to Baltimore and parts of Maryland. The farm frontier pushed west as well. The acquisitive Thomas Penn had inherited control of Pennsylvania from his more idealistic father, founder William Penn. In 1737 the young proprietor defrauded the Delaware Indians out of land they occupied west of the Delaware River. In the infamous Walking Purchase, Penn claimed a boundary that could be walked in a day and half. Then Penn’s men cleared a path through the woods and sent horsemen along to assist his runners, who covered more than 55 miles in 36 hours. In all, the fast-moving agents took title to 1200 square miles of potential farmland near modern Easton and Allentown, Pennsylvania. Land-hungry settlers pressed the reluctant Delawares west toward the Allegheny Mountains and occupied the rich river valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. Land agents and immigrant farmers called the fertile region “the best poor man’s country.” Philadelphia epitomized the commercial dynamism of the eighteenth-century British colonies. The city was a hub in the fastest-growing economic region on the Atlantic seaboard. Ben Franklin, arriving there in 1723 at age 17, achieved particular success. Within seven years he owned a printing business. Within 25 years he was wealthy enough to retire, devoting himself to science, politics, and social improvement. He created a lending library, developed an efficient stove, promoted schools and hospitals, supported scientific and philosophical organizations, and won fame in Europe for his experiments with electricity. The outburst of scientific inquiry and religious skepticism spreading through European PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 170 ${bmicon} intellectual circles at the time became known as the Enlightenment. Its spirit of rational questioning and reason was greatly aided by the printing press. In America, Franklin and his fellow printers personified the new Age of Enlightenment. By 1760 the British mainland colonies had 29 printing establishments, more presses per capita than in any country in Europe. These presses squeezed out 18 weekly newspapers and a variety of public notices, commercial broadsides, fictional pieces, farmers’ almanacs, and scientific treatises. They fostered political and business communication throughout the colonies. But they also performed a very different public function, publishing an array of religious material. In Britain’s eighteenth-century North American colonies, the spirit of enterprise and worldly achievement existed side by side with a longing for spiritual community and social perfection. The story of another Pennsylvania printer is an apt example. In 1720, three years before Franklin arrived in Pennsylvania, Conrad Beissel migrated to Philadelphia from the Palatinate in Germany. He lived and preached in nearby Germantown; in 1738 he withdrew farther west to lead a life of unadorned simplicity. Soon other men and women joined him at his retreat near modern-day Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There they created Ephrata Community, the earliest of many wilderness utopias in North America. The communal experiment lasted for more than a generation, supporting itself by operating a printing press. Although Beissel pursued the same trade as Franklin, his experience as a dedicated seeker of spiritual truth represents a very different and important side of colonial life. In the first half of the eighteenth century, colonists witnessed surprising breakthroughs in religious toleration and bitter controversies within the ministry. They also experienced a revivalist outpouring, with roots in Europe and America, that later became known as the Great Awakening. This stirring began in the 1730s, and it gained momentum through the visits from England of a charismatic preacher named George Whitefield (pronounced Whitfield). In most colonies, the aftershocks of the Awakening persisted for a full generation. The same population shifts that made Britain’s mainland colonies more diverse in the eighteenth century also created a new Babel of religious voices that included many non-Christians. Africans, the largest of all the new contingents, brought their own varied beliefs across the Atlantic. Some slaves from Portuguese Angola had had exposure to Catholicism in their homeland. But most Africans retained as much of their traditional cultures as possible under the circumstances, and they showed skepticism toward initial efforts to plant Christianity among them. An Anglican missionary recalled one black South Carolinian saying that he “preferred to live by what he could remember” from Africa. Christian efforts to convert Native Americans also had mixed results. A minister living near the Iroquois reported that Indians would beat a drum to disrupt his services and then “go away Laughing.” Another non-Christian contingent, Jewish immigrants, remained few in number, with only several hundred families by 1770. Merchants rather than farmers, they established communities in several Atlantic ports, beginning in Dutch New Amsterdam (1654) and Newport CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 171 ${bmicon} (1658). Most were Sephardic Jews; that is, their ancestral roots were in Spain and Portugal. They came by way of the Caribbean, reaching Charleston in 1697, Philadelphia after 1706, and Savannah in 1733. A few of their children merged into the Protestant culture. In 1743, for example, Phila Franks, daughter of a leading Jewish merchant in New York, wed the son of Stephen DeLancey, a wealthy Huguenot who had married into the city’s Dutch aristocracy and then joined the Anglican church. But more than 80 percent of Jewish young people (including a handful of Ashkenazi Jews with ties to central Europe) found partners within their congregations, creating small but lasting communities. The majority of the colonies’ newcomers in the eighteenth century were Christians. A few, such as the Acadians, were Catholics, but the rest had some Protestant affiliation. In the two centuries since the Reformation, numerous competing Protestant denominations had sprung up across Europe. Now this wide array made itself felt in America, as Presbyterians, Quakers, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, and smaller sects all increased in numbers. To attract immigrant families, most colonies did away with laws that favored a single established church. Nevertheless, New England remained firmly Congregational, while the merchant elite everywhere, and southern gentry in particular, concentrated increasingly within the Anglican church. Rhode Island had emphasized the separation of church and state from the start, and Pennsylvania had likewise favored toleration, both as a matter of principle and as a practical recruitment device to attract new settlers. In Europe, Enlightenment thinking gave ideas of religious tolerance greater force as the eighteenth century progressed. So new colonists looked for assurances that they could indeed practice their religion freely and avoid burdensome taxes to support other faiths. In fact, migration from Europe was a demanding ordeal that discouraged the fainthearted. Those willing to take the risk were often people with strong religious hopes and convictions, and various colonies competed to accommodate them. In many places, religious tests still limited who could hold public office, according to the acceptability of their beliefs, but tolerance for competing religious views was definitely expanding. Ironically, if any institution threatened the growing religious toleration in the colonies, it was the British king’s own denomination. The monarch headed the Anglican church, and it had influential American members, including almost every colonial governor. Therefore, repeated talk by the Church of England about installing a resident bishop in America aroused suspicions among loyal colonists who worshipped in other denominations. This was especially true in New England, where Congregationalists had long opposed hierarchies within the Christian faith. Boston, which had 18 churches, rose up against a plan for an Anglican bishop in 1750. In a passionate sermon, Reverend Jonathan Mayhew preached that the town must keep “all imperious bishops, and other clergymen who love to lord it over God’s heritage, from getting their feet into the stirrup.” As relative toleration became a hallmark of the British colonies, no one benefited more than German-speaking Protestant groups. Numerous religious sects, such as the Moravians, Mennonites, Schwenk-felders, and Dunkers, were escaping from persecution as well as poverty at home. Their numbers multiplied after 1730, and hymns in German became a common sound on Sabbath day. In 1743, before any American printer produced an English-language Bible, a press in Pennsylvania put out a complete German edition of Luther’s Bible, using type brought from Frankfurt. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 172 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Sounds Around Us: The Lost World of High Fidelity George Whitefield was as much a performer as a minister. He preached extemporaneously, mesmerized his listeners, and rarely declined an opportunity to address a crowd. Besides his 7 trips to America, he made 3 tours in Ireland and 15 in Scotland. He preached roughly 18,000 times before his death in New England in 1770, so hundreds of thousands of people heard him on both sides of the Atlantic. Because dozens of his sermons were transcribed and published, we are able to read what he said. But what did he sound like? And for that matter, what did anything sound like in the eighteenth century? Whitefield had “a clear and musical voice,” one listener recalled, “and a wonderful command of it.” He squeezed every word for full effect. Some said he could move his listeners to tears with his dramatic enunciation of a single word, such as Mesopotamia. England’s most famous actor observed, “I would give a hundred guineas if I could only say ‘O!’ like Mr. Whitefield.” Benjamin Franklin, a skeptic and deist in matters of religion, told how he had gone to hear Whitefield preach at Philadelphia’s Market Street, determined to hold onto the gold and silver coins he was carrying. “As he proceeded I began to soften,” Franklin wrote, “and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.” “The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous,” Franklin reported, and their numbers challenged Whitefield’s exceptional voice. Ever the rational experimenter, Dr. Franklin set out to measure the preacher’s range. He backed down Market Street until he could not hear the sermon distinctly, then calculated the radius of the circle Whitefield could reach, allowed 2 feet for every potential listener, and concluded “that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand.” The estimate may be generous, but it speaks to the strength of Whitefield’s operatic voice and the hushed attentiveness of his audience. It also reflects a wider point: the very different quality of hearing three centuries ago. Of all the five senses, hearing may be the one that historians think and write about least of all. For years they have studied the rich world of musical history, of course, and recently they have awakened to disability history, exploring the complicated saga of social responses across time to hearing loss and other physical impairments. But the broader history of hearing remains so unexamined that few even recognize it as a fit topic of inquiry. Still, if each environment has a distinctive landscape that changes over time, it must have a discernible soundscape as well. If we could join the residents of Franklin’s Philadelphia, or if they could join us, the contrasts in sight, smell, taste, and touch between our two worlds would be fascinating to discuss. When you explore the history of these senses by listing differences, they mount up quickly. The same is true with sound. Rasping handsaws, creaking pump handles, and airy harpsichords would surprise us; droning lawnmowers, honking taxicabs, and pulsating electric guitars would startle them. But with sound, the differences go deeper than simply comparing one set of activities and instruments with another. There is a more fundamental contrast. Just as the cars, trucks, machines, and factories of our ever-widening industrial world have spawned physical pollution around the globe, they also generate noise as a universal byproduct. These sounds are so numerous and constant that we hardly recognize them as noise pollution because we know no other soundscape. But Murray Schaffer explained the shift in a pioneering work of sound history, The Tuning of the World (1977). In the preindustrial world (most of history) humans lived in a high-fidelity soundscape with very little background noise. Distinct sounds traveled clearly and far, whether a tolling bell, a ringing axe, a singing bird, a shouting preacher, or a clap of thunder. In contrast, we grow up in a lowfidelity world. From birth, our soundscape is filled with a steady array of background noises, large and small, day and night. Even in a rural field or a wilderness campsite, the roar of a snowmobile, the whine of a chainsaw, or the hum of distant tires or a passing jet plane can alter the near silence. The whir and buzz of countless devices is so much a part of our sound envelope that we amplify and blast voices to make them heard. Or we slip on headphones so we can lock out background noise and listen only to what we want to hear. Colonial visitors would marvel at how noisy our world seems but also at how scrambled and indistinct specific sounds become in this modern cacophony. “How do you hear yourselves think?” they might well ask. Collectively, these newcomers were part of a European reform movement to renew piety and spiritual vitality among Protestant churchgoers in an age of increasing rationalism and worldliness. Pietism, as this “Second Reformation” was called, had roots in eastern Germany and stressed the need to restore emotion and intensity to worship that had become too rational, detached, and impersonal. The German pietists reached out after 1700 to inspire Huguenots in France and Presbyterians in Scotland. They influenced reformers in the Church of England such as John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and a teacher at Oxford University. Through Wesley, pietist ideas touched George Whitefield, a lively college student in the class of 1736. Over the next decade, “the boy parson” became the first trans-Atlantic celebrity. Hailed as a preaching prodigy, he sparked a widespread religious awakening in the American colonies. As a boy growing up in England, George Whitefield left school at 12 to work in the family tavern. But he still managed to attend college, and at Oxford he discovered Wesley and the pietists. He also discovered two other things: the lure of America and his calling to be minister. His mentor, Wesley, had preached briefly in Georgia. So in 1738, at age 23, Whitefield spent several months in the new colony, where he laid plans for an orphanage near Savannah. Arriving back in England, Whitefield quickly achieved celebrity status. He drew large crowds with fiery sermons that criticized the Anglican church. The evangelist’s published Jour- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 173 ${bmicon} nals, priced at only sixpence, went through six editions in nine months. Moreover, he recruited an experienced publicist, so word of his popularity preceded him in 1739 when he returned to America for an extended tour, the second of seven trans-Atlantic journeys during his career. Building upon religous stirrings already present in the colonies, Whitefield preached to huge and emotional crowds nearly 350 times in 15 months. He made appearances from Savannah to Boston, something no public figure had ever done. “God shews me,” he wrote in his journal, “that America must be my place for action.” The timing was perfect. Whitefield, whose brother was a wine merchant, understood the expanding networks of communication and consumption in the British Atlantic world. He saw that in America, as newspapers multiplied and roads increased, he could advertise widely and travel extensively. Other ministers from England had remarked in frustration that most colonists knew “little of the nature of religion, or of the constitution of the church.” At times, each person seemed to hold to “some religious whim or scruple peculiar to himself.” Whitefield thrived on this vitality and confusion. He had little taste for Protestant debates over church structures and sectarian differences. Instead, he believed that an evangelical minister should simply preach the Bible fervently to a wide array of avid listeners. Everywhere he went, Whitefield served as a catalyst for religious activity. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 174 ${bmicon} The heightened commotion in American churches had local origins as well. The same tension felt in European parishes—between worldly, rational pursuits and an emotional quest for grace and salvation—also troubled colonial congregations. Occasional local revivals had taken place in America for decades. The most dramatic “harvest” of committed converts to the church took place in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734–1735 under the able guidance of a local minister named Jonathan Edwards. As the colonies’ most gifted theologian, Edwards anticipated Whitefield’s argument that dry, rote “head-knowledge” made a poor substitute for “a true living faith in Jesus Christ.” “Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored,” Edwards observed, “as to have their hearts touched.” full view Jonathan Edwards A Yale graduate, Jonathan Edwards preached the need for experiencing salvation in ways not strictly intellectual. A major figure in the Great Awakening, his most famous sermon was “Sinners in the Hands of a Angry God.” This sermon reasserted the centrality of the omnipotent God in human existence. (Library of Congress) In a fast-growing society, who would prepare suitable church leaders for the next generation? Candidates for the ministry could train at Harvard College (founded 1636), William and Mary (1693), Yale (1707), or one of several small academies. But these institutions could not instruct a sufficient number and variety of church leaders. The shortage of educated ministers, combined with steady geographic expansion, meant that pulpit vacancies were common. A minister might oversee several parishes, and even if he tended only one parish, it often had broad boundaries. Rural families found it difficult to attend church regularly, and the great distances separating parishioners made it hard for any pastor to travel widely enough to address their needs. Feeling neglected, people voiced their dissatisfaction over the shortage of ministers. The problem in the pulpit went beyond the matter of quantity. It included the issue of quality as well. Many college graduates had too much “head-knowledge.” Their fluency in Latin and Greek often earned them more disdain than respect from down-to-earth congregations. Most foreign-born ministers, such as Anglicans sent from England and Presbyterians from Scotland, had failed to land good positions at home. Some resented their assignments to the colonies, and others felt overwhelmed by the task they confronted. Too often, they showed limited appreciation for the local church members who paid their salaries, and they resented those who criticized their ministries. One such critic was the Scots-Irish immigrant William Tennent, who arrived in Pennsylvania with his family in 1716. Dismayed by the small numbers and cold, unemotional outlook of Presbyterian ministers, Tennent opened a one-room academy in a log house to train his four sons and other young men for the ministry. But local Presbyterian authorities challenged his credentials and disparaged the teachings of his “Log College.” Eventually, the school moved and grew, becoming linked to the new College of New Jersey in 1746, which later evolved into Princeton University. But before this happened, Tennent’s preacher sons allied themselves with Whitefield and managed to shake the colonial religious establishment to its roots. full view Phillis Wheatley Born in Africa in 1753 and brought to America as a young girl, Phillis Wheatley grew up in Boston as a personal maid and later became a noted poet. In an age when most whites took it for granted that blacks were an intellectually inferior race, Wheatley became one of the most prominent examples to the contrary. (New York Public Library) One of Tennent’s sons, Gilbert, eventually led a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia created by Whitefield’s supporters. In 1740, at the time of Whitefield’s triumphal tour, young Gilbert Tennent delivered a blistering sermon entitled “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry” that became a manifesto for the revival. Cutting to the heart of the matter, he condemned the “sad security” offered by incompetent, uncaring, and greedy ministers. “They are as blind as Moles, and as dead as Stones,” he charged, “without any spiritual Taste and Relish.” He argued that congregations had the right to turn away from these “Orthodox, Letter-learned … Old Pharisee-Teachers.” It was “an unscriptural Infringment on Christian Liberty,” Tennent proclaimed, “to bind men to a particular Minister, against their Judgement and Inclinations.” Whitefield hailed Gilbert Tennant and his brothers as “burning and shining lights” of a new kind. All the ministers and worshipers who joined in the movement began to call themselves “New Lights.” Opponents, whom they dismissed as “Old Lights,” continued to defend a learned clergy, CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 175 ${bmicon} emphasized head-knowledge on the difficult road to salvation, and opposed the disruptions caused by itinerant ministers who moved freely from parish to parish without invitation. The New Lights, in contrast, appealed to people’s emotions and stressed the prospect of a more democratic salvation open to all. They defended their itinerant wanderings, which made them more accessible to a broader public and less likely to become set in their ways. “Our Blessed Saviour was an Itinerant Preacher,” they reminded their critics; “he Preach’d in no other Way.” full view 1740s Missionary John Jacob Schmick Prussian missionary John Jacob Schmick who dedicated himself to peaceful relations with the Indians in the 1740’s. (Moravian Historical Society, Nazareth, PA) full view 1740s Missionary Johanna Jacob Schmick Johanna Jacob Schmick, wife of Jacob Shmick. Both were missionaries to the Delawares in Pennsylvania in the 1740’s. (Moravian Historical Society, Nazareth, PA) Just as New Light preachers moved readily across traditional parish boundaries, they also transcended the lines between different Protestant sects. Their simple evangelical message reached across a wide social spectrum to diverse audiences of every denomination. Moreover, their stress on communal singing, expressive emotion, and the prospects for personal salvation inevitably drew special attention from those on the fringes of the culture, such as young people, women, and the poor. It is important, but not surprising, that New Light ministers and their supporters made headway in spreading Christianity within various African American and Native American communities. Some of the most zealous New Light men and women tried to transcend the competing denominations altogether and create a broad community of Protestant believers. Faced with such a broad awakening, members of the religious establishment, once secure as unchallenged leaders within their own church communities, now faced a stark choice. Some reached out to the itinerants who attacked them so vehemently. These powerful churchmen acknowledged their New Light critics and reluctantly welcomed the popular renegades into the local pulpits. Such a strategy might blunt the thrust of the revival, and it would surely raise church attendance. Other Old Lights, however, took the opposite approach; they clung to tradition and stability, challenging their new rivals openly. They condemned itinerancy and disputed the interlopers’ right to preach. They mocked the faddish popularity of these overemotional zealots and even banned the New Light itinerants from local districts for the good of the parishioners. In the end, neither tactic stemmed the upheaval. The arguments of the Great Awakening reverberated through the colonies for a full generation, peaking in the North in the 1740s and in the South during the 1750s and 1760s. But its long-term consequences were mixed. Some of the most zealous New Light men and women tried to transcend the competing denominations altogether and create a broad community of Protestant believers. But for all their open-air preaching, the itinerant reformers could never create such unity, and they left behind no new set of doctrines or institutional structures. Nevertheless, they created an important legacy. First, they infused a new spirit of piety and optimism into American Christianity that countered older and darker Calvinist traditions. Second, they established a manner of fiery and popular evangelical preaching that found a permanent place in American life. Finally, and most importantly, they underscored democratic tendencies in the New Testament gospels that many invoked in later years when faced with other apparent infringements of their liberties. In 1739 Pierre and Paul Mallet set out up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. The two French Canadians hoped to test rumors that the Missouri River, the Mississippi’s mightiest tributary, stretched into New Mexico and to claim the new trading route for France. Far to the east that same year, George Whitefield launched his tour of the English colonies, and the Stono slave rebellion erupted in South Carolina. But in the heart of the French empire thoughts were on expansion. Pausing in the Illinois country to gather seven French Canadian recruits, the Mallet brothers pushed up the Missouri. They finally abandoned the river in northeastern Nebraska, purchased horses at an Omaha Indian village, and set off across the plains. Clanging church bells greeted the French when they reached Santa Fe in July. After a nine-month stay, most of them returned east across the southern plains the next year. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 176 ${bmicon} At a stream in central Oklahoma, the explorers exchanged their horses with local Indians for elm bark canoes. (They named the water the Canadian River, a reference to their roots.) Farther east, they stopped at the old Arkansas Post near the mouth of the Arkansas River and then at Fort Rosalie on the lower Mississippi, where Louisiana colonists and their Choctaw allies had put down a revolt by the Natchez Indians a decade earlier. When the Mallet brothers completed their enormous circuit and returned to New Orleans, they brought word from the West of Indian and Spanish eagerness to engage in greater trade. From their perspective, the future of France in America looked bright indeed. But the promise disappeared entirely within their lifetimes. In 1740 French colonists had grounds for cautious optimism. France already claimed a much bigger expanse of North America than Britain or Spain had, and the French wilderness empire ran strategically through the center of the continent. The available resources and potential for agriculture seemed boundless, as a small community of settlers in the Illinois region had already discovered. Moreover, no Europeans had shown greater skill in forging stable and respectful relations with Native American peoples. North of Fort Rosalie and the Arkansas Post, a chain of isolated French forts stretched up the Mississippi River and then east to the lower Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Valley. These posts facilitated trade with Native Americans and secured ties between Canada and Louisiana. With Indian support, more outposts could be built farther east near the Appalachian mountain chain to contain the English settlers and perhaps one day to conquer them. At least three problems marred this scenario. First, the French population in America remained small, and the flow of new immigrants paled by comparison to the large number of English settlers. Canada still had fewer than 50,000 colonial inhabitants in 1740, whereas Britain’s mainland colonies were rapidly approaching a million. Likewise, the Louisiana colony contained only 3000 French people, living among nearly 4000 enslaved Africans and 6000 Native Americans. Second, colonists lacked sufficient support from France to develop thriving communities and expand the valuable Indian trade. The importation of European goods was still meager and unpredictable, to the dismay of colonists and Native Americans alike. Finally, an ominous trickle of British hunters and settlers was beginning to cross the Appalachian chain. Carolina traders already had strong ties with the Chickasaw Indians living near the Mississippi River, and Virginia land speculators were eyeing lands in the Ohio Valley. What seemed a promising situation for the French in 1740 was soon put to the test. Britain and France had long been on a collision course in North America. Colonial subjects of the two European superpowers had already clashed in a series of wars, with Indian allies playing crucial roles. After several decades of peace, the conflicts known in English-speaking America as King William’s War (1689–1697) and Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713) seemed distant memories, but warfare was about to resume. Two more contests, King George’s War (1744–1748) and the French and Indian War (1754–1763) preoccupied colonists and Native Americans alike over the next two decades. In 1763 the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, part of a far wider conflict known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War. At that point, less than a quarter century after the Mallet brothers’ optimistic journey through the heartlands, the expansive French empire in North America suddenly vanished. full view The Seven Years War, 1756-1763 The Seven Years War is also known as the French and Indian War, yet the conflict lasted for nine years and, in addition to the French and Native Americans, included the British, the Prussians, and the Austrians. These hostilities were part of a larger rivalry between the French and British to control North America. These colonial conflicts of the mid-eighteenth century, generally linked to wider warfare in Europe, had a significant impact on everyone living in the British mainland colonies. A few people took advantage of the disturbances to become rich. They provisioned troops, sold scarce wartime goods, sponsored profitable privateering ventures, or conducted forbidden trade with the enemy in the Caribbean and elsewhere. But many more people paid a heavy price because of war: a farm burned, CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 177 ${bmicon} a job lost, a limb amputated, a husband or father shot in battle or cut down by disease. From London’s perspective, the Americans made ill-disciplined and reluctant soldiers. But from the colonists’ viewpoint, they received too little respect and inadequate assistance from Britain. Adding insult to injury, a hard-won victory on North American soil could be canceled out at the peace table in Europe. In 1745, during King William’s War, Massachusetts called for an attack on Louisburg, the recently completed French fortress on Cape Breton Island that controlled access to the St. Lawrence River and nearby fishing grounds. Because they had less at stake, other colonies refused to assist the Massachusetts fleet in this endeavor. (George Whitefield, sensing a Protestant crusade against French Catholicism, preached a fiery sermon to the troops before their departure from Boston.) After a lengthy siege, the New England forces prevailed. But the cost was high—dysentery slaughtered the soldiers—and British diplomats soon rescinded the colonial victory. In 1748, at treaty negotiations ending the war, they handed Louisburg back to France in exchange for Madras in India. Whatever their differences, the American colonists and the government in Britain saw potential in the land west of the Appalachian mountains, and both were eager to challenge French expansion in the region. In 1747, a group of colonial land speculators formed the Ohio Company of Virginia, seeking permission to develop western lands. Two years later the crown granted them rights to 200,000 acres south of the Ohio River if they would construct a fort in the area. Moving west and north, the Virginians hoped to occupy a valuable spot (modern-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers come together to form the Ohio River. But the French had designs on the same strategic location as they extended their holdings toward the upper Ohio from the Great Lakes region. “Everyone cries, a union is necessary, but when they come to the manner and form of the union, their weak noodles are perfectly distracted.” In 1753 the Virginia governor sent a promising young major in the colonial militia named George Washington—at age 21 already regarded as a distinguished soldier—to warn the French to leave the area. The next spring Virginia workers began erecting a fort at the forks of the Ohio, but a larger French force drove them from the site and constructed Fort Duquesne instead. When Major Washington returned to the vicinity with troops in April, he probed for enemy forces. In a skirmish on May 28, 1754, 5 miles east of modern Uniontown, Pennsylvania, his men killed ten French soldiers, the first casualties in what eventually became history’s first truly global war. Fearing a counterattack, he fortified his camp, calling it Fort Necessity. With 450 men and meager supplies, he dug in to prepare. Throughout the British colonies in the early summer of 1754, fears spread about the dangers of French attack and the loyalties of Native American allies. Officials in London requested that all the colonies involved in relations with the Iroquois send delegates to a special congress in Albany, New York, to improve that Indian alliance. Virginia and New Jersey abstained, but seven other colonies sent 23 representatives, who hoped to strengthen friendship with the Iroquois nations and also discuss a design for a union of the colonies. With these goals in mind, the delegates to the Albany Congress explored and adopted a proposal by Benjamin Franklin. It called for a colonial confederation empowered to build forts and repel a French invasion. The colonies would be unified by an elected Grand Council and a president general appointed by the crown. The delegates hoped the design would be debated by colonial assemblies and implemented by an act of Parliament. But Franklin’s far-sighted Albany Plan never received the attention it deserved, and no colonial legislature ever ratified the idea. “Everyone cries, a union is necessary,” Franklin wrote, “but when they come to the manner and form of the union, their weak noodles are perfectly distracted.” The main distraction came from Pennsylvania, with word that on July 3 the French had attacked Major Washington at Fort Necessity. After a brief fight, he had no alternative but to surrender to a larger force and then withdraw. But the British colonists were not willing to give up their claims to the Ohio Valley without a fight. Taking the lead, the Virginia government asked PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 178 ${bmicon} for help from Britain in conducting a war against the French and their Native American allies. The crown responded by dispatching General Edward Braddock and two regiments of Irish troops. Early in 1755, his force arrived in Virginia, where preparations were already under way for a campaign to conquer Fort Duquesne. Washington accepted an unpaid position as an aide to Braddock, and in June the combined British and colonial army of 2500 began a laborious march west to face the French. The early stages of the war in America could hardly have been more disastrous for Britain or more encouraging for France. According to his own secretary, the aging Braddock was poorly qualified for command “in almost every respect.” A French and Indian force ambushed his column in the forest near Fort Duquesne, cutting it to pieces in the most thorough defeat of the century for a British army. When Braddock died of his wounds during the hasty retreat, Washington oversaw the burial and then wrote in his diary, “We have been most scandalously beaten by a trifling body of men.” Elsewhere, the British fared little better. Indian raids battered the frontiers, spreading panic in the northern colonies. With the local militia away at war, fears of possible slave uprisings swept through the south. The French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, struck into New York’s Mohawk Valley from Lake Ontario in 1756 and then pushed south down Lake Champlain and Lake George in 1757. After a seven-day siege, he took 2000 prisoners at Fort William Henry. In an episode made famous in The Last of the Mohicans, his Huron Indian allies killed more than 150 men and women after their release. The change in British fortunes came with the new ministry of William Pitt, a vain but talented member of the House of Commons. Pitt was an expansionist committed to the growth of the British empire at the expense of France. He brought a daring new strategy to the war effort, and he had the determination and bureaucratic skill to carry it out. In recent contests with France, the military might of the French army in Europe had stymied the British. Now, British forces would instead concentrate on France’s vulnerable and sparsely populated overseas colonies. Under Pitt, the British broadened the war into a global conflict, the first in history, taking advantage of their superior naval power to fight on the coasts of Asia and Africa and in North America as well. By 1758, Britain had undertaken a huge military buildup in America (nearly 50,000 troops) and funded it with vast amounts of money. To win colonial support for his plan, Pitt promised to reimburse the colonies generously for their expenses. In the South, guns, ammunition, and trade goods flowed freely to Britain’s Native American allies through Charleston and Savannah, while desperate French officials in Louisiana waited anxiously for supplies that would help them retain the wavering support of their Choctaw and Creek allies. In the North, France lost Louisburg again in July 1758. Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario fell in August. In November, faced with a powerful force, the French abandoned their valuable position at the Fork of the Ohio, blowing up Fort Duquesne to keep it out of enemy hands. Even without fortifications, the British were glad to possess the strategic site at last. They erected a new post, aptly named Fort Pitt, and laid out the village of Pittsburgh beside it. In Canada, autumn brought a poor harvest, followed by the worst winter anyone could remember. The Marquis de Montcalm huddled in the provincial capital at Quebec with his ill-equipped army. Ice in the St. Lawrence combined with a British blockade to cut off overseas support from France during the long, cold winter. In the spring of 1759, the British pressed their advantage, moving against Canada from the West and the South. As Britain’s superintendent of Indian affairs in the region, Sir William Johnson had lived among the Iroquois nations for 20 years. His Mohawk Indian wife, Molly Brant, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 179 ${bmicon} full view MAP 5.4 THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE, 1754–1760 was the sister of Chief Joseph Brant. As British successes mounted, the Mohawks and other Iroquois became increasingly eager to support the winning side in the war. Sensing this, Johnson recruited 1000 formerly neutral Iroquois to join 2000 British regulars on the shores of Lake Ontario. With Johnson in command, they laid siege to Fort Niagara. The fort fell in July, a British victory that effectively isolated enemy posts farther west and obliged the French to abandon them. In August, a British force under Jeffery Amherst captured Ticonderoga and Crown Point on Lake Champlain. The stage was set for an assault on Quebec itself. In London, William Pitt knew that capturing Quebec would conquer Canada. Months earlier, he had ordered James Wolfe “to make an attack upon Quebeck, by the River St. Lawrence.” Wolfe’s flotilla, with 8500 troops, anchored near the walled city in late June. But the French held their citadel despite weeks of heavy shelling. Desperate and sick, Wolfe resorted to a ruthless PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 180 ${bmicon} campaign against the countryside that left 1400 farms in ruins. Even this strategy failed to draw Montcalm’s forces out to fight. Cold weather was approaching, and the British realized that they would soon need to reboard their ships and retreat to the Atlantic to avoid being trapped by winter ice on the river. As a last resort, Wolfe adopted a risky plan to climb a steep bluff and attack the vulnerable west side of the city. On the night of September 12, 1759, he dispatched troops to float quietly past French sentries and scale the formidable cliffs. At daybreak, 12 British battalions emerged on a level expanse known as the Plains of Abraham. The future of the continent and its inhabitants hinged on a pitched battle between opposing European armies. Montcalm and Wolfe staked everything in the clash, and both lost their lives in the encounter. By nightfall, the British had won a decisive victory, and four days later the surviving French garrison surrendered the city of Quebec. Montreal fell to Britain the following year, and fighting subsided in America. But Pitt continued to pour public money into the global war, and one military triumph followed another. The British conquered French posts in India, took French Senegal on the West African coast, and seized the valuable sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the French West Indies. When Spain came to France’s aid in 1762, British forces captured the Philippines and the Cuban city of Havana. As Londoner Horace Walpole put it, “Our bells are worn thread-bare with ringing of victories.” But with 160,000 men under arms, British taxpayers resented the huge costs of the war. Many also worried that the effort to humiliate France and Spain and undo their empires could spark retaliation in the years ahead. Rising criticism pushed Pitt from office, and peace negotiations began. In a matter of months, the European powers redrew the imperial map of North America. Their complex swaps constituted the largest single rearrangement of real estate in the history of the continent. First, France ceded to Spain the port of New Orleans and all of the Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi River. Then, in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, more transactions followed. Spain turned over East Florida to Britain, receiving back Havana and the Philippines in return. France gave Britain its holdings between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River as well as the parts of Canada not already claimed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. In exchange CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 181 ${bmicon} for this vast acquisition, the British returned the sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe to the French. They also allowed France to retain fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland and two small islands in the vicinity. Those negotiating the peace agreed that French Canadians could choose between leaving Canada or becoming British subjects. But the Paris treaty made no mention of the thousands of Native Americans whose bountiful homelands were being reassigned. The final results were striking. Britain emerged as the world’s leading colonial power, and, after two centuries, the empire of France in North America abruptly disappeared. For half a century, the complex currents of colonial life had recalled the ancient tale of Babel, as told in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. A confusion of voices, interests, and cultures competed and interacted over a wide expanse in North America. In the process, a string of related economic regions emerged along the eastern seaboard. The colonies that composed these regions varied in ethnic make-up, but they all owed political allegiance to Britain, and they were all expanding rapidly in population. This demographic growth was crucial. Beneath the commercial striving and religious debate, a deeper and less visible change in numbers was underway that would alter the power and place of the Atlantic colonies. Unprecedented population growth along the Atlantic coast stands out dramatically in hindsight. In 1763 Britain’s mainland colonies contained more than 1.6 million people. The figure had quickly come to dwarf all the other population totals on the continent. The Spanish in New Mexico and Texas and the Comanche and Sioux on the Great Plains all controlled wide stretches of territory. But their numbers remained only a minute fraction of the people in the East Coast colonies who had recently managed, despite all their regional differences, to support the British armed forces in ousting the French from North America. Amazingly, in the 13 years between 1750 and 1763 more than 400,000 people were added to the British mainland colonies. This number of new people—reflecting natural increase and migration combined—exceeded the entire population that had been living in those same British colonies five decades earlier, in 1713. The growth in numbers during the decades to come was equally rapid, and the changes for the continent were even more dramatic and long-lasting. San Saba Mission The ruins of the mission, abandoned by the Spanish after Comanche attacks in the 1750s, lie 2 miles east of Menard, Texas, off US-190, near the San Saba River. Two miles west of Menard, on Highway 29, the fully restored San Saba Presidio contains a small museum in the rebuilt chapel. Menard is 150 miles northwest of San Antonio. The Ephrata Cloister One of America’s earliest communal societies was the Ephrata Cloister, founded by Conrad Beissel in 1732. It is located on West Main Street in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, 2 miles west of Highway 222 between Lancaster and Reading. Guided tours include the Meetinghouse, Bake House, and Print Shop. Winchester, Virginia Founded in 1744 as a stop on the Great Wagon Road, Winchester is located 70 miles west of Washington, D.C., at Interstate 81, “where the Shenandoah Valley begins and history never ends.” Young George Washington worked as a land surveyor in this frontier town, and his office is now a museum. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 182 ${bmicon} Old Salem www.oldsalem.org This reconstruction of a village founded in 1766 is in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The site includes the Winkler Bakery, a cemetery, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA). Take a virtual tour of the site at www.oldsalem.org. Nearby is Bethabara, a Moravian community founded in 1753, also open to the public; see www.bethabara.org. Sermons of the Reverend George Whitefield www.crta.org/documents/Whitefield.html The texts of 59 sermons of the Reverend George Whitefield are available online at this Web site. The Bethesda Orphanage, founded by Whitefield in 1740, is located on 650 acres beside the Moon River outside Savannah, Georgia. It is now the Bethesda Home for Boys, America’s oldest existing children’s home. The Rice Museum Located in the Old Market Building in Georgetown, South Carolina, the museum contains dioramas and exhibits describing rice cultivation. The Caw Caw Interpretive Center, west of Charleston on the Savannah Highway (Route 17S) in Ravenel, South Carolina, provides a fascinating view of eighteenth-century rice fields. Fort William Henry This fort, at the south end of Lake George, was the location for events in 1757 depicted in The Last of the Mohicans. Guided tours relating to the British–French struggle during the Seven Years’ War are available at Fort William Henry and at larger Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain. Both sites are east of Interstate 87, north of Albany, New York. Visit Fort Ticonderoga online at www.fort-ticonderoga.org/. Seven Years’ War Association Journal www.sywajournal.com/ The online journal of the Seven Years’ War Association has links to numerous sites and documents connected to the American portion of the conflict, often known as the French and Indian War. For a Web Index of the French and Indian War, go to www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/1500/fiw.html. John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (1991). Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution (abridged edition, 1986). Carla Gardina Pestana, Liberty of Conscience and the Growth of Religious Diversity in Early America, 1636–1786 (1987). Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (1987). Gary Clayton Anderson, Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota–White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650–1862 (1984). Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795 (1975). Frank Raymond Secoy, Changing Military Patterns of the Great Plains Indians (1953). Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (2002). James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (1972). Harry Roy Merrens, Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Historical Geography (1964). A. G. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America (1993). Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (1982). Marianne S. Wokeck, Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America (1999). Kathryn E. Holland Braund, Deerskins and Duffels: Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685–1815 (1993). Elaine Forman Crane, Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630–1800 (1998). Margaret Ellen Newell, From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England (1998). Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–1763 (1948). Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630–1850 (1994). Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (1970). CHAPTER 5 ###8226; AN AMERICAN BABEL, 1713###8211;1763 183 ${bmicon} Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (1986). Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (1962). Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (1977). Timothy D. Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (1994). Jacob R. Marcus, The Colonial American Jew (1970). Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (1987). Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (2000). Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (1984). Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years’ War in America (1988). Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (1990). Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 (1992). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter5 To Chapter 5 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 184 ${bmicon}         New Challenges to Spain’s Expanded Empire       New Challenges to Britain’s Expanded Empire       “The Unconquerable Rage of the People”       A Conspiracy of Corrupt Ministers?       Launching a Revolution       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 185 ${bmicon} BY THE 1760S, BOSTON HAD GROWN INTO A BUSY SEAPORT OF 16,000 PEOPLE. ALTHOUGH tiny by modern urban standards, the city was much larger and less intimate than it had been a century earlier. The gap between the rich and the poor had expanded steadily, until a mere 5 percent of the city’s taxpayers controlled as much wealth as the other 95 percent combined. The Seven Years’ War had only worsened the growing inequality. During the war, wealthy Boston families such as the Apthorps and Hancocks multiplied their fortunes, building stately homes and importing elegant fashions. In 1764 young John Hancock, heir to his uncle’s vast shipping business, inherited an immense fortune of £80,000. However, most Bostonians lived in a very different world, made worse by a terrible fire that swept the port in 1760 and the depression that gripped the region after the war ended in 1763. Half the townspeople had lifetime property and savings worth less than £40, and half of those possessed £20 or less. George Hewes, five years younger than Hancock, was born into this other Boston in 1742. Hewes lost his father, a struggling butcher who also sold soap and candles, at age seven. But unlike Hancock, he had no rich uncle. Hewes’s mother died in 1755, and when her own father died the next year after a life toiling as a shoemaker, he left behind only £15. George inherited less than £3 from his grandfather, and perhaps his tools and his familiarity with leatherworking as well. The boy became an apprentice shoemaker at age 14. Despite the town’s growth, rich and poor still encountered one another on occasion. If anything those contacts increased during the tumultuous decade that gave rise to the American Revolution. Politics—both imperial and local—heated up in the 1760s, opening up rifts within the ruling elite. Throughout the colonies, British officials and other people who supported the crown’s policies became known as Loyalists, or Tories. The wealthy among them saw social and economic dominance as their birthright and scorned their rivals for courting favor with the poor. In contrast, leaders of the emerging opposition (known as Whigs or Patriots) consisted of less conservative—often young and ambitious—members of the educated and professional classes. These people downplayed their rank and privilege to win popular support from those beneath them on the social scale. In Boston, Hancock was one such person. In 1763, after Hewes repaired an expensive shoe for John Hancock, the merchant invited the young cobbler to a New Year’s open house at his impressive mansion. In his old age, Hewes still recalled the occasion vividly. Intimidated by the wealth around him, he remembered being scared “almost to death” when the magnate toasted him and gave him a silver coin. According to Hewes, the two men met again on very different terms after a decade had passed. In December 1773, the shoemaker painted stripes on his face and then joined other activists, also disguised as Native American warriors, in a risky nighttime action. To protest imperial policies, these patriots in war paint emptied chests of British tea into Boston Harbor. Recalling that night as an elderly man, Hewes was one of the first to refer to the event as a “tea party.” And he swore that in the darkness he had rubbed elbows with Hancock himself and had joined him in smashing a crate of tea. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 186 ${bmicon} Whether the man beside Hewes—also disguised as an Indian yet wearing a ruffled shirt—was actually Hancock remains doubtful. But symbolically, the two men were now working shoulder to shoulder. They came together across class lines in a coalition that would soon challenge Europe’s strongest empire, Britian, and spark the Atlantic world’s first successful anticolonial revolution. Few could have predicted the growth of solidarity between a portion of the colonial elite and a wide spectrum of working people; this implausible alliance developed gradually and imperfectly. During the decade before 1776, there were numerous occasions when class and regional interests still sharply divided the British colonists. Urban artisans, rural farmers, enslaved African Americans, and numerous wives and widows, for example, did not necessarily share common views and concerns. Indeed, they were frequently at odds. Nevertheless, within half a generation enough of these diverse people—many as distant from one another socially as Hancock and Hewes—came together to stage a successful struggle to separate politically from Britain. What shared experiences and beliefs caused this unstable partnership to emerge against the odds? What events shaped it and prompted it to gather momentum by July 1776, when John Hancock, as president of the Second Continental Congress, applied the first and largest signature to the American colonies’ Declaration of Independence? In retrospect, we know that between 1763 and 1775 a significant change in identity took place. Little by little, for the first time, colonists from separate regions and different countries of origin began to speak of themselves as Americans. Gradually, they adopted a term that had previously applied only to Indians. (Indeed, it may be a sign of the increasing identification with North America that they occasionally adopted symbolic Indian garb, as when Hewes and Hancock joined others in dumping tea in Boston Harbor.) At times, of course, this self-conscious new identification with North America went too far, as in the creation of a Continental Congress. In fact, it was not a body of the entire North American continent at all. The tumult and debate that led up to the revolt against Britain touched communities all up and down the Atlantic seaboard, linking them through shared debates and energetic Committees of Correspondence. So it is not surprising that the delegates to Philadelphia boldly called themselves a Continental Congress. Still, the familiar terminology is clearly misleading in any wider, literal sense. Eventually, a new American nation would come to control much of the continent. But that unlikely prospect lay far in the future, and few obvious signs pointed in that direction. In 1763 thousands of Native Americans in the Midwest, under the leadership of Pontiac, were fighting to assert their own independence from European encroachment. While Indians on the Great Plains, including the Comanche and the Sioux, continued to contend for new territories, other peoples still farther west experienced the initial shocks of colonial contact. Suddenly, inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands and the Alaskan coast were encountering European intruders for the first time. The rival European empires, meanwhile, competed globally on the high seas, seeking mastery in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans. For them, North America, the resources of its rich interior still largely unexplored and unexploited, remained only one piece in a larger puzzle, one prize in a wider imperial game. CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 187 ${bmicon} Following the departure of the French, the push of rival powers to establish permanent control over the North American continent continued. But the limitations that constrained imperial control were more evident than ever. Geographic ignorance, limited resources, weak bureaucracies, huge distances, strong-willed colonists, and resilient native inhabitants all posed limits for maintaining and expanding far-flung empires. Russia’s foothold in Alaska and Spain’s presence in California were new and tenuous at best. Spanish dominance at older outposts in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas remained partial, and Spain’s grip on its newly acquired Louisiana territory was even more nominal. East of the Mississippi River, long-term British control finally seemed to be assured. But appearances can be deceiving. Even Britain, secure after its decisive victory over France, would soon be fighting a losing battle to retain much of the American continent that it confidently claimed to control. With Spain’s acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1763, the Spanish held nominal title to the entire West, from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Populated by more than 1 million Native Americans, this expanded empire reached north into the uncharted realms where Russian Siberia faced Alaska. But whether Spain could settle and exploit, or even explore and defend, this vast domain remained an open question. After all, envious rivals were already probing North America’s Pacific coast. Exploration voyages by the French and the British challenged Spain’s dominance in the Pacific, and Russian colonization in Alaska spurred the Spanish to establish posts along the coast of California. These rivalries, in turn, brought new pressures to bear on the West’s diverse Indian peoples, even before the United States emerged as a separate entity with expansionist ambitions of its own. Defeat in the Seven Years’ War removed the French from North America in 1763. Lamenting the loss and burdened with heavy war debts, France sought fresh prospects in the unexplored PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 188 ${bmicon} South Pacific. As one Frenchman observed, the discovery of a new continent might furnish “opportunities for profit to equal all that has been produced in America.” The task of finding such a bonanza fell to Louis Antoine de Bougainville, a gifted French officer who had served with General Montcalm in Canada during the war. In 1766 Bougainville set out to search for “Terra Australis Incognita,” the Pacific’s fabled unknown southern land. His voyage marked the first French circumnavigation of the world. Nevertheless, it revealed no continent—only small, lush islands such as Tahiti and Samoa. French hopes for immediate wealth from a new Pacific landmass went unfulfilled. Not to be outdone, British captains pressed their own Pacific explorations. The most skilled and successful was James Cook, who ranged from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica during three momentous voyages beginning in 1768. In January 1778, during Cook’s final voyage, his two vessels happened upon the Hawaiian Islands, eight volcanic isles stretching over 300 miles. More than 13 centuries earlier (A.D. 300–500), seafaring Polynesians had migrated here in remarkable ocean-sailing canoes. They had arrived from the Marquesas Islands far to the south, and their descendants, perhaps as many as 300,000 people, lived in agricultural and fishing communities dominated by powerful chiefs. The Hawaiians mistook Captain Cook for Lono, a deity they had expected to reappear, and treated him with hospitality and respect. “No people could trade with more honisty,” the navigator scrawled in his journal when he departed. During the next 12 months, Cook cruised up the west coast of North America, starting in what is now Oregon. Two centuries had passed since Francis Drake’s earlier visit to the California coast. But English mariners still hoped to find a sea passage through North America that might drastically shorten voyages from the Atlantic to Asia. Cook brought an end to the speculation. He encountered a solid coastline that stretched all the way to Alaska. Along the way, he traded with Northwest Coast Indians for sea otter pelts and other furs. In Alaska, he gave his own name to Cook Inlet, near present-day Anchorage. Then he sailed north into arctic waters, pausing at Asia’s easternmost tip. Cook’s vessels returned south in 1779, and they were again greeted with fanfare on the big island of Hawaii. But admiration turned to resentment as the English outstayed their welcome at Kealakekua Bay. When an incident of petty pilfering erupted into violence, an angry crowd of Hawaiians killed Cook and four of his mariners. After the captain’s death, his two sloops returned to the North Pacific and then stopped at the Chinese port of Macao. There, the crew sold their furs at an enormous profit. They then sailed back to England in 1780 with word of the money to be made selling North American sea otter pelts in China. The voyagers also confirmed a disturbing rumor: Russia already had a foothold in this lucrative Pacific traffic. In 1728 Vitus Bering, a Danish captain hired to serve in the Russian naval service, completed a three-year trek east across Siberia. Reaching the Kamchatka peninsula on the Pacific Ocean, he built a boat and sailed north between Asia and America through the strait that bears his name today. The journey ended European speculation that Asia was linked to North America. On a second expedition in 1741, Bering visited the Alaskan mainland and claimed it for Russia. He lost his life on the return voyage after a winter shipwreck on a frozen island. Bering’s crew managed to return to Kamchatka with valuable pelts. Their feat proved that round trips between Russia and America were both possible and profitable. Over the next generation, merchants in Asian Rus- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 189 ${bmicon} full view MAP 6.1 RUSSIAN ALASKA sia sent several expeditions to Alaska each year, bringing back furs that they traded with the powerful Chinese empire. One typical journey east along Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain in 1752 brought back the pelts of 1772 sea otters, 750 blue foxes, and 840 fur seals. Before reaching Alaska, these rough Russian trappers (known as promyshlenniki) had gathered furs in Siberia for generations using a cruel and effective system. They captured native women and children as hostages, then ransomed them back to their men in exchange for a fixed number of furs. In Alaskan waters, the trappers lacked the numbers, the boats, and the skill to collect large supplies of furs on their own. So they put their brutal hostage system into practice there as well. “They beach their vessels and try to take hostages, children and women from the island or nearby islands. If they cannot do this peacefully, they will use force,” one Russian captain explained. “No matter where the Natives hunt, on shore or at sea, they must give everything” to the trappers. Native Alaskans resisted these intruders where possible, but many eventually submitted in a desperate effort to survive. In the quarter century before 1780, 30 different companies sponsored expeditions to Alaskan waters. Harsh conditions and stiff competition between ships made the traffic risky for the Russians and far worse for the Aleutian Islanders. The newcomers, bringing diseases, firearms, and their brutal hostage-taking system, reduced the population of the islands. The remaining Aleuts were forced to overhunt their valuable wildlife, making their own survival even more precarious. As the human and animal population of the Aleutian Islands declined, the Russians pushed farther east in search of new hunters and hunting grounds. As the voyages from Kamchatka grew longer and more expensive, a Russian organizer named Grigorii Shelikov gave serious thought to establishing an Alaskan base to facilitate operations. Shelikov and a partner formed a new company in 1781, and in 1784, founded a permanent colonial settlement on Kodiak Island east of the Aleutians, despite fierce opposition from the island’s native residents. By 1799 the firm would absorb smaller competitors to become the Russian-American Company, with a monopoly from the czar. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 190 ${bmicon} In 1790, with the Kodiak base secure, Russians forced more than 7000 island inhabitants to embark on six enormous fur hunts in their versatile two-seat kayaks. That same year, Shelikov hired Alexander Baranov to oversee the Kodiak post and expand operations down the Alaskan coast. In 1799 Baranov established an additional outpost at Sitka in southeast Alaska. When a raid by Tlingit Indians destroyed the fort in 1802, he rebuilt the post. Sitka, called New Archangel at the time, became the capital of Russian America in 1808. From here, Baranov eventually extended the company’s reach south toward Spanish California, seeking new hunting grounds and a climate warm enough to grow food crops. The Seven Years’ War had left Spain’s king, Carlos III, with vast new land claims in western North America and only limited resources to explore or defend them. The Spanish ceded Florida to the British in 1763, evacuating St. Augustine and Pensacola. But Spain acquired from France the port of New Orleans and all of upper and lower Louisiana west of the Mississippi. The bureaucrats charged with administering Spanish America struggled to oversee the vast and unfamiliar portions of the extended realm. But they faced numerous obstacles in controlling the huge domain. To their dismay, many of the Native Americans were not intimidated by force. Apaches and Comanches resisted several decades of military suppression and slave raids across the Southwest. In addition, clerics offered their own resistance to government designs. Carlos III expelled the powerful Jesuit order from the Spanish realm in 1767 for opposing administrative reform in the colonies. Unruly colonists posed a threat of their own. French inhabitants of New Orleans led a brief rebellion against Spanish rule in 1768. Finally, officials feared challenges in the Pacific from the British and the Russians. It was not until 1812 that Baranov finally established a Russian outpost at Fort Ross on the California coast, just north of San Francisco Bay. But as early as 1759, a Spanish Franciscan had published Muscovites in California, warning of Russian settlements. With the threat of Russians in mind, Spanish leaders in America concentrated on establishing a token presence along the Pacific coast. Responsibility for this difficult task fell to Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 191 ${bmicon} full view MAP 6.2 SPANISH EXPLORATION AFTER 1760 AND THE START OF THE CALIFORNIA MISSIONS José de Gálvez, a dedicated administrator who literally drove himself mad with concern for securing this bountiful region. In 1769 Gálvez sent a small vanguard north from lower (Baja) California, led by Gaspar de Portolá and Franciscan friar Junípero Serra. They established an initial outpost at San Diego Bay. Portolá then pressed farther up the coast, building a presidio (or military garrison) at Monterey in 1770 to “defend us from attacks by the Russians, who,” he believed, “were about to invade us.” After the removal of all Jesuits from Spanish America in 1767, numerous Franciscan missionaries, members of a competing Catholic order, expanded their work and took on new responsibilities. Following the lead of Father Serra, other Franciscans soon planted several missions between San Diego and Monterey. These included the San Gabriel mission in 1771, where colonists established the town of Los Angeles ten years later. In 1775 a Spanish captain sailed through the Golden Gate into spacious San Francisco Bay, and the next year a land expedition laid out the presidio and mission of San Francisco. A town sprang up at nearby San José the following year. Isolated Franciscan fathers labored to convert the coast’s diverse Indian inhabitants. Meanwhile, Spanish vessels pushed far up the Pacific shoreline. They established contact with the Northwest Coast Indians in 1774, and Captain Ignacio de Arteaga reached the Gulf of Alaska in 1779, 14 months after Captain Cook had been there. But Spanish ships traveling north from Mexico had difficulty supplying the few dozen settlers in California. Authorities therefore looked to open an overland supply route to the coast from Santa Fe or Sonora. In 1774, Juan Bautista de Anza set out in search of a land route to California from the Sonoran presidio he commanded at Tubac, south of Tucson. Accompanied PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 192 ${bmicon} by a Franciscan named Father Garcés, he forded the Colorado River with the help of Yuma Indians. He then crossed desert and mountains to reach the coast at San Gabriel. The next year, Anza led 240 reinforcements—mostly Spanish women and children—along a similar route, pausing at San Gabriel and heading north to San Francisco Bay. Further explorations in 1776 proved less successful. Trying to find a usable route between California and New Mexico, Father Garcés meandered through the southwestern deserts. He traveled north along the Colorado River from Yuma country and then probed west across the Mohave Desert and east near the Grand Canyon without success. Two other Franciscans, Fathers Domínguez and Escalante, left Santa Fe on horseback in July 1776. They headed northwest across Colorado and Utah in search of a more northern route to avoid hostile Indians and lead to Monterey on the Pacific coast. But no such trail existed, and eventually they turned back. Instead of a west-flowing river, their five-month, 1800-mile trek revealed the huge expanse of the Great Basin. A passable route linking Santa Fe to the West Coast would have to wait for another half century. Moreover, the Sonoran path to California that Anza had established proved short-lived. The same Yuma Indians who had helped his party cross the Colorado River in 1774 quickly grew to resent the Spanish trespassers. The last straw came in the summer of 1781, when a party of Spanish soldiers and settlers arrived at the river, heading for California with nearly a thousand head of livestock. When a sergeant demanded food from the Yumas, he reported that “the Indians screamed out to me that the cows and horses destroyed their mesquite [trees] and corn fields.” The irate inhabitants asked him why the animals “were not fenced in,” and within weeks they retaliated. Father Garcés and more than 100 Spanish men, women, and children died in the bloody Yuma Revolt, and hopes for a rapid expansion of the Spanish colony in California died with them. Despite all these problems, the tiny California settlements endured. With difficulty, Spain managed to retain some control over its recently expanded North American empire. The same could not be said for the British in their own newly enlarged empire farther east. They had taken Canada from the French, and their military might dominated the Atlantic world. But their fortunes in North America were about to change. In September 1760, French forces at Montreal submitted to British commander Jeffery Amherst in the final surrender of the Seven Years’ War. For Native Americans living east of the Mississippi, the French defeat had an immediate impact. General Amherst, who despised Indians as “treacherous” and “contemptible,” intended to alter Native American relations in the interior to reflect the new balance of power. Immediately, Amherst dispatched James Grant to South Carolina with instructions “to chastise the Cherokees,” who had taken up arms against the growing number of English traders and settlers in western Carolina. With 2800 soldiers—and more than 80 blacks to tend 700 packhorses and 400 beef cattle—Grant invaded Cherokee country in 1761. His men burned 15 villages and destroyed 1500 acres of beans and corn. The attackers had orders “to put every Soul to Death” without sparing women or children. The Indians who escaped Grant’s force retreated in defeat. With the Cherokees chastened in the South, Amherst turned his attention to the Indians living north of the Ohio River. Here his harsh policies brought a sudden retaliation from the Native Americans that took many lives and cost Amherst his command. And if Indians in the Midwest posed fresh challenges to Britain’s expanded American empire, so did the colonists themselves. As soon as the British unseated their French competitors in the Ohio River Valley, they prohibited traffic with Indians in such goods as knives, tomahawks, muskets, lead, and powder. CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 193 ${bmicon} They also cut back on the use of ceremonial gifts. When the French were still powerful, the British had been generous, but now, one Native American complained, “you Look on us as Nobody.” As French traders withdrew, the British took over their strategic posts at Detroit and at Michilimackinac. English settlers built new forts in the Ohio Valley and erected massive Fort Pitt over the ruins of Fort Duquesne. Indians at Niagara Falls commented in dismay at “so many Men and so much artillery passing by.” In 1761 wary Senecas proposed a preemptive strike against the British intruders. They failed to recruit their former enemies—the Ottawas, Potawatomies, and Hurons—so the plan died. But the next year brought poor harvests, a harsh winter, and a deadly epidemic. Hard conditions, plus the lack of French trade, weakened these “three fires” of the Great Lakes region and made them more willing to take up arms. Then, early in 1763, rumors spread through the Indian communities regarding peace negotiations in Europe. Reportedly, France would cede Louisiana to Spain and give up Canada and the entire Midwest to Great Britain. Among Native Americans, this shocking news undercut moderate leaders who were willing to accommodate the English and strengthened the hand of war factions. Word that a remote treaty in Paris might disrupt the entire region also drew attention to Neolin, a Delaware Indian prophet who urged a return to ancient ways and a separation from the corrupting Europeans. Neolin’s vision of gaining independence from white control by driving out the British held wide appeal for Native Americans in the Midwest. Among those influenced by it was Pontiac, a militant Ottawa warrior. In April, Pontiac addressed a great council of more than 400 Ottawas, Potawatomies, and Hurons, meeting secretly within 10 miles of Fort Detroit. Invoking the Delaware Prophet’s vision, he told the gathering that the Master of Life resented the British and wanted them removed: “Send them back to the lands which I have created for them and let them stay there.” By May, he had mobilized a coalition and laid siege to Detroit. Pontiac’s uprising ignited other attacks, as Indians from 18 nations joined in a widespread war of liberation. By mid-June 1763, both Detroit and Fort Pitt were under siege. Moreover, the British had lost every other Ohio Valley and Great Lakes outpost. As Indian raiding parties ravaged white communities in western Virginia and Pennsylvania, embittered settlers responded with indiscriminate racial killing. In December, white men from Paxton Creek descended on families of peaceful Conestoga Indians near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, executing more than 30 Christian converts in cold blood. When eastern Pennsylvanians protested this outrage, the “Paxton Boys” marched on Philadelphia to demand increased protection on the PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 194 ${bmicon} frontier. General Amherst ordered his officers to take no Indian prisoners, spread smallpox if possible, and treat the Native Americans as “the vilest race of beings that ever infested the earth.” They deserved extermination, he ranted, “for the good of mankind.” The violence ended in a stalemate. Without French support, Native American munitions ran short, and Detroit and Fort Pitt endured. Indian militancy waned, and fighters deserted the coalition. Then in 1765, Pontiac was assassinated by a Peoria Indian in Illinois. Although the Native Americans had not won, they also had not lost, for the costly uprising prompted a shift in British policy. To avoid further expensive warfare, officials moved to restore the Indian trade, keep squatters and debt evaders out of Indian country, and prevent colonial speculation in western lands. In October 1763, Major General Thomas Gage replaced Amherst in command of British forces. In England, the crown went further. Late in 1763, it issued a proclamation forbidding colonial settlers from moving west across the Appalachian Divide. They were not to go past the headwaters of the familiar rivers that ran east into the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond that line, where the streams flowed west into the Mississippi River or south into the Gulf of Mexico, all the land east of Spanish Louisiana would be reserved for Native Americans and a few authorized British soldiers, Indian agents, and traders. In practice, the Proclamation Line of 1763, drawn in London, had only limited success. But it managed to frustrate aspiring members of Virginia’s gentry, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. These prominent men were investors in land companies that speculated in large western tracts, hoping to obtain property cheaply from Native Americans and sell small parcels to eager settlers at a steady profit. One place they did this was Kentucky, a region that had been disputed among Indians for generations. Conflicting treaties in 1768 only sharpened the disagreement. At the Treaty of Hard Labor in South Carolina, the Cherokees retained control of the Kentucky region for hunting. Yet at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in New York, the Iroquois ceded the same area to the British in exchange for a large payment. They did so even though the Kentucky lands were not theirs to sell. Virginia investors, hoping that this latter deal would open the region for purchase, pressed their case. But the British government, fearful of sparking unified Indian opposition and additional warfare, denied the Virginians’ wishes and aroused their resentment. In 1763, the same year as the Proclamation Line, King George III also appointed Robert Grenville to head a new government in London. Grenville’s ministry immediately faced a series of intertwined problems. Britain’s victory over the French in the Seven Years’ War had proved costly, nearly doubling the national debt to a staggering £146 million. As England’s postwar depression deepened, returning soldiers swelled the ranks of the unemployed. Aggressive imperialists objected to what they saw as a timid peace settlement with France. In addition, rural mobs protested a new tax on domestic cider, imposed to help whittle away at the war debt. No one promoted opposition to the government more than John Wilkes, a flamboyant member of Parliament (MP) who published an outspoken periodical. In issue number 45 of the North Briton, Wilkes attacked the king’s peace settlement and the king himself. Grenville reacted quickly, issuing a general warrant to search the homes of all those connected to the paper. He also arrested the publisher, despite his status as an MP. Angered by the government’s sweeping suppression of dissent, protesters made “Wilkes and Liberty!” and “45” into popular rallying cries. Pressured at home, Grenville set out to impose order on Britain’s growing American colonies through a series of reforms. The first step was to maintain a considerable military presences. Even with the Proclamation Line in place, Grenville’s ministry kept nearly 7000 troops in North America. Leaving them there could help enforce peace with the Indians, protect the newly acquired territories of Canada and Florida, and keep young British men employed overseas rather than jobless at home. Grenville also saw another positive aspect to this move that helped to justify it. Strapped for funds, he considered paying for the trans-Atlantic forces with money drawn from the very colonies these troops were defending? CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 195 ${bmicon} Raising money in this way would also remind the British colonies of their subordination to the sovereign power of Parliament. Colonists had grown wealthy by sidestepping the elaborate Navigation Acts and trading illegally with foreign powers, even during wartime. Sympathetic colonial juries had looked the other way. Worse, American legislatures had used their power of the purse to withhold money from any British governor who ignored local interests. Finally, lax customs officers assigned to colonial ports often collected their salaries while remaining in England, without even occupying their posts. “What has America done,” protested critics, “to be stripped of so invaluable a privilege as the trial by jury?” As a preliminary step, Grenville ordered absentee customs officials to their colonial stations and dispatched 44 navy ships to assist them. Next, he moved his first reform through Parliament: the American Duties Act of 1764, also known as the Revenue Act or the Sugar Act. The new law increased the duty on sugar and other products, such as wine, spirits, cloth, coffee, and indigo, entering the empire from non-British ports. But most important, it cut in half the long-standing import duty of sixpence per gallon on foreign molasses. Officials hoped that New England rum distillers, who had been secretly importing cheap molasses from the French West Indies without paying customs, would be willing to pay threepence per gallon to import the ingredient legally. If fully enforced, the act would reduce smuggling and boost revenues while saving merchants from the heavy costs of bribing port officials and courtroom participants. full view Colonial Products Note the small number of ironworks, shipbuilding sites, and rum distilleries on this map. The colonies produced few finished goods and were dependent upon British manufactures and other trade to import most of their cloth, metal goods, and ceramics. In return, the colonies exported raw materials (skins, indigo, lumber, and naval stores) and food and agricultural products (rice, grain, meat, and tobacco). To ensure compliance, the Sugar Act strengthened the customs officers’ authority to seize goods off arriving ships, and it established the first of several vice-admiralty courts. The court sat at Halifax, Nova Scotia, so defendants had large travel expenses and no hope of a favorable local jury. Instead, they faced a single appointed judge and no jury. Shockingly, a captain or shipowner accused of smuggling was presumed guilty until he could prove his innocence. If he failed to do so, he lost his seized property. “What has America done,” protested critics, “to be stripped of so invaluable a privilege as the trial by jury?” Additional statutes followed quickly. The Currency Act of 1764 prohibited colonial assemblies from issuing paper money or bills of credit to be used as legal tender to pay off debts. The move only worsened the money shortage in British America, where trade languished in a postwar depression. A lopsided trade balance was already draining gold and silver from the colonies to England annually, and colonial merchants had to pay Grenville’s new duties using the same scarce hard money. The next year, after resentful New Yorkers refused to provide firewood for General Gage’s troops, Parliament passed a Quartering Act that obliged colonists to assist the army. Soldiers could not be quartered in private homes, as Gage had requested, but officers could requisition vacant barns and other buildings as temporary quarters when regular barracks and alehouses could not accommodate all their men. The local governor was to supply the soldiers, at colonial expense, with certain basic necessities they would expect at any inn: firewood, candles, bedding, salt, vinegar, utensils, and rations of beer and cider. Colonial assemblies had willingly voted such support during the Seven Years’ War. However, these peacetime requisitions, ordered by a distant Parliament, seemed to challenge their authority and smacked of indirect taxation. There was nothing indirect about Grenville’s most important reform: the Stamp Act. Early in 1765, Parliament approved the new statute “for raising a further revenue” to pay for “defending, protecting, and securing” the British colonies in America. Grenville patterned his legislation on a similar law already in place in England. The new act was a complex measure that required stamps (rather like those on modern packs of cigarettes) to appear on a wide variety of articles in America after November 1, 1765. The list included all legal contracts and commissions, plus countless other paper documents from land deeds and liquor licenses to servant indentures and academic degrees. Newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, playing cards, and dice also had to bear a stamp. full view Stamp Act Stamps The Stamp Act placed a tax on documents and printed matter - newspapers, marriage licenses, wills, deeds, even playing cards and dice. The stamps varied in denomination. Colonial lawyers and printers were supposed to purchase these stamps from designated agents and pass the additional cost on to their clients and customers. The official stamp distributor in PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 196 ${bmicon} each colony would receive a handsome fee equaling 7.5 percent of all stamp sales. The British Exchequer (Treasury) anticipated taking in at least £100,000 per year, to be held in a separate account and spent only for government operations in America. The proposed stamp bill generated little debate in Parliament. William Pitt, the leader of the opposition party and a friend of the colonists, did not even attend the session. Only Isaac Barré, a veteran of the Quebec campaign, protested. Claiming to “know more of America than most of you,” Barré challenged the assertion of Stamp Act supporters that England had nurtured and protected the colonies from earliest times. He defended the Americans as true “Sons of Liberty”: loyal British subjects protective of their rights and quick to “vindicate them, if ever they should be violated.” But Grenville countered Barré’s claims. Americans, the minister argued, had nothing to fear from England. Granted, colonists had no actual representation in the Parliament that had enacted this tax. But in this they were like the majority of subjects in England. Most of them did not have the right to cast a ballot, yet all of them were said to be “virtually” represented by MPs, who supposedly had the interests of the entire country at heart. If members of Parliament could look out for nonvoting subjects at home, surely they could provide the same sort of “virtual representation” for all British subjects throughout the realm. Whether or not they spoke for colonists in America, most MPs viewed Grenville’s stamp measure as appropriate, moderate, and well conceived. They saw no legal distinction between external duties used to regulate trade and enforce the nation’s navigation acts and internal taxes imposed by Parliament within the colonies themselves to raise revenue. Besides, because the stamp tax applied to numerous daily articles used throughout the colonies, it would be widely and evenly distributed. Even better, revenues would grow steadily and automatically as colonial economic activity continued to expand. So as not to cause alarm in the colonies, Parliament set initial stamp prices in America lower than those charged in England, although it could always raise the rates as colonists grew accustomed to the tax. Moreover, the tax was to be gathered quietly by Americans themselves in the course of doing business rather than extracted from individual citizens by tax collectors. In drafting the act, the ministry had consulted agents serving as lobbyists for the American colonies in London, including Benjamin Franklin. According to these public figures, prominent colonists were eager to accept the lucrative stamp distributorships. No one predicted the upheaval that the Stamp Act would instigate. But it soon unleashed a storm of organized, militant resistance in the colonial ports where the stamps were to be sold. At first, most colonial assemblies had mixed responses to the burdensome new tax. But in late May, the youngest member of the Virginia House of Burgesses—a rising country attorney named Patrick Henry—galvanized American resistance to the Stamp Act. Henry introduced a series of fiery resolves regarding the mandate. The House session was winding down, and many conservative members who endorsed Parliament’s right to impose taxes had already departed from Williamsburg. With impressive oratory, the 28-year-old Henry managed to gain narrow passage of five separate resolutions. Young Thomas Jefferson recalled listening to the heated debate from a hallway, with other students from the College of William and Mary. full view 1765 Stamp Act Protest Mob burning stamps in protest against the Stamp Act of 1765, which implemented a direct tax on all printed material. (Library of Congress) Henry’s fifth and most provocative resolve asserted that Virginia’s assembly had the “sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes” on the colony’s inhabitants. The resolution passed by just one vote. In fact, opponents reintroduced it the next day, after Henry himself left town, and voted it down. But the spark had been struck. Within a month, distant newspapers were reprinting Henry’s “Virginia Resolves.” The papers included not only the resolution that had been voted down but also two ominous-sounding ones that had been drawn up but never introduced for a vote, since approval seemed unlikely. According to these two added resolutions, Virginians were CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 197 ${bmicon} “not bound to yield obedience” to any such tax, and anyone arguing otherwise must “be deemed an enemy” to the colony. In Massachusetts, the assembly took a different approach. It issued a call for each colony to send delegates to a Stamp Act Congress in New York in October 1765 to “implore relief ” from Parliament. Local citizens, inflamed by Virginia’s resolutions and squeezed by an economic depression, prepared to take more direct action. In Boston, a small group of artisans and merchants known as the Loyal Nine mobilized to halt the new tax before it could even be implemented. They hatched a plan to force the designated stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver, to resign before the stamps arrived from England. The Loyal Nine persuaded Ebenezer McIntosh, leader of the well-organized Pope’s Day demonstrations in that city’s South End, to join forces with North End rivals in a demonstration against Oliver. On August 16, a crowd of several thousand hanged an effigy of Oliver and tore down his newly erected Stamp Office. That night, the protesters ransacked Oliver’s elegant house, drinking his wine and smashing his furniture. The next day, Oliver resigned his appointment. As word of the protest spread, crowds took to the streets in scores of towns. Often the mobs were encouraged by local leaders who opposed the Stamp Act. These prominent citizens had started to organize themselves in secret groups, which they called the Sons of Liberty, borrowing the phrase first used by Isaac Barré in Parliament. With speeches and additional prompting, they aroused angry demonstrators. The crowds, in turn, forced the resignation of potential stamp distributors in ports from New Hampshire all the way down to the Carolinas. When a shipment of stamps finally arrived in New York City, a crowd of nearly five thousand risked open warfare to confiscate the hated cargo on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5. Throughout the second half of 1765, the Sons of Liberty promoted street violence against specific targets. But they quickly learned that they could not always contain and control the demonstrations, since the debtors, sailors, blacks, and women drawn to such crowds all had separate grievances of their own. For example, on August 26 in Boston, just 10 days after the raid on Oliver’s house, a second mob launched a broader assault. Without sanction from the Loyal Nine or the Sons of Liberty, the crowd went after the homes of several wealthy office holders, including the house of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Because he also served as chief justice of the Superior Court, Hutchinson had offended townspeople by issuing numerous warrants for debtors and collecting large fees for administering bankruptcies. He recounted how he fled when “the hellish crew fell upon my house with the Rage of devils and … with axes split down the doors.” By the time the assault ended, the attackers had pillaged Hutchinson’s entire estate. In South Carolina several months later, the spirit of insurrection also went well beyond the careful boundaries intended by the Sons of Liberty. They were pleased when Charleston artisans hanged a stamp distributor in effigy, with a sign reading, “Liberty and no Stamp Act.” And they gave tacit approval when white workers harassed the wealthy slave trader and potential stamp distributor Henry Laurens with chants of “Liberty, Liberty!” Soon, however, enslaved African Americans also took to the streets, raising their own defiant cry of “Liberty, Liberty!” Fearing an insurrection by South Carolina’s black majority, the same people who had sanctioned earlier street demonstrations quickly shifted their focus, believing that ideas of freedom had spread PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 198 ${bmicon} full view MAP 6.3 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA, 1763–1766 In 1763, the British worked to govern their new provinces in Canada and Florida, while suppressing an Indian uprising in the Midwest. With widely dispersed troops, they also tried to keep colonists out of the Mississippi Valley and halt opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act. CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 199 ${bmicon} too far. The colonial assembly banned further importation of Africans temporarily, while local leaders expanded slave patrols and placed Charleston briefly under martial law. Elsewhere, too, the colonial elites took steps to contain the turbulence. Many moved—often reluctantly—toward more radical positions, joining the Sons of Liberty and ridiculing the British concept of virtual representation. Colonial assemblies condemned Grenville’s intrusive reforms, and the Stamp Act Congress passed resolutions vehemently protesting both the Sugar and Stamp acts. But even as they challenged Parliament, these same local leaders counseled caution and restraint. They stressed their continuing loyalty to the crown and moved to control the violence, some of which was directed at them. Such moderation appealed to cautious merchants in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Reluctantly, they agreed to stop ordering goods from Britain. As they saw it, British exporters, feeling the boycott’s economic pinch, might use their political strength to force a repeal of the Stamp Act and defuse the tense situation. When politics in London prompted Grenville’s sudden removal from office, hopes rose in America for a possible compromise resolving the Stamp Act crisis. In March 1766, these hopes were nearly fulfilled. The new ministry of Lord Rockingham, responding to merchant pressure as predicted, and also to the compelling rhetoric of William Pitt, persuaded Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. But colonial victory had a hollow ring to it, for the repeal bill was accompanied by a blunt Declaratory Act. In it, the members of Parliament declared clearly that they reaffirmed their power “to make Laws … to bind the Colonists and People of America … in all Cases whatsoever.” As news of Stamp Act repeal spread, the Sons of Liberty organized elaborate celebrations in British America. In Charleston and Philadelphia, citizens staged public “illuminations,” placing lighted candles in the windows of their homes. In Boston, they lit so many fire-works that the town shone like day, and John Hancock treated the public to casks of Madeira wine. But word of the Declaratory Act had a sobering effect. Clearly, the problems surrounding colonial taxation and representation remained unresolved. The atmosphere of mutual suspicion and righteous indignation that had erupted during the Stamp Act crisis divided colonists further in the years ahead. A flurry of pamphlets from colonial presses broadened awareness of the issues, sharpened arguments, and inspired new coalitions. For the first time, colonists from separate regions and different countries of origin began to identify themselves as Americans, gradually adopting a term that had previously applied only to Indians. Most importantly, as colonial leaders collaborated with one another, they discovered a shared viewpoint that gave heightened meaning and importance to each new event. This emerging ideology had a logic of its own, with common assumptions and unifying principles. It also had deep roots stretching back into earlier periods in English history. The radical ideas that had emerged during England’s Civil War in the 1640s, when English subjects briefly overthrew their monarchy and proclaimed a Puritan Commonwealth, lived on long after the Restoration in 1660. Decades later, the English Whigs who led the Glorious Revolution invoked some of these same principles when they limited the monarchy’s power and strengthened Parliament’s authority in 1688. Succeeding generations of mainstream publicists hailed the rights of all freeborn English subjects and congratulated themselves that Great Britain (as England and Scotland became known in 1707) had achieved a truly balanced government. They drew on the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to explain their accomplishment. Aristotle, his modern readers noted, had observed a cycle in politics. He believed that too much power vested in a king could eventually corrupt the monarchical form of government. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 200 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Movement Building Against the Odds Few popular protests, no matter how novel, start from scratch. Social movements regularly build on their predecessors. Even when protesters address new issues, they borrow many of their strategies from the past. Consciously or unconsciously, they adopt tactics that have proven effective at other times in undermining powerful opponents and rallying public support. Old songs are rewritten for fresh causes or adopted by new generations. The Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” began as a slave protest song and spread into the modern labor movement before returning to the black freedom struggle in the 1950s. In the late twentieth century, it circled the globe from Poland to South Africa to the Philippines as a universal hymn of liberation. But each era of conflict contributes its own fresh additions to the arsenal of protest. Nineteenth-century slavery opponents and advocates for women’s rights raised the ancient art of petition writing to a form of public demonstration. Withholding local tax payments also became a viable protest action. Author Henry David Thoreau went to jail for this act in 1846, as a gesture to oppose the Mexican–American War. In a famous essay, Thoreau popularized the general idea of civil disobedience and influenced the nonviolent protest tactics of Mahatma Gandhi in India a century later. In the twentieth century, American autoworkers and civil rights activists perfected the sit-in, drawing inspiration from Gandhi. The Atlantic world of the late eighteenth century made key contributions to the list of effective protest tactics. Strikes, the organized work stoppages that became a central weapon for organized labor in the industrial era, draw their name from earlier acts by British deck hands. As far back as the 1760s, militant sailors in London would “strike” (take down) the sails and the horizontal yardarms of their square-rigged ships. By keeping vessels in the world’s busiest port, they could halt English trade until their demands were met. In North America, meanwhile, colonists experimented with the same boycott tactics used more recently by farm workers, environmentalists, and opponents of movie violence and record industry obscenity. Groups of irate colonists combined in formal associations, using their collective buying power to withhold purchases of certain imported goods. These nonimportation agreements were intended to cripple commerce with Britain until the government altered its policies. Such associations, though supposedly voluntary, put heavy social pressure on nonmembers who refused to join, ignoring them at church and in the streets. (Such boycotts, both commercial and social, did not earn their current name until a century later, when Irish protesters used them effectively against a landlord named Captain Boycott in 1880.) Colonists also went beyond nonimportation agreements to engage in concerted attacks on property. But these volatile actions rarely spun far out of control. If there was one thing that the protesters knew from experience and passed on to their successors, it was the need for patience in building a movement. Premature or excessive action by a few enthusiasts could draw down reprisals, turn away potential supporters, and discredit the cause. So organizers who worked to stir up cautious or complacent citizens also worked to rein in overzealous dissidents. In any era, deadly acts of violence such as seizing a federal arsenal, bombing a public building, or attacking an abortion clinic can be viewed as a wake-up call by those committing the act. But they can also provoke a strong backlash in public opinion. For movements building a broad base of support, therefore, it often seems best if violence and deadly force come first from the powers that be. That was true when British soldiers fired into a Boston crowd on March 5, 1770, and equally true two centuries later when troopers on horseback attacked peaceful civil rights marchers at Selma, Alabama, on March 9, 1965. So colonial protesters, like modern antiglobalization activists, preferred mock hangings to real ones. And like their descendants with cell phones, they stressed coordination, knowing that communication was essential to the movement’s success. It is no surprise that printer Ben Franklin and messenger Paul Revere played central roles. The Committees of Correspondence that linked Whig leaders in separate colonies have present-day counterparts in the campus networks that spur anti-sweatshop activism. Unbounded royal power sooner or later led to a tyranny, misrule by a despot wielding absolute control. When nobles then asserted themselves against the tyrant (as English barons had done when they forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215), the resulting aristocracy could easily turn corrupt as well. Abuse of power by such an oligarchy of self-serving nobles could then prompt the common people, known as the commons, to rise up. If the commons gained sway, they might build a democracy, but it too could degenerate, leaving only anarchy. Such a “mobocracy” only paved the way for an opportunistic leader to once more seize the scepter of royal power and start the cycle over again. Confident Whigs claimed that England had halted this vicious cycle by balancing the power of the nation’s three estates: the king epitomized the legitimate interests of monarchy, the House of Lords represented the aristocracy, and the House of Commons represented the rest of the population. A few of the more radical Whig theorists continued to oppose this consensus view long after 1700, however. Calling themselves the Real Whigs, these skeptics argued that the existing mixed government—which claimed an ideal and lasting balance between monarchy, aristocracy, and commons—was actually much less perfect and more vulnerable than most people suspected. A truly balanced government, they argued, is hard to achieve and difficult to maintain, for if power inevitably corrupts, then schemers who obtain undue control can readily disrupt such a fragile system. So its protection, these critics argued, demanded constant vigilance. They urged Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 201 ${bmicon} citizens to watch for the two surest signs of decay: the concentration of wealth in few hands and the political and social corruption that inevitably follows. Where others saw grandeur and stability in England’s exuberant growth, these Real Whigs perceived sure signs of danger in the powerful new Bank of England, the expanding stock market, and the rise in public debt. No Real Whigs proved more vigilant than John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. The two men sensed around them the same luxury and greed that had undermined the Roman Republic. They pored over the works of ancient historians and social critics, including the Roman statesman Cato, whose correspondence described and challenged corrupt behavior. In 1721 they published Cato’s Letters: Essays on Liberty, in which they cautioned against “the Natural Encroachments of Power” and warned that “public corruptions and abuses have grown upon us.” One abuse that offended Trenchard and Gordon was Britain’s expanding patronage system. New public positions seemed designed to reward loyal support, and too many people appeared to gain office through political ties rather than through skill or training. The two writers warned that this system of patronage, when carried to an extreme, put private advancement ahead of the public good. Far from being independent civil servants, the patronage appointees supported and protected some important figure high up in the government. They dutifully filled a post (often in the colonies) and took direction from their patron in exchange for the chance to line their pockets with public money. PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 202 ${bmicon} The authors of Cato’s Letters saw each individual act of corruption as representing a dangerous precedent, if unopposed. They reminded their readers that tyranny is often imposed through small, subtle steps, for “if it is suffered once, it is apt to be repeated often; a few repetitions create a habit.” Soon, before the citizens realize that they are losing their liberties, the permanent “Yoke of Servitude” is in place, supported by military force, and all hope of successful protest has disappeared. Equally insidious, would-be tyrants may actually “provoke the People to Disaffection; and then make that Disaffection an Argument for new Oppression … and for keeping up Troops.” The encroachment of power over liberty, Trenchard and Gordon concluded, is “much easier to prevent than to cure.” Though these writers attracted only limited attention in England, they earned a wide American following. The popularity of Cato’s Letters and related tracts continued to spread in the colonies during the 1760s, for colonists saw disturbing parallels between the warnings of Real Whig authors and current events in America. Throughout history, the essayists warned, corrupt ministers have encouraged expensive wars, negotiated damaging treaties, and promoted “worthless and wicked” officials whose only qualification is to “show stupid alacrity to do what they are bid.” When tainted by corruption, a government might deny adequate representation, initiate unjust taxes, or replace jury trials with arbitrary proceedings such as the vice-admiralty courts. If public officials curtailed freedoms of press or religion, that only confirmed their schemes to consolidate power. Moreover, weak and unprincipled ministers might advise the monarch poorly or keep citizens’ pleas from reaching their king’s ears. If the populace relaxed its guard, these ministers might even sanction a standing army in peacetime to impose arbitrary rule over their own population. During the 1760s, colonists saw disturbing parallels between the warnings of Real Whig authors and current events in America. According to Real Whig doctrine, ordinary people must be alert but circumspect; a measured response to these threats was all-important. After all, one stubborn or mistaken act by officials did not necessarily indicate a pattern of conspiracy. Also, it could be counterproductive to raise alarms too often. So prudent citizens should turn first to accepted, legal methods of appeal and redress. If the system was functioning properly, claims of real abuses would bring forth proper corrections. Even if forced to take to the streets as a last resort, crowds should be organized and purposeful, not riotous and uncontrolled. They should threaten property before people and hang effigies, not actual office holders. For the most part, the Stamp Act demonstrations had followed this logic of restraint and had gained the desired effect. “In every Colony,” wrote John Adams, “the Stamp Distributors and Inspectors have been compelled, by the unconquerable Rage of the People, to renounce their offices.” But did individual demands for liberty have limits? If so, what were they? Could slaves seek liberty from their masters? What about wives from their husbands? Could tenants press for redress from rich landlords, or debtors from powerful creditors? Such questions generated widespread, heated debate in the turbulent quarter-century ahead. For a growing number of colonists, international events in the years after 1765 seemed to confirm the views that the Real Whigs had passed down. When John Wilkes was repeatedly elected to Parliament but expelled from the Commons for his radical views, his English supporters cried foul and demanded political reform. Americans saw Wilkes as their champion. In 1768, when troops in London fired on a huge mob protesting Wilkes’s imprisonment—killing half a dozen people and wounding innocent bystanders—colonists joined in condemning “the massacre of St. George’s Field.” South Carolina’s Assembly even tried to contribute public money to support Wilkes. Similarly, Americans embraced the short-lived cause of Pasquale Paoli, who fought to free the Mediterranean island of Corsica from domination by Genoa. Many colonists christened their sons after Wilkes or Paoli, and Pennsylvanians named new towns after these overseas heroes. The two men seemed to embody a broader struggle of lib- CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 203 ${bmicon} erty against tyranny. But often that contest flared up closer to home as well. Local occurrences, large and small, seemed to fit a pattern described by the Real Whigs. On the religious front, for example, New England colonists bemoaned rumors that the Church of England—which had persecuted their Puritan ancestors—hoped to install an American bishop in Boston. Similar talk of a resident bishop in Virginia, where the Church of England had long dominated, also provoked debate. Controversy intensified with the work of Virginia’s Separate Baptist ministers, who won over thousands of recruits with their staunch opposition to the colony’s established church. After 1765, as local controversies simmered, the “Rage of the People” often seemed to boil up from below, especially in rural areas, where most colonists lived. “The People, even to the lowest Ranks, have become more attentive to their Liberties,” John Adams observed with some worry, “and more determined to defend them” than ever before. For example, while stamp protesters demonstrated in New York City, aggrieved tenant farmers staged a violent revolt against powerful landholders in the Hudson River Valley. They chose an Irish immigrant named William Prendergast as their leader, established a council, and organized militia companies with elected captains. Calling themselves Levellers, they broke open local jails to free debtors, and they set up their own people’s courts to try captured gentry. British troops finally suppressed the Hudson Valley revolt, but not before the land rioters proclaimed themselves Sons of Liberty and sought aid from Stamp Act rebels in New York City. A participant named Moss Kent recalled that “when they went to New York they expected to be assisted by the poor people there.” However, leaders in New York City’s antistamp protests rebuffed the request for assistance from upriver. These prominent figures were also Hudson River land moguls who had evicted scores of tenants from their manors. Such men proved “great opposers of the Rioters,” according to one observer, “as they are of opinion no one is entitled to Riot but themselves.” (For example, one New York judge condemned land rioters who were brought before him, even while he was taking an active role in the Stamp Act Congress.) A special court convicted Prendergast of high treason and sentenced him to be disemboweled and then beheaded. Luckily for him, the king spared his life. While tenant farmers protested in the Hudson Valley, unrest also shook the Carolinas in the interior region known to colonists as the backcountry, or the Piedmont. In South Carolina, the absence of civil government beyond the coastal parishes fostered lawlessness and disunity among white settlers until the governor extended circuit courts into the interior in 1769. In North Carolina, migrants seeking land were moving south from Virginia and Pennsylvania into the fertile backcountry in a steady stream. When they arrived in the Piedmont, they found a local elite already in place. Appointed to county offices by the governor, these officials possessed strong family and financial ties to powerful planters and merchants farther east. (Their high-handed and self-serving ways epitomized, at the local level, the sorts of corruption that had long troubled Real Whig pamphleteers.) The newcomers disliked the grasping officeholders and corrupt courts. As their numbers rose, they protested against inadequate representation for backcountry counties in the colonial assembly. They began organizing into local groups to better “regulate” their own affairs, and they soon became known as Regulators. These small farmers, many of them in debt after moving to a new region, protested loudly against regressive taxes that imposed the same burden on all colonists, regardless of their wealth or poverty. The Regulators’ discontent turned into outrage when they heard that coastal planters who dominated the assembly had voted public funds to build a stately mansion in New Bern for William Tryon, the colonial governor. By this act, the slaveholding elite in eastern North Carolina would establish the colony’s permanent capitol building on the coast, rather than in the expanding interior town of Hillsborough. What’s more, farmers who would never see the stately mansion would bear most of the cost of constructing it. The decision to erect “Tryon’s Palace” at public expense confirmed the worst suspicions of backcountry settlers. The governor and his associates, they decided, were concerned primarily with their own wealth, at the expense of the public interest. Hundreds, then thousands, of aroused Piedmont farm families joined local alliances that swelled into the well-organized Regulator Movement. They filed petitions, withheld their tax money, closed courts, and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 204 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY “Exert Your Selves This Once in Our Favour”: Petition Signed by 30 North Carolina Regulators, October 4, 1768 In the 1760s, corruption prevailed among appointed officials in central North Carolina. Often holding numerous offices at once, these men managed elections, controlled courts, and gathered taxes. Apparently not all the tax money they collected made it to the public treasury. Nevertheless, any farmer who resisted payment might lose the plow horse or the milk cow that sustained the family. It could be “seized and sold” to cover a small tax payment or minor debt, with “no Part being ever Return’d” from the proceeds. Banding together to better regulate their own affairs, these farmers sought relief through every possible legal means. But by 1768, when this document was created, these organized Regulators had exhausted most avenues of peaceful protest. The western counties where they resided were badly underrepresented in the colonial assembly. As a new session prepared to convene in November, they fired off a final round of petitions. They assured the legislators that they were law-abiding citizens willing to pay their legal share of taxes. And they begged for the appointment of honest public officials who would protect their interests. (For greater readability, editorial corrections have been made in this emotional petition.) To the Worshipful House of Representatives of North Carolina Your Poor Petitioners [have] been Continually Squez’d and oppressed by our Publick Officers both with Regard to their fees as also in the Laying on of Taxes as well as in Collecting…. Being Grieved thus to have our substance torn from us [by] … such Illegal practices, we applied to our public officers to give us some satisfaction … which they Repeatedly denied us. With Regard to the Taxes,… we labour under Extreem hardships…. Money is very scarce … & we exceeding Poor & lie at a great distance from Trade which renders it almost Impossible to gain sustenance by our utmost Endeavours…. To Gentlemen Rowling in affluence, a few shillings per man may seem triffling. Yet to Poor People who must have their Bed and Bedclothes, yea their Wives Petticoats, taken and sold to Defray, how Tremenious [tremendous] … must be the Consequences…. Therefore, dear Gentlemen, to your selves, to your Country, and in Pity to your Poor Petitioners, do not let it stand any longer to Drink up the Blood and vitals of the Poor Distressed. After seeking relief from existing taxes, the petitioners went on to question new burdens, such as the law imposing an additional tax “to Erect a Publick Edifice” for Governor Tryon in New Bern. Good God, Gentlemen, what will become of us when these Demands come against us? Paper Money we have none & gold or silver we can Purchase none of. The Contingencies of Government Must be Paid, and … we are Willing to Pay, [even] if we [must] sell our Beds from under us. And [yet] in this Time of Distress, it is as much as we can support…. If, therefore, the Law for that Purpose can be happily Repealed, … May the God of Heaven Inspire you with sentiments to that Purpose. We humble Begg you would … Use your Influence with our Worthy, Virtuous Governor to discontinue … such Officers as would be found to be ye Bane of Society, and [instead to] Put in the Common Wealth [officials willing] to Encourage the Poor and … to stand [up] for them. This would Cause Joy and Gladness to Spring from every Heart. This would cause Labour and Industry to prevail over Murmuring Discontent. This would Raise your poor Petitioners … to a flourishing Opulent and Hoping People. Otherwise … disatisfaction and Melancholy must Prevail over such as Remain, and Numbers must Defect the Province and seek elsewhere an Asylum from Tyranny and Oppression…. We leave it to you … in your great Wisdom … to pass such Act or Acts, as shall be Conducive to the welbeing of a whole People over Whose welfare ye are plac’d as Guardians…. For the Lords Sake, Gentlemen, Exert your selves this once in our favour. Source: William S. Powell, James K. Huhta, and Thomas J. Farnham, eds., The Regulators of North Carolina: A Documentary History, 1759–1776 (Raleigh: State Dept. of Archives and History, 1971), 187–189. CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 205 ${bmicon} harassed corrupt office holders, protesting the “unequal chances the poor and weak have in contentions with the rich and powerful.” Both sides dug in their heels. In 1771 Governor Tryon finally called out the militia, marching a thousand men into the Piedmont. After defeating several thousand irate farmers at the battle of Alamance in May 1771, Tryon imposed his will on the dissenters. Half a dozen captured leaders were hanged publicly in Hillsborough, and Tryon forced residents to swear an oath of loyalty. Many refused, migrating farther south to backcountry Georgia or west to the Appalachian Mountains. Their leader, a Quaker named Herman Husband, barely escaped with his life, as Prendergast had done in New York. In North Carolina, just as in the Hudson Valley, well-to-do members of the Sons of Liberty dismissed the organized and militant farmers as misguided rabble. Numerous sharp divisions—some leading to armed conflict—continued to separate colonists of different classes and regions. But ill-timed steps by successive administrations in London attracted widening attention throughout British America, prompting uneasy new alliances. Colonists familiar with the dire warnings of Real Whig pamphleteers asked themselves a question: in the weak and short-lived ministries that succeeded Grenville’s, were the leaders simply ill-informed, or were they actively corrupt? A widening array of colonists wondered whether some official conspiracy existed to chip away at American liberties. Even loyal defenders of the crown expressed frustration with new policies, fearing that they were too harsh to calm irate colonists, yet too weak to force them into line. “It’s astonishing to me,” wrote a beleaguered supporter from Boston, “after the Warning and Experience of the Stamp Act Times; that any new Impositions should be laid on the Colonies,” especially “without even so much as a single Ship of Warr” to back up new measures. Parliament’s first new imposition after repeal of the Stamp Act was the Revenue Act of 1766. The act offered an additional reduction in the duty on molasses, from threepence per gallon to a single penny, in hopes of further discouraging smuggling and raising revenue. Colonial merchants reconciled themselves to this measure as an external tax designed to regulate imperial trade. They paid the new duty, and customs revenues rose. But Real Whigs reminded them that compliance with even the most innocuous measure could set a dangerous precedent. The skeptics had a point, for Parliament soon imposed new hard-line measures. These distasteful statutes, put in motion by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend before his sudden death in 1767, sparked angry responses from colonists. The most telling came from John Dickinson, a moderate Philadelphia lawyer who drafted a series of widely circulated “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” Urging colonists to respond “peaceably—prudently—firmly—jointly,” he dismissed any distinction between external and internal taxation. He also rejected the idea that Americans had virtual representation in Parliament. “We are taxed without our own consent,” Dickinson proclaimed to his readers. “We are therefore—SLAVES.” In search of additional funds for the Exchequer, Townshend persuaded Parliament to pass the Revenue Act of 1767, which created new duties on colonial imports of glass, paint, lead, paper, and tea. Proceeds were to be spent in the colonies for “the administration of justice, and the support of civil government,” a seemingly benevolent gesture. But Dickinson and other colonists pointed out what these two phrases actually meant. “The administration of justice” cloaked expanded searches of American homes and shops in which customs officers used hated “writs of assistance” to ferret out smuggled goods. “The support of civil government” ensured that governors and appointed office holders could draw their pay directly from the new duties instead of depending on an annual salary grant from the local assembly. In short, the new act removed PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 206 ${bmicon} from colonial legislatures one of their strongest bargaining tools in dealing with the crown: the power to pay or withhold yearly salaries for key officials sent from Britain. Similar acts and instructions followed. Asserting its sovereignty, Parliament disciplined the New York Assembly for its “direct disobedience” in refusing to comply with the Quartering Act of 1765. The crown instructed governors in America, now less dependent for their salaries on colonial lower houses, to disapprove any further measures from legislatures asserting their traditional control over how members were chosen, what their numbers should be, and when they would meet. Equally galling, the Customs Act of 1767 established a separate Board of Customs for British North America. Ominously, the commissioners would live in Boston rather than London. To strengthen the board’s hand in customs enforcement, Britain moved in 1768 to expand the number of vice-admiralty courts in North America from one to four. It supplemented the court in Halifax (established by the Sugar Act of 1764) with new courts in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Furthermore, to look after its troublesome mainland colonies, the British government created a new American Department, overseen by Lord Hillsborough. It also began to move British troops in America from remote frontier outposts to major Atlantic ports, both as a cost-cutting measure and as a show of force. Whereas most people in England viewed these measures as legal, timely, and efficient, many Americans found them threatening, especially when considered as a whole. In February 1768, the Massachusetts legislature, led by 46-year-old Samuel Adams, petitioned the king for redress. The legislators also circulated a call to other lower houses to voice similar protests. Condemning the Townshend Revenue Act as unconstitutional, they argued that it imposed taxation without representation. By removing control of the governors’ salaries from colonial legislatures, they said, Parliament set the dangerous precedent of making royal officials “independent of the people.” Lord Hillsborough demanded an immediate retraction of this provocative “Circular Letter” and ordered the dissolution of any other assembly that took up the matter. In June, just as word arrived of the Wilkes Riot in London, events in Boston took a more radical turn. Defying Hillsborough, the Massachusetts assembly voted 92 to 17 against rescinding its circular letter. “The 92” became instant celebrities, and their opponents were vilified by the Sons of Liberty. On June 5, a dockside crowd faced down a “press-gang” from a British warship and protected local sailors from being forced (or “pressed”) into naval service. Five days later, customs officials seized John Hancock’s sloop, Liberty, and demanded that he pay import duties for a cargo of Madeira wine. This move sparked a huge demonstration as citizens dragged a small customs boat through the streets and then burned it on Boston Common. “Hancock and Liberty” became a rallying cry—“as ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ is in London!” “Let us take up arms immediately and be free,” Sam Adams was heard to say; “We shall have thirty thousand men to join us from the Country.” full view Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man - Cartoon The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man expresses public sentiment against the importation of tea and other British goods. Though the primary action is the tarring and feathering of an offending importer, there are other symbols, such as the Liberty Tree with hangman’s noose, the overturned copy of the Stamp Act, and Bostonians dumping tea into the harbor. (Library of Congress) Emotions ran high. But most leaders sensed that any escalation of the violence would be premature and perhaps suicidal. They managed to rein in demonstrations and initiate efforts to expand their base of support. Organizers turned their attention to implementing a boycott of British goods proposed the previous fall. Spurred by an energetic press, nonimportation plans took hold rapidly. These plans called upon colonists to refrain from imported luxuries and opt instead for virtuous self-sufficiency. The idea held broad appeal, as did the prospect that nonviolent resistance might reverse British policies. As the nonimportation movement expanded, it drew in men from small towns previously untouched by the imperial controversy. It also engaged women of all ranks in sacrificing for the cause. Self-proclaimed Daughters of Liberty took to making, wearing, and selling home- full view Daughter of Liberty - 1774 Woodcut The boycott movement drew many colonial women into popular politics. In this 1774 woodcut, a Daughter of Liberty stands ready to resist British oppression. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 207 ${bmicon} spun garments. Local associations sprang up, pledging to forgo imported tea and London fashions. A dozen colonial assemblies voted to halt importation of selected goods. In New York, the value of imports from Britain shrank from £491,000 to just £76,000 in a single year. full view Women Signing Anti-Tea Agreement 1775 cartoon derisively depicting women in North Carolina signing an anti-tea Agreement. As market-goers and consumers, urban women played a crucial role in applying economic pressure to England. (Library of Congress) Elsewhere, the novel boycott exerted less impact, but the damage to English shipping proved substantial. Britain was losing far more revenue in colonial trade than it was gaining through the expanded customs duties. Soon influential exporters in England were pressing the government for relief. When Lord North established a new ministry in January 1770, he received the king’s consent to work toward a better arrangement with the colonies. On March 5, 1770, North persuaded Parliament to repeal all the Townshend Duties except the one on tea. The move defused the colonial boycott, but it offered too little too late. Like the earlier Declaratory Act, this measure reaffirmed Parliament’s disputed right to tax the colonists at will. Moreover, it came at the exact moment when violence and bloodshed were escalating in America. After the Liberty riot in June 1768, tensions had mounted in Boston, especially with the arrival in October of two regiments of British soldiers, well armed and dressed in their traditional red coats. Paul Revere, a local silversmith and member of the Sons of Liberty, crafted an ominous engraving entitled “British Ships of War Landing Their Troops.” According to Real Whig beliefs, any appearance by a standing army in peacetime constituted danger, and the issue of how to house and feed unwanted troops quickly became a political hot button. The soldiers pitched their tents on Boston Common, a central gathering place for boisterous crowds. Artisans in a sluggish economy welcomed the increased business that the men in uniform generated, but numerous unemployed workers resented the soldiers’ “moon-lighting,” trying to earn extra pay by applying for local jobs. full view Paul Revere Etching of Boston Massacre Outrage over the Boston massacre was fanned by propaganda, such as this etching by Paul Revere, which showed British redcoats firing on ordinary citizens. In subsequent editions, the blood spurting from the dying Americans became more conspicuous. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) With 4000 armed men encamped in a seaport of scarcely 16,000, confrontation seemed inevitable. When rowdy American youths harassed the intruders as “redcoats” and “lobster-backs,” British officers ordered their men not to retaliate. Their refusal to fight only prompted more taunts. Affairs “cannot long remain in the state they are now in,” wrote one observer late in 1769; “they are hastening to a crisis. What will be the event, God knows.” In February 1770, the answer came. When a hostile crowd threatened a customs informer, he fired back, killing 11-year-old Christopher Seider. The boy’s elaborate funeral brought crowds of demonstrators into the streets. On Friday, March 2, protesters reappeared after a run-in between local workers and job-seeking soldiers. Rumors spread during the weekend that a larger confrontation between the two sides was looming. On Monday morning, a scrawled notice of unknown origin appeared on a wall. It read, “to Inform ye Rebellious people in Boston that ye Soldjers … are Determend to Joine to Gether and Defend them Selves against all who Shall Opose them.” Regardless of who actually posted the notice, both sides were ready for a fight. Around 9 P.M. on March 5, a crowd gathered outside the customs house, where a harassed sentry struck a boy with his rifle butt. As witnesses pelted the guard with snowballs, he called for help. As seven fellow soldiers pushed through the mob to assist him, firebells summoned more townspeople to the scene. The British loaded their rifles and aimed at the crowd, their bayonets fixed. Into this tense standoff marched a brash contingent of several dozen sailors from Dock Square. Led by Crispus Attucks, an ex-slave, they arrived waving banners and brandishing clubs. Attucks was an imposing figure, standing 6 feet 2 inches. The son of a black man and an Indian PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 208 ${bmicon} woman, he had run away from his master two decades earlier and then taken up a life at sea. John Adams assumed the unpopular task of defending the British soldiers at the trial resulting from this incident. He told the court that “Attucks appears to have undertaken to be the hero of this night.” Damning the soldiers and daring them to fire, Attucks pressed his band of sailors to the front, waving a long stick in the moonlight. full view Handbill “On the Death of Five Young Men” Leaders of Boston used handbills such as this one referring to the Boston massacre to keep citizens stirred up against the British in the early 1770s. (Library of Congress) A slave witness named Andrew, who had climbed a post to get a better view, testified that Attucks “threw himself in, and made a blow at the officer,” shouting, “kill the dogs, knock them over.” Adams later showed the court how with one hand the sailor “took hold of a bayonet, and with the other knocked the man down.” In the mayhem, a British gun went off, prompting a volley of fire from the other soldiers. The crowd recoiled in disbelief at the sight of their dead and wounded neighbors lying in the street, but they stayed past midnight to demand that the soldiers be jailed for murder. According to a printed report, Attucks and four others had been “killed on the Spot.” The anti-British cause had its first martyrs, joining young Christopher Seider. By grim coincidence, the bloody episode on King Street occurred only hours after Lord North addressed the House of Commons to urge removal of most Townshend Duties. His effort at reconciliation immediately became lost in a wave of hostile publicity. In Boston, Paul Revere captured the incident in an inflammatory engraving that circulated widely. The Sons of Liberty quickly named the event of March 5 the Boston Massacre and compared its martyred victims to the Wilkes demonstrators who had perished in London during the Massacre at St. George’s Field. “On that night,” John Adams remarked, “the foundation of American independence was laid.” As the 1770s unfolded, citizens in Boston commemorated “Massacre Day” each year with orations. According to speakers, the bloodshed on March 5 had revealed a dark scheme among British cabinet ministers. They seemed intent, the orators proclaimed, to drive America into a state of rebellion, “whereby they might hope to gratify both their malice and avarice.” Besides the aggression of a standing army, the overzealous conduct of customs officers gave colonists further cause for distrust. As traffic with Britain revived, after the repeal of most Townshend Duties and the end of the colonial boycott of English goods, so did the likelihood of conflict between merchants and customs inspectors. In the Delaware River region, local residents thrashed and jailed a customs collector in 1770. The next year, protesters stormed a customs schooner at night, beat up the crew, and stole their sails. Tensions ran especially high in Rhode Island. In 1769 Newport citizens seized the sloop Liberty—which crown agents had confiscated from John Hancock the year before and converted into a customs vessel—and scuttled it. In June 1772, the Gaspee, another customs boat said to harass local shipping, ran aground near Pawtuxet. In a midnight attack, more than a hundred raiders descended on the stranded schooner in half a dozen boats, driving off its crew and setting fire to the vessel. The destruction of the Gaspee renewed sharp antagonisms between the two sides. Alarmed, the Earl of Hillsborough, secretary of state for the American colonies, sent a royal commission from London to investigate and to transport suspects to England for trial. But many of the attackers, such as John Brown of Providence, came from important Rhode Island families. Even a £500 reward could not induce local inhabitants to name participants. Besides, colonists viewed the order to deport accused citizens to England as a denial of their fundamental right to trial by a jury of their peers. They took action. Again, Virginia’s House of Burgesses led the way, as it had in the Stamp Act crisis. In March 1773, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee pushed a resolution through that body establishing a standing committee to look into the Gaspee affair and to keep up “Correspondence and Communication with our sister colonies” regarding the protection of rights. Following Virginia’s example, ten other colonial legislatures promptly established their own Committees of Correspondence. In Massachusetts, similar committees sprang up linking individual towns. Within months a new act of Parliament, designed to rescue the powerful East India Company from bankruptcy, gave these emerging communication networks their first test. CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 209 ${bmicon} In 1767, before Parliament imposed the Townshend Duties, Americans had imported nearly 870,000 pounds of tea from England. But the boycott movement cut that amount to less than 110,000 pounds by 1770 as colonists turned to smuggling Dutch blends and brewing homemade root teas. When nonimportation schemes lapsed in the early 1770s, purchase of English tea resumed, even though a duty remained in effect. Encouraged by this apparent acceptance of parliamentary taxation, Lord North addressed the problem facing the East India Company. The ancient trading monopoly owed a huge debt to the Bank of England and had 18 million pounds of unsold tea rotting in London warehouses. Moreover, many MPs held stock in the company. In May, Parliament passed a new law designed to right the situation and bail out the ailing company. The Tea Act of 1773 let the struggling East India Company bypass the expensive requirement that merchants ship Asian tea through England on its way to colonial ports. Now they could send the product directly to the colonies or to foreign ports, without paying to unload, store, auction, and reload the heavy chests. Any warehouse tea destined for the colonies would have its English duty refunded. These steps would reduce retail prices and expand the tea market. They would also quietly confirm the right of Parliament to collect a tea tax of threepence per pound. The company promptly chose prominent colonial merchants as consignees to receive and distribute more than 600,000 pounds of tea, for which they would earn a hefty 6 percent commission. But wary colonists in port towns, sensing a repetition of 1765, renewed the tactics that had succeeded against the Stamp Act. Sons of Liberty vowed to prevent tea-laden ships from docking, and crowds pressured local distributors to renounce participation in the scheme. “If they succeed in the sale of that tea,” proclaimed New York’s Sons of Liberty, “then we may bid adieu to American liberty.” In Boston, where tea worth nearly £10,000 arrived aboard three ships in late November, tension ran especially high. The credibility of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who had taken a hard line toward imperial dissent, had suffered in June when Benjamin Franklin published private correspondence suggesting the governor’s willingness to trim colonial rights. When two of Hutchinson’s sons were named tea consignees, the appointments reinforced townspeople’s suspicions of an elaborate plot. The governor could have signed papers letting the three vessels depart, but that would give victory to the local opposition. Instead, he determined to unload and distribute the tea, by force if necessary. One could scarcely buy a pair of pistols in Boston, a resident observed on December 1, “as they are all bought up, with a full determination to repel force by force.” full view 1774 Illustration - List of Crimes by Massachusetts Governor The devil was a familiar fixture in political cartoons that sought to morally condemn certain individuals or policies. In one famous illustration, published in 1774, the devil held a list of crimes committed by Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, as the viper of death prepared to punish the royal official for his sins. (New York Public Library) On December 16, the largest mass meeting of the decade took place at Boston’s Old South Church. A crowd of 5000, including many from other towns, waited in a cold rain to hear whether Hutchinson would relent. When word came in late afternoon that the governor had refused, the cry went up, “Boston Harbor a teapot tonight!” Following a prearranged plan, 150 men, disguised as Mohawk Indians and carrying hatchets, marched to the docks and boarded the ships. As several thousand supporters looked on, this disciplined crew spent three hours methodically breaking open hundreds of chests of tea and dumping their contents overboard. The PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 210 ${bmicon} quasimilitary operation proved swift, efficient, and well organized. It united participants reflecting all levels of society—from merchants such as Hancock to artisans such as Hewes—and news of it spurred similar acts of defiance in other ports. “This destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm,” John Adams wrote in his diary the next day, “it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I can’t but consider it as an Epocha in History.” Sixty years later, as one of the oldest veterans of the Revolution, George Hewes still recalled with special pride his role in “the destruction of the tea.” “The crisis is come,” wrote British general Thomas Gage, responding to the costly Tea Party in Boston Harbor; “the provinces must be either British colonies, or independent and separate states.” Underestimating the strength of American resolve, Parliament agreed with King George III that only stern measures would reestablish “the obedience which a colony owes to its mother country.” Between March and June 1774, it passed four so-called Coercive Acts to isolate and punish Massachusetts. The first of the Coercive Acts, the Boston Port Act, used British naval strength to cut off the offending town’s sea commerce—except for shipments of food and firewood—until the colonists paid for the ruined tea. By the Administration of Justice Act, revenue officials or soldiers charged with murder in Massachusetts (as in the Boston Massacre) could have their trials moved to another colony or to Great Britain. The Quartering Act gave officers more power to requisition living quarters and supplies for their troops throughout the colonies. Most important, the Massachusetts Government Act removed democratic elements from the long-standing Massachusetts Charter of 1691. From now on, the assembly could no longer elect the colony’s Upper House, or Council; the governor would appoint that important body instead. In addition, colonists would have to get written permission from him to hold town meetings. Lord North’s government went even further. It replaced Hutchinson with Gage, installing the commander of British forces in America as the governor of Massachusetts and granting him special powers and three additional regiments. It also secured passage of the Quebec Act. The new legislation addressed nagging problems of governance in Canada after a decade of English rule. It accommodated the Catholic faith and French legal traditions of Quebec’s inhabitants. Moreover, it multiplied the size of the colony several times over to draw scattered French settlers and traders under colonial government. Suddenly, Quebec took in the entire Great Lakes region and all the lands north of the Ohio River to the east bank of the upper Mississippi River. Expanding the province of Quebec to the Ohio River might extend British government to French wilderness outposts and help to regulate the Indian trade there. But as American land speculators in Virginia and elsewhere quickly realized, the move also challenged the western claims of other colonies. The Quebec Act appeared to favor French Catholics and Ohio Valley Indians—both recent enemies of the crown—over loyal English colonists. Resentment ran especially high in New England, where Protestants had long associated Catholicism with despotism. The Quebec Act, which denied that province a representative assembly and jury trials in civil cases, set an ominous precedent for neighboring colonies. full view First Political Cartoon in American Newspaper, by Ben Franklin The first political cartoon to appear in an American newspaper was created by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 to emphasize the importance of the Albany Plan. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) The Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act—lumped together by colonial propagandists as the Intolerable Acts—brought on open rebellion against crown rule. Competing pamphlets debated the proper limits of dissent. In A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Jefferson went beyond criticisms of Parliament to question the king’s right to dispense land, control trade, and impose troops in America. Sympathy for the economic and political distress of Massachusetts mounted in other colonies. Sam Adams and his Boston colleagues had proven their ability to mobilize large and determined crowds; now they needed to foster wider cooperation among distant colonies that were less directly threatened. At the same time, they had to build resolve among wealthy merchants and cautious gentry. Within months, Massachusetts had called for a congress of all the colonies. It also established its own Provincial Congress at Concord, a small vil- CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 211 ${bmicon} lage that lay 17 miles west of Boston and British naval power. Operating as a de facto government, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress reorganized the colonial militia into units loyal to its own Committee of Public Safety. These farmer-soldiers became known as Minutemen for their quick response to Gage’s repeated efforts to capture patriot gunpowder supplies. While Massachusetts chafed under these new restrictions, shifting coalitions in each colony, ranging from conservative to radical, vied for local political control. Extralegal committees, existing outside the authorized structure of colonial government, took power in hundreds of hamlets. In Edenton, North Carolina, 51 women signed a pact to abstain from using imported products for the “publick good.” London cartoonists mocked the action as the “Edenton Ladies’ Tea Party,” but women in other colonies made similar agreements to boycott British textiles and tea. Towns instructed their representatives to provincial assemblies to support Massachusetts’ call for an intercolonial congress. During the summer, all colonies except Georgia selected representatives to the First Continental Congress. In September 1774, 56 delegates convened at Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia. Most had never met before, and they differed as much in their politics as in their regional manners. At first the delegates disagreed sharply over how best to respond to the Intolerable Acts. Joseph Galloway, a wealthy lawyer and commercial land speculator from Pennsylvania, urged a compromise with Britain modeled on the Albany Congress of 1754. His plan called for the creation of a separate American parliament, a grand council with delegates elected by the colonial legislatures. The less conservative delegates voiced opposition to this idea for a federation of the colonies, under a president-general appointed by the king. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, they managed to table the Galloway Plan by a narrow vote. full view Bronze of Paul Revere in Boston Bronze of Paul Revere in Boston, MA (Photodisc, Inc.) When Paul Revere arrived from Boston on October 6, bearing a set of militant resolves passed in his own Suffolk County, further rifts appeared. Southern moderates, while expressing sympathy for Massachusetts, still resisted calls for a nonexportation scheme that would withhold Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 212 ${bmicon} full view MAP 6.4 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA, APRIL 1775 Rising colonial unrest brought strong countermeasures. The British government organized regional vice-admiralty courts to punish smugglers; it greatly expanded Quebec in 1774; and it reallocated troops to the Boston area. When warfare erupted there in April 1775, the news spread throughout the colonies within weeks. American tobacco, rice, and indigo from Great Britain. But by the time the Congress adjourned in late October, it had issued a Declaration of Rights and passed a range of measures that seemed to balance competing views. On one hand, the Congress endorsed the fiery Suffolk Resolves, which condemned the Coercive Acts as unconstitutional and spoke of preparation for war. On the other, it humbly petitioned the king for relief from the crisis and professed continued loyalty. But in practical terms, Galloway and the more conservative members had suffered defeat. Most importantly, the delegates signed an agreement to prohibit British imports and halt all exports to Britain CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 213 ${bmicon} except rice. They called for local committees to enforce this so-called Association, and they set a date—May 10, 1775—for a Second Congress. Before delegates could meet again in Philadelphia, the controversy that had smoldered for more than a decade on both sides of the Atlantic erupted into open combat. Predictably, the explosion took place in Massachusetts. The spark came in the form of secret orders to General Gage, which he received April 14, 1775. The confidential letter from his superiors in London urged him to arrest the leaders of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and regain the upper hand before the strained situation grew worse. He was to use force, even if it meant the outbreak of warfare. On April 18, Gage ordered 700 elite troops from Boston to row across the Charles River at night, march 10 miles to Lexington, and seize John Hancock and Sam Adams, who had taken refuge with Hancock’s relatives. Next, the soldiers were to proceed 7 more miles to Concord to capture a stockpile of military supplies. Alerted by signal lanterns, express riders Paul Revere and William Dawes eluded British patrols and spurred their horses toward Lexington along separate routes to warn Hancock and Adams. Bells and alarm guns spread the word that the British were coming. By the time the British soldiers reached Lexington, shortly before sunrise, some 70 militiamen had assembled on the town green. When the villagers refused to lay down their arms, the redcoats dispersed them in a brief skirmish that left eight militiamen dead. The British column trudged west to Concord and searched the town for munitions. Four hundred Minutemen who had streamed in from neighboring communities watched from the outskirts of town. By 11 A.M., a fire had broken out in the village. The Minutemen advanced in double file, with orders not to fire until the British fired first. At the small bridge over the Concord River, British regulars opened fire. “The shot heard ’round the world” killed two men. The Americans loosed a volley in return, killing three. By noon, British forces were retreating in disarray. Exhausted, hungry, and short of ammunition, the redcoats made easy targets for the more than 1000 Americans who shot at them from behind stone walls. A relief party prevented annihilation, but the British suffered severe losses: 73 killed and 200 wounded or missing. They encamped briefly at Bunker Hill, but lacking the foresight and strength to retain that strategic height, they soon returned to Boston. The Americans, with only 49 dead, had turned the tables on General Gage, transforming a punitive raid into a punishing defeat. For the British, festering administrative problems in America had suddenly become a military emergency. A decade of assertive but inconsistent British policies had transformed the colonists’ sense of good will toward London into angry feelings of persecution and betrayal. The years of incessant argument and misunderstanding reminded many, on both sides of the Atlantic, of watching a stable, prosperous household unravel into mutual recrimination. A once-healthy family was becoming increasingly dysfunctional and troubled. The assertive children grew steadily in strength and competence; the aging parents chafed at their diminished authority and respect. Predictably, authorities in London found the once-dependent colonists to be ungrateful, intemperate, and occasionally even paranoid. With equal assurance, the American subjects saw Parliament, government ministers, and eventually the king himself as uninformed, selfish, and even deceitful. For the aggrieved colonists, the moment had come to declare loyalties and muster sustained resistance. They would receive suitable recognition within the family, or they would leave home for good. Britain’s overseas empire, which had expanded steadily for two centuries, now seemed on the verge of splitting apart. From the perspective of Britain’s mainland colonies, rapid economic and demographic growth had been a fact of eighteenth-century life. It had created serious growing pains, generating strong tensions across boundaries of region, race, and class. In 1676, near the beginning of this growth PART 2 ###8226; A CENTURY OF COLONIAL EXPANSION TO 1775 214 ${bmicon} process, the colonial tensions that generated Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia had been focused into war against the Indians and conflict against the ruling colonial elite, with independence little more than a remote ideal for a few. A century later, the equation had changed, and the limits of imperial control in North America had become increasingly evident. Colonists could overcome their regional and ethnic differences, and political independence no longer seemed implausible. With effort, class hostilities and urban-rural divisions could also be overcome. Redirecting these longstanding local resentments against the distant and powerful British crown could increase the sense of unity among people with very different personal backgrounds and resources. Nor would British colonists be alone if they mounted a rebellion. On one hand, they could make the unlikely choice of liberating half a million slaves, empowering colonial women, and embracing the anti-British cause of Pontiac and numerous Native Americans. Such revolutionary moves would increase their strength dramatically in one direction. On the other hand, they could also take a more cautious and less democratic route. If men of substance could gain control of the forces that were being unleashed, they might curb potential idealism among slaves, women, tenant farmers, and the urban poor, giving precedence instead to policies and practices that would win powerful European allies. Bacon’s rebels, after all, had never managed to muster French or Dutch support as hoped. But the new Sons of Liberty might well succeed in enlisting vital support from the continent of Europe in an American fight for independence from Britain. France, recently evicted from North America, and Spain, anxious about British designs in the Pacific, might both be willing allies, despite their commitment to monarchy. Such an alliance, if it ever came about, could push the limits of British imperial control to the breaking point. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park anza.uoregon.edu This isolated and beautiful state park covers 600,000 acres 80 miles east of San Diego, California. The Web site, which focuses on the exploration of Alta, California, 1774–1776, contains maps, resources, and documents in both English and Spanish concerning Juan Bautista de Anza’s two overland expeditions. Baranov Museum Located near the ferry landing in Kodiak, Alaska, the Baranov Museum is housed in one of the few remaining structures from the Russian colonial era. In Fairbanks, the modern University of Alaska Museum, located on Yukon Street overlooking the campus, provides a rich introduction to the region’s history and cultures. Fort Ross State Historic Park This reconstruction of the outpost built by the Russians on the northern California coast in the early nineteenth century is located on a scenic bluff 11 miles northwest of the town of Jenner on Highway 1, about a two-hour drive from San Francisco. Pontiac Marker In 1977, Michigan placed a marker concerning Pontiac on a building at 3321 East Jefferson Avenue, near the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit. It commemorates the Battle of Bloody Run, in July 1763, which marked the height of Pontiac’s siege of Detroit. The city of Pontiac, named for the Ottawa leader, lies 25 miles northwest. Boston’s Freedom Trail This 2.5-mile self-guided walking tour begins at Boston Common. Stops include the Boston Massacre site, the Old South Meeting House where the Boston Tea Party began, Paul Revere’s house, and the Granary Burial Ground, where Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Crispus Attucks are all buried. Colonial Williamsburg www.history.org This tourist site in Virginia, suitable for all ages, features shops, homes, and public buildings as they existed in the 1770s. In the Capitol Building on Duke of Gloucester Street, Patrick Henry stirred the House of Burgesses to oppose the Stamp Act in 1765. There are regular tours and candlelight evening programs. Tryon’s Palace Governor William Tryon erected this building in New Bern, North Carolina, in 1768 over the protests of Regulators. The Georgian mansion, with a handsome garden overlooking the Trent River, served as the colony’s first capitol. Now restored, Tryon Palace Historic Sites and Gardens is 112 miles east of Raleigh, the current capital. Alamance Battleground At this site, located on Route 62 near Burlington, North Carolina, Governor Tryon’s forces defeated the Regulators in 1771. In historic Hillsborough, 30 miles east, a plaque on a hillside at the end of King Street on the east side of the town marks the site where Regulator leaders were hanged. CHAPTER 6 ###8226; THE LIMITS OF IMPERIAL CONTROL, 1763###8211;1775 215 ${bmicon} Jack P. Greene, ed., Colonies to Nation: A Documentary History of the American Revolution (1975). Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (1968). Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (1972). Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (1982). Alfred F. Young, ed., The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (1976). John Francis Bannon, The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821 (1970). Richard Hough, Captain James Cook (1994). John L. Kessell, Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California (2002). Mark Santiago, Massacre at the Yuma Crossing: Spanish Relations with the Quechans, 1779–1782 (1998). Barbara Sweetland Smith and Redmond J. Barnett, eds., Russian America: The Forgotten Frontier (1990). John K. Alexander, Samuel Adams: America’s Revolutionary Politician (2002). John L. Bullion, A Great and Necessary Measure: George Grenville and the Genesis of the Stamp Act, 1763–1765 (1982). Gregory E. Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (1992). Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, 3rd ed. (1995). Peter D. G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution, 1763–1767 (1975). Peter D. G. Thomas, John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty (1996). Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967). Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (1981). Ronald Hoffman, A Spirit of Dissention: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland (1973). Marjoleine Kars, Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina (2002). Rachel N. Klein, Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Class in the South Carolina Backcountry, 1760–1808 (1990). Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974). Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (1999). John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the Revolution (1965). Peter D. G. Thomas, The Townshend Duties Crisis: The Second Phase of the American Revolution, 1767–1773 (1987). John W. Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the American Revolution (1986). David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (1994). Benjamin Woods Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (1964). Philip Lawson, The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution (1989). Peter D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of theAmerican Revolution, 1773–1776 (1991). Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (1999). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter6 To Chapter 6 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 216 ${bmicon}   1776 Thomas Paine, Common Sense. Declaration of Independence. Washington crosses the Delaware. New Jersey gives women the right to vote. 1777 Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga. 1778 U.S. forges an alliance with France. 1779 Sullivan’s campaign against the Iroquois. 1780 Charleston falls to the British. 1781 Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown. Articles of Confederation are ratified. 1783 Treaty of Paris. Newburgh Conspiracy is thwarted. 1785 Land Ordinance of 1785. 1786 Shays’s Rebellion. 1787 Constitutional Convention meets in Philadelphia. Constitution of the United States is signed. Northwest Ordinance creates Northwest Territory. 1789 George Washington is elected the first president of the U.S. U.S. Constitution goes into effect after ratification by nine states. 1789 Judiciary Act of 1789. 1790 First U.S. Census enumerates population of 4 million. Congress restricts citizenship to “free white persons.” Northern states take steps to abolish slavery. Miami Chief Little Turtle scores victory over U.S. troops. IN 1775, GREAT BRITAIN STILL POSSESSED ALL OF NORTH AMERICA EAST of the Mississippi River, from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. If the British could suppress the troublesome rebellion along the Atlantic seaboard, their prospects for expansion in America looked promising. Farther west, Spain had recently acquired the vast Louisiana Territory from France. The Spanish retained their dominance in the Southwest, and they were finally beginning to expand their claim to California by building a series of new missions and presidios. By 1803, however, the broad picture had changed markedly. In the Pacific Ocean, Europeans had encountered the Hawaiian Islands for the first time, Russian fur traders had consolidated their hold in Alaska, and Spanish vessels along the Pacific coast faced increasing competition from the ships of rival nations. The British still held Canada and Florida, but the 13 rebellious colonies had become an independent republic and had started to acquire new territories. The most spectacular acquisition was the Louisiana Territory, which the United States purchased in 1803, after Spain returned the region to the control of France. Few could have foreseen such an unlikely series of events in such a brief span of time. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776 at age 33. His generation had reluctantly become the effective leaders of a revolutionary movement by the mid-1770s. They contended ably with those who pushed for greater democratization, those who desired the stability of military rule, and even those who longed for the protection of the British monarchy. These unlikely revolutionary leaders were by no means united in all their views and actions. They argued fervently over constitutional issues, domestic policies, and foreign alignments. Most managed to reap personal rewards from the new society’s collective success. And they saw to it that these rewards reached far beyond their own households. Urban artisans, frontier farmers, and immigrant newcomers benefited from the removal of monarchy. Such positive developments inspired optimism for many, both at home and abroad. Yet although the revolutionary era fulfilled the expectations of numerous citizens, it failed to meet the hopes and aspirations of Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 217 ${bmicon}   many Americans. Many American merchants and planters, indebted to British interests before 1776, gained by the separation from Great Britain as creditors and investors in the new society. Many frontier farmers and army veterans, on the other hand, faced burdensome debts after the Revolutionary War. Women worried that the numerous written constitutions of the period were unresponsive to their interests. In 1776 only New Jersey gave the vote among property holders to “all free inhabitants,” including women. But this provision was undone a generation later, in 1807, when New Jersey men objected to the idea of women having the right to vote. From New Hampshire to Georgia, committed “Daughters of Liberty” had made possible colonial boycotts through their industry and had managed families, farms, and businesses during the dislocations of war. Female access to education and the courts improved somewhat in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but for most American women the advances were more symbolic than real. For African Americans the disappointments were greater still. British offers of freedom prompted thousands of southern slaves to take up the Loyalist cause at great personal risk. Other free blacks and slaves, primarily in the North, shouldered arms for the Patriots, drawn by the rhetoric of liberty and the prospect of advancement. Even though they had chosen the winning side, they reaped few benefits. Although the number of free blacks expanded after the Revolutionary War, the African slave trade to the United States resumed and gained official protection. Slavery itself gained renewed significance with the transition to cotton production in the South and a federal constitution that sanctioned the power of slaveholders. Even in the North, where gradual emancipation became the norm by the end of the century, free blacks found their welcome into white churches and schools to be so half-hearted that many set about organizing their own separate institutions. Eastern Indians, like African Americans, had good reason to distrust the Revolution and its leaders. The majority, including most Iroquois and Cherokee warriors, sided with the British and paid a steep price in defeat. Throughout the Mississippi Valley, Native Americans who still remembered the benefits of French trade and British military support faced relentless pressure as American speculators, soldiers, and settlers dissected their homelands. Some government officials promised that the newly acquired lands beyond the Mississippi would become an Indian Territory, providing lasting refuge for displaced eastern tribes. If so, what was to become of the Native American nations that already inhabited the western plains? Like most political upheavals, the American Revolution left many questions unanswered and much business unfinished. Even the new federal government itself, in operation for little more than a decade by 1803, remained a work in progress. The specific roles and relative power of the government’s three separate branches spurred endless debate, as did the proper place of the military and the most suitable direction for foreign policy. The Constitution ratified in 1789 seemed promising, but it remained an uncertain and largely untested framework. 1791 Bill of Rights is ratified. Saint Domingue slave revolt. Alexander Hamilton, “Report on the Subject of Manufactures.” Samuel Slater constructs first spinning machine on U.S. soil. Bank of the United States is chartered. 1792 Washington is reelected president. Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1793 Washington issues Neutrality Proclamation. Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin. 1794 U.S. troops defeat forces of Ohio Confederacy. Whiskey Rebellion. 1795 Jay’s Treaty. Treaty of San Lorenzo. 1796 Washington’s farewell address. John Adams is elected president. 1797 XYZ Affair. 1798 Quasi War with France (to 1800). Alien and Sedition Acts. Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798–1799). 1799 Seneca Leader Handsome Lake proclaims gai’wiio, or “Good Message.” 1800 Thomas Jefferson is elected president. Gabriel plot is exposed in Richmond, Virginia. 1801 Judiciary Act of 1801. War against Barbary pirates. Spain secretly cedes Louisiana Territory to France. 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Marbury v. Madison. full view Columbia as Indian Maiden Symbolic figure of Columbia as an Indian maiden. Though this image was popular during the Revolution, the symbol of the innocence and freedom of the new republic would soon appear more classically attired and without her Indian headdress. (Library of Congress) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 218 ${bmicon}         Declaring Independence       “Victory or Death”: Fighting for Survival       Legitimate States, a Respectable Military       The Long Road to Yorktown       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 219 ${bmicon} IN 1775, AFRICAN-BORN THOMAS PETERS WAS A 37-YEAR-OLD SLAVE IN WILMINGTON, North Carolina. As a young man, this Yoruba speaker had been taken from what is now Nigeria and shipped to Louisiana aboard the slave ship Henri Quatre. Forced to cut sugar cane in the French colony, Peters rebelled repeatedly. For this, he endured whipping, shackles, branding, and exile. His owner sold him to a merchant on North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, where he received his English name, learned to operate a grist mill, and started a family. Still enslaved, Peters was working as a millwright and living with his wife, Sally, age 22, and their 4-year-old daughter, Clairy, by the eve of the Revolutionary War. During the 15 years between Peters’s abduction from Africa in 1760 and the outbreak of hostilities between America and Britain in 1775, nearly 225,000 people had streamed into the British mainland colonies. More than half came from the British Isles (125,000), and another 15,000 arrived from Europe, mostly German-speaking settlers landing in Philadelphia. But the remaining 85,000 newcomers—or 4 in every 10—had all been purchased in Africa and enslaved in the coastal South. Thomas Peters, entering from Louisiana, was among the recent arrivals in British America. In the summer of 1775, Peters must have heard talk about possible slave revolts in Virginia and the Carolinas. Before the end of the year, he certainly knew that Virginia’s governor, Lord Dunmore, had offered freedom to slaves who would take up arms for the British. The following March, ships of the Royal Navy arrived at the Cape Fear River. The fleet carried a strike force under the command of Sir Henry Clinton, and it offered to provide safe haven for any slaves escaping from Patriot masters. For two months, the ships cruised the Lower Cape Fear, and Thomas and Sally Peters realized that the opportunity would not last. Joining numerous other black families, they risked arrest to gain their personal liberty by bolting to the British vessels. Peters was with General Clinton when the British fleet tried to take Charleston, South Carolina, in June 1776. Throughout the war, he served in a unit called the Black Pioneers. He was wounded twice and rose to the rank of sergeant. In October 1783, as defeated Loyalists left New York at the end of the Revolutionary War, the British officer in command of Peters’s company swore out a certificate attesting to his service and affirming that he had “gained the good wishes of his officers and comrades.” By serving, Peters had earned the promise of a farm in British Canada. He joined other members of the Black Pioneers aboard the Joseph James in New York harbor, bound for Nova Scotia. With him were Sally, Clairy, and 18-month-old John. Departing in November 1783, the ship was blown off course by foul weather. The ex-slaves spent the winter sheltered at Bermuda before finally joining 3500 other black Loyalists in Nova Scotia the following May. But reaching Nova Scotia did not mark the end of Thomas Peters’s odyssey. In 1790, after he and others had been denied the promised farmland, he ventured to London as an PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 220 ${bmicon} advocate for these former slaves. He protested their treatment, petitioned for relief, and met with British abolitionists who were planning a colony of former slaves in West Africa. Eager to take part in the effort, he returned to Canada and led 1200 African Americans to Sierra Leone, where he died at Freetown in 1792. In 32 years, Peters had seen New Orleans, Wilmington, Charleston, New York, Halifax, and London. He had escaped after 16 years of enslavement and then gone to war, fighting for his belief in freedom and for the safety of family and friends. Though Thomas Peters’s saga is unusual, it helps to illustrate an overriding point about the Revolutionary War. Although it has often been represented as such a simple “family affair,” the American War of Independence was not, in fact, a clear, two-sided struggle in which unified English colonists joined together to oppose the English monarchy and Parliament. Instead, like most revolutions, it was a conflict fought by loose and shifting coalitions. After decades of intensive migration, the mainland colonies had become increasingly complex (and in many ways non-English) societies. At a personal level, innumerable options existed to create fresh personal alliances, marrying someone who differed in language, ethnicity, religion, or class. Similarly, in a time of strife, there were countless possibilities for forging political “marriages of convenience” between different regions, groups, and interests. Where would merchants and sailors, wives and widows, servants and slaves, farmers and shopkeepers wind up in the emerging alignment between the Patriots (or rebels) on one hand and the Loyalists (or Tories) on the other? And what about dozens of other possible groupings, such as debtors, Catholics, young people, or frontier dwellers? Given the diversity of people with a stake in the outcome of the war, almost any combination seemed plausible. Within each small community, and within the Atlantic theater as a whole, alliances often proved the old adage that “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” No doubt Thomas Peters escaped servitude to join the British in part because the man who had been holding him in slavery was a leading member of the local Sons of Liberty. Likewise, powerful colonial merchants like John Hancock and Henry Laurens threw in their lot with the crowds in the streets in part because they had grown disillusioned with the political and commercial controls exerted by Parliament. On the international scale, the monarchies of France and Spain eventually swallowed their dislike for American rhetoric to join in a war that allowed them an opportunity to attack their longstanding rival, Britain. On the other hand, many Cherokee and Iroquois Indians, disillusioned by contact with land-hungry settlers, cast their lot with the British forces from overseas. Precisely because the alliances were so numerous and complex, they often remained problematic and incomplete. Not all Iroquois warriors or African slaves sided with the British, and by no means all New England merchants or Virginia planters embraced the Patriot cause. In a landscape marked by uncertainty, large numbers of people at all levels of society opted for cautious neutrality as long as they could, while others shifted their allegiance as the winds changed. It was even possible, as the dramatic case of Benedict Arnold made clear, to betray a post of trusted leadership on one side and assume a position of authority on the other. Not surprisingly, given so many complexities and uncertainties, the final outcome of the conflict remained a source of constant doubt. Looking back, Americans often view the results of the Revolutionary War as inevitable, perhaps even foreordained. In fact, the end result—and thus independence itself—hung in the balance for years. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 221 ${bmicon} full view MAP 7.1 BRITAIN AT WAR: THE GLOBAL CONTEXT, 1778–1783 For Britain, the war that began in 1775 expanded into a worldwide conflict against rival European powers within three years. By 1783, the British lost American colonies while expanding their hold in India. The lifetime journey of African-born Thomas Peters, shown here, is clearly exceptional, but extensive movements figured in many lives during these years of warfare. General Cornwallis, for example, went on to serve the British in India after his defeat at Yorktown in 1781. New England’s Minutemen had rallied swiftly at Lexington and Concord to harry the British. They moved equally quickly to spread news of their success in all directions. A ship carrying the Patriot version of events arrived in England two weeks before the dispatches of General Gage. Word reached Charleston, South Carolina, by early May and soon spread west beyond the Appalachian Mountains. When hunters exploring the blue-grass region heard the news, they named their campsite Lexington, now a city in modernday Kentucky. full view The American Revolution From April 1775 until Cornwallis’s surrender in 1781, Americans fought for their independence from Britain. A major turning point came in 1777, when the French joined with the Americans after the British defeat at Saratoga. Peace terms were not finalized until 1783, when the last British soldiers left New York. In the ensuing months, Congress took the initial steps to form a Continental Army. It also launched efforts to force the British out of Boston and to pull Canada into the rebellion. If these predominantly Protestant rebels hoped to draw the French Catholics of Quebec into their revolt, would free whites also be eager to include the blacks of Boston, Williamsburg, and Charleston in the struggle for liberty? Or would it be British officials who recruited more African Americans and furnished them with arms? After all, determined ex-slaves like Thomas Peters represented a serious threat to their former masters and a stark reminder to other slave owners who contemplated joining the colonists’ rebellion. The answers to such questions became clear in the 15 months between the skirmish at Lexington and the decision of Congress to declare political independence from Britain in July 1776. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 222 ${bmicon} Enthusiasm ran high in Philadelphia in May 1775 as the second Continental Congress assembled amid cheers and parades. Delegates moved quickly in the weeks that followed to put the beleaguered colonies on a wartime footing. They instructed New York to build fortifications. They also paid for a dozen new companies of riflemen—recruited in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia—to be sent north to aid the Minutemen surrounding Boston. They created an Army Department under the command of a New York aristocrat, General Philip Schuyler, and approved an issue of $2 million in currency to fund the military buildup. The Congress also took important steps to ensure a coalition between the southern and the northern colonies. In late May, word arrived from Lake Champlain in New York of a victory for the Green Mountain Boys (farmers led by Ethan Allen, from the area that became Vermont) and soldiers under Benedict Arnold of Connecticut. They had captured Fort Ticonderoga, along with all its cannon (heavy arms the new Army Department needed badly). This initiative not only secured the Hudson Valley against a British attack from the north; it also allowed Schuyler to propose a strike against Montreal and Quebec via Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. Congress approved the assault, to be led by General Richard Montgomery. It also approved a daring scheme submitted by Arnold. He planned to lead separate forces up the Kennebec River. They would assist Montgomery in seizing Quebec and winning Canada before the region could become a staging ground for British armies. But no single action by Congress had greater implications for coalition building among the colonies than the one taken on June 15, 1775. That day, members voted unanimously to appoint George Washington, a 43-year-old delegate from Virginia, “to command all the continental forces.” Colonel Washington already headed a committee that was drawing up regulations to run the new army, and he had notable military experience. But his strongest asset may have been his southern roots. Northern delegates—especially John Adams, who had nominated Washington—sensed the need to foster colonial unity by placing a non–New Englander in charge of the army outside Boston. For their part, Southerners sensed keen regional differences, particularly over slavery. They appeared jealous, as one delegate noted, “lest an enterprising New England general, proving successful, might with his victorious army” enforce control over “the southern gentry.” full view Independence Hall Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, was the site of the interim capitol before Washington D.C. became the permanent home for the United States government. (Library of Congress) In military and political terms, the selection of Washington proved auspicious. The tall, imposing planter from Mount Vernon emerged as a durable and respected leader in both war and peace. At another level, however, putting a slaveholder in command signaled the beginning of an important alliance between the well-to-do regional leaders of the North and South. Although no one could foresee it at the time, this alliance would contribute to the particular shape of the Federal Constitution a dozen years later, and the bond endured sufficiently to shape the governing of the country until the middle of the next century. The selection of Washington strengthened the hand of plantation owners in the emerging coalition across regions. But in so doing, it signaled a limit to the prospects for any major or lasting American coalition across racial lines. The move sent a stronger message than Congress realized to some half a million African Americans, increasing their skepticism about the Patriot cause and spurring many of them—including Tom Peters, no doubt—to risk siding with the British. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 223 ${bmicon} full view MAP 7.2 OVERVIEW OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR For their part, the British gave increasing thought to the idea of befriending enslaved Africans in order to undermine rebellious planters. In June 1775, the British commander in America, Thomas Gage, wrote to London: “Things are now come to that crisis, that we must avail ourselves of every resource, even to raise the Negros, in our cause.” One Lutheran minister who spoke to black house servants near Philadelphia the next year noted that they “secretly wished that the British Army might win, for then all Negro slaves will gain their freedom. It is said that this sentiment is almost universal among the Negroes in America.” In the South, rumors of liberation swept through the large African American community during 1775. Slaveholding rebel authorities countered with harsh measures to quell black Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 224 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY “Revoking Those Sacred Trusts Which Are Violated”: A Declaration Signed by 15 Grand Jury Members in South Carolina, May 1776 Throughout the late spring of 1776, provincial assemblies, town meetings, and grand juries in the 13 colonies began issuing their own pronouncements regarding a break with Great Britain. The authors drew on historical precedent, legal tradition, and emotional sentiment. They mixed lofty theory and Real Whig ideology with local concerns. They also incorporated rhetoric and ideas from current pamphlets, speeches, and newspaper essays. At least 90 of these proclamations survive. Most are more impressive for their strong feelings than for their literary merit. But taken together, they suggest the sentiments, arguments, and words that were in the air when Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. This document was drawn up and signed by 15 members of the Cheraw District grand jury who came together for their regular court session in Long Bluff, South Carolina, on Monday, May 20, 1776. The Presentments of the Grand Jury of and for the Said District I. When a people, born and bred in a land of freedom and virtue … are convinced of the wicked schemes of their treacherous rulers to fetter them with the chains of servitude, and rob them of every noble and desirable privilege which distinguishes them as freemen,—justice, humanity, and the immutable laws of God, justify and support them in revoking those sacred trusts which are so impiously violated, and placing them in such hands as are most likely to execute them in the manner and for the important ends for which they were first given. II. The good people of this Colony, with the rest of her sister Colonies, confiding in the justice and merited protection of the King and Parliament of Great Britain, ever … esteemed such a bond of union and harmony as the greatest happiness. But when that protection was wantonly withdrawn, and every mark of cruelty and oppression substituted;… self-preservation, and a regard to our own welfare and security, became a consideration both important and necessary. The Parliament and Ministry of Great Britain, by their wanton and undeserved persecutions, have reduced this Colony to a state of separation from her … as the only lasting means of future happiness and safety…. Cast off, persecuted, defamed, given up as a prey to every violence and injury, a righteous and much injured people have at length appealed to God! and, trusting to his divine justice and their own virtuous perseverance, taken the only and last means of securing their own honour, safety, and happiness. III. We now feel every joyful and comfortable hope that a people could desire in the present Constitution and form of Government established in this Colony; a Constitution founded on the strictest principles of justice and humanity, where the rights and happiness of the whole, the poor and the rich, are equally secured; and to secure and defend which, it is the particular interest of every individual who regards his own safety and advantage. IV. When we consider the publick officers of our present form of Government now appointed, as well as the method and duration of their appointment, we cannot but declare our entire satisfaction and comfort; as well in the characters of such men, who are justly esteemed for every virtue, as their well-known abilities to execute the important trusts which they now hold. V. Under these convictions, … we … recommend it to every man … to secure and defend with his life and fortune a form of Government so just, so equitable, and promising;… that the latest posterity may enjoy the virtuous fruits of that work, which the integrity and fortitude of the present age had, at the expense of their blood and treasure, at length happily effected. VI. We cannot but declare how great the pleasure, the harmony, and political union which now exists in this District affords; and having no grievances to complain of, only beg leave to recommend that a new Jury list be made for this District, the present being insufficient. And lastly, we beg leave … that these our presentments be printed in the publick papers.—PHILIP PLEDGER, Foreman [and 14 other signatures] Source: Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1997), 229–231. unrest. In Charleston that spring, they deported an African-born minister, David Margate, for preaching a sermon that hinted at equality. Also, they focused their attention on a prominent free black man named Thomas Jeremiah, who had prospered as a skilled pilot guiding vessels between treacherous sand bars into the busy South Carolina port. In April, Jeremiah supposedly told an enslaved dockworker of a great war coming and urged slaves to prepare to seize the opportunity. Weeks later, nervous Patriot planters made the well-known free black into a scapegoat, accusing him of involvement in a plot to smuggle guns ashore from British ships to support a slave uprising. In August 1775, despite a lack of hard evidence against him, Jeremiah was publicly hanged and then burned. That September, a Georgia delegate to Congress made a startling comment. If British troops were to land on the southern coast with a supply of food and guns, he said, and offer freedom to slaves who would join them, 20,000 blacks from Georgia and South Carolina would materialize in no time. In November, the beleaguered royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, attempted just such a scheme. Dunmore issued a proclamation granting freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who agreed to take up arms on behalf of the king. Hundreds responded to Dunmore’s proclamation. They formed the Ethiopian Regiment and wore sashes proclaiming “Liberty to Slaves.” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 225 ${bmicon} In the North, British forces had been confined in Boston ever since the Battle of Lexington. They would remain isolated on the town’s main peninsula, supported by the Royal Navy, for nearly a year. In early July 1775, Washington arrived at nearby Cambridge to take up his command and oversee the siege of Boston. He quickly set out to improve order among his men. He tightened discipline, enforced punishments, and calmed regional jealousies. He removed nearly a dozen incompetent officers. In addition, he wrote scores of letters to civilian political leaders and the president of Congress to muster support for his meager army. The Massachusetts legislature alone received 34 messages from the new commander. Washington made clear that nearly everything was in short supply, from tents and uniforms to muskets and cannon. He dispatched 25-year-old Henry Knox, a former bookseller and future general, to retrieve the ordnance captured at Ticonderoga. The Patriots’ siege of Boston, he informed Congress, could not succeed without heavy fieldpieces to bombard the city from the heights at Dorchester and Charlestown that lay across the water. Even before Washington’s arrival, the British and the Americans had vied for control of these strategic heights. Indeed, the British General Gage drew up plans to secure Charlestown PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 226 ${bmicon} peninsula by seizing its highest point, Bunker Hill. But the Patriots learned of the scheme. On the night of June 16, 1775, they moved to fortify Breed’s Hill, a smaller knoll 600 yards in front of Bunker Hill. The next afternoon, 1500 well-entrenched but inexperienced Patriot volunteers confronted the full force of the British army as thousands watched from the rooftops of Boston. Although Gage might easily have sealed off Charlestown peninsula with his naval power, he instead used 2500 British infantry, weighed down by heavy packs, to launch three frontal attacks up Breed’s Hill from the shoreline. The first two charges fell back before withering volleys at close range. Finally, with adjoining Charlestown ablaze and rebel powder supplies exhausted, a third assault overran the hill and dislodged the Americans. Mistakenly, the engagement became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Although it was technically a British victory, success came at a terrible price. Forty-two percent of British troops (1054 men) were wounded or dead—the worst casualty figures of the entire war. Gage lost his command, replaced in October by General William Howe. The Royal Army itself lost its aura of invincibility. As Washington used the last half of 1775 to organize his rudimentary army in Cambridge, Henry Knox pursued his mission to retrieve the captured British ordnance from Ticonderoga. Using oxen, sledges, and local volunteers, he managed to haul 43 heavy cannon east, across trails covered with snow and ice, from the Hudson Valley to the coast. His men delivered the guns in late winter, and in March 1776 the Americans moved to secure Dorchester Heights. As at Breed’s Hill, they made their surprise move at night. But this time, they had cannon that could reach far enough to bombard their enemies huddled in Boston. The British General Howe, who had commanded the charges at Breed’s Hill and seen the devastation, drew back from a similar assault on Dorchester Heights. Instead, he evacuated his army, retreating by ship to Halifax, Nova Scotia. There, he made plans to attack the rebels again at New York, where Loyalist support was stronger. As Washington’s forces laid siege to Boston, other Americans converged on British troops in Canada. General Montgomery’s troops seized Montreal in November 1775. They then descended the St. Lawrence River to join Benedict Arnold’s men, who had struggled north toward Quebec under brutal winter conditions. As one combined force, under Montgomery, they attacked the walled city during a fierce snowstorm on the night of December 30. But their assault failed, and Montgomery perished in the fighting. Smallpox had already broken out in the American ranks, and it spread to new arrivals during the next five months. When British reinforcements showed up at Quebec in May, the Americans beat a hasty retreat toward Lake Champlain. They left behind most of their baggage and hundreds of sick companions. Hundreds more died of smallpox during the withdrawal of the shattered army, and others spread the deadly pox further as they returned to their New England homes. “I got an account of my johns Death of the Small Pox at Canada,” one New Hampshire father scrawled in his diary after learning that his 24-year-old son had died while fighting against the King’s forces. “He was shot through his left arm at Bunker Hill.” Now, “in defending the just Rights of America,” John had been taken “in the prime of life by means of that wicked Tyranical Brute (Nea worse than Brute) of Great Britan.” In thousands of American households, strained loyalty was turning to explosive anger. full view Common Sense - Title Page Title page of Common Sense, where Thomas Paine articulated the thoughts of rebellion and independence that others had not dared. He did not put his name on the title page, though he was soon identified as the author. (Library of Congress) In January 1776, a brilliant pamphlet, Common Sense, captured the shifting mood and helped propel Americans toward independence. British corsetmaker Thomas Paine, age 39, had endured a long series of personal and economic failures in England before sailing to Philadelphia. To this passionate man, with his gift for powerful and accessible prose, America represented a fresh start. Arriving late in 1774, Paine poured his energy into bold newspaper essays. In one, he argued that African American slaves deserved freedom and ample land to become productive citizen–farmers. CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 227 ${bmicon} Paine’s Common Sense was a wildly popular tract, selling 120,000 copies in three months and reaching all sorts of readers. In it, the author promised to lay out “simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense” on the precarious American situation. He then proceeded to lambaste “the so much boasted constitution of England.” Not stopping there, he went on to attack hereditary monarchy and the divine right of kings. “One honest man,” Paine proclaimed, is worth more to society “than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.” He urged the creation of an independent constitutional republic that could become “an asylum for all mankind.” “Reconciliation is now a fallacious dream,” he argued: “’TIS TIME TO PART.” Thousands of Paine’s avid readers agreed. In the spring of 1776, one colony after another instructed its representatives to vote for independence. But many among the well-to-do still held strong social and economic ties to London; they feared the loss of British imperial protection and the startling upsurge of democratic political activity among the lower orders. At first, Congress vacillated. But with no sign of accommodation from England, most members agreed with Robert Livingston of New York that “they should yield to the torrent if they hoped to direct its course.” In early June, young Livingston, age 30, joined the committee assigned to prepare a formal statement declaring independence from Great Britain. The Committee of Five also included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and the second youngest member of the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson. The 33-year-old Jefferson had recently returned to Philadelphia from Virginia, where his mother had died suddenly in March. Personally independent for the first time, he willingly took responsibility for crafting the document. He framed a stirring preamble, drawing on British philosopher John Locke’s contract theory of government. Locke (1632–1702) believed that the sovereign power ultimately resided not in government but in the people themselves, who chose to submit voluntarily to civil law to protect property and preserve basic rights. According to Locke, rulers held conditional, not absolute, authority over the people. Citizens therefore held the right to end their support and overthrow any government that did not PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 228 ${bmicon} fulfill its side of the contract. For any people facing “a long train of abuses,” Jefferson wrote, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.” He went on to catalogue the “repeated injuries and usurpations” committed by King George III. Meanwhile, on July 2, Congress voted on the statement affirming that “these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States.” Twelve colonies voted to approve a resolution, with the New York delegation abstaining until it could receive further instructions from home. Having made the fundamental decision, the delegates then considered how to “declare the causes” behind their momentous choice to separate from Great Britain. Over the next two days, all the Congress members edited the draft declaration submitted by the Committee of Five. They kept Jefferson’s idealistic assertion that “all men are created equal.” But they removed any reference to slavery, except for the charge that the king had “excited domestic insurrections amongst us,” a veiled reference to the Thomas Jeremiah debacle in Charleston and to Lord Dunmore’s proclamation. With other changes in place, they finally voted to approve the revised Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. John Hancock, the president of the Congress, signed the document with a flourish, and printers hastily turned it into a published broadside. The other signatures (contrary to folklore) came two weeks later, after New York had offered its approval. Then 56 delegates gathered to sign their names to “The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.” They did so at great risk. As they endorsed the document with their signatures, they knew that they were opening themselves to face charges of treason, punishable by death. While the Continental Congress debated whether to declare independence, the British sharpened their strategies for suppressing the rebellion. Strangling the revolt with a naval blockade appeared impossible, given the length of the American coastline. But two other alternatives emerged in the first year of open warfare. These options shaped British intentions throughout the rest of the conflict. One design involved a southern strategy. It rested on the assumption that loyalty to the crown remained strongest in the South. If the British could land forces below Chesapeake Bay, Loyalist support might enable them to gain the upper hand and push north to reimpose colonial rule elsewhere. In June 1776 troops under General Henry Clinton arrived off the Carolina coast with such a mission in mind. But Loyalists had already lost a battle to the Patriots at Moore’s Creek Bridge near Wilmington, North Carolina, in February, and the British ships sailed to South Carolina instead. On June 28, they bombarded Sullivan’s Island, at the mouth of Charleston harbor. But the Americans’ cypress log fortress withstood the cannon fire, and the attackers withdrew. The British did not renew their southern design for several years, concentrating instead on a separate northern strategy. According to Britain’s alternative northern plan, troops would seize New York City and then divide the rebellious colonies in two at the Hudson River. By advancing upriver while other forces pushed south from Canada, they would take control of the entire Hudson Valley. Then, having sealed off New England, they could finally crush the radicals in Massachusetts who had spearheaded the revolt while restoring the loyalties of inhabitants farther south. Lord George Germain, the aggressive new British cabinet minister in charge of American affairs, favored this plan. An overwhelming strike, he asserted, could “finish the rebellion in one campaign.” full view New York Burning - 1776 New York burning in September 1776. The fire was apparently set by a defiant Patriot woman as American troops unsuccessfully fought for control of the city. (Library of Congress) Early in 1776, Germain set out to generate a land and sea offensive of unprecedented scale. He prodded the sluggish Admiralty for ships, and when he could not raise troops swiftly at home, he rented them from abroad. Empress Catherine of Russia declined a request for 20,000 soldiers, but the German states produced 18,000 mercenaries. Eventually, 30,000 German troops traveled to America, so many of them from the state of Hesse-Cassel that onlookers called all of them Hessians. Canada, having already repulsed Montgomery’s American invasion, could provide a loyal staging ground in the north. “I have always thought Hudson’s River the most proper part of the Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 229 ${bmicon} whole continent for opening vigorous operations,” observed “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne, the dapper and worldly British general who arrived at Quebec with reinforcements in May 1776. But plans for a strike south from Canada had to wait. Britain made its first thrust toward the mouth of the Hudson River by sea, using nearly 400 ships. In June, a convoy under General William Howe sailed from Halifax to Staten Island, New York, with 9000 soldiers. By mid-August, the general had received 20,000 reinforcements from across the Atlantic. His brother, Admiral Richard Howe, hovered nearby with 13,000 sailors aboard 70 naval vessels. full view The Tory’s Day of Judgment - Engraving Engraving of The Tory’s Day of Judgment which shows a mob harassing British loyalists. The three British Tories are wearing wigs and breeches. (Library of Congress) On orders from Congress, General Washington moved south to defend New York City, a difficult task made harder by ardent Loyalist sentiment. Rumors swirled of a Loyalist plot to kidnap the general or even take his life. A bodyguard named Thomas Hickey, implicated in the Tory scheme, was hanged before a huge crowd of anxious onlookers in late June. Intrigue aside, Washington’s army lacked the numbers, equipment, and naval support to defend New York properly. The general weakened it further by dividing his troops between Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights on nearby Long Island. A month after Congress members signed the Declaration of Independence, the commander nearly lost his entire force—and the cause itself. General Howe moved his troops by water from Staten Island to the Brooklyn area and then outflanked and scattered the poorly trained Americans in the Battle of Long Island on August 27. Remarkably, the British leader called off a direct attack that almost certainly would have overrun the American batteries on Brooklyn Heights. Perhaps Howe remembered yet again the heavy toll that a similar assault had taken on his forces at Bunker Hill. When his equally cautious brother failed to seal off the East River with ships, rebel troops escaped disaster by slipping back to New York City in small boats under cover of night and fog. Washington’s narrow escape to Lower Manhattan from Long Island in August 1776 was only the first of numerous retreats. His army left New York City on September 15. (Congress counseled the American forces against destroying the town as they departed, but a suspicious fire devastated much of the city a week later.) The rebels withdrew from upper Manhattan and Westchester in October and from Fort Washington and Fort Lee PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 230 ${bmicon} on the Hudson—with heavy losses—in November. The Americans “fled like scared rabbits,” one Englishman wrote. “They have left some poor pork, a few greasy proclamations, and some of that scoundrel Common Sense man’s letters, which we can read at our leisure.” With winter at hand, the ragged Continental forces retreated southeast toward Philadelphia, plagued by deserting troops and low morale. But thanks to the unlikely success of one desperate maneuver—recrossing the Delaware River by night—they survived to renew their efforts in 1777. By the end of the next campaign season, two and a half years after the skirmish at Lexington, their powerful adversaries stumbled badly. Still, it was a long 14 months between the painful withdrawal from New York City and a stunning victory that finally came at Saratoga, 185 miles up the Hudson. As the American army retreated from New York late in 1776, General Howe repeatedly failed to press his advantage. The British commander and his brother had received a commission from Lord North, who headed the government in London, permitting them to negotiate a peace settlement with the Americans whenever possible. They hoped that a strong show of force, without a vicious offensive that might alienate civilians, could bring the enemy to terms. Howe’s troops captured General Charles Lee, second in the American command, as they chased Washington across New Jersey. They also offered pardons to repentant rebels and encouraged desertions form Washington’s army. In early December, the dwindling American force hurried through Princeton and slipped across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Confident of victory, the British again failed to pursue them, instead making camp at Trenton. Washington realized that unless circumstances changed quickly, “the game will be pretty well up.” Distressed by civilian talk of surrender, Tom Paine again took up his pen. In the Pennsylvania Journal for December 19, he launched a new series of essays called “The American Crisis.” The series began with the ringing words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Paine mocked “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” who shrank from extreme trials, and he chided Lord North’s administration for so underestimating “our abilities and disposition.” Just when Britain “supposed us conquered,” Paine predicted hopefully, “we rose the conquerer.” Action soon followed words. On Christmas Day 1776, Washington issued a new code phrase for sentinels: “Victory or Death.” He ordered Paine’s words read aloud to the troops. Then, after dark, his men recrossed the windswept Delaware River in a driving snowstorm and advanced on Trenton. Overconfidence, holiday festivities, and the foul weather had left the enemy unprepared. The Americans inflicted a startling defeat, killing several dozen and capturing more than 900 Hessian soldiers. Few Patriot soldiers could converse with their German-speaking captives, but they could see first-hand that their opponents had superior resources. Both the British and their Hessian mercenaries possessed standardized equipment and ample supplies. The Americans, in contrast, were expected to provide their own firearms, and soldiers who brought a blanket from home earned a bonus. On enlisting, they were generally offered 40 shillings a month and a new issue of clothes, but the cost of their outfit came out of their pay at 10 shillings per month. Food was poor, rifle balls were makeshift, and gunpowder was so scarce that earlier in the year Benjamin Franklin had seriously proposed the use of bows and arrows. Most soldiers had signed up to serve for a brief term and return home, and many had joined the previous January for a one-year stint. Washington knew that numerous enlistments expired on December 31 and that men would leave if the brief offensive halted. So he advanced again on December 30. Howe sent fresh troops forward under Charles Cornwallis to confront the rebels, pinning them down at Trenton. But when the British paused before attacking, the Americans left their campfires burn- CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 231 ${bmicon} ing and slipped out of reach. They then circled behind Cornwallis to surprise and defeat his reinforcements at Princeton on January 3. It was not the last time that Washington bested Cornwallis. But for now, the victories at Trenton and Princeton restored a glimmer of hope for the tattered Continental Army as it took up winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey. When Howe withdrew his forces from much of New Jersey, anxious civilians who had sworn their loyalty to the crown felt deserted. Public sentiment again swung toward the rebels. More importantly, news of the victories spurred support for the American cause overseas in France. Eager to see their powerful rival bogged down in a colonial war, the French dispatched secret shipments of munitions to aid the revolutionaries. One young aristocrat, the idealistic Marquis de Lafayette, was already on his way from France to volunteer his services to General Washington. But it took a larger show of success to draw forth an official French commitment to the American cause. Among the Americans, two years of grim conflict had dampened the initial zeal for rebellion that had prompted citizen soldiers to enlist. Washington believed that the armed resistance could scarcely continue unless many more men made longer commitments to fight. They needed better pay, he insisted, and tighter discipline. Congress members reluctantly agreed. Though opposed in principle to a professional standing army, Congress expanded the commander’s disciplinary powers and approved a bonus for men who enlisted for three-year terms. Faced with a slumping economy, numerous recruits answered the call, including recent immigrants and unemployed artisans. All lacked training, supplies, and experience; many also lacked immunity to smallpox. Most of the enemy soldiers had acquired immunity from the PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 232 ${bmicon} devastating disease in Europe by surviving frequent epidemics. In contrast, Washington’s rural recruits came from isolated townships and had never been exposed to the disease. When smallpox broke out among the American soldiers at Morristown, the commander promptly ordered inoculation. Because the process brings on a mild case of the disease, he anxiously counted the days until his rebuilding army could be ready to fight. “If Howe does not take advantage of our weak state,” Washington commented in April 1777, “he is very unfit for his trust.” Despite the Americans’ vulnerability, the British were slow to move. By seeking both a decisive blow and a negotiated settlement in 1776, they had achieved neither objective. George Germain and his colleagues in Lord North’s ministry had fallen victim to contradictions in their own cumbersome planning process. They had also underestimated the persistence of Washington’s army. During the campaigns of 1777, the British learned further hard lessons about the difficulty of the task facing them and the need for tight coordination of plans. General Burgoyne, returning to London for the winter, won government support for a major new offensive. He planned to lead a large force south from Canada via Lake Champlain, using the Hudson Valley to drive a wedge through the rebellious colonies. In support, a combined British and Indian force would strike east from Lake Ontario, capturing Fort Stanwix (east of modern-day Syracuse, New York) and descending the Mohawk River to meet Burgoyne at Albany. Howe would push north from New York City to complete the design. But General Howe had formed a different plan. Assuming Burgoyne would not need his help in the Hudson Valley, he intended to move south against Philadelphia. The two generals never integrated their separate operations, and the results were disastrous. In one six-month span, the British bungled their best chance for victory and handed their enemies an opening that permanently shifted the course of the war. The isolated operations of Burgoyne and Howe got off to slow starts in late June 1777. Howe used up two months in moving his troops by sea from New York harbor to the headwaters of Chesapeake Bay. This delay gave the Americans time to march south to check the British advance on Philadelphia. But at the Battle of Brandywine Creek (September 11, 1777), Howe bested Washington once again, using the same flanking maneuver that had worked so well on Long Island the year before. The British general finally marched into Philadelphia in late September, only to find that the rebel Congress had retreated to York, Pennsylvania. With pacifist Quakers and active Tories in the area, Washington could count on little support from local militia. Nevertheless, he launched a surprise attack against the large Hessian garrison at Germantown just north of Philadelphia on the morning of October 4. He hoped to repeat his previous success at Trenton. However, dawn fog created so much confusion that the inexperienced Patriot troops “ran from victory,” according to American general Anthony Wayne. Yet as Washington led his battered army to winter quarters at nearby Valley Forge, the defeats at Brandywine and Germantown seemed worth the price. The Americans had gained needed combat experience and had made Howe pay heavily in men and in time for his hollow capture of Philadelphia. “Now,” Washington wrote expectantly, “let all New England turn out and crush Burgoyne.” full view George Washington at Valley Forge George Washington at Valley Forge (Photodisc, Inc.) Moving south from Canada in late June, “Gentleman Johnny” saw little likelihood of being crushed. His huge army consisted of 7200 soldiers, with 1500 horses to haul baggage and heavy equipment. The British officers believed their force to be irresistible and foresaw little danger. General Burgoyne even brought his mistress along on the campaign. Weakened by tensions in their own command and knowing the British were on the march, the Americans fell back from Crown Point and Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. But as British supply lines lengthened, the crown’s army grew less invincible. Burgoyne’s soldiers were forced to expend valuable time cutting a roadway through the wilderness. Also, CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 233 ${bmicon} the reinforcements anticipated from the west never arrived; Benedict Arnold turned them back at Fort Stanwix. Even worse, a British unit of 600 sent east to forage for corn and cattle was badly mauled by militia near Bennington. With cold weather approaching and his supplies dwindling, Burgoyne pushed toward Albany, unaware that Howe would not be sending help up the Hudson to meet him. As Burgoyne’s situation worsened, the American position improved. An arrogant British proclamation demanding submission from local residents only stiffened their resolve and drew out more rebel recruits. The Americans’ strength grew to nearly 7000 in September after Congress gave command in the Hudson Valley region to Horatio Gates. The new general was an ambitious English-born officer who harbored resentments toward his American superior, Washington, and toward the much-admired Benedict Arnold. While Burgoyne’s army crossed to the Hudson River’s west bank at Saratoga, Gates’s American forces dug in on Bemis Heights, 10 miles downstream. On September 19, 1777, Patriot units under two aggressive officers, Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan, confronted the enemy at Freeman’s Farm, not far from Saratoga. In the grueling battle, British forces suffered 556 dead or wounded, nearly twice the American losses. Gates’s refusal to commit reinforcements prevented the Patriots from achieving total victory. Nevertheless, he claimed success and saw to it that his nemesis, Arnold, later lost his command. In the weeks that followed, the American ranks swelled with new recruits who sensed a chance to inflict losses on Burgoyne’s forces. On October 7, the beleaguered British tried once more to smash southward, only to suffer defeat in a second battle at Freeman’s Farm. Morgan and Arnold once again played key roles, though Arnold suffered a crippling leg wound. When Burgoyne’s entire army of 5800 surrendered at nearby Saratoga ten days later, Gates took full credit for the stunning triumph. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 234 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Uncanny Similarities: Britain’s Vietnam? Does history repeat itself? Never exactly, of course, yet sometimes the general similarities can be striking. This applies not only to small incidents but also to larger historical events such as the American Revolution. Consider the following six paragraphs: The British had emerged victorious from a major world war just decades earlier. They took pride in their commercial dynamism, military strength, and cultural power. Also, they felt justifiably confident that their political institutions tended more toward liberty than those of their competitors. Still, step by step, they let themselves be drawn into a difficult conflict on a distant continent. At the time, the political and economic reasoning for entering combat made sense to most British leaders, especially because they were engaged in an ongoing struggle for global power with their major rival, France. But British forces soon discovered that they were unable to exert their full military superiority. Instead, they needed to work incessantly to win the “hearts and minds” of the people (a phrase coined by John Adams). They found the population in the theater of war to be deeply divided politically, although it was often difficult to determine just who supported the British presence and who opposed it. Commandeering local resources might alienate the very people they hoped to support. But supplying a large modern army with food and equipment across a wide ocean posed unprecedented logistical problems. Moreover, British recruits who had little personal stake in the conflict had to fight on unfamiliar terrain alongside soldiers of several nationalities. Career army officers found it difficult to maintain high morale among the British troops when facing a highly motivated citizen army opposed to colonialism of any kind. France, the rival superpower, provided extensive support to the enemy’s war effort to increase the capacity and willpower of a determined people’s army. Officers, diplomats, and politicians in France hoped to keep large portions of the British army and navy tied up in a long and expensive war. That way, troops and resources were unavailable for engagements in other parts of the world. At home, despite well-intentioned efforts, charges of corruption and inefficiency within the British bureaucracy and military establishment weakened the war effort. Opposition to the war slowly expanded within vocal portions of the British public. As casualties rose and the nation’s deficit spending increased, the war became a divisive domestic issue. After years of fighting, successful enemy offensives underscored the army’s weak position. The British concentrated their final efforts in the southern part of the country, where support remained strongest. Finally, successive defeats (and a desire to protect British interests elsewhere in the world) prompted the full-scale evacuation of the army. As the troops departed, they were accompanied by thousands of civilians who had remained loyal supporters. After nearly a decade, the British and their enemies negotiated a peace treaty in Paris, and the long war came to a conclusion. But ill will lingered between the two countries for another generation before they finally resumed peaceful commerce. This seems a brief and plausible overview of events, at least from a British perspective. But now try going over these six paragraphs again. This time, for each use of the word British read American, and for France read the Soviet Union. Surprisingly, two centuries after the War of Independence, the United States found itself in a situation that bore remarkable similarities to the British position during the American Revolution. Again, a powerful English-speaking empire (this time an informal one) seemed to have overextended its reach across a western ocean. Americans now have three decades of perspective on the Vietnam War. In a new generation that did not experience the conflict first-hand, many feel a keen interest in understanding its lessons. For historians, comparison is a traditional tool for such inquiry. They often seek out similarities between two historical people or episodes and then test the comparison, seeing where it works best, where it breaks down, and where it leads to new comparisons or deeper insights. Could learning more about Vietnam possibly help to put the American Revolution in a new light—and vice versa? Ever since declaring independence, Congress had maneuvered to win international recognition for the new nation and aid for its military cause. While claiming neutrality, the Dutch supplied gunpowder for the rebellion through their West Indian island of St. Eustatius. In November 1776 they fired cannon there to salute an American ship—the first foreign acknowledgment of American sovereignty. Weeks later, Benjamin Franklin arrived in France as part of a commission sent to seek wider European support. It was one thing for the Dutch Republic to recognize fellow republicans; it was quite another for the French king, Louis XVI, to endorse a revolution that opposed monarchy. Some in France, like the young marquis de Lafayette, felt enthusiasm for the American cause as an expression of rational enlightenment beliefs. But others, such as France’s foreign minister, Comte de Vergennes, saw the colonists’ revolt as an opportunity to avenge old grievances against Britain and undermine British power. Uncertain about the rebellion’s chances for success, especially after the fall of Philadelphia, the government in Paris moved cautiously. It confined itself to substantial but covert assistance in the form of money and arms. Word of the American victory at Saratoga suddenly gave Franklin more room to maneuver. When he hinted to the French that he might bargain directly with London for peace, Vergennes moved immediately to recognize American independence. France agreed to renounce Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 235 ${bmicon} forever any claim to English land in North America, and Franklin promised that the Americans would help defend French holdings in the Caribbean. Both parties pledged to defend the liberty of the new republic, and each agreed not to conclude a separate peace with Great Britain or to cease fighting until U.S. independence had been ensured by formal treaty. In May 1778 the Continental Congress approved this alliance. The next month, France entered the war, adding its enormous wealth and power to the American cause. A year later, Spain—unwilling to ally itself directly with the upstart republic but eager to protect its vast American assets from Great Britain—entered the war on the side of France. For the British, what had been a colonial brushfire swiftly flared into a global conflict reminiscent of the Seven Years’ War. These new hostilities with France meant possible invasions at home. Equally worrisome, they meant inevitable attacks on outposts of Britain’s empire around the world, from the Mediterranean Straits of Gibraltar to India’s Bay of Bengal. Over several years, French ships seized Senegal in West Africa, took Grenada in the West Indies, and burned trading factories at Churchill and York on Hudson Bay. London’s annual war expenditures climbed from £4 million in 1775 to £20 million in 1782. As these costs mounted, British domestic opposition to the war in America intensified. Some members of Parliament pushed for a swift settlement. In 1778 a peace commission led by Lord Carlisle offered concessions to the Continental Congress, hoping to tear the French alliance apart. But the Carlisle Commission failed to win a reconciliation. Other Britons went PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 236 ${bmicon} further in opposing the American war. Their diverse reasons included fear of French power, desire for American trade, disgust over war profiteering, hatred of government corruption, ties to friends in America, and idealistic belief in the revolution’s ideals. They drank toasts to General Washington and openly supported the American cause. full view FIGURE 7.1 BRITISH GOVERNMENT EXPENSES ON ARMED FORCES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD (IN MILLIONS OF POUNDS), 1775–1782 Britain’s war budget soared after France entered the conflict in 1778, but major resources flowed toward India and the Caribbean, limiting the share available for North America. Faced with growing economic and political pressure, the king and his ministers briefly considered withdrawing all troops from the rebellious colonies and focusing on the French threat. But instead, when General Howe resigned as commander-in-chief in America, they instructed his successor, Sir Henry Clinton, to retreat from Philadelphia to New York and devote his main resources to attacking the French in the Caribbean. Over the next four years, discontent within Britain continued to escalate, and no strategy proved sufficient to pacify the Americans or to crush their rebellion. Even with a new French alliance in hand, the rebellious American states faced serious challenges on both the civilian and military fronts in the struggle to secure lasting independence. They had thrown out their colonial governors and embarked on a dangerous war, but two fundamental questions still confronted them: How would the once-dependent colonies govern themselves? And even if they devised new forms of self-governance, how could they shape a military force strong enough to defend themselves but not so unchecked as to overthrow their new civil governments? Their colonial experience had taught them to trust representative legislatures over strong executive authority. They had also learned another lesson: Any standing army, even one’s own, could pose a danger if not under civilian control. For people who often cited ancient history, one well-known story drove this point home. Colonists knew how Rome’s military commander, Julius Caesar, and his legion crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. and helped destroy the Roman Republic they had sworn to defend. The Continental Congress that the rebelling states created had taken prompt initiative. Without clear authority, it had declared independence, raised an army, issued currency, borrowed money from abroad, and negotiated an alliance with France. Then it moved to bring greater stability and legitimacy to its work. In November 1777, one month after the victory at Saratoga, it approved Articles of Confederation and presented this formal plan for a lasting and unifying government to the states for ratification. In every region, citizens were already debating how much authority each new state government would have in relation to the larger federation. Who would have the power to levy taxes, for example, and who would control the distribution of land? The Articles declared “The United States of America” to be a “firm league of friendship” between the 13 former colonies that had each become a new state. The final document proposed a weaker confederation than the one outlined in an earlier draft by John Dickinson. According to the finished charter, each state would retain its sovereignty and independence, plus all rights and powers not “expressly delegated” to the Confederation Congress. Indeed, it implied such a loose arrangement of states that the French considered sending 13 separate CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 237 ${bmicon} ambassadors to America. And several European proposals to end the war suggested negotiating separately with each state. According to the Articles, Congress could not collect taxes or regulate trade; it could only requisition funds from the states. Their proportions would vary depending on relative population. Moreover, the Confederation had no separate executive branch; executive functions fell to various committees of the Confederation Congress. In addition, to the dismay of land speculators, the Congress would not control the western domains that several large states had claimed. Maryland, a small state without western claims, protested this arrangement and refused to ratify. To win approval, drafters changed the plan and granted the Confederation control of western lands. After four years, the Articles finally won ratification in 1781. full view Western Land Claims Ceded by the States One of the major impasses in the ratification of the Articles concerned the disposition of western lands. The dispute was finally settled in 1781 – after that, western lands belonged to the nation as a whole rather than to individual states, thus removing a potential source of conflict between them. Given the importance of the states, the task of designing new state governments seemed a higher priority to many than inventing a confederation structure. Some leaders in the Continental Congress returned home to help implement this reconstruction process. In May 1776, for example, two of Jefferson’s friends in the Virginia delegation in Philadelphia departed for Williamsburg. They left their younger colleague behind, but they carried his written draft for a possible state constitution. Those already at work in Virginia accepted Jefferson’s proposed preamble, and on June 29, 1776, Virginia led the way, adopting the first republican state constitution. Virginia had already pioneered in another respect. Two weeks earlier, Virginia representatives approved a Declaration of Rights drawn up by George Mason. In language anticipating Jefferson, Mason affirmed that “all men are by nature equally free and independent,” possessing inherent rights “to the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” He affirmed the revolutionary concepts that all power derives from the people and that magistrates are their servants. He went on to endorse trial by jury, praise religious freedom, and condemn hereditary privilege. Over the next eight years, each state adopted a similar bill of rights to enumerate the fundamental limits of government power. Though diverse, the 13 states shared practical needs. Each had removed a functioning colonial government and needed to reestablish the rule of law under a new system. To do so, they drew on principles they had learned in the previous decade and on English common-law traditions. Britain possessed no written constitution, but the colonists had been ruled under published charters, and they shared a belief in the value of such clear and open arrangements. Thus they readily envisioned an explicit controlling document, or constitution, for each new state. Besides, the novel idea that government flowed from the people—as an agreement based on the consent of the governed—called for some all-encompassing, written legal contract. A new written constitution, whether for a state or a union of states, represented something more fundamental and enduring than a regular law. It needed to be above day-to-day legal statutes and political whims. Somehow, the people, through chosen representatives, had to prepare a special document that citizens would affirm, or ratify, only one time. After the new government structure was in place, the constitution itself would be difficult, though not impossible, to change. In 1779, Massachusetts legislators, under pressure from the public, fixed upon a method for providing the elevated status and popular endorsement for such a new document. Local voters in town meetings chose representatives for a specific constitution-drafting convention. These delegates, building on a model suggested by John Adams, crafted a suitable document, and their proposed constitution was then submitted to all the state’s free men (regardless of race or property) for ratification. This widened constituency was intended to give special weight to the endorsement process. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 238 ${bmicon} Approval of the Massachusetts document was hotly debated. Many objected to the limits on popular power that were part of Adams’s novel design. A reluctant revolutionary, Adams had dismissed Tom Paine as “ignorant, malicious, short-sighted.” He had even composed a tract titled Thoughts on Government to counter the democratic enthusiasm of Paine’s Common Sense. In his pamphlet, Adams argued that “interests” (like-minded groups), rather than people, should receive equal representation. In addition, he proposed sharing legislative responsibilities between a house, a senate, and a chief executive. Property requirements for these offices were steep, so wealthy interests would have power far beyond their numbers. The Massachusetts state constitution, ratified by a narrow margin, implemented these ideas. They signaled a turn away from the strongest popular radicalism of 1776 and foreshadowed the more conservative balance of interests that Madison championed in the federal Constitution drafted in 1787. This extended experiment in constitution writing was exhilarating and unprecedented. Never before in history, John Adams observed, had several million people had numerous opportunities “to form and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom could contrive.” Initial state efforts yielded varied results as citizens debated novel approaches to self-government. By 1780, the desire of prominent and well-established elites to rein in democratic power was evident. Yet in comparison to the overseas monarchy they had rejected, even the most conservative new state constitutions seemed risky and bold. At least three common threads ran through all the documents. First, fearing executive might, drafters sharply curtailed the strength of state governors. These men no longer had the power to dismiss assemblies, raise armies, declare war, fill offices, or grant privileges. Colonial governors had been appointed from above, by proprietors or the crown, and they could serve terms of any length. In contrast, state governors would now be elected annually, usually by the assembly. Moreover, their service was subject to impeachment and controlled by term limits. In Pennsylvania, the most radical of the new constitutions did away with a single governor altogether, placing executive power in the hands of a 12-member council elected by the people. Second, whether out of political belief or an effort to mobilize broad support for the revolutionary cause, drafters expanded the strength of the legislature and increased its responsiveness to the popular will. They enlarged the size of assemblies and increased the frequency of elections to allow greater local involvement. They also reduced property requirements for holding office and changed limits on the right to vote to allow wider participation. Third, the constitution-makers feared the possible corruptions that came when people held more than one office at the same time. Having experienced these glaring conflicts of interest first-hand, they stressed the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial posts. The decision to prevent members of the executive branch from also holding a legislative seat removed any prospect for a cabinet-style government along the lines of the British model. A new republican order, whatever its nature, could not defend itself without a suitable fighting force. Just as defunct colonial administrations gave way to new state governments after seri- CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 239 ${bmicon} ous debate, colonial militia companies transformed into state militia amid intensive arguments. In the state militias, and in Washington’s army, controlled and paid by the Continental Congress, inevitable tensions emerged from the start. Heated discussions erupted as to what constituted equitable pay, appropriate discipline, suitable tactics, and a proper distribution of limited supplies. Others argued over whether wealth, popularity, vision, military experience, political savvy, European training, or influential ties should play a role in determining who received, or retained, the cherished right to command. Two basic tensions underlay all of these debates. One involved the stresses arising between educated gentry and citizen soldiers when different, even opposing, social ranks joined in a coalition across class lines to confront a common enemy. The other concerned strains within the upper levels of society, as status-conscious members of the upper classes wrestled with what constituted appropriate service and recognition for men of their standing. Should they serve in the military at all, and if so, how much should they defer to older soldiers, seasoned frontiersmen, foreign-born officers, or civilian authorities without taking offense. One heated topic involved the election of officers. Wealthy gentry assumed that they would command their state militia, while citizen soldiers demanded the right to choose their own leaders. Another source of tension concerned an old European tradition—the right of any prosperous individual to buy exemption from military service or to send a paid substitute. Back in December 1776, as Washington’s army had retreated into Pennsylvania, militia in Philadelphia had chastised “Gentlemen who formerly Paraded in our Company and now in the time of greatest danger have turn’d their backs.” They asked whether state authorities meant “to force the poorer kind into the field and suffer the Rich & the Great to remain at home?” Three years later, some of these same Philadelphia militia, bitter that the burdens of the war always fell disproportionately on the poor, took part in what became known as the Fort Wilson Riot. Staging a demonstration in October 1779 spurred by soaring food prices, they intentionally marched passed the stately home of James Wilson, where wealthy Patriots had gathered. “The time is now arrived,” the demonstrators’ handbill proclaimed, “to prove whether the suffering friends of this country, are to be enslaved, ruined and starved, by a few overbearing Merchants,… Monopolizers and Speculators.” Shots were exchanged, and six died in the melee at “Fort Wilson.” (Wilson himself went on to become a leader of the 1787 Constitutional Convention.) Subtle class divisions had also beset the Continental Army, where jealousies over rank plagued the status-conscious officer corps. Congressional power to grant military commissions, often on regional and political grounds, only intensified disputes. Also, Americans representing Congress abroad were empowered to promise high military posts to attract European officers. Some of these recruits served the American cause well, such as Johann de Kalb and Friedrich von Steuben (both born in Germany) and Thaddeus Kosciusko and Casimir Pulaski from Poland. In France, at age 19, the Marquis de Lafayette secured a commission to be a major general in America, and he assisted Washington impressively throughout the war. However, other foreign officers displayed arrogance and spread dissension. Irish-born Thomas Conway, for example, courted congressional opponents of Washington and encouraged the desires of General Horatio Gates to assume top command. Whether or not a concerted “Conway Cabal” ever existed, Washington managed to defuse tensions from Valley Forge during the hard winter of 1777–1778. His numerous letters helped to patch frayed relations with Gates and consolidate his position with Congress. Another rival for command of the army, English-born Charles Lee, met disfavor several months later, when Washington ordered him to attack the rear guard of Clinton’s army as it withdrew from Philadelphia to New York. Lee mismanaged the encounter at Monmouth, New Jersey, on June 28, 1778, and only Washington’s swift action stopped a premature retreat. The Battle of Monmouth ended in a draw, but American troops claimed victory and took pride in their swift recovery and hard fighting. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 240 ${bmicon} The army’s improved effectiveness came in large part from the efforts of Friedrich von Steuben, a European officer recruited by Benjamin Franklin after charges of homosexuality disrupted his German military career. He had arrived at Valley Forge in February 1778, offering to serve without pay. There he found soldiers with poor food, scant clothing, and limited training. Many Americans still wanted to see a more democratic citizen army, with elected officers and limited hierarchy. But Washington hoped to mold long-term soldiers into a more “Europeanized” force, using stern discipline to train the Continental Line. Steuben provided the chance to do so. Shouting in several languages—he spoke no English—the newcomer worked energetically to drill soldiers who, in turn, trained others. A written drill manual was drawn up, and the strict training paid off. Alexander Hamilton, who observed the routine and later fought beside Steuben at Yorktown, wrote that “unquestionably to his efforts we are indebted for the introduction of discipline in the Army.” New discipline helped boost morale. Still, terms of service and wage levels remained sources of contention for American soldiers. So did the disparities in treatment and pay between officers and enlisted men. There were other grievances as well. Congressional committees overseeing the war effort appeared inept. Officers with political appointments frequently proved incompetent, and civilians often expressed indifference or hostility toward militia. A steady shortage of new recruits added to the frustrations of enlisted men. Arguments also persisted over who could serve in the army. Women organized in diverse ways to assist the war effort, making uniforms and running farms and businesses for absent husbands. A few American women, such as Deborah Sampson of Massachusetts, disguised themselves as men and fought. Far more accompanied the troops to cook and wash in the camps. Earning scant pay, they carried water to the weary and wounded on the battlefield. Serving in these capacities, they formed a significant presence in both armies. For example, when Burgoyne launched his campaign from Canada, 2000 women accompanied his 7200 troops. As many as 20,000 women, many of them wives, may have accompanied the American army during the war. Washington reluctantly accepted the presence of women in camp, reasoning that they freed men for “the proper line of their duty.” Mary Hays, wife of a Pennsyl- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 241 ${bmicon} vania soldier, embodied the women’s effort and commitment. She endured the winter at Valley Forge and later hauled pitchers of water on the battlefield at Monmouth. When her husband was wounded, she is said to have set down her jug and joined his gun crew, earning folk legend status as the cannon-firing “Molly Pitcher.” After petitioning to fight, free blacks were allowed to join the revolutionary army. Rhode Island even formed an African American regiment. But repeated proposals to arm southern slaves met with defeat. South Carolina and Virginia went so far as to move in the opposite direction, offering to give away slaves captured from Tory planters as a bonus to white recruits. Thus it is no surprise that thousands of enslaved people, especially in the South, risked their lives to escape to British lines. Even as the Americans’ army grew into a respectable force, their lack of naval strength proved a constant disadvantage. As early as October 13, 1775, the Continental Congress had agreed to arm two vessels to prey on British supply ships on the Atlantic. In retrospect, the vote marked the birth of the American navy. At the time, however, many delegates still held out hope for reconciliation with Britain. Samuel Chase, a cautious lawyer from Maryland, thought a new navy would be large enough to provoke British resentment and retaliation but far too small to be effective. He objected that it was “the maddest Idea in the World to think of building an American Fleet.” Despite such objections, Congress promptly appointed a committee to acquire sailing craft for “protection and defense.” Most of the 13 states built up their own small navies for local purposes, only adding to the confusion. The lack of central coordination proved deadly. When Massachusetts sent its ships “down east” along the Maine coast to challenge a Loyalist buildup at Castine in 1779, British vessels cornered the fleet at Penobscot Bay and crushed the enterprise. Despite its strength, the British navy was stretched thinner as more European powers joined the fray: France in 1778, Spain in 1779, and Holland in 1780. The English feared possible invasion, and French corsairs harassed Britain’s coastline, joined by American captains. One of PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 242 ${bmicon} these captains, a Scottish immigrant named John Paul Jones, arrived in European waters from America in early 1778, just as Franklin signed the pact with France. In April, Jones led a night raid on the port of Whitehaven in his native Scotland. He inflicted slight damage on the Irish Sea town, but the propaganda triumph of an American success in British waters proved huge. The brazen young captain won an even greater victory the next year off Flamborough Head on England’s east coast. Jones and his crew—including men of 11 nationalities—were sailing an aged French ship named the Bonhomme Richard in tribute to Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard.” In a fierce battle, they managed to board Britain’s sleek new H.M.S. Serapis and capture the larger, heavily armed British frigate before their own vessel sank. In all, the Continental Navy equipped more than 50 vessels and captured nearly 200 British craft as prizes. But these numbers pale in comparison to the activities of American privateers. More than a thousand private ship owners obtained licenses from Congress to seize enemy ships and divide the proceeds among themselves and their crew. With international commerce curtailed, shipowners and sailors were eager to try their luck at this tempting opportunity. Average pay aboard privateers was higher than on a government vessel, and discipline was less strict. In 1778 nearly 10,000 men were engaged in privateering aboard several hundred vessels. Their small, quick boats swarmed the Atlantic like troublesome gnats, frustrating England’s mighty navy. According to one estimate, by war’s end the British had surrendered 2000 ships, 12,000 men, and goods valued at £18 million. Moreover, because privateering drew merchant investors directly into the Patriot war effort, it helped bind the coastal elite more firmly to the American cause. By July 1778, Clinton’s British forces had returned to New York City, and their situation had not improved. Frustrated in New England and the middle tier of states, Clinton revived the southern strategy discussed at the beginning of the war. A southern plan offered numerous potential benefits. Because the region produced staple crops, it held more economic value for Britain than the North did. Less thickly settled than the North, the South was more vulnerable. In addition, it supposedly contained a wide array of Loyalists who would offer their support. The recently acquired colonies of East and West Florida had never rebelled, and the British army might win back Georgia and the Carolinas with a sufficient show of force. Success there would open up Virginia for reconquest. Furthermore, the South’s warm weather allowed longer campaigns and easier provisioning of troops. A lengthy growing season meant more fodder for the wagon horses and cavalry mounts so essential to any large military operation. The region’s long Atlantic coastline, far from New England privateers, lay open to the British. Clinton knew that Washington’s distant, land-based army would have trouble defending it. Moreover, nearly 500,000 enslaved African Americans posed a constant threat to Patriot planters and represented potential support for British invaders. Finally, the same whites who dreaded slave rebellion also feared war with Native Americans, as Jefferson had explained in the Declaration of Independence. So the possible use of Indian allies also entered Britain’s strategic calculation. Most Native Americans in eastern North America remained loyal to the British during the Revolutionary War. Exceptions existed, such as the Oneida, Tuscarora, and Catawba, but Indians in many regions had long-standing grievances about the encroachments of colonial whites. In southern Appalachia, colonial land investors and settlers had defied the king’s Proclamation Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 243 ${bmicon} full view MAP 7.3 THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR IN THE NORTH PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 244 ${bmicon} full view MAP 7.4 THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR IN THE WEST Line for more than a decade. At Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River in 1775, North Carolina speculators led by Richard Henderson illegally purchased much of the Cherokees’ territory. A young war chief named Dragging Canoe, defying his more conservative elders, vowed to turn the region into a “dark and bloody ground.” True to his word, he laid siege to the new “Over-Mountain” Watauga settlement in July 1776. Whites struck back, organizing separate expeditions from four southern states. In all, 6000 troops pushed into the mountains, laying waste to Cherokee villages. Meanwhile, Daniel Boone (an agent for Henderson) led settlers through Cumberland Gap in western Virginia to establish a fort on the Kentucky River at Boonesborough in 1775. By 1777, these pioneer families faced constant warfare against Indian adversaries who were fighting for their homelands. The Native Americans were also being urged on by Henry Harri- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 245 ${bmicon} son, the British commandant at far-off Detroit. In one six-month span, Harrison, who became known as the Scalp Buyer, received 77 prisoners and 129 scalps from this frontier warfare. Along the upper Ohio, the violence escalated, despite efforts by Indian elders to maintain neutrality. Not all deaths occurred in battle. Americans killed Shawnee leader Cornstalk and his son during a truce in 1777. The next year, they murdered the neutral Delaware leader, White Eyes, although they had recently hinted to him and other Native Americans in Ohio Country that the Indians might one day “form a state” and have “representation in Congress.” Four years later, at the village of Gnadenhutten (south of modern-day Canton, Ohio), militia from Pennsylvania massacred 100 peaceful Delaware men, women, and children who had been converted to Christianity by missionaries of the Moravian church. By then, conflict had also flared farther north, much of it involving Native Americans. Joseph Brant, a mixed-race Mohawk leader educated in New England and loyal to the British, pushed south from Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario. Joined by a Loyalist band under John Butler, Brant and his men attacked poorly guarded frontier settlements. First in the Wyoming Valley of northeastern Pennsylvania and later in New York’s Cherry Valley, the raiders killed hundreds of settlers. In the summer of 1779, American General John Sullivan, fresh from fighting the British in Rhode Island, received a new assignment: lead a punitive campaign to annihilate Indian towns as a reprisal for the Cherry Valley slayings. His revenge-minded army of more than 4000 marched into Iroquois Country, pushing aside resistance from Brant and Butler at New-town (Elmira, New York). Sullivan’s troops destroyed 40 villages of the four tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy most linked to the British cause: the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. They avoided towns of the two Iroquois groups sypathetic to the Americans—the Oneida and Tuscarora—but elsewhere they chopped down orchards, torched crops, burned 160,000 bushels of corn, and sent several thousand Indian refugees streaming toward Fort Niagara. Hunger and retaliatory raids haunted the region until the end of the war. While the British were passing arms and supplies to the divided Iroquois Confederacy through Fort Niagara, they were also using several western posts to arm other Indian allies and seek an advantage in the interior. Soldiers at Fort Michilimackinac recruited Sioux, Chippewa, and Sauk warriors for an unsuccessful attack on Spanish-held St. Louis in 1780. At Fort Detroit, Harrison continued to equip war parties of Ottawa, Fox, and Miami Indians to attack American settlers migrating into the Ohio Valley. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 246 ${bmicon} In 1778, with support from his home state of Virginia, a young Patriot surveyor named George Rogers Clark organized a foray west to counter these raids and lend support to Spanish and French allies in the upper Mississippi Valley. He secured the settlements at Kaskaskia and Cahokia on the Mississippi River, and in February 1779 he led a grueling winter march to the fort at Vincennes in southern Indiana. In surprising that outpost on the Wabash River, Clark managed to capture Henry Harrison, but he failed to seize Detroit. The rebel war effort beyond the Appalachian Mountains also expanded south. In 1778 a Patriot party setting out from Fort Pitt managed to descend the Ohio and Mississippi rivers unnoticed. The raiders captured Natchez on the Lower Mississippi and seized property in British West Florida. But it was the energetic governor of Spanish Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez, whose moves proved decisive. Living in New Orleans, Gálvez maintained a careful neutrality between the Americans and their British rivals through 1778. But when Spain allied with France and declared war on Britain the next year, the governor acted quickly to keep the British from gaining ground on the Gulf Coast. Moving from west to east, Governor Gálvez drove the British from the Mississippi River in 1779, seized their fort at Mobile in 1780, and conquered Pensacola, the capital of British West Florida, in 1781. His plan to retake St. Augustine with American help came to nothing. Still, his troops had reasserted Spain’s control over the entire Gulf Coast and protected Spanish interests in the Gulf of Mexico. The fall of Mobile and Pensacola also cut British supply lines to the southeastern interior. The move hurt Creeks and Cherokees, who depended on their ally’s assistance. Without additional guns, knives, and powder, the Indians could offer little assistance in Britain’s ambitious plan to win back the South and regain the upper hand in the war for eastern America. It was support the British could ill afford to lose. Still, the crown’s forces regained control of most of Georgia from the rebels in 1778. The next year, they blocked American and French efforts to retake Savannah. Early in 1780, British generals Clinton and Cornwallis ferried troops by sea from New York to South Carolina aboard more than a hundred ships. By May, this army had isolated Charleston and forced the capitulation of 5500 American troops. The surrender was the largest loss of American men and CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 247 ${bmicon} full view MAP 7.5 THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR IN THE SOUTH weapons during the entire conflict. (Not until the Civil War—at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1862—and World War II—at Bataan in the Philippines in 1942—were comparable numbers of U.S. Army soldiers obliged to lay down their arms.) For disappointed Patriots, the fall of Charleston nearly offset the triumph at Saratoga. One soldier wrote that the defeat delivered “a rude shock to the Independence of America.” A confident Clinton returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis in command in South Carolina. Throughout that summer, fierce fighting erupted across the state. Banastre Tarleton’s green-coated British dragoons (mounted troops), along with their Loyalist supporters, went head to head against the guerrilla bands led by Thomas Sumter, Andrew Pickens, and Francis Marion. In June, Congress appointed Horatio Gates to take command of southern operations, and he hurried to the Carolinas with fresh troops. On August 16, 1780, in a poorly calculated move, Gates’s army confronted Cornwallis at the South Carolina garrison town of Camden, 120 miles north of Charleston. The Americans, short on rest, food, and leadership, suffered another huge defeat. The British killed or wounded eight hundred and took a thousand prisoners. Two days after the Camden disaster, as Gates fled north ahead of his troops, Tarleton’s cavalry landed another blow. They surprised Sumter’s band of 800 partisans at Fishing Creek near the Catawba River and took 300 prisoners. The dragoons inflicted 150 casualties and freed several hundred Loyalists and British regulars while suffering almost no losses themselves. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 248 ${bmicon} That September, as Washington absorbed word of the defeats at Camden and Fishing Creek, he received yet another “rude shock.” Benedict Arnold—in command of West Point, the key outpost controlling the Hudson River—had plotted to defect and yield the post to the British. A gifted and admired leader in battle, Arnold was also brash, self-centered, and easily affronted. Troubled by his war wounds and passed over by Congress for promotion, Arnold felt increasingly alienated from the Patriot cause. His scheme was revealed by the American capture of his British contact, Major John André. The major was hanged as an enemy spy, but Arnold escaped and received command of British troops. full view Hanging of Major John Andre Hanging of Major John Andre by American militiamen who found him to be a British spy. (Library of Congress) These setbacks troubled not only General Washington but also Congress. Its members stood firmly committed to maintaining civilian control over the American army. They appointed military leaders and supervised their funds, reviewing countless problems of the war effort on a daily basis. Apart from Arnold’s treason, Congress rarely faced disloyalty among officers, but frustration and disobedience among enlisted men were more common. Early in 1780, soldiers from Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut had mutinied in separate incidents. Members of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Lines soon staged similar strikes over disputed terms of enlistment. After five years of war, a harried Congress also faced soaring inflation, scarce resources, and sinking citizen morale. Cornwallis had reason for optimism as he divided his troops and pressed into North Carolina in the fall of 1780. But the next 12 months saw a dramatic reversal in British fortunes. That reversal began in October with a surprising Patriot victory in the southern backcountry. British major Patrick Ferguson had organized South Carolina Loyalists into a successful fighting unit. Cornwallis dispatched him and his troops toward the Blue Ridge Mountains in western Carolina to guard the army’s flank and harry rebel supporters. Overconfident, Ferguson repeated Burgoyne’s mistake by threatening disloyal mountain settlers with hangings and retribution. More than 800 frontier settlers rallied at Sycamore Shoals in the Watauga Valley and raced south to challenge the British. On October 6, at King’s Mountain just below North Carolina’s southern border, these sharpshooters surrounded the Loyalist troops and decimated the entire force, killing Ferguson and taking 700 prisoners. British casualties in the one-sided affair exceeded 300, whereas fewer than 90 “Over-Mountain Men” were killed or wounded. A shrewd change in leadership followed the American victory at King’s Mountain. Congress realized its mistake in appointing Gates to the southern command, and it turned to Washington to suggest a replacement. He selected Nathanael Greene, an experienced Rhode Islander who soon proved more than a match for Cornwallis. General Greene arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina, in December 1780, taking charge of a tattered army of 1600. The British, stung by their losses at King’s Mountain, postponed designs on North Carolina. This gave the new commander precious weeks to reorganize his American force. full view Copybook Decorated with Political Themes Martha Ryan, a young North Carolina girl, decorated the cover of her copybook with political themes. (from the Ryan Cipher Book, #1940, Southern Historical Collection, The Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Greene used his time wisely. Earlier, he had served as the army’s quartermaster general, overseeing supplies, and he quickly realized that his soldiers had pressing needs. He swiftly ordered one town to make shoes for his men, another to sew uniforms. He also dispatched scouts to explore possible river crossings and paths of retreat, necessary for the elusive “fugitive war” he planned to conduct. Shocked by the violence of partisan warfare and conscious of the need to win public support, he urged restraint on such experienced guerrilla fighters as Sumter and Marion while weaving them into his overall plans. Going against traditional practice, Greene decided to divide his small army and send half his men into South Carolina under the seasoned Daniel Morgan to harass the British flank. “It makes the most of my inferior force,” he explained, “for it compels my adversary to divide his, and holds him in doubt as to his own line of conduct.” Cornwallis took the bait and dispatched Tarleton in pursuit. He caught up with Morgan at Hannah’s Cowpens, west of King’s Mountain, on January 17, 1781. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 249 ${bmicon} The outnumbered rebel militia lacked experience and discipline, but Morgan shrewdly turned this weakness to an advantage at the Battle of Cowpens. He stationed the militia units in front of his Continental forces with orders to fire two rounds and fall back. Sensing an enemy retreat, the British force of 1100 advanced too far too fast. Morgan’s men promptly overwhelmed them. Tarleton managed to escape, but he left behind 100 dead, 800 prisoners, and most of his horses and ammunition. Morgan’s force suffered only 148 casualties, mostly wounded militia. He rightly called the battle of Cowpens “a devil of a whipping.” full view Surrender at Yorktown Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, subordinate of Cornwallis, sent to yield the symbolic sword of surrender at Yorktown. (Library of Congress) Though frustrated, Cornwallis clung to the belief that “a successful battle may give us America.” He discarded all excess baggage and pursued the rebel army 200 miles across North Carolina. Greene directed a speedy retreat over swollen rivers to the Virginia border, then doubled back to confront the weary British in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15. Although the American forces eventually withdrew from the field, Cornwallis sustained such heavy losses that he was forced to alter his plans. The British retreated to the coast at Wilmington, North Carolina, and then marched north in early summer 1781 to Yorktown, Virginia. There, Cornwallis hoped to obtain reinforcements by sea, rally Loyalists in the Chesapeake region, and divide the rebelling colonies once and for all. The design’s success hinged on continued naval superiority and timely support from General Clinton in New York. But Cornwallis could be assured of neither. In mid-August, the French fleet in the Caribbean set out for Chesapeake Bay. It planned to spend eight weeks in American waters, assisting the combined French–American army, located near New York. “Employ me promptly and usefully,” French admiral De Grasse urged, so that “time may be turned to profit.” Suddenly Washington had access to impressive naval power. He seized his chance. He sent word south to Lafayette in Virginia to keep Cornwallis contained at Yorktown. Then, to hold Clinton’s forces in New York, he ordered his men to make a show of building roads and baking ovens, as if preparing for a lengthy siege of the city. Behind this disguise, French and American soldiers slipped away, secretly marching south to lay a trap for the British army. De Grasse reached Chesapeake Bay with two dozen ships at the end of August. On September 5, he repulsed a British fleet off the mouth of the bay, dashing Cornwallis’s hopes for relief by sea. When 9000 Americans and 7800 French converged on Yorktown in late September, they outnumbered their 8000 opponents by more than two to one. The trap had been sprung, and the siege proved brief. Plagued by sickness and shortages of food and munitions, the British army PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 250 ${bmicon} surrendered on October 19, 1781. For Washington and his army, Yorktown was a stunning victory. Intermittent warfare continued for another year. But the Americans finally had powerful leverage to bargain for peace and force Britain to recognize their independence. After Yorktown, the fighting in America gave way to diplomacy in Europe. Indeed, the final phase of the war played out in European courts. There, the maneuvering was almost as complicated and risky as it had been on the battlefield. As one representative, the American Congress dispatched Henry Laurens, its former president, to the Dutch Republic. The South Carolinian was to negotiate a loan and a commercial treaty with the United Province of the Netherlands, but the British captured Laurens at sea. They salvaged the incriminating documents Laurens tried to throw overboard and then locked him in the Tower of London. This left Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay as the key American players. Often at odds, the three men nevertheless managed to achieve a final triumph that proved as unlikely and momentous as Washington’s victory in Virginia. They did it, wrote the immodest Adams, “in spite of the malice of enemies, the finesse of Allies, and the mistakes of Congress.” For the British, the road to the peace table had been long and unpleasant. Early feelers about a negotiated settlement—from the Howes in 1776 and the Carlisle Commission in 1778—had not mentioned independence. But conditions changed drastically after Yorktown. Domestic unrest in Britain had already boiled into riots, and the expanded war was going poorly in India and the West Indies. “O God, it is all over!” Lord North muttered when he received the news of Cornwallis’s defeat in Virginia. Within months, Sir Guy Carleton replaced Clinton in command of the remaining British forces in America, the hawkish Lord Germain stepped down from the Cabinet, and North resigned after 12 years as prime minister. Even the king spoke briefly of abdicating. But instead, he approved a new ministry more suited to the rising antiwar sentiment in Parliament. The Earl of Shelburne became prime minister in July 1782. Even before he assumed office, he had authorized peace discussions with his old acquaintance, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was in a difficult position. The crucial alliance he had negotiated with France stated that the Americans would not sign a separate peace with Britain. Moreover, Congress, grateful for vital French military and financial support, had instructed the American negotiators to defer to the wishes of Vergennes, the French foreign minister. The Americans did not realize that the minister’s own agenda differed sharply from their own. Balancing the desire to reduce British power against the crippling costs of the war, Vergennes had already entertained thoughts of a truce that would leave London in control of all the territory it currently held in America. This consisted of Penobscot Bay in Maine (with its valuable supplies of naval timber), New York City, and parts of the lower South. Vergennes opposed the Americans’ republican principles, and he resented their desire to expand their boundaries and gain the right to fish the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. He refused to treat the American diplomats as equal partners. To strengthen the French position, he also hoped to keep the weak new CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 251 ${bmicon} governments dependent on France whether the American states remained united or broke apart, as most European observers thought likely. The American peace commission, though cautioned from home and belittled abroad, ultimately elected to chart its own course. The three commissioners fared surprisingly well in the treacherous waters of European diplomacy, starting with Franklin’s first informal talks with the British. He laid out four “necessary” points, leading with the recognition of American independence. To this he added the removal of British troops, the right to fish in Newfoundland waters, and the revision of the Canadian border, which the Quebec Act of 1774 had pushed south to the Ohio River. ful view Patriots and Slaves Toppling Statue of George III Patriots and their slaves toppling statue of George III, at Bowling Green in New York City, as a celebration of American Independence. (Library of Congress) Franklin then noted some “desirable” items, no doubt intended to position the Americans for later bargaining. The British, he suggested, should consider paying an indemnity for war damages. In doing so, they would officially acknowledge their own blame for the war. Perhaps they should cede Canada to the United States as well. For their part, the British sought compensation for the American Loyalists who had been driven from their homes and the right to collect old debts that colonists had owed to British merchants before 1776. After helping Washington at Yorktown, French admiral De Grasse had sailed back to the Caribbean to seize Great Britain’s wealthiest colony, Jamaica. But British admiral George Rodney had intercepted his ships and taken De Grasse prisoner. Word of the naval victory strengthened Britain’s negotiating hand and weakened France’s position. Hoping to disrupt the American–French alliance and to reestablish profitable trade with their former colonies, the British negotiated preliminary peace terms with the Americans in November 1782. In return for independence, troop withdrawal, and fishing rights, the Americans agreed vaguely that their Congress would “recommend” that individual states approve compensation for confiscated Loyalist property. On the Canadian boundary question, the Americans scored another success, but one that came at the expense of Indian nations. By giving up their bid for all of Canada, the negotiators persuaded Britain to relinquish the Ohio Valley and accept a northern boundary for the United States defined by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. In the west, the United States would reach to the Mississippi River, and Americans would gain free navigation on the waterway, despite Spanish opposition. In the south, the 31st parallel, above East and West Florida, would provide the American boundary. The diplomats endorsed the final peace terms at Versailles, France, in September 1783. Amid all the other treaty terms, the British yielded East and West Florida to Spain. In the process, however, they made no mention of the Indians who had served as allies in the American conflict. Abandoned, the Native Americans had to confront their new situation alone. To end up “betrayed to our Enemies & divided between the Spaniards and the Americans is Cruel & Ungenerous,” protested the Creek leader, Alexander McGillivray. His people had been “most Shamefully deserted.” The War for Independence that began at Lexington had lasted eight years. Like any lengthy armed struggle, it took a heavy toll on combatants and non-combatants alike. Personal survival itself was far from certain, as encounters with sickness and the enemy carried off enlisted men. American forces lost an estimated 25,000 soldiers over eight years. The number seems small in modern terms, but comparable losses in the present military service, as a proportion of the current United States population, would total more than 2 million people. For those who avoided death, lesser dangers abounded. Separations were frequent, and uprooting from home became commonplace. Losses of property proved extensive, and indebtedness appeared to be widespread. Some, of course, managed to benefit from the precarious circumstances. During the war years, whether by determination, foresight, or simple good fortune, they expanded their wealth, gained their freedom, or enhanced their reputation. But other PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 252 ${bmicon} individuals and families, through lost opportunities, poor choices, or bad luck, suffered from the winds of war. Despite constant uncertainties at the individual level, a makeshift revolutionary army, learning as it marched, had forced the British to concede American independence. As in all wars, some of the most decisive action occurred far from the battlefield. In London, weakness and inconsistency in the chain of command, combined with a lumbering bureaucracy and divided public sentiment, undermined the British war effort. In Europe, skillful American diplomats built the international alliances needed to secure victory and won peace terms that promised survival to the new confederation of states. Meanwhile, a flurry of constitution-writing unprecedented in history had launched more than a dozen newly independent states, and the Articles of Confederation, approved after long delay, had knit them together into a formal league with a common Congress. The new and difficult art of republican self-government remained a work in progress, with some of the most difficult and contentious choices still to come. As the former slave Thomas Peters climbed aboard the Joseph James with his family and other Loyalists to leave New York in 1783, pressing problems still confronted all those who had had a stake in the conflict. Some of the white settlers, Indian allies, and African Americans who had taken the British side chose to withdraw altogether. They joined the massive evacuation engineered by royal ships from St. Augustine, Savannah, Charleston, and New York. But all who stayed did not celebrate for long. The fragile unity built on fighting a common enemy was soon be strained to the limit, as new debates erupted over the meaning and direction of the unfinished revolution. Loyalties fluctuated with the fortunes of war, and even those far from the fighting became entangled in the web of confrontations, debts, and reprisals that played out year after year. The story of Thomas Peters and his family serves to underscore the point that no one could predict clearly the ultimate outcome of protracted warfare in America. The Saratoga National Historical Park The National Park Service maintains a visitor center and has arranged a self-guided battlefield tour that includes the locations for the British and American camps during the crucial engagement of October 1777 at this park, which is located 10 miles south of Saratoga Springs, New York, on Route 50. Brandywine Battlefield State Park This park is located on Highway 202 west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not far from the borders of Delaware and Maryland. (At nearby Chadds Ford, the Wyeth Museum celebrates three generations of one of America’s great artistic families.) The Continental Congress memory.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html This Web site on the Continental Congress in the American Memory series of the Library of Congress contains materials dating from 1774. Virginia Runaways Project www.uvawise.edu/history/runaways/index.html This digital database of runaway slave and servant advertisements from eighteenth-century Virginia newspapers contains full transcripts and images of all runaway ads placed in Virginia newspapers from 1736 to 1790, including those for slaves who responded to Lord Dunmore’s proclamation. The Cowpens National Battlefield www.nps.gov/cowp/index.htm The actual site of the battle where Daniel Morgan’s troops defeated Banastre Tarleton’s British forces (January 17, 1781) is located 10 miles west of Gafney, South Carolina, off Highway I–85. The battle was dramatized in Hollywood’s film The Patriot (see www.patriotresource.com). Spy Letters of the American Revolution www.si.umich.edu/spies/index-timeline.html This Web site, maintained by the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, contains 12 facsimiles and transcriptions of spy letters contained in the Sir Henry Clinton collection and provides some context for each letter. Old Fort Niagara www.oldfortniagara.org/ This New York State Historic Site overlooks Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River. Built by the French in 1727, the fort is located just off the Robert Moses Parkway, not far from Niagara Falls, at Youngstown, New York. The Birth of the Navy of the United States www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq31–1.htm Visit the Naval Historical Center Web site to learn about the history of the U.S. Navy. CHAPTER 7 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARIES AT WAR, 1775###8211;1783 253 ${bmicon} Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (1995). Edward Countryman, The American Revolution (1985). Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence (1971). Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (revised edition, 1989). Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (1965). Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause (1982). Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (1980). Ray Raphael, A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence (2001). Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969). Alfred F. Young, ed., Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (1993). Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976). Ira D. Gruber, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution (1972). Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997). Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (1996). Richard A. Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765–1776 (1978). Hal T. Shelton, General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution (1994). Wayne Bodle, The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers at War (2002). R. Arthur Bowler, Logistics and the Failure of the British Army in America, 1775–1783 (1975). Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence (2000). Sylvia R. Frey, The British Soldier in America: A Social History of Military Life in the Revolutionary Period (1981). Richard M. Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers (1973). Max M. Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga: John Burgoyne and Horatio Gates (1990). Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (1980). Elisha P. Douglass, Rebels and Democrats: The Struggle for Equal Political Rights and Majority Rule During the American Revolution (1955). Jonathan R. Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (1985). James S. Leamon, Revolution Down East: The War for American Independence in Maine (1993). Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography (1959). Robert M. Calhoon, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760–1781 (1973). Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (1972). Max M. Mintz, Seeds of Empire: The American Revolutionary Conquest of the Iroquois (1999). Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (1965). Steven Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and the Lower Sort During the American Revolution (1987). J. Barton Starr, Tories, Dons, and Rebels: The American Revolution in British West Florida (1976). Carl Van Doren, Mutiny in January: The Story of a Crisis in the Continental Army (1943). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter7 To Chapter 7 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 254 ${bmicon}         Beating Swords into Plowshares       Competing for Control of the Mississippi Valley       Creditors and Debtors       Drafting a New Constitution       Ratification and the Bill of Rights       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 255 ${bmicon} LUIS SALES SERVED AS A CATHOLIC MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS ON THE PENINSULA OF Baja California from 1772 to 1790. His darkest times occurred in 1781. One fateful day, he recalled, “there entered the port of Loreto” a small vessel bringing families across the narrow Gulf of California “from Sonora, infected with the small-pox.” Immediately, the sickness “spread like lightning through all the missions,” causing “havoc which only those who have seen it can believe. The towns and missions were … deserted, and bodies were seen in the road.” Some who had watched loved ones break out in sores and die painful deaths insisted on “throwing themselves into the sea at the onset of the disease.” Others, in desperation and fear, “cast themselves into mudholes, others into fire, and still others set about burning the pustules with live coals.” Many Indians crowded into caves, Sales remembered, and “when they noticed any infected with the disease,” they “fled to another cave,” deserting the sick and spreading the illness. Time and again, “the poor little children, abandoned beside the dead, died without help.” While Father Sales ministered to survivors, the dozen families who had unwittingly brought the disease moved north along the peninsula to Alta (or Upper) California. Their destination was the San Gabriel Mission, built ten years earlier. They finally reached the outpost in late summer, “arriving with some little children recently coming out with smallpox.” Mission leaders immediately quarantined them in a separate camp. Still, during that autumn, the Spanish-speaking newcomers managed to establish a village named Our Lady of the Angels, the start of modern-day Los Angeles. A census that year showed that this frontier band of “recruits, colonists, and families” contained a variety of Indian, black, and Spanish adults with several dozen mixed-race children. On their journey from Sonora, they had unintentionally spread destruction in their wake. The torment Sales described was only a tiny part of a far wider swath of destruction created by this deadly disease. Between 1775 and 1782—the exact years of the Revolutionary War—a huge smallpox epidemic ricocheted relentlessly across broad sections of North America. At times the epidemic entwined itself with the war, traveling on supply ships and moving with marching troops. In the Northeast, it struck during the siege of Boston and the attack on Quebec. In the South, it cut down hundreds of Virginia slaves who had escaped at the start of the war to join Governor Dunmore, when he promised emancipation to slaves who would desert their rebel masters and fight for Britain. The disease found additional victims during the British siege of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. Like the wartime violence, smallpox erupted first in Massachusetts. But the devastating contagion spread far more widely than the destruction caused by the war. Whereas the American army remained “continental” in name only, the great smallpox epidemic proved Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 256 ${bmicon} full view MAP 8.1 THE SPREAD OF SMALLPOX ACROSS NORTH AMERICA, 1775–1782 A great smallpox epidemic swept North America during the Revolutionary era. In 1781 it moved up the Baja Peninsula with settlers heading for San Gabriel, the Spanish mission that became Los Angeles, California. truly continental in scope. It soon gained a foothold in New Orleans, Mexico City, and even the far-flung trading posts that dotted the Canadian interior. In 1781 the disease menaced Virginia as French and American troops completed their successful campaign against the British at Yorktown. At the same time, it ravaged Indian villages as far away as the Northwest Coast. Within another year, as the War of Independence ended in the East, the transcontinental epidemic also drew to a close. CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 257 ${bmicon} The contagion left a patchwork of destruction from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The smallpox losses were greatest among Native Americans, and few groups or regions remained untouched. British sea captain George Vancouver, probing the Northwest Coast near the head of Puget Sound in 1792, observed numerous skulls, ribs, and “other vestiges of the human body in many places promiscuously scattered about the beach.” Vancouver’s pilot, Peter Puget, pressed farther into the sound that is now named for him. There he found deserted villages that only a dozen years earlier had bustled with people. In its eight-year course, the fearsome virus took more than 130,000 North American lives, many times the total lost on battlefields during the Revolution. In different ways, these two events exerted a drastic and lasting impact on the continent and its people. As the dual scourges of epidemic and war subsided, fresh problems confronted North America’s inhabitants. Despite the successful bid for independence by England’s mainland colonies, the question of which European powers would exert the most influence on various parts of the huge continent remained unresolved. British power ruled Canada; Spanish authority claimed much of the West; and in Paris, despite the approach of the French Revolution, some still dreamed of restoring the Mississippi Valley to the control of France. In the North Pacific, Russians sent by Empress Catherine the Great intruded on the Alaskan coast. And lucrative new trade with China was soon luring sea captains from several nations, including the United States, to the Northwest coast. Ships from Atlantic ports could barter for sea otter pelts near Puget Sound and then cross the Pacific to deliver this “soft gold” to the Chinese in exchange for tea and porcelain. In the fertile woodlands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, Indians whom Pontiac had sought to unify a generation earlier once again endured sudden transfers of their ancestral land between distant powers. But now the rapid incursion of American settlers added new urgency and desperation to their situation. Farther east, inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard faced an array of thorny problems after warfare and smallpox loosened their grip. Many black Americans had escaped from servitude, won their freedom through military service, or been freed by masters who saw a conflict between slavery and the Revolution’s rhetoric of equality. But half a million people remained legally enslaved. During the Revolutionary War, they had seen that armed rebellion in the name of liberty could succeed, and they were potential allies for any European power seeking to disrupt the fragile new society. In addition, members of the Confederation’s Continental (or national) Congress in Philadelphia had a restless army to pay, a weak government to reform, and enormous war debts to confront. When they imposed unprecedented taxes to pay off war bonds accumulated by wealthy speculators, irate farmers and veterans protested that Congress was gouging “the Many” to enrich “the Few.” As these dissenters—increasingly numerous and desperate—showed signs of success in pressuring state governments to provide debt relief and issue paper money, wealthy creditors reacted forcefully. Like-minded men maneuvered to create a new and stronger central government that could support their interests and override state-level economic measures that favored the common people. Sidestepping the existing government, they drafted a new constitution at a closed convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and they campaigned successfully for its ratification by 1789. The reins of power, which nearly slipped from the hands of established American leaders during the tumultuous 1770s, had been securely restored by the end of the 1780s, in the face of bitter and varied opposition. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 258 ${bmicon} At first, in the wake of military victory over Britain, the short-term survival of the new United States of America seemed assured, thanks to years of intense fighting and skillful diplomacy. The former colonies had banded together under the Articles of Confederation, duly ratified in 1781, which placed specific governmental powers in the hands of an elected national legislature, or Continental Congress. But deeper questions persisted. Who would benefit most from independence, and who would chart the direction of the new republican experiment? Should power rest primarily with the victorious army, the wealthy merchants, or the artisans and farmers who had provided the backbone of the revolutionary movement? And should authority be consolidated in the hands of a well-educated, new national elite, or should it be widely dispersed, with local communities and regions empowered to manage their own affairs? full view Alexander Hamilton - Portrait George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in a formal portrait. (Independence National Historical Park) Equally important, what did the newly emerging cultural patterns mean for the fledgling society? In these postwar years, scientific, educational, and humanitarian undertakings flourished. Literary endeavors also prospered, and lending libraries sprang up. “At no time did Literature make so rapid a progress in America, as since the peace,” boasted a Massachusetts periodical in 1785. “It must afford real pleasure to every son of science, that our swords are beaten into ploughshares, and that the torch of Learning now shines with such lustre in this western hemisphere.” This Biblical reference of turning from war and swords to peacetime activities like plowing was particularly compelling to a nation that had endured nearly a decade of war. After their triumph at Yorktown, Washington’s men had moved north to press British forces to evacuate New York City. More than 10,000 American troops and 500 officers encamped at Newburgh, on the Hudson River. With victory at hand, the soldiers looked forward to returning to civilian life. But they were also eager to receive their pay, long overdue because the protracted war had exhausted public finances. Clearly, they could negotiate best for the promised wages while they were still together and still on a wartime footing. Their bargaining position would weaken sharply once peace arrived and they laid down their weapons. Officers were especially reluctant to disband without clear assurances of money and status. In 1780 they extracted from the Congress a promise of half pay for life, in imitation of the European model. In December 1782, with no sign of the money in sight, the disgruntled officers sent a delegation to Philadelphia to press their claims. full view Women Petition for War Compensation Following the war, many women petitioned state legislatures to recover property and address other war grievances. Here, Mary Moore seeks compensation from the North Carolina Assembly. (North Carolina Division of Archives and History) Within Congress, the men around financier Robert Morris, including James Wilson and Alexander Hamilton, wanted to bolster and centralize the Confederation’s finances. To that end, they sought a new “continental impost”—a duty of 5 percent on imported goods—to raise money from the states. In the short run, revenue from the impost would help make the Confederation government solvent. But the measure would also strengthen that government in the long run, for the new income would allow it to assume responsibility for paying off state war debts. In turn, this economic commitment would tie the interests of wealthy citizens to the Confederation government’s survival and success. Morris even threatened to resign his position as secretary of commerce if the “nationalists” did not get their way. Rumblings from the officer corps would help these politicians push through the impost measure, crucial to their long-term goals. So they quietly encouraged the military dissidents in Newburgh. In late February 1783, anonymous petitions—penned by the staff of Washington’s old rival, Horatio Gates—circulated among officers encamped at Newburgh. These inflammatory “addresses” suggested that officers should sit tight, neither fighting nor laying down their arms, until Congress guaranteed their future payments. If the government met their demands, they would be like “lambs,” General Henry Knox wrote privately to a fellow general. But if not, they would become “tigers and wolves.” Such phrases suggest the veiled Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 259 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Demobilization: “Turned Adrift Like Old Worn-Out Horses” Joseph Plumb Martin was born in western Massachusetts in 1760, and he took up arms in the Revolution before his sixteenth birthday. He served faithfully in the Continental Army and was encamped at West Point, New York, when peace finally arrived. Later, in a compelling narrative of his wartime experiences, he recalled the demobilization process from the perspective of a common soldier. [On April 19, 1783,] we had general orders read which satisfied the most skeptical, that the war was over and the prize won [after] eight tedious years. But the soldiers said but little about it; their chief thoughts were closely fixed upon their situation…. Starved, ragged and meager, not a cent to help themselves with, and no means or method in view to remedy or alleviate their condition. This was appalling in the extreme…. At length, the eleventh day of June 1783, arrived. “The old man,” our captain, came into the room, with his hands full of papers. … He then handed us our discharges, or rather furloughs,… permission to return home, but to return to the army again if required. This was policy in government; to discharge us absolutely in our present pitiful, forlorn condition, it was feared, might cause some difficulties…. Some of the soldiers went off for home the same day that their fetters were knocked off; others stayed and got their final settlement certificates, which they sold to procure decent clothing and money…. I was among those…. I now bid a final farewell to the service. I had obtained my settlement certificates and sold some of them and purchased some decent clothing, and then set off from West Point…. When those who engaged to serve during the war enlisted, they were promised a hundred acres of land, each…. When the country had drained the last drop of service it could screw out of the poor soldiers, they were turned adrift like old worn-out horses, and nothing said about land to pasture them upon…. Congress did, indeed, appropriate lands,… but no care was taken that the soldiers should get them. [Instead,] a pack of speculators … were driving about the country like so many evil spirits, endeavoring to pluck the last feather from the soldiers. The soldiers were ignorant of the ways and means to obtain their bounty lands. … It was, soldiers, look to yourselves; we want no more of you. We were, also, promised six dollars and two thirds a month…. And what was six dollars and sixty-seven cents of this “Continental currency,” as it was called, worth? It was scarcely enough to procure a man a dinner…. I received one month’s pay in specie while on the march to Virginia, in the year 1781, and except that, I never received any pay worth the name while I belonged to the army…. It is provoking to think of it. The country was rigorous in exacting my compliance to my engagements … but equally careless in performing her contracts with me, and why so? One reason was that she had all the power in her own hands and I had none. Such things ought not to be. After the war, Martin settled on the Maine frontier, and a speculator bought his right to 100 acres of bounty land in Ohio. In 1818, as a disabled laborer with a large family, he successfully petitioned Congress for a small pension to support the household. He died poor in 1850. Source: James Kirby Martin, ed., Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin, 2nd ed. (New York: Brandywine Press, 1999), pp. 159–164. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 260 ${bmicon} threat of a military takeover in order to impose stability after a turbulent revolution. The prospect of a military coup suited the unsettled circumstances (and a similar scenario would be played out by Napoleon Bonaparte in France a decade later). Some American officers clearly envisioned the prospect of using military might to assert and retain political power. Without approval from General Washington, the officers at Newburgh arranged a meeting to discuss their plight. If the plotters hoped to draw Washington into the scheme, they were sorely disappointed. He did attend the officers’ meeting on March 15, but he used his commanding presence to discredit the ill-advised plan. His eyes weakened by endless wartime correspondence, he drew a pair of spectacles from his pocket. Few had seen him wear glasses, and the gesture underscored the commander’s years of dedication and sacrifice. He read a letter from Congress containing assurances of support, and he urged his officers not to take any actions that would undermine the honor they had earned. Finally, he agreed to draft a reasoned request to Congress, stressing the army’s needs. His leadership prevailed, and the officers disavowed the “infamous propositions.” Within weeks, Congress offered assurances of back wages for the officers. However, promise of half pay for life met stiff opposition from congressmen who worried about its costliness. The plan was exchanged for a guarantee of full pay to officers for the next five years, and all parties accepted the compromise. In April 1783, word spread that preliminary articles of peace had been signed in Paris. By June most soldiers were headed home. By quieting his officers, Washington had averted the threat of a military coup. The commander’s strong stance against the suspected Newburgh conspiracy reminded his admirers of the story of Roman general Cincinnatus, well known to people at that time. In the early Roman Republic, the Senate called Cincinnatus from his farm to command an army against the Aequians. After defeating the invaders, he put down his sword and took up his plow again rather than seize power as a military ruler. His selfless action earned him the lasting respect of the Roman people. The familiar story of Cincinnatus appealed to Washington. At a crucial moment in the republic’s earliest days, the American general had bravely urged fellow officers to respect the fragile principle of civilian control over the military. full view Statue of George Washington Statue of George Washington (Photodisc, Inc.) Thomas Jefferson praised Washington’s action. He wrote to him admiringly that “the moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.” Still, Jefferson and others worried that some military officers might yet meddle in politics while hiding behind the noble name of Cincinnatus. Their fears soon seemed confirmed. In May 1783, as demobilization got under way, General Knox announced formation of the Society of the Cincinnati. The new organization invoked the name of the famous Roman, in a plural form, to put its members in the best light. It was open only to officers in the Continental army at the war’s end, plus former officers and invited honorary members. Some onlookers believed that the “Cincinnati Club” was no more than a social fraternity for men united by their war experience. Benjamin Franklin assumed those joining the society had been drawn together simply by the lure of ceremony and recognition. Perhaps, he mused, these officers had “been too much struck with the Ribbands and Crosses they have seen … hanging to the buttonholes of Foreign Officers.” But others sensed a more sinister purpose. After all, members contributed an entire month’s salary to a charitable fund that resembled a political war chest. Also, the society’s state chapters maintained contact with each other through newsletters concerning “the general union of the states.” Most ominously, participants endorsed hereditary membership so that the eldest sons of Continental officers would join the society down through the generations. For skeptics, the society appeared to plant the seeds of a self-perpetuating ruling class. In a scathing pamphlet titled Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnati … with CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 261 ${bmicon} Remarks on Its Consequences to the Freedom and Happiness of the Republic, Judge Aedanus Burke of South Carolina protested that the organization revealed a “thirst for power” and created a “race of hereditary patricians, or nobility.” Critics such as Burke argued that the society would spawn a separate aristocracy of the very kind Americans had fought to erase. Jefferson and other friends of Washington, who was automatically a member, urged the general not to accept a leadership position in the new organization. Struck by this “violent and formidable” opposition, Washington suggested changes in the society, including doing away with the hereditary and honorary memberships. However, he never played a central role in the organization, and his well-publicized alterations were never implemented. The Cincinnati exerted influence as a pressure group before receding from politics in future generations. The controversy over the Society of the Cincinnati represented part of a larger debate about the direction of postwar life. The victors in any revolutionary struggle must move quickly to solidify their success, heal internal differences, and fulfill bold promises. In the wake of the revolutionary war, many Americans—despite continuing disagreements—set out to build a national culture and a shared identity. Those who had fought or had endured hardship because of the war wanted to create a country that would justify their sacrifices and uphold the ideals of the revolution. Citizens of the new Confederation would strive to match all that they still admired about European culture and, at the same time, separate themselves from all that they distrusted or rejected. Like the Puritans before them, they aspired to provide new models for the Atlantic world. One zealous professor went so far as to rewrite nursery rhymes to eliminate offending words. They began with names. Everywhere, people christened new towns, counties, streets, and schools and renamed old ones. Just as citizens had stripped away royal statues and coats of arms at the beginning of the war, they replaced numerous British names, such as those of hated prewar governors. Dunmore County in Virginia, named after Lord Dunmore, received the Indian name Shanando (later spelled Shenandoah). Tryon County, New York, which had celebrated Governor William Tryon, became Montgomery County, after the American general who died at Quebec. A frontier town in what would become Vermont, named after Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, took its new name, Barre, from Isaac Barré, a parliamentary supporter of the American cause. Political leaders rediscovered and popularized Christopher Columbus as well. Their reasoning was simple: For generations, the English had downplayed the explorer’s importance as they contested Spanish claims in the Western Hemisphere. Now, American writers coined the ringing term Columbia for their land to stress its separation from Britain. In South Carolina, citizens named their new capital Columbia in 1786. That same year, in Philadelphia, an Irish immigrant named Mathew Carey launched an ambitious new periodical called The Columbian Magazine. Five years later, supporters of the proposed national capital christened it the District of Columbia. In New York City, King’s College had been founded with a royal charter in 1754 and had served as an army hospital during the Revolutionary War. But when the school reopened in 1784 under local governance, it was called Columbia College (later Columbia University). Most people in the new republic found any references to royalty distasteful. One zealous professor at Columbia College went so far as to rewrite nursery rhymes to eliminate offending words. Children should no longer hear that a pie filled with singing blackbirds appeared “before the king.” The “dainty dish” would be “set before the Congress” instead. King Street in Boston quickly became State Street. Still, royal figures who had aided the revolution received their due. At the Falls of the Ohio River, settlers named their new town Louisville, honoring America’s wartime alliance with King Louis XVI of France. Farther up the Ohio River, in 1790, General Arthur St. Clair renamed a village near Licking Creek, calling it Cincinnati. He hoped to honor all his fellow officers in the controversial PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 262 ${bmicon} society and to invoke Cincinnatus, the Roman general. Such classical references cropped up everywhere. In 1789, for instance, citizens of Vanderheyden’s Ferry on the Hudson River voted to rename their town Troy, New York, after the citadel that the Greeks captured in Homer’s Iliad. “I find not the least resemblance,” complained one newspaper editor, “between the old city of that name and this small village.” (The trend of putting ancient names on small towns continued well into the nineteenth century. Settlers along the Mississippi River, known as “the Nile of America,” invoked famous Egyptian cities when they laid out Cairo, Illinois; Memphis, Tennessee; and Alexandria, Louisiana.) Of all the new names, those honoring individual war heroes became the most popular. Citizens hailed foreign supporters of the revolution—such as Lafayette, Pulaski, and Steuben—by using their names on streets and towns. They saluted American officers the same way. Washington’s name was used most often, but those of Montgomery, Wayne, Greene, Lincoln, Mercer, Marion, and others popped up as well. North Carolina named one of its trans-Appalachian forts on the Cumberland River Nashborough, after General Francis Nash, who had died at the battle of Germantown. Citizens changed the fort’s name to Nashville in 1784. Two years later, inhabitants of a site on the Tennessee River named their new town Knoxville in honor of General Henry Knox, who had become the Confederation’s secretary of war the previous year. New names were just part of the story. Many Americans felt that their whole language needed to be made more independent and accessible. Noah Webster, a schoolteacher who had fought against General Burgoyne, believed that “as an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government.” In his American Spelling Book (1783), Webster championed a simple, uniform written language that rejected English conventions. Words such as colour and labour lost their silent u, theatre became theater, and plough was shortened to plow. The New Englander followed this success with an influential grammar book and a popular reader. Webster went on to produce An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) that incorporated 5000 new words, many of them reflecting Indian origins (tomahawk) and American nature (rattlesnake). Webster also joined other reformers in lobbying state legislatures for copyright laws that would protect the literary works that poured from the pens of ambitious writers. Philip Freneau, a classmate of James Madison at Princeton, drafted a poem titled “The British Prison Ship” (1781), about his war experiences. Authors living near Hartford, known as the Connecticut Wits, made similar nationalistic contributions. Timothy Dwight, future president of Yale College, created a poetic allegory, “The Conquest of Canaan” (1785), and Joel Barlow composed an epic poem titled “The Vision of Columbus” (1787), heralding a bright future for citizens of the new nation. Each rustic here, that turns the furrow’d soil, The maid, the youth, that ply mechanic toil, In freedom nurst, in useful arts inured, Know their just claims, and see their rights secured. Increasingly, the land itself captured the imagination of Americans. In 1784 a Connecticut silversmith engraved the first map of the new United States and a a recent Yale graduate, Jedidiah Morse, published Geography Made Easy, which went through 25 editions. (Five years later, Morse created The American Geography and earned his reputation as the “Father of American Geography.”) In Pennsylvania, naturalist William Bartram distributed seeds CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 263 ${bmicon} from an experimental garden that his father, Quaker botanist John Bartram, had developed beside the Schuylkill River. The younger Bartram also drafted a pioneering nature book about his travels throughout the Southeast. In nearby Philadelphia, versatile painter and patriot Charles Willson Peale launched a museum to promote interest in art and the natural world. He gathered specimens, mastered taxidermy, and originated the practice of displaying stuffed animals in a model of their natural habitat. “Sir,” George Washington wrote to Peale from Mount Vernon, “you will receive by stage the body of my gold pheasant packed in wool.” At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson also corresponded with Peale and continued to pursue his own fascination with the American landscape. He promoted exploration, tested new crops, and tried his hand at archaeology by excavating ancient Indian mounds. In Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson detailed his region’s geography, society, and natural history. He also challenged the theories of famous French naturalist Comte de Buffon regarding the vitality of New World species. Buffon had declared, without first-hand knowledge, that America’s weak soil and dubious climate prompted the inevitable degeneration of plants and animals, including people. Jefferson and others disagreed. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, a Frenchman who made his home in America, had already argued the opposite case. In 1782 he published Letters from an American Farmer. In the book’s most famous essay, “What Is an American?” Crèvecoeur proclaimed that poor European immigrants became revitalized “in this great American asylum.” “Every thing has tended to regenerate them,” he wrote. “In Europe they … withered; and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now, by the power of transplantation, like all other plants, they have taken root and flourished!” According to Crèvecoeur, free people flourished in America not only because of “new laws” but also because of “a new mode of living, a new social system” that nurtured community growth. Crèvecoeur’s argument had merit: Voluntary associations bent on improving local conditions sprang up everywhere. Of course, societies for bettering jails, assisting debtors, and building libraries had existed in port cities before independence. But a new generation revived many of these charities after the war and created new ones at an unprecedented rate. Earnest reformers launched more than 30 new benevolent organizations between 1783 and 1789. Some provided relief for the physically and mentally ill. Others offered aid to strangers and immigrants. Still others granted charity to the poor and disabled or lobbied to reform harsh penal codes. In 1785 prominent New Yorkers John Jay and Alexander Hamilton joined like-minded citizens to form a Society for the Promotion of the Manumission of Slaves. Society members decried slavery as “disgraceful” and “shocking to humanity.” And in Connecticut, citizens banded together to stop the abuse of liquor. Members of this early temperance organization protested that the state’s residents consumed 400,000 gallons of rum annually and that communities paid dearly in both financial and moral terms. Meanwhile, the new Massachusetts Humane Society dedicated itself to assisting people in “suspended animation” between life and death, whether from drowning, drinking, heatstroke, or other causes. The society provided crude lifesaving equipment along waterfronts. It also constructed huts, stocked with food and firewood, to aid shipwreck survivors on isolated coastlines. Similar efforts to reform and improve the new nation sprang up everywhere. Amid such optimism, no sooner had the former British colonists disentangled themselves from the British Empire than they began to speak of shaping an expansive empire of their own. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 264 ${bmicon} “It has ever been my hobby-horse,” John Adams wrote in 1786, “to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible…. I would still say, let us try the experiment.” Westward expansion became a persistent American theme. But during the postwar decade, interest and activity centered mostly on the land just beyond the eastern mountains, territory reserved for Indians by the British until they ceded the lands to the United States at the end of the Revolution. There, countless tributaries of the Mississippi River flowed west from the Appalachian ridges toward the interior of the continent. In the South in the 1780s, pioneer families searching for land pushed west along an old buffalo trail and Indian trading path. Passing through Cumberland Gap, where southwest Virginia now touches Kentucky, they spread out across parts of the lower Mississippi Valley, a region that eventually became known as the Old Southwest. These aspiring homesteaders promptly faced resistance from Native American inhabitants and their Spanish supporters. At the same time, north of the Ohio River, other American settlers were flocking to newly claimed lands that lay between the Allegheny Mountains and the Upper Mississippi, a vast, wooded expanse later remembered as the Old Northwest. They, too, met stiff opposition from Native Americans defending their homelands and from the Indians’ British allies in neighboring Canada. By the time the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, the Continental Congress of the existing Confederation government was busy revising an elaborate plan to draw this territory into the union. For a generation, as part of wider reforms within its American empire, Spain had been rebuilding its position north of the Gulf of Mexico and east of Texas in the Old Southwest. The Spanish had acquired Louisiana from France in 1763 and had conquered West Florida. In a 1783 treaty, Britain gave back East Florida to the Spanish and agreed that Spain would retain West Florida as well. The Spanish occupied St. Augustine, Pensacola, New Orleans, and Natchez, not to mention St. Louis farther north. Because they controlled both banks of the lower Mississippi and dominated the gulf with their navy, the Spanish controlled who could use the huge river as an access route to the Atlantic. Mississippi Valley settlers knew that if they carried their produce downstream to New Orleans, they could then ship it to the West Indies and Atlantic ports more cheaply than they could haul bulky commodities east across the Appalachian Mountains. Besides, merchants in Louisiana paid for goods in Spanish silver, and settlers upriver needed the hard currency. Since 1763, the Spanish had let British subjects navigate freely on the Mississippi, so trans-Appalachian fur traders had become accustomed to using this thoroughfare. And during the Revolutionary War, Spain’s American allies had retained access to the river. But Spain was shocked when Britain, through its separate treaty with the United States in 1783, granted the Americans a generous southern boundary: the 31st parallel. The treaty terms also included the right of Americans to navigate the Mississippi. Spain had good reason to claim that its West Florida province stretched north above 31 degrees at least to the mouth of the Yazoo River and perhaps as far as the Tennessee River. Moreover, the Spanish felt that they should be the only ones to decide whose boats had access to the Mississippi. To be sure, the Spanish in New Orleans had grown dependent on foreign produce arriving by river from the north. But they also feared American expansion into the Mississippi Valley. Spanish authorities debated whether to co-opt the newcomers and profit from their trade or resist settlers pushing from the east. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 265 ${bmicon} full view MAP 8.2 SOUTHERN LAND DEBATES AFTER 1783 Following the Revolution, competing forces collided in the trans-Appalachian South. The United States claimed land reaching the Mississippi River down to 31 degrees latitude, and the Spanish claimed territory north to the Tennessee River. Although major Indian tribes continued to possess much of the region, coastal states also claimed sweeping jurisdiction. In Georgia, for instance, settlement remained confined near the Savannah River, but the state sold speculators large tracts as far west as the Yazoo River. For its part, the new Confederation had the force of numbers working to its advantage. The Proclamation Line of 1763 had dammed up colonial expansion for two decades. After the war, Americans migrated by the thousands to three existing centers of Anglo settlement in the Old Southwest. By 1785, 10,000 settlers clustered along the Holston, Watauga, and French Broad rivers above Knoxville. Nearly three times that many newcomers had already staked claims to the rich land south of the Ohio River between Lexington and Louisville. In addition, another 4000 were clearing farms along the Cumberland River around Nashville. These Americans took advantage of the fact that Spain had not negotiated an explicit boundary treaty of its own with the United States in 1783. As the flow of settlers increased, some talked aggressively about pushing even farther. They imagined establishing a foothold on the Mississippi at Chickasaw Bluffs (modern Memphis) or perhaps seizing Natchez or New Orleans. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 266 ${bmicon} The weak Confederation government lacked power to constrain the westward push. And state governments, with little money to pay war veterans, had instead given them paper vouchers with which to claim frontier farmland. In the southern states, powerful land speculators pressed their legislatures to support expansion. Georgia, unlike many other states, had not relinquished its western lands to the Confederation. The state’s so-called Yazoo claim embraced a region of 35 million acres. This vast expanse stretched west from the Chattahoochee River (Georgia’s present boundary with Alabama) to the Mississippi River and from the lower border of modern-day Tennessee to the 31st parallel. “I look forward to a time, not very far distant,” wrote Judge George Walton, when Georgia “will be settled and connected … from the shores of the Atlantic to the banks of the Mississippi.” By 1789, Walton had been elected governor of the state, and the land business boomed. During his tenure, Walton signed warrants for huge tracts up to 50,000 acres, sometimes selling unusable or even nonexistent acreage. Unlike Georgians, pioneers from Virginia and the Carolinas faced a rugged mountain barrier. But they still trekked west through Cumberland Gap, seeking land of their own or land that they could improve and then sell to later arrivals. In the decade after the war, backwoodsman Daniel Boone worked as a surveyor for these migrants in the trans-Appalachian region of Virginia that became Kentucky in 1792. He accumulated more than 20,000 acres of his own, only to lose much of it in litigation with other claimants. During that same decade, North Carolina issued more land patents than it had created during the entire colonial era, most of them deeds for homesteads west of the mountains. Some of North Carolina’s western landholders tried to create their own separate jurisdiction, calling themselves residents of the mountain state of Franklin. Without recognition from the Confederation government, their venture soon failed. Instead, all of North Carolina’s western territory—from the Appalachians to the Mississippi—became the state of Tennessee in 1796. Native American southerners, living in all these lands, suddenly found themselves caught between the competing claims of Spain and the United States. Ravaged by the recent smallpox epidemic and the bitter war and utterly ignored during peace negotiations, they endured the increasingly aggressive acts of state legislatures and frontier settlers from the east. The Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws—numbering roughly 40,000 people—all debated over which leaders and strategies to follow. Some responded to their new situation by selecting leaders with European-American ties. Among the Creeks, for example, Alexander McGillivray rose to prominence. The son of a wealthy Scottish trader and a Creek woman, he had been raised on his father’s Georgia plantation before becoming the Creeks’ spokesperson in 1782. The fact that he owned 50 slaves and kept a wine cellar may have boosted his bargaining power with Spanish and American officials. However, it also separated him from the needs and lives of those he represented. The renegade Cherokee warrior Dragging Canoe, who had split with tribal elders before the Revolution broke out, offered a different approach. Hundreds of militant Indians, discouraged by the compromises of their leaders, had joined his band of guerrilla fighters known as the Chicamaugas. After Americans burned the Chicamauga encampments at Lookout Mountain in the closing days of the Revolutionary War, the CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 267 ${bmicon} Indians erected five new villages nearby on the Tennessee River, including Dragging Canoe’s headquarters at Running Water Town. From this well-protected location—near where Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee now meet—the Chicamaugas recruited allies and led forays to stop American encroachment. They drew aid from the Spanish when possible, sending delegations as far as St. Augustine. When Anglo frontiersmen murdered Old Tassel, a moderate Cherokee leader, during a truce in 1788, Indian support for the militant Chicamaugas increased. But Dragging Canoe died in 1792 before he could build a strong alliance with Indians north of the Ohio River. They, too, struggled with the steady incursions of newcomers and the disintegration of their way of life. Like their neighbors in the South, most Native Americans in the North had sided with the British during the Revolutionary War. So Americans lost no time in claiming northern Indian domains ceded by Britain in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. “We are now Masters of this Island,” General Philip Schuyler boasted to the Iroquois, “and can dispose of the Lands as we think proper.” Britain refused to vacate western forts at Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac on the pretext that Americans still owed prewar debts to London merchants. Even so, the British could provide little material support to the Indians of the region, who felt betrayed by the terms of the Paris treaty. American delegations moved quickly to draft treaties with the Iroquois and the Ohio Valley tribes. Delegates bluntly asserted the right of the new United States government to Indian lands. The Congress of this recently established Confederation government instructed these negotiators to deal with the Native Americans as dependents rather than equals, calling them children rather than brothers. The treaty makers even took hostages to force the Indians to accept their terms. Ordinary Americans sealed these claims with a surge of migration into western Pennsylvania and beyond. “The Americans … put us out ofour lands,” Indian leaders complained to the Spanish governor at St. Louis in 1784, “extending themselves like a plague of locusts in the territories of the Ohio River which we inhabit.” Clearly, the British and the Indians had lost the upper hand. However, Americans initially remained divided among themselves over who would control the region. One by one, the states of Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Virginia ceded separate territorial claims—dating from their early colonial charters—to the Confederation government. However, Connecticut retained economic control over a “western reserve” of 4 million acres south of Lake Erie that it used to satisfy claims from the state’s war veterans. Similarly, Virginia held onto land rights for an even larger “military district” to repay soldiers and war victims. These western land acquisitions transformed the Confederation. For the first time, it became more than a league of states. With lands of its own to organize and oversee, the Confederation government took on attributes of a sovereign ruling body. As the number of cessions increased, Congress put Thomas Jefferson in charge of a committee to draft a plan to administer this national domain. Before he departed for Europe to replace Benjamin Franklin as the American minister to France, Jefferson drew up an orderly design for western land distribution. This document became the basis for the Land Ordinance of 1785. Jefferson knew that in the South, where hired surveyors often staked out piecemeal claims on a first-come, first-served basis, the best property had gone to wealthy investors. Moreover, boundary litigation over odd-shaped and overlapping lots had proved endless. To avoid these complications, the 1785 ordinance called for surveyors to lay out a grid of adjoining townships, beginning at the point where the Ohio River flowed out of Pennsylvania. A township would contain 36 numbered sections, each 1 mile square (640 acres). This grid plan shaped all future American land policy and left a permanent mark on the country’s landscape. As its most far-reaching innovation, the ordinance reserved the income from one valuable section near the heart of every township—square number 16—to support public education. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 268 ${bmicon} But orderly surveying and public education were just parts of Jefferson’s plan. Hoping to populate the region with self-sufficient yeomen farmers, he proposed that the government give away land in small parcels rather than sell it in large blocks that only wealthy speculators could afford. He envisioned self-government for these enterprising settlers, not colonial rule. For Jefferson, the more weight these independent farmers obtained in the American government the better, so he urged the rapid entry of numerous new territories into the union on an equal footing with the 13 original states. He suggested creating up to 14 small, rectangular districts in the west, with elaborate names such as Metropotamia. At least nine would be north of the Ohio River, and each could become a separate state with voting rights in Congress. According to Jefferson’s report “Government for the Western Territory,” the first settlers to arrive in each district were to form their own temporary governments. And when the local population reached 20,000, residents could call a convention, frame a constitution, and send a delegate to Congress. When the district’s population equaled the number of free inhabitants living in the smallest of the 13 original states, that district could enter the union if certain conditions were met. Each new state must agree to support a republican form of government, remain part of the Confederation, and accept a share of the federal debt. It must also agree to exclude slavery after 1800. Once Jefferson left for France, Congress accepted his report. However, it then modified the plan greatly. In the Land Ordinance of 1785, Congress removed his call for numerous districts, ignored his suggestion of ornate names, dismissed the notion of free land, and dropped the idea of ending slavery. Surveying the vast wilderness north of the Ohio River into neat geometric squares raised untold practical and diplomatic problems. The task would take years to complete. Almost immedi- CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 269 ${bmicon} ately—and long before the initial ordinance could take hold—political shifts produced an entirely new law from Congress: the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. This law determining how territories north of the Ohio River would be governed contained a number of additional changes to Jefferson’s original plan. For example, it reversed direction on the slave question once again, introducing an immediate prohibition of slavery north of the Ohio River. However, it made arrangements to deport fugitive slaves back to their owners in slaveholding states. In various ways, the new ordinance proved less democratic than earlier versions. Congress cut the possible number of new states from the Northwest, specifying there could be only three to five new states. This move limited the potential political weight of the vast territory. In addition, the ordinance increased property requirements for citizens who wanted to vote or hold office. It also slowed the process by which new states could gain admission to the union. Eventually, Congress granted statehood to five new entities—Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), and Wisconsin (1848)—but the process took more than half a century. Minnesota, part of which was also in the original cession from Britain, did not become a state until 1858. Most members of Congress feared the prospect of democratic governance and local control in the Old Northwest, giving a strong voice to people with different regional interests. And they worried that aggression by settlers could spark expensive Indian wars. To retain control over the region, they provided for the appointment of territorial officials—a governor, a secretary, and three judges—instead of allowing elected governments. Even when territorial legislatures formed, the governor would have veto power over their actions. James Monroe, head of the committee that moved the bill through Congress, wrote candidly to Jefferson, “It is in effect to be a colonial gover[nme]nt similar to wh[at] prevailed in these States previous to the revolution.” These changes benefited eastern land speculators most, some of whom were members of Congress. They hoped to control these lands for profit. What they did not want was to see numerous western states emerge quickly to play a powerful role in the national government. In 1786, former army officers in New England, joined by five surveyors who had seen the promising region first-hand, organized the Ohio Company to buy up western land. They dispatched a clever Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler to lobby Congress to sell a huge tract to the company at bargain rates. Cutler joined forces with congressional insiders associated with another venture, the Scioto Company. Together, they engineered a deal providing 1.5 million acres to the Ohio Company and another 5 million acres for the Scioto investors. Whatever suspicious bargains surrounded congressional passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the new law still granted basic rights to western residents. These guarantees—following state bills of rights—included religious freedom, trial by jury, and access to common-law judicial proceedings. Most important, the western territories were assured of full entry into the union as equal states rather than receiving dependent status as permanent colonies. This system established an orderly method for bringing new regions of settlement into the union. The same process, first used when Vermont became the fourteenth state in 1791, remained in use as late as 1959, when the Pacific territories of Alaska and Hawaii received statehood. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 270 ${bmicon} full view MAP 8.3 NATIVE AMERICAN OHIO BEFORE 1785 For centuries, what is now Ohio was a land of Native American villages, set by rivers. Key eighteenth-century Indian towns and trails are shown here. (In 1781 whites massacred Christian Indians at the Moravian mission of Gnadenhutten.) The end of the Revolutionary War brought widespread economic depression. The money spent by foreign armies for goods and services dried up, and the split with Britain disrupted established patterns of commerce. When peace returned, merchants and artisans scrambled to find new markets and to locate new routes of profitable trade. At the same time, those who had preserved their holdings or made money during the war snapped up foreign goods that had been scarce during the fighting. These purchases—whether for luxury goods or more necessary items—drained hard currency away from the states and increased the Confederation’s debt. Citizens everywhere felt the brunt of the postwar slump as prices dropped and the money supply shrank. As credit tightened, merchants called in their loans and unpaid bills. But the people who had taken on debts earlier, when higher prices prevailed, had more difficulty in paying them off. Families, especially poor artisans and subsistence farmers, suddenly faced the threat of foreclosure and loss of their property. They fought back in local elections, state legislatures, and even the streets. Violence broke out in state after state, from New Hamp- CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 271 ${bmicon} full view MAP 8.4 SETTLERS’ OHIO, AFTER 1785 Starting in 1785, the American government imposed a novel grid system on the territory northwest of the Ohio River. Rectangular property lines and geometric state boundaries laid out by surveyors later overlay the natural landscape of the American West. shire to Georgia, as hard-pressed people, many of them veterans, decried fiscal policies that seemed to favor the moneyed classes. When armed conflict erupted in Massachusetts, wealthy merchants raised an army to suppress the revolt. They succeeded, but they feared similar conflicts in the future. After all, democratic forces had shown that they had the strength to win control in a number of the state legislatures. The Massachusetts rebellion therefore helped prompt a drastic effort to restructure and strengthen the national government through a special, closed-door convention in Philadelphia. As diplomats finalized the Peace Treaty of 1783, the British government managed to fire one parting shot at the former colonies. To nurture Britain’s maritime trade and punish New England shippers, it imposed restrictions on the Americans’ trade with the British West Indies. The move barred American ships from a key portion of Britain’s imperial commerce, forcing merchants to seek out new avenues of trade. In 1784 an American vessel entered the Baltic Sea and established trade relations with Russia. Meanwhile, the New England whaling towns of Nantucket and New Bedford rebuilt their war-ravaged fleets and stepped up their search for PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 272 ${bmicon} whales to provide oil for American lamps. Sea captains had no trouble finding sailors in need of work. Ship owners extended their reach in any direction where they sensed possible profits, even into the African slave trade and the remote China trade. Early in 1783, a Savannah merchant named Joseph Clay commented that a “vast number” of slaves had fled Georgia and South Carolina during the war. As rice plantations renewed production, African workers were “exceeding scarce and in demand.” Sensing a profit, foreign slave traders shipped 15,000 Africans to the two states by 1785. American captains moved to grab a share of the trade. The seaports of Bristol, Newport, and Providence in Rhode Island, as well as Boston and Salem in Massachusetts, all sent ships to the west African coast in hopes of renewing a trade that had been interrupted during the war. True, antislavery sentiment had increased with the idealism of the Revolution. And several states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and even Virginia, had passed laws outlawing slave imports. But these developments did not prevent American sea captains from transporting Africans to the Spanish West Indies and to Georgia and South Carolina. “The Negro business is a great object with us,” Clay reported in 1784. “It is to the Trade of this Country, as the Soul to the body.” Although American merchants had taken part in the African trade and other commerce for generations, their ships had rarely, if ever, ventured outside the Atlantic. That changed dramatically in the decade after Yorktown. John Ledyard, an American who had sailed with Captain Cook in the Pacific, convinced financier Robert Morris of the profits to be made by opening new trade routes to the Orient. The project would take an enormous investment—ten times the amount needed to send a ship to Europe—but the potential rewards were irresistible. “I am sending some Ships to China,” Morris announced to John Jay, “in order to encourage others in the adventurous pursuits of Commerce.” His first vessel, a former privateer renamed the Empress of China, left New York harbor for Canton by way of the Indian Ocean early in 1784. It carried almost 30 tons of ginseng root—242 casks procured from the mountains in the “back part of Virginia”—highly prized by the Chinese. The ship also carried 2600 furs, which the Chinese used to line fashionable winter clothing, and $20,000 in hard currency, a huge drain on New York’s economy. In six months, the American vessel reached Canton, China’s outlet for foreign commerce. “The Chinese had never heard of us,” one sailor noted, “but we introduced ourselves as a new Nation, gave them our history, with a description of our Country,” and stressed the mutual advantages of trade, “which they appear perfectly to understand and wish.” The Chinese called the strangers “the new people.” They called their country “the flowery flag kingdom” because to them the stars on the American flag resembled blossoms. Business proved brisk, and in May 1785 the Empress of China returned to New York loaded with tea, chinaware, and silk. Morris and his partners raked in a hefty 20 percent return on their investment. Other traders took notice. In 1787 the Browns, wealthy merchants in Providence, diverted their slave ship, the General Washington, from the African trade to the China tea trade. That same year, six Boston investors sent two vessels—the Columbia and the Lady Washington—around Cape Horn at the tip of South America to trade for furs on the American Northwest Coast. Within five years, their captains, Robert Gray and William Kendrick, had pioneered new Pacific routes for American ships. Captain Gray traded cloth and iron goods for sea otter pelts with the Nootka Indians. Then he took the Columbia across the Pacific, pausing at the Hawaiian Islands for supplies. Reaching Canton in 1789, Gray found 70 foreign ships in the harbor, 14 of them American. He traded profitably and proceeded home through the Indian Ocean, making the Columbia the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. Because Gray’s voyage affirmed the rewards of trade along the Northwest Coast, a diplomatic controversy flared the following year at Nootka Sound, on the west side of Vancouver Island. Although Spain protested British and American trading activities in the area, Gray was back on the Northwest Coast by 1792. He entered a powerful stream—where the states of Washington and Oregon now meet—and named it the Columbia River, after his ship. When he planted the American flag at the mouth of this major CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 273 ${bmicon} waterway, his action foreshadowed later territorial claims by the United States in the Oregon region. At the same time, Captain Kendrick, sailing in the Lady Washington, anchored off the Japanese island of Honshu, hoping to gain access for American trade. But Japan remained closed, and Kendrick’s objective was not realized for another 62 years. While American merchants probed for new markets from the Baltic to the Pacific, they also moved to strengthen their economic and political position at home. Peacetime brought forth a variety of ingenious schemes, many of which foundered in the troubled economy. But one practice attracted wide interest among the wealthiest people in town after town. Paying only a small fraction of the original value, they bought up a variety of loan certificates, paper notes, and wartime securities issued by state governments and the Continental Congress. Certificates issued to soldiers and officers at the end of the war rapidly became part of this speculative market as the original recipients sold their notes to prosperous speculators in return for ready cash. As a result, such holdings accumulated increasingly in the hands of the well-to-do. In Maryland, for example, the claims on $900,000 owed by the state became concentrated in the possession of only 318 people by 1790. Moreover, 16 of these people controlled more than half of the total value, and the 8 largest holders possessed 38 percent. As their speculative holdings increased, these few wealthy investors maneuvered to influence political events. They realized that the people who controlled the reins of power at the state and national levels would determine whether and how the various notes of credit might be redeemed. With this in mind, they purchased large quantities of these notes for a fraction of their face value. These men stood to reap enormous profits from any government that would pay interest on, and then buy back, all these paper arrangements at their original high value. The few people who had acquired most of the paper securities wanted their holdings redeemed for hard money. But the majority of citizens, faced with rising debts amid an economic downturn, resented the heavy taxes needed to pay interest on the debt to these wealthy speculators. Favoring much easier credit, they urged their states to issue new paper money. This conflict was familiar from colonial times, when many merchants and planters, in debt to British firms, PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 274 ${bmicon} had chafed under Britain’s tight fiscal policies. But the views of local elites had shifted when they gained control over their own state governments. They now wanted to limit paper money in ways that favored their new position as powerful creditors and holders of wartime certificates. Their opponents argued that issuing paper money could take the pressure off cash-strapped farmers and help retire enormous war debts. In seven states, these advocates of economic relief carried the day. State government presses put additional notes in circulation. Local battles over debt, credit, and currency issues hit hardest in the Northeast for several reasons. During the war, Americans had foiled British plans to isolate and crush New England’s rebellious colonists. Indeed, the region had prospered. Yankee farmers sold provisions to the Continental Army at hefty prices. French forces stationed at Newport in 1780 paid for food and firewood in gold coins. And throughout the war, numerous New England ships, known as privateers, fought with an eye on profit, hauling captured enemy vessels into local ports as prizes. In 1783, however, Britain’s move to ban American ships from the British West Indies cut off the lucrative trade that New Englanders had created. For generations, these American captains had sold fish, grain, and lumber to the islands in exchange for hard currency. Sudden exclusion from Britain’s Caribbean colonies dried up the flow of much-needed cash into New England and undermined the region’s economy. These changes had an immediate impact. In New Hampshire courts, debt cases rose sixfold from 1782 to 1785. Even if the debts themselves were not large, the heavy costs of traveling to court and paying high legal fees pushed thousands of families into insolvency. As long as the courts remained open, judges routinely ordered the seizure and sale of property. Embittered farmers watched as their horses, cows, wagons, and household goods disappeared in auction at low prices. Hard times often spark drastic responses, and New England’s pot soon boiled over. Early in 1787, from his desk at Mount Vernon, Washington’s secretary noted that the “tumults, insurrections, and Rebellion in New England have of late much engrossed the minds of the people here.” Newspaper accounts told of disturbing events in Rhode Island. There, rural politicians seeking relief for indebted farmers swept into power during the elections of April 1786. Their triumph freed the assembly from its longtime domination by rich Providence merchants. The newcomers, elected on their paper money platform, wasted no time in implementing their ballot box revolution. Their region had a withered economy, and the state government carried a burdensome war debt. To address these matters, assemblymen approved a huge outlay of paper money: £100,000. The assembly planned to distribute the legal tender among the towns and lend it to citizens on equitable terms. The revenue received back in taxes as the economy rebounded would then be used to pay off the state’s debts and retire the paper currency. To ensure the plan’s success, legislators declared the money as legal tender that all creditors had to accept as payment. And if any creditors refused to accept the paper money, debtors could deposit the funds with the county court. The judge would then advertise that the debt had been paid. Many merchants closed their stores rather than accept payments in the new medium of exchange. Not surprisingly, creditors and speculators resented Rhode Island’s currency law. Moreover, they fumed at the new legislature’s unwillingness to assume a share of the national debt and pay off wealthy bond holders, as other states had done. Without control over the legislature, these speculators feared they would be left holding all the continental securities they had acquired. They took swift action. Though heavily outnumbered, members of the moneyed class in Providence used their economic strength to fight back. Many merchants closed their stores rather than accept payments in the new medium of exchange. Some even left the state to avoid being forced to accept debt payments in paper money. When judges who favored the merchants’ cause finally declared the new statute unconstitutional, creditors everywhere sighed with relief. Their newspapers condemned the “Rogue Island” currency law as a dire example of the dangers of democracy. CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 275 ${bmicon} In Massachusetts and New Hampshire, unlike Rhode Island, wealthy merchants in coastal centers retained control over the new state assemblies. They therefore had the power to resist public pressure to generate more paper money. Such a policy might provide relief for an expanding backcountry population hit hard by the economic downturn and the scarcity of circulating currency, but it did not suit the interests of these creditors. Instead, it was the enforcement of debt collection by the courts that would best expand merchants’ holdings and improve their standing in international trade. As in other states, a small contingent of wealthy speculators had bought up, at bargain rates, most of the public securities and certificates issued during the war. They anticipated enormous windfall profits if a government they controlled could redeem these notes, in gold and silver, at their full face value. In New Hampshire, by 1785, securities valued at nearly £100,000 belonged to just 4.5 percent of the state’s adult male population: 1120 men among approximately 25,000. A mere 3 percent of this group—34 men—controlled more than a third of this vast speculative investment. Most of these men had close ties to the prevailing government, situated in Exeter, near the coast. When farmers organized conventions to voice their economic grievances, merchants infiltrated and disrupted their meetings. In September 1786, 200 citizens, many of them armed war veterans, marched on Exeter to demand money reforms before conditions “drive us to a state of desperation.” Officials organized cavalry units to confront the desperate citizens, arresting their leaders from the crowd “as a butcher would seize sheep in a flock.” As soon as the state’s governor, General John Sullivan, had suppressed the dissenters, he issued a proclamation forbidding further conventions. He then wrote to Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin, offering to help crush similar unrest in the neighboring state. Early in 1786, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had imposed a heavy direct tax full view FIGURE 8.1 CONCENTRATION OF SECURITY NOTES IN THE HANDS OF A FEW: THE EXAMPLE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE IN 1785 PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 276 ${bmicon} on its citizenry, stipulating that people pay it in hard currency. Western farmers lacked sufficient cash and already faced a wave of foreclosures for debt. They protested the tax law at town meetings and county conventions. When their complaints fell on deaf ears, they took actions into their own hands, “regulating” events as the North Carolina Regulators had done two decades earlier. The Massachusetts Regulation became known as Shays’s Rebellion when Daniel Shays, a revolutionary officer who had served with distinction under Lafayette, emerged as one of its popular leaders. At first, these New England Regulators focused on closing the courts. In August 1786, 1500 farmers marched against the Court of Common Pleas in Hampshire County and shut it down. The next month, another band closed the court in Worcester. The confrontation escalated as winter set in. By January the next year, more than 1000 Shaysites, knowing that their allies in New Hampshire had been defeated, moved to seize the federal arsenal in Springfield. But Governor Bowdoin had mobilized an army, financed largely by wealthy merchants in Boston. This private militia overpowered the westerners and forced all who did not flee to sign an oath of allegiance. Disarmed but not silenced, the dissidents succeeded in defeating Bowdoin in the next election and extracting some relief from the new governor, John Hancock. The unrest in New England played into the hands of those advocating a stronger national government. (Some of their opponents even suspected that ardent nationalists had helped provoke the violence specifically to rally support for their cause.) In a typical letter, Henry Knox expressed fear to his fellow general, John Sullivan, that “we are verging fast to anarchy.” Writing in May 1787, he urged Sullivan to send delegates from New Hampshire to a crucial meeting that was about to begin in Philadelphia. Even before Yorktown, Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s youthful Caribbean-born aide-de-camp, had proposed a convention to restructure the national government. Now he worked with another young nationalist, James Madison, and their energetic supporters to bring it about. Congress had made earnest efforts toward reform, but any changes to the Confederation’s governing articles required approval from all 13 states. Thus, vital amendments—which would let Congress regulate commerce, raise revenue, and establish a judiciary, for example—proved nearly impossible. For some powerful leaders, especially merchants and creditors, a major political revision seemed in order. They were willing to alter the Articles of the Confederation, which governed the United States, or perhaps even scrap them, in favor of some modified structure that would reflect their worldview and serve their own interests yet still prove acceptable to a sufficient portion of the people. “Many Gentlemen both within & without Congress,” wrote Madison, desire a “Convention for amending the Confederation.” Still, it would take impressive leadership—Madison provided much of it—to seize the initiative and then generate enough momentum to change the rules of national government. Extensive compromise, both between elite factions and toward resistant popular forces, would be necessary at every stage. After all, it would take an enormous push to engineer such a convention, to guide it to restructure the government along nationalist lines, and finally to persuade voting Americans to ratify the proposed changes and accept their legitimacy. To begin such a task, would-be reformers needed to recruit the enormous prestige of George Washington and obtain the acquiescence of a stymied Congress. full view Mount Vernon Mount Vernon (Photodisc, Inc.) The path began at Mount Vernon in 1785 when Washington hosted commissioners appointed by Maryland and Virginia to resolve state boundary disputes regarding the Potomac River. CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 277 ${bmicon} During the gathering, these men (including James Madison) scheduled a broader meeting on Chesapeake trade for the next year at Annapolis, Maryland. They invited all the states to send representatives. Only 12 delegates from five states showed up at Annapolis in September 1786, but news of the serious unrest in New England prompted talk of a more extended meeting. Alexander Hamilton, as a representative from New York, persuaded the other delegates to call for a convention in Philadelphia the following May to discuss commerce and other matters. Madison won endorsement for the proposal from the Virginia legislature and then from Congress. Reform-minded congressmen, such as James Monroe, saw an opportunity to amend and improve the existing Confederation structure. But when the states sent delegates to Philadelphia the following spring, many of the appointees felt that amendments might not go far enough. They were open to the more sweeping changes that Madison and other nationalists had in mind. So the gathering called to consider commercial matters and propose improvements to the Articles of Confederation soon became a full-fledged Constitutional Convention, a private meeting to design and propose an entirely new structure for governing the United States. Madison reached Philadelphia in early May 1787. He immediately began drafting plans for drastic change and lobbying delegates, some of whom came early to attend a secret gathering of the Society of the Cincinnati. On May 25, when representatives from seven states had arrived, they launched the convention and unanimously chose Washington as the presiding officer. Participants agreed that they would operate behind closed doors and each state delegation would have one vote. There would be no public discussion or official record of their proceedings. Soon, delegates from 12 states had joined the gathering. Only Rhode Island opted not to send representatives. The 55 delegates had much in common. All were white, male, and well educated, and many already knew one another. These members of the national elite included 34 lawyers, 30 public PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 278 ${bmicon} creditors, and 27 members of the Society of the Cincinnati. More than a quarter of the participants owned slaves, and nearly a dozen had done personal business with financier Robert Morris of the Pennsylvania delegation. Not surprisingly, all seemed to agree that the contagion of liberty had spread too far. Indeed, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts called the current situation “an excess of democracy.” Specifically, these men feared recent legislation that state assemblies had adopted to assist hard-pressed citizens: laws that delayed tax collection, postponed debt payments, and issued paper money. Most delegates hoped to replace the existing Confederation structure with a national government capable of controlling finances and creating creditor-friendly fiscal policy. To be effective, they believed, a strengthened central government must have greater control over the states. Only Robert Yates and John Lansing of New York and Luther Martin of Maryland staunchly resisted expanding central power. Many of the delegates, especially those from the large states, thought that the national legislature should be based on proportional representation according to the number of inhabitants rather than each state receiving equal weight regardless of its population. Also, most wanted to see the single-house (unicameral) Congress of the Confederation replaced by an upper and lower house that would reflect the views and values of different social classes. John Adams had helped create such a two-house (bicameral) system in the Massachusetts constitution, thereby limiting pure democracy and giving more political power to propertied interests. Besides calling for checks within the legislative branch itself, Adams had also laid out strong arguments for separating, and checking, the powers of each competing branch of government. For a sound and lasting government, Adams had argued in earlier essays, the legislative branch should be balanced by separate executive and judicial branches that are equally independent. Most delegates agreed with this novel system of checks and balances, intended to add stability and remove corruption. The Philadelphia gathering, which lasted through the entire summer, would later be known as the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Even as a general consensus emerged within the small meeting, countless personal, practical, and philosophical differences persisted. Hamilton delivered a six-hour speech in which he staked out an extremely conservative position, no doubt intended to make other proposals look more moderate and therefore acceptable. He underscored “the imprudence of democracy” and stressed a natural separation between “the few and the many”—the “wealthy well born” and the “turbulent and changing” people. Hamilton’s conservative oration called for the chief executive and the senators to be chosen indirectly, by elected representatives rather than by the people themselves, and he recommended that these high officials should serve for life. Such ideas undoubtedly appealed to many of his listeners, but all of the delegates knew that a majority of citizens would never accept such proposals. Pierce Butler of South Carolina, invoking ancient Greece, urged members to “follow the example of Solon, who gave the Athenians not the best government he could devise but the best they would receive.” This attentiveness of convention members to what the public would accept is illustrated by their approach to voting rights. Even delegates who wanted to limit the vote to property holders realized that various state constitutions, responding to popular pressure, had already distributed suffrage more broadly. Property ownership was no longer a universal voting requirement, and states varied on whether religion, race, or gender could determine eligibility. James Wilson of Pennsylvania, second only to Madison in working to build a practical nationalist majority in the convention, pointed out that “it would be very hard and disagreeable” for any person, once franchised, to give up the right to vote. Accordingly, the delegates proposed that in each state all those allowed to vote for the “most numerous branch of the state legis- CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 279 ${bmicon} lature” would also be permitted to cast ballots for members of the House of Representatives. But they shied away from accepting direct election for the Senate or the president, and they deferred suffrage matters to the states. Time and again during the 16-week convention, these like-minded men showed their willingness to bargain and compromise. Lofty principles and rigid schemes often gave way to balancing and improvisation. The unlikely creation of the electoral college for selecting a president is one example. Delegates who differed over the length for the chief executive’s term of office and right to run for reelection also disagreed on the best method of presidential selection. Some of them suggested that ordinary voters should elect him; others proposed that the state governors, or the national legislature, or even electors chosen by state legislators should choose the chief executive. Finally, the aptly named Committee on Postponed Matters cobbled together an acceptable system: a gathering (or “college”) of chosen electors from each state would cast votes for the presidency. This electoral college plan had little precedent, but it managed to balance competing interests. Under the scheme, state legislatures would set the manner for selecting electors. The least populous states would get a minimum of three electoral votes, and states with more people would choose more electors in proportion to their numbers, giving them added weight in the decision. The people could also participate in the voting process, though only if their state legislatures called for it. And if no candidate won a majority in the electoral college, the House of Representatives had the right to determine the president, with each state having one vote. The system was far from elegant or democratic, but it placated varied interests, and it won prompt approval. As deliberations stretched across the long, hot summer of 1787, two central issues threatened to unravel the convention: political representation and slavery. Questions of representation pervaded almost every discussion, pitting large states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts against the less populated states. Madison’s well-organized Virginians offered a comprehensive blueprint outlining a new national government that would have three separate branches. This design, called the “Virginia Plan,” recommended a bicameral national legislature with proportional representation in each body. The House of Representatives would be chosen by popular election, the Senate by state legislators. Madison’s system clearly favored populous states. Not surprisingly, a coalition of small-state delegates led by William Paterson of New Jersey submitted an alternative “New Jersey Plan.” This less sweeping revision built on the current Articles of Confederation. It called for a continuation of the existing unicameral legislature, in which each state received an equal vote. A committee chaired by Benjamin Franklin managed to break the impasse. The idea of an upper house, or Senate, would be retained, and each state, whatever its size, would hold two senate seats. Seats in the House of Representatives would be determined proportionally, according to the relative population of each state. Moreover, this lower house would have the power to initiate all bills dealing with finance and money matters. As deliberations stretched across the long, hot summer of 1787, two central issues threatened to unravel the convention: political representation and slavery. To implement proportional representation in a fast-growing society, the delegates provided for a national census every 10 years. No European country had attempted a regular periodic headcount, so the census represented a radical innovation at the time. This in turn raised a thorny question. Should slaves—people enumerated in the census yet denied the rights of citizens—be counted in determining a state’s proportional representation in the national government? Slaveholding states wanted their human property to count because that would give those states more representation. The convention resolved this dilemma in mid-July with Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 280 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Equal Representation? The ratified Constitution was an approved blueprint, not a finished house. In the name of “We, the people of the United States,” the new plan affirmed citizen representation in government. The tradition had grown during generations of local self-rule in the colonies, and debate over the issue had sparked rebellion from British rule. Regular elections allowing the choice of “representative” public officials would be central to the new framework. But each state government held the right to decide how “the people” would be defined in election matters. And no one knew how the proposed federal court system might rule on these issues. Everywhere, concerned onlookers wondered how representation would work in the new republic. After all, the majority of inhabitants found themselves excluded from the franchise on the basis of age, gender, or race. Status as a slave or servant, lack of sufficient property, military status, tax classification, criminal record, or length of residency could also be factors in denying the vote. But to many in the ruling elite, broadening the franchise appeared a dangerous proposition. “Democracy,” Elbridge Gerry had told the Constitutional Convention, is “the worst … of all political evils.” (Later, when he served as governor of Massachusetts, Gerry’s name became associated with the art of drawing voting districts in strange shapes to assure political advantage, a practice known ever after as gerrymandering.) Struggles over the right to vote have expanded the franchise and the federal government’s role in guaranteeing that right through amendments to the Constitution itself. After the bloody Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) granted that a citizen’s voting rights could not be “denied or abridged … on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (gender was not mentioned), and it empowered Congress to enforce the article. But Congress shirked this assignment and tolerated new devices for black disfranchisement. Similarly, Congress failed to protect Native American voting rights, even after a 1924 act granted Indians the rights of citizenship. Meanwhile, women mounted a suffrage campaign of their own, leading to passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), removing voting restrictions “on account of sex.” As enfranchisement expanded, so did the proliferation of devices to inhibit voting and limit its value. In the segregated South, poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright intimidation all became tactics for preventing black voter registration and participation. So did racial gerrymandering. When Charles Gomillion, a sociologist at Tuskegee Institute, registered hundreds of black voters in Macon County, Alabama, during the 1950s, the white legislature fought back. It redrew the boundaries of the city of Tuskegee to exclude most black voters, “gerrymandering” them into adjacent precincts where their votes would count for little. In a landmark case (Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 1960), the Supreme Court ruled such redistricting unconstitutional. When Congress, pressured by the Civil Rights Movement, passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the idea of “one person, one vote” gained a legal foothold in the land. Each person should be able to register freely, cast a secret ballot, and have that vote tallied fairly. But in addition, one citizen’s vote should count as much as another. In one way, the framers of the Constitution anticipated the problem of uneven representation, for they mandated a new census every ten years. This headcount would allow state and federal legislators to reapportion representation every decade in a rapidly growing society, with courts overseeing the disputes. But in another way, the framers, through their electoral college system, created a time bomb of sorts. What would happen if a presidential candidate received the majority of the popular vote but only a minority of votes in the electoral college? Such an unlikely event occurred once in 1876, with chaotic results, and again in 2000. Both times, millions of voters suddenly realized that in selecting a president each ballot does not have equal weight. This ensures that the debate over how American leaders are selected will continue for years to come. CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 281 ${bmicon} a “three-fifths” formula that Madison had proposed in earlier legislation. The odd recipe made every five enslaved people equivalent to three free people in apportionment matters. In an ironic twist, the same week the Constitutional Convention delegates approved the notorious three-fifths clause, the existing government of the United States leaned in the opposite direction. Meeting in New York, members of th Confederation’s Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which outlawed slavery in the new territory above the Ohio River. Because there was much contact between the two meetings, some scholars speculate that powerful Southerners agreed to give away the prospect of slavery north of the Ohio River in exchange for more support of slavery within the new plan taking shape in Philadelphia. During the debate over the three-fifths clause, Madison commented that the greatest division in the United States “did not lie between the large & small States: it lay between the Northern & Southern,” owing to “the effects of their having or not having slaves.” This highly charged issue continued to simmer beneath the surface for most of the summer. In late August, with most other matters resolved, delegates could no longer postpone questions surrounding slavery. Yet again, a committee deliberated, and a bargain was struck. But this time, hundreds of thousands of human lives were at stake. Planter delegates from Georgia and South Carolina refused to support any document that regulated the slave trade or curtailed slavery itself. And, they asserted, such a charter could never win acceptance at home. In part they were bluffing. In fact, constraints against slavery had wide popular appeal in the expanding backcountry of the Deep South, where independent farmers outnumbered planters, ministers questioned slavery, and pioneers wanted national support in confronting powerful Indians. Yet few delegates challenged the proslavery posture, possibly because strong antislavery opinions could have prolonged or even deadlocked the convention. The weary delegates were eager to complete their work and fearful of unraveling their hard-won consensus. Rather than force the matter, even those who disapproved of slavery rushed to compromise. In doing so, they heaped a huge burden on generations of Americans to come. Southern delegates dropped their protests against giving Congress the power to regulate international shipping. In exchange, the framers approved a clause protecting the importation of slaves for at least 20 years. They also added a provision governing fugitive slaves that required the return of “any person held to service or labor.” Through a calculated bargain, delegates had endorsed slavery and drawn the South into the union on terms that suited that region’s leaders. The word slave never appeared in the finished document. In early September, the convention members put the finishing touches on their proposal and prepared to present it to the public. Most still had qualms about the document they had created and wondered whether Americans would accept it. Winning state-by-state approval would involve an uphill battle, especially given the delegates’ resistance to the idea of a bill of rights. George Mason, who had drawn up Virginia’s Declaration of Rights 11 years earlier, reminded members that such a set of guarantees “would give great quiet to the people.” But in the convention’s closing days, fellow delegates voted down his suggestion overwhelmingly. Without a bill of rights, Mason and Gerry refused to endorse the final document, along with Edmund Randolph of Virginia. Other delegates who PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 282 ${bmicon} dissented had already departed. Of the 74 delegates chosen at the convention’s outset, 55 actually attended the proceedings, and only 39 agreed to sign the finished plan. These small numbers made it more important than ever to end on a note of unanimity. By polling the state delegations instead of individual delegates, the document’s authors shrewdly hid the three dissenting votes. This allowed them to assert, in article VII, that their task—framing a new constitution for the United States—had been approved “by the unanimous consent of the States present” on September 17, 1787. Having negotiated an alternative structure for a strengthened central government, committed nationalists now faced their most difficult task: winning public acceptance for a document that defied existing law. After all, the proposed constitution ignored the fact that the Articles of Confederation—the document governing the United States at the time—could be amended only with the approval of all 13 states. Instead, the text drafted in Philadelphia stated that ratification (acceptance through voting) by conventions in any nine states would make the new document take effect in those places. Moreover, the proposed ratification process left no room for partial approval or suggested revisions. Each state, if it wanted to enter the debate at all, had to accept or reject the proposed frame of government as offered. CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 283 ${bmicon} The Confederation Congress had acquiesced in allowing the convention to occur in the first place. Most congressional representatives had expected the meeting to produce proposals for amending the current government, not discarding it. But now that the Philadelphia conclave had ended, the Congress sitting in New York City balked at endorsing the revolutionary document. To avoid a lengthy and troublesome debate, proponents of the new constitution urged Congress simply to receive the frame of government as a possible proposal and then transmit it to the states without an endorsement. Congress did so on September 28, 1787, and the document’s advocates portrayed the unanimous vote as an expression of approval. Supporters had no time to lose because Pennsylvania’s assembly was set to adjourn on the next day. An early victory in that large and central state would be crucial in building momentum before an organized opposition developed. So they hired a courier to rush the congressional letter of transmittal from New York to Philadelphia. There, the assembly faction dominated by Robert Morris quickly moved to schedule a state ratifying convention. When opposition members saw that they could not defeat the motion on short notice, 19 of them walked out of the chamber, hoping to prevent a vote that would begin the ratification the process. But proponents dragged back two of them to have enough members for a legal vote. Over the next three months, towns and counties elected delegates, a convention met, and Pennsylvania voted to approve the new plan. Delaware had already approved unanimously on December 7, and New Jersey and Georgia promptly followed suit. By the end of January, Connecticut had also ratified. Other states had called elections and scheduled conventions. Only Rhode Island, which had not sent delegates to the drafting convention, refused to convene a meeting to debate ratification. By seizing the initiative early, the proponents of the new framework shaped the terms of debate. The drafters, anything but a cross-section of society, worked to portray themselves as such. They noted that their document began with the ringing phrase, “We the people of the United States,” a last-minute addition by Gouverneur Morris of New York. And Madison told the public that the text sprang from “your convention.” Most important, in a reversal of logic and contemporary usage, the nationalists who supported the new constitution took for themselves the respected name of Federalists. They gave their opponents, a diverse assortment of doubters and critics, the negative-sounding term Anti-Federalists. The Federalists then used their ties to elite leaders and influential editors to wage a media war for public support. They dashed off letters, prepared pamphlets, and published essays praising the proposed constitution. The strongest advocacy came from the pens of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. The two men composed 80 essays for the New York press under the pen name Publius. John Jay added five more, and in the spring of 1788 the collection appeared as a book titled The Federalist. In the most famous piece, “Number 10,” Madison challenged the widely accepted idea that a republic must be small and compact to survive. Turning the proposition around, he argued that minority opinions would fare better in a large nation, where diverse competing interests would prevent a unified majority from exerting control. Opponents of the new plan found themselves on the defensive from the start. Many of them had supported some government change, and most conceded the presence of economic difficulties. But the Federalists’ dire predictions of impending chaos struck them as exaggerated. “I deny that we are in immediate danger of anarchy,” one Anti-Federalist writer protested. Richard Henry Lee, president of the Confederation Congress, condemned the Federalists as a noisy “coalition of monarchy men, military men, aristocrats and drones.” Other prominent figures joined him in opposition: George Clinton in New York; Luther Martin, Samuel PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 284 ${bmicon} Chase, and William Paca in Maryland; and Patrick Henry, George Mason, and Benjamin Harrison in Virginia. Though not always sufficiently forceful or committed, such notables became the spokespeople for a far wider array of skeptics. Many critics of the proposed constitution protested the plan’s perceived threat to local political power. Despite Madison’s reassurances in Federalist Number 10, they believed that local and state governments represented voters more fairly and responded to their needs and concerns more quickly than a distant national authority could. For some critics this belief expressed a radical democratic principle; for others it represented their firm provincial bias. In short, Anti-Federalists were too diverse to speak with a single voice. Their ranks included many subsistence farmers living at a distance from any navigable river or urban market. These self-sufficient yeomen were joined by numerous war veterans who saw their rights to direct influence in republican government diminished by the proposed system. A wide variety of indebted people also opposed ratification, on the grounds that a strong national government would favor the interests of bond holders and foreign creditors ahead of the economic well-being of ordinary people. But if Anti-Federalists were numerous in the remote countryside, Federalists predominated in the coastal commercial centers. Using a variety of tactics, they pressed their advantages in the fight to control state ratifying conventions. They lured prominent Anti-Federalist delegates with hints of high office in the proposed national government. They also intimidated less prominent figures by ridiculing them as Shaysite extremists. Meanwhile, in state after state, they forged coalitions linking large commercial farmers living near towns and rivers with aspiring artisans and city-based entrepreneurs. Through intensive politicking, they garnered approval in Massachusetts in February 1788, but only by a thin margin (187 votes to 168 in the ratifying convention). This commitment from “the Bay State” helped to sway Maryland in April, South Carolina in May, and New Hampshire in June. In July 1788 celebrations hailed the new Constitution. “Columbus” on horseback led New York City’s parade, followed by artisan groups. The silk banner of the pewterers proclaimed that under the Federal Plan, “All Arts Shall Flourish in Columbia’s Land, And All Her Sons Join as One Social Band.” The Federalists could now claim the nine states they said they needed to implement their plan, and the approved Constitution became the law of the land. But in Massachusetts, they had triumphed only by promising to add a bill of rights, giving explicit written protection for valued civil liberties. They had to make similar assurances during the summer to secure slim majorities in Virginia (89 to 79) and New York (30 to 27). North Carolinians had voted down the proposed frame of government at their first ratifying convention because it lacked a bill of rights. A second North Carolina convention, called in 1789, withheld approval until a bill of rights had actually been introduced into the first Federal Congress as proposed amendments to the Constitution. In 1790, Rhode Island narrowly voted approval for the new framework (34 to 32) rather than risk being left in economic and political isolation. In a society consisting of almost 3 million people, the franchise remained a limited privilege, open primarily to white men with property. All told, only about 160,000 voters throughout the country took part in choosing representatives to the state ratifying conventions. And only about 100,000 of these people—less than 7 percent of the entire adult population—cast votes for delegates who supported the Constitution. Fully aware of these slim numbers, the Federalists knew they would have to fulfill their promise to incorporate a bill of rights. Madison, goaded by Jefferson from his post in Paris, promised Virginians that he would push for the inclusion of CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 285 ${bmicon} specific rights as amendments to the Constitution. In making this promise, he had several motives. First, he hoped to ensure his own election to the nation’s new House of Representatives. Second, he wanted to stave off the prospect that discontented states would call a second national convention “for a reconsideration of the whole structure of government.” In compiling a list of protections, or bill of rights, Madison drew from scores of proposals for explicit amendments put forward by the state ratifying conventions. He selected those, mostly dealing with individual rights, that could pass a Federalist-dominated Congress and would not dilute any of the proposed new government’s powers. He set aside suggestions for limiting the government’s right to impose taxes, raise a standing army, or control the time and place of elections. True to his word, he pushed 12 less controversial statements through the Congress as constitutional amendments, despite congressional apathy and opposition. Within two years, three-fourths of the states ratified ten of these short but weighty pronouncements. Hence, the first ten amendments—the Bill of Rights—quickly became a permanent part of the U.S. Constitution. Many of the protections provided by the Bill of Rights harked back to lessons learned in the colonists’ earlier struggle with Parliament. The ten amendments guarded the right of the people to bear arms, limited government power to quarter troops in private homes, and banned unreasonable searches or seizures. They also guaranteed crucial legal safeguards by ensuring the right to trial by jury, outlawing excessive bail and fines, and prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishments.” The First Amendment secured freedom of speech and of the press, protected people’s right to assemble and petition, and prohibited Congress from meddling in the exercise of religion. By securing these freedoms, Madison engineered a final set of compromises that ensured the acceptance and longevity of the Constitution he had done so much to frame. The War for Independence exhausted the new nation. Defeating the British and managing the difficult task of demobilization and reconstruction consumed American energy and resources in the 1780s. So did the new western domain, where Americans had to balance prospects for national expansion against the military threats posed by European empires and Native American groups that asserted old and competing claims in the region. Also, economic differences set aside during the war reemerged in the years after Yorktown, so questions of wealth and property loomed large. How should the public debt be handled? Should slavery and the African slave trade be allowed to continue? Over all these matters hovered the basic issue of governance. Independence from Britain meant an end to monarchy for Americans. They were keenly aware that they were sailing in uncharted waters as they experimented with constitution-making at every level. Acceptance of the Articles of Confederation in 1781 was a major accomplishment, and all assumed that the structure would demand further revision and adjustment. However, few could foresee that it would be set aside for a more centralized federal design within eight years. The fierce debate over ratification of the new constitution raised fresh uncertainties about the long-term survival of the union. Much hinged on selection of the first president for the newly constituted nation. Only a few years earlier, Madison—then a young representative serving in Philadelphia—had met George Washington as the general journeyed south toward Yorktown in 1781. Now the fellow Virginian, 19 years Madison’s senior, was the overwhelming favorite to become the first chief executive of the new republic. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1775-1803 286 ${bmicon} Washington’s Newburgh Headquarters For 16 months in 1782–1783, the farmhouse of Jonathan Hasbrouck served as Washington’s headquarters in Newburgh, New York, 12 miles north of West Point. The state of New York purchased the stone building on Lafayette Street in 1850 and opened it as the first publicly operated historic site in the United States. Fraunces Tavern Here, at 54 Pearl Street near the tip of Manhattan, Washington bid farewell to his officers in 1783. From 1785 to 1787, while New York served as the capitol city, the building held the departments of foreign affairs, the treasury, and war. Now it houses a museum with exhibits relating to the eighteenth century. Mount Vernon www.mountvernon.org/ During the nineteenth century, concerned women rallied to preserve Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate on the Potomac River. It is still maintained by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. If you cannot visit the plantation itself, eight miles south of Alexandria, Virginia, you can visit the Web site. Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia Covering 45 acres and containing 20 buildings, this site includes Independence Hall, where the Constitutional Convention met in the summer of 1787. The Visitor Center is at Third and Walnut Streets. On the Market–Frankfurt Subway, use the 5th St. and Market station. The Natchez Trace Parkway Running 444 miles from Natchez, Mississippi, to the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, this one-time Chickasaw Indian trail became a pathway for boatmen returning north after floating their goods down the Mississippi. It is now a scenic road maintained by the National Park Service. Congress and the Constitution memory.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html The Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention are the subjects of a rich Web site created by the Library of Congress in its American Memory series. James Madison: His Legacy www.jmu.edu/madison/madison.htm The James Madison Center at James Madison University in Virginia maintains this Web site, which provides ready access to materials on Madison’s life and interests, along with links to numerous documents and Web sites. Historic Bartram’s Garden www.ushistory.org/tour/index.html This Web site is part of LibertyNet’s Virtual Tour of Historic Philadelphia. The garden itself, located at 54th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard, is run by the John Bartram Association, named for William’s botanist father. Visit http://www.bartramtrail.org/ to learn more about backpacking Bartram’s Trail through the South. Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, 1781–1789 (1948). Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789 (1987). Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution (1976). Larry E. Tise, The American Counterrevolution: A Retreat from Liberty, 1783–1800 (1998). Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969). Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (2001). Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (1975). Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (1976). George R. Stewart, Names on the Land, 4th ed. (1982). CHAPTER 8 ###8226; NEW BEGINNINGS 287 ${bmicon} Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (1992). R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830 (1996). Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (1987). John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees (2000). Arthur Preston Whitaker, The Spanish American Frontier, 1783–1795 (1927, reprinted 1969). E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790 (1961). Jackson Turner Main, The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788 (1961). Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (1988). David P. Szatmary, Shays’ Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (1980). Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). Donald A. Grinde, Jr., and Bruce E. Johansen, Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy (1991). Leonard W. Levy and Dennis J. Mahoney, eds., The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution (1987). John P. Kaminski, ed., A Necessary Evil? Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution (1995). Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996). Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (1998). Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (1999). Michael Kammen, A Machine That Would Go by Itself: The Constitution in American Culture (1986). Robert A. Rutland, The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Antifederalists and the Ratification Struggle of 1787–1788 (1966). Garry Wills, Explaining America: The Federalist (1981). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter8 To Chapter 8 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 288 ${bmicon}         Competing Political Visions in the New Nation       People of Color: New Freedoms, New Struggles       Continuity and Change in the West       Shifting Social Identities in the Post-Revolutionary Era       The Election of 1800: Revolution or Reversal?       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 289 ${bmicon} THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION DESTROYED ONE INDIAN CONFEDERATION AND LED TO THE creation of another. The Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy—which consisted of the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, and Mohawk nations of present-day New York state had suffered greatly during the war. Then, in the late 1780s, some tribal members migrated westward and northward, away from their ruined fields and still smoldering villages. Regrouping in Detroit, they sought to forge a new political alliance, this time with other Indians living along the Ohio River and in the Great Lakes region. Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (born Thayendanegea) urged the Algonquians, Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, and Weas, among others, to join in common purpose, to resist U.S. territorial aggression, even as each group retained its separate identity. Together, he claimed, western Indians could “eat out of one bowl with one spoon.” Unity would bring strength, he explained: “Whilst we remain disunited, every inconvenience attends us. The Interest of any one Nation should be the Interests of us all, the welfare of the one should be the welfare of all the others.” The European Americans were determined to rid themselves of the persistent military threat posed by Indian and British forces in the Northwest Territory and so launched a concerted campaign against Indians in the area that is present-day Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Under the leadership of Miami chief Little Turtle (Michikinikwa), and with support from the British, this Ohio Confederacy held off the advances of the American army. In August of 1794 the forces of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne overwhelmed those of Little Turtle. The Ohio confederation of Indians lay in ruins until a new generation of leaders arose. The Ohio Confederacy offers some intriguing parallels to the coalition of colonies during the Revolution and to the union of the states afterward. Before the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin had marveled at the cohesion of the Six Nations (the precursor of the Confederacy), drawing inspiration from the Indians’ example. He noted, “If Six Nations of Ignorant savages” could create a union, then 13 colonies led by white men should be able to do so also. Patterns of leadership in the Confederacy were in some ways similar to those of the Patriots. Joseph Brant, in his call for unity, was the Thomas Jefferson—the political theorist—of the Confederacy. Little Turtle was its George Washington, a leader skilled in both political negotiation and military warfare. Soon after the war, Brant pointed to lessons that the Indians learned from the United States in creating the Ohio Confederacy: with political unity came military strength. Indians, like the colonists, sought to overcome regional and cultural differences among themselves. In both cases, disparate groups found common ground in their fight against a common enemy—Great Britain in the case of the thirteen colonies, the United States in the case of the Ohio Confederacy. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 290 ${bmicon} Indians and European Americans soon discovered that neither the Ohio Confederation nor the new United States could function as completely independent political entities. In the early 1790s the Indians relied heavily on the British for guns and artillery. And until 1815, the United States found itself mired in European conflicts, its trade and domestic politics shaped by ongoing wars between France and Britain. From 1775 to 1800, the Great Lakes region, or Northwest Territory west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi River, was a vast middle ground, where Indian villagers coexisted with British traders and French trappers. The cultures of these groups intermingled. For example, Brant had visited England in the mid-1770s, and he had been educated at a Christian school in Connecticut, so he was comfortable with certain European and American customs related to dress and diet. After the Revolution, the incursion of European American settlers into this “middle ground” disrupted Native hunting practices. Squatters from the East did not want only to cultivate the land; they wanted to own it. Violence escalated in an endless cycle of raids and retaliation. The U.S. citizens who settled in the area that is today Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky—the trans-Appalachian West—were the vanguard of the new, expanding republic. At the same time, they drew the army of the infant nation into a costly, bloody war. One U.S. official labeled these European American migrants “white savages,” suggesting that they would make more trouble for the country than the “tawny ones” would. Indeed, the Revolution had spawned a number of new groups who would challenge colonial ideas about race, gender, wealth, and standing in the community. White settlers were being compared to Indians in the Northwest Territory. In New England and the Upper South, another new class—free people of color—struggled to assert their rights. Throughout the colonies, some women maintained a high degree of political engagement; New Jersey even granted well-to-do women the right to vote, if only for a brief period. Artisans also sought to wield new political clout. “White savages,” free blacks, women voters, artisan–politicians—they all revealed both the social tensions mounting in the new republic and the promise it offered to these same groups. The Revolution had spawned a number of new groups who would challenge colonial ideas about race, gender, wealth, and standing in the community. The country’s natural landscape and resources, as well as its sheer size, shaped both economic and political development. Leaders continued to disagree over whether such a huge country could remain a unified republic of well-informed voters. James Madison argued that a large population dispersed over a wide area would prevent any single group from tyrannizing smaller and diverse groups. Regional economic activity—cotton cultivation in the South and commercial development in the North—demonstrated the young nation’s potential as a producer of goods. Also, the country’s physical expanse allowed people to leave their homes in the East, migrate, regroup, and begin life anew in the West. Geographic mobility remained a hallmark of the American experience. The first census of the United States, conducted in 1790, tallied 4 million people. Of this number, 750,000 were black. People of various ethnicities clustered together in pockets throughout the states. German-born people accounted for one-third of all Pennsylvanians, and almost one-fifth of New York residents were Dutch. Numbers of Northerners and Southerners were about equal. However, ethnic and regional differences proved less significant in shaping the emerging two-party system than the persistent split between urban-based merchants and rural interests such as southern planters. Moreover, policy differences between these wealthy propertied white men—proponents of a strong federal government versus supporters of states’ rights and local authority—could not account for all the domestic turmoil that rocked the young republic in its early years. The Revolution CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 291 ${bmicon} unleashed enormous creative energy as some people, unfettered by restrictions imposed by the Crown, pursued new economic opportunities. In contrast, many artisans and small farmers continued to stagger under a burden of debt and new federal taxes. For them, the Revolution was a betrayal of their vision for America. The impulse for association so evident in the U.S. union of states and in the Indians’ Ohio Confederacy permeated everyday American life. In effect, ordinary people put into practice the grand theories of the Revolution. Exhorting their brothers and sisters to join in religious fellowship, revivalists formed new spiritual communities. Reform groups wrote constitutions for themselves in an effort to commit their principles to paper. Temperance advocates joined together and called on men and women to cast off the tyranny of drink; the reformed drunkard was considered as noble as the patriot. Most dramatically, opponents of slavery kept alive the rhetoric and the ideals of the Revolution. In 1800 Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith in Richmond, Virginia, plotted a rebellion to seize the city. His actions gave voice to the egalitarian principles articulated in Philadelphia in 1776 and then in Saint-Domingue in 1791, when slaves had staged a bloody revolt against their French masters. (In 1804 they renamed the country Haiti.) Gabriel’s rebels used the words of the Founding Fathers to justify their actions, rallying around the cry, “Death or Liberty.” One even compared himself to George Washington in his struggle to “obtain the liberty of [his] countrymen.” Gabriel’s plans to kill all whites except abolitionists failed when informants betrayed him to Richmond authorities. Yet Gabriel’s rebellion, even though unsuccessful, is indicative of the struggle of almost all Americans, regardless of creed or color, wrestled with the legacy of the Revolution. full view President-Elect Washington’s Reception in Trenton This image of president-elect Washington’s reception in Trenton, New Jersey, provides insight into the popular adulation that surrounded him as well as the sharply different political roles of men and women. (Library of Congress) In the first two decades of the life of the new nation, domestic politics remained entwined in relations with the great European powers. For all their bold talk of freedom and liberty, the heirs of the Revolution continued to formulate public policies based upon the models offered by Great Britain and France specifically. Some Americans found much to admire in British traditions of social order and stability, traditions shaped by a strong central authority in the form of a monarchy. Other Americans derived inspiration from the French Revolution, which began in 1789; they believed that, for all its bloody excesses, the revolution represented an ideal of true democracy, an ideal at odds with entrenched privilege in the form of monarchies and aristocracies. The British model appealed to Federalists, supporters of a strong central government. In contrast, the French model appealed to Anti-Federalists, soon to be called Democratic-Republicans, supporters of the rights of the states and of the active participation of ordinary citizens in politics. These divergent views shaped both foreign and domestic policy in the 1790s. Within this contentious atmosphere, George Washington assumed the presidency in 1789, backed by the unanimous endorsement of the Electoral College. Even today, he has the distinction of being the only president in U.S. history to be elected unanimously. The early days of his administration provided some evidence that even his political foes shared his core beliefs. Support for Washington appeared to be widespread: When the new president traveled from his home in Virginia to the capitol in New York, cheering throngs of citizens lined the route, and parades of artisans marked celebrations in the largest towns. full view George Washington’s Arrival in New York City, 1789 Washington arrived in New York City-the first capital-April 23, 1778, one week before he took office as the first president of the United States. (Library of Congress) Neither the ratification of the Constitution nor Washington’s election silenced the continuing debate over civil liberties and the nature of the national government. Responding to the concerns of the Anti-Federalists, Congress quickly passed ten amendments, collectively called the Bill of Rights, to the Constitution. Ratified by the necessary number of states in 1791, the PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 292 ${bmicon} amendments were intended to protect white men from the power of government, whether local, state, or national. The Judiciary Act of 1789 established a national, federal court system that included a five-member Supreme Court and the office of attorney general, charged with enforcing the nation’s laws. The new republic was taking shape as the founders had hoped. It would be a nation of laws, with the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government checking one another’s power. Like other political leaders of the time, Washington believed that ideological differences between political leaders should never become institutionalized in the form of separate political parties. These leaders believed politicians should debate issues freely among themselves, without being bound by partisan loyalty to one view or political candidate over another. However, by the late 1790s, the intense rivalry between Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s secretary of the treasury, and Thomas Jefferson, his secretary of state, had produced a two-party system that proved remarkably durable. Representing two competing political visions, Hamilton and his supporters (known as Federalists) and Jefferson and his supporters (called Democratic-Republicans) disagreed on foreign diplomacy and domestic economic policies. Hamilton advocated a strong central government that would promote commerce and manufacturing. In contrast, Jefferson favored states’ rights bolstered by small, independent farmers who would serve as the nation’s moral and political center. These opposing viewpoints represented a continuation of the debate over the proper role of government, a debate that had shaped the Constitution. The Democratic-Republicans were the political heirs of the Anti-Federalists, and the Federalists continued to support the power of the federal government. In 1792 Washington ran for and won a second term, although his rivals for office (his own vice president, John Adams, and New York governor George Clinton) all lacked party designations in the contest. Four years later, Washington declined to run for a third term. His successor was John Adams, an unabashed Federalist who rankled Jefferson and other more egalitarian-minded citizens. Between 1789 and 1800, the clash between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans reverberated on the high seas, in Indian country, and in the halls of Congress. In 1793, France and England went to war over territorial claims in Europe and the West Indies. At the outbreak of the war, President Washington issued a Neutrality Proclamation. The United States, he declared, would remain on the sidelines of the conflict. Nevertheless, the two combatants drew the new country into the struggle, and few Americans could resisit taking sides. full view Washington Taking the Oath of Office April 30, 1789 George Washington took the oath of office as the first American president at Federal Hall in New York City. (Library of Congress) In the 1790s many Americans followed closely the dramatic events unfolding in France. At first, U.S. support for that country’s revolution was widespread; by imposing constitutional constraints on their king, Louis XVI, the French seemed to be engaged in a heroic struggle, much like that of the Patriots of 1776 who had challenged the absolute power of the English crown. However, in 1792, French revolutionaries beheaded the king and launched what came to be known as the Reign of Terror, executing aristocrats and presumed opponents of the revolution—wealthy people tied to the monarchy through kin ties and economic interests. CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 293 ${bmicon} In the United States, public opinion toward the revolution shifted in response to the Reign of Terror. Many Americans abhorred the carnage. In their eyes, the blood-soaked Place de la Concorde in Paris, where heads rolled off the guillotine platform and into baskets with the rhythmic precision of drumbeats, represented the end of order and humanity. Federalist politicians hoped to take advantage of these views, claiming that the bloody excesses of the French Revolution represented an argument in favor of a moderate and stable central government for the United States, one like that of Great Britain. full view Washington’s First Cabinet Washington’s Cabinet included Secretary of War Henry Knox, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. (Library of Congress) Tensions between France and the United States took a turn for the worse when France’s first envoy to the United States, Citizen Edmund Genet, ignored the Neutrality Proclamation and tried to enlist American support for French designs on Spanish Florida and British Canada. Genet was eager to raise an army among Americans who lived on the borders of these territories. The French thought they would find support among men who hoped to free the Mississippi River from Spanish control and open it to U.S. commercial interests. Nor did Britain endear itself to its former American subjects during these years. Pursuing French military forces in 1793, the British navy seized 300 American merchant ships plying the West Indian seas, forcing American sailors into service. In a practice known as impressment, British sea captains boarded American ships and captured sailors at gunpoint. England claimed that it was simply reclaiming its own sailors, who had deserted from the Royal Navy in response to U.S. captains who offered them higher wages. Meanwhile, along the United States’ northern border, British officials were supplying the Indians of the Ohio Confederacy with guns, alcohol, and encouragement in their fight against the Americans. Nevertheless, Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists continued to proclaim their support of Britain against France. These proponents of strong central government feared that the French would aid and encourage violent anti-Federalist tendencies, such as those that had motivated Shays’s Rebellion in 1786. Thomas Jefferson and other Democratic-Republicans condemned the French Reign of Terror but admired the French spirit embodied in their motto: egalité and fraternité (equality and brotherhood). As secretary of the treasury, Hamilton took bold steps to advance the commercial interests of the new nation. As secretary of the treasury, Hamilton took bold steps to advance the commercial interests of the new nation. Hamilton wanted the wealthy to invest in American rather than European manufacturing enterprises. He believed that if government promoted a robust economy that benefited successful businesspeople and investors, then, eventually, the poorest people would prosper as well. For example, tariffs protecting domestic manufacturers would provide employment to artisans. In 1789, Hamilton persuaded Congress to enact the first U.S. tariff on imported goods to encourage home manufactures and to raise money for the treasury. (Between 1790 and 1860, the tariff yielded two-thirds of the national government’s income.) full view Ships and Port at Mystic, CT Ships and Port at Mystic, CT (Photodisc, Inc.) Hamilton also sought to strengthen the federal government through monetary policy. At his prodding, in 1790 Congress agreed to fund the national debt—that is, to assume responsibility for repaying the government’s creditors and for paying the interest on it (a total of $54 million). It also assumed responsibility for debts that the individual states had incurred during the Revolution. To pay for all this, federal officials stepped up debt collection and imposed new taxes on individuals. In 1791 Congress also issued a 20-year charter to the first Bank of the United States. Hamilton had argued that this institution, modeled after the Bank of England, would help stimulate the economy by circulating surplus funds held by the government. He intended that the bank would serve the interests of urban-oriented manufacturers. In his “Report on the Subject of Manufactures” (1791), Hamilton argued that factories stimulated economic growth. They used labor-saving machinery, promoted foreign emigration, and freed the United States from dependence on European-made goods in times of war, he pointed out. They also spurred a demand for consumer products and furnished “greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other.” Hamilton also advocated the employment of poor women and children in factories. He especially admired the way British employers hired women and children in their own textile mills. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 294 ${bmicon} An advocate of agricultural interests and the power of individual states, Jefferson disagreed with Hamilton on all these issues. Jefferson bitterly opposed the Bank of the United States, arguing that only the states could issue charters for financial institutions. He favored a lower tariff, arguing that high-priced imports hurt farmers and other small consumers. More generally, Jefferson objected to the idea that fiscal policy should serve as a tool for nation building. The leader of the Democratic-Republicans believed that the government should not interfere in the lives of its citizens by imposing higher taxes on individual households or on imported goods. He was not interested in extending government aid to manufacturers or other businesses. According to Jefferson, governments, like individuals, should exercise restraint in their spending and should avoid accumulating debt. Hamilton and Jefferson’s opposing views of government shaped the American political party system for generations to come. When the “Report on the Subject of Manufactures” came out, in 1791, New England was already moving in the direction that Hamilton advocated. That same year, Samuel Slater, a 21-year-old English inventor, arrived in the United States. With financial support from Moses Brown, a wealthy merchant of Providence, Rhode Island, Slater constructed the first cotton thread spinning machine on American soil. To launch his Steam Cotton Manufacturing Company, Slater hired seven boys and two girls (between ages 7 and 12) to operate the machinery. Nevertheless, during the late eighteenth century, most manufacturing took place in individual households. For example, working in sheds called ten footers (so called because of their length), master shoemakers employed journeymen (skilled workers) and apprentices (young boys learning the trade) as well as their own wives and children. Throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic, families processed wheat, pork, hides, and cheese and made soap, candles, and leather. From 1800 to 1810, Philadelphia textile factories turned out 65,000 yards of cloth annually, but households in the region produced nearly four times that much. These small home-based producers shared similar values with yeoman (small property-owning) farmers; both groups prized property ownership and the independence of their households. In 1793 Massachusetts-born Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. This machine gave a tremendous boost to both the southern plantation system and the fledgling northern industrial system. By quickly removing the seeds from cotton balls and cleaning other impurities from raw cotton, the cotton gin fostered the emergence of a new cotton economy. Planters rushed to meet the nearly insatiable demand for cotton from mill owners in both England and New England. Southern slaveholders expanded their holdings into Alabama and Mississippi, where fresh, fertile lands beckoned. Between 1793 and 1815, annual cotton production soared from 3 million to 93 million pounds. In the 1790s undeniable signs of an emerging manufacturing economy appeared, especially along the “fall line,” the region where the Piedmont’s hills meet the broad coastal plain. Stretching from New England to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, this area had all the ingredients for an American Industrial Revolution: water power from rushing rivers, a faltering agricultural economy that western producers would soon eclipse, capital from successful merchants, and a dense population to serve as both workers and consumers. full view Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin Eli Whitney’s cotton gin separated the seeds from the cotton. Many people marveled at U.S. energy, productivity, and diversity. Especially in the North, the sounds of industry attested to American ingenuity and ambition. On a visit to the United States in 1794, an Englishman named Henry Wansey found Boston “a very flourishing place, full of business and activity.” Its docks groaned under “casks of sugar and rice, bags of cot- CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 295 ${bmicon} ton and wool, pipe staves, lumber, iron bars, bags of nails, and, in short, every article of commerce.” The Boston Duck and Sail Cloth Manufactory, an imposing structure 180 feet long and two stories high, employed as many as 400 people. Boston and its environs also boasted distilleries and factories that turned out wallpaper, nails, woolen goods, carpets, and paper. Sawmills and flour mills dotted the countryside. Throughout the North, silversmiths, booksellers, hairdressers, and makers of toys, fine carriages, and furniture, among others, produced luxury goods and provided a variety of services. Yet Wansey also saw evidence of labor problems to come. The expanding American economy yielded many jobs preferable to those of factory and domestic work, prompting high rates of labor turnover. In New York City, textile artisans brought over from Lancashire, England, proved unreliable. They left the factories at the first opportunity, eager to buy land of their own and thus “arrive at independence.” And in Newark, New Jersey, wealthy women had trouble retaining domestic servants. Poorer women were eager to take advantage of economic opportunities that did not require them to wait on their social betters hand and foot. They resented the deference demanded of them in the domestic-employer relationship. When their employees “stipulated that they shall sit at table [and dine] with their masters and mistresses,” the mistresses were horrified at this breach of social etiquette. full view Upstate New York Sawmill As settlers moved west, they cleared the land of trees for agriculture and produced lumber for houses and fences, as this sketch of a sawmill in upstate New York suggests. (Library of Congress) By the mid-1790s Hamilton and his supporters were praising the regional economic growth and specialization that protective tariffs nourished. In the South, the growing reliance full view FIGURE 9.1 EXPORTS OF UNITED STATES COTTON, 1784–1800 Sources: Stuart Brucey, Cotton and the Growth of the American Economy, 1790–1860 (1967), pp. 14–15; Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America (1835), p. 111. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 296 ${bmicon} on slaves for cotton, the newly crowned king of crops, further accelerated that growth. Tar, pitch, and turpentine produced in North Carolina, tobacco from Virginia and the Carolinas, and wheat grown in the Mid-Atlantic states, revealed the richness of the new nation’s natural resources. Freed from colonial restrictions, the New England shipbuilding industry thrived, constructing masts, boards, planks, and barrels from the forests of Maine and New Hampshire. Miners extracted iron from the land; mariners pulled fish from the sea. Innovations in transportation facilitated growth. Since the Revolution, construction had begun on 11 canals. In addition, the Lancaster Turnpike, a 62-mile road, connected Philadelphia to its outlying areas. Privately financed by stockholders, the venture yielded a profit of 15 percent annually (because of tolls) for its investors and furthered settlement of the western part of the Mid-Atlantic region. Despite Hamilton’s optimism about the economy, Washington’s administration faced violent resistance to its policies from certain quarters. In the West, American soldiers suffered a series of humiliating defeats in battles with Indians until they finally subdued Little Turtle and his warriors at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. That same year, farmers and grain distillers in southwestern Pennsylvania refused to pay their federal taxes, prompting Washington to send militiamen to quell the protest. Known as the Whiskey Rebellion, this uprising was sparked by the new 7-cents-a-gallon tax on whiskey. It was the culmination of a lengthy rural protest against Hamilton’s “hard money” policy. By favoring hard currency (coinage) over the more plentiful paper money, this policy resulted in the constriction of financial credit. With less money to lend, creditors charged high interest rates for loans they did grant. Debtors such as small farmers had to repay loans when money was even scarcer than when they borrowed it. This meant they could not pay their taxes or repay their loans; as a result, many faced foreclosure on their property. Until 1787, debtor-farmers in the Pennsylvania counties of Westmoreland, Bedford, and Huntingdon had managed to protect their holdings against seizure by winning the sympathy and support of local tax commissioners, juries, and judges. In some of these counties, as many as 43 percent of all taxable landowners were in danger of losing their property to creditors in the period 1782–1792. But by providing for a federal system of tax collection, the Constitution bypassed sympathetic local officials. Enraged by the new, efficient tax collection methods, which meant they would lose their land, Pennsylvania farmers blocked the roads leading into their communities. Road obstructions disrupted both the work of tax collectors and court proceedings intended to enforce their authority. Between 1787 and 1795, 62 cases of road obstruction occurred throughout the state. full view County Convention - Woodcut A 1787 woodcut representation of a county convention for redress of grievances to the Massachusetts government, from Bickerstaff’s Genuine Boston Almanack (Library of Congress) Using the tactics of the Stamp Tax rioters a generation earlier, western Pennsylvania farmers also attacked the officials charged with collecting the whiskey tax. The tax hurt farmers who distilled grain into whisky and shipped it east for sale. They set fire to their offices and ran them out of town. To subdue the rebellion, Washington gathered 13,000 men from the states’ militias and sent them to four of the most resistant counties in September 1794. To underscore the supremacy of the national government over the states, Washington personally led the troops into western Pennsylvania. However, when the soldiers arrived they found that the protesters had dispersed. In November 1794 Washington devoted most of his annual address to Congress to defending his actions as commander-in-chief of the militia. He indirectly charged the defiant Pennsylvania distillers with treason. The protests, he claimed, had been incited by men who demonstrated “an ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies and accusations of the whole government.” Yet Washington failed to gauge the extent of country dwellers’ economic distress. By defying federal authority so openly, the farmers expressed the general grievances of westerners who felt underrepresented in state legislatures and the halls of Congress. They also revealed the deep current of resentment against the Federalists running through rural America. Another uprising in rural Pennsylvania—this one cen- CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 297 ${bmicon} full view Whiskey Rebellion Tax Protest - 1794 The tarring and feathering of federal officials was one way in which western Pennsylvanians protested the tax on whiskey in 1794. When Washington called for volunteers to put down the resurrection, more responded than during the Revolution. tered in the southeastern part of the state in 1799—violently affirmed popular opposition to federal taxes. Protesters charged that “Congress and the government” intended to “rob the people” and reduce them to the status of European peasants, “poor as snakes.” Yet, like the Whiskey Rebellion, these civil disturbances sputtered and then failed, leaving the authority of the federal government intact. In 1795 the president sent Chief Justice John Jay to England to negotiate a key treaty. The negotiations were intended to address the problems of British forts in the Northwest, American debts owed to British creditors, British seizure of American ships and sailors in the West Indies, and the right of individual Americans to trade freely with European belligerents in wartime. Jay obtained a treaty but failed to extract meaningful compromises from England. Pro-British in his political leanings, he found it difficult to press that country for concessions. He was also hampered by the fact that Hamilton—in an effort to thwart the treaty—had supplied the British with secrets related to Jay’s bargaining strategy. In the treaty that bore his name and that the Senate eventually ratified, England grudgingly agreed to evacuate its northern forts and to stop seizing American ships. More ominously, Jay acquiesced to English demands that individual Americans pay the debts they had owed PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 298 ${bmicon} to English creditors since before the Revolution. The Americans believed that their victory in the war exempted them from longstanding financial obligation to their English creditors. The Democratic-Republicans took alarm at these developments. In their view, the new agreement humiliated all Americans and threatened southern planters in particular. Western agricultural interests gained as a result of the Pinckney Treaty of 1795, negotiated by American diplomat Thomas Pinckney. The formal name of the agreement was the Treaty of San Lorenzo. Under this agreement, Spain allowed the United States to navigate the Mississippi River freely and to land goods at New Orleans free of taxes for three years. Yet this measure hardly placated the Democratic-Republicans, still smarting over what they considered Jay’s humiliating treaty with the British. With their eye on the next presidential election, the Democratic-Republicans began a vigorous campaign in favor of their own candidate, Thomas Jefferson. They contrasted Jefferson, the friend of the small farmer, with the Federalists’ choice, Massachusetts’s John Adams, advocate of a strong central government run by the well-educated and the well-born. Jefferson’s party expressed particular dismay over Washington’s haste to crush the rebellious Pennsylvania farmers in 1794 and over Jay’s Treaty. Yet, backed by the New England states, Adams won the election, though narrowly. Because he received the second largest number of electoral votes—68 to Adams’s 71—Jefferson became the new vice president according to the terms of the Constitution then in effect (Article II, Section I). TABLE 9-1 The Election of 1796 Candidate Political Party Electoral Vote John Adams Federalist 71 Thomas Jefferson Democrat-Republican 68 Thomas Pinckney Federalist 59 Aaron Burr Democrat-Republican 30 In his farewell address, printed in newspapers but not delivered in person, Washington reviewed his years in office. Most memorably, he warned against the “insidious wiles of foreign influence” and against alliances with foreign powers that could compromise America’s independence and economic well-being. “Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation,” he wrote. “Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, caprice?” full view John Adams - Portrait Portrait of John Adams by John Trumbull in 1793. (Independence National Historical Park Collection, Eastern National Parks and Monuments Association) Nevertheless, upon assuming the presidency in 1797, Adams found that European powers still had a hold on American domestic and foreign relations. France began to seize American merchant vessels (300 of them by mid–1797) in retaliation for what it saw as favoritism toward England in Jay’s Treaty. In October of that year, the new president sent John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry to join the U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Pinckney, to negotiate a new treaty with France. However, French intermediaries (referred to only as X, Y, and Z in the Americans’ dispatches) demanded that the three U.S. commissioners arrange for a loan of $12 million to France and pay a $250,000 bribe. Only then would the envoys be allowed to speak to the foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand. The sentiments of the American public, outraged at the idea of paying a bribe and willing to defend their new nation against all aggressors, were captured in the cry, “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” Adams called the commissioners home. In the next two years, tensions escalated on both the domestic and international stage. Federalists throughout the country called for war against France, and the Adams administration sought to shore up the country’s military forces by creating a navy and the Marine Corps. Hoping to rid U.S. coastal waters of French “pirates,” ships that were seizing American vessels, in May 1798 Congress authorized American ships to seize “armed vessels under authority or pretense of authority from the Republic of France.” Over the next two years, the undeclared so-called Quasi War pitted the American navy against its French counterpart. The major players in this drama—Adams, Talleyrand, and his successor, Napoleon—were all determined to avoid outright war. They succeeded. The two nations signed a treaty, called the Convention of 1800, in Paris. This agreement dissolved the Franco-American Alliance CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 299 ${bmicon} that the two nations had created during the Revolution, provided restitution for American shippers damaged by French aggressors, and secured a permanent peace between the United States and France. French privateers and naval vessels were removed from the U.S. coastline. Conflicts continued to simmer on the domestic front. Soon after Adams’s inauguration, the Federalist-dominated Congress moved to suppress the rising chorus of dissent among rural people, Democratic-Republican leaders, and newspaper editors. Such dissent, they charged, amounted to sedition—an act of insurrection against the government. Foreign influences were whipping up disloyalty among the populace and endangering the security of the new nation, the Federalists claimed. To eradicate this perceived threat, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. These new laws made it more difficult for immigrants to become resident aliens, gave the president the power to deport or imprison aliens, and branded as traitors any people (U.S. citizens included) who “unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States.” Even though the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional—they violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech—the Federalist-dominated Supreme Court upheld them. Consequently, Democratic-Republicans were by definition guilty of treason, for they advocated policies and supported candidates opposed by the Federalists, the party in power. Ten newspaper editors were convicted, and many others charged and jailed, under the Sedition Act. Their convictions suggested the increasing influence of newspapers as conduits of information and as shapers of strong political opinion. Between 1790 and 1810, the number of newspapers in the country ballooned from 90 to 370. But editors were not the only targets of the new laws against sedition. Some Democratic-Republican lawmakers also spent time in jail because their speech offended their partisan rivals. Matthew Lyon, a congressman, went to prison for suggesting that President Adams showed “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.” In 1798 and 1799 the state legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia issued a series of resolutions condemning the Alien and Sedition Acts. Outraged at what they saw as the Federalists’ blatant power grab, the two legislatures proposed that individual states had the right to declare such measures “void and of no force.” Thomas Jefferson (for Kentucky) and James Madison (for Virginia) wrote the actual resolutions. In declaring that states could essentially nullify federal laws, the two Founding Fathers unwittingly laid the theoretical framework for Southerners to ignore congressional authority in the future. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 300 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Civil Liberties Under Siege During Wartime and Other National Crises Passed by Congress in 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts severely curtailed freedom of speech among immigrants and native-born Americans alike. Supporters of these measures feared that the nation would soon be embroiled in a war with France and that all critics of the Federalist government, including Democratic-Republicans, must be silenced. During several other periods in American history, government officials have advocated the suspension of civil liberties on the grounds of national security. Immigrants and political radicals have proved especially vulnerable to these measures in times of crisis. Soon after the outbreak of Civil War, in April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus (that is, he denied arrested persons the right to petition for their freedom in federal court) in the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland and in the District of Columbia. Military authorities had the power to arrest people suspected of aiding the Confederacy and to detain suspects indefinitely without formally charging them with a crime. Two years later Lincoln extended the suspension to all other states under Union control. During World War I, Congress passed the Entry and Departure Controls Act. The law made it easier for government officials to target noncitizens “whose presence was deemed contrary to public safety.” During the Red Scare of 1919–1920, some Americans feared that the recent Russian Revolution would inspire the spread of communism in the United States. Officials cited the act in their attempts to deport thousands of immigrants, many of whom were labor and political radicals. The outbreak of war with Japan in 1941 led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066. This measure resulted in the relocation of more than 110,000 West Coast Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens to internment camps. In two different cases, Hirabayashi v. United States and Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the government’s position. However, in 1988 Congress awarded restitution payments of $20,000 to each of 60,000 surviving internees. After World War II, tensions surrounding the Cold War led to suppression of the rights of U.S. communists and other people suspected of disloyalty toward the United States. Under the Internal Security Act of 1950, communists had to register with the government. Many other Americans lost their jobs because they expressed, or were charged with expressing, views critical of U.S. policies on any number of subjects, including civil rights and foreign affairs. During the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s, President Richard Nixon’s administration sought to suppress antiwar sentiment in the United States. High-ranking officials, including Attorney General John Mitchell and Federal Bureau of Investigation head J. Edgar Hoover, monitored the activities of, and kept secret files on, antiwar activists. In the late twentieth century, the rise of terrorist activity around the world resulted in several laws designed to detect and apprehend people suspected of such activity. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Act, and its expansion in 1994, authorized electronic wiretapping and eavesdropping and covert physical searches in the effort to collect information related to terrorism. In 1996 Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which targeted immigration offenses, including possession of a false driver’s license or passport. In response to the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush proposed that foreign nationals accused of terrorism be tried by military tribunals. Constitutional rules of evidence would not apply in these special courts. Meanwhile, the Justice Department enacted new guidelines allowing officials to eavesdrop on people in federal custody and to listen in on conversations between these prisoners and their lawyers. In October 2001 Congress passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001. This act expanded the government’s authority to monitor and destroy terrorists’ sources of funding, to wiretap and engage in other forms of surveillance activity, and to detain immigrants suspected of terrorism. Americans who applaud these measures argue that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” and that stringent measures are needed to protect the security of the United States and its citizens. Critics counter that the suspension of legal rights in the name of national security might eventually erode civil liberties for all Americans. In the late eighteenth century, North American elites demonstrated an emerging preoccupation with matters of race as a means of categorizing people and distinguishing groups from each other. Spanish officials in colonial New Mexico conducted a 1790 census that divided the population into a variety of groups based on ethnicity: Spanish, Indian, Mestizo (Spanish and Mexican Indian), coyote (Spanish and New Mexican Indian), mulatto (a person of African plus Spanish or Indian heritage), genizaro (children of acculturated Indians), and color quebrado and lobo (both designating some form of mixed-race parentage). In the United States, a 1790 naturalization law limited naturalized U.S. citizenship to “free white persons,” thereby belying the oft-heard claim that all men were equal under the law. The crosscurrents of the revolutionary legacy showed themselves most obviously in the status of African Americans after the war. To some extent, people’s fate depended on where they lived and labored. Soon after the United States won its independence from England, all the northern states lay the groundwork for the abolition of slavery. In the Upper South, citing the egalitarian principles of the Revolution, some planters also freed their enslaved workers. But overall, economics rather than principles influenced these decisions. The North and Upper South had Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 301 ${bmicon} been accustomed to using bound workers of all kinds, including white indentured servants, youthful apprentices, and slaves. With changes in the economy, owners of grist mills and other enterprises now wanted paid labor. Paid laborers offered a flexible workforce; they could be hired and fired at a moment’s notice. Even free African Americans faced an uphill struggle in their efforts to achieve political rights and economic well-being. Free people of color found their employment options limited as white men competed with them for jobs and political representation. When they emerged from bondage, freed people created educational and religious institutions that affirmed their sense of community and shared heritage. However, chronic underemployment and persistent white prejudice, sanctioned by law, condemned many black men and women to poverty. Lacking full citizenship rights, they saw the Revolution as an unfulfilled promise rather than a glorious achievement. For many northern blacks, the Revolution continued to resonate in their memories and their hopes. Gad Asher, seized from his home on the western coast of Africa around 1750, had PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 302 ${bmicon} been forced to work as a slave for a ship carpenter in East Guilford, New Jersey. During the Revolution, Asher had served as a soldier in his master’s place. His owner promised him the money he would earn as a Continental soldier. Yet when Asher came home after the war, his master reneged on the promise. Eventually, Asher managed to earn enough money on his own to buy his freedom. In 1785 he and his wife had a son, Jeremiah. The youngster loved to hear his father and two other African American veterans talk of the “motives which had prompted them to ‘endure hardness’” while fighting the British. Recalled Jeremiah many years later, I was so accustomed to hear these men talk, until I almost fancied to myself that I had more rights than any white man in the town. Such were the lessons taught me by the old black soldiers of the Revolution. Thus, my first ideas of the right of the colored man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, were received from these old veterans and champions for liberty. Between 1790 and 1804, all the northern states abolished slavery. Some, such as New York and New Jersey, did so gradually, stipulating that the children of slaves must serve a period of time (as long as 28 years in certain states) before they could gain their freedom. In 1800, over 36,500 blacks in the North were still enslaved, and some 47,000 were free. Pennsylvania did not liberate its last slave until 1847. Yet throughout the North, blacks—whether enslaved or free—were only a small percentage of the total population, ranging from less than 1 percent in Vermont to almost 8 percent in New Jersey. Most black men worked as farm hands or manual laborers, most black women as domestic servants or laundresses. Nevertheless, some whites saw black men as rivals for their jobs and as a threat to the well-being of the white population. full view FIGURE 9.2 FREE BLACKS AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION IN SELECTED SOCIETIES Source: The New York Public Library African American Desk Reference, p. 38. At both the state and national levels, most free blacks lacked basic citizenship rights. In 1792, two years after Congress limited naturalization to white aliens, it restricted the militia to white men. State legislatures in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region imposed various other restrictions on free people of color. These measures limited blacks’ right to vote, serve on juries, and move from place to place. Rectifying an “oversight” in their state constitutions, New Jersey and Connecticut later took special pains to disfranchise African American men. Massachusetts offered free blacks the most rights, including the right to vote (for men) and the right of blacks and whites to intermarry. As slaves, blacks had served in a variety of skilled capacities in the North. Yet as free people, they faced mounting pressures in trying to live independently. Certain jobs, such as those with the federal postal service, remained closed to them by law. And municipal authorities refused to grant them licenses to ply their trades, such as wagon driving. Lacking the means to buy tools and equipment and the ability to attract white customers, many black artisans had to take menial jobs. Blacks’ experiences in New York City are an apt example. In 1790 the free black population in that city amounted to about 1000 people; ten years later that number had more than tripled. In 1800 about 38 percent of male free heads of household in New York made their living as artisans. By 1810 that number had fallen to 29 percent, and it continued to drop in the years that followed. Increasingly, free black men took jobs as laborers, sailors, and domestic servants, and black women worked mostly as domestic servants and laundresses. Still, free blacks in the North set about creating their own households and institutions. They moved out of the garrets and back rooms in houses owned by whites and set up housekeeping on their own. In Boston in 1790, one in three blacks lived outside white households; CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 303 ${bmicon} 30 years later, eight in ten did so. In response to efforts of white Methodists to segregate church seating, Philadelphia black leaders formed the Free African Society in 1787. The first independent black church in the North, St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church, was founded in Philadelphia in the early 1790s. Absalom Jones, an African American preacher, headed the new church. In 1794 the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a branch of the Methodist denomination, was dedicated. full view Abigail Adams Supervising a Slave in the White House Abigail Adams, however, like most First Ladies in history, was expected to serve as an example for American housewives by running the household while her husband worked. In this painting, Adams, at left, supervises a servant hanging laundry out to dry in the East Room of the White House. (White House Historical Association) Black people also continued to celebrate their own festivals, some of which originated in the colonial period: Pinkster (based on the Jewish and Christian celebration of Pentecost) in New York and Training Day, Negro Election Day, and Coronation Day in New England. Usually conducted in late spring or early summer, these events featured parades in which black people came together to strut their finery, play drums and other African musical instruments, and proclaim their identity as a free people. In Massachusetts, blacks celebrated “Negro Election Day” by choosing their own “governors” and “judges,” unofficial but influential community leaders (often African-born). In Providence, slaves and free people of color joined with small numbers of Narraganset Indians in Negro Election Day celebrations. The festivals gave men and women alike an opportunity to escape the confines of the workplace, even if only for a short time, and eat, drink, and dance with other people of color. In 1782 the Virginia state legislature lifted a 59-year-old ban on manumission, a process by which owners released selected people from bondage. Over the next ten years, approximately 10,000 Virginia slaves gained their freedom through manumission. Some planters believed PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 304 ${bmicon} that the Revolution was the will of God, and they came to believe that slavery violated their religious principles. Some, taking to heart the rhetoric of the Revolution, objected to the glaring contradiction between the ideal of liberty and the reality of bondage. In 1802 a Maryland woman freed her slaves because, she said, the institution went against “the inalienable Rights of Mankind.” In the Upper South, especially, private manumissions dramatically increased the free black population. There, the emergence of a more diversified economy, including craft shops and grist mills, had lowered slave prices and encouraged abolitionist sentiment among some lawmakers, clergy, and slave owners. Between 1790 and 1810, the free black population in Baltimore increased from around 325 to over 5600. Virginia planters George Washington and Robert Carter were unusual in terms of the numbers of slaves they manumitted (several hundred) and their efforts to ease the transition to freedom for people who possessed neither land nor financial resources. Providing for manumission in his will, Washington arranged apprenticeships for younger freed blacks and pensions for aged ones. In 1792 Carter granted his older slaves small plots of land. In general, however, newly emancipated men and women had difficulty finding employment as free workers. Nor was their freedom guaranteed: the 1782 Virginia manumission law provided that black debtors could be returned to slavery. The next year, Maryland went out of its way to stipulate that manumitted blacks were not “entitled to the rights of free men” except in their ability to own property. In southern cities, free people of color had to compete with both whites and enslaved laborers for work. The latter group, especially, formed a pool of cheap labor that limited the economic opportunities of all free workers, white and black alike. Not all southern blacks achieved freedom through manumission. Some slaves, inspired by the growing community of free people of color in their midst and by the example of the black revolutionaries in the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue in 1791, freed themselves. They ran away, heading for the anonymity of a nearby town or a haven such as Philadelphia or New York. Despite the growth in the free black population, the number of slaves actually increased in the Upper South, from over 520,000 in 1790 to almost 650,000 in 1810. In the South, slavery proved to be an extraordinarily durable institution. full view Slave Revolt, San Domingue, 1791 Slaves revolting against the French in Saint Domingue in 1791. Napoleon sent an army to restore colonial rule in 1799, but yellow fever decimated the French soldiers, and the rebels defeated the weakened French army in 1803. (Library of Congress) CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 305 ${bmicon} Later generations of Americans claimed that the western fringe of European American settlement—the ever-receding frontier—was the most American of all places. There, it was said, with a great deal of hard work, the rugged sons and daughters of the Revolution and their descendants could carve a living out of the land and prosper independently of landlords and creditors. Yet this image was more fantasy than reality. In certain key respects, western communities tended to duplicate their eastern counterparts. The opening of federal lands proved a boon for speculators, who extended credit to homesteaders and profited from the sale of small land parcels. Charged high prices for their purchases and forced to buy expensive supplies transported across the Appalachians, some settlers rapidly sank into debt. Westerners, like their eastern counterparts, needed money and business savvy—and in some cases political connections—to succeed. full view American Stage Wagon Engraving by J. Stoner, American Stage Wagon, which depicts the common mode of transportation along federal roads during the Jefferson administration. Many native-born men and women and German and Scots-Irish immigrants who followed the Shenandoah Valley south brought with them, or bought, enslaved workers to toil on river docks and in cotton fields. The late-eighteenth-century trans-Appalachian West (modernday Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee) thus offered few African Americans a fresh start. Even in the Northwest Territory, where slavery was prohibited by law, African Americans faced the same kind of prejudice that shaped social relations in the East. Rather, than extend the bounds of liberty, western settlement solidified ideas about white supremacy. From the Canadian border to Georgia, the trans-Appalachian West had become a cultural battlefield. European Americans warred against Indians, but Indian leaders also disagreed bitterly with one another about how to respond. Should they defend their hunting grounds to the last man, woman, and child? Seek refuge elsewhere? Capitulate completely to an alien culture? Or embrace some combination of these alternatives? The true history of the West during this period reveals the dangers of generalizing about “Americans,” “Indians,” and “foreigners.” Yet one generalization does hold true: the abundance of natural resources and the vastness of the land, combined with the clash of cultures and the prevalence of armed men of all backgrounds, made life particularly dangerous in the borderlands. Many Indians residing in the Northwest Territory in the 1790s were refugees from the East, victims of the Revolutionary War. As they resettled in villages, they managed to retain some elements of their cultural identity. These groups included the Ottawas, Ojibways, Wyandots, Algonquians, Delawares, and what remained of the Iroquois Confederacy. They also included peoples who had long occupied the area that today is called the Great Lakes region and the Upper Midwest (Map 9.1): the Miamis, Weas, Piankashaws, Potawatomis, Menominees, Kickapoos, Illinois, Peorias, Kaskaskias, Fox, Winnebagos, Sauks, and Shawnees. In the seven years immediately after the Revolution, thousands died in Indian–white clashes in this region. What caused this violence? By encouraging European Americans to stake their claim to the area, the Northwest Ordinance inflamed passions on both sides: whites’ determination to occupy and own the land and Indians’ equal determination to resist this incursion. In 1790, under orders from President Washington, Brigadier General Josiah Hamar led a force of about 1500 men into the Maumee River Valley in the northwest corner of modern-day Ohio. Orchestrating two ambushes in September, Miami chief Little Turtle and his men killed 183 of Hamar’s troops, driving the general back in disgrace. The next year, Washington chose another officer, General Arthur St. Clair, to resume the fight. St. Clair’s men met Little Turtle’s warriors in November near the upper Wabash River and slightly south of the site of Hamar’s defeat. During this engagement, 600 whites died. Washington tried once more to find a commander equal to Little Turtle. This time he chose General Anthony Wayne, a Revolutionary War hero dubbed “Mad Anthony” for his Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 306 ${bmicon} full view MAP 9.1 THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY After the Revolution, the Northwest Territory became a battleground. Indians—both long-term residents and newcomers—as well as European American squatters and speculators vied for control of the land. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided for territorial governments before an area could apply for statehood. The present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin were carved out of the Northwest Territory. All had gained statehood by 1848, but only after almost sixty years of bloodshed between Indians and U.S. troops in the region. bold recklessness. Wayne mobilized a force of 3000 men and constructed a string of new forts as well. Alarmed by this new offensive, Little Turtle urged his warriors and the Ohio Confederacy to make peace. Instead, they chose a new leader, a warrior named Turkey Foot. When the anticipated encounter came in August 1794, at the British Fort Miami on the Maumee River (near the western shore of Lake Erie), the Indians found themselves surrounded. They sought refuge in the fort, but the British would not let them enter, refusing to become involved in a wider war with the Americans. Hundreds of Indians perished as Wayne’s forces closed in. The withdrawal of British support helped to doom the Ohio Confederacy, which was less a union of Indians than a lopsided alliance between Indians and their British benefactors. On August 3, 1795, 1100 Indian leaders met at Fort Greenville (in western Ohio) and ceded to the United States a vast tract of Indian land: all of present day Ohio and most of Indiana. Little Turtle helped negotiate the agreement. Various Indian groups differed in their responses to the European Americans who settled among them or attempted to persuade—or force—them to “acculturate” by adopting the customs and habits of whites. According to European Americans, men farm and herd sheep and cattle; women milk cows, keep chickens, tend the garden, spin thread, and weave cloth. However, in the “middle ground” throughout the West, newly arrived settlers and indigenous peoples traded foodways, folk remedies, and styles of dress. Even Joseph Brant and Little Turtle picked and chose among European American (and, in Brant’s case, English) cultural CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 307 ${bmicon} traits. Little Turtle drank tea and coffee, kept cows, and shunned leather breeches in favor of white men’s clothing. The fact that his wife made butter suggested that she was skilled in the ways of European American homemakers. Little Turtle himself appealed to Quaker missionaries to help the Miamis adapt to stock raising and the plow. The white population was advancing “like oil on a blanket,” he pointed out, and the Indians were disappearing “like snow before the sun.” Adopting some habits of European Americans—for example, liquor consumption—amounted to self-destruction. On the “middle ground,” alcohol was a prized trade item. Moreover, European Americans and Indians often used it to lubricate political negotiations and cultural rituals. Yet conflicts over liquor, and tensions vented under the influence of liquor, became increasingly common—and deadly. Some Indian leaders, such as Joseph Brant and Little Turtle, who came to view the drinking of alcohol as a full-blown crisis among their people, believed that Indians must reject the white man’s bottle if they were to survive. Others placed their priorities elsewhere and continued to indulge in alcohol. In 1799 Seneca leader Handsome Lake (Skanyadariyoh) emerged from an alcohol-induced coma to proclaim Gai’wiio, or Good Message. This message urged Indians to accept certain elements of whites’ culture (stock tending and individual homes) while retaining traditional rituals and languages. But liquor was not the only crisis facing the Indians, as the experience of the Five Civilized Tribes in the southeastern United States revealed. This group included the Cherokee, Chickasaws, Chocktaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. The migration of whites into their hunting grounds had depleted their game supply and devastated their crop fields. After the Revolution, the Cherokees appealed to the federal government for aid. Some of the other groups, unable to hunt for food, took up agriculture. Men, using plows, replaced women, who had relied on hoes. Protestant missionaries encouraged Indian women to learn to spin thread and weave cloth. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 308 ${bmicon} full view MAP 9.2 WESTERN LAND CLAIMS OF THE STATES Several of the original thirteen colonies, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia claimed land west of the Appalachian mountains. By 1802, these states had ceded their western lands to the federal government. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided that this expanse be auctioned off in parcels no less than 640 acres each, with a minimum price of one dollar per acre—too expensive for many family homesteaders, thus opening the way for investors to purchase and profit. Hoping to raise money through land sales, the federal government did not object to speculation. The southeastern groups only gradually accepted the idea of keeping livestock, for they retained cultural scruples against eating certain kinds of animals. The Cherokees, for example, believed that people would assume the characteristics of the animals they ate, so they discouraged the consumption of pork and other pig products. Yet in 1796, when a federal Indian agent toured Creek country, he noted signs of “civilization”: black slaves (most of them runaways from southern plantations) hard at work in the fields and fences that protected crops from cattle and other beasts. The willingness of members of the Five Civilized tribes to accommodate themselves to European American law and divisions of labor allowed them to stay in their homeland and retain key elements of their cultural identity. Later generations of southwestern Indian leaders challenged this strategy of accommodation. In southwest and far west borderland areas, Spanish officials met with mixed success in their attempts to convert Indians to Christianity and encourage them to engage in sedentary farming. For example, between 1772 and 1804, Spanish priests established five missions CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 309 ${bmicon} among the Chumash, hunter-gatherers living in permanent villages along the California coast. When large numbers of the Indians moved to these settlements, they forfeited their traditional kin and trade networks, and their distinctive culture began to fade. Birth rates plummeted due to disruptions in family life (more women than men lived in the missions), and mortality rates increased dramatically as the Spanish introduced new diseases. In contrast, along the Texas Gulf Coast, the Spanish made little headway in their efforts to bring the Karankawas Indians into the missions. Members of this nomadic tribe arrived at the mission gates only when their own food reserves were low; in essence, the Karankawas simply included the missions in their seasonal migrations between the Gulf Coast and the coastal prairie. The West was not necessarily a place of boundless economic opportunity for all people who settled there. When Americans poured into the trans-Appalachian West after the Revolution, they often carried alcohol and guns, staples of trade among all groups. These items proved a lethal mix, injecting violence into commercial and diplomatic relations among a variety of cultural groups. Moreover, land speculators sought to make large profits from family homesteaders forced to buy property at inflated prices. And too, many European American migrants brought their slaves west in a bid for economic self-sufficiency or profit-making, or both. For all these reasons, in several respects the West soon came to resemble society on the eastern seaboard, with its hierarchies based on class, ethnicity, and race. Eager investors and creditors thwarted many homesteaders’ quest for cheap land. Post-Revolutionary-era schemes such as the Ohio Company of Associates foreshadowed the significance of land speculation in shaping patterns of settlement and property ownership in the West. With backing from wealthy investors, the Ohio Company quickly bought up tracts of land and then sold parcels to family farmers at inflated rates. A similar venture was initiated in Georgia in 1795, when speculators bribed state legislators for the right to resell huge tracts to the west of the state, land that the state did not even own. The state legislature passed the so-called Yazoo Act (named for a Georgia river) because of these bribes. The act resulted in the defrauding of thousands of buyers, whose land titles were worthless. By protecting slavery and opening territory new territory to European America settlement, the new nation condemned southern blacks to a kind of legal bondage that stood in stark contrast to revolutionary principles. Many settlers relied on slave labor. By the late eighteenth century, Kentucky slaves numbered 40,000—more than 18 percent of the state’s total population. In isolated settlements, where farmers owned just one or two slaves, African Americans faced a kind of loneliness unknown on large plantations in the East. In 1793, near Newport, Kentucky, slaves Moses and Humphrey informed their master, James Taylor, that “there are no colored people here, we have no women to wash for us, on Sundays we stalk about without being able to talk to anyone.” Where white planters embraced new kinds of opportunity in the new territories, their slaves experienced backbreaking toil unrelieved by companionship or family ties. Patterns of land use directly affected the spread of slavery into the West. Despite eastern planters’ use of European soil conservation techniques (crop rotation, use of manure as fertilizer), many of them had to contend with depleted soil in the Upper South. Generations of tobacco growers had worn out the land, depriving it of nutrients. As a result, many growers PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 310 ${bmicon} were forced to abandon tobacco. Some of them moved west into Indian lands (Mississippi Territory) to cultivate cotton. The scarcity of labor motivated slave owners to push workers to the limits of their endurance. Slaves prepared the ground for cultivation, rooted out tree stumps, and cleared brush. Then slaves followed the rhythms of the cotton-growing season: planting in the spring, hoeing in the summer, and harvesting in the fall. Slaves on cotton plantations worked in gangs under the sharp eye of a white overseer or black driver. Men, women, and children labored as human hoeing machines, growing as much cotton as quickly as possible. In contrast, slaves who worked in rice fields were organized under the task system: each day, once they completed a certain amount of field work, they were allowed to devote time to cultivating their own gardens and tending their own chickens. Whether working on a gang or task system, blacks and Indian captives of war remained vulnerable to certain Indian tribes such as the Cherokee, which actively practiced slavery. Even many free people of color found a less than hospitable welcome in the West. In 1802 delegates to the first Ohio territorial convention moved to restrict blacks’ economic and political opportunities, even though fewer than 400 were living in Ohio at the time. One proposal read that “no negro or mulatto shall ever be eligible to hold any office, civil or military, or give oath in any court of justice against a white person.” Although slavery was outlawed in Ohio and other territories, blacks still lacked the right to vote. Soon after Ohio became a state in 1803, the legislature took steps to prevent the in-migration of free blacks altogether. Several other Midwestern territories and states followed Ohio’s example. In 1803 the territorial legislature of Indiana passed a “black law” prohibiting blacks or Indians from testifying in court against white people. Black families in the Northwest were also vulnerable to kidnapping: some white men seized free blacks and sold them as slaves to plantation owners in the South. Moreover, whites took advantage of poor blacks by “indenturing” their children. Under this arrangement, a white man or woman controlled the labor of a black youth for a stipulated number of years. In Indiana, terms of indenture for any black person could last as long as 90 years. The nation’s founders had argued for an egalitarian society, one in which people prospered according to their talents and ambition. Of course, their definition of egalitarianism encompassed only white men. Still, it was a revolutionary idea and led to challenges of social hierarchies after the Revolution. These hierarchies included institutions such as the patriarchal (male-headed) family, established Protestant denominations, power systems based on social standing, and ideas about race and gender. Several writers applauded these leveling tendencies. They argued that authority of all kinds—fathers over families, clergy over congregations, political leaders over citizens—was suspect and counter to revolutionary ideas. Ordinary men and women penned letters to local newspapers, glorifying common laborers and questioning the claim to power of “the marchent, phesition [physician] the lawyer and divine [minister] and all the literary walkes of life, the Jutical & Executive oficeers & all the rich who live without bodily labour.” This letter writer’s creative spelling suggests that even people lacking in formal education felt free to voice their opinions on political issues of the day. In the early nineteenth century, voluntary reform organizations multiplied across the nation, transforming the professions, the religious landscape, slavery, the rights of women, and a host of other American institutions. In the years immediately after the Revolution, both the possibilities and limitations of reform became clear. Some groups—for example, white working men—sought to advance their own self-interest without showing much concern for the plight of African American laborers. In other cases, people banded together to target the behavior of CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 311 ${bmicon} a specific group: drunkards, slave owners, the irreligious, or prostitutes. These moral reform groups welcomed diversity among members, as long as new converts supported the cause. As people embraced a common cause with like-minded others, a variety of groups emerged. Manumission and temperance societies had appeared during the Revolution. Other kinds of associations sprang up and multiplied after the war. For example, in southwestern Pennsylvania, tax resisters formed the Mingo Creek Society. The organization offered mediation services for citizens who felt “harassed with suits from justices and courts, and wished a less expensive tribunal.” In New York, 15 women formed the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows and Small Children. Often, free people of color in the North and South created new churches designated as “African,” a testament to a shared heritage that predated their transportation to America and enslavement. Americans redefined the family to accommodate new circumstances and ideas. Some whites who chose to live in Indian villages (known as white Indians) felt they had found new families. Wrote Mary Jemison, a captive and then willing member of the Senecas, “It was my happy lot to be accepted for adoption.” She described her initiation ceremony in these terms: “I was received by the two squaws to supply the place of their brother in the family; and I was ever considered and treated by them as a real sister, the same as though I had been born of their mother.” In some instances the family metaphor extended to religious ties. Members of Baptist and Methodist congregations referred to themselves as brothers and sisters. They called their preachers “elder brother” or, in some places in the South, “Daddy.” The Shakers, a sect founded by Englishwoman Ann Lee in the 1770s, forbade sexual intercourse between male and female members. In this group, the church itself replaced traditional family relationships. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 312 ${bmicon} In the decades after the Revolution, residents of port cities along the eastern seaboard grew accustomed to public parades marking special occasions: a visit from George Washington, the ratification of the Constitution, the Fourth of July. Most of these parades consisted of groups of artisans marching together, carrying the banners of their respective occupations. As one example, the bricklayers’ flag declared, “Both Buildings and Rulers Are the Works of Our Hands.” Proud of their role in the Sons of Liberty and other revolutionary organizations, brick-layers—along with tanners, carpenters, glassblowers, weavers, and other groups of artisans—proclaimed themselves the proud citizens of the new nation. In some respects, these groups resembled the guilds of Europe: members of one craft united and caring for one another in mutual obligation. In other respects, American worker organizations were unique, for they built on a distinct revolutionary heritage that stressed the equality of all (white) freeborn men. Master artisans in several cities—including Boston, Albany, Providence, Portsmouth, Charleston, Savannah, and New York—created organizations called the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen that brought together skilled workers from a variety of fields. The proliferation of newspapers let these artisans participate in a new, more open public forum. Such participation in turn helped gain them influence within local politics. In some towns, as many as 85 percent of adult men owned property of some kind and thus were eligible to vote. Indeed, artisans’ organizations soon became quasi-political groups, extending their reach in ways that pre-Revolutionary trades-based associations had not. full view FIGURE 9.3 PERCENTAGE OF WHITE MEN ELIGIBLE TO VOTE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1792 Source: Robert J. Dinkin, Voting in Revolutionary America: A Study of Elections in the Original Thirteen States, 1776–1789 (1982), pp. 36–39. CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 313 ${bmicon} Still, these organizations exhibited their own brand of elitism. Although commerce flourished in the 1790s, not all members of the laboring classes prospered. Journeymen in particular faced an uncertain future. In Philadelphia in the 1790s, half of the journeymen shoemakers eventually established their own shops, but only 10 percent of their tailor counterparts managed to do so. Dockworkers and other kinds of laborers struggled to find year-round employment. Meanwhile, more and more free men of color were drawn to sailing. Although they had little chance to rise within the ranks of a ship’s command, they accepted the seafaring life because it was the steadiest work they could find. As the country expanded and developed methods and systems of transport, the canal worker replaced the skilled artisan as the typical laborer. The diggers who constructed the canals of the early 1790s included men from all walks of life: part-time farmers, indentured servants, slaves, and white transients. Moving around in search of work, they led an unsettled existence that contrasted greatly with the more predictable life of urban artisans. The plight of menial laborers (in the countryside and the cities) suggests the ironies that accompanied the decline of indentured servitude and the rise of the “free laborer.” To be sure, master artisans attained a degree of economic independence that many other workers did not. But for men and women who lacked skills, money, and wealthy patrons, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 314 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY A Sailmaker Discusses “Means for the Preservation of Public Liberty” on the Fourth of July, 1797 Urban skilled artisans (also called mechanics) played a significant role in the American fight for independence. In the years after the conflict, many artisans remained active in politics. They believed that the success of the new nation depended on the ability of its citizens to remain informed about and engaged in the political process. In a speech delivered on July 4, 1797, a New York sailmaker, George James Warner, warned that citizens must strive to preserve the hard-won gains of the Revolution. We must guard as a most valuable privilege, the freedom and rights of election. WHEREVER the wealthy by the influence of riches, are enabled to direct the choice of public officers, there the downfall of liberty cannot be very remote. It is our own fault if an influence so dangerous, has become in any measure prevalent among us. It would not be the case if the people did not consent to become the dupes of design. It is because tradesmen, mechanics, and the industrious classes of society consider themselves of TOO LITTLE CONSEQUENCE to the body politic that any thing belonging to the system of oppression at all obtains. We ought to spurn from us with disdain, the individual who would not solicit our vote, from motives of personal consideration. He ought not to be listened to, who would demand it as the price of friendship, or who would expect it from regard to his superior riches. It too often happens that men only capable of attracting public notice by an ostentatious display of their wealth, are deemed best qualified to protect the rights of the people, and consequently receive their suffrages; while our choice ought only to be directed to men of TALENTS and VIRTUE whatever their situation in life might be. The possession of riches is not necessarily accompanied by superior understanding or goodness of heart. On the contrary, the experience of ages confirms this opinion, that a state of mediocrity is more favorable to them both. If, instead of improving on it original plan, our government, at any future period, should be irresistibly impelled in an unalterable course toward despotism, the dividing line between the rich and the poor will be distinctly marked, and the latter will be found in a state of vassallage [slavery] and dependence on the former. Be it your care then, my fellow-citizens, to guard with unceasing vigilance against the growth of this evil; assume the native dignity of your character and maintain with a modest but determined spirit, the liberty of opinion. Suffer no one to DICTATE imperiously what line of conduct you are to pursue; but at the same time let no one be sacrificed at the alter of public vengeance, for a candid and liberal expression of his sentiments…. We must endeavor to acquaint ourselves with the political situation and relative interests of our country. Without this information, we shall either be unable to form an accurate opinion on our own, or often become the dupes of the designing. The PUBLIC PRINTS naturally present themselves as the vehicles of this necessary knowledge. Those conducted in a spirit of liberality, yet altogether consonant to the principles on which our revolution was achieved, should employ the public attention and meet its decided support. It will be found, that a JUST and EQUAL GOVERNMENT will ever derive additional stability, as the PEOPLE obtain a more general knowledge of its principles and operations. The result is, that every sincere friend to our NATIONAL CONSTITUTION, ought sedulously to promote the dissemination of this knowledge, as a barrier to the risings of sedition, as well as to the encroachments of arbitrary power. In his speech, Warner also called for “the practice of all the moral virtues” and the education of children “as to the RIGHTS which they possess, and the DUTIES which they owe society.” Warner himself became active in New York’s Democratic-Republican party. Source: George James Warner, Means for the Preservation of Public Liberty (New York, 1797); reprinted in Howard B. Rock, The New York City Artisan, 1789–1825 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 6–11. freedom often meant financial insecurity and, in some cases, reliance on public or private charity. Those who did find work usually had the kinds of jobs that came with the booming economy of the late eighteenth century: moving goods from one place to another, building new structures, and providing personal services for the merchants who profited from all this commercial activity. In the coming years, trade associations for skilled white artisans would take pains to distance themselves from workers whom post-Revolutionary prosperity had left behind. Some well-educated women in the United States read English writer Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women published in England and in the United States in 1792. In that manifesto, Wollstonecraft argued that young men and women should receive the same Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 315 ${bmicon} kind of education. She objected to a special female curriculum that exclusively emphasized skills such as needlepoint and musical accomplishments; this “false system of education,” she charged, left women “in a state of perpetual childhood.” In 1801 an anonymous “American Lady” published an essay titled “A Second Vindication of the Rights of Women.” In it, she claimed that “a good kitchen woman [that is, a household drudge], very seldom makes a desirable wife, to a man of any refinement.” The anonymous “American Lady” and others who shared her opinion celebrated a new kind of woman—the “Republican mother”—who provided cultured companionship for her husband and reared her children to be virtuous, responsible members of society. This image of womanhood led to a new notion: that well-off women should dedicate themselves to tending the home fires rather than aspiring to a more public role in business or politics. Prior to the Revolution, women tended to bear many children, since additional hands were needed to labor in the fields. The decline in white women’s fertility rates after the Revolution PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 316 ${bmicon} suggested that the economy had shifted. Factory managers and bookkeepers did not need to rely on the paid labor of their offspring. And some women could now buy products their grandmothers had made at home. In particular, a small but influential group of well-to-do women in the cities were shedding their roles as producers of candles, soap, and textiles. Instead, they became consumers of these staples and of luxury goods, and they managed household servants. As “Republican mothers,” these women participated in the public life of the new nation as the guardians of the home and the socializers of children. But the idea of the “Republican mother” also suggested a more radical notion. If such a woman wanted to earn the respect accorded all intelligent human beings, she must strive for an education equal to that of men’s. In the 1790s a number of academies for “young ladies” opened in New England, including Sarah Peirce’s in Litchfield, Connecticut, and Susanna Rowson’s in Medford, Massachusetts. Many female academies catered to boarders, students living away from home. These schools offered courses in such “womanly pursuits” as needlework, etiquette, and music. But many also offered a classical curriculum consisting of mathematics, foreign languages, and geography. This system of study encouraged young women to think for themselves. In this respect, female academies challenged the view that women were intellectually inferior to and necessarily dependent on men. Some elite women—like the anonymous “American Lady” and Alice Izard of Charleston, South Carolina—did not share this more radical viewpoint. For example, in opposition to Woll- CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 317 ${bmicon} stonecraft’s argument in favor of equal education for young men and women, Izard expressed disgust with notions of female equality. “It is not by being educated with Boys, or imitating the manners of Men that we shall become more worthy beings,” she proclaimed. Women need not attain public glory, she wrote, to gain “domestic honor and true praise.” Alice Izard was not alone in her beliefs. After the Revolution, many American women, even those of modest means, eagerly read advice manuals written by both native and foreign-born authors. These manuals stressed the importance of good manners over formal education. And even graduates of the new female academies often renounced aspirations to public life once they married and assumed household responsibilities. Wrote Eliza Southgate Bowne, a defender of women’s education, “I believe I must give up all pretension to profundity, for I am much more at home in my female character.” Other women were more sympathetic to Wollstonecraft’s arguments regarding women’s equality with men. As the author of a series of essays on women’s rights such as “On the Equality of the Sexes,” published in Massachusetts Magazine in 1790, Judith Sargent Murray was the intellectual heir of Abigail Adams. With a notable lack of success, Adams had urged her husband, John, to secure married women’s property rights in the Constitution. By arguing for the inherent equality of men and women, Murray echoed Wollstonecraft and laid the groundwork for the women’s rights movement to come. The white women of means who came of age after the Revolution keenly felt the ties that bound them together, even as those ties limited their participation in the public sphere, especially after the wartime emergency had passed. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 318 ${bmicon} The Revolution gave elite white women a rationale for speaking out in the realm of politics. Yet the war had a very different impact on other groups of women. For example, among the Cherokees, the introduction of a European American division of labor lessened women’s customary political influence as leaders and diplomats. European Americans believed that only men should serve in positions of authority, and so Cherokee women felt pressured to refrain from taking part in political negotiations and to subordinate themselves to men. In 1787 one Cherokee leader (called a War Woman, or Beloved Woman) wrote to Benjamin Franklin. She was confident in her own ability to participate in postwar Indian–white negotiations. Out of respect for Franklin, and in the diplomatic tradition of her people, she enclosed in the letter some of the same tobacco used in the peace pipes of Cherokee warriors. She lectured Franklin, “I am in hopes that if you Rightly consider that woman is the mother of All—and the woman does not pull Children out of Trees or Stumps nor out of old Logs, but out of their [women’s] Bodies, so that they [men] ought to mind what a woman says.” By the end of the century, only men had the power to negotiate treaties and land transactions. Still, some women managed to resist this new arrangement. Nancy Ward, the “Beloved Woman of Chota,” participated in a treaty conference in Hopewell, South Carolina, in 1785. Speaking as the “mother of Cherokee warriors,” she became a powerful person in her own right, not just because of her ties to male leaders. In the early nineteenth century she mobilized other Cherokee women, and together they spoke out forcefully against the practice of selling Cherokee lands to whites. In the West, Indian women registered the brunt of ongoing conflicts between their own people and European American settlers. In New Mexico, female Indian captives from Plains tribes (such as the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa) became indios servientes in Hispanic households. In some cases their masters set them to work tending sheep, an occupation that had been reserved for men in traditional native cultures. In the East, Native American women dispossessed of their land pieced together a meager existence. For example, in Natick, Massachusetts, women turned to weaving and peddling baskets and brooms, while their men scrounged for wage labor. Many Indian women, such as Hannah Freeman, a Lenape woman in rural Pennsylvania, depended on white farmers for seasonal work. Born in southeastern Pennsylvania 1731, Freeman spent her lifetime moving or being moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Delaware and back again as her family sought refuge from whites and struggled to make a living. By the 1790s, she was an itinerant laborer; her biographer noted that “she has been moving from place to place making baskets &c and staying longest where best used but never was hired or recd wages except for baskets.” In 1800 she entered the Chester County Poorhouse, where she died two years later. Commercial development, combined with race and gender discrimination, offered only modest possibilities for many impoverished women and women of color. For some Americans, the postwar years brought unprecedented opportunities to buy, sell, and trade. However, commercial development, combined with race and gender discrimination, offered only modest possibilities for many impoverished women and women of color. Like other free blacks, Chloe Spear of Boston “worked early and late” at a number of jobs, such as laundering and ironing clothes. Eventually, she managed to purchase her own home. In Rhode Island, Elleanor Eldrige started her work career at age ten in 1795. Thereafter, she worked as a domestic servant, spinner, weaver, dairymaid, and nurse. She finally went into business, first as a soapboiler and then as a wallpaperer and house painter. However, like many free blacks, Eldrige remained vulnerable to the machinations of white men who tried to defraud her of her hard-won earnings. Some white women also felt the effects of fluctuations in the market economy. In Philadelphia in the mid-1790s, two former servants—Polly Nugent (married to a blacksmith who CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 319 ${bmicon} had just lost his job) and Grace Biddle (newly widowed)—had to plead for assistance from their former mistress, Elizabeth Drinker. The city’s “Bettering House” for indigent people housed men and women, blacks and whites. Many women had neither the resources nor the opportunities to improve their lot after the Revolution. full view Washington, D.C.’s Pastoral Setting Unlike highly commercial, cosmopolitan centers such as New York or Philadelphia that had served as earlier capitals, Washington seemed lost in the woods of southern Maryland and northern Virginia. (Library of Congress) The campaign of 1800 pitted Thomas Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate, Aaron Burr, against the incumbent, John Adams, and his vice-presidential nominee, Charles Pinckney. Certain elements of the campaign were predictable. The Democratic-Republicans blasted Alexander Hamilton’s economic policies and the Adams administration’s military buildup. Jefferson’s party also condemned the Alien and Sedition Acts’ effect of silencing Adams’s political opponents. For their part, the Federalists portrayed Jefferson as a godless supporter of the French Revolution. They also charged that he had fathered children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. (Two centuries later, DNA evidence suggested that this charge might be true.) Jefferson prevailed in the 1800 election, but his victory did not come easily. The electoral college allowed delegates to vote separately for president and vice president, and as a result Jefferson tied with Burr. Each man received 73 votes. Then the decision went to the House of Representatives, which was dominated by Federalists. After a series of tied votes, Jefferson finally gained a majority. His selection in February 1801 marked the orderly transfer of power from the Federalists to the Democratic-Republicans, a peaceful revolution in American politics. TABLE 9-2 The Election of 1800 Candidate Political Party Electoral Vote Thomas Jefferson Democrat-Republican 73 Aaron Burr Democrat-Republican 73 John Adams Federalist 65 Charles C. Pinckney Federalist 64 As chief executive, Jefferson did little to change the direction of the country. Aware of his razor-thin victory, he retained many Federalist appointees. And his eagerness to expand the boundaries of the United States—which culminated in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803—solidified the Hamiltonian principles that favored commerce and trade over agrarian values. Who was Thomas Jefferson? In 1800 Jefferson, the presidential candidate, wrote, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Yet Jefferson’s own views on ordinary people were less heroic. Specifically, his support for slavery and the assimilation of Indians provided justification for whites’ violent assault on both groups in the early nineteenth century. Many Americans know Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. But he also sought to justify slavery as a central institution in the new republic. In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson searched for a rationale to exclude nonwhite men from the new body politic. His stereotypical views of all blacks (for example, he believed they lacked imagination and intelligence) suggested what we today would call scientific racism. full view Thomas Jefferson - Informal Drawing Thomas Jefferson, like many statesmen of his time, posed for several famous formal portraits. Here, however, he is shown in a more informal drawing by French-born artist Charles Saint-Memin. (Worcester Historical Museum) Jefferson wrote much about the noble calling of the yeoman farmer. Yet he assigned the task of tilling the soil on his own estate (Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia) to his enslaved workers. When he did acknowledge the abolitionist sentiment, he warned of a possible race PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 320 ${bmicon} war between aggrieved blacks and their white masters. Such a war, he said, would “produce convulsions, [and] probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race.” The president’s views on Indians also did nothing to reverse the course of aggression in the West. He believed that land ownership created the stable institutions necessary for civilized behavior. He told the Delawares, When once you have property, you will want laws and magistrates to protect your property and persons, and to punish those among you who commit crimes. You will find that our laws are good for this purpose. You will wish to live under them; you will unite yourselves with us, join in our great councils, and form one people with us, and we shall all be Americans. You will mix with us by marriage. Your blood will run in our veins and will spread with us over this great island. Yet the system of private property, and the violent methods that whites used to enforce it, spelled the destruction of traditional Indian ways of life. Jefferson’s views on assimilation sounded idealistic. But in practical terms, they paved the way for seizures of Indian lands and the forced migrations that removed the Five Civilized Tribes from their homelands in the nineteenth century. Though committed to a political union of disparate states, Jefferson despised what he considered to be racial differences between groups of people. full view Native American Removal White conquest of Native American lands was almost complete in the 1880s. Even after the creation of reservations, the US government wanted to take further action to “civilize” Native Americans. Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887 that allotted land to Indians who would live away from their tribes. Many were cheated of their allotments, so that by 1934, 86 million of the 138 million acres set aside were owned by whites. It is tempting to excuse Jefferson’s racist beliefs by saying he merely reflected his time. But in fact, a significant number of Jefferson’s contemporaries were voicing their misgivings about slavery. While Jefferson acknowledged their arguments, he did not share their beliefs. A citizen of a trans-Atlantic “republic of ideas,” he corresponded with political thinkers—from John Adams to the Marquis de Lafayette—who understood the inherent tension between freedom for whites and slavery for blacks. Obviously, Jefferson knew that some of the northern states (Massachusetts and Vermont among them) had written constitutions that incorporated the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence. These states had interpreted the document in ways that justified the abolition of slavery. Moreover, a notable number of Jefferson’s wealthy Virginia compatriots (including George Washington) had chosen to free their slaves, either by their own hand or through provisions of their wills, to practice in their own households what they preached to British tyrants. Jefferson lived in an age when revolutionary enthusiasm was sweeping the western world. Challenges to slavery had rocked Europe; France outlawed the practice in 1794, although Napoleon later reinstated it. Abolition had also transformed the Western Hemisphere with the successful rebellion of the Saint-Domingue slaves in 1791. The United States provided the political theory and rhetoric to inspire abolitionists around the globe, but within the new nation, the debate over the institution of slavery continued to rage. The southern states, in particular, took decisive steps to solidify the institution within their own boundaries. As president, Jefferson reconsidered his original vision of the United States: a compact country in which citizens freely pursued modest agrarian interests without interference from the national government or distractions from overseas conflicts. Indeed, during his years in office, the federal government moved toward increasing its own power. In early 1801, just before Jefferson assumed the presidency, the Federalist-dominated Congress had strengthened the national court system by passing the Judiciary Act of 1801. The act created 16 circuit (regional) courts, with a judge for each, and bolstered support staff for the judicial branch in general. President Adams appointed these judges (so-called midnight judges because they were appointed right before Jefferson took office). Before stepping down, full view Statue of Jefferson Statue of Thomas Jefferson (Photodisc, Inc.) CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 321 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 9.4 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE, 1798 Source: Lee Soltow, Distribution of Wealth and Income in the United States in 1798 (1989), p. 238. Adams had also appointed Secretary of State John Marshall as chief justice of the Supreme Court. Adams’s last-minute acts had long-term consequences. Marshall remained on the bench for 34 years. He presided over the court when it rendered its landmark Marbury v. Madison decision in 1803, which established the judiciary’s right to declare acts of both the executive and legislative branches unconstitutional. When Jefferson assumed the presidency, the actual document listing Adams’s choices for “midnight judges” had not yet been finalized. Jefferson ordered the new secretary of state, James Madison, to withhold the appointments. One of the nominated judges, William Marbury, petitioned the Supreme Court to force Madison to approve Adams’s appointments to the bench. The Court refused to do so, arguing that the basis of Marbury’s suit, Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, was unconstitutional. With this decision, the Court thereby established the principle of judicial review—the notion that the justices could invalidate any state or congressional statute they deemed unconstitutional. Chief Justice Marshall declared, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” full view New Capitol - Congress’ First Meeting - 1800 Only the wing housing the House of Representatives had been complete when Congress first met in the new capitol in 1800. (Library of Congress) In the realm of international affairs, Jefferson asserted his own authority. Challenges from foreign powers prompted the Democratic-Republican president to take bold steps to protect U.S. economic and political interests abroad and along its own borders. In 1801 Jefferson’s administration launched a war against pirates in North Africa when Tripoli (modern-day Libya) demanded ransom money for kidnapped American sailors. (Together, the North African kingdoms of Tunis, Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco were known as the “Barbary States.” The war against Tripoli, which spanned four years, revealed the extent of U.S. trade interests even at this early point in the nation’s history. The United States signed a peace treaty with Tripoli in 1805 and paid $60,000 for the release of the American captives. The plight of these captives, many of whom had been enslaved, transfixed whites at home. For the first time, whites contemplated a form of slavery that confounded traditional notions of skin color and legal status. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the European powers continued their operations in the territory west of the United States. In 1801 Napoleon persuaded the King of Spain to secretly cede the trans-Mississippi region called Louisiana to France. Retaining control of New Orleans, Spain denied Americans the right to use that city as a depository for PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 322 ${bmicon} goods awaiting shipment. In 1803 Jefferson sent his fellow Virginian, and prominent Anti-Federalist, James Monroe to Paris. Together with Robert Livingston (there as American ambassador), Monroe set out to secure American trading rights to New Orleans. To the president’s surprise, Napoleon agreed to sell the whole area to the United States. At the time, Louisiana included most of the territory between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains—a total of 828,000 square miles. The United States agreed to pay $15 million for the Louisiana Purchase. Frustrated by his inability to quell the Saint-Domingue revolt, Napoleon believed that the money would help fund future wars against England. Referring to his failed ventures in the New World, he sputtered, “Damn sugar, damn coffee, damn colonies…. I renounce Louisiana.” The Louisiana Purchase reversed the roles of Jefferson and his Federalist rivals. The president advocated territorial expansion, but his opponents remained suspicious of the move. Devoted to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, Jefferson traditionally favored limiting federal authority. Yet he sought to justify the purchase by pointing out that it would finally rid the area of European influence. He proposed shifting Indians from the Mississippi Territory (part of present-day Alabama and Mississippi) to the West so that European Americans could have the eastern part of the country to themselves. He also expressed curiosity about the geography and natural resources of the new acquisition. For their part, the Federalists feared full view MAP 9.3 THE BARBARY STATES The Barbary states included the small kingdoms of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli in northern Africa. Before the Revolution, Great Britain paid the states protection money each year; in return, Barbary pirates agreed not to loot British ships or capture their sailors for ransom. This arrangement covered the ships of the American colonies as well. After the Revolution, the Barbary states dealt directly with the United States. Tripoli insisted that the United States pay more money. President Jefferson refused. The ensuing U.S.–Tripoli war ended in 1805; the treaty signed that year freed the U.S. of protection payments. CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 323 ${bmicon} that Louisiana would benefit mainly agrarian interests and eventually dilute New England’s long-standing political influence and power. They suspected Jefferson of attempting to expand the influence of his own political party. Neither the Democratic-Republicans nor the Federalists expressed much concern about the fate of the many Indian and Spanish-speaking inhabitants of Louisiana. All these peoples became residents, if not citizens, of the United States when the Senate approved the purchase in October 1803. In his first inaugural address, Jefferson spoke about partisan politics. He cautioned, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.” Indeed, Jefferson felt that partisan conflicts obscured a broad, common ground uniting all leaders of the new republic: “We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” Jefferson was suggesting that all political leaders shared essentially the same views about the role of government and the importance of economic opportunity for ordinary people. Most office holders, regardless of party affiliation, remained committed to the “pursuit of happiness,” which they defined as the right to own private property. These leaders also expressed suspicion of groups that professed religious beliefs that lay outside the mainstream of Protestantism or liberal Deism (a general belief in God without ties to a particular religious denomination). They considered slavery not a moral issue, but a political issue that individual states must address. They united behind the idea that women, as well as black and Indian men, should have no formal voice in governing the nation. full view Monticello Monticello (Photodisc, Inc.) Despite these common principles shared by many political leaders in the post-Revolutionary period, this era saw the rise of two opposing camps—those favoring local control and those supporting federal authority. Many people defined political interests in “either-or” terms: either the French system of political equality or the British monarchy; either the individual states or the federal government; either the farm or the factory. Such thinking promoted a narrow view of the United States, a society of great economic and ethnic diversity. For example, certainly the country was large and prosperous enough to accommodate the views of people who believed that both manufacturing and farming were crucial for national growth and development, or who believed that the states and the federal government could share power in a way that enhanced the rights and well-being of all citizens. Yet the machinery of government ran most efficiently on a two-party system. A candidate’s political victory depended on his winning more votes than his opponent, and the electoral system provided no avenues for different groups to share power. This system made it extremely difficult for people who had no place in it to find their own political voice and claim the Revolutionary legacy as their own. At the same time, the new nation gave white men opportunities practically unknown in the rest of the world. Regardless of their background, many white men could aspire to own property and to participate in the political process. The federal government supported economic growth by facilitating territorial expansion, technological innovation, and the protection of private property. As much for the prosperity it promoted as for the noble ideas it nourished, the Revolution continued to inspire liberation movements within the United States and throughout the world. PART 3 ###8226; THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 324 ${bmicon} Thomas Jefferson www.pbs.org/jefferson/ This site is the companion to the Public Broadcasting System series on Jefferson. The site includes material on how people understand Jefferson today. Archiving Early America earlyamerica.com Old newspapers provide a window into issues of the past. This site includes the Keigwin and Matthews collection of early newspapers. Alexander Hamilton odur.let.rug.nl/∼usa/B/hamilton/hamilxx.htm This site, from a Hypertext of American History, examines Hamilton’s life and influence in the United States during the early national period. The XYZ Affair gi.grolier.com/presidents/aae/side/xyzaffr.html This site examines the XYZ affair. The Whiskey Rebellion www.whiskeyrebellion.org This site devoted to the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion includes a narrative of events and a timeline. Native Languages of the Americas www.geocities.com/bigorrin/miam.htm This site provides information on the language of the Miami and Illinois Indians, a dialect of the same Algonquian language spoken in Indiana and later in Oklahoma. The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/quasi.htm This site explores the Quasi War between the United States and France. The Marshall Cases odur.let.rug.nl/∼usa/D/1801-1825/marshallcases/marxx.htm John Marshall, and the cases he heard, shaped the form and function of the judicial system in the United States. National Museum of the American Indian www.si.edu/nmai The Smithsonian Institution maintains this site, which provides information about the museum that is dedicated to the history and culture of Native Americans. Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (2000). Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (2000). Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution: 1750–1850 (1996). Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1998). Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (1991). Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and the New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (1984). Terry Bouton, “A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania,” Journal of American History 87 (Dec. 2000):855–887. Albert Bowman, The Struggle for Neutrality: Franco-American Diplomacy During the Federalist Era (1974). John Hoadley, Origins of American Political Parties, 1789–1803 (1986). James Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (1995). James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (1956). Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1981). Graham R. Hodges, Root and Branch: African-Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863 (1999). James O. Horton and Lois Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (1997). Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (1961). CHAPTER 9 ###8226; REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES, 1789###8211;1803 325 ${bmicon} Shane White and Graham White, Stylin’: African-American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (1998). Henry W. Bowden, American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Change (1981). Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (1992). R. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (1984). Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000). Reginald Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812 (1992). Dorothy V. Jones, License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (1982). James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (1984). Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (1989). Jacqueline Jones, American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor (1998). Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1980). William G. McLaughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (1986). Billy G. Smith, The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750–1800 (1990). Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (1998). David B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (1975). Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996). Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (2000). Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (1999). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter9 To Chapter 9 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 326 ${bmicon}   1803 South Carolina reopens slave trade Louisiana Purchase Marbury v. Madison 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–1806) 1805 British Navy defeats French and Spanish fleets at Battle of Trafalgar 1806 Congress authorizes funds for construction of National Road 1807 Jefferson places embargo on all U.S. exports to Europe U.S.S. Chesapeake attacked by British vessel Robert Fulton pilots first steamboat up the Hudson River 1808 Congressional ban on slave trade takes effect Non-Intercourse Act prevents exports to France and England Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa found Prophet Town in Indiana 1810 Macon’s Bill No. 2 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe Revolt of 400 slaves in Louisiana 1812 War of 1812 begins 1813 Red Sticks battle U.S. troops at Battle of Horseshoe Bend 1814 British forces attack Washington, D.C. 1815 Treaty of Ghent ends War of 1812 Battle of New Orleans 1816 Tariff of 1816 1817 Rush–Bagot Agreement 1818 Andrew Jackson battles Seminoles in Florida African Methodist Episcopal Church founded in Charleston, S.C. 1819 Spain cedes Florida to United States Tallmadge Amendment Panic of 1819 1820 Missouri Compromise Washington Irving, Legend of Sleepy Hollow 1821 Mexico gains independence from Spain Sequoyah completes Cherokee syllabary 1822 Charleston officials convict and hang blacks in Vesey “plot” 1823 Monroe Doctrine Catharine Beecher establishes Hartford Female Seminary Lowell textile mills open 1824 Erie Canal opens IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, FEW IF ANY NATIONS ON earth could rival the United States’ remarkable record of growth. At its founding, the country consisted of 4 million people living in 13 states that hugged the eastern seaboard of North America. By the mid-nineteenth century, the nation’s population had grown to 22.5 million people as a result of reproduction, foreign immigration, and the conquest of indigenous and Spanish-speaking peoples. Because of a mix of diplomatic pressure and military aggression, dramatic geographic expansion accompanied the burgeoning population growth. By 1850 the country sprawled the breadth of the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Territorial expansion, economic growth, and increasing ethnic diversity profoundly shaped American politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Innovations in transportation (the steamboat), communication (the telegraph), and the production of crops and textiles (reapers and mechanical looms) allowed Americans to move materials, people, and information more quickly and to produce food and goods more efficiently. Meanwhile, the immigration of large numbers of western Europeans, the rapid expansion of the free black population, and the conquest of Spanish-speaking peoples in the Southwest in 1848 challenged the United States’ view of itself as an exclusively Anglo-Protestant nation. Some citizens declared that the United States had a God-given duty and God-given right to expand its borders in opposition to the British and Russians in the Northwest and in opposition to Spain and later Mexico in the South and Southwest. Thus, territorial expansion brought the United States into conflict with other countries and groups that claimed the land. America’s victory in the War of 1812 secured the nation’s Great Lakes border and at the same time proved that American soldiers and sailors were the equal of England’s seasoned fighting forces. In 1823, fear- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 327 ${bmicon}   ful that European powers would take advantage of independence movements in Latin America, the United States issued the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the era of colonization of the Americas was over. Nevertheless, Indian tribes continued to resist the incursion of European Americans who believed that land was a commodity to be wrested from native peoples and then bought and sold. In the southern part of the country, the Five Civilized Tribes and other Native American groups occupied territory coveted by both gold seekers and cotton growers. Many American voters demanded that their political leaders work to expand the nation’s boundaries through a variety of means: treaty, negotiation, or military force. Andrew Jackson, who assumed the presidency in 1828, seemed a fitting symbol and a representative politician of the age. Determined to expand the power of the executive branch of government, Jackson claimed to represent the interests of ordinary people in his political battles against the Second Bank of the United States and the Supreme Court and in his forceful removal of Indian tribes from the Southeast to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Like other politicians of the time, Jackson conceived of citizenship as a system of rights and privileges for white men only. Still, European Americans trumpeted the arrival of a new era of egalitarianism. Western settlers laid claim to political power, and suffrage restrictions based on property ownership crumbled in the wake of egalitarian legislation and rhetoric. Americans were restless, moving out west and back east again, around the countryside, and in and out of cities. Believing that people could and should work together to reform society, many created reform associations, embraced new religious beliefs, and joined political parties. New forms of association yielded new kinds of communities in an era characterized by great geographic mobility. At the same time, two distinct power systems coalesced to ensure that certain groups would monopolize the political and economic life of the country. In the South, cotton planters launched an aggressive defense of the institution of slavery. In the North, an emerging class system extended the differences between the political influence and material well-being of factory owners and machine operatives. For the country, therefore, growth brought great promise and great peril. Abolitionists, associations of working people, nativists (people hostile to immigrants), women’s rights advocates, and a variety of other groups proclaimed their agendas for social change. Most significantly, by 1848 it was becoming more difficult for national legislators to resolve the question of whether to allow slavery in the territories. As passions rose, few could imagine a political compromise that would satisfy abolitionists and proslavery advocates alike. As mid-century approached, more and more Americans seemed prepared to express their convictions—or their prejudices and resentment—through violent means. 1826 American Society for the Promotion of Temperance founded 1827 Workingmen’s Party founded in Philadelphia 1828 Cherokee Phoenix begins publication 1829 Gold discovered on Cherokee lands in Georgia 1831 Nat Turner leads slave rebellion in Virginia William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator 1832 Nullification crisis Worcester v. Georgia Jackson vetoes Second Bank of the United States Black Hawk War 1833 Great Britain abolishes slavery National Road completed 1834 Cyrus McCormick patents reaper First strike at Lowell mills Whig Party organized 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Texas revolts against Mexico 1836 Congress passes gag rule on antislavery petitions Republic of Texas founded 1837 Panic of 1837 John Deere invents steel plow 1838 Pennsylvania revokes black male suffrage Cherokee removal begins; Trail of Tears 1840 Liberty Party founded 1841 John Tyler assumes presidency after death of William Henry Harrison Supreme Court rules in favor of Amistad Africans 1844 Mormon leader Joseph Smith killed by mob in Nauvoo, Illinois 1845 Irish potato famine Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Texas becomes twenty-eighth state 1846 Great Britain cedes southern part of Oregon Country to United States Mexican–American War begins 1847 United States wins battles of Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, Mexico City Capture of San Patricio soldiers, Battle of Churubusco 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican–American War Women’s Rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York Popular revolutions sweep Europe Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 328 ${bmicon}         The British Menace       The War of 1812       The “Era of Good Feelings”?       The Rise of the Cotton Plantation Economy       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 329 ${bmicon} IN EARLY NOVEMBER 1804 A GROUP OF SOLDIERS WORKED FEVERISHLY TO CONSTRUCT A rough military garrison on the north bank of the Missouri River, near several Mandan Indian villages and what is today Washburn, North Dakota. The soldiers knew they had to work quickly. Within a month, winter would descend on the Northern Great Plains, and the temperature would plummet. In fact, not long after Fort Mandan was completed, the temperature registered at 45 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. The garrison provided shelter for an expedition party led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Both captains in the U.S. Army, Lewis and Clark had been commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the upper reaches of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, which had doubled the size of the country. With the ultimate goal of reaching what is today Oregon, their party spent the winter at Fort Mandan and joined the buffalo hunts and nightly dances sponsored by their hosts, the Mandan Indians. Between November 1804 and March 1805, Lewis and Clark also found time to record their observations on all manner of things natural and cultural. In their journals and their letters to President Jefferson, they described the language of the Hidatsa Indians and the beadwork of the Arikaras, the medicinal properties of native plants, and the contours of the Missouri River. In a shipment prepared for the president, they included deer horns, pumice stones, the pelt of a white weasel, and an assortment of live animals. (Sadly, only a magpie and a prairie dog survived the journey to Washington, D.C.) full view Early Exploration of the West President Thomas Jefferson was anxious to explore the West, and so he appointed his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to head an expedition. Lewis enlisted the assistance of a fellow soldier, William Clark. Their goals were to find a connection between the Mississippi river system and the Pacific, and to describe the geography, plant and animal life, and Native American inhabitants of the region. Though the most famous, Lewis and Clark were not the only explorers Jefferson sent out to explore the new territory. Lewis and Clark’s trek took 28 months to complete and covered 8000 miles. Along the way, the two men assured the Indians they met that their expedition’s purpose was purely scientific. However, Jefferson had also commissioned them to chart a waterway passage to the Northwest. The president hoped to divert the profitable fur trade away from Canada and into the hands of Americans by locating a river connecting the Northwest directly to eastern U.S. markets. Jefferson also instructed Lewis and Clark to initiate negotiations with various Indian groups, to pave the way for miners and ranchers to move into the area. Throughout their journey, Lewis and Clark expressed awe of the magnificence of the land—its physical beauty and its commercial potential. While camped at Fort Mandan, Lewis described the Missouri: “This immence river so far as we have yet ascended waters one of the fairest portions of the globe, nor do I believe that there is in the universe a similar extent of country, equally fertile, well watered, and intersected by such a number of navigable streams.” When the expedition’s official report was published in 1814, it caused a sensation. Americans swelled with pride at the bounteous expanse called the Upper Louisiana. full view Meriwether Lewis - Portrait Portrait of Meriwether Lewis, Independence National Historical Park Collection Lewis and Clark’s party consisted of a diverse group of people, including British and Irish enlisted men, and Lewis’s African American slave, York. At Fort Mandan, the group picked up Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian, and his 15-year-old wife, Sacajawea, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 330 ${bmicon} full view MAP 10.1 LEWIS AND CLARK This map, showing the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition, suggests the importance of interior waterways in facilitating travel and exploration in the West. Spain feared, rightly, that the Americans would use western rivers to establish trade links with the Indians and thereby challenge Spain’s northern border with the United States. Source: From Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage. a Shoshone Indian. The explorers came to rely on Sacajawea’s skills as an interpreter. And because women never traveled with Indian war parties, Sacajawea’s presence reassured suspicious Native Americans that the goal of the expedition was peaceful. White men were fond of boasting that “they were great warriors, and a powerful people, who, if exasperated, could crush all the nations of the earth.” Indians heard these threats frequently and so were not inclined to look kindly upon an expedition of white men. full view William Clark - Portrait Portrait of William Clark, Independence National Historical Park Collection Lewis and Clark failed in their mission to locate a commercial route across the Rocky Mountains; the terrain proved too rugged. However, by sponsoring this and other major exploration parties, the federal government signaled its intention to help European Americans settle the West. The expedition also revealed that control of western waterways would be crucial to America’s attempt to explore the interior of the continent and to establish trading relations with the Indians. The exploitation of waterways and water power proved a key component in the new nation’s economic growth and development. In sum, the Lewis and Clark expedition yielded information that furthered westward migration, commercial development, and scientific knowledge about the western landscape. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the United States faced a number of challenges from within and outside its borders, challenges that had long-lasting political and economic effects. Indians in general were a persistent threat to the new nation. Indeed, in the Great Lakes region, various tribes maintained political and military alliances with Great Britain. Nevertheless, in this period the United States successfully met its most severe test to date: a war with England that raged from 1812 to 1815. The effects of this so-called Second CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 331 ${bmicon} American Revolution were far-reaching. The conflict eliminated the British from the Northwest once and for all. Its military heroes, including Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison, went on to illustrious political careers. The war also spurred industrialization and stimulated commerce. In the South, the cotton plantation system began to shape the political and economic life of the entire region. Some Europeans who visited the United States during these years criticized Americans for their crudeness and their lack of accomplishment in literature, architecture, road building, and manners. Yet after the War of 1812, American patriotism soared. The country now stretched from New Orleans to the Canadian border—an enormous expanse blessed with rich natural resources. Its military leaders were the equal of, if not superior to, the finest European officers. However, some Americans began to see a threat to their sense of themselves as a unique people. That threat—the expansion of human bondage—would come not from the outside but from within their own borders. In the election of 1804, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate, George Clinton, a former governor of New York, easily bested their Federalist opponents, Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King. Jefferson had gained widespread favor among the voters through the Louisiana Purchase. And his decision to repeal the federal excise tax on whiskey that had so angered farmers in the West secured his popularity. On the eve of his second term, he no doubt imagined himself examining the specimens and reading the reports that Lewis and Clark sent back from the West. Yet the ongoing squabbling between France and England and the increasing aggression of the British navy toward American sailors demanded his attention. Developments overseas preoccupied Jefferson during his second term in office. England and France continued to challenge each other as the reigning powers of Europe. In 1805 the British navy, under the command of Lord Nelson, defeated the French and Spanish fleets in the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of Spain. That same year, France reveled in its own triumph on land when Napoleon conquered the Austrian and Russian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz. Supreme on the seas, England in 1806 passed the Orders in Council, which specified that any country that wanted to ship goods to France must first send them to a British port and pay taxes on them. Many Americans believed that England’s policies amounted to acts of military and economic aggression against the United States. TABLE 10-1 The Election of 1804 Candidate Political Party Electoral Vote Thomas Jefferson Democratic-Republican 162 Charles C. Pinckney Federalist 14 Not content to control trade across the Atlantic as decreed by the 1806 Orders in Council, the British also seized sailors from American ships, claiming that these men were British seamen who had been lured away from their own vessels by American captains promising them higher wages. In some cases these claims were probably true. However, U.S. political leaders charged that an estimated 6000 U.S. citizens had been seized by the British navy between 1808 and 1811, including an unknown number of African Americans, many of whom were working as mariners. Seafaring appealed to free men of color because it paid good wages. In the early PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 332 ${bmicon} nineteenth century, black mariners’ pay equaled that of their white counterparts. And in this line of work, a man’s skill, not the color of his skin, determined the nature of his job. With limited economic opportunities on shore, black sailors accepted the danger and long absences from home. However, neither black nor white sailors had bargained for enforced service in His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Seizure, or impressment, reminded Americans of their pre–Revolutionary War days, when British “press gangs” prowled the docks of American port cities and seized colonial merchant sailors. In 1807 the tensions over this practice erupted into violence. Just ten miles off the shore of Virginia, the American ship Chesapeake came under attack from a British vessel. British naval CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 333 ${bmicon} officers claimed that the Americans were harboring four British deserters. In the ensuing exchange of cannon fire, 3 Americans were killed and 18 wounded. Jefferson demanded that England leave American sailors and ships alone, but he was rebuffed. In 1807 President Jefferson decided to place an embargo on all exports to the European powers in an effort to force those nations to respect the rights of Americans on the high seas. The move aroused intense opposition in Federalist-dominated New England, where the regional economy depended heavily on foreign trade. The Embargo Act passed by Congress halted the shipment of goods from the United States to Europe. Because Europe—including England—relied heavily on American grain and timber, Jefferson hoped that the move would force England to respect American independence. The president saw this measure as preferable to either war or capitulation to England, but the New England states, which were particularly hard hit by the embargo, saw the matter quite differently. As the effects of the embargo took hold, the New England grain growers saw the markets for their products dry up, and the shipbuilding industry, which made heavy use of timber, ground to a standstill. Southern tobacco and cotton planters faced similar hardship because of the embargo. By 1808 some of them had joined with Northerners to circumvent the embargo by moving their goods through Canada and then to Europe. The embargo seemed only to intensify, not lessen, tensions between England and the United States. Yet Jefferson held his course. He prodded Congress to enforce the unpopular act, but his efforts provoked a backlash. Ordinary citizens compared him to George III, and New England politicians threatened to take their states out of the union. Despite all the uproar, the embargo did benefit Americans in some ways. Specifically, it encouraged New Englanders to rely more on goods produced locally and less on foreign imports. Jefferson had advocated a policy that had an unanticipated effect: it promoted industrialization at home. At the same time, the embargo seemed only to intensify, not lessen, tensions between England and the United States. Both the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans suffered a blow to their leadership in 1804. That year, the Federalist party lost one of its original leaders with the death of Alexander Hamilton at the hand of his rival, Aaron Burr. Both successful New York attorneys, the two men had risen together through the political ranks in the 1780s and 1790s. Burr served as Jefferson’s running mate in the election of 1800; four years later he ran for governor of New York. Incensed by a report that Hamilton had claimed he was “a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government,” as well as “still more despicable rumors,” Burr challenged his antagonist to a pistol duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, in July 1804. (Many European American men, especially in the South, considered dueling a means to preserve their honor in response to a perceived insult leveled at them or at a family member.) As the combatants faced off, Burr fired at Hamilton. Mortally wounded, Hamilton died the next day. As a result, Burr’s political career lay in ruins. In 1807 he stood trial for treason, charged with conspiring to create an empire for himself out of the territory Spain held west of the Mississippi. Acquitted of the charges, he nevertheless fled the United States for Europe. Jefferson declined to run for a third presidential term in 1808, and he left office in March 1809 upon the inauguration of the new president, James Madison. Soon after Madison took office, Congress repealed the embargo and replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act, which eased the complete ban on exports to Europe. This measure permitted American exporters to ship their goods to all European countries except for France and England, still at war with one another. New Englanders opposed even this limited embargo. full view James Madison - Portrait James Madison, important framer of the Constitution and later US president. (National Archives) Meanwhile, the Federalists’ influence in Congress was waning. The partisan division within Congress—the Federalists, with their emphasis on a strong national government, PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 334 ${bmicon} against the localist Democratic-Republicans—gradually eased. That division had emerged in response to the ratification of the Constitution and debates over the direction of the new nation. By 1810 a new split had emerged—between young, hotheaded representatives from the West and their more conservative seniors from the eastern seaboard. The western group, or “war hawks,” called on the nation to revive its former glory. Americans must uphold U.S. honor, they declared, by opposing European, especially British, claims to military dominance. The war hawks also yearned to vanquish the Indians who impeded settlement of the area west of the Mississippi. In 1810 Congress passed legislation called Macon’s Bill No. 2. Under its provisions, if either France or England agreed to resume trade with the United States, then the Americans would resume trade with that country and refuse to trade with the other. France’s emperor Napoleon seized this offer to reestablish economic ties with the United States. Outraged, England began to contemplate war not only with its arch enemy, France, but also with the upstart United States. The new nation had positioned itself directly in the middle of a conflict between the two major European powers. full view Tenskawatawa, the Prophet Tecumseh was a gifted war chief of the Shawnee and was responsible for much of the success the tribe had against the Americans. His brother Tenskawatawa, pictured here, was known as the Prophet because it was thought that he was capable of performing great miracles. (Library of Congress) Looking eastward, the war hawks saw an England determined to defile the honor of their young nation. Looking westward, these same men saw an equally threatening menace: the rise of an ominous Indian resistance movement that blended military strength with native spirituality. The movement was led by Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. Tenskwatawa (also known as the Prophet) claimed that he had a vision in which he received a message from the world’s creator. In the Prophet’s words, the creator stated that European Americans “grew from the scum of the great water, when it was troubled by an evil spirit and the froth was driven into the woods by a strong east wind.” The Prophet declared to other Indians, “They are numerous, but I hate them. They are unjust; they have taken away your lands, which were not made for them.” In 1808 the two brothers founded Prophet’s Town in Indiana. They envisioned a sovereign Indian state and the preservation of Native American culture. Tenskwatawa spoke of a time and place where Indians would reject alcohol and scorn “the food of whites” as well as the “wealth and ornaments” of commercial trade. Tecumseh set out to deliver the message to as many Indian groups as possible, traveling the broad swath of territory from Florida to Canada. In his journey south, Tecumseh found the Creek nation in Muskogee Territory particularly receptive to his message of Indian solidarity. By that time the Creeks had lost millions of acres of land to the Americans. Tecumseh deputized a relative, Seekaboo, to remain with the Creeks and instruct them in the religion of Tenskwatawa. He could not know that, within a few years, Tenskwatawa’s message would spark armed conflict between the Creeks and American troops. Meanwhile, in 1809, the territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, plied a group of Indian leaders with liquor, then got them to agree to sell 3 million acres to the U.S. government for just $7600. Upon hearing of the deal, Tecumseh decried a new form of American aggression: “treaties” between U.S. officials and Indians who lacked the authority to sell their people’s homeland. “All red men,” Tecumseh proclaimed, “[must] unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all, for the use of each.” In November 1811 Harrison led 1000 U.S. soldiers in an advance on Prophet’s Town. But before they could reach the settlement, several hundred Shawnees under the command CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 335 ${bmicon} full view MAP 10.2 THE PUBLIC DOMAIN IN 1810 This map indicates the expanse of western lands owned by the U.S. government in 1810, after the Louisiana Purchase. American war veterans received land warrants in return for military service in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. A warrant entitled the bearer to settle a specific number of acres of unoccupied lands. Warrants could be transferred, sold, and traded like stocks and bonds. After the War of 1812, the government issued 29,186 land warrants for a total of 4.8 million acres. Source: After Charles O. Paulin, Atlas of Historical Geography (Washington, DC), Plate 57. of Tenskwatawa attacked their camp on the Tippecanoe River. The Indians suffered a sound defeat, and Harrison burned Prophet’s Town to the ground. A Potawatomi chief, Shabonee, who fought at the Battle of Tippecanoe, later recalled the false sense of superiority that had inspired the Indians’ doomed attack on Harrison and his men. According to Shabonee, the Indians believed, “the white soldiers are not warriors. Their hands are soft. Their faces are white. One half of them are calico [fabric] peddlers. The other half can only shoot squirrels.” Warriors or not, the Americans had a distinct advantage over the Indians: better guns. Clearly, military technology, not just determination, would shape the western conflict. The defeat of the Shawnees at Tippecanoe only inflamed western war hawks’ passions and stiffened their resolve to break the back of Indian resistance altogether. But to achieve this goal, the United States would have to invade Canada and eliminate the British arms suppliers who had been trading with the Indians. Claiming the mantle of patriotism, western and southern members of the House of Representatives agitated for a war that would eliminate both the British threat on the high seas and the Canada-based Indian–British alliance. These Americans wanted a war that would win for them a true independence once and for all. “On to Canada! On to Canada!” became the rallying cry of the war hawks. In a secret message sent to Congress on June 1, 1812, President Madison listed Americans’ many grievances against England: the British Navy’s seizure of American citizens, the blockades of American goods, and continued conflict “on one of our extensive frontiers,” the PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 336 ${bmicon} result of “savages” who had the backing of British traders and military officials. Madison left it up to Congress whether the nation would continue to endure these indignities or would act “in defense of their natural rights.” Seventeen days later, the House voted 79 to 49 and the Senate voted 19 to 13 to declare war on England and, by extension, the western Indians. The War of 1812 united Americans behind a banner of national expansion. But, at the same time, it exposed dangerous divisions between regions of the country and between political viewpoints. Many New Englanders saw the conflict as a plot by Virginia Democratic-Republicans primarily to aid France in opposition to England and to add agrarian (that is, slave) states to the Union. In an ironic twist, the New England Federalists—usually staunch defenders of the national government—argued that states should control their own commerce and militias. full view Abigail Admas Although the Americans were better armed and organized than the western Indians, they were at a disadvantage when they took on the soldiers and sailors of the British Empire. The United States had not invested in the military and thus was ill-prepared for all-out war. The American navy consisted of merely a fleet of tiny gunboats constructed during the cost-conscious Jefferson administration. The charter for the Bank of the United States had expired in 1811, depriving the country of a vital source of financial credit. Suffering from a drop in tax revenues as a result of the embargo on foreign trade, the nation lacked the funds to train and equip the regular army and the state militias. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1812, the Americans launched an ambitious three-pronged attack against Canada, striking from Niagara, Detroit, and Lake Champlain. All three attempts failed miserably. Lacking united, enthusiastic support on the home front, the Americans’ offensive got off to a bad start. Yet some people, even in Federalist New England, believed that all Americans should support the war, regardless of the potential outcome. Writing from a Federalist stronghold in December 1812, Abigail Adams (the wife of former president John Adams) acknowledged to a correspondent that her home state of Massachusetts “had much to complain of ” because the war had severely disrupted trade. However, she added, “that cannot justify [Massachusetts] in paralyzing the arm of Government [that is, opposing federal trade policies], when raised for her defense and that of the nation.” She warned against “a house divided against itself,” which she believed could be the nation’s undoing. In the West, the British moved to take advantage of divisions on American soil. They cemented their long-standing alliance with the Indians, who possessed both military prowess and an abiding hatred of the land-hungry Americans. In late 1812, Tecumseh (who had accepted a commission as a brigadier general in the British army) and British General Isaac Brock captured Detroit. Indians also participated in England’s successful raid on Fort Dearborn (Chicago). In at least two cases, when U.S. soldiers marched into Canada, they lost their advantage when state militia members refused to cross the border. Leaders of these militias claimed that their sole purpose was to defend their states from attack, not invade foreign territory. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 337 ${bmicon} full view MAP 10.3 THE NORTHERN FRONT, WAR OF 1812 Much of the fighting of the War of 1812 centered in the Great Lakes region. It was there, the war hawks charged, that the British were inciting Indians to attack American settlements. Conducted in 1812 and 1813, the campaign against Canada was supposed to eliminate the British threat and, some Americans hoped, win Canadian territory for the United States. Yet the Americans scored some notable successes in 1813. That September, Commodore Oliver H. Perry defeated a British fleet on Lake Erie. Exhilarated, he declared, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” But Perry’s victory came at a steep price. Shortly before the engagement, about a third of all the officers and men in the American fleet had fallen victim to a typhus epidemic. Then the battle started. By the end of the day, of the 100 men who had reported for duty that morning, 21 were dead and more than 60 wounded. Perry’s hard-won victory forced the British back into Canada, over Tecumseh’s objections. General William Henry Harrison followed in hot pursuit. British Colonel Henry Proctor marched his troops to eastern Ontario, leaving Tecumseh to try holding the Americans at bay. At the Battle of the Thames (that October), Harrison defeated the Indians. Many perished, Tecumseh among them. A group of Kentucky soldiers skinned what they mistakenly believed to be his corpse. His body was never found. Later that autumn, an American campaign against Montreal failed. The Americans trudged back into New York state, the British close behind them. Flush with their victory in Montreal, the British captured Fort Niagara and set Buffalo and other nearby towns aflame. By mid–1814, the English had also crushed Napoleon. This success freed up 15,000 British troops, who promptly sailed for North America. Still, in July 1814 the Americans, under the leadership of Major General Jacob Brown and Brigadier General Winfield Scott, managed to defeat the British at the Battle of Chippewa, across the Niagara River from Buffalo. But by the end that year, the Americans had withdrawn to their own territory and relinquished their goal of invading and conquering Canada. The arrival of fresh British troops forced the Americans to defend their own soil. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 338 ${bmicon} For the Americans, the most humiliating episode of the war came with the British attack on the nation’s capital. On August 24, 1814, the British army, backed by the Royal Navy, sailed into Chesapeake Bay. At the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, they scattered the American troops they encountered. The Redcoats then advanced to Washington, where they torched the Capitol building and the White House, causing extensive damage to both structures. The Baltimore Patriot carried an eyewitness account of the confusion surrounding the spectacle. Residents of the capital city had received word that the British were advancing. On Sunday, August 21, public officials frantically packed up their books and papers. Private citizens, also gathered up their furniture and other belongings and left town. By Tuesday, the city stood nearly empty. As a ragtag American force succumbed to the British, President Madison “retired from the mortifying scene, and left the city on horseback.” His aides and some military officers accompanied him. As it turned out, he escaped just in the nick of time: by Wednesday flames had engulfed not only the capitol but also Monroe’s residence. Disorganized, hungry, and hot, the American troops had put up scant resistance. The eyewitness reported, “Our army may with truth be said to have been beaten by fatigue, before they saw the enemy.” Yet the Americans rallied and pursued the British and overtook them in battle in Baltimore. (This victory inspired an observer, Francis Scott Key, to write “The Star Spangled Banner” as he watched “the bombs bursting in air” over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry.) The Americans scored another crucial victory in September, when U.S. naval commander Thomas McDonough crushed the British fleet on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, New York. In the Southeast, Tecumseh’s message of Indian unity had resonated with particular force among Native Americans once the war broke out. Some Cherokees and Choctaws cast their lot with the United States. However, a minority of Creeks were emboldened by Tenskwatawa’s message, “War now. War forever. War upon the living. War upon the dead; dig up their corpses from the grave; our country must give no rest to a white man’s bones.” By 1813, a group of warriors called Red Sticks (for their scarlet-painted weapons) stood ready to do battle with the Americans. Yet they faced opposition from some of their own people, the White Sticks, who counseled peace. The Red Sticks finally decided to attack Fort Mims (in what is now Alabama). In response, Andrew Jackson, leader of the Tennessee militia, received a commission as major general. His mission was to retaliate against the Indians. Jackson had a history as a speculator in Indian lands in Mississippi Territory. Even in a country where anti-Indian sentiment ran high, his views were extreme. He called Native Americans “savage bloodhounds” and “blood thirsty barbarians.” After the attack on Fort Mims, he vowed, “I must destroy those deluded victims doomed to distruction by their own restless and savage conduct.” He boasted about collecting the scalps of all his Indian victims. Jackson’s 3500 troops laid waste to Creek territory. Regiments of Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Indians, as well as White Sticks, helped them. During a monumental battle in March 1814, CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 339 ${bmicon} more than three-quarters of the 1000 defending Red Sticks and a number of Indian women and children died at Horseshoe Band (in modern-day Alabama). Jackson survived the battle thanks to the intervention of a Cherokee soldier. Some American soldiers took their victory to a brutal extreme; they flayed the corpses of their victims and made horse bridles out of their skin. full view Dolley Madison - Portrait Beautiful and elegant, Dolley Madison set the standards for society in Washington, D.C. Though delicate, she could be tough, as evidenced by her actions when the British burned the White House during the War of 1812. (New York Public Library) Yet Jackson insisted on praising his soldiers as a civilizing force. They were only reclaiming the land from a band of savages, he explained. In a postbattle speech to the men under his command, he declared, In their places a new generation [of Indians] will arise who know their duties better. The weapons of warfare will be exchanged for the utensils of husbandry; and the wilderness which now withers in sterility and seems to mourn the desolation which overspreads it, will blossom as the rose, and become the nursery of the arts. In the Treaty of Horseshoe Bend that followed the massacre, the Americans forced the Creek Nation to give up 23 million acres. The remnants of the Red Sticks fled to the swamps of Florida. There they eventually regrouped in the company of fugitive slaves, as Seminoles (from the Spanish cimarrones, or runaway slaves). full view Burning of the White House in 1814 The White House was not spared when the British set fire to Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812. (Library of Congress) Jackson next marched to New Orleans to confront the British. Knowing he would be facing some of Europe’s finest soldiers, he assembled 7000 men, U.S. soldiers and militiamen from the states of Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Two Kentucky regiments consisted of free Negro volunteers, about 400 men in total. The Battle of New Orleans, fought on January 8, PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 340 ${bmicon} 1815, began with a ferocious assault by British soldiers. But within just half an hour, 2000 of them lay dead or wounded. The Americans lost only 70. They had vanquished the army of Europe’s greatest military power. American and British negotiators had signed a peace agreement that ended the war two weeks before “Old Hickory” defeated the British in New Orleans. (Jackson received his nickname when one of his soldiers called him “tough as hickory.”) Later, many Americans associated Andrew Jackson with the war’s decisive battle and most glorious victory. The Battle of New Orleans might have been a glorious victory for the Americans, but it was hardly the decisive battle of the war. In the fall of 1814 Madison had decided to end the war. He dispatched John Quincy Adams, son of former president John Adams, to the Belgian city of Ghent to start negotiations. Representative Henry Clay and three other American envoys accompanied Adams. At first, English representatives to the meeting made two demands. The Americans, they said, must agree to the creation of an Indian territory in the upper Great Lakes region. They must also cede much of the state of Maine to England. The Americans refused, and the negotiations dragged on. In the meantime, the New England states had grown increasingly impatient with what they called “Mr. Madison’s war.” As with the embargo, they saw the effort as a mistake and a threat to their regional commercial interests. In December 1814, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont sent delegates to a gathering in Hartford, Connecticut, to consider a course of action. The delegates demanded that the federal government give their states financial aid to compensate for the revenue they had lost as a result of disrupted trade. Some delegates even hinted that their states wanted to secede from the union. Although most delegates shied away from the idea, the majority of them apparently wanted to leave that possibility open. Back in Ghent, the British had reversed their initial position by late December. They had lost recent battles in upper New York and in Baltimore and, as always, were still worried about new CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 341 ${bmicon} threats from France. They dropped their demands for territory and for an Indian buffer state in the upper Midwest. They also agreed to an armistice that, in essence, represented a draw: both combatants would retain the same territory they had possessed when the war began. The British made no concessions to the Americans’ demands that they stop impressing American sailors and supplying the western Indians with arms or that they revoke the Orders in Council. Still, most U.S. citizens considered the war a great victory for the United States. After 1815, the Americans and the British never again met each other across a battlefield as enemies. Some of the American soldiers and sailors who had survived the conflict paid a high price. For example, Benjamin F. Palmer was an American sailor imprisoned in an English jail from 1813 to 1815. There he subsisted on meager rations and witnessed unspeakable cruelties, including the murder of inmates by guards. In all probability, the Treaty of Ghent did not change Palmer’s views of the British soldiers’ “Brutal & Savage Barbarity.” In total, 6000 American combatants had died or suffered wounds in the war. Yet survivors felt that they and their dead fellows had preserved the nation’s honor. Many Indians saw matters quite differently. For them, the War of 1812 had only stiffened white settlers’ determination to take native peoples’ land. Andrew Jackson, the Indian-hater and Indian-killer, would aggressively pursue a national political career. And so, the Battle of Horseshoe Bend signaled not only a continuation of bloodshed but also a terrifying sign of things to come. American nationalism came at the expense of vast Indian homelands and thousands of lives on both sides. In 1816 the Democratic-Republicans nominated James Monroe for president, to run against Federalist candidate Rufus King. Although Monroe only narrowly won his party’s endorsement, he soundly defeated King in the general election. Monroe benefited from several developments that had mortally wounded the Federalist party: the War of 1812 victory, presided over by a Democratic-Republican chief executive; the New England Federalists’ flirtation with secession (and treason) during the war years; and the strong nationalist tendencies of both the Jefferson and Madison administrations, which had stolen the Federalists’ thunder. Addressing Congress in December 1817, Monroe expressed optimism about the state of the nation. The country’s boundaries were secure, and the Indians had little choice but to retreat farther and farther west. The president predicted that, shortly, “Indian hostilities, if they do not altogether cease, will henceforth lose their terror.” Equally inspiring, the Americans had once again defied the British Empire and won. Two treaties with Britain—the Rush–Bagot of 1817 and the Convention of 1818—set the U.S.–Canadian border at the 49th parallel and provided that the two countries would jointly occupy Oregon Territory for ten years. TABLE 10-2 The Election of 1816 Candidate Political Party Electoral Vote James Monroe Democratic-Republican 183 Rufus King Federalist 34 Monroe called on Congress to acknowledge “the vast extent of territory within the United States [and] the great amount and value of its productions” and to facilitate the construction of roads and canals. It was this “happy situation of the United States,” in Monroe’s words, that ushered in what some historians called “The Era of Good Feelings.” Although voters continued to disagree over some issues of the day—such as the national bank, sectionalism, and internal improvements—they did not necessarily express those disagreements in the form of bitter partisan wrangling. In any case, the term “good feelings” can be applied only to a PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 342 ${bmicon} narrow group of enfranchised citizens, men who shared common beliefs about territorial expansion and economic development. The War of 1812 yielded little in the way of material gains for the United States or concessions from England. Yet it permanently reshaped American social, political, and economic life. The nation exploited the vulnerable southeastern Indians and hastened their removal from their homeland. Many veterans of the war gained land grants, military glory, and political influence in return for their sacrifices. Although the war had disrupted foreign trade, it also gave home manufacturers a tremendous boost. The textile industry spearheaded a revolution in industry. And a new class of workers—factory operatives (machine tenders)—emerged to symbolize both the promise and the hazards of machines. American veterans of the War of 1812 won the praise of a grateful nation. Even the British expressed a grudging respect for Americans’ fighting abilities. One British naval officer admitted, “I don’t like Americans; I never did, and never shall like them.” He further declared that he had “no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal with them, or consort with them in any way.” But, he said, he would rather not fight with them either, for they were “an enemy so brave, determined, and alert, and in every way so worthy of one’s steel, as they have always proved.” To reward veterans for their service, Congress offered them 160-acre plots of land in the territory between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. These grants did much to encourage families to emigrate west and establish homesteads. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 343 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Cherokee Women Petition Against Further Land Sales to Whites in 1817 In traditional Cherokee society, men took responsibility for foreign affairs while women focused on domestic matters, leading to a roughly equal division of labor. However, European American diplomats, military officials, and traders dealt primarily with Indian men. As a result, beginning in the eighteenth century, Cherokee women’s traditional influence was eroding within their own communities. In this new world, Indian warriors wielded significant power. Nevertheless, Cherokee women insisted on presenting their views during the crisis of 1817–1819, when men of the group were deciding whether to cede land to U.S. authorities and move west. The following petition was supported by Nancy Ward, a Cherokee War Woman. This honorific title was bestowed on women who accompanied and attended to the needs of war parties. Ward had supported the colonists’ cause during the American Revolution. Amovey [Tennessee] in Council 2nd May 1817 The Cherokee Ladys now being present at the meeting of the Chiefs and warriors in council have thought it their duties as mothers to address their beloved Chiefs and warriors now assembled. Our beloved children and head men of the Cherokee nation we address you warriors in council we have raised all of you on the land which we now have, which God gave to us to inhabit and raise provisions we know that our country has once been extensive but by repeated sales has become circumscribed to a small tract, and [we] never have thought it our duty to interfere in the disposition of it till now, if a father or mother was to sell all their lands which they had to depend on which their children had to raise their living on which would indeed be bad and to be removed to another country we do not wish to go to an unknown country [to] which we have understood some of our children wish to go over the Mississippi but this act of our children would be like destroying your mothers. Your mothers your sisters ask and beg of you not to part with any more of our lands, we say ours[. Y]ou are our descendants and take pity on our request, but keep it for our growing children for it was the good will of our creator to place us here and you know our father the great president [James Monroe], will not allow his white children to take our country away for if it was not they would not ask you to put your hands to paper for it would be impossible to remove us all for as soon as one child is raised, we have others in our arms for such is our situation and will consider our circumstance. Therefore children don’t part with any more of our lands but continue on it and enlarge your farms and cultivate and raise corn and cotton and we your mothers and sisters will make clothing for you which our father the president has recommended to us all we don’t charge anybody for selling any lands, but we have heard such intentions of our children but your talks become true at last and it was our desire to forewarn you all not to part with our lands. Nancy Ward to her children[:] warriors to take pity and listen to the talks of your sisters, although I am very old yet cannot but pity the situation in which you will hear of their minds. I have great many grand children which I wish they do well on our land. In addition to Nancy Ward, 12 Cherokee women signed the petition. Their names suggest the varying degrees of assimilation to white ways on the part of Cherokees in general. Petitioners included Cun, o, ah and Widow Woman Holder, as well as Jenny McIntosh and Mrs. Nancy Fields. It is unclear what effect, if any, this petition had on Cherokee male leaders. The Cherokee nation did halt land cessions to whites between 1819 and 1835. Source: Cherokee Women to Cherokee Council, May 2, 1817, series 1, Andrew Jackson Presidential Papers, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C. Reprinted in Nancy F. Cott, Jeanne Boydston, Ann Braude, Lori Ginzberg, and Molly Ladd-Taylor, eds., Root of Bitterness: Documents of the Social History of American Women (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996), pp. 177–178. Some military heroes of the war parlayed their success into impressive political careers. Andrew Jackson won election to the presidency in 1824, William Henry Harrison, in 1840. Winfield Scott served in a war against Mexico in 1848 and ran for president in 1852. But European American veterans were not the only ones to gain status and influence within their own communities as a result of the conflict. A Cherokee leader named the Ridge PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 344 ${bmicon} also earned the gratitude of American officials for his contributions to the war effort. (His original Indian name, Kah-nung-da-tla-geh, means “the Man Who Walks on the Mountaintop.”) The Ridge accepted the government’s attempts to press the Cherokees to adopt European American ways. When the Ridge married a Cherokee woman named Susanna Wickett in the early 1790s, the couple settled in a log cabin (in northwest Georgia) rather than in a traditional Cherokee dwelling made of hardened clay daubed onto a wooden frame. During the war against the Red Sticks, the Ridge served under Andrew Jackson and earned the title of major. For the rest of his life, the Cherokee leader was known as Major Ridge. His wife devoted herself to tending an orchard, keeping a garden, and sewing clothes, tasks traditionally performed by European American but not Native American women. Eventually, the family prospered and bought African American slaves. They eventually became Christians as well. The Ridge’s battlefield experiences earned him the respect of other Cherokees who embraced the “civilization” program that missionaries and government officials promoted. At the same time, the Ridge vehemently resisted U.S. officials’ attempts to persuade the Cherokee to give up their lands to whites and move west. Emerging as a leader of the Cherokee nation after the War of 1812, he criticized members of his group who had abandoned their lands in favor of a new life in the West. He declared, “I scorn this movement of a few men to unsettle the nation, and trifle with our attachment to the land of our forefathers.” The Ridge believed that his people should adopt some elements of white culture but should also hold fast to their native lands in opposition to white settlers and politicians. The Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 stimulated home manufactures—especially the production of cloth and other goods in private households and factories. Home manufacturing resulted in a significant shift in the national economy—from reliance on imported goods to the production of those goods at home. The experiences of one rural Massachusetts family demonstrate the impact this shift had on individuals. Before the war, Lucy Kellogg and her sister worked at home, braiding straw hats to be sold at market. The war ruined their straw business, since economic hardship among New Englanders meant fewer people could afford to buy hats. In response, the sisters invested in cotton looms, which they used to make cloth. They secured cotton thread from the Massachusetts factories that had sprung up during the war to compensate for the lack of English textile imports. The Kellogg sisters found a ready market for their shirts, gingham dresses, and bed tickings. Still, their family was restless, moving briefly to New Hampshire but then returning to Worcester, where they resumed farming. The end of the war saw up an upsurge in this kind of internal migration. New Englanders, especially, pushed west in search of new opportunities. Between 1800 and 1820, the population of Ohio grew from 45,000 to 581,000. Nevertheless, some emigrants expressed disillusion with the hardships and rigors of western life. Clearing the land of trees and then living in an isolated cabin did not appeal to everyone. John Stillman Wright initially sold his New York State farm in 1818 and settled in Ohio with high hopes. Later, he published Letters from the West, which recounted “the cruel disappointment and vain regret, which so many thousands are now enduring.” CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 345 ${bmicon} New means of transportation—and new means to fund them—facilitated the movement of goods, people, and ideas from the East to the West (and, in some cases, back again). Indeed, riding in stagecoaches, wagons, and boats and on horseback, Americans seemed to be on the move constantly. In 1807 an entrepreneur named Robert Fulton piloted the Clermont, a new kind of boat powered by steam, up the Hudson River from New York City. Within a few years, such vessels were plying the western waterways: the Columbia, Sacramento, Colorado, and Mississippi rivers and their tributaries. Steamboats traveled up river, against the current, ten times faster than keelboats, which had to be pushed, pulled, or hauled by men or mules. full view Clermont on the Hudson - Painting Clermont on the Hudson by Charles Pensee, 1830-1835. Steamboats were an essential new element in the expansion of the lines of communication across the country. The steam-powered boats could go against the current of rivers and were faster than other modes of transportation. (New York Public Library) New improvements in land transportation also stimulated economic growth. The profits that the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike raked in by charging travelers tolls inspired other local private corporations to invest in roads. By 1810 several thousand such corporations were building roads up and down the East Coast. Funding came from a variety of sources, both public and private. Philadelphia textile mill owners financed transportation links with the city’s hinterland (rural areas to the west) to bring their goods to the largest number of customers. Individual cities also invested in routes westward. The state of Virginia authorized a board of public works to expend funds for roads and other internal improvements. Western politicians flexed their political muscle in 1806 by securing congressional authorization for the building of the Cumberland (later National) Road, which snaked through the Allegheny Mountains and ended at the Ohio River. New improvements in land transportation also stimulated economic growth. The acceleration of commerce in the West, combined with the disruption in trade from Europe that had come with the embargo and war, stimulated manufacturing throughout the United States. Philadelphia’s growth proved particularly dazzling. During the War of 1812, the city’s craft producers did not have to worry about foreign competition. Local merchant-financiers, who otherwise might have been pouring their money into trade ventures, began to invest in manufacturing. As early as 1808, the city’s new factories had compensated for the glass, chemicals, shot, soap, lead, and earthenware that no longer flooded in from England. Philadelphia soon took the lead in production of all kinds, whether carried out in factories, artisans’ shops, or private homes. Metalworking, ale brewing, and leather production counted among the array of thriving industries that made Philadelphia the nation’s top industrial city in 1815. Still, in 1820, about two-thirds of all Philadelphia workers labored in small shops employing fewer than six people. Only 10 percent were employed in establishments larger than nine people. Moreover, because of an influx of English and Irish immigrants in the late eighteenth century, the city never developed a mechanized textile industry along the lines of New England’s. Many of these newcomers were skilled textile workers; they continued to work in small shops rather than tend machines in large factories like New England textile workers. Even the earliest stages of the industrial revolution transformed the way people lived and worked. Some crafts—for example, the production of leather, barrels, soap, candles, and newspapers—expanded from small shops with skilled artisans into larger establishments with unskilled wage earners. In these cases, production was reorganized; now wage earners under the supervision of a boss replaced apprentices and journeymen who had formerly worked alongside a master artisan. These workers performed a single task many times a day instead of using their specialized skills to see a production process through to completion. full view Expanding America and Internal Improvements After the War of 1812, many Americans moved west. One reason for this movement was that while affordable land was running out for farmers in the East, western lands were cheaper and easier to buy because of an emerging federal land policy. The economy was good, and there was more money available for the adventurous to borrow. Most who moved west did so in family units. While skilled artisans were alarmed at the prospect of being reduced to mere “hands” tending machines, the sons and daughters of many New England farmers eagerly took new jobs in the mills. They appreciated the opportunity to escape close family supervision, to live on their own, and to earn cash wages. Some farm hands and manual laborers considered factory work, no matter how grueling and ill-paid, preferable to plowing fields, digging ditches, and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 346 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Revolutions in Transportation The introduction of commercial steamboat service in 1807 marked a new era in seafaring transportation. Until that time, improving the speed of ships involved adding more sails while still relying on windpower. With the invention of the steam-powered boat, shippers were no longer at the mercy of the wind and the currents. Over the generations, American prosperity has depended on moving things—whether barrels of flour, new computers, or people—over long and short distances. New forms of power such as steam, electricity, and gasoline, combined with innovations in technology and engineering, produced revolutions in transportation. The first railroads also relied on steam engines; they challenged wagons and horses as the most efficient means of moving across land. During the Civil War, northern and southern armies used railroads to move men, weapons, and supplies to battlefields. This task was complicated by the South’s lack of a standard railroad gauge, (that is, a uniform track size) necessitating unloading goods from one train and loading them onto another. By the end of the nineteenth century, five transcontinental railroad lines spanned the entire breadth of the United States. During this time, two specific innovations transformed rail travel and transport. The Pullman sleeping car allowed passengers to travel long distances in comfort. Refrigerated cars allowed farmers to ship fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat to distant markets and consumers. In the 1880s the first streetcars ran on electric power. Gasoline-powered engines propelled automobiles (developed in the 1890s) and airplanes, inaugurated by the first successful flight of brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903. By the 1920s, automobiles were the chief means of passenger transportation, and trucks rivaled trains as means of shipping foodstuffs and manufactured goods. Commercial airline service began in the 1950s. In the late twentieth century, shippers introduced a system called containerization, a form of transportation linking land, sea, and water. Containers of uniform size could be loaded onto ships, trucks, or trains, facilitating the international trade necessary to a global economy. Various means of conveyance relied on new developments in engineering. Locks adjusted the water level of canals that were integral to freight transportation in the eastern United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Crucial to the westward migration of thousands of Americans during that period were interstate roads. Costing $6.82 million, the gravel-paved Great National Pike stretched from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. Begun in 1806, it took 34 years to complete. The first transcontinental railroad, finished in 1869, was an engineering marvel, with trestles spanning deep chasms, tracks running alongside rivers, and tunnels burrowing through mountains. Beginning in 1900, the largest cities constructed systems of underground tunnels for streetcars. Between 1900 and 1930, states and counties paved 700,000 miles of roads and highways. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 established the interstate highway system. By the end of the twentieth century, the total highway mileage in the United States was 4 million miles, with about 46,000 of that number part of the interstate system. By this time almost 200,000 miles of pipeline carried various fuels and gases from Alaska to the continental United States and within and between states. In 2000, approximately 125 million cars, 70 million trucks, 700,000 buses, and 200,000 aircraft were in use in the United States. The proliferation of vehicles put tremendous strains of the environment. Environmental regulations increased fuel efficiency, especially for newer vehicles; between 1970 and 2000, average miles per gallon on cars increased from 13.5 miles to 21.3 miles. In the early twenty-first century, the United States accounts for one-fourth of all fossil fuel emissions in the world. These emissions increase pollution in American cities and greenhouse gases worldwide. In early 2002, President George W. Bush’s administration announced a shift in federal policy, from a quest for ever-more fossil-fuel–efficient cars to the development of vehicles powered by hydrogen-based fuel cells. However, scientists predicted that this particular revolution in transportation was still decades in the future. hauling lumber. Chauncey Jerome, a young Connecticut man, lamented that few opportunities were open to him in rural areas: “There being no manufacturing of any account in the country, the poor boys were obliged to let themselves to the farmers, and it was extremely difficult to find a place where they would treat a poor boy like a human being.” New England rapidly became the center of mechanized textile production in the United States. By the late eighteenth century, Boston shippers were making handsome profits by supplying Alta Californio (the area north of San Diego, encompassing present-day California, Nevada, and parts of Arizona and Utah) with cloth, shoes, and tools, selling Western otter pelts in China, and returning home laden with Chinese porcelains and silks. These profits financed New England’s mechanized textile industry. By 1813, 76 cotton mills housing a total of over 51,000 spindles had cropped up within the vicinity of Providence, Rhode Island. Faced with a shortage of adult men (many were moving west), New England mill owners sought other local sources of labor. The Rhode Island system of production had relied on child spinners working in small mills. This system gave way to the Lowell model, based in Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts, which brought young women from the surrounding countryside to work in gigantic mills. Many of the women were eager to earn cash wages and to escape the routine of farm life. Still, New England mill owners realized that they had to reas- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 347 ${bmicon} sure Yankee parents that their daughters would find the factories to be safe, attractive places to work. Mill owners offered the young women housing in dormitory-like boardinghouses staffed by older women, called matrons, who looked after them. Some New Englanders were unsettled by the social changes that accompanied these new ways of working. Factories encouraged parents to put their children to work rather than sending them to school. The new production system also widened the economic inequality between owners and wage hands. Colonial communities, where men and women, rich and poor, had worked together in the fields, gave way to mill towns. There, the wives of owners lived lives of privilege and leisure compared with the women who toiled at looms or spindles all day. Nevertheless, New England had not yet developed what might be called a factory working class. Many people went back and forth between farm and factory, depending on their own fortunes and inclinations. Some workers were neither suited for nor inclined to work in or around the mills; they quit or were fired. One account in the contract books of the Pomfret Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts revealed that a 14-year-old girl named Sukey Blois was hired on May 7, 1807. The details of her hiring are followed by the words, “Quit May 10.” These transformations in the workplace and in social relations disturbed some white laborers in particular. They feared for their own status as freeborn, proud sons (and grandsons) of PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 348 ${bmicon} the Revolution. To them, the factory represented a loss of independence; they were becoming mere “hands” to tend machines. In 1806 striking Philadelphia shoemakers charged, “The name of freedom is but a shadow.” The court ruled that by joining together to withhold their labor from their employer, these workers were guilty of conspiring to raise their own wages. Some whites went so far as to claim that they were “wage slaves.” No longer in charge of their own work lives, they felt condemned to long hours and low pay. The contrast between the ideal of household independence—a father and husband who owned property and could provide comfortably for his family—and the reality of men, women, and children working for pitiful wages in a noisy, dirty factory was profoundly demeaning to these men. They claimed that toiling for puny wages was not all that different from laboring as slaves. full view FIGURE 10.1 GEOGRAPHIC LOCATIONS OF BRITISH IMMIGRANT TEXTILE WORKERS, 1770S–1831 Source: David J. Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: Diffusion of Cotton Power-Loom Weaving Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), p. 156. Black men and women continued to suffer the stigma of slavery. Regardless of legal status, all blacks were descendants of slaves. This stigma determined the jobs for which blacks were hired and the pay they received. The 7500 free blacks who lived in New York City in 1810 were about only 8 percent of the city’s total population. But they made up fully 84 percent of all black people in the city (the rest were enslaved children who would not gain their freedom until they became adults). They struggled to earn a living, and they had limited employment options. One job that was open to them was the dangerous, dirty work of cleaning chimneys. Black men served as master chimney sweeps and employed youths of their own race as assistants and apprentices. In an attempt to control the sweeps, the New York City Council tried to insist that they purchase expensive licenses to ply their trade. In response, a group of master chimney sweeps decried a double standard; resenting what they considered unreasonably high licensing fees, they declared that they wanted to be treated “in the same manner as you have thought proper to do in respect to Cartmen, porter, measurer &c.” Realizing that they had to protect themselves, they established their own mutual aid society, the United Society of Chimney Sweeps. Some members asserted their equality with white men of the city by noting that they too had “served in the revolutionary war & some of them received wounds.” Their efforts proved short-lived, however. Eventually, the use of machinery eroded black men’s monopoly on this kind of work. Most black men could not afford to purchase the machines, which eliminated the need for skilled labor. Chimney sweeps plied their trade by walking the streets and calling out loudly, “Sweep O! Sweep O!” to potential customers. In 1816 the New York City Common Council moved again to restrict the sweeps’ work. The council outlawed “crying aloud or singing in the public streets.” Those who persisted, council members warned, would be deprived of their licenses. In other cities as well, municipal officials, backed by white laborers, sought to regulate the behavior of black men who worked outdoors, whether it was pulling carts, cleaning streets, peddling goods, or emptying chamberpots. Whites claimed that black outside workers were noisy and disorderly. These complaints revealed the hyprocrisy of white people, who relegated blacks to the most disagreeable jobs and then criticized these workers for not pursuing other (better) kinds of work. CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 349 ${bmicon} In the coming years, some white workers embraced the cause of temperance as a means of distancing themselves from poor people in general and poor blacks in particular. White men’s own sober behavior, they claimed, was far superior to that of the rowdy poor, especially black men and women who had to make their living by working outdoors, singing and “crying” for customers—practices that whites linked to drunken, disorderly behavior. White men in cities increasingly associated productive labor with inside work performed by people who practiced punctuality, thrift, and sobriety. Poor people of both races remained vulnerable to the charge of vagrancy. According to an observer in the New York Independent Mechanic in 1811, vagrants “infest our streets, by day, shocking the delicacy of our females, and disgusting the feelings of everyone, who is not as debased as the wretches themselves.” Industrialization was not confined to New England; the southern states encouraged the development of textile mills as well. Yet in the South, industrialization had different social consequences. By 1816, England had begun to dump its accumulated stores of textiles in the United States, selling them at bargain rates and putting hundreds of American mills out of business. Some New England factory owners moved their operations to the South, hoping to find cheaper land and labor. The southern mills used white wage hands, enslaved workers, or a combination of the two. Many owners of southern industrial establishments sought to piece together their labor forces on the basis of the availability of different kinds of labor: enslaved and free, black and white, male and female, young and old. Thus, ironworks, gold and coal mines, brickworks, hemp factories, salt-processing plants, and lumber, railroad, and canal camps often employed men of both races, enslaved and free. In southern cities, white artisans concerned about losing their livelihood protested the use of skilled slave labor. But their complaints fell on deaf ears. Most members of city councils and regulatory boards owned slaves themselves, and they had no intention of giving up their enslaved workers so that white artisans could find jobs. Southern industry always reflected developments in the plantation economy. For example, when cotton prices rose, slave owners kept their slaves working in the fields. Thus, planters discouraged any kind of large-scale manufacturing that might disrupt the agrarian society they had built so carefully over so many years. However, in 1816 neither southern nor northern congressmen foresaw that the differences between their two regions would intensify over the coming years. That year Congress debated whether to impose a tariff on foreign goods. The proposed tax would require importers of such goods to pay duties of 20 to 25 percent of the value of the total. A young representative from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, spoke in favor of the tariff bill. The South, he explained, might someday have to rely heavily on manufacturing. Calhoun, therefore, was open to a tariff that would raise the price of goods manufactured in the United States. In contrast, Representative Daniel Webster of New Hampshire opposed the measure. The tariff, he said, would further harm the New England shipping industry by dampening foreign trade altogether. The Tariff of 1816 passed and became law. Within a few years these two men reversed their positions on the tariff as the North became more rigidly associated with manufacturing and the South with staple crop agriculture. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 350 ${bmicon} The growth and spread of the cotton economy redefined the institution of slavery, the southern political system, and, ultimately, all of American history. With the invention of the cotton gin and the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory, cotton production boomed, and with it the enslaved population. About 700,000 slaves resided in the United States in 1790; just two decades later, that figure had jumped to 1.1 million. In 1790 plantations produced 3000 bales (about 300 pounds each) of cotton; 20 years later, that number hit 178,000. On the eve of the Civil War, in 1860, the southern states were growing 4 million bales of cotton. Behind these figures lay a human drama of immense proportions. Beginning in 1808, the United States outlawed the importation of new slaves. However, the astounding profitability of cotton heightened the demand for slave labor. Although South Carolina had banned its own trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1787 (that is, outlawed the importation of slaves into the state), the state reopened the trade in 1803. Between those years, annual exports of cotton had risen from less than 10,000 pounds to more than 6 million. Between 1803 and the imposition of the national ban five years later, South Carolina imported 35,000 Africans. (This number far exceeded the number of slave importations in any other five-year period in the state’s history.) However, other states began to rely on the domestic slave trade—the forced migration of slaves from the upper South to the lower South. The institution of slavery was marked by sharp regional variations. Between 1800 and 1820, those variations reflected the impact of cotton cultivation on local economies. At the same time, the contours of an African American culture emerged. This culture had certain characteristics regardless of place, such as strong ties that bound nuclear and extended family members, rich oral and musical traditions heavily influenced by West African customs, and individual and collective resistance to slavery. White people as a group understood little of this culture; they viewed black people primarily as workers who would never become citizens. As U.S. military strength and nationalistic pride grew, southern planters imposed a harsher, more regimented system of slavery on the black population. The tension between the rhetoric of freedom and the reality of slavery shaped southern—and American—life for the next four decades. Throughout the South, shifts in production methods transformed the demographic and economic make-up of specific regions. For example, by the early nineteenth century, the Chesapeake tobacco economy had declined as a result of worn-out lands and falling prices. In its place arose a more diversified economy based on crafts, the cultivation of corn and wheat, and the milling of flour and wheat. Owners put enslaved men to work making barrels and horseshoes while their wives, sisters, and daughters labored as spinners, weavers, dairymaids, personal servants, and livestock tenders. The lower South states of Georgia and South Carolina also saw their economies change during this period. The indigo export business never recovered from the Revolution, when it was outlawed by the Continental Congress to deprive foreign countries of the prized dye. European customers now had to turn to Louisiana and Central America for indigo. In contrast, the lowcountry (coastal) South Carolina rice economy recovered and flourished after the war. Technical advances in tidal rice production boosted the size of rice holdings, and ambitious planters bought up the land of neighboring small farmers. In a particularly rich rice district, All Saints Parish, one out of two slaves lived on a plantation with more than a hundred slaves in 1790; 30 years later, four out of five lived on such large establishments. In these areas, the plantation owners themselves often lived elsewhere, and black people constituted almost the entire population. Adding to the wealth of South Carolina was the rapid development of cotton cultivation, especially in the state’s interior, away from the coast. In 1810 fully half of the state’s population lived away from the coast. There, prosperous cotton planters began to rival their CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 351 ${bmicon} lowcountry rice-growing counterparts in social status and political influence. Meanwhile, Charleston’s population grew more diverse, as refugees from Saint-Domingue (current-day Haiti) arrived in the 1790s and as the free black population grew. Southern slaveholders supported territorial expansion because they understood that a thriving staple-crop economy relied on the cultivation of fresh lands. Cotton planters rushed into the Louisiana Territory after 1803. They accelerated an economic process that had begun in the late eighteenth century: the replacement of a frontier exchange economy with plantation agriculture. (Sugar dominated the New Orleans region; cotton, the rest of the Lower Mississippi valley.) No longer able to serve as traders in this frontier territory, slaves remained confined to their masters’ estates. Their owners forbade them to sell or buy goods and to own firearms. By 1800, slaves in lower Louisiana were producing 4.5 million pounds of sugar annually and more than 18,000 bales of cotton. The reaches of the Lower Mississippi took on an increasingly multicultural flavor. A strong Spanish influence persisted as a vestige of colonial days. French-speaking planter–refugees and their slaves from revolutionary Saint-Domingue came to New Orleans while the city was still in French hands (1800 to 1803). Between 1787 and 1803, nearly 3000 slaves arrived to be sold in New Orleans—some imported clandestinely from Africa, others bought from the Spanish in West Florida, still others transported from the Chesapeake region. In 1803 and afterward, American planters began to import even larger numbers of slaves from the North. Slave owners who settled in Natchez, on the banks of the Mississippi River, grew cotton—and grew rich. Between 1790 and 1861, approximately 400,000 Africans were imported into the territory that became the United States. Yet by 1860, the black population had grown to more than 4 million—a tenfold increase in 160 years. These numbers suggest a tremendous rate of natural increase. Some planters continued to buy slaves brought into the country illegally after 1808. But most of the increase stemmed from births. The preferences of both slaveowners and slaves account for this development. Unlike their Latin American and West Indian counterparts who preferred to work large numbers of male slaves to death, southern planters encouraged black women to PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 352 ${bmicon} bear many children. At the same time, enslaved African Americans valued the family as a social unit; family ties provided support and solace for a people deprived of fundamental human rights. Even under harsh conditions, black people fell in love, married (albeit informally, without the sanction of law), had children, and reared families. Despite the lack of protection from local, state, and national authorities, the slave family proved to be a remarkably resilient institution. The stability of individual slave families depended on several factors, including the size and age of the plantation and the fortunes and life cycle of the slaveowner’s family. Very large or long-established plantations had more two-parent slave families compared to small or newer holdings, which tended to have more unrelated people. Slave families were broken up when whites died and their “property” bequeathed to heirs. Slaves might also be sold or presented to other family members as gifts. For example, a slaveowner might present a slave to a son or daughter getting married and setting up a new household. In these instances, whites’ family ties came at the expense of blacks’ family ties. Ultimately, slaveowners prized the natural increase of their workers but had little respect for the family feeling that black people nourished within their own communities. Still, enslaved men and women struggled to retain some control over their own lives. Slaves tended to be exogamous—that is, they married outside their circle of cousins and other close relatives. To keep from being sold, slave girls at times felt compelled to demonstrate their fertility to their owners. Many of them had their first child with an enslaved man in their late teens, then entered stable marriages later. Mothers and fathers often named their children after a parent or grand-parent. On the Good Hope Plantation in Orangeburg, South Carolina, five slave children were born between 1804 and 1819. Flora and Clarinda were each named for their mother’s mother, Sambo for his mother’s father, and Primus and July for their fathers. Enslaved African Americans valued the family as a social unit [providing] support and solace for a people deprived of fundamental human rights. Many slave families suffered disruption in response to the growing demand for slaves in the fresh cotton lands of Alabama and Mississippi. The forced migration from upper South to lower South necessarily severed kin ties, but slaves often reconstituted those ties in the form of symbolic kin relationships. For example, families adopted new, single members of the slave community, and the children called these newcomers “Aunt” or “Uncle.” Slaves throughout the South tended to have large families, and they preferred to live in units consisting of two parents with children. However, they adapted their household structures to the available housing. On the Oakland Plantation in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, the slave quarters consisted of 15 cabins that housed various forms of families. In 1811, four married couples and their children lived alone, but other cabins consisted of single people, a married couple only, or households of extended family and adopted kin. Established in 1809, this plantation had fewer nuclear families than long-established rice plantations in South Carolina did, for example. After the Civil War, southern blacks combined their work and family lives by laboring within their families in the fields. Under slavery, however, owners showed little or no inclination to take family relationships into account when they parceled out work assignments to men, women, and children. Rather, those assignments, and the conditions under which slaves performed them, reflected the size and crops of a particular plantation. An estimated 75 percent of antebellum slaves worked primarily as field hands. On large plantations the division of labor could be quite specialized. Men served as skilled carpenters, blacksmiths, and barrelmakers, and women worked as cooks, laundresses, nursemaids, and personal maids. Rice slaves continued to work under the task system. Each day, after they completed a specific assigned task, they spent their time as they chose, within limits. The women washed clothes and cleaned the living quarters. The men hunted and fished. Both men and women visited friends and worked in their own gardens. Slaves jealously guarded their limited forms of freedom. One white man in Georgia described a slave who had completed his appointed task for the day: “His master feels no right to call on him,” leaving him “the remainder of the day to work in his own corn field.” CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 353 ${bmicon} Even in the cotton-growing regions, where blacks labored under the regimented gang system, slaves tried to work for themselves in the little free time they had on Saturday afternoons and Sunday. In Louisiana, one white observer noted that the slave man returning to his living quarters after a long, hot day in the fields “does not lose his time. He goes to work at a bit of the land which he has planted with provisions for his own use, while his companion, if he has one, busies herself in preparing some for him, herself, and their children.” Family members who grew or accumulated a modest surplus—of corn, eggs, vegetables—in some cases could sell their wares in a nearby market or to slaves on another plantation. Some slaves appropriated goods from their master’s storeroom and barn and sold or traded them to other slaves or to poor whites. This kind of labor benefited individual slaves and their families. These transactions often took place under the cover of darkness. Planters complained of slaves who stole their cattle, hogs, chickens, sacks full of cotton, farm equipment, and stores of ham and flour. In 1806 planters in lowcountry South Carolina, along the Combahee River, railed against a problem that would grow worse in the coming years: “pedling boats which frequent the river … for the purpose of trading with The Negroe Slaves, to the very great loss of the Owners, and Corruption of such slaves.” Thus slaves’ various forms of labor fell into at least three categories: work performed at the behest of and directly under the supervision of whites, labor performed by and for family members within the slaves’ living quarters, and the sale (or sometimes clandestine exchange) of goods with masters, other slaves, and poor whites. In 1817 the New Orleans City Council decreed that slaves could sing and dance at a stipulated place—Congo Square—every Sunday afternoon. Thereafter, a variety of groups came together to make music. These groups included recent émigrés from Saint-Domingue and slaves PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 354 ${bmicon} newly imported from Africa; slaves from neighboring plantations, in town for the day; and free people of color (Creoles), who often blended Spanish and French classical music traditions. One eyewitness declared that the Congo Square musicians “have their own national music, consisting for the most part of a long kind of narrow drum of various size.” In towns and on plantations throughout the South, black people drew from West African musical styles, using drums as well as banjolike instruments, gourd rattles, and mandolins. From Congo Square and other southern places flowed the roots of several uniquely American musical styles: the blues, gospel, ragtime, jazz, swing, and rock ‘n’ roll. In their artistic expression, dress, hairstyles, and language, slaves sought to preserve their cultural uniqueness and create an existence that slaveholders could not touch. In the South Carolina lowcountry, slaves spoke Gullah. Originally a pidgin—a blend of words and grammatical structures from West African languages and English—Gullah later developed into a more formal Creole language. Slaves throughout the United States also mixed West African religious beliefs with Christianity. Nevertheless, they showed little interest in some of the essential features of European American Protestantism, including the concept of original sin and the possibility of eternal damnation in the afterlife. Many West African groups believed in a close relationship between the natural and supernatural worlds. In slave quarters, spiritual leaders not only preached a Christianity of equality but also told fortunes and warned away “haunts” (spirits of the dead). In gatherings of many kinds, enslaved Americans affirmed their bonds with one another and their resistance to bondage. For example, funerals provided opportunities for music and expressions of group solidarity. The rich oral tradition that characterized slave life preserved collective memories of Africa and the lore of individual families and kin networks. Black resistance to slavery took many forms. Slaves might work carelessly in an effort to resist a master’s or mistress’s demands. During the course of their workday, some slaves broke hoes and other farm implements. A cook might burn the biscuits, thus spoiling a special dinner party for her mistress. Striking out more directly, the African-influenced “conjurer”—often a woman who had a knowledge of plants and herbs—could wreak havoc on a white family by concocting poisons or encouraging disruptive behavior among slaves. Slaves also stole goods from their masters and at times stole themselves by running away. (This practice was more common among young, unmarried men than among those who had family obligations.) Some slaves revolted. In St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes in Louisiana, an 1811 revolt of 400 slaves cost two whites their lives and left several plantations in flames. Under the leadership of a free man of color, Charles Deslondes, the original group acquired new members as they marched toward New Orleans. U.S. troops cut their advance short, killing 66 of them. In the Southeast in 1817 and 1818, 400 to 600 runaway slaves converged on the swamps of central Florida, uniting with Indian refugees from the Red Stick War. Together, they raided Georgia plantations until Andrew Jackson and his soldiers halted them in April 1818. To justify their own behavior, masters and mistresses created a number of myths about the black people they exploited. Whites had a vested interest in believing that their slaves felt gratitude toward them. Skilled in the so-called deference ritual, some slaves hid their true feelings and acted submissively in the presence of white people. Owners and overseers alike interpreted this behavior as a sign of black contentment. Yet most whites understood that danger could lurk beneath the surface of the most accommodating slave. Therefore, the prevailing stereotypes of black men and women encom- CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 355 ${bmicon} passed two caricatures: “Sambo” and “Mammy” were childlike and grateful, and “Nat” and “Jezebel” were surly, cunning, dangerous, and unpredictable. One Kentucky slave, Susan, was described by a planter in 1822 as “the biggest devil that ever lived.” Susan reportedly poisoned a stud horse and set a stable on fire, causing $1500 worth of damage, after managing to escape from handcuffs. Although some planters boasted of their fatherly solicitude for their slaves, in fact, slaveowners harbored deep fears about the men and women they held in bondage. These fears explain the barbaric punishments that some owners inflicted on men, women, and children. Whip-wielding overseers made pregnant women lie down in a trench in the fields, presumably so that the lash would not harm the fetus. Even in “respectable” southern families, slave owners branded, mutilated, and beat enslaved workers for resisting discipline or to deliver a warning to other potentially defiant slaves. In the slave South, American cries of freedom, equality, opportunity, and the blessings of citizenship rang hollow. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, striking historical developments stirred the spirit of American nationalism. The Louisiana Purchase magnified the natural wealth of the young nation, and the federal government encouraged citizens to exploit that wealth through trade and settlement. Both the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 freed the country from the British menace in the West and on the high seas. The war also bolstered the American economy by stimulating technological innovation and the growth of manufacturing. Territorial expansion combined with economic development created new jobs for a burgeoning population. Unlike the rigidly class-conscious nations of Europe, America seemed to offer limitless possibilities—at least for propertied white men, the only people entitled to the full rights of citizenship. Southern cotton planters and northern factory owners derived their newfound prosperity from very different sources: staple crop agriculture on one hand and the emerging industrial system on the other. At the same time, these two groups had much in common. As they expanded their operations, whether sprawling plantations or gigantic mill complexes, full view FIGURE 10.2 ESTIMATED POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1790–1860 Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, p. 7. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 356 ${bmicon} they displaced smaller landowners and raised land prices. Members of both elite groups proved restless entrepreneurs, eager to move around to find the freshest lands and the cheapest labor. Their personal wealth and their political power set them apart from the people under them—the slaves and wage earners—who produced that wealth. And both the southern “lords of the lash” and the northern “lords of the loom” depended on large numbers of slaves to grow cotton. Thus, the fluffy white fiber of the cotton boll is perhaps a most fitting symbol of the emerging American economy. Producing and processing it yielded tangible benefits for a few and created a new, harsher world of work for many. The Lewis and Clark Expedition www.cp.duluth.mn.us/∼tmcs/lewsclrk1.htm This site offers assorted materials treating the expedition that explored the Louisiana Territory. The Barbary Treaties www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary This site includes the texts of treaties between the United States and the Barbary states, 1786–1816. Documents from the War of 1812 www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/britian/br1814m.htm This site includes important documents from the War of 1812. Whole Cloth: Discovering Science and Technology Through American Textile History www.si.edu/lemelson/centerpieces/whole cloth/ The Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and Society for the History of Technology assembled this site. It includes excellent activities and sources related to early American manufacturing and industry. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties www.library.okstate.edu/kappler/ This digitized text at Oklahoma State University includes preremoval treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes and other groups. Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996). Joanne P. Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860 (1998). Theda Perdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1866 (1979). Carroll Pursell, The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology (1995). Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (1979). Donald J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992). W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African-American Seamen in the Age of Sail (1997). Thomas J. Fleming, Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America (1999). Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812 (1961). Burton Spivak, Jefferson’s English Crisis: Commerce, Embargo, and the Republican Revolution (1974). John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (1998). Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (1989). Walter Lord, The Dawn’s Early Light (1972). Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans (1999). Robert Allen Rutland, The Presidency of James Madison (1990). David C. Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds., The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814 (2001). CHAPTER 10 ###8226; DEFENDING AND EXPANDING THE NEW NATION, 1803###8211;1818 357 ${bmicon} James H. Broussard, The Southern Federalists, 1800–1816 (1979). Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835 (1998). Kirkpatrick Sale, The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream (2001). Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor: Philadelphia Artisans and the Politics of Class, 1720–1830 (1993). Cynthia Shelton, The Mills of Manayunk: Industrialization and Social Conflict in the Philadelphia Region, 1787–1837 (1986). George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (1951). Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1976). Charles W. Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (1984). Ann Patton Malone, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana (1992). Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and British Caribbean (1992). Jeffrey Robert Young, Domesticating Slavery: The Master Class in Georgia and South Carolina, 1670–1837 (1999). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter10 To Chapter 10 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 358 ${bmicon}         The Politics Behind Western Expansion       Federal Authority and Its Opponents       Real People in the “Age of the Common Man”       Ties That Bound a Growing Population       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 359 ${bmicon} CAMPAIGNING FOR POLITICAL OFFICE IN TENNESSEE IN THE 1820S WAS NOT AN ACTIVITY for the faint of heart. Candidates competed against each other in squirrel hunts, the loser footing the bill for the barbecue that followed. A round of speechmaking often was capped by several rounds of whiskey drinking enjoyed by candidates and supporters alike. Into this boisterous arena stepped a man unrivaled as a campaigner. David Crockett ran successfully for several offices, including local justice of the peace in 1818, state legislator in 1821 and 1823, and U.S. congressman in 1827, 1829, and 1833. The plainspoken Crockett knew how to play to a crowd and rattle a rival. He bragged about his skill as a bear hunter and ridiculed the fancy dress of his opponents. He condemned closed-door political caucuses (small groups of party insiders who hand-picked candidates) and praised grassroots democracy. Crockett claimed he could out-shoot, out-drink, and out-debate anyone who opposed him. If his opponent lied about him, why, then, he would lie about himself: “Yes fellow citizens, I can run faster, walk longer, leap higher, speak better, and tell more and bigger lies than my competitor, and all his friends, any day of his life.” Crockett’s blend of political theater and folksy backwoods banter earned him the allegiance of voters like him—men who, though having little formal education, understood the challenges of carving a homestead out of the dense thickets of western Tennessee. Crockett’s raucous brand of campaigning appealed to Westerners, that is, at this point in history, European Americans living just west of the Appalachian Mountains. His social betters might sniff that he was a rough, ignorant man—in the words of one Tennessee political insider, “more in his proper place, when hunting a Bear in the cane Brake, than he will be in the Capital.” But newspaper reporters and defeated opponents alike grew to respect his ability to champion ordinary farmers. As a politician, Crockett spoke for debtors, squatters, and militia veterans of the Revolutionary War. He scorned the well-born in favor of men who could shoot down and skin a wolf. During the 1820s, European American settlers in the trans-Appalachian West transformed the style and substance of American politics. Beginning with Kentucky in 1792, western states began to relax or abolish property requirements for adult male voters. Even the English that Americans spoke changed. New words introduced into the political vocabulary reflected the rough-hewn, woodsman quality of western electioneering: candidates hit the campaign trail, giving stump speeches along the way. They supported their party’s platform with its planks (positions on the issues). As legislators, they voted for pork-barrel projects that would benefit their constituents at home. Emphasizing his modest origins, David Crockett became widely known as Davy Crockett. (It is hard to imagine anyone calling the Sage of Monticello Tommy Jefferson.) These developments reflected the movement of European Americans westward. In 1790, 100,000 Americans (not including Indians) lived west of the Appalachian PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 360 ${bmicon} full view MAP 11.1 THE CENTER OF POPULATION MOVES WEST, 1790–1970 In 1830 most European Americans still lived along the eastern seaboard. Yet the statistical center of the country had shifted dramatically westward as settlers moved across the trans-Appalachian West. Migrants from the South sought out the fresh cotton lands of Alabama and Mississippi, while New Englanders created new communities in the Upper Midwest. Migration to areas such as Wisconsin and Georgia was contingent on the removal of Indians from those areas, either by treaty or by military force. Mountains; half a century later that number had increased to 7 million, or about 4 out of 10 Americans. Western settlers attacked what they considered to be centralized, eastern-based institutions of wealth and privilege. They scorned a six-person Supreme Court that could overturn the laws of Congress and the individual states; the privately held Second Bank of the United States, which, its critics charged, enriched its own board of directors at the expense of indebted farmers; and federally sponsored internal improvements, such as turnpikes and canals, which, many western homesteaders believed, served the interests of well-connected merchants and financiers. Western voters rejoiced with the 1828 election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency; here, they claimed, was a man who would battle eastern financiers and at the same time support white settlers’ claims to Indian lands in the West. Jackson held out the promise that ordinary men would have a political voice and access to expanding economic opportunities. Indeed, during these years, voter participation in presidential elections soared, from 25 percent of eligible voters in 1824 to 50 percent in 1828. During his two terms in office (1828–1836), Andrew Jackson so dominated the American political landscape that historians have called him the symbol of an age and the representative man of his time. Born in humble circumstances, orphaned at age 14, Jackson achieved public acclaim as a lawyer, a military officer, and, finally, president. In promoting a strong central government, and the authority of the chief executive in particular, he fought against foreign military forces (the British in the War of 1812) and Native Americans, and he clashed with southern states’ rights advocates. Jackson backed up his vision with the use CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 361 ${bmicon} of violence and, at times, contempt for the law. Nevertheless, Jackson’s view appealed strongly to workers and small farmers, men who resented what they called entrenched eastern privilege in politics and the economy. Yet democracy had its limits during this period, for most people could not vote. Native Americans remained barred from even the rudiments of formal citizenship. White married women, who could neither own property nor vote, found themselves second-class citizens. Almost all free people of color, whether in the North, South, or Midwest, likewise lacked basic rights—to vote, serve on juries, or send their children to public school. Further complicating this age was the rise of social classes. Acquiring great economic and political significance, the class system seemed to mock the idea of equality. The outlines of this system appeared in the 1820s in the Northeast, where business and factory managers received salaries, not hourly wages, and their wives were full-time homemakers and mothers. New forms of popular literature, such as the Ladies Magazine, published in Boston, glorified the middle-class family, especially the pious wife and mother who held moral sway over it. The “age of the common man” was thus rife with irony. Jackson himself embodied many apparent contradictions. An Indian-fighter, he adopted a young Indian boy as his ward. A foe of privilege, he was a slave owner. A self-professed champion of farmers and artisans, he expressed contempt for their representatives in Congress. He also took steps to expand the power of the executive branch. The 1820s in general revealed these larger contradictions as national leaders pursued a more democratic form of politics on one hand and supported a system based on class and racial differences on the other. The resulting tensions shaped American society and politics in the third decade of the nineteenth century. As the United States gained new territory through negotiation and conquest and people moved west, the nation felt the impact. Western debtors’ economic distress echoed in eastern centers of finance. Congressional debates over whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union as a slave or free state sent shock waves throughout the country. Of the political conflict over the fate of slavery in the territories, the elderly Thomas Jefferson wrote, “This momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the death knell of the Union.” As new states were carved out of the west, gaining national influence in Congress, traditional methods of choosing candidates and the old political parties of Democratic-Republicans and Federalists came under fire. Parties began to choose their presidential nominees in conventions, not in caucuses of legislators. Rejecting practices that favored the wealthy, more and more states abolished the requirement that would-be voters and office holders had to own property. “The people must be heard!” became a rallying cry. However, the opening of the West to European American settlement, which invigorated white men’s democracy, also sowed seeds of economic and political conflict. Settlers made their way not through empty territory but through Native American homelands. Once in the West, most of these settlers faced the same kinds of conflicts that increasingly preoccupied Easterners, especially those between masters and slaves and debtors and creditors. In 1819 the United States consisted of 22 states. Slavery was legal in half of them. Late that year, the territory of Missouri applied for statehood. This move set off panic in both the North and South because a twenty-third state was bound to upset the delicate balance of senators Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 362 ${bmicon} full view MAP 11.2 THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE Missouri applied for statehood in 1819, threatening the balance between 11 free and 11 slave states. According to a compromise hammered out in Congress, Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and Maine, formerly part of Massachusetts, was admitted as a free state. Slavery was banned above the 36°30′ parallel. between slave and free states. Representative James Tallmadge of New York proposed a compromise: no slaves would be imported into Missouri in the future, and the new state would gradually emancipate the enslaved men and women living within its borders. The Tallmadge Amendment was defeated in the House as Southerners resisted this blatant attempt to limit the spread of slavery. The debate over the future of Missouri occupied Congress from December 1819 to March 1820. In the Senate, Rufus King of New York claimed that Congress had the ultimate authority to set laws governing slavery. However, his colleague William Pinckney of Maryland retorted that new states possessed the same rights as the original 13; that is, they could choose whether to allow slavery. Maine’s application for admission to the Union suggested a way out of the impasse. Speaker of the House of Representatives Henry Clay of Kentucky proposed a plan calling for Missouri to join the Union as a slave state. At the same time, Maine, originally part of Massachusetts, would become the twenty-fourth state and be designated a free one. In the future, slavery would be prohibited from all Louisiana Purchase lands north of latitude 36°30′, an area that included all territory north of present-day Missouri and Kansas. The House and the Senate finally approved the compromise, which maintained the balance between the number of slave and free states. The day Congress sealed the compromise, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams walked home from the Capitol with Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The two men engaged in a muted but intense debate over slavery. Calhoun claimed that the institution “was the best guarantee to equality among the whites.” Slavery, he asserted, demonstrated that all white men were equal to one another and superior to all blacks. Unnerved by Calhoun’s comments, CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 363 ${bmicon} Adams concluded that the debate over Missouri had “betrayed the secret of [Southerners’] souls.” By reserving backbreaking toil for blacks, wealthy planters fancied themselves aristocratic lords of the manor. Adams confided in his diary that night, “They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee’s manners, because he has no habits of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs.” Adams acknowledged that the compromise had kept the number of slave and free states in balance. Still, he reflected, slavery “taints the very sources of moral principle.” Would it not have been better to confront the issue squarely and amend the Constitution in favor of free labor in all new states admitted to the Union? Adams feared that the North-South conflicts over the issues might someday imperil the nation itself. He concluded ominously, “If the Union must be dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which it ought to break.” Five years later, Adams won the presidency of the United States. Elected separately by the voters, his vice president was none other than John C. Calhoun. Over the next four years, the two men managed to maintain an uneasy political alliance. Through land grants and government financing of new methods of transportation, Congress encouraged European American migrants to push their way west and south. The Land Act of 1820 enabled westerners to buy a minimum 80 acres at a price of $1.25 an acre in cash—even in those days, a bargain homestead. Built with the help of government legal and financial aid, new roads and canals, steamboats, and, after the early 1830s, railroads facilitated migration. Between 1820 and 1860, the number of steamboats plying the Mississippi River jumped from 60 to more than 1000. Canals linked western producers to eastern consumers of grains and cattle and connected western consumers to eastern producers of manufactured goods. Shipping costs and times between Buffalo and New York shrank. Cities such as Rochester and Syracuse, New York, and Cincinnati, Ohio, flourished because of their geographic position along waterways. Americans took a variety of routes West. One route was taken in the 1820s by desperate planters moving out of the exhausted lands of the Upper South (the states of Virginia and Maryland), the Carolinas, and Georgia, westward into Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. This migration across the Appalachian Mountains furthered the nationalist idea of the “expansion of liberty and freedom,” a view held by many white men regardless of political affiliation. Yet it also spread slavery. The sight of slave “coffles”—groups of men, women, and children bound together in chains, hobbling down a city street or a country road—became increasingly common in this western region. In 1821 Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had produced two-thirds of the nation’s cotton crop; the rest came from recently settled areas. Just a dozen years later the proportions shifted: Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida together produced two-thirds of all cotton, and the remaining one third came from older areas. The race to riches in the western portions of the South went to planters who had the most slaves and the most money to drain swamps and build the levees needed to hold back springtime river flooding. Soon a new planter elite—men and women who presided over vast slave holdings and lorded over their poor-white neighbors—dominated the lower Mississippi Valley. European Americans also migrated across the border into Mexican territory. In 1821 Spain approved the application of a U.S. citizen, Moses Austin, to settle 300 American families on 200,000 fertile acres along the Colorado and Brazos river bottoms in southeastern Texas. Austin died soon after, but his son Stephen carried on his legacy. Within two years, the younger Austin had received permission (now from the government of newly independent Mexico) to bring in another 100 families. These settlers, together with squatters, numbered about 1500 people. Although the Mexican constitution prohibited slavery, some of the newcomers brought their slaves with them, and some free people of color came on their own. All these migrants from the United States called themselves Texians to distinguish themselves from the Tejanos, or Spanish-speaking full view Austin, Texas 1840 This lithograph shows Austin, Texas in January 1840 when it was still the capitol of the Lone Star Republic. (Library of Congress) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 364 ${bmicon} full view MAP 11.3 PRINCIPAL CANALS BUILT BY 1860 Many canals were expensive ventures and, in some cases, engineering nightmares. The Erie Canal had a competitive advantage because it snaked through the Mohawk Valley, the only major level pass through the mountain chain that stretched from Canada to Georgia. In contrast, the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, which ran from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, used a combination of inclined planes and steam engines in ten separate locations to haul boats up and down the Allegheny Mountains. residents of the region. These newly arrived Texians agreed to adopt the Catholic faith and become citizens of Mexico. Eager for settlers to improve the land, Mexican authorities made it clear they would welcome new settlers “from hell itself,” in the words of one official. By late 1821 Mexico’s independence had nullified the trade embargo that Spain had imposed on Mexico and on cities to the north, including Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico Territory. Ambitious people of all stripes rushed into New Mexico, including European American merchants who brought ready-made cloth (in the process displacing Hispanic and Native American textile producers), U.S. soldiers who claimed “God-given rights of conquest,” and mountain men intent on harvesting animal pelts from the New Mexico Rocky Mountains. In the 1820s, 900 additional families sponsored by Austin arrived in Texas. They were followed by 3000 squatters. This mass migration raised well-founded fears among Mexican officials that they would lose authority over the American newcomers within their borders. In 1819 a financial panic swept across the nation, followed by an economic depression. The Second Bank of the United States played a major role in triggering this economic downturn, which came to be called the Panic of 1819. Granted a twenty-year charter by Congress CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 365 ${bmicon} in 1816, the Bank resembled its predecessor, seeking to regulate the national economy through loans to state and local banks. In 1819 the Bank clamped down on small, local “wildcat” banks, which had extended credit to many people who could not repay their loans. Many homesteaders were not self-sufficient farmers but producers of staple crops or proprietors of small enterprises. They relied on credit from banks and local private lenders. As a result, the Bank’s crackdown on wildcat banks had a devastating impact on western households. Debtors unable to meet their obligations had their mortgages foreclosed, their homes seized, and their crops and equipment confiscated. Ruined by the Panic of 1819, many western farmers developed an abiding hatred of the Bank of the United States and a deep resentment of eastern financiers. Davy Crockett’s own family history suggests the plight of families dependent on bank credit to create homesteads out of western territory. The son of a propertyless squatter, Crockett had an intense fear of debt. Although he campaigned as a hunter and a farmer, he had built several enterprises on land he leased or owned on Shoal Creek in south central Tennessee: a water-powered grist mill, a gunpowder factory (worked by slaves), an iron ore mine, and a liquor distillery. For each venture, he had to borrow money from local creditors. Spending much of his time away from home, Crockett relied on his wife, Elizabeth, and his children to manage these businesses. (He had nine children by Elizabeth and three by his first wife, Polly, who died in 1815.) The depression of 1819 cut off Crockett’s sources of credit, and in 1822 a flash flood swept away his grist mill and powder factory. Without milled grain, the distillery could no longer operate. Creditors immediately set upon the family, demanding payment of their debts. The Crocketts were fortunate enough to own land they could sell, using the proceeds to repay their debts. Nevertheless, they decided to move further west, to a remote area on the banks of the Obion River in northwest Tennessee. There they started over. Crockett described the area as a “complete wilderness” (although he noted that it was also “full of Indians who were hunting”). The region still showed the effects of an earthquake that had occurred in 1811. With its downed trees and thick brambles, the fissure-riddled landscape presented challenges to Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 366 ${bmicon} full view MAP 11.4 MEXICO’S FAR NORTHERN FRONTIER IN 1822 This map shows Mexico’s far northern frontier in 1822. When Moses Austin died suddenly in 1821, the task of supervising the settlement of in-migrants from the United States fell to his son Stephen. The Mexican government authorized the younger Austin to act as empresario of the settlement. He was responsible for the legal and economic regulations governing the settlements clustered at the lower reaches of the Colorado and Brazos rivers. the farmers who ventured there. Once again, Crockett needed bank loans, this time to buy flour and seed for cotton. Many western settlers engaged in the same sort of cycle: borrowing to improve their land, then selling out and moving on. Unable to pay their debts, the least fortunate among them were thrown in jail. In several states, politicians urged the abolition of debtors’ prison. They pointed out that jailing people who owed money did little to ensure that the debt would be repaid. New York state legislators passed such a law in 1831 in response to a group of well-to-do petitioners who argued that debtors’ prison was “useless to the creditor—oppressive to the debtor—injurious to both.” Crockett advocated a system that would allow local sheriffs to buy debtors’ property at bankruptcy auctions and then sell it back to the former owners. He denounced the bankers and other creditors, men who “had gone up one side of a creek and down another, like a coon, and pretended to grant the poor people great favors” in making them loans that the moneylenders knew they could not afford to repay. Then these creditors demanded their money and wiped out families, taking their land and livestock. Too often, according to Crockett, the backwoods farmer was burdened by debt and vulnerable to depressions and scheming creditors alike. The Panic of 1819 caused widespread economic distress. Small farmers who lost their land through foreclosure could not produce crops for the eastern marker, contributing to the rise in the price of food. Deprived of credit, small shopkeepers also felt the effects of the depression. CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 367 ${bmicon} With rising unemployment, consumers could not afford to buy cloth, and as the demand for cotton fell, southern plantation owners, too, felt the contraction. Within a few years Andrew Jackson would capitalize on the fears and resentments of working men, farmers, planters, and tradesmen, as he championed the “common man” in opposition to what debtors called the “eastern monied interests.” In doing so he would transform the two-party system. James Monroe won reelection easily in 1820. The depression did not affect his popularity. He also benefited from the disorganization of his opponents and from the demise of the Federalist party. Congressman John Randolph of Virginia suggested that the voters were unanimous on only one issue: their indifference to Monroe. As it turned out, the president’s 231–1 victory in the Electoral College was the last chapter in the so-called Era of Good Feelings. On the international front, Monroe’s second term opened on a tense note. Foreign nations had started claiming land or promoting their own interests near U.S. borders. The United States remained especially wary of the Spanish presence on its southern and western borders. In 1818, President Monroe authorized General Andrew Jackson to broaden his assault on the Seminole Indians—a group composed of Native Americans and runaway slaves—in Florida. For the past two years, U.S. troops had pursued fugitive slaves into Spanish-held Florida. Now Jackson and his men seized the Spanish fort at Pensacola and claimed all of western Florida for the United States. The United States demanded that Spain either suppress the Seminole population or sell all of east Florida to the United States. With the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, Spain gave up its right to both Florida and Oregon (although Britain and Russia still claimed land in Oregon). In 1822 General Jackson became the first governor of Florida Territory. In 1821 the czar of Russia forbade non-Russians from entering the territory north of the fifty-first parallel and the open sea 100 miles off the coast of what is now Canada and Alaska. The Russians had established trading posts up and down that coast, some almost as far south as San Francisco Bay. Meanwhile, the crowned heads of Europe were cracking down on popular rebellions (in Italy in 1821 and Spain in 1823). Rumors circulated that these monarchs were planning new invasions of Latin America. TABLE 11-1 The Election of 1820 Candidate Political Party Electoral Vote James Monroe Democratic-Republican 231 John Quincy Adams Democratic-Republican 1 Fearful of an alliance between Russia, Prussia, Austria, Spain, and France, President Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams formulated a policy that became a landmark in American diplomatic history. Adams rejected a British proposal that Great Britain and the United States join forces to oppose a further Spanish encroachment in Latin America. He convinced Monroe that the United States must stand alone against the European powers—Spain in the South and Russia in the Northwest—if it hoped to protect its own interests in the Western Hemisphere. In his annual message to Congress in December 1823, the president declared that the era of Europe’s colonization of the Americas had ceased. Henceforth, he said, foreign nations would not be allowed to intervene in the Western Hemisphere. The United States conceived the so-called Monroe Doctrine as a self-defense measure aimed specifically at Russia, Spain, and Britain. With the Russo-American Treaty of 1824, Russia agreed to pull back its claims to the area north of 54°40′, the southern tip of the present-day Alaska panhandle. However, the United States did not have the naval power to back up the Monroe Doctrine with force. In its earliest form, the doctrine was more a statement of principle than a blueprint for action. The United States sought to discourage European powers from political or military meddling in the Western Hemisphere. The doctrine would have greater international significance in the late nineteenth century, when the United States developed the military might to enforce it. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 368 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY The Strange Career of the Monroe Doctrine What U.S. president was responsible for relocating several hundred suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists from Afghanistan to Cuba in early 2002? President George W. Bush had ultimate authority for the decision, of course; he claimed that intelligence officers needed to interrogate the men in a secure U.S. military installation, away from war-torn Afghanistan. Yet indirectly, at least, the detainees found themselves in steel cages on the shores of Guantanamo Bay because President James Monroe had announced his famous doctrine to the world almost 180 years before. At the time, Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, saw threats to U.S. economic interests and national security. Both Russia and Great Britain were making territorial claims in the Northwest, in what was called Oregon Country. To the south of the United States, a number of Spanish colonies had won, or were about to win, their independence: Chile in 1818, Mexico in 1821, Brazil in 1822, and Venezuela in 1824. The Monroe administration hoped to convince Spain, France, and Portugal not to take advantage of this unstable situation. However, over the years, the purpose of the doctrine shifted from trying to keep the European powers from recolonizing any part of the Americas to justifying U.S. territorial acquisition and attempts to police and intervene in the domestic affairs of Latin American countries. For example, Presidents Tyler and Polk cited the doctrine to further the nation’s continental expansion, including the conquest of Texas and California. In the mid–1890s, Secretary of State Richard Olney justified the U.S. decision to intervene in a border dispute between Britain and Venezuela by proclaiming, “Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law … its infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers.” The American victory over Spain in the War of 1898 gave policymakers an opportunity to gain influence over Cuban domestic matters. The Platt Amendment to the Cuban–American Treaty of 1903 restricted the freedom of the newly independent Cuban government. Under pressure from the United States, Cuba incorporated into its constitution provisions that barred a foreign power (other than the United States) from intervening in Cuban political and economic affairs and gave the United States the right to buy or lease sites for naval installations (including the site at Guantanamo Bay). In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt nullified most provisions of the Platt Amendment, but the United States retained its right to the base at Guantanamo. This decision was part of U.S. actions to claim small but geographically critical land holdings around the globe to use for military purposes: imperial claims to Guam, Hawaii, and the Philippines in addition to the base in Cuba, for example. Theodore Roosevelt devised his famous policy called the Roosevelt Corollary to justify military intervention into Central American countries that were indebted to American banks or businesses. Under Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy, U.S. marines landed in Nicaragua in 1912 and remained in the country until 1933. The stated purpose of the occupation was to make certain that Nicaragua paid off its debts to U.S. banks. A guerrilla group led by General Augusto Cesar Sandino led an armed resistance against the American troops. In the mid–1970s, members of a resistance movement fighting the repressive Somoza regime in Nicaragua called themselves Sandinistas in honor of the general, who was killed by Nicaraguan government troops in 1934. As a result of the revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959, Cuba became a communist nation. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan cited the Monroe Doctrine in pushing Congress to authorize the use of force against the spread of communism in Latin America. Yet by 1989 President George Bush felt no need to justify his administration’s action in Panama, when U.S. troops forcibly seized dictator Manuel Noriega and returned him to the United States to stand trial on charges of drug smuggling. Over the generations, the Monroe Doctrine has proved a flexible policy, providing justification for almost any action the United States deemed necessary to its self-interest, broadly defined. Detaining Al Qaeda members at the Guantanamo naval station, for example, allows U.S. authorities to hold them securely, without the dangers of keeping them on American soil, where democratic traditions and constitutional rules might complicate the situation. This state of affairs exemplifies both the strength and the weakness of the Monroe Doctrine; the United States controls a small piece of Cuba, but the communist regime there stubbornly endures. full view 1824 Election Cartoon Cartoon for the 1824 election showing Adams’ “low pressure” ship sailing towards the victory dock, while Jackson’s “high pressure” ship explodes before reaching the dock. The election of 1824 provided a striking contrast to the bland affair four years earlier. In 1824 the field of presidential nominees was crowded, suggesting a party system in disarray. In the spirit of openness, secretive congressional caucuses no longer nominated presidential candidates. Instead, a number of states backed their “favorite sons” in the presidential race. Although all the candidates called themselves “Democratic-Republicans,” the label meant little more than the fact that most politicians sought to distance themselves from the outmoded “Federalist” label, which hearkened back to the post-Revolutionary period, rather than pointing forward to the nation’s new challenges. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams threw his hat in the ring. Other nominees included Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky and Andrew Jackson, now a senator from Tennessee. Jackson received the highest number of electoral votes (99), but no candidate achieved a majority. As a result, the election went to the House of Representatives. The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1804, provided for separate electoral balloting for the office of vice president, and John C. Calhoun won that vote. Clay withdrew from the race. He had promised Jackson his support but then endorsed Adams, whom the House subsequently elected. When Adams named Clay secretary of state, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 369 ${bmicon} Jackson’s supporters cried foul. The election, they charged, amounted to nothing more than a corrupt deal between two political insiders. Haunted by these charges, Adams served his four-year term under a cloud of public distrust. A member of a respected New England family and the son of former president John Adams, the new chief executive had served with distinction in Monroe’s cabinet. Still, Adams proved ill suited to the rough-and-tumble world of what came to be called the New Democracy. Adams held strong political views; he advocated a greater federal role in internal improvements and public education, a variation on Henry Clay’s “American System,” a set of policies which promoted a national bank, public funding of canals and turnpikes, and a high tariff to protect domestic manufactures. TABLE 11-2 The Election of 1824 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote John Quincy Adams Democratic-Republican 108,740 84 Andrew Jackson Democratic-Republican 153,544 99 William H. Crawford Democratic-Republican 46,618 41 Henry Clay Democratic-Republican 47,136 37 Adams’s party, which called itself the National Republicans, faced a formidable challenge in the election of 1828. Having seethed for four long years, Andrew Jackson’s PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 370 ${bmicon} full view Andrew Jackson’s Inauguration - Lithograph As depicted in the Robert Cruikshank lithograph, All Creation Going to the White House, the first inauguration of Andrew Jackson in 1829 was the scene of wild festivities, and a harbinger of the excesses in American life and politics in the ensuing years. (Library of Congress) supporters (the Democratic-Republicans) now urged “the people” to reclaim the White House. The campaign was a nasty one. Jackson’s opponents attacked his personal morality and that of his wife and his mother. Jackson’s supporters countered with the charge that Adams himself was corrupt and that he and his cronies must be swept from office. At campaign rallies, Jacksonians waved about brooms to signal their disgust with the current administration. By the time of the 1828 election, the Democratic-Republicans and their rivals had developed sophisticated national organizations. They sponsored local entertainments such as parades and barbecues. These gatherings brought out the vote and cultivated party loyalty. With the decline of state laws regulating voter qualifications, ordinary people in the South and the West cast ballots for the first time. The “Hero of the Battle of New Orleans” won a stunning victory, accumulating a record 647,292 popular votes. His supporters hailed the well-to-do slaveholder as the president of the “common” (meaning white) man. TABLE 11-3 The Election of 1828 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Andrew Jackson Democratic 647,292 178 John Quincy Adams National Republican 508,064 83 In office, Jackson tightened his party’s grip on power by introducing a national political spoils system. Through this process, successful candidates rewarded their supporters with jobs and tossed their rivals out of appointed offices. The spoils system let the Democratic-Republicans—now called the Democrats—build a nationwide political machine. Not surprisingly, it also provided fertile ground for corruption. When Americans defeated the British in the War of 1812, they ensured the physical security of the new nation. However, the war’s end left a crucial question unanswered: what role would federal authority play in a republic of states? During Andrew Jackson’s tenure, Congress, the chief executive, and the Supreme Court all jockeyed for CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 371 ${bmicon} influence over one another and over the states. To be sure, some groups, such as the Cherokee nation, challenged federal power. But these efforts failed against the sheer determination of Andrew Jackson. During his term in office, Jackson claimed a broad popular mandate, the authority the people gave him to act, in his effort to increase the power of the presidency. At the same time, militant southern sectionalists regarded the growth of federal executive and judicial power with alarm. If the president could impose a high tariff on the states and if the Supreme Court could deny the states the authority to govern Indians within their own borders, might not high-handed federal officials someday also threaten the South’s system of slavery? In a series of notable cases, the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall, sought to limit states’ power to control people and resources within their own boundaries. In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Court supported Congress’s decision to grant the Second Bank of the United States a 20-year charter. The state of Maryland had imposed a high tax on notes issued by the bank. Declaring that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” the Supreme Court ruled the state’s action unconstitutional. The court justices held that, although the original Constitution did not mention a national bank, Congress retained the authority to create such an institution. This fact implied that Congress also had the power to preserve it. This decision relied on what came to be called a “loose construction” of the Constitution to justify “implied powers” of the government. Under a “loose” construction, or interpretation, of the Constitution, the federal government reserved for itself forms of authority not explicitly stated in the Constitution. Similarly, in deciding Cohens v. Virginia (1821), the Court limited the power of individual states. The Cohens had been convicted of illegally selling lottery tickets. The Supreme Court upheld their conviction but also asserted its own authority to review state legislation that affected the federal government’s powers. In 1832 a case involving the rights of the Cherokee nation brought the Court head to head with President Jackson’s own brand of federal muscle-flexing. With the expansion of cotton cultivation into upland Georgia in the early nineteenth century, white residents of that state increasingly resented the presence of their Cherokee neighbors. full view View of the Great Treaty Held at Prairie du Chien (1825) - Painting View of the Great Treaty Held at Prairie du Chien (1825). Representative of eight Native American tribes met with government agents to define the boundaries of their respective land claims. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) At the same time, some Cherokees worked and worshipped in ways similar to European Americans: they cultivated farmland, converted to Christianity, and established a formal legal code. A census authorized by the Cherokee Nation in 1828 enumerated the population and provided evidence of the group’s conformity to whites’ ways. For example, the 2600 residents of Georgia’s Coosewaytee District owned a total of 295 slaves, 2944 black cattle, 1207 horses, 4965 swine, 113 looms, 397 spinning wheels, 461 plows, and several sawmills, grist mills, and blacksmith shops. Two missionary schools had a total of 21 Cherokee pupils. On July 4, 1827, Cherokee leaders met in convention to devise a republican constitution. In the grand tradition of the Patriots of 1776, the group proclaimed itself a sovereign nation, responsible for its own affairs and free of the dictates of individual states. By the late 1820s certain white people, including the president, were calling for the removal of the Cherokee from the Southeast. The 1829 discovery of gold in the Georgia hills brought 10,000 white miners to Cherokee territory in a gold rush that the Indians called the “Great Intrusion.” Whites, it seemed, were less interested in Indian assimilation and religious conversion than they were in the riches to be extracted from Indian land. President Jackson saw the very existence of the Cherokee nation as an affront to his authority and a hindrance to Georgia’s economic well-being. He resented the fact that the Cherokee considered themselves a sovereign nation, independent of the U.S. president. Jackson also feared that the Cherokee would prevent whites from mining or farming land within Indian borders. Jackson, in fact, favored removing all Indians from the Southeast to make way for whites. He declared that Georgia should be rid of “a few thousand savages” so that “towns and prosperous PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 372 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 11.1 CHEROKEE NATION INTERCENSUS CHANGES, 1809–1824 Source: Douglas C. Wilms, “Cherokee Land Use in Georgia Before Removal,” in William L. Anderson, ed., Cherokee Removal: Before and After (Athens: University of Georgia Press). farms” could develop there. In 1830, with the president’s backing, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. The Act provided for “an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi.” Outraged by this naked land grab, the Cherokee Nation refused to sign the removal treaties specified by Congress as part of the Indian Removal Act. In a petition to Congress in 1830, members of the group declared, “We wish to remain on the land of our fathers. We have a perfect and original right to claim this, without interruption or molestation.” In a message to his own people in 1831, Cherokee leader John Ross invoked the promise of President Jackson himself. Ross noted that the president had claimed two years earlier that “so far as we had rights we should be protected in them.” Citing both the treaties that guaranteed them a right to the land and the “laws of the United States made in pursuance of treaties,” the Cherokee Nation appealed to the Supreme Court. In an effort to protect their land titles, the Indian nation had first tried to take its case to Georgia courts, but Georgia refused to allow it to press its claim. The Georgia legislature maintained that it had authority over all the Indians living within the state’s borders, and that the Cherokee nation lacked jurisdiction over its own people. The Cherokee hoped that the Supreme Court would support their position that they were an independent entity, not bound by the laws of Georgia. In a set of cases—Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832)—the Court agreed that Georgia’s CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 373 ${bmicon} full view MAP 11.5 THE CHEROKEE NATION AFTER 1820 This map shows the Cherokee nation on the eve of removal to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The discovery of gold in the region sparked a constitutional battle over control of Cherokee land. In 1832 the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had ultimate authority over Indian nations. The state of Georgia ignored the ruling and sought to enforce its own laws in Cherokee territory. authority did not extend to the Cherokee Nation. The Court proclaimed that Indian self-governing bodies were “domestic dependent nations” under the authority of the U.S. government, not the individual states. Under this ruling, Georgia lacked the authority to force Indians from their land. More generally, the states must defer to the federal government in issues related to the welfare and governance of the Indians. Governor Wilson Lumpkin of Georgia rejected these Supreme Court rulings. In 1832 he declared, “It is due to the sovereign character of every State of the Union to maintain its territorial rights and policy over its own population.” Jackson, too, ignored the Court’s display of judicial authority. Of the Worcester decision, Jackson declared, “John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.” full view Cherokee Trail of Tears - Painting Robert Lindneux painting of the Cherokee “Trail of Tears” which captures the essence of the Indian removals of 1838. (Woolaroc Museum Bartlesville, Oklahoma) Some of the president’s own supporters protested his determination to deprive landowners—even Indian landowners—of their personal property. Davy Crockett announced that he was voting his conscience and opposing Jackson’s Indian removal policy. Declared Crockett, “I believed it was a wicked, unjust measure, and that I should go against it, let the cost to myself be what it might.” Nevertheless, in 1832 the president sent troops to Georgia to begin forcing the Indians out of their homeland. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 374 ${bmicon} Besides engineering the removal of the Cherokees, Jacksonian Democrats continued the post–War of 1812 policy of high tariffs. In 1828 they pushed through Congress legislation that raised fees on imported manufactured products and raw materials such as wool. Facing a disastrous decline in cotton prices after the Panic of 1819, Southerners protested: to survive, they had to both sell their cotton on the open world market and buy high-priced supplies from New England or Europe. In their view, the higher the tariff on English goods, the less likely the English were to continue to purchase their cotton from southern planters. Southerners dubbed the 1828 legislation the “Tariff of Abominations.” A renewal of the tariff four years later moderated the 1828 rates. But by this time, South Carolina politicians were in no mood to sit back and accept what they saw as the arrogant wielding of federal power. They drew on past precedents in developing a theory called nullification—the idea that individual states had the authority to reject, or nullify, federal laws. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 and the Hartford Convention of New England states during the War of 1812 had previously raised the issue of state sovereignty. Led by Senator John C. Calhoun, the nullifiers met in a convention in 1832 and declared the tariff “null and void” in South Carolina. But Jackson struck back swiftly. In his Nullification Proclamation of December 10, 1832, he argued that states’ rights did not include nullification of federal laws or secession from the Union. The president then sent a token military and naval force to South Carolina to intimidate the nullifiers. Henry Clay, now senator from Kentucky, brokered a compromise agreement: a 10 percent reduction in the Tariff of 1832 over a period of eight years. This compromise finally eased tensions, and the South Carolina nullifiers retreated for the time being. However, they continued to maintain “that each state of the Union has the right, whenever it may deem such a course necessary … to secede peaceably from the Union.” The repository of federal funds ($10 million), the Bank of the United States in the 1830s had 30 branches and controlled the money supply by dictating how state banks should repay their loans: in paper notes or in currency. After the expiration of the charter of the first Bank of the United States in 1818, Americans relied on a combination of state bank notes and on coins minted by the individual states as well as by foreign countries. Congress attempted to relieve the chaotic money and state-banking system by chartering a Second Bank of the United States in 1816. As a central (though privately held) institution, the bank also aided economic growth and development by extending loans to commercial enterprises. In 1832, Jackson vetoed a bill that would have renewed the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, which was due to expire in 1836. Somewhat contradictorily, Jackson claimed to represent the interests of small lenders such as farmers, but he also advocated hard money (currency in the form of gold or silver, not paper or credit extended by banks). Traditionally, small lenders objected to hard money policies, which kept the supply of currency low and interest rates for borrowers high. Jackson also objected to the bank’s work as a large commercial institution. For example, he blamed the bank for precipitating the Panic and Depression of 1819 by withholding credit from small banks, causing them to recall their loans and, in some cases, fail. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 375 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY José Agustin de Escudero Describes New Mexico as a Land of Opportunity, 1827 In the early nineteenth century, many people believed that the West afforded abundant economic opportunities for those willing to work hard. However, in most areas of the trans-Appalachian West, farming was a risky venture. Farmers needed cash or credit to hire hands—or to buy slaves—to clear dense underbrush and make other improvements on the land. Floods and droughts could wipe out a year’s hard work and ruin even the most industrious family. Nevertheless, certain frontier livelihoods did not take large investments in labor or equipment. In 1827, José Agustin de Escudero, a lawyer from the Mexico state of Chihuahua, visited the northern reaches of his country and reported on the partido system of sheep raising in the colony of New Mexico. He reported that the quality and expanse of the land meant that young men of modest means could prosper after a few years without securing large loans. It can be asserted that there were no paupers in New Mexico at that time, nor could there be any. At the same time, there were no large-scale stockmen who could pay wages or make any expenditure whatever in order to preserve and increase their wealth in this branch of agriculture. A poor man, upon reaching the age when one generally starts a family, would go to a rich stockman and offer to help him take care of one or more herds of sheep. These flocks were composed of a thousand ewes and ten breeding rams, which were never separated from the herd as is the practice of stock raisers in other countries. Consequently, in each flock, not a single day would go by without the birth of two or three lambs, which the shepherd would put with the ewe and force the female to suckle without the difficulties which he would have had with a larger number of offspring. The shepherd would give the owner ten or twenty per cent of these sheep and an equal amount of wool, as a sort of interest, thus preserving the capital intact. From the moment he received the flock, the shepherd entered into a contract in regard to the future increase, even with his own overseer. As a matter of fact, he usually contracted it at the current market price, two reales per head [an advance from the stockman], the future increase to be delivered in small numbers over a period of time. With this sum, which the shepherd had in advance, he could construct a house, and take in other persons to help him care for and shear the sheep, which was done with a knife instead of shears. The milk and sometimes the meat from the said sheep provided him sustenance; the wool was spun by his own family into blankets, stockings, etc., which could also be marketed, providing an income. Thus the wealth of the shepherd would increase until the day he became, like his overseer, the owner of a herd. He, in turn, would let out his herds to others after the manner in which he obtained his first sheep and made his fortune. Consequently, even in the homes of the poorest New Mexicans, there is never a dearth of sufficient means to satisfy the necessities of life and even to afford the comfort and luxuries of the wealthiest class in the country. José de Escudero was a visitor to, not a resident of, New Mexico. It is possible that he oversimplified the partido shepherds’ self-sufficiency in this region. Soon after winning its independence from Spain, Mexico opened New Mexico to U.S. traders. By the mid–1820s, traders were leading mule trains along the Santa Fe Trail, which ran from Franklin, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico. In his account here, de Escudero indirectly highlights the roles of wives and mothers (as spinners and weavers of cloth) in preserving the economic independence of the shepherds’ households. Nevertheless, de Escudero’s observations suggest that a combination of factors, including the nature of the landscape itself (in this case suitable for sheep grazing) and the amount of initial capital necessary to the enterprise (in this case a minimal amount of cash), were crucial elements in providing young men and their families with economic opportunities on the frontier. Source: H. Bailey Carroll and J. Villasana Haggard, trans. and ed., Three New Mexico Chronicles (Albuquerque, 1942): 41–42. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 376 ${bmicon} Jackson condemned the bank as a “monster” intent on devouring hardworking people and enriching a few eastern financiers. In his veto message to Congress, he denounced the bank as an instrument of privilege, one that granted favors to the well-born and well-connected. He fumed, “The humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.” By vetoing the bank bill, Jackson angered members of Congress and his own cabinet. They had urged him to recharter the bank because they believed the credit system was necessary for economic progress and expansion. Convinced that Jackson had overextended his reach, his opponents seized on the issue as a sign of the chief executive’s political vulnerability. Harboring presidential ambitions himself, Henry Clay was certain that the bank controversy would prove Jackson’s downfall. However, Clay, the “Great Compromiser,” badly miscalculated. Congress upheld Jackson’s veto of the Bank (the Bank closed when its chapter expired in 1836). Nominated for president by the National Republicans in 1832, Clay drew support from merchants who had benefited from Bank of the United States loans and from the sizable contingent of Jackson-haters. Yet a new player, the Anti-Masonic party, entered the fray and complicated matters for Clay, as it drew some of the anti-Jackson sentiment away from him. This group accused the Masons, a secret fraternal order, of subverting American democratic values. Jackson himself was a member of the Masons, prompting the new party to call into question the president’s devotion to the “common man.” The Anti-Masonic party gained some favor in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, where rumors flew about the Masons’ secret rituals and alleged clandestine political influence. Still, Jackson won in a landslide against Clay. The president carried not only his stronghold, the West, but also the South and substantial parts of New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. The Anti-Masonic candidate, William Wirt, won only Vermont. While in office, Jackson used his veto power a total of 12 times. All his predecessors combined had used it just 10 times. When his opponents finally formed a political party in 1834, they called themselves Whigs, after the English antimonarchist party. In choosing this name, their intention was to ridicule “King Andrew.” In the words of the states’ rights advocates, Jackson’s high-handed manner was “rather an appeal to the loyalty of subjects, than to the patriotism of citizens.” The Whigs opposed the man who had built up the power of the presidency in defiance of Congress and the Supreme Court. TABLE 11-4 The Election of 1832 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Andrew Jackson Democratic 687,502 219 Henry Clay National Republican 530,189 49 John Floyd Independent   11 William Wirt Anti-Masonic 33,108 7 CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 377 ${bmicon} Universal white manhood suffrage set a new standard for political involvement in the United States. Now, white men could vote and run for office regardless of their class or religion. However, as the voting public expanded, those excluded from it charged that white men’s rights came at their expense. White men had the freedom to move west and settle the land because Indians lost their own claim to the land. White men could buy and sell slaves because African American men and women lacked the power to control their own work and keep their families together. White men pursued their careers and stations in the public sphere because women were restricted to the domestic sphere. Together, Indians, blacks, and white women constituted about 70 percent of the American population in the 1820s. Thus, in the “age of the common man,” less than one-third of the adult population had the right to vote. In the early 1830s, a wealthy Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States and wrote about the contradictions he saw. In his book Democracy in America (published in 1835), de Tocqueville noted that the United States lacked the rigid hierarchy of class privilege that characterized European nations. However, he also noted some sore spots in American democratic values and practices. He commented on the plight of groups deprived of the right to vote, whose lack of freedom stood out starkly in the otherwise egalitarian society of the United States. He sympathized with the southeastern Indians uprooted from their homelands. He raised the possibility that conflicts between blacks and whites might eventually lead to bloodshed. He even contrasted the situation of young unmarried white women, who seemed so free-spirited, with that of wives, who appeared cautious and dull. He concluded, “In America a woman loses her independence forever in the bonds of matrimony.” In other words, de Tocqueville saw America for what it was: a blend of freedom and slavery, of independence and dependence. Population growth in the United States—and on the borderlands between the United States and Mexican territory—put pressure on Indian societies. Yet different cultural groups responded in different ways to this pressure. Some, like the Cherokees, conformed to European American ways and became sedentary farmers. Others were forced to work for whites. Still others either waged war on white settlements and military forces or retreated further and further from European American settlements in the hope of avoiding clashes with the intruders. Nevertheless, prominent whites continued to denigrate the humanity of all Indians. In the 1820s Henry Clay claimed that Indians were “essentially PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 378 ${bmicon} inferior to the Anglo-Saxon race … and their disappearance from the human family will be no great loss to the world.” In 1828 the House of Representatives Committee on Indian Affairs surveyed the Indians of the South and concluded that “an Indian cannot work” and that all Indians were lazy and notable for their “thirst for spirituous liquours.” According to the committee, when European settlers depleted reserves of wildlife, Indians as a group would cease to exist. full view Seminoles Attacking Federal Fort Seminoles in Florida attacking a federal fort in an effort to conserve their tribal lands. They were finally forced to surrender in 1842. (Library of Congress) Members of the Cherokee Nation bitterly denounced these assertions. “The Cherokees do not live upon the chase [for game],” they pointed out. Neither did the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles—the other members of the Five Civilized Tribes, so called for their varying degrees of conformity to white people’s ways. Charting a middle course between the Indian and European American worlds was Sequoyah, the son of a white Virginia trader–soldier and a Cherokee woman. A veteran of Andrew Jackson’s campaign against the Creeks in 1813–1814, Sequoyah moved to Arkansas in 1818, part of an early Cherokee migration west. In 1821 he finished a Cherokee syllabary (a written language consisting of syllables and letters, in contrast to pictures, or pictographs). The product of a dozen years’ work, the syllabary consisted of 86 characters. In 1828 the Cherokee Phoenix, a newspaper based on the new writing system, began publication in New Echota, Georgia. Sequoyah’s written language enabled the increasingly dispersed Cherokee Indians to remain in touch with each other on their own terms. At the same time, numerous Indian cultural groups lost their struggle to retain even modest control over their destinies. In some areas of the continent, smallpox continued to ravage native populations. In other regions, Indians became wards of, or dependent on, whites, living with and working for white families. Other groups, living close to whites, adopted their trading practices. In Spanish California, the Muquelmne Miwoks in the San Joaquin delta made a living by stealing and then selling the horses of Mexican settlers. In other parts of California, Spanish missionaries conquered Indian groups, converted them to Christianity, and then forced them to work in the missions. In missions up and down the California coast, Indians worked as weavers, tanners, shoemakers, bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and other artisans. Some herded cattle and raised horses. Indian women cooked for the mission, cleaned, and spun wool. They wove cloth and sewed garments. Nevertheless, even Indians living in or near missions resisted the cultural change imposed by the intruders. Catholic missionaries complained that Indian women such as those of the Chumash refused to learn Spanish. But by abandoning their native tongue, these women would have lost much—positions of influence within their own religious community—and gained little because positions of authority were dominated by Spanish-speaking men. The refusal among some Indians to assimilate completely signaled persistent, deep-seated conflicts between native groups and incoming settlers. In 1824 a revolt among hundreds of newly converted Indians at the mission La Purisima Concepción north of Santa Barbara revealed a rising militancy among native peoples. After the War of 1812, the U.S. government had rewarded some military veterans with land grants in the Old Northwest. Federal agents tried to clear the way for these new settlers—farmers as well as miners with their eye on the rich lead deposits in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin—by ousting Indians from the area. Overwhelmed by the number of whites, some Indian groups such as the Peorias and Kaskaskias gave up their lands to the interlopers. However, the Kickapoos along the Wabash and Illinois rivers, together with the Winnebagos, Sauks, and Fox, took a stand against the white intrusion. In 1826 and 1827 the Winnebagos attacked white families and boat pilots living near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Two years later, the Sauk chief Black Hawk (known to Indians as Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak) assembled a coalition of Fox, Winnebagos, Kickapoos, and CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 379 ${bmicon} Potawatomis. Emboldened by the prospect of aid from British Canada, they clashed with federal troops and raided farmers’ homesteads and miners’ camps. In August 1832 a force of 1300 U.S. soldiers and volunteers struck back, attacking an encampment of Indians on the Bad Axe River in western Wisconsin. The soldiers killed 300 Indian men, women, and children. The massacre, the decisive point of what came to be called the Black Hawk War, marked the end of armed Indian resistance north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi. If the United States did not have justice on its side, it at least had superior military might. In the courts and on the battlefield, Indian cultures were under siege. In 1820 the U.S. population included 1.5 million slaves. A decade later that figure had grown to 2 million, almost entirely from natural increase. In the same ten-year period, the number of free blacks increased from 99,281 to 137,529 in the North as a result of emancipation. The figure rose from 134,223 to 182,070 in the South. The large free black population in the Upper South was scattered in rural areas, whereas the small numbers of their Lower South counterparts were concentrated in the cities. Overall, however, the proportion of free blacks within the southern population declined. True, some masters freed their slaves, and some slaves managed to run away or buy their freedom. The free population also grew by natural means. But within the South, whites perceived free blacks as an unwelcome and dangerous presence, especially given the possibility that they would conspire with slaves to spark a rebellion. For these reasons some states began to outlaw private manumissions (the practice of individual owners freeing their slaves) and to force free blacks to leave the state altogether. One free black who inspired such fears was Denmark Vesey. Born on the Danish-controlled Island of Saint Thomas in 1767, Vesey was a literate carpenter as well as a religious leader. In 1799 he won $1500 in a Charleston lottery and used some of the money to buy his freedom. In the summer of 1822, a Charleston, South Carolina, court claimed to have unearthed evidence of a “diabolical plot” hatched by Vesey together with plantation slaves from the surrounding area. The judges charged that Vesey and his coconspirators aimed “to trample on all laws, human and divine; to riot in blood, outrage, and rapine … and conflagration, and to introduce anarchy and confusion in their most horrid form.” The judges’ claims provide a laundry list of whites’ fears about free men of color. In their account of the testimony, they suggested that Vesey drew inspiration from the Saint Domingue slave revolt that freeman Toussaint L’Ouverture had led in 1791. They claimed Vesey closely followed congressional debates during the Missouri Compromise crisis of 1819 and 1820. They implicated members of Charleston’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, an independent body founded in 1818, which whites believed provided fertile ground for black insurrectionists. Finally, the judges took note of one witness who claimed that, “even whilst walking through the streets in the company with another, he [Vesey] was not idle; for if his companion bowed to a white person he would rebuke him, and observe that all men were born equal.” Notions of freedom and equality had explosive potential in the slave South. Yet the historical record strongly suggests that no plot ever existed. Black “witnesses” who feared for their own lives provided inconsistent and contradictory testimony to a panel of judges. Authorities never located any material evidence of a plan, such as stockpiles of weapons. Under fire from other Charleston elites for rushing to judgment, the judges redoubled their efforts to embellish vague rumors of black discontent into a tale of a well-orchestrated uprising and to implicate growing numbers of black people. As a result of the testimony of several slaves, 35 black men were hanged and another 18 exiled outside the United States. Of those executed, Vesey and 23 other men said nothing to support even the vaguest charges of the court. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 380 ${bmicon} The uncovering of the Vesey “plot” prompted whites throughout the South to crack down on meetings, religious or otherwise, among slaves and free people of color. In Charleston, a new white group calling itself the South Carolina Association sought to restrict the movements of free blacks and return fugitive slaves to their owners. The city’s African Methodist Episcopal Church was shut down and its preacher, Moses Brown, hounded out of South Carolina. In the North, some blacks were granted the right to vote after emancipation in the late eighteenth century; however, many of those voting rights were lost in the early nineteenth century. New Jersey (in 1807), Connecticut (1818), New York (1821), and Pennsylvania (1838) all revoked the legislation that had let black men cast ballots. In several instances, the political party in power feared that black voters would swing the election to their opponents. Free northern blacks continued to suffer under a number of legal restrictions. Most were not citizens and therefore perceived themselves as oppressed like the slaves in the South. A new group of black leaders in the urban North began to link their fate to that of their enslaved brothers and sisters in the South. In Boston, North Carolina–born David Walker published his fiery Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World in 1829. Walker called for all blacks to integrate fully into American society, shunning racial segregation whether initiated by whites or by blacks themselves. Reminding his listeners of the horrors of the slave trade, he declared that black people were ready to die for freedom: “I give it as a fact, let twelve black men get well armed for battle, and they will kill and put to flight fifty whites.” Walker ended by quoting the Declaration of Independence. Whites, he argued, had demonstrated more cruelty and tyranny toward blacks than Great Britain had ever shown toward the colonies. Also in Boston, Maria Stewart, a charismatic black preacher, became the first American-born woman (of any background) to lecture in public. In 1832 and 1833 she delivered a series of stirring addresses. She argued that free blacks in the North were not much better off than enslaved blacks in the South. “Knowledge is power,” she exhorted her audience, urging them to pursue education on their own. Northern black leaders disagreed among themselves on the issues of integration and black separatism—for example, whether blacks should create their own schools or press for inclusion in the public educational system. A few leaders favored leaving the country altogether, believing that black people would never find peace and freedom in the United States. Founded by whites in New Jersey in 1817, the American Colonization Society (ACS) paid for black Americans to settle Monrovia (later Liberia) on the west coast of Africa. The group claimed that foreign colonization would bring American blacks “unspeakable blessings.” The ACS drew support from a variety of groups: whites in the Upper South who wanted to free their slaves but believed that black and white people could not live in the same country and some slaves and free people of color convinced that colonization would give them a fresh start. A small number of American-born blacks settled in Liberia. However, most black activists rejected colonization. They had been born on American soil, and their forebears had been buried there. Maria Stewart declared, “But before I go [to Africa] the bayonet shall pierce me through.” Northern black leaders disagreed among themselves on the issues of integration and black separatism. Northern whites sought to control black people and their movements. Outspoken black men and women such as Walker and Stewart alarmed northern whites who feared that if blacks could claim decent jobs, white people would lose their own jobs. African Americans who worked outdoors as wagon drivers, peddlers, and street sweepers were taunted and in some cases attacked by whites who demanded deference from blacks in public. In October 1824 a mob of white men invaded a black neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island. They terrorized its residents, destroyed buildings, and left the place “almost entirely in ruins.” The catalyst for the riot had come the previous day, when a group of blacks had refused to yield the inside of the sidewalk—a cleaner place to walk—to white passersby. These blacks were arrested, but a jury found the defendants not guilty. Noting the unabashed racism of white Northerners and the unwillingness of white Southerners to acknowledge the terrible consequences of slavery, CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 381 ${bmicon} Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “There is something more frightening about the silence of the South than about the North’s noisy fears.” The South’s silence was broken in 1831 when white Southerners took steps to reinforce the institution of slavery, using both violent and legal means. That year Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher and mystic, led a slave revolt in Southampton, Virginia. In the 1820s the young Turner had looked skyward and had seen visions of “white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle … and blood flowed in streams.” Turner believed that he had received divine instructions to lead other slaves to freedom, to “arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons.” In August he and a group of followers that eventually numbered 80 moved through the countryside, killing whites wherever they could find them. Ultimately, nearly 60 whites died at the hands of Turner’s rebels. Turner himself managed to evade capture for more than two months. After he was captured, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. A white man named Thomas Gray interviewed Turner in his jail cell and recorded his “confessions” before he was hanged. full view Nat Turner Rebellion, 1831 In 1831, Nat Turner led the most famous slave uprising in American history in Southampton County, Virginia. Fifty-five whites were killed during the uprising and as many blacks were killed in the aftermath before Turner was apprehended and executed. (Library of Congress) In the early nineteenth century, work was becoming increasingly identified as labor that earned cash wages. Published in 1832 by Gray, The Confessions of Nat Turner reached a large, horrified audience in the white South. According to Gray, Turner said that he had exhibited “uncommon intelligence” when he was a child. As a young man, he had received inspiration from the Bible, especially the passage “Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.” Perhaps most disturbing of all, Turner reported that, since 1830, he had been a slave of “Mr. Joseph Travis, who was to me a kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me; in fact, I had no cause to complain of his treatment to me.” Turner’s “confessions” suggested the subversive potential of slaves who were literate and Christian and those who were treated kindly by their masters and mistresses. After the Turner revolt, a wave of white hysteria swept the South. In Virginia near where the killings had occurred, whites assaulted blacks with unbridled fury. The Virginia legislature seized the occasion to defeat various antislavery proposals. Thereafter, all the slave states moved to strengthen the institution of slavery. For all practical purposes, public debate over slavery ceased. In the political and economic realms, the egalitarian impulse rarely affected the status of women in a legal or practical sense. Regardless of where they lived, enslaved women and Indian women had almost no rights under either U.S. or Spanish law. Still, legal systems in the United States and the Spanish borderlands differed in their treatment of women. In the United States, most of the constraints that white married women had experienced in the colonial period still applied in the 1820s. A husband controlled the property that his wife brought to the marriage, and he had legal authority over their children. Indeed, the wife was considered her husband’s possession. She had no right to make a contract, keep money she earned, or vote, run for office, or serve on a jury. In contrast, in the Spanish Southwest, married women could own land and conduct business on their own. At the same time, however, husbands, fathers, and local priests continued to exert much influence over the lives of these women. European American women’s economic subordination served as a rationale for their political inferiority. The “common man” concept rested on the assumption that only men could ensure American economic growth and well-being. According to this view, men had the largest stake in society because only they owned property. That stake made them responsible citizens. Yet women contributed to the economy in myriad ways. Although few women earned cash wages in the 1820s, almost all adult women worked. In the colonial period, society had highly valued women’s labor in the fields, the garden, and the kitchen. However, in the early nineteenth century, work was becoming increasingly identified as labor that earned cash wages. This attitude proved particularly common in the Northeast, where increasing numbers of workers labored under the supervision of a boss. As this belief took root, men began valuing women’s PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 382 ${bmicon} contributions to the household economy less and less. If women did not earn money, many men asked, did they really work at all? In these years, well-off women in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states began to think of themselves as consumers and not producers of goods. They relied more and more on store-bought cloth and household supplies. Some could also afford to hire servants to perform housework for them. Privileged women gradually stopped thinking of their responsibilities as making goods or processing and preparing food. Rather, their main tasks were to manage servants and create a comfortable home for their husbands and children. They saw their labor as necessary to the well-being of their families, even if their compensation came in the form of emotional satisfaction rather than cash. In contrast, women in other parts of the country continued to engage in the same forms of household industry that had characterized the colonial period. In Spanish settlements, women played a central role in household production. They made all of their family’s clothes by carding, spinning, and weaving the wool from sheep. They tanned cowhides and ground blue corn to make tortillas, or atole. They produced their own candles and soap, and they plastered the walls of the home. In the Spanish mission of San Gabriel, California, the widow Eulalia Pérez cooked, sewed, ministered to the ill, and instructed children in reading and writing. As housekeeper, Pérez kept the keys to the mission storehouse. She also distributed supplies to the Indians and the vaqueros (cowboys) who lived in the mission. She supervised Indian servants as well as soap makers, wine pressers, and olive oil producers. At Mission San Diego, Apolonaria Lorenzana worked as a healer and cared for the church sacristy and priestly vestments. Lorenzana devoted her life to such labors, from the time she arrived in Monterey as a child of seven (in 1800) until her death in the late nineteenth century. Although the priests tried to restrict her to administering the mission hospital, she took pride in her nursing abilities, “even though Father Sánchez had told me not to do it myself, but to have it done, and only to be present so that the servant girls would do it well.” Indian women also engaged in a variety of essential tasks. Sioux and Mandan women, though of a social rank inferior to men, performed a great deal of manual labor in their own villages. They dressed buffalo skins that the men later sold to traders. They collected water and wood, cooked, dried meat and fruit, and cultivated maize (corn), pumpkins, and squash with hoes made from the shoulderblades of elk. These women worked collectively within a network of households rather than individually within nuclear families. In many communities, women, regardless of ethnicity, were paid in kind for their work—that is, they received food and shelter but not money. Nevertheless, some women did work for cash wages during this era. New England women and children, for example, were the vanguard of factory wage-earners in the early manufacturing system. In Massachusetts in 1820 women and children constituted almost a third of all manufacturing workers. In the largest textile factories, they made up fully 80 percent of the workforce. The business of textile manufacturing took the tasks of spinning thread and weaving cloth out of the home, where such tasks often were performed by unpaid, unmarried daughters, and relocated those tasks in factories, where the same workers received wages. The famous “Lowell CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 383 ${bmicon} mill girls” are an apt example. Young, unmarried white women from New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, these workers moved to the new company town of Lowell, Massachusetts, to take jobs as textile machine operatives. In New England, thousands of young men had migrated west, tipping the sex ratio in favor of women and creating a reserve of female laborers. But to attract young women to factory work, mill owners had to reassure them (and their parents) that they would be safe and well cared for away from home. To that end, they established boarding houses where employees could live together under the supervision of a matron—an older woman who served as their mother-away-from-home. Company towns set rules shaping employees’ living conditions as well as their working conditions. In the early 1830s, a posted list of “Rules and Regulations” covered many aspects of the lives of the young women living at the Poignaud and Plant boardinghouse at Lancaster, Massachusetts. The list told the women how to enter the building (quietly, and then hang up “their bonnet, shawl, coat, etc. etc. in the entry”) and where to sit at the dinner table (the two workers with greatest seniority were to take their places at the head of the table). Despite these rules, many young women valued the friendships they made with their coworkers and the money they made in the mills. Some of these women sent their wages back home so that their fathers could pay off the mortgage or their brothers could attend school. The new delineation between men’s and women’s work and workplaces intensified the drive for women’s education begun after the Revolution. But not all women wage-earners labored in large mills. In New York City, single women, wives, and widows toiled as needleworkers in their homes. Impoverished, sewing in tiny attics by the dim light of candles, these women were at the mercy of jobbers—merchants who parceled out cuffs, collars, and shirt fronts that the women finished. Other urban women worked as street vendors, selling produce, or as cooks, nursemaids, or laundresses. The new delineation between men’s and women’s work and workplaces intensified the drive for women’s education begun after the Revolution. If well-to-do women were to assume domestic responsibilities while their husbands worked outside the home, then women must receive their own unique form of schooling, or so the reasoning went. Most ordinary women received little in the way of formal education. Yet elite young women had expanded educational opportunities, beginning in the early nineteenth century. Emma Willard founded a female academy in Troy, New York, in 1821, and Catharine Beecher established the Hartford (Connecticut) Female Seminary two years later. For the most part, these schools catered to the daughters of wealthy families, young women who would never have to work in a factory to survive. Hailed as a means to prepare young women to serve as wives and mothers, the schools taught geography, foreign languages, mathematics, science, and philosophy, as well as the “female” pursuits of embroidery and music. Out of this curriculum designed especially for women emerged women’s rights activists, women who keenly felt both the potential of their own intelligence and the degrading nature of their social situation. Elizabeth Cady, an 1832 graduate of the Troy Female Seminary, later went on to marry Henry B. Stanton and bear seven children. But by the 1840s she strode onto the national stage as a tireless advocate of women’s political and economic rights. full view Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton raised seven children while acting as a leader for the women’s rights movement. In addition to her pioneering work for women’s suffrage, Stanton lectured frequently on family life and child-care. (New York Public Library) The Founding Fathers had disagreed among themselves about whether democracy could still thrive in a large nation, where news necessarily traveled slowly and people remained isolated from their neighbors. However, by the 1820s few Americans doubted that the nation could grow and still preserve its democratic character. In fact, westward expansion seemed to promote democracy. Now, more ordinary white men than ever participated in the political process. At the same time, population growth and migration patterns disrupted old bonds of community. When people left their place of birth, they often severed ties with their family and PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 384 ${bmicon} original community. New forms of social cohesion arose to replace these traditional ties. By the 1830s, for example, the national party system of Democrats and Whigs claimed the allegiances of white men from all sections of the country. Indeed, when one English visitor to New York state observed the “furious acrimony of party spirit,” he suggested that Americans cared more for the trappings of partisan loyalty—”the spirit of electioneering”—than for ideas themselves. full view Office Hunters for the Year 1834 - Cartoon Cartoon, Office Hunters for the Year 1834, portraying the president as a demon dangling the spoils of his office. Jackson’s spoils-system policies were repeatedly attacked by opposition cartoonists. (Library of Congress) In addition, new religions sought to make sense of changing political and economic landscape. High literacy rates among the population created a new community of readers, a far-flung audience for periodicals as well as for a new, uniquely American literature. Finally, opinionmakers used the printed word to spread new ideas and values across regional boundaries. These ideas, such as glorification of male ambition, helped knit together far-flung segments of the population, men and women who began to speak of an “American character.” New forms of religious faith arose in response to turbulent times. During the Indian Wars in the Old Northwest, a Winnebago prophet named White Cloud helped Black Hawk create a coalition of Winnebagos, Potawatomies, Kickapoos, Sauks, and Fox Indians. A mystic and medicine man, White Cloud preached against the white man and exhorted his CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 385 ${bmicon} followers to defend their way of life, an Indian way that knew no tribal boundaries. White Cloud, the religious leader, and Black Hawk, the military leader, surrendered together to federal troops on August 27, 1832, signifying the spiritual component in the Indians’ militant resistance to whites. Through the rest of the nineteenth century, a number of Indian groups found inspiration, and in some cases common ground, in the teachings of Indian religious leaders. full view Amish Signpost Amish Signpost (Photodisc, Inc.) New religious enthusiasms took hold in other parts of the country as well. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, the Second Great Awakening swept western New York. The fervor of religious revivals so heated the region that people began to call it “the Burned-Over District.” Hordes of people of various Protestant denominations attended week-long prayer meetings, sat together on the “anxious bench” for sinners, and listened, transfixed, as new converts told of their path to righteousness. What explains this wave of religious enthusiasm? A major factor was a clergyman named Charles Grandison Finney who managed to tap into the wellspring of hope and anxiety of the time. A former lawyer, Finney preached that people were moral free agents, fully capable of deciding between right and wrong and doing good in the world. Finney’s message had great appeal during this period of rapid social, economic, and technological change. In New England and New York, for example, canals were bringing new kinds of goods to rural areas and longtime residents were departing for the Midwest. Traditional social relationships seemed threatened. Finney believed that people could control their own destinies and that they should work through earthly institutions to do it. In one sermon, he declared, “The church must take the right ground in regard to politics…. The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men.” Of course, not all Christians agreed on what constituted the “right ground” in politics. But Finney sought to link the life of the spirit with political and reform efforts, and many men and women responded enthusiastically. full view Shaker Dance In this sacred Shaker dance, sin is being shaken out of the body through the fingertips. Note the separation of women and men. (Shakertown at Pleasantville, KY) Throughout the country, religious institutions also grappled with questions about slavery. As the fear of possible black uprisings spread, white clergy in the South began to turn away from their former willingness to convert anyone. Instead, they began seeking respectability in PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 386 ${bmicon} the eyes of the well-to-do, slave-owning class. Incorporating masculine imagery into their sermons, they used the language of militant patriotism to distance themselves from the white women, slaves, and free people of color in their congregations. At a western revival in 1824, one itinerant Methodist minister described his military service in the War of 1812; he had helped to vanquish not only the British but also “the merciless savages of the forest, and to secure and perpetuate the liberties secured to us by our forefathers.” These preachers strove to reinforce the power of husband over wife, parent over child, and master over slave, relations that defined the typical plantation household. Elsewhere, some church leaders sought to purge Christianity of what they saw as its too-worldly nature and to revive the primitive church that Jesus and his disciples had established. On April 6, 1830, a young farmer named Joseph Smith, Jr., founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also called the Mormons) in Fayette, New York. Smith said that, in a vision, he had received the text of a holy book originally written by a Native American historian more than 1400 years earlier. Transcribed from tablets presented to him by an angel named Moroni, the text was called the Book of Mormon. Together with the Old and New Testaments, it formed the basis of a new faith. Over the next few years, the Mormon Church grew rapidly, claiming 8000 members by the mid-1830s. However, the young church also aroused intense hostility among mainstream Protestant denominations that regarded the new group’s theology and textual inspiration with suspicion. It was almost impossible for religious institutions to escape the worldly realm of politics and social fragmentation. In 1828 a young widow named Sarah Hale broke new ground for women. She became the first woman to edit an American periodical when she accepted responsibility for editing the Ladies Magazine, published in Boston. Once a hatmaker but now a published poet and novelist, Hale aimed “to make females better acquainted with their duties and privileges” through the articles in her magazine. Between 1825 and 1850, thousands of other magazines cropped up and then disappeared, the product of a growing audience of literate (and literary) city-dwellers. But the Ladies Magazine, later renamed Godey’s Lady’s Book, lived an uncommonly long life under Hale’s editorial guidance. The Ladies Magazine appealed primarily to well-off white wives and mothers in the Northeast, the South, and the West. They identified with its message promoting motherhood and the virtues of piety and self-sacrifice. The Ladies Magazine and other publications portrayed women as especially devout and thus powerful: men might claim as their domain “the government and the glory of the world,” wrote Hale in 1832, “but nevertheless, what man shall become depends upon the secret, silent influence of women.” That influence, Hale and other men and women like her believed, derived from women’s roles as nurturers and caretakers. Indeed, many of the poems and short stories published in the Ladies Magazine and other women’s periodicals came under the category of sentimental literature. Such writing was calculated to appeal to readers’ emotions, rather than their intellect, as their titles reveal: “Burial of a Motherless Infant,” “The Blind Mother and Her Children,” and “The Harp of the Maniac Maiden” (about a young girl’s descent into insanity). Just as sentimental fiction and poetry attracted a large readership among women, a number of male writers staked their claim to emerging American literature. Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant all explored regional histories and landscapes in their works. In Rip Van Winkle (1819) and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), Irving wrote about the legends of upstate New York. Cooper explored the western New York middle ground contested by the British, Americans, French, and Indians in the late eighteenth century in such works as The Spy (1821) and Last of the Mohicans (1826). Bryant, CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 387 ${bmicon} inspired by the sight of the Illinois plains in 1832, penned “The Prairies.” This praise-song to the vast plains described them as beautiful and “quick with life” (“The graceful deer/Bounds to the woods at my approach”). As the vanguard of a new generation of male American authors, these writers began a literary “American Renaissance.” Along with this new American literary tradition, small towns across the nation began publishing newspapers to educate, inform, and entertain readers. News stories about national elections and legislation, about foreign monarchs and conflicts, reached log cabins in the West as well as elegant townhouses in Boston and Philadelphia. Wrote Washington Irving in 1820, “Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.” Newspapers, books, and magazines promoted a set of values that writers claimed described an enduring American character. The ideal American supposedly was ambitious—ready to seize opportunity wherever it could be found—and at the same time devoted to home and family. In fact, these values strongly resembled those adopted by the British middle classes at the same time. Indeed, the United States spawned its own brand of middle-class sensibility called Victorianism, after the English queen who reigned from 1837 to 1901. Four core values defined early American Victorianism. First, the Victorians believed in the significance of the individual. People should be judged on the basis of their character, not on the circumstances of their birth. This belief, however, generally applied only to white men. Second, individuals should have the freedom to advance as far as their talents and ambition took them; no person should claim advantages over others by virtue of a noble title or aristocratic lineage. Third, work was intrinsically noble, whether performed by a canal digger wielding a pick-axe or a merchant using a quill pen. All people, regardless of their trade, deserved to reap the fruits of their labor. Finally, men and women occupied separate but complementary spheres. American society could be orderly and stable only if men could find a haven from the heartless world of work in their own homes. There, wives tended the hearth and infused the household with their love, self-sacrifice, and religious devotion. Victorians often saw work as an individualistic endeavor, with men, women, and children earning wages for the number of hours they worked or for each task they performed. However, not all groups embraced Victorian attitudes. The Sioux and Mandan, among other Indian tribes, favored a communal way of life that valued community over the individual. Likewise, Spanish-speaking settlers of tight-knit adobe pueblos prized the close cooperation of men and women: compadres (godfathers) with comadres (godmothers). These settlers lived their lives according to the seasonal rhythms of agriculture and stock-raising. In the South, slaveholders straddled both positions. They idealized both profit-seeking individualism and a traditional way of life based on community ties. These white men and women eagerly raked in the financial gains that flowed from their control over staple crop agriculture. Yet in their public pronouncements, they scorned the exclusive pursuit of profit. They held their loyalties to family, kin, and community above the crass emphasis on cash that Yankees espoused. As conflicts between Indians and whites revealed, differences in values were far more than theoretical abstractions. Ultimately, they could wreak death and destruction, as northerners and southerners soon discovered. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 388 ${bmicon} Western settlement infused American politics with raw energy in the 1820s. Andrew Jackson was the first in a long line of presidents who boasted of their humble origins and furthered their careers by denouncing what they called the privileges enjoyed by wealthy Easterners. The western impulse for grassroots politicking shaped in political reforms, such as those that gave voters more power in nominating candidates for office and electing members of the Electoral College. The challenges faced by western settlers in establishing homesteads and paying their debts emerged as national, not purely local issues. Through the sheer force of his personality, Andrew Jackson exemplified these dramatic changes in the political landscape. Almost single-handedly, he extended the limits of executive power and remade the American party system in the process. However, the contradictions in Jacksonian politics became glaring in the coming years. As the nation expanded its borders and diversified its economy, distinctions between social classes sharpened. The country also staked its claim to foreign territory, using violence to advance democratic values. Meanwhile, the North and South eyed each other with increasing distrust. And the contrast between those who moved from place to place voluntarily and those who were forced to move became even more dramatic. The Second Bank of the United States, 1816–1936 odur.let.rug.nl/∼usa/E/usbank/bank04.htm The political conflict surrounding the Second Bank of the United States contributed to the rise of the Whig party. The Erie Canal www.syracuse.com/features/eriecanal This site presents the Erie Canal as “the super highway of pre–Civil War America.” The Cherokee Nation www.cherokee.org/culture/history.asp This is the official Web site of the Cherokee Nation based in Talequah, Oklahoma. Commerce on the Prairie www.ukans.edu/carrie/kancoll/books/gregg/contents.htm This University of Kansas site includes information on life and commerce on the frontier between the United States and Mexico. Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820–1910 memory.loc.gov/ammem/umhtml/umhome.html This Library of Congress site looks at first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, ethnographic and anti-quarian texts, colonial archival documents, and other works from the seventeenth to early twentieth century. It covers many topics and issues related to Americans and the settlement of the Upper Midwest. The Settlement of African Americans in Liberia www.loc.gov./exhibits/african/perstor.html This site contains images and text relating to the colonization movement sponsored by the American Colonization Society. African American Women Writers from the Nineteenth Century digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/toc.html The New York Public Library–Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture site contains texts of nineteenth-century African American literature by women. CHAPTER 11 ###8226; EXPANDING WESTWARD 389 ${bmicon} Stuart R. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (1989). Daniel Feller, The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815–1840 (1995). D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. Vol. 2: Continental America, 1800–1867 (1993). Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway, eds., The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880 (1996). Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians (1993). David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992). William J. Cooper, The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856 (1978). James W. Covington, The Seminoles of Florida (1993). Mark Derr, The Frontiersman: The Real Life and Many Legends of Davy Crockett (1993). Ernest R. May, The Making of the Monroe Doctrine (1976). Timothy Matovina, Tejano Religion and Ethnicity: San Antonio, 1821–1860 (1995). Ronald E. Shaw, Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790–1860 (1990). William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (1966). Michael D. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (1982). Michael F. Holt, Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (1992). Lawrence Frederick Kohl, The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (1989). Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (1968). Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (2001). Virginia Marie Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, 1542–1840: Codes of Silence (2001). Thomas Dublin, Transforming Women’s Work: New England Lives in the Industrial Revolution (1994). Albert L. Hurtado, Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Culture and Gender in California (1999). Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840 (1988). Walter Licht, Industrial America: The Nineteenth Century (1995). David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles (1965 ed.). Julie Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787–1848 (1988). Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (1990). Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984). Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Charles Grandison Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelism (1996). Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (1989). Christine L. Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997). Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837 (1978). Walter Bern Michaels and Donald E. Pease, eds., The American Renaissance Reconsidered (1985). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter11 To Chapter 11 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 390 ${bmicon}         Mass Migrations       A Multitude of Voices in the National Political Arena       Reform Impulses       The United States Extends Its Reach       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 391 ${bmicon} IN THE SPRING OF 1847 JANNICKE SAEHLE LEFT HER HOME IN BERGEN, ACITYONTHE western coast of Norway, and boarded a ship bound for New York City. From New York, the young woman traveled by steamship up the Hudson River to Albany. There she boarded a train to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although arduous, the journey had its pleasures. Piloted by a charming captain, the steamship resembled, in Saehle’s words, “a complete house four stories high, and very elegantly furnished, with beautiful rugs everywhere.” On the train, the passengers enjoyed each other’s company as well as “the noteworthy sights that we rushed past.” By the summer Saehle was living with and working as a domestic servant for a Norwegian family, the Torjersens, in Koshkonong in southeastern Wisconsin. Founded in 1840, Koshkonong was a rapidly growing settlement of Norwegian immigrants farming the fertile prairie. Jannicke Saehle was eager to make a new life for herself in the United States. For just a few months of service in the Torjersen household, she received the harvest of 3 acres of wheat for three years. In the fall she found a job washing and ironing at a tavern in Madison. For the first five weeks she earned a dollar a week. Then she received a raise of $.25 a week, with the promise of another raise, and relief from washing, at the end of the winter. Although she could not speak English, she was pleased to “enjoy the best treatment” from the tavern owners and patrons. However, hoped to leave the tavern and work as a domestic servant for a local family, the Morisons. Saehle believed this new position would be comfortable; with the Morisons she could “live more peacefully and have a room by myself.” In September 1847, Jannicke Saehle wrote of her good fortune in America in a letter to her family back in Norway. She described “the superabundance of food” in the Torjersen home. On his 40-acre farm Torjersen kept swine and produced “tremendous amounts” of wheat, potatoes, beans, cabbage, cucumbers, onions, and many other kinds of vegetables. At the Madison tavern she had “food and drink in abundance” and dined on the same fare served to the guests: for breakfast, “chicken, mutton [lamb], beef or pork, warm or cold wheat bread, butter, white cheese, eggs, or small pancakes, the best coffee, tea, cream and sugar.” For supper she feasted on “warm biscuits, and several kinds of cold wheat bread, cold meats, bacon, cakes, preserved apples, plums, and berries, which are eaten with cream, and tea and coffee.” Saehle felt heartbroken to see excess food thrown to the chickens and pigs, for, she wrote, “I think of my dear ones in Bergen, who like so many others must at this time lack the necessaries of life.” During the 1840s, more than 13,000 immigrants from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark arrived in the United States, a sixfold increase over the number of Scandinavians who had PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 392 ${bmicon} arrived the decade before. This migration continued to increase over the course of the nineteenth century. In the 1880s, more than 655,000 Scandinavians, fleeing poverty and military conflict, came to America. Many traveled to Wisconsin and Minnesota, where they farmed small homesteads and found the cold winter climate similar to that of their homeland. In the rural upper Midwest, clashes between Indians and white settlers shaped the experiences of many immigrants. Newcomers to Minnesota, especially, did not fare well; there the great Sioux uprising of 1862 resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Indians and immigrant settlers, Swedes and Norwegians prominent among them. However, by the late 1840s, settlers in Wisconsin such as Jannicke Saehle had little reason to fear the Indians whose ancestral lands they occupied; the U.S. army’s destruction of a band of Sauk Indians under the leadership of Black Hawk in 1832 had opened up much of the area to whites. In the 1830s and 1840s, patterns of settlement and employment among immigrant groups varied widely in the United States. For example, most Irish immigrants lacked the resources to move much farther west than the eastern seaboard ports where they landed. In contrast, many Germans arrived with enough money to buy farmland in the Midwest or take up a trade in eastern cities. Nevertheless, Norwegian immigrants had much in common with other groups that came to the United States in these years. Many relied for jobs and housing on compatriots who had already arrived. The newcomers found employment in expanding regional economies. Communities of immigrants built their own religious institutions and mutual aid societies. In the 1830s and 1840s, the United States was home to many peoples in motion. Groups of Indians in the Southeast and Midwest and slaves in the upper South were forced at gunpoint to move from one region of the country to another. From western Europe came poor and persecuted groups drawn to the United States by the demand for labor and the promise of religious and political freedom. Some Americans eagerly pulled up stakes and moved to nearby cities or towns in search of better jobs. Migrants with enough resources made the long journey across the Sonoran Desert in the Southwest or to the Oregon Territory in the Northwest. Population movements and economic change generated new forms of community and group identity. Some immigrants and migrants left behind old identities and created new ones for themselves in their new homes. In their native lands, many newcomers to the United States had lived and labored as peasants under the control of aristocratic landlords. Now in America these immigrants worked as wage earners or as small farmers. Urban workers founded the National Trades Union, an organization that tried to help laboring people wield political influence. Women and men who believed in their power to change society banded together for any number of causes—including those that challenged basic institu- full view Oregon Trail Marker Oregon Trail Marker (Photodisc, Inc.) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 393 ${bmicon} full view MAP 12.1 WESTERN TRAILS This map shows the major trails followed by western emigrants in the nineteenth century. Settlers endured long and dangerous journeys. For example, beginning at Independence, Missouri, and stretching to Portland, Oregon, the Overland Trail was 2000 miles long. Covering the entire trail could take four to six months. Wagon trains had to traverse rocky terrain, scale mountains, and ford rivers. Along the way, outposts such as Fort Laramie and Fort Hall gave travelers a chance to refresh their supplies, rest their livestock, and repair their wagons. Though resentful of such incursions, Indians rarely attacked large wagon trains. tions such as the nuclear family, slavery, and white supremacy. Some reformers established new communities based on alternative notions of marriage and child-rearing. Partisan politics also entered a new era. By 1836, the so-called Second Party system had emerged, as Jacksonian Democrats squared off against the Whigs on familiar issues including tariffs and new systems of transportation. A coalition of anti-Jackson forces, the Whigs, sought to craft an economic program that would appeal to the largest number of voters. Less concerned with the purity of their ideas than with success at the ballot box, the Whigs saw their policies as a means to winning elections and not necessarily as ends in themselves. full view Old Barn in Oregon Old Barn in Oregon (Photodisc, Inc.) The choices offered by the Whigs and Democrats failed to represent what many groups saw as their pressing political and economic interests. Many Americans turned to violence to advance or defend their causes. The deep-seated resentments or lofty aspirations among various ethnic and religious groups and social classes provoked bloodshed. Urban mobs vented their wrath against African Americans, abolitionists, and Irish immigrants and other Catholics. The government itself sponsored violence, which peaked in the late 1830s with the forced removal of southeastern Indians to the West, and again in the late 1840s, when the United States wrested a vast expanse of land from Mexico. Indeed, within the larger society, physical force seemed to be an acceptable means of resolving disputes; tellingly, politicians of all persuasions followed Andrew Jackson’s lead and staked their claim to national leadership on the basis of their records as soldiers, military officers, and Indian-killers. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 394 ${bmicon} Although industrial machines such as locomotives and textile looms grew more sophisticated in these years, farming remained the primary occupation for many people. However, when the land refused to yield crops, millions of people had to move on—from the blighted potato fields of Ireland, the rocky soil of New England, or the worn-out fields of the cotton South. In search of new economic opportunities, some people moved into lands belonging to other people. In the territory occupied by native Spanish speakers in Texas or by Indians in the Southeast, people stood ready to fight—and die—for the land. When foreign visitors called Americans a “restless” people, they were referring to patterns of both immigration and migration within the country. Between 1830 and 1850, 2.3 million immigrants entered the United States, up from a total of 152,000 during the two previous decades. In the 1840s, 1.7 million immigrants arrived (in 1850 the country’s total population stood at 27 million people). Most newcomers came from Ireland, Germany, England, Scotland, and Scandinavia. In the United States itself, individuals and families moved around the country with almost dizzying speed in search of better jobs. They migrated from rural to urban areas, from one city to another, out west and then back to the east. In Boston, in any one year, about a third of the population left the city to find a new home elsewhere. In the late 1840s, almost half of all urban residents moved within a 12-month period. For the country as a whole, an estimated one family in five moved every year, and on average every family moved once every five years. Many westward migrants had enough money to move overland and buy a homestead once they arrived in Wisconsin or Oregon. However, much of the population turnover in urban areas stemmed from landless people’s relentless quest for higher wages and cheaper places to rent. full view Sacramental Scene in a Western Forest - Lithograph Sacramental Scene in a Western Forest is a lithograph done around 1801 by P. S. Duval. Religious revival meetings on the frontier attracted hundreds of people who camped out for days to listen to the preacher and to share with their neighbors in the communal religious experiences. (General Collections, Library of Congress) Some people moved because other people forced them to—under the crack of a whip and in manacles. Slave traders in the Upper South transported thousands of slaves to the Lower South for sale “on the block.” Indians underwent the equivalent of a middle passage (the horrific slave ship voyages between Africa and the Americas) when U.S. soldiers forced them to walk from their homelands in the southeast to Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma). Europeans marveled at Americans’ apparent willingness to search out new opportunities. But to some Americans, moving meant the death of dreams and the loss of hope for a better life. By the early nineteenth century, life had become more precarious than ever for the long-suffering people of Ireland. Over the generations, small farm plots had been subdivided among heirs to the point that most holdings consisted of less than 15 acres each. At the same time, the population of Ireland had grown exponentially—to more than 4 million people in 1800. England treated Ireland like a colony that existed purely for the economic gain of the mother country (or, in the eyes of the Irish, an occupying power). A series of English laws and policies mandated that farmers export most of the island’s grain and cattle, leaving the impoverished people to subsist mainly on a diet of potatoes. Then, beginning in 1845, a blight devastated the potato crop. In the next five years, 1 million people died and another million fled to the United States. The great Irish migration had begun. Increasing numbers of poor Irish had settled in the United States before the potato famine of the mid–1840s. In the 1820s, about 50,000 such immigrants arrived; the following decade saw a spike in numbers to more than 200,000. Yet a more dramatic increase was yet to come. As the 1840s and 1850s unfolded, 1.7 million Irish men, women, and children emigrated to the United States. This exodus continued over the next century as more than 4.5 million Irish arrived. Many immigrants were single women who found work as servants and sent money back to Ireland. As Margaret McCarthy wrote in a letter to her parents back home in County CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 395 ${bmicon} full view MAP 12.2 POPULATION CHANGE IN IRELAND, 1841–1851 During the famine of the late 1840s, some counties in Ireland lost more than one-quarter of their population to out-migration. However, emigration rates in some of the very poorest counties were not always high. People there were too poor to pay for passage to the United States. The county of Kerry, in the country’s southwestern corner, is an example. Cork, in 1850, the newcomers embraced “this plentyful Country where no man or woman ever Hungerd or ever will and where you will not be Seen Naked.” By the 1870s, the Irish constituted fully 20 percent of the population of New York City, 14 percent of Philadelphia, and 22 percent of Boston (the “hub of Gaelic America”). The newcomers quickly formed mutual aid associations and other community organizations. In cities across America, the Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic order founded in Dublin, established homes to provide lodging for single women and day nurseries for the children of working mothers. Most Irish immigrants lacked the resources to move much farther west than the eastern seaport cities where they landed, and they soon realized that their struggle against poverty, discrimination, and religious persecution would not end in the United States. The arrival of large numbers of Irish immigrants in the 1830s threatened the jobs of native-born Protestants, who reacted with resentment and violence. Employers posted signs outside their doors reading “No Irish Need Apply.” Despised for their Roman Catholicism and their supposed “clannishness,” the Irish competed with African Americans for the low-paying jobs at the bottom of the economic ladder. At times, anti-Irish sentiment reached violent extremes. In 1834 a mob destroyed the Ursuline convent full view Boston Slums - Illustration Hundreds of Irish immigrants crowded into the disease-ridden slums and shanties of places such as Boston’s Burgess Alley. The illustration of the deplorable living quarters of the city’s immigrants is from the Report of the Committee on Internal Health on the Asiatic Cholera, issued in 1849. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 396 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Diasporas Almost all of the Irish men, women, and children who emigrated from their homeland in the nineteenth century came to the United States. In this respect, the Irish exodus was somewhat unusual. Over the last four and a half centuries, many peoples have participated in transoceanic mass migrations. Yet most of those migrations have been characterized by a scattering of peoples to different countries. Since its beginnings, the United States has been a major host, but not the only one, to immigrants as well as forced migrants. When specific ethnic or cultural groups disperse from one place to many different places, they produce a diaspora. Originally, the word Diaspora (with a capital D) referred to the dispersal of Jewish communities out of Palestine and into Europe and Africa 2000 years ago. Now scholars use the term more generally to refer to many kinds of population dispersals in the past and today. These migrations are the result of two historical phenomena. The first is an emerging world economy with its intense demand for labor, especially in the mining, agricultural, and industrial sectors. The second phenomenon is the desire among specific peoples to flee poverty and persecution and to seek out land, jobs, and religious and political freedom elsewhere. The African diaspora reveals the effects of a forced migration. Between 1500 and 1850 slave traders transported 12 million Africans to the Western Hemisphere. An estimated one-tenth of that number died during the Middle Passage. Of the survivors, 10 million were taken to the Caribbean or Latin America and fewer than 450,000 to the area that is now the United States. Yet by 1865, the U.S. African American population accounted for 30 percent of all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere. Why? American slaveholders encouraged their slaves to have families. In addition, cotton cultivation in the United States was not as unhealthful as other kinds of work performed by slaves elsewhere in the hemisphere. Thus, African Americans had higher fertility rates and lower mortality rates than their counterparts to the south. Over the generations, voluntary migration to the United States has taken place among other mass population movements around the world. Many of the groups that arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1920, such as Italians, Russian Jews, and Germans, also sent immigrants to other parts of the world. In the twentieth century, political and religious conflict in their homeland propelled Greek emigrants to many different countries. They settled in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, but others migrated to such diverse places as Dakar, Senegal; Kinshasa, Zaire; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Their modern dispersal was similar to that of Lebanese emigrants, who went not only to the United States but also to Latin America, Africa, and Australia. In some cases, governments have encouraged their citizens to search widely for work to increase the flow of cash into their own countries. When China began to trade with the rest of the world in 1845, that country sponsored a mass out-migration among men. Those men were supposed to work abroad temporarily and send their earnings home. The Chinese who arrived in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century were part of a larger mass migration that sent 400,000 men also to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Between 1845 and 1900, 1.5 million Chinese went to Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore) to work in the mines or the fields. Another half million went to Peru, Cuba, and Chile. Chinese workers in all these countries tried to save to send money back home to their families. In the early twentieth century, officials on the island of Okinawa, part of Japan, took note of their faltering agricultural economy. They encouraged able-bodied young people to find employment elsewhere and send their wages to families back home. Beginning in 1900, Okinawa immigrants arrived in Hawaii to work on sugar plantations. Over the next decades other Okinawans moved to California to labor in the fruit and vegetable fields and to the Philippines to grow Manila hemp. Others went to Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, and the islands of Micronesia. In the 1980s, the Ferdinand Marcos government in the Philippines made a series of agreements with other countries to accept Filipino workers. Marcos saw the wages the migrants sent home as a means to boost the national economy. However, by that time, the worldwide demand for male workers in the maritime and oil industries had declined. As a result, the Philippines sent mainly women workers abroad, to the United States, Hong Kong, and Europe. Most of these immigrant women worked in domestic service. Their wages were the greatest source of foreign money in the Philippine economy. However, this diaspora had severe consequences for domestic life in the Philippines, where the absence of so many wives and mothers severely disrupted the family. Diasporas profoundly affect home countries as well as host countries. full view MAP 12.3 THE GRAND MIGRATION The Grand Migration of Jews out of Europe lasted from 1880 to 1914. This map shows that, while significant numbers of Jewish emigrants were coming to the United States, some were going to Mexico, Argentina, and South Africa. in Charlestown, near Boston, after terrifying the women and children residents and ransacking the building. In 1837 a group of Boston City Guards (a fraternal order) assaulted the Montgomery Guards, the first Irish military company in the city. (Local military companies often functioned as social groups for men of all ages.) The attackers accused the immigrants of lacking patriotism because they had created a group based on ethnic loyalties. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 397 ${bmicon} Nevertheless, by the 1850s, the Irish had gained a measure of influence. They filled many high positions in the U.S. Catholic church and became active in the Democratic party. They claimed that their white skin entitled them to distance themselves from blacks and lay claim to full American citizenship. More than one hundred years later, the election of the first Catholic president of the United States—John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Boston, PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 398 ${bmicon} a descendant of famine-era immigrants on both his mother’s and father’s side of the family—became a milestone in the Irish rise to political power. The hardship endured by the Irish in the early nineteenth century mirrored the political and economic distress of many other people living in Europe at the time. The Revolutions of 1848 stemmed from a rising nationalist fervor among Germans, Italians, Czechs, and Hungarians against the Austrian Empire. Popular uprisings in France, Germany, and parts of Italy struck out against monarchy and called for constitutional government. In England and Germany, new textile factories could not accommodate all the urban workers who sought jobs. Europeans in rural areas also fell on particularly hard times. Dramatic population increases made food scarce, and the Industrial Revolution put artisans out of work. In an effort to bolster their power, wealthy landholders consolidated their estates from the holdings of peasant farmers. In the process, the demand for farm labor decreased, pushing many people off the countryside. Between 1831 and 1850, more than half a million Germans arrived in the United States. Those numbers exploded in the next few decades. An uprising against the authoritarian Prussian state had failed in 1848, and German intellectuals, farmers, and workers alike fled across the ocean. Like Scandinavian immigrants, many Germans settled in the Midwest. Some had responded to the promises of railroad land and recruiting offices scattered through Europe. These offices promised transportation subsidies and low-interest loans to immigrants who bought land from the railroads—land the railroads had purchased from the federal government on generous terms. Between 1831 and 1850, more than half a million Germans arrived in the United States. The stories of the Stille and Krumme families paint a compelling picture of many German immigrants’ experience during this period. Wilhelm Stille came to Ohio in the mid–1830s. In letters home, he praised the vitality of the local German immigrant community, the bountiful soil, and the “feel for freedom” that infused even the most recent newcomers. Over the next few years Stille worked at a variety of jobs in a steam mill and a distillery and for a merchant. Scraping together some money, he started his own trading business. He traveled as far away as New Orleans and South America with flour, potatoes, string beans, cabbage, onions, and apples. Then Stille married a young woman newly arrived from Switzerland. Together the couple tried their hand at farming. Meanwhile, Wilhelm’s sister Wilhelmina, who had accompanied him to America, married another German immigrant, Wilhelm Krumme. Wilhelmina missed her mother and felt guilty about leaving her. But, she assured her mother, “I’m much better off here than with you, that’s because you can live in peace over here.” Wilhelmina’s husband worked on the National Road, crushing rocks, and the couple received money sent from their families in Europe. Still, in the early 1840s a national depression hit them hard: “These are bad times now, there’s not much work and if you work the pay is not good.” In 1841 Wilhelmina gave birth to a son, but she died of tuberculosis a few months later. Within a year, Wilhelm remarried, this time to a German-born woman. In a letter to his relatives back home, he explained that he had almost had to give his son up for adoption; it was that difficult for him to work and provide for the boy at the same time. Both hardship and opportunity defined life in a new land. Between 1800 and 1860, the average price of slaves quadrupled, revealing a growing demand for bound labor. The slave market responded accordingly. In the last three decades before the Civil War, approximately 670,000 people were bought and sold. As many as one out of every ten slave children in the Upper South was sold to the Lower South (many to cotton planters) between 1820 and 1860. Slave households in Virginia bore the brunt of these forced separations. There, an estimated three quarters of the people sold never saw their spouse, parents, or children again. full view Slave Dealers Price, Birch & Company of Virginia, “Dealers in Slaves.” Such companies sold and arranged work for slaves. (National Archives) full view Raffling Off A Slave This advertisement announces that both a five-year-old horse and a twenty-year-old mulatto “girl” house servant are to be raffled. One dollar gave each participant a chance at winning either prize. Owners sold slaves for a variety of reasons. Some they considered poor workers or too “uppity.” Occasionally, a mistress decided to rid herself of the sight of a slave woman whom her husband had sexually abused. Selling slaves also generated ready cash for masters who wanted to build a new house, divide an estate, or settle a debt. Moses Grandy, for example, was sold CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 399 ${bmicon} full view MAP 12.4 EXPANSION OF THE COTTON BELT AND SLAVE TRADING ROUTES, 1801–1860 This map shows the spread of cotton cultivation and routes followed by traders in transporting slaves from the upper South to the new plantations of the Southwest. After Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, the new republic legalized slavery. Many white landowners believed that they could not grow cotton without the use of slave labor. was sold because his master, who had failed to pay his mortgage, needed the cash. A later sale separated Grandy from his wife: standing on a sidewalk one day, he saw his wife in chains, in a coffle passing by. He recalled the scene in his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America (1844): full view Bill of Sale for Slaves, 1835 This 1835 bill reflects the sale of ten adult slaves and one infant. In the footnote, the seller asks for an additional 40 dollars because one of the female slaves “made such and damned fuss” about not leaving without her infant, that the seller kept the two of them together. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) Mr. Rogerson was with them on his horse, armed with pistols. I said to him. “For God’s sake, have you bought my wife?” He said he had; when I asked him what she had done, he said she had done nothing, but that her master wanted money. He drew out a pistol and said that if I went near the wagon where she was, he would shoot me. I asked for leave to shake hands with her which he refused, but said I might stand at a distance and talk with her. My heart was so full that I could say very little…. I have never seen or heard from her from that day to this. I loved her as I love my life. The slave trade became big business. Many wealthy traders made regular trips between the Upper and Lower South. Owners of slaves who worked in the sawmills and grist mills of Virginia and Maryland realized they could profit handsomely by selling blacks to cotton planters in Mississippi and Alabama. A large slave trade establishment such as Franklin and Armfield, for example, had operations in Alexandria, Virginia (where slaves languished in pens until traders could ship them south), in Natchez, Mississippi, and in New Orleans, Louisiana. The pace of buying and selling picked up in late fall, after slaves had harvested grains and tobacco in the upper South and cotton in the lower South. Traders transported men, women, and children by boat down the eastern seaboard or down the Mississippi River or chained and forced them to walk as much as 20 miles a day for seven or eight weeks at a time in the chill autumn full view Slave Sale Notice Notices such as this for the sale of slaves brought directly from Africa were common in colonial America. The emphasis here is on the healthiness of this shipload and these slaves’ likely immunity to smallpox. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 400 ${bmicon} air. Eventually, slaves stood on the block in the markets of New Orleans, Natchez, Charleston, and Savannah, where white men inspected them for health, strength, and compliance. The European American slave owners who had moved to Texas in the 1820s took their slaves with them. When Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, some European American masters freed their slaves but then forced them to sign lifelong contracts that kept them in a state akin to bondage. Nevertheless, some free people of color—men such as John Bird—saw Texas as a place of opportunity. He had brought his family to Texas from Virginia because he hoped that they “would be received as citizens and entitled as such to land.” full view Young Frederick Douglass An escaped slave, Frederick Douglass spent his life working for freedom and improved opportunities for African Americans. Douglass lectured on the evils of slavery and published and newspaper dedicated to the abolition of slavery. (Library of Congress) full view Frederick Douglass After he escaped slavery, Frederick Douglass used his powerful intellect to fight for his fellow African-Americans. His writings helped shape the northern abolitionist perspective. (Library of Congress) full view An Elder Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned writer, abolitionist, and orator. Douglass fought for the recruitment of African Americans into the Union Army. Douglass would be remembered as the greatest African American leader of the nineteenth century. (Library of Congress) Indeed, during this period, voluntary migrations of African Americans formed the counterpoint of the slave trade as runaways and free people of color made their way out of the old slave states. An estimated 50,000 enslaved workers tried to escape each year, but few made it to the North and freedom. Some southern free people of color headed to northern cities. By 1850, more than half of all Boston blacks had been born outside Massachusetts. Of those migrants, about one-third had been born in the South, most in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Slave runaways who lived in fear of their safety and their lives eluded census takers, but by midcentury as many as 600 fugitives lived in Boston. Regardless of their place of origin, many migrants took up residence with other blacks, who helped ease the newcomers’ transition to city life. These boarding arrangements strengthened ties between the enslaved and the free communities. For example, when authorities arrested the runaway George Latimer in Boston in 1842, free blacks in that city took immediate action. They posted signs condemning the police as “human kidnappers.” Some tried to wrench him physically from his captors. Still others sponsored protest meetings in the local African Baptist Church and made common cause with white lawyers sympathetic to abolitionism. Finally a group of blacks and whites raised enough money to buy Latimer from his owner and free him. Out of this campaign came a 150-pound antislavery petition containing the names of thousands of Massachusetts citizens. The petition, ignored by Congress, called for legislation forbidding the complicity of state officials in apprehending fugitive slaves. Meanwhile, throughout the urban North, whites began eyeing blacks’ jobs. Irish immigrants in particular desperately sought work. Skilled black workers found it increasingly difficult to ply their trades as cooks, hotel and boat stewards, porters, brickmakers, and barbers. In 1838, 656 black artisans in Philadelphia reported that they had to abandon their work because white customers would no longer patronize them. White factory owners in Philadelphia preferred white laborers. In that same city, a bustling site of machine shops and textile factories, almost no blacks did industrial labor of any kind. Shut out of ship-caulking work in New Bedford, Massachusetts, fugitive slave Frederick Douglass warned of the consequences of an economic system that condemed all blacks to lowly, ill-paid labor, “Men are not valued in this country, or in any country, for what they are; they are valued for what they can do.” Douglass understood that whites would judge blacks on the basis of their jobs as menial laborers and not on the basis of their rights as American citizens. These judgments, he predicted, would lead to further discrimination and hardship among blacks. full view Poster Warning Escaped Slaves This poster, distributed in Boston, Massachusetts, warned escaped slaves and free African-Americans that public officials may attempt to seize and send them to captivity in the South. Under one of the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act, the federal government had forbidden African-Americans accused of being escaped slaves from testifying on their own behalf. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) In 1835 President Andrew Jackson made a puzzling declaration. The removal of eastern Indian groups to Indian Territory, he said, would ensure their “physical comfort,” “political advancement,” and “moral improvement.” Rarely have a chief executive’s words contrasted so starkly with reality. Throughout the 1830s, the U.S. government pursued the policy of removing Indians from the Southeast by treaty or by force. The 1832 Treaty of Payne’s Landing, negotiated by the CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 401 ${bmicon} Seminole Indians and James Gadsden, a representative of Secretary of War Lewis Cass, aimed to force the Seminoles out of Florida and into Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The federal government promised to give individual Indians cash, plus blankets for the men and dresses for the women, in exchange for their lands. Government authorities also hoped to recapture the large number of runaway slaves who had sought refuge in Seminole villages, deep in the swamps of central Florida. Three years later, many of the Indians had departed for the West. But a small number withdrew deeper into the Everglades and held their ground. They were led by a young man named Osceola, who with his followers waged a guerrilla war (based on ambush tactics rather than traditional conventions of European American warfare) against U.S. troops. Accustomed to meeting the enemy on a battleground, U.S. army troops failed to dislodge significant numbers of Indians who had hidden themselves in the swamps. Referring to the twin military goals of removing the Indians and capturing runaway slaves, General Thomas S. Jesup expressed his frustration with the military operation: “We have committed the error of attempting to remove them when their lands were not required for agricultural purposes, when the greater portion of their country was an unexplored wilderness, the interior of which we were as ignorant of as the interior of China.” Osceola’s resistance, called the Second Seminole War, dragged on for seven years. Eventually, the government forced 3000 Seminoles to move west, but not until it had spent $20 million, and 1500 U.S. soldiers had lost their lives. The Choctaws of the southern Alabama–Mississippi region, the Chickasaws directly to the north of them, and the Creeks in central Georgia and Alabama suffered the same fate in the 1830s. The Creeks remained bitterly divided among themselves on the issue of removal. Creek leader Eneah Emothla organized a violent resistance movement against government soldiers. Emothla’s actions gave the government a pretext for forcibly relocating 15,000 of his people, more than a fifth of whom died as a result of the operation. The threat of removal also provoked intense conflict within the Cherokee Nation. Cherokee Indians, Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, leaders of the so-called Treaty Party, urged their people to give up their homeland and rebuild their nation in the West. John Ross and others like him opposed the Ridges and Boudinot. The Cherokees must remain in Georgia at all costs, Ross insisted. He claimed that he spoke for a majority of Cherokees. To silence him, the U.S. government threw him in prison. Then it concluded negotiations with the Treaty Party, which agreed to sell Cherokee land to the federal government for $5 million. Elias Boudinot said, “We can die, but the great Cherokee Nation will be saved.” Within a few years, the Ridges and Boudinot died at the hands of anti–Treaty Party Cherokee assassins. In 1838 General Winfield Scott, with 7000 troops under his command, began rounding up the citizens of the Cherokee Nation. U.S. troops held men, women, and children in concentration camps before forcing them to march west. During the period from 1838 to 1839, nearly 16,000 Indians began a journey that they called the Trail on Which We Cried. Four thousand of them died of malnutrition and disease in the course of the 116-day forced march. U.S. troops confiscated or destroyed the material basis of Cherokee culture: sawmills, cotton gins, barns, homes, spinning wheels, meetinghouses, flocks, herds, and the printing press used to publish the Cherokee Phoenix. Rebecca Neugin later recalled the arrival of army troops at her house. “My father wanted to fight,” she said, “but my mother told him that the soldiers would kill him if we did and we surrendered without a fight. They drove us out of our house to join other prisoners in a stockade.” The soldiers let Rebecca’s mother take a few cooking utensils with her; the family lost everything else. Still, Neugin’s family remained Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 402 ${bmicon} full view MAP 12.5 INDIAN REMOVAL This map shows the routes of forced migration of the Five Civilized Tribes in the 1830s. By the 1870s, several groups of Plains Indians, including the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa, had joined them in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). intact. Many others did not. A soldier who participated in the operation saw children “separated from their parents and driven into the stockade with the sky for a blanket and the earth for a pillow.” U.S. officials claimed that troops had carried out the removal with “great judgment and humanity.” However, an internal government report completed in 1841 revealed that the United States had reneged on even its most basic treaty promises. “Bribery, perjury, and forgery, short weights, issues of spoiled meat and grain, and every conceivable subterfuge was employed by designing white men.” Many government agents seized goods such as blankets and food intended for Indians and sold these goods for profit. Military authorities suppressed the report, and the public never saw it. For many native-born migrants seeking a new life west of the Mississippi, the road proved neither smooth nor easy. For example, the Mormon community moved west, seeking refuge from religious persecution. The founder of the church, Joseph Smith, had aroused the anger of his neighbors in Nauvoo, Illinois. They took alarm at the Nauvoo Legion, a military company formed to defend the Mormon community. They also heard rumors (for the most part true) that Smith and other Mormon leaders engaged in plural marriage. Through this practice the Mormon Church granted men permission to marry more than one wife. CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 403 ${bmicon} TABLE 12-1 Outfitting a Party of Four for the Overland Trail Area Item Amount Unit Cost ($) Cost ($) Weight (lb.) Transport Wagon 1 90.00 90.00     Oxen 4 yoke 50.00/yoke 200.00     Gear   100.00 100.00   Food Flour 600 lb. 2.00/100 lb. 12.00 600   Biscuit 120 lb. 3.00/100 lb. 3.60 120   Bacon 400 lb. 5.00/100 lb. 20.00 400   Coffee 60 lb. 7.00/100 lb. 4.20 60   Tea 4 lb. 50.00/100 lb. 2.00 4   Sugar 100 lb. 10.00/100 lb. 10.00 100   Lard 200 lb. 6.00/100 lb. 12.00 200   Beans 200 lb. 8.00/100 lb. 16.00 200   Dried fruit 120 lb. 24.00/100 lb. 28.80 120   Salt 40 lb. 4.00/100 lb. 1.60 40   Pepper 8 lb. 4.00/100 lb. .32 8   Saleratus 8 lb. 4.00/100 lb. .32 8   Whiskey 1 keg 5.00/keg 5.00 25 Goods Rifle 1 30.00 30.00 10   Pistols 2 15.00 30.00 10   Powder 5 lb. .25/lb. 1.25 5   Lead 15 lb. .04/lb. .60 15   Shot 10 lb. .10/lb. 1.00 10   Matches     1.00 1   Cooking utensils     20.00 25   Candles and soap 65 lb. From home from home 65   Bedding 60 lb. From home from home 60   Sewing kit 10 lb. From home from home 10   Essential tools     from home 20   Clothing     from home 100       Totals $589.69 2216 In 1844 the Nauvoo Legion destroyed the printing press owned by a group of rebellious church members who objected to what they considered Smith’s authoritarian tactics. Civil authorities charged Smith and his brother Hyrum with the destruction of private property and arrested and jailed the two men in the nearby town of Carthage. In June 1844 an angry mob of non-Mormons broke into the jail and lynched the brothers. By 1847, Brigham Young, who had inherited the mantle of leadership from Smith, determined that the Mormons could not remain in Illinois. Migrants, some of them pushing handcarts loaded with personal belongings, set out for the West. Several thousand settled at the base of the Wasatch Mountains on the edge of the Great Salt Basin, in what is present-day Utah. By 1852, 10,000 Mormons lived in Salt Lake City. With their large numbers and church-inspired discipline, the community prospered. They created an effective irrigation system and turned the desert into a thriving agricultural community. The Mormons had not settled an uninhabited wilderness. Around Salt Lake, Canadian trappers, Paiute Indians, and Spanish speakers from New Mexico crossed paths, some to hunt, others to gather roots and berries, herd sheep, or trade captives. A variety of cultural groups mingled with and reacted to one another in diverse ways, from intermarriage to savage brutality. Here, one might hear the sounds of a Mexican’s guitar, the song of a man half-Mohawk and “half American Scotch,” or the lament of an Indian woman taken captive and forcibly separated from her children. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 404 ${bmicon} A Christmas dinner celebrated near Great Salt Lake around this time revealed the multicultural mix of western life. The guests included Osborne Russell (a European American trader), a Frenchman married to a Flathead woman, and various other intermarried Cree, Snake, and Nez Percé Indians. The group feasted on the meat of elk and deer, a flour pudding, cakes, and strong coffee. After the meal, the women cleared the table. The men smoked pipes and then went outside and conducted target practice with their guns. Other European Americans also migrated to the Northwest during this period. Protestant missionaries initially settled Oregon beginning in 1834. But in contrast to the Mormons, these northwestern colonists found themselves in the midst of hostile Native Americans. One young doctor and his wife from western New York, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, established a mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington. There they encountered the Cayuse Indians and what Narcissa Whitman called “the thick darkness of heathenism.” Deciding that white settlers offered a more fertile field for converts, the Whitmans encouraged emigrants from the East to move to Oregon. More than a thousand did so during the “Great Migration” of 1843. The U.S. government aided this westward movement when it commissioned its Topographical Corps of Engineers to survey the Oregon Trail. That task fell to an expedition headed by John Charles Frémont, educated in mathematics and engineering. From 1843 to 1844, members of Frémont’s expedition, including several Indian scouts and fur trappers, took precise measurements of the terrain using barometers and field telescopes. Their final report had immense practical value for the emigrants, for it mapped the way west and provided crucial information about pasture, sources of water, and climate. In addition to detailing plant and animal life, the Report of the Exploring Expeditions to the Rocky Mountains described a middle ground where “well-dressed” Indians spoke fluent Spanish, where whites employed Indian labor to grow their wheat and irrigate their fields, and where German immigrants were following a variety of “agricultural pursuits.” CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 405 ${bmicon} The Oregon settlements founded by missionaries were fragile affairs. Discouraged and overwhelmed by homesickness, Narcissa Whitman eagerly awaited copies of the latest Mothers’ Magazine sent to her by female relatives in the East. After 1843, the influx of newcomers brought her some consolation but also brought outbreaks of measles, to which the Native Americans had no immunity. An ensuing epidemic among the Cayuse claimed many lives. In 1847, blaming the missionaries for the deaths of their people, several Indians attacked the Whitman mission, killing 12 whites, including Narcissa and Marcus Whitman. The Midwest and the borderlands between U.S. and Spanish territories were meeting places for many different cultures. Leaving established communities behind, some migrants challenged rigid definitions of who was black, Indian, Hispanic, or European American. Moving from one place to another enabled—or forced—people to adopt new individual and group identities. People who fell into one racial category in the east sometimes acquired new identities in the west. Some people classified as “black” in the south became “white” outside the region. In 1831, George and Eliza Gilliam decided to leave their home in Virginia and make a new life for themselves in western Pennsylvania. Eliza died in 1838, and George remarried nine years later. He prospered over the course of his lifetime. He worked as a doctor and druggist and invested in and sold real estate. George and his second wife, Frances, eventually moved to Illinois, and the couple finally settled in Missouri. Several of the Gilliam children attended college in Ohio. In 1870, the census listed the value of his estate at $95,000 (the equivalent of $2 million dollars today). For George Gilliam and his family, the move west produced an American success story. Yet this migration story was unusual in at least two respects. First, the Gilliams left behind a large amount of property, including slaves, when they moved from Virginia in 1831. Second, in leaving Virginia, they became white. George Gilliam was the son of a white father and a black mother. Although he and his first wife Eliza were very light-skinned, the commonwealth of Virginia classified them both legally as black. Beginning their married life near Petersburg, they were well aware of Virginia’s tightening restrictions on free people of color; black men could not vote or enter certain professions such as the law or the ministry. Convicted of a crime, even free blacks could be sold into slavery and sent south. The year the Gilliams left Virginia, the state legislature enacted an additional law making it illegal to teach black children, whether slave or free, to read and write. Though connected by blood to several elite white families, the Gilliams faced at best an uncertain future in Virginia, where local officials knew who they were and who their parents were. In contrast, the public records in their new home states of Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Missouri listed family members as white. Outside the slave South, the Gilliams managed to reinvent themselves and embrace opportunities sought by many other Americans in this era of migration. Throughout the West, migrants forged new identities as a matter of course. For example, many people straddled more than one culture in the western borderlands. In 1828 Mexican military officer Jose Maria Sanchez described the Tejano settlers (Spanish-speaking natives of Mexico) he met in the province of Tejas (Texas): “Accustomed to the continued trade with the North Americans, they have adopted their customs and habits, and one may say truly that they are not Mexican except by birth, for they even speak Spanish with a marked incorrectness.” Leaving established communities behind, some migrants challenged rigid definitions of who was black, Indian, Hispanic, or European American. In other provinces of northern Mexico, European American Protestant traders and travelers mingled with native Spanish speakers. For example, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Gertrudis Barceló owned a saloon that served as a meeting site for people of many cultures. There European American men could attend a nighttime fandango (dance), play monte (a card game), listen to Spanish music, and socialize with native Spanish speakers. A center of politics, business, and social life, the saloon broke down barriers based on religion, language, and even preconceived notions of personal morality as men and women came to gamble, drink, and carouse. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 406 ${bmicon} In some cases new relationships led to marriage and, ultimately, the creation of households that blended Catholic and Protestant, Spanish and European American cultures. In parts of the West, traditional social identities yielded to new ones, based less on a single language or ethnicity than on a blend of cultures and new ways of making a living from the land. The 1830s and 1840s marked the height of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. The trade could generate huge profits for the eastern merchants who controlled it; for example, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company sold 168 packs of beaver pelts for $85,000 in 1832—more than $1 million today. However, individual trappers fared more modestly. They ranged freely across national boundaries and cultures, going wherever the bison, bear, and beaver took them. These men demonstrated a legendary ability to navigate among Spanish, French, European American, and Native American communities. Westerners coined new terms to describe the people representative of new kinds of cultural identity within trading communities. Some white men became “white Indians,” and the children they had with Indian women were called “métis” (mixed bloods). William Sherley “Old Bill” Williams, a convert to the religion of the Osage Indians of the southeastern Plains, was not unusual in the ways he crossed cultural boundaries. He married an Osage woman, and when she died, he wed a New Mexican widow. His third wife was a Ute woman. Williams’s life story suggests the ways that Indian and Hispanic women could serve as cultural mediators between native peoples and European American traders. The increasing diversity of the American population, combined with specialized regional economies, heightened tensions within and between different groups and sections of the country. The Second Party system, which replaced the Federalist–Anti-Federalist rivalry of the early nineteenth century, was characterized by intense competition between the Jacksonian Democrats and anti-Jackson Whigs. But this new system could not accommodate the old or new conflicts based on race, religion, ethnicity, regional loyalties, and political beliefs. Social and cultural disputes spilled out of the courthouse and the legislative hall and into the streets. Public demonstrations ran the gamut from noisy parades to bloody clashes. During these displays, resentments between ethnic and religious groups, arguments over political issues, and opposition to reformers often blended together. Specific interests—the white laboring classes, abolitionists, southern slave owners, and nativists (people hostile to immigrants)—sought to find their own political voices. Yet as national parties, the Democrats and Whigs refrained from facing, head-on, controversial issues such as slavery. Deprived of what they considered effective representation on the national level, some Americans grew increasingly frustrated by their own lack of political clout. Their grievances set off a full-blown political crisis and led to party realignment once again in the 1850s. Ill with tuberculosis, Andrew Jackson did not run for a third term in 1836. The Democrats nominated Jackson’s vice president and friend Martin Van Buren for president. As his running mate, they chose Col. Richard M. Johnson, the self-proclaimed killer of Tecumseh. The Jackson-haters, led by Senator Henry Clay and other Congressmen formed a political party called the Whigs. They drew their support from several groups: advocates of Clay’s American System, states’ rights southerners opposed to Jackson’s heavy-handed use of national power, and merchants and factory owners in favor of the Second Bank of the United States. Evangelical Protestants from the middle classes also joined the anti-Jackson forces; they objected CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 407 ${bmicon} to his rhetoric stressing class differences because they believed that individual religious conviction, not a group’s material status, should shape politics and society. Still somewhat disorganized, these allied groups fielded three candidates: Hugh White of Tennessee, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and General William Henry Harrison of Indiana. Benefiting from the Whigs’ disarray, Van Buren narrowly won the popular vote but swept the Electoral College. TABLE 12-2 The Election of 1836 Candidate Political Party   Popular Vote Electoral Vote Martin Van Buren Democratic   765,483 170 William Henry Harrison Whig   73 Hugh L. White Whig 739,795 26 Daniel Webster Whig   14 W.P. Magnum Independent     11 In northeastern cities, political candidates of all persuasions began to court the allegiance of workers aligned with a new trade union movement. Urban traders and laborers had become a political force in their own right. The spread of the factory system threatened the livelihoods of artisans in a number of trades. Immigration increased workers’ anxieties. People worried about making a living tended to favor the Democratic Party, which spoke against class privilege and the wealthy. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, a variety of trade organizations had formed to advance the interests of skilled workers (the “producing classes,” they called themselves). These unions pressed for a ten-hour workday, the abolition of paper money (so that workers would receive their wages in hard currency rather than bank notes) and debtors’ prisons, and higher wages. In some cities, though representing only a minority of workers, these unions fielded their own candidates through Workingmen’s Parties. In other places, workers counted on the Democrats to advance their interests at the polls. However, once in office, politicians often were indifferent to the demands of urban laboring people. In some cases, journeymen protesting long hours and low wages took their grievances to the streets. In New York City in 1834, groups of sailors, bakers, shoemakers, carpet weavers, locksmiths, stonecutters, and hatters staged boisterous work stoppages. In October of that same year, the stonecutters turned their fury on a building under construction. They smashed windows and caused much damage until “a strong posse of watchmen” made them disperse. The founding of the National Trades Union (NTU) in 1834 made workers more politically visible. The union represented workers as diverse as jewelers, butchers, bookbinders, and factory workers. In Philadelphia in the early 1830s, for example, the local NTU organization, called the General Trades Union, consisted of 50 trade societies and supported a number of successful strikes. Both Whigs and Democrats professed allegiance to the union, but neither party went out of its way to represent the interests of workers over other groups, such as farmers and bookkeepers. But even larger troubles loomed for the trade union movement. In the course of his term, Van Buren had to grapple with the effects of a major depression, the Panic of 1837. Brought on by overspeculation—in canals, turnpikes, railroads, and slaves—the panic deepened when large grain crops failed in the West. British creditors worsened matters when they recalled loans they had made to American customers. The depression, which lasted until the early 1840s, devastated the NTU and its constituent organizations. Up to one-third of all Americans lost their jobs when businesses failed. Those fortunate enough to keep their jobs were in no position to press for higher wages. Not until the Civil War era did members of the laboring classes recapture political momentum at the national level. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 408 ${bmicon} In 1831 a Boston journalist named William Lloyd Garrison launched The Liberator, a newspaper dedicated to “immediate emancipation” of all slaves. Two years later, a group of 60 blacks and whites formed the American Anti-Slavery Society (AA-SS). That same year, Great Britain had abolished slavery in the West Indies. This move encouraged like-minded Americans eager to cooperate with their British counterparts to abolish slavery everywhere. In the United States, the abolitionist movement enlisted the energies of a dedicated group of people who believed not only that slavery was immoral but also that the federal government must take immediate steps to destroy this “peculiar institution.” The position of the AA-SS was clear: “the slaves ought instantly to be set free, and brought under protection of law.” The Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society strongly condemned southern slaveholders and supporters of African American colonization. Indeed, it criticized the latter group for encouraging American blacks to move to Africa—in the words of the AA-SS, a “delusive, cruel and dangerous” scheme. A wellorganized movement, the society sponsored an aggressive campaign against slavery, gathering hundreds of names on antislavery petitions to present to Congress. The group also distributed antislavery literature throughout the North. The society drew moral and financial support from northern communities of free people of color as well as from white women and men. All the supporters showed a great deal of courage within a larger American society indifferent to the issue of slavery. Activists such as Maria Stewart and David Walker had laid the foundation for the abolitionist movement. Well-to-do black leaders, including Henry Highland Garnet, Charles Lenox Remond, and his sister Sarah Parker Remond, spoke out on behalf of southern blacks in chains. Fugitive slaves, including Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northup, and William and Ellen Craft, electrified northern abolitionist audiences with their first-hand accounts of the brutality of slavery and of their own daring escapes from bondage. The American Anti-Slavery Society sponsored an aggressive campaign against slavery, gathering hundreds of names on antislavery petitions, to present to Congress. Douglass’s autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), immediately gained an enthusiastic audience among abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic. Within five years of its publication the book had sold 30,000 copies. An American tale of determination and self-education, the Narrative is also a literary classic. In one passage Douglass describes standing on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay, watching sailboats “robed in purest white” skimming along the water: I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone along the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and there with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint. Large and charismatic, Douglass had a compelling speaking style. He soon became a much-sought-after abolitionist speaker in the Northeast, the Midwest, and England. A few white women also became active in the abolitionist cause. Sarah and Angelina Grimké, for example, left the household of their slave-owning father in Charleston, South Carolina, and moved to Philadelphia. The Grimké sisters spoke before groups composed of men and women, blacks and whites in the North, an act offensive to many other whites. They were struck by what they considered the similar legal constraints of slaves and white women. White men considered both groups to be unworthy of citizenship rights, childlike in their demeanor, well-suited for domestic service, and inherently unintelligent. Also in the North, local associations, such as the Female Antislavery Society of Andover, Massachusetts, mobilized women who then fired off letters to the Liberator and other publications. In these letters, they urged other women to respond to “the sighs, the groans, the deathlike struggles of scourged sisters in the South…. We feel that woman has a place in this God-like work.” CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 409 ${bmicon} Such activities provoked outrage not only from southern slave owners but also from anti-abolitionists and their allies in Congress—in other words, most northern whites. In Washington, D.C., the House of Representatives imposed a gag rule on antislavery petitions, forbidding them to be read aloud or entered into the public record. Supporters of slavery also resorted to violence. In 1834 a mob of whites attacked a school for young women of color operated by a white teacher, Prudence Crandall, near New Haven, Connecticut. A local paper charged that the school was fostering “levelling [egalitarian] principles, and intermarriage between whites and blacks.” The next year in Boston a different mob attacked the Liberator founder, William Lloyd Garrison himself, tying a rope around him and parading him through the streets of that city while onlookers jeered. In 1837 in Alton, Illinois, a group of whites murdered outspoken abolitionist Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy. Hounded out of Missouri because of his antislavery pronouncements, Lovejoy had moved directly across the river to Alton, in freestate Illinois, where he published the Alton Observer and organized the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society. The mob had destroyed his printing press before turning on Lovejoy. After the killing, Garrison and others hailed Lovejoy as a martyr. full view Martin Van Buren and Abolitionism - Cartoon This cartoon shows the widening gap between abolitionists and slave masters, by depicting the Free Soil candidate, Martin Van Buren, undergoing a vain attempt to bridge the salt river dividing the nation. The salt river erodes the abolitionist side, while the Democratic and southern-dominated side remains as hard as a rock. (Library of Congress) Throughout the North, anti-abolitionist mobs voiced the fears of whites who believed that every black man who had a job took one from a white man. Antiblack riots broke out in New York City, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati in 1834, and again in Philadelphia in 1842. White workers attacked blacks so often in the 1830s and 1840s that bricks became known as “Irish confetti” because of the way immigrants used them as weapons. Still, these dramatic episodes had little noticeable impact on the two major political parties. In 1840 the Democrats renominated Van Buren, although many people blamed him PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 410 ${bmicon} for the depression. Eager to find a candidate as popular as Andrew Jackson, the Whigs selected William Henry Harrison; his supporters called him “Old Tippecanoe” in recognition of his defeat of Indians at the battle of the same name in 1811. As Harrison’s running mate the Whigs chose John Tyler, who had been both governor of and a senator from Virginia. To counter their reputation as well-heeled aristocrats, which in fact they were, the Whigs promoted Harrison as a simple, humble man living in a log cabin and drinking hard cider. They rallied around the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” full view 1840 Campaign Ad, Louisiana In the 1840 election, Louisiana Democrats attempted to use Whig campaign symbols, including the log cabin and hard cider, against them as portrayed in this cartoon of the “Federal-Abolition-Whig Trap. To Catch Voters In.” (Library of Congress) The election of 1840 represented the triumph of style over substance in political electioneering as the two major parties ignored the growing controversy over slavery. That year abolitionists meeting in Albany, New York, founded a new party, the Liberty Party, dedicated to eradicating slavery. Although it garnered only 7000 votes for its candidate, James G. Birney, in the general election, the party soon gained the ability to swing local elections in favor of antislavery candidates. Still, Whigs and Democrats dominated the campaign of 1840. The two major parties were well organized and evenly matched. They used symbols, songs, and imagery in innovative ways to build party loyalty. Sloganeering substituted for meaningful discussion of the issues of the day. TABLE 12-3 The Election of 1840 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote William Henry Harrison Whig 1,274,624 234 Martin Van Buren Democratic 1,127,781 60 James G. Birney Liberty 7,069   By this time, the Whigs had gained strong support among wealthy southern planters, who worried that Van Buren would not protect their interests in slavery. Harrison won the election, but he contracted pneumonia at his inauguration and died within one month of taking office. Ridiculed as “His Accidency,” Tyler assumed the presidency and soon lost his core constituency, Whigs who favored a strong central government, by vetoing bills for both a national bank and higher tariffs. The new president represented members of the Whig party who were ardent supporters of states’ rights. As a result, he proved a poor standard-bearer for the numerous nationalist-minded Whigs. Tyler learned a hard lesson: that members of his own party were a loose coalition of groups with varying views on a range of issues rather than a unified party bound to a single idea or principle. full view “General Harrison’s Log Cabin March” - Sheet Music Sheet music drawing for General Harrison’s Log Cabin March. The presidential campaign of 1840 was the first to use techniques of mass appeal such as circus hoopla. (Library of Congress) Abolitionists could claim few victories, either real or symbolic, during these years. However, they did take heart from the Amistad case. In 1839 Spanish slave traders attempted to transport 53 illegally purchased Africans to Havana, Cuba, on a ship named Amistad. En route to Havana, the Africans, under the leadership of a young man named Cinqué, rebelled, killed the captain, and took over the ship. Soon after, U.S. authorities captured the ship off the coast of Long Island. President Van Buren wanted to send the blacks to Cuba. However, a federal district court judge in Hartford, Connecticut, ruled that because the African slave trade had been illegal since 1808, the Africans had been wrongfully enslaved. The U.S. government appealed the case to the Supreme Court. To publicize the Amistad case, abolitionists produced a play, “The Black Schooner or the Private Slaver ‘Amistad.’” To raise funds, Philadelphia black leader Robert Purvis paid to have Cinqué’s portrait painted; then antislavery activists sold copies for $1 each. In 1841 former president John Quincy Adams argued the Africans’ case before the high court. The court ruled in their favor. Of the original 53 men, women, and children, 35 had survived the ordeal (the rest died), and they returned to Africa. Slavery advocates and abolitionists alike pondered the question: Could the law be used to dismantle slavery? Among the active players on the political scene were the nativists, who opposed immigration and immigrants. The immigrants who came to the United States were a varied group in terms CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 411 ${bmicon} of their jobs, religion, and culture. Some farmed homesteads in Michigan, and others worked in northeastern factories. But to nativists, these distinctions made little difference: all immigrants were foreigners and thus unwelcome. Some nativists were also temperance advocates calling for the prohibition of alcohol; they objected to the Irish drinking in taverns and the Germans drinking in their Biergarten. Protestants worried that large numbers of Catholic immigrants would be loyal to the pope in Rome, the head of the Catholic Church, and thus undermine American democracy. Members of the working classes, black and white, feared the loss of their jobs to desperate newcomers who would accept low, “starvation” wages. But nativists objected just as much when immigrants kept to themselves—in their Catholic schools or in their German Turnverein (gymnastics clubs). They also complained when immigrants participated in U.S. politics as individual voters and members of influential voting blocs. Samuel F. B. Morse, the artist and inventor, was among the most vocal nativists. In the early 1840s he ceased painting portraits and turned his creative energies to developing a form of long-distance electric communication. Congress financed construction of the first telegraph line, which ran from Washington to Baltimore. In May 1844, Morse sent a message in code, “What hath God wrought!” and the modern telegraph was born. The precursor of all later communication innovations, the telegraph revolutionized the spread of information and tied the country together. Morse was convinced that Catholic immigrants in particular (mostly the Irish) were a grave threat to American democracy. In his book Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 412 ${bmicon} United States (1835), Morse charged that Catholics favored “monarchical power” over republican governments. Catholicism was like a cancer, he wrote, “We find it spreading itself into every nook and corner of the land; churches, chapels, colleges, nunneries and convents are springing up as if by magic every where.” In his fears, Morse expressed nostalgia for a simpler past, even as his technical ingenuity paved the way for the modern world. In 1844, an openly nativist political organization, the American Republican Party, made substantial gains in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. The party elected six of its candidates to Congress and dozens of others to local political offices. In 1849, nativists founded the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner. Also called the Know-Nothing Party, the group got its name by cautioning its members to profess ignorance when asked about its existence. The Know-Nothings drew their support from a broad spectrum of the native-born population, including Whigs who saw immigrants as the backbone of the Democratic party. Nativeborn Democrats who shared that view also supported the Know-Nothings. Anti-Catholic prejudices in particular helped to justify territorial expansion. Many U.S. Protestants believed the government was justified in siezing the land of Spanish-speaking Catholics in the West. They claimed religious and cultural superiority over Hispanics. As Protestant explorers, traders, and travelers reported on their experiences in the Southwest, they condemned what they called the region’s “ignorant, priest ridden peasantry,” in the words of one writer for Harper’s Magazine. They also disdained Hispanic material culture: adobe houses revealed “the power of mud,” suggested one European American. Albert Pike, a native New Englander, called the Santa Fe region “bleak, black, and barren.” Other Protestants disdained what they considered “a people infatuated with the passion” for gambling. Protestant stereotypes of Mexican Roman Catholics set the stage for the U.S. conquest of northern Mexico in the late 1840s. However, not just in the West, but all over the continent, nativists’ ideas had violent consequences. In the 1830s and 1840s, violence in the form of military action or urban riots pitting anti-abolitionists against abolitionists, workers against employers, or nativists against immigrants constituted a widespread form of political expression. However, the opposing sides in some riots were not nearly so clear-cut. For example, with the demise of the Philadelphia General Trades Union, the laboring classes fell to fighting among themselves, venting their ethnic and religious differences. In May 1844, in the Philadelphia suburb of Kensington, Irish Catholic immigrant cloth weavers and native-born Protestant artisans brawled in the streets for four days. Protestant artisans came together to urge temperance, protest the increasing prominence of Irish politicians in the Democratic Party, and advocate the use of the King James Version of the Bible in the public schools. Catholic clergy disapproved of that translation, which, they claimed, public school teachers imposed on Catholic school children with the aid of taxpayers’ dollars. The May riot, fueled by the emergence of the nativist American Republican Party, left several native-born workers dead and the Irish workers’ churches and homes in shambles. Thus, ethnic animosity, anti-Catholicism, and nativism, as well as the temperance cause (widely associated with pre–Civil War reform) blended to produce often violent conflict. CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 413 ${bmicon} In August 1841 writer Lydia Maria Child recorded a striking scene in New York City: a march sponsored by the Washington Society, a temperance group, was snaking its way through the streets. The procession stretched for 2 miles and consisted of representatives from “all classes and trades.” The marchers carried banners depicting streams and rivers (the pure water favored over liquor) and poignant scenes of the grateful wives and children of reformed drunkards. Stirred by the martial sounds of trumpets and drums, Child wrote that the music was “the voice of resistance to evil.” She added, “Glory to resistance! for through its agency men become angels.” full view Philadelphia Almshouse, House of Employment, and Prison The Revolution, together with broader humanitarian impulses, prompted various efforts at social reform in early America, as depicted here in this view of the Philadelphia Almshouse, House of Employment, and Prison. (Will Brown, Philadelphia, PA/The Dietrich American Foundation) Inspired by Charles Grandison Finney’s faith in the “perfectibility” of human beings and heartened by the rapid pace of technological progress, many Americans set about trying to “make angels out of men,” in Child’s words. In the process, various reform associations targeted personal habits such as dress and diet, conventional beliefs about sexuality and the status of women, and institutions such as schools, churches, and slavery. Their efforts often brought women out of the home and into public life. Marches and meetings also led to encounters between different cultural groups: Christian missionaries and non-Christians, rich and poor, native-born and immigrants. Yet not all Americans shared the reformers’ zeal. Even those who did rarely agreed about the appropriate means to transform society. full view The Drunkard’s Progress - Cartoon, 1846 The temperance movement of the 1830s and 1840s used the tactics of religious revivalists to scare drinkers into taking the “teetotal” pledge. Who could resist this poignant 1846 portrayal of The Drunkard’s Progress? (Library of Congress) In the eyes of some Americans, a growing nation needed new forms of tax-supported schooling. As families moved from one area of the country to another, public education advocates PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 414 ${bmicon} pointed out, children should be able to pick up in one school where they had left off in another. Members of a growing middle class wanted to provide their children with schooling beyond basic literacy instruction (reading and writing skills) and had the resources to do so. Factory owners, for their part, supported education that would produce a self-motivated, disciplined labor force. Horace Mann, a Massachusetts state legislator and lawyer, was one of the most prominent educational reformers. In 1837 Mann became secretary of the first state board of education. He stressed the notion of a common school system available to all boys and girls regardless of class or ethnicity. In his annual report of 1848, he noted, “Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” In an increasingly diverse nation, schooling promoted the acquisition of basic knowledge and skills. But it also provided instruction in what Mann and others called American values: hard work, punctuality, and sobriety. How exactly would educators teach reading and writing skills and moral values? The dictionary of Connecticut’s Noah Webster (published in 1828) and the McGuffey’s Reader series, first published in 1836, provided a way. In his books, William H. McGuffey, a college professor and Presbyterian minister, combined lessons in reading with lessons in moral behavior: “Beautiful feet are they that go/Swiftly to lighten another’s woe.” Over the next 20 years, the McGuffey series sold more than 7 million copies. By the 1840s, public school systems attended by white children had cropped up across the North and the Midwest. Urban districts, using tax revenues to support schools, sought to educate as many pupils as possible. These districts pioneered in grading classrooms, imposing uniform standards for curricula and teachers’ qualifications, and regimenting pupils to make schooling more “efficient.” Toward that end, local school boards eagerly tapped into the energies of women as teachers. School officials claimed that women were naturally nurturing and could serve as “mothers away from home” for small children. CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 415 ${bmicon} Furthermore, schools could pay women only a fraction of what men earned. Between the 1830s and 1840s, the number of female schoolteachers in Massachusetts jumped more than 150 percent. In 1846 writer and educator Catharine Beecher urged unmarried women to devote themselves to teaching. That year, she created a Board of National Popular Education, which sent New England teachers to the Midwest. By 1847 she had enlisted the services of 70 young Protestant women to serve as teacher–missionaries in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Beecher expected these young women to endure hardship cheerfully. Many tried to do so. Dutifully reporting from her new home in what she described as “a newly organized county,” one teacher wrote, “I came expecting to make sacrifices, and suffer privations.” She found her pupils to be “ragged and dirty in the extreme” and unschooled in proper classroom decorum. Other forms of education also multiplied. Lyceums—informal lectures offered by speakers who traveled from place to place—attracted hordes of adults regardless of their formal education. By the mid–1830s, approximately 3000 local lecture associations, mostly in New England and the Midwest, were sponsoring such series. In addition, local agricultural fairs offered informal practical instruction to rural people. Despite the lofty goals of Mann and other reformers, public schooling did not offer a “common” experience for all American children. The number of colleges more than doubled (46 to 119) between 1830 and 1850. Founded in 1837, Mount Holyoke, a college for women in Massachusetts, and Oberlin in Ohio, which accepted black men as well as women of both races, were unusual for their liberal admission policies. Most colleges were supported by a specific religious denomination or cultural group. In Indian Territory, for example, the Cherokee National Council founded the Cherokee Female Seminary in 1851. With a classical curriculum similar to that of Mount Holyoke, the school was intended for the daughters of wealthy, assimilated Cherokees. In an ironic twist, innovations in education heightened differences in status. Despite the lofty goals of Mann and other reformers, public schooling did not offer a “common” experience for all American children. Almost exclusively, northern white children benefited from public school systems. Slightly more than one-third of all white children attended school in 1830; twenty years later, the ratio had increased to more than one half. In northern cities, these proportions were considerably higher; there reformers were able to provide elementary-school instruction for relatively large numbers of white children, both immigrant and native-born. By contrast, few black children had the opportunity to attend public schools. In the South, slave children were forbidden by law to learn to read and write. Recalled one former slave many years later, “dey [owners] didn’t teach ’em nothin’ but wuk [work].” By the 1830s, schools for even the children of free people of color had to meet in secret. In the North, many black households needed the labor of children to survive, resulting in black school-attendance rates well below those of whites. Throughout the Northeast and Midwest, black children remained at the mercy of local officials, who decided whether they could attend the schools their parents’ tax dollars helped to support. full view Prisons Prisons were meant to reform criminals through rigid discipline and extensive rules that restricted the inmate’s movements, speech, and actions. In most prisons, a strict silence was enforced at all times to allow prisoners to reflect on the error In the late 1840s, Benjamin Roberts, a black man, launched a series of lawsuits against the Boston School Committee on behalf of his five-year-old daughter Sarah. Roberts demanded that the city’s schools be integrated. The abolitionist-politician Charles Sumner argued the Roberts case before the state’s highest court, but lost. However, in 1855, the Massachusetts legislature would outlaw segregated schools. All over the country, education remained an intensely grassroots affair, belying the reformers’ call for uniform systems. Local communities raised money for the teacher’s salary, built the schoolhouse, and provided wood to heat the building. Southern states did not develop uniform public education systems until the late nineteenth century. Lacking local, popular support for tax-supported schooling, poor white children remained illiterate, while wealthy parents hired tutors for their own children or sent them to private academies. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 416 ${bmicon} Formal training for professionals also changed during this period. New state licensing and certification standards meant that people preparing to become physicians and lawyers must receive specialized training. As these professions came to insist on formal educational standards for practitioners, some women lost some of their traditional roles such as midwifery and healing. By the 1830s, almost all states required that doctors be licensed. The only way to attain such a license was to attend medical school, and these schools still excluded women. In regions of the country where medical schools appeared, the self-taught midwife gradually yielded to the formally educated male physician. In contrast, in rural communities of black and white Southerners, Native Americans, and Hispanics, women continued to practice time-honored ways of midwifery and healing. The crosscurrents of reform showed up most clearly in debates about sexuality, the family, and the proper role of women. For example, reformer Sylvester Graham argued that even husbands and wives must monitor their sexual activity. Sexual excess between husband and wife, he claimed, caused ills ranging from headaches, chills, and impaired vision, to loss of memory, epilepsy, insanity, and “disorders of the liver and kidneys.” Graham also promoted a diet of special crackers made of wheat flour (now called Graham crackers) and fruit (in place of alcohol and meat) in addition to a regimen of plain living reinforced with cold showers. Other reformers disagreed with Graham’s notion that people must repress their sexuality to lead a good and healthy life. Defying conventional standards of morality, sponsors of a number of experimental communities discouraged marriage-based monogamy (a legal commitment between a man and a woman to engage in sexual relations only with each other) and made child-rearing the responsibility of the entire community rather than just the child’s parents. These communities were communitarian—seeking to break down exclusive relations between husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee—in an effort to advance the wellbeing of the whole group, and not just individuals within it. These communities were also utopian, seeking to forge new kinds of social relationships that would, in the eyes of the reformers, serve as a model for the larger society. The crosscurrents of reform showed up most clearly in debates about sexuality, the family, and the proper role of women. Many of these communities explicitly challenged mainstream views related to property ownership and the system of wage labor as well as rules governing relations between the sexes. The Scottish industrialist and socialist Robert Owen founded New Harmony in Indiana in 1825 basing his experiment on principles of “cooperative labor.” In 1826 Owen released his “Declaration of Mental Independence, ” which condemned private property, organized religion, and marriage. By this time, 900 persons had joined the New Harmony order. full view Robert Owen’s Harmony Community This is an architect’s drawing of the New Harmony, Indiana utopian community as envisioned by Robert Owen. Settled in 1824, New Harmony was abandoned after only a few years. (Library of Congress) The community at Nashoba, Tennessee, was more radical still, at least in theory. In 1825 a Scottish immigrant and heiress named Frances Wright established the settlement a few miles from Memphis, on land that the U.S. government had seized from the Chickasaws. A liberal thinker on many issues such as slavery and the roles of women, Wright wanted to prepare slaves for a life of freedom. Inspired by Owen, she embraced his program. Yet Nashoba, isolated in the Tennessee swamps, was an unhealthy site for everyone, white and black, young and old. The slaves resented the labor the community required of them before they could gain their freedom. Outsiders recoiled at what they considered the loose morality of the experiment, especially Wright’s apparent approval of interracial sexual relations. Newspapers denounced her as a “voluptuous preacher of licentiousness,” intent on converting the whole world “into a universal brothel.” When Nashoba collapsed in the late 1820s, Wright joined the Owenites in New Harmony. She later moved to New York City, where she became a public lecturer, speaking out on behalf of workers and against the legal subordination of women. full view Marriage Certificate, 1848 This marriage certificate from 1848, detailing the respective marital requirements of husband and wife, makes clear male dominance and female subservience. In that same year, women’s rights activists began their long struggle for equality at Seneca Falls, New York. (Library of Congress) Several other prominent communitarian experiments that challenged conventional marital relations were vehemently criticized, and participants were sometimes physically CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 417 ${bmicon} attacked by their neighbors. Salt Lake City Mormons, who practiced plural marriage, continued to meet intense hostility from outsiders. Another group, the Oneida Community, founded in upstate New York near Utica in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes, went even further than the Mormons in advocating an alternative to monogamy. At its peak, Oneida consisted of 300 members who endorsed the founder’s notion of “complex marriage,” meaning communal sexual unions and community-regulated parent–child relations. Charges of adultery eventually forced Noyes to flee the country and seek refuge in Canada. full view Utopian Communities before the Civil War Utopian communities in America included the Fourierists, Owenites, Shakers, the Nashoba Colony, the Oneida community, and Brook Farm. Some were short-lived, while others continued into the twentieth century. Numerous moral reforms overlapped with and reinforced each other. For example, women’s rights advocates often supported temperance. Husbands who drank, they pointed out, were more likely to abuse their wives and children. Sarah and Angelina Grimké gained prominence as both abolitionists and advocates for women’s rights. They also followed Sylvester Graham’s program, and for a short time they sported “bloomers” (loose fitting pants, popularized by dress reformer Amelia Bloomer) in place of cumbersome dresses. Abolitionism and women’s rights reinforced each other and spawned overlapping political movements in Europe as well as in the United States. Beginning in the 1820s, European women reformers began challenging a host of institutions, including slavery, capitalism, and the nuclear family. By the late 1840s, abolitionism, socialism, and utopianism helped inspire the European revolutions of 1848. In the United States, women’s rights advocates made some progress independent of the abolitionist movement. For instance, in 1839, Mississippi passed the nation’s first Married Women’s Property Law. The ruling was intended to protect the fortunes of the married daughters of wealthy planters. In 1848 both New York and Pennsylvania passed legislation giving married women control over any real property (land) or personal property they brought to marriage. But the organized women’s rights movement drew its greatest inspiration from the abolitionist cause. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who played an active role in a local Female Anti-Slavery Society, is an apt example. Together with other American women, Cady Stanton attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Male leaders of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society relegated the women delegates to a balcony and excluded them from the formal deliberations. Eight years later, Cady Stanton worked with Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister; Susan B. Anthony, a young women’s rights activist; and other similarly inclined men and women to organize a women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Massachusetts resident Margaret Fuller explored many reform impulses of the day during her brief life (1810–1850), Educated in the classics by her father at home (in Cambridge), in the 1830s she embraced a new intellectual sensibility called Transcendentalism. Fuller cultivated friendships with two other famous Transcendentalists living in the Boston area: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Transcendentalists believed in the primacy of the spirit and the essential harmony between people and the natural world. They took their inspiration from European Romantics, who celebrated the beauty of nature in art, music, and literature. Transcendentalists also encouraged engagement with the world: in Emerson’s words, “I will not shut myself out of this globe of action, and transplant an oak into a flower-pot.” In 1840, Fuller began editing The Dial, the transcendentalist movement’s magazine. PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 418 ${bmicon} In the early 1840s, Fuller sponsored study groups among her female neighbors in Boston. By pondering questions such as “What is beauty?” and “What is truth?” the groups sought to discover the “connection between nature and the affections of the soul.” Fuller also lent her moral support to a Transcendentalist community named Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. There, men and women shared equally in the home chores and fieldwork. However, most members preferred thinking to laboring, and the venture failed in 1846. Around this time, Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, one of the first feminist essays written by an American. “I would have Woman lay aside all thought, such as she habitually cherishes, of being led and taught by men,” wrote Fuller. She then embraced the role of investigative journalist, writing about the plight of slaves, Indians, and imprisoned women for the New York Tribune. In 1847, the newspaper sent her to Italy to report on the Italian unification movement. Returning home in 1850, Fuller; her new husband, Italian revolutionary Giavanni Angelo, Marchese d’Ossoli; and their son drowned off the shore of Fire Island, New York, when their ship sank. In just two decades of her adult life, Margaret Fuller had embraced a spectrum of social ideas, from reformist to revolutionary. In the mid–1840s, the editor of the New York Morning News declared that the United States had a “manifest destiny” to “overspread the continent” and claim the “desert wastes.” Those inhabiting the “desert wastes”—Mexican settlers and a variety of Indian groups—apparently would have little say in the matter. The term manifest destiny soon became a catchall phrase, justifying American efforts not only to conquer new territory but also to seek out new markets for its goods across the oceans. With its growing population and increasingly specialized regional economies, the country strove to expand both geographically and economically. full view Territorial Expansion of the United States In the seventy years after 1873, the western border of the US expanded from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast. Many Americans believed in a national “Manifest Destiny” -- the divine right of the US to expand its boarders to encompass the entire continent -- but there were also personal reasons to move west. International political developments and technological innovations led to expanded opportunites for trading. In 1846 Britain repealed its exclusionary Corn Laws, which had protected its own agricultural markets from foreign competition. As a result, farmers in the U.S. Midwest had fresh incentive to produce wheat for export. The invention of the clipper ship, which ushered in “the golden age of American shipping,” also helped in the expansion of global trade. Narrow-bodied vessels, topped with large sails on towering masts, the new ships “clipped off ” the miles. American merchants used them to import tea from China and wool from Australia. Investors from the eastern United States financed trading companies that marketed antelope skins, beaver pelts, and cured beef to places as far away as Cuba. They eyed Asian ports hungrily, an impulse that would result in U.S. seizure of Pacific island naval waystations in the late nineteenth century. Within the United States, many groups advocated the expansion of the country’s borders. Among all American exports to foreign countries, cotton was king, accounting for half of the total goods shipped after 1840. Southern planters and northern merchants alike made huge profits from the cotton trade. In 1840 English textile manufacturers depended on the fiber, and the American South produced about three-quarters of their supply. No wonder then that southern slave owners were eager to extend their land holdings into Texas. They were joined in that hope by residents of the western states, men such as Davy Crockett, hoping to press into the fresh lands of the far West and Southwest. Little did they know that their interest would evetually lead to all-out war. full view The Alamo 1 The Alamo (Photodisc, Inc.) In the early 1830s, the Mexican government grew alarmed by the growing number of American emigrants to Texas. Worried that the settlers would refuse to pledge allegiance to Mexico, CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 419 ${bmicon} that country closed the Texas border to further in-migration. By 1835 only one out of every eight residents of Texas was a Tejano (that is, a native Spanish speaker); the rest, numbering 30,000, hailed from the United States. The U.S.-born Texians, together with some prominent Tejanos, had become increasingly well armed and militant. They organized volunteer patrols to attack Indian settlements. These forces became the precursor of the Texas Rangers, a statewide organization of law enforcement officers. full view The Alamo 2 The Alamo (Photodisc, Inc.) In 1836 the Texians decided to press for independence from Mexico. Only by becoming a separate nation, they believed, could they trade freely with the United States, establish their own schools, and collect and spend their own taxes. The pro-independence Texians included Davy Crockett. He had lost his congressional race in 1835, partly because of his opposition to Jackson’s Indian removal policies. Crockett moved to Texas in late 1835; he hoped to revitalize his political career there and also find work as a land agent. In early February 1836, Crockett and the other armed Texians retreated to a Spanish mission in San Antonio called the Alamo. The next month, a military force led by Antonio López de Santa Anna, president of the Republic of Mexico and a general in the army, battled them for 13 days. All 187 Texians died at the hands of Santa Anna and his men (the Mexican leader lost 600 of his own troops). Historians disagree on whether the Alamo defenders died fighting or were executed by Mexican soldiers. In April a force of Texians and their Tejano allies, including military leader Juan Seguin, surprised Santa Anna and his men at the San Jacinto River and killed another 600 of them. The victors captured Santa Anna and declared themselves a new nation. Sam Houston, former U.S. congressman from Tennessee and commander-in-chief of the Texian army, became president of the Republic of Texas (also called the Lone Star Republic) in 1837. Some Tejanos who objected to Mexican high-handedness joined in supporting the new republic. They resented restrictions imposed by Mexico limiting trade between the Mexican states and the United States. For these reasons a number of prominent Tejano leaders, including Jose Antonio Navarro, Francisco Ruiz, and Lorenzo de Zavala, signed their names to the Texas Declaration of Independence. De Zavala became vice president of the new republic. In New Mexico and other northern territories of Mexico, many Spanish speakers had long felt abandoned by the Mexican government, which had made no provisions for their self-government and, as in the case of Texas, inhibited trade relations with the United States. In 1835 one New Mexico newspaper editorialized, “The rain of brute force has been replaced by reason. We can be sure that Americans will not take the land by bullets. Their weapons are their industry, their liberty, and their independence. Mexico has left us in a deplorable state, a deplorable darkness.” Although other Mexican provinces protested the way they were treated by the government, Texas was the only Mexican state to launch a successful rebellion against Mexico. full view Galveston, Texas 1844 The young city of Galveston is shown in the 1844 Lithograph. (Library of Congress) Texas’s independence raised the fears of U.S. abolitionists and blacks living in the new republic. In contrast to Mexico, which had abolished slavery in 1829, Texas approved a constitution that not only legalized slavery but also prohibited free blacks from living in the country. Greenbury Logan, a black man who owned a farm near Austin, petitioned to stay. He wrote, “Every privilege dear to a free man is taken away.” But vigilantes forced him to leave. They also forced out many Tejanos. Among them was Juan Seguin, who had helped defeat Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto and was now the mayor of San Antonio. Not until 1981 did another Tejano, Henry Cisneros, hold the office of mayor of the city of San Antonio. As an independent republic, Texas became a hotly contested political issue in the United States. During the election of 1844, politicians began to debate whether the United States should annex Texas. Van Buren was outspoken in his opposition to the idea. As a result, TABLE 12-4 The Election of 1844 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote James K. Polk Democratic 1,338,464 170 Henry Clay Whig 1,300,097 105 James G. Birney Liberty 62,300   PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 420 ${bmicon} the frankly expansionist Democrats spurned the former president as a candidate and nominated James K. Polk of Tennessee. They called for “the reannexation of Texas” and the “reoccupation of Oregon.” Their rallying cry became “54°40′ or Fight,” a reference to their desire to own the area (expressed in terms of its longitude and latitude coordinates) claimed by the British in present-day Canada south of Alaska and west of the Continental Divide. Kentucky congressman Henry Clay received the Whig nomination after he announced he was against the annexation of Texas. But under pressure from southerners, he later changed his mind, to the disgust of party leaders. full view Houston, Texas 1845 This engraving of Houston, Texas appeared in the Illustrated London News in January 1845. (Library of Congress) Neither the Democrats nor the Whigs had shown an interest in addressing the issue of slavery directly in the last presidential election. Yet in 1844 the controversy over the annexation of Texas made it impossible for the two parties to ignore the growing controversy over bound labor. Under the banner of the young Liberty Party, some abolitionists charged that territorial expansion would mean the continued growth and prosperity of the slave system; they pointed to the public pronouncements of southern planters, who were outspoken in their desire to expand their slaveholdings into the fertile lands of Texas. In 1844 the Liberty Party once again nominated James G. Birney as its presidential candidate. The Liberty Party revealed a major split within the abolitionist movement in general. One faction within that movement was represented by the prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator and a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison had alienated his conservative supporters with several CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 421 ${bmicon} controversial principles. Specifically, he believed that women had a right to participate equally in the abolitionist movement with men. He also saw all political institutions and parties as inherently corrupt, since they upheld the U.S. Constitution, a document Garrison believed legitimized slavery. Another abolitionist faction was represented by members of the Liberty Party, men who believed that political action, far more than moral suasion (appealing to people’s sense of justice and humanity) would halt the spread of slavery. By upholding abolitionism but rejecting Garrison’s views, Liberty men claimed that slavery was ultimately a political issue, one that should rightfully claim the attention of all political parties. full view Henry Clay - Daguerreotype Daguerreotype of Henry Clay around the time when he played a major role in the Compromise of 1850. For their part, Democrats and Whigs believed, correctly, that most voters would ignore slavery when they cast their ballots. Thus members of both parties tried to silence both sides of the slavery debate. They turned a deaf ear to the proslavery advocates on one hand and squelched northern abolitionist opinion by ignoring petitions to Congress on the other. In the end, Polk won the election. The expansionists had elected one of their most ardent champions to the highest office in the land. Still, Polk was not interested in going to war with Great Britain over the vast territory of Oregon. In 1846 the two countries reached a compromise. Britain would accept the 49th parallel as the border between Canada and the United States and retain the disputed islands off the coast of Vancouver. The United States settled for one-half of its original claim to Oregon. Therefore, it was free to turn its full attention to extending its southern and western borders. Texas leaders wanted to become part of the United States. In 1845, as one of his last acts as president, Tyler invited Texas to become the twenty-eighth state. He also understood PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 422 ${bmicon} that annexing Texas was a way to goad Mexico into open hostilities; Mexico had warned the United States that such a move would mean war. A joint resolution of both houses of Congress confirmed Texas statehood in December of 1845. The boundaries between Mexico and the new state of Texas Mexico remained in dispute. Mexico recognized the Nueces River as the boundary for Texas. In contrast, Texians and U.S. politicians envisioned the boundary hundreds of miles to the west at the Rio Grande. Complicating matters further, the new president, James K. Polk, had sent an envoy, John Slidell, to purchase California and a disputed section of Texas from Mexico. Mexico refused the deal. Nevertheless, around this time, Polk wrote in his diary that if he could not acquire all of New Mexico and California through diplomatic negotiation, he was determined to obtain them by force. The stage was set for war. Armed conflict broke out in January 1846. U.S. troops, under the command of General Zachary Taylor (a veteran of wars against Tecumseh, the Seminoles, and Black Hawk), clashed with a Mexican force near the mouth of the Rio Grande near Matamoros. Taylor had deliberately moved his troops across the Nueces River into disputed territory; his intention was to provoke an armed response from Mexico. A skirmish ensued, 11 Americans were killed, and Taylor pulled back. Polk used this military action as justification for a declaration of war against Mexico. The president declared, “American blood has been shed on American soil.” Not all Americans supported the war. Transcendentalists and others objected to what they saw as a naked land grab. Refusing to pay taxes for what he considered a war to expand slavery, Henry David Thoreau went to jail. He explained his actions in an essay, “Civil Disobedience,” published in 1848. He wrote, “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” Nativists also objected to the war, fearing that the United States would have to assimilate thousands of Indians and Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics. Some members of Congress also condemned Polk’s “act of aggression.” A newly elected U.S. Representative from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, together with a few other legislators, sponsored a series of resolutions. The “Spot Resolutions” demanded that Polk specify the exact spot where bloodshed had occurred. The Wilmot Proviso declared that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist” in territories the United States acquired from Mexico. Predictably, opponents of slavery were among Polk’s most outspoken critics. Soon after the outbreak of war, Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania attached an amendment to a bill appropriating money for the war. Called the Wilmot Proviso, the measure declared that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist” in territories the United States acquired from Mexico. Though a member of the Democratic party, Wilmot spoke primarily as a white Northerner; he wanted to preserve the West for “the sons of toil of my own race and color.” Wilmot’s views show how racial prejudice and antislavery sentiment coexisted in the minds of many white Northerners. The House approved the Proviso, but the Senate did not. Abandoning party loyalty, southern Democrats claimed that Congress had no right to deprive slaveholders of their private property anywhere in the nation. Meanwhile, Polk launched a three-pronged campaign against Mexico. He sent Taylor into northern Mexico and ordered General Stephen Watts Kearny into New Mexico and then into California. Following the third directive of the campaign, General-in-Chief of the U.S. Army Winfield Scott coordinated an amphibious landing of 10,000 soldiers at Vera Cruz, on the Gulf of Mexico coast. Marching west, Scott’s men followed in the footsteps of the Spanish conquistadors of the sixteenth century. Mexican forces tried to defend their homeland using guerrilla tactics. But U.S. soldiers overcame them by terrorizing civilians. Scott acknowledged that the men under his command had “committed atrocities to make Heaven weep and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 423 ${bmicon} full view MAP 12.6 THE U.S.–MEXICAN WAR During the U.S.–Mexican War, American troops marched deep into the interior of Mexico. General Winfield Scott raised the American flag over Mexico City on September 14, 1847. The treaty that concluded the war was named after the village of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a few miles north of the Mexican capital. The U.S. army withdrew the last of its troops from foreign soil in July 1848. every American of Christian morals blush for his country…. Murder, robbery and rape of mothers and daughters in the presence of tied-up males of the families.” full view The Storming of Chapultepec Chapultepec Castle was the last major obstacle before American troops could take Mexico City in the Mexican War. Artillery bombarded the castle for two days before two storming parties scaled the walls. (Library of Congress) Along the way, at the Battle of Churubusco in August 1847, U.S. forces encountered a battalion of Irish immigrants who had originally served with the United States but were now fighting for Mexico. The San Patricio Battalion (St. Patrick’s Company) consisted primarily of Irish-born men who had deserted from the U.S. army and defected to Mexico. Some had recoiled at the atrocities committed by U.S. troops on Mexicans; others wanted to ally with Catholic Mexico in opposition to Protestant America. Court martial Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 424 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Senator John C. Calhoun Warns Against Incorporating Mexico into the United States In January 1848, Senator John C. Calhoun delivered a speech, addressing his remarks to President Polk and to his fellow lawmakers. He urged them to resist calls to incorporate all of a conquered Mexico into the United States. Calhoun favored the spread of slavery into new territories. However, here he expresses the fear that residents of Mexico were incapable of becoming suitable U.S. citizens for “racial” reasons. It is without example or precedent, either to hold Mexico as a province, or to incorporate her into our union. No example of such a line of policy can be found. We have conquered many of the neighboring tribes of Indians, but we never thought of holding them in subjection—never of incorporating them into our Union. They have either been left as an independent people amongst us, or been driven into the forests. I know further, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other half is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest such a union as that! … Sir, it is a remarkable fact, that in the whole history of man, as far as my knowledge extends, there is no instance whatever of any civilized colored races being found equal to the establishment of free popular government, although by far the largest portion of the human family is composed of these races…. Are we to associate with ourselves as equals, companions, and fellow-citizens, the Indians and mixed race of Mexico? Sir, I should consider such a thing as fatal to our institutions. Calhoun then moves on to another theme. He disputes the notion that Mexico can begin as a territory and then work its way up to statehood, following the standards Congress set for other western territories. You can establish a Territorial Government for every State in Mexico, and there are some twenty of them. You can appoint governors, judges, and magistrates. You can give the people a subordinate government, allowing them to legislate for themselves, whilst you defray the cost. So far as the law goes, the thing is done. There is no analogy between this and our Territorial Governments. Our Territories are only an offset of our own people, or foreigners from the same regions from which we came. They are small in number. They are incapable of forming a government. It would be inconvenient for them to sustain a government, if it were formed; and they are very much obliged to the United States for undertaking the trouble, knowing that, on the attainment of their majority—when they come to manhood—at twenty-one—they will be introduced to an equality with all other members of the Union. It is entirely different with Mexico. You have no need of armies to keep your Territories in subjection. But when you incorporate Mexico, you must have powerful armies to keep them in subjection. You may call it annexation, but it is a forced annexation, which is a contradiction in terms, according to my conception. You will be involved, in one word, in all the evils which I attribute to holding Mexico as a province. In fact, it will be but a Provincial Government, under the name of a Territorial Government. How long will that last? How long will it be before Mexico will be capable of incorporation into our Union? Why, if we judge from the examples before us, it will be a very long time. Ireland has been held in subjection by England for seven or eight hundred years, and yet still remains hostile, although her people are of kindred race with the conquerors. A few French Canadians on this continent yet maintain the attitude of hostile people; and never will the time come, in my opinion, Mr. President, that these Mexicans will be reconciled to your authority…. Of all nations of the earth they are the most pertinacious—have the highest sense of nationality—hold out the longest, and often even with the least prospect of effecting their object. On this subject also I have conversed with officers of the army, and they all entertain the same opinion, that these people are now hostile, and will continue so…. We make a great mistake, sir, when we suppose that all people are capable of self-government. We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged in a very respectable quarter, that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially this continent. It is a great mistake. None but people advanced to a very high state of moral and intellectual improvement are capable, in a civilized state, of maintaining free government; and amongst those who are so purified, very few, indeed, have had the good fortune of forming a constitution capable of endurance. Calhoun also warns that “these twenty-odd Mexican States” would eventually have power in Congress. He asks his listeners whether they would want their own states “governed by” these peoples. Source: Clyde A. Milner, ed., Major Problems in the History of the American West: Documents and Essays (1989), pp. 219–221. trials of captured San Patricio soldiers resulted in death sentences for 70 of them. Heeding formal protests from the archbishop of Mexico and the British ambassador of Mexico, General Scott pardoned 50 of the men because of their young age or because they could prove they had not fought willingly with the Mexicans. Yet Mexico continued recruiting San Patricio soldiers for the duration of the war. In all, more than 4800 Irish-born soldiers served in the U.S. army during the U.S.–Mexican War. Of that number, about 4 percent ended up fighting for the Mexicans. full view General Winfield Scott in Mexico City In August 1847, General Winfield Scott and U. S. troops captured Mexico City and brought the Mexican War to an unofficial end. (Library of Congress) In September 1847 Mexico City surrendered, and the war ended. Mexico had been in no shape to resist superior U.S. firepower. The United States paid for Scott’s victory with 13,000 lives and $100 million. The Mexicans lost 20,000 lives. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (approved by the Senate in 1848) Mexico agreed to give up its claims to Texas. The United States gained all of Texas and half of the territory of Mexico: the area west of Texas, comprising present-day New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Male residents of areas formerly held by Mexico were given one year to decide whether to stay in the United States and become citizens or return to Mexico. They were also entitled to retain their titles to the land, a provision that proved difficult to enforce in the face of European American land hunger. The U.S. government paid Mexico $18,250,000. Of that amount, $15 million was designated as payment for land lost; the rest was restitution to U.S. citizens who might bring claims against Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 425 ${bmicon} Mexico for damaged or destroyed property during the war. Americans had conflicting views of the treaty. Abolitionists saw it as a blood-drenched gift from American taxpayers to slaveholders. Others argued that Polk had squandered a rare opportunity to seize all of Mexico. In the 1830s and 1840s, mass population movements affected almost every aspect of American life. Immigrants from western Europe helped to swell the nation’s labor force in midwestern farming communities and eastern cities. The arrival of the Roman Catholic Irish provoked a backlash among native-born Protestants and spawned a nativist political movement. Reformers in the United States and Europe went back and forth across the Atlantic, exchanging ideas related to women’s rights, abolitionism, and utopian communities. As European Americans pushed the boundaries of the country west and south, they clashed with Indians and with foreign powers that claimed those lands as their own. Thus migration and immigration had profound consequences for American politics, economy, ideas, and society. Most striking was the restlessness among land-hungry slave owners and antislavery forces alike. The war with Mexico in general and the clash over the Wilmot Proviso in particular PART 4 ###8226; EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY, 1803###8211;1848 426 ${bmicon} opened a new chapter in the debate over slavery. In considering the Proviso, Congressmen gave up their party loyalties as Democrats or Whigs and began to think of themselves as Southerners and Northerners. When Wilmot proclaimed that he wanted to preserve the West for his “own color,” he revealed that even antislavery Northerners did not necessarily embrace black people as equals. When Southerners indicated that even the vast expanse of Texas would not satisfy their desire for land, they revealed that the conflict over slavery was far from over. In fact, that conflict was about to enter a new and ominous stage. The American Whig Party, 1834–1856 odur.let.rug.nl/∼usa/E/uswhig/whigsxx.htm This site explores the rise and fall of the anti-Jackson Whig Party. The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour: Exploring Democracy in America wwww.tocqueville.org/ Text and images are part of this companion site to C-SPAN’s recent programming on de Tocqueville. America’s First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839–1862 memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/daghome.html The Library of Congress’s daguerreotype collection consists of more than 650 photographs from the 1839–1864 period. The collection includes portraits, architectural views, and some street scenes. Important Black Abolitionists www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/influ.html This Library of Congress exhibit includes pictures and text related to African American abolitionists. On the Trail in Kansas www.ukans.edu/carrie/kancoll/galtrl.htm This Kansas collection site provides primary sources and images related to the Oregon Trail and European Americans’ early movement westward. The Era of the Mountain Men www.xmission.com/∼drudy/amm.html This site includes private correspondence from early settlers in the area west of the Mississippi River. Exploring Amistad amistad.mysticseaport.org/main/welcome.html The Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, maintains this site, which includes collections of historical documents related to the slave revolt aboard the Amistad and the trial that followed. The Trail of Tears www.americanwest.com/pages/indians.htm A site on the forced migration of Cherokees from their home in the Southeast to Indian Territory. The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden americanhistory.si.edu/presidency/index.html The Smithsonian Institution maintains this site on American presidents. ”Been Here So Long”: Selections from the WPA American Slave Narratives newdeal.feri.org/asn/index.htm A site devoted to the interviews of former slaves conducted in the late 1930s. The Roberts Case and the Efforts to Desegregate Boston Schools www.sjchs-history.org This site explores the legal challenge to racial segregation in Boston’s schools during the late 1840s. The Mexican–American War Memorial sunsite.dcaa.unam.mx/revistas/1847 Images and text explore the causes, course, and outcome of the Mexican–American War. Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (1999). Michael Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997). Mary P. Ryan, The Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (1983). Charles G. Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (1991). CHAPTER 12 ###8226; PEOPLES IN MOTION, 1832###8211;1848 427 ${bmicon} Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960 (1962). Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (1990). David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992). Jennifer S. H. Brown, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (1980). Kathleen Neils Conzen, Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836–1860: Accommodation and Community in a Frontier City (1976). Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). John Ehle, Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (1988). John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (1979). Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: the Inside of the Antebellum Slave Market (1999). Philip J. Schwarz, Migrants Against Slavery: Virginians and the Nation (2001). Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (1984). Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 (1987). Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (1979). Lawrence F. Kohl, The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (1989). Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (1966). David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (rev. ed., 1999). Charles Capper, Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life (1992). Jed Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder: Temperance Reform in Cincinnati from the Washington Revival to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (1984). Michael D. Fellman, The Unbounded Frame: Freedom and Community in Nineteenth-Century America Utopianism (1969). Howard Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy (1987). Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (1983). Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (1998). Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828–1860 (1992). Arnoldo De Leén, The Tejano Community, 1836–1900 (1982). Richard Griswold Del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (1990). Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (1985). David Alan Johnson, Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840–1890 (1992). Paul D. Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835–1836 (1992). Ramón Ruiz, ed., The Mexican War: Was It Manifest Destiny? (1963). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter12 To Chapter 12 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 428 ${bmicon}   1848 Gold is discovered in California. Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York. Free Soil Party is founded. 1849 ”Forty-Niners” migrate to California. 1850 Clayton–Bulwer Treaty. Compromise of 1850; Fugitive Slave Law. 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty. Indiana Constitution bars in-migration of African Americans. 1852 American (Nativist) party is founded. Abolitionists free fugitive slave Shadrach. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 1853 Gadsden Purchase. Matthew Perry’s fleet enters Tokyo Harbor. 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act. Republican party is founded. Cyrus McCormick patents mechanical reaper. Henry David Thoreau, Walden. 1855 William Walker captures Granada, Nicaragua. Pottowatamie Creek massacre. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. 1856 Lecompton (Kansas) Constitution. 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court Case. George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All. 1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates. 1859 Harpers Ferry raid. Harriet Wilson, Our Nig. Cortina’s War in Texas. 1860 South Carolina secedes from Union. 1861 Confederate States of America is formed. Civil War begins. U.S. Sanitary Commission is founded. 1862 Minnesota (Santee) Sioux uprising. Congress passes Homestead, Morrill, and Pacific Railroad acts. Battle of Antietam. 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Richmond Bread Riots. Battle of Gettysburg. Northern antidraft riots. Lincoln delivers Gettysburg Address. THE CIVIL WAR WAS THE COUNTRY’S GREATEST POLITICAL AND MORAL crisis. By 1860 the two-party system could no longer contain the dispute between proslavery and antislavery forces. That dispute centered on the fate of slavery in new territories to the west. Several dramatic developments—the secession of southern states from the union, the formation of the Confederate States of America, and a Confederate attack on a federal fort in Charleston Harbor—precipitated all-out war. In the spring of 1861 few people could have anticipated that the conflict would drag on for four long years and claim more than 600,000 lives. The Second Party System, based on divisions between Whigs and Democrats, unraveled in the 1850s. Both parties represented coalitions of groups that expressed cultural, not sectional, sensibilities. Yet a series of events led to a realignment of parties into northern and southern camps. Many Northerners chafed under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required that all citizens assist law enforcement agents in retrieving runaway slaves for their owners. The founding of the Republican party in 1854 gave a political voice to Northerners hoping to preserve the western territories for family farmers who would not have to compete for land and labor with large slaveholders. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that black people had no rights that any court was bound to respect. Violent conflicts between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas and a failed raid by abolitionists on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in 1859), revealed that legislators’ resolutions and maneuverings were insufficient to stave off bloodshed. In pursuing a militant nationalism, Confederates hoped to compensate for their relative weakness in terms of population and industrial capacity compared with the North. They believed that they could use a large, docile black labor force to grow food and serve as a support system for the army. They anticipated that European nations, dependent on southern cotton, would extend them diplomatic recognition and that white civilians would rally to the defense of their homeland no matter what the price in money or blood. Confederates also believed that western Indians would gladly assist them in their cause against a hated U.S. army and that brilliant southern generals could outstrategize a huge, lumbering invading army indefinitely. On all these counts they miscalculated, but their miscalculations were revealed gradually. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 429 ${bmicon}   During the war, white Southerners had to contend with two major unanticipated consequences of the conflict. First, war mobilization efforts across the South necessitated the centralization of government and economic policymaking. Principled states’ rights supporters opposed these efforts. Second, slaves and free blacks alike proved traitorous to the Confederate cause. In myriad ways—running away from their owners and spying for the enemy, slowing their work pace in the fields, and fighting for the Union army—black people served as combatants in the war. They fought for their families and their freedom and for a country that would grant them full citizenship rights. In the North, only in late 1862 did President Abraham Lincoln announce that the United States aimed to destroy slavery, but violent antidraft, antiblack riots in several cities showed that the northern population was deeply divided over emancipation. Soon after the end of the war, in April 1865, congressional Republicans began to challenge President Andrew Johnson’s plan for reconstructing the South; they considered it too lenient toward the former Confederate states. In 1867 these political leaders had enough votes to enact their own plan, calling for the enfranchisement of black men in the South, the reorganization of southern state governments under leadership loyal to the Union, and the enactment of a labor contract system between southern landowners and black laborers. Members of the Republican party backed a strong Union, a federal system in which the central government would ensure that individual men could pursue their own self-interest in the marketplace of goods and ideas. Yet the Civil War era exposed the limits of the Republican vision. The Plains Indians sought not citizenship but freedom from federal interference altogether. Women and working people challenged various components of the Republican ideal, with its emphasis on unbridled individualism and federal subsidies of business. African Americans aspired to own property, vote, and send their children to school, just as other nineteenth-century Americans did. They wanted to farm their own land and care for their own families free from white intrusion. Yet congressional Republicans did not enact large-scale land redistribution programs; most felt that once the rebels were subdued and slavery abolished, their duty was done. Civil strife persisted into the postwar period. Union generals turned from quelling the southern rebellion to putting down armed resistance among the Plains Indians. Former rebels formed vigilante groups to attack black voters and their allies in the South. By the early 1870s most Northerners had lost interest in the welfare of the former slaves and acquiesced as former Confederates reclaimed state governments. The last occupying forces withdrew from the South in 1877. In welding the country together as a single economic and political unit, the Republicans had triumphed. However, white Southerners retained control over their local social and political affairs. The revolution to secure African American civil rights was stalled for nearly 100 years. 1864 Fort Pillow massacre of African American (Union) soldiers. Sand Creek (Colorado) massacre. Sherman’s March to the Sea. 1865 Freedmen’s Bureau is formed. Confederacy is defeated. Lincoln is assassinated; Andrew Johnson becomes president. Thirteenth Amendment is ratified. 1866 Civil Rights Act of 1866. National Labor Union is founded. Equal Rights Association is founded. Ku Klux Klan is organized. Congress approves Fourteenth Amendment. 1867 National Grange is founded. U.S. purchases Alaska from Russia. Reconstruction Act of 1867. 1868 Johnson is impeached and acquitted. U.S.– China Burlingame Treaty. Colored Labor Union is founded. Fourteenth Amendment is ratified 1869 Congress approves Fifteenth Amendment. Transcontinental Railroad is completed. National Woman Suffrage Association and American Woman Suffrage Association are formed. Knights of Labor is founded. 1870 Fifteenth Amendment is ratified. 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. 1872 Apex Mining Act of 1872. Congress creates Yellowstone National Park. Susan B. Anthony attempts to vote. Crédit Moblier scandal. 1873 Timber Culture Act. Onset of depression. 1874 Freedman’s Savings Bank fails. 1875 Civil Rights Act. Resumption Act. Whiskey Ring is exposed. 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn. Contested presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. 1877 Compromise of 1877. California Workingmen’s Party is formed. Great Railroad Strike. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 430 ${bmicon}         Regional Economies and Conflicts       Individualism Vs. Group Identity       The Paradox of Southern Political Power       The Deepening Conflict over Slavery       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 431 ${bmicon} ON JANUARY 24, 1848, HENRY WILLIAM BIGLER TOOK A BREAK FROM BUILDING A sawmill for John Sutter in California’s Sacramento Valley and penned in his pocket diary, “This day some kind of mettle was found … that looks like goald.” GOLD! News of the discovery at Sutter’s mill spread like wildfire. By 1848 immigrants from all over the world and migrants from all over the United States had begun to pour into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Dubbed “the Forty-Niners,” they had journeyed westward across the mountains, from the tenements of New York City and the great plantations of Mississippi; north from Mexico; and over the oceans, from western Europe, China, and South America. Equipping themselves with simple mining tools, the Forty-Niners began to dig for buried treasure, determined to stake a claim and make a fortune. And so they sang: full view A Forty-Niner’s Covered Wagon John Bemmerly used this wagon on his trek from Ohio to the California gold country in 1849. (National Archives) I’ll scrape the mountains clean, my boys, I’ll drain the rivers dry, A pocket full of rocks bring home, So brothers, don’t you cry! During the Gold Rush years of 1848 to 1859, various cultural groups were thrown in close proximity to each other. Men from Belgium, France, Germany, Scotland, Chile, and Long Island learned to appreciate flour and corn tortillas (tortillas de harina and tortillas de maiz) and beef cooked in chile, staples of the Mexican diet. The disproportionate number of men permitted small numbers of women to challenge European American gender conventions. A gold miner might take a break from washing his clothes, straighten his aching back, and watch a Mexican woman and her daughter, well mounted on their horses, rounding up a herd of near-wild cattle. An-Choi, a Chinese immigrant woman, earned a tidy sum by opening a brothel that catered to gold miners. Biddy Mason, an enslaved woman, successfully sued for her freedom and became the first African American homesteader in Los Angeles. California came to be part of the United States as a result of the U.S.-Mexican War. In the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico agreed to hand over territory stretching from Texas northwest to California. As a result, the United States obtained a vast expanse of land—almost 530,000 square miles—called the Mexican Cession. In addition to the land, the nation added to its population large numbers of men, women, and children already living in the area—13,000 Spanish speakers and 100,000 Indians (all former Mexican citizens) in California alone. After 1848 many new settlers streamed into California, and the migrants pressed for statehood, granted in 1850. By that year 90,000 new European American settlers lived in the state. Prominent among the Forty-Niners were Chinese immigrants—20,026 had arrived in California by 1852. Within two PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 432 ${bmicon} decades their numbers would swell to 50,000. From the American South came both free and enslaved African Americans; between 1850 and 1852, the California black population more than tripled from almost 700 people to over 2200. Rapid growth meant that, soon after the beginning of the Gold Rush, California had surpassed the minimum population necessary for statehood—60,000 people. California became a state in 1850, but only after a bitter Congressional debate over the extension of slavery. The resulting Compromise of 1850 included several provisions bearing on the issue of slavery: California would be admitted as a free state; slave-trading would be outlawed in the District of Columbia; carved out of the Mexican Cession, the Utah and New Mexico territories could decide for themselves whether or not to legalize slavery. Finally, a new, harsh, fugitive slave law provided for the capture and return of slaves who found their way to free states in the north or west, including California. Though called a compromise, in fact these provisions inflamed the passions on both sides of the slavery debate—abolitionists in the North and slaveowners in the South. Despite California’s status as a free state, the principle of free labor was often violated. For example, in 1850 the state enacted a law with the misleading title, “An Act for the Government and Protection of the Indians,” which provided for the indenture or apprenticeship of Indian children to white men for indeterminate periods of time. The law also allowed for the hiring out, to the highest bidder, of adult Indians deemed guilty of vagrancy. Indians in the region belonged to the Uto-Aztecan, Hokan, Penutian, Yukian, and Athabascan language families. Nevertheless, European Americans ignored these distinctions and called all Indians by the contemptuous term “Diggers,” denounced them as lazy and uncivilized, and denied them the rights accorded American citizens. Though a free state, California also enacted discriminatory legislation against African Americans. The state’s Fugitive Slave Law of 1852 decreed that, regardless of his or her current status, a black person who entered the state as a slave and thereafter attempted to remain on free soil was a fugitive slave. That year, three African American gold miners, Robert Perkins, Carter Perkins, and Sandy Perkins, all former slaves who had been freed by their owner, were arrested under the law and ordered re-enslaved in their native Mississippi. Moreover, some European Americans continued to hold people against their will illegally. Thomas Shearon, a quartz-mining entrepreneur from Nashville, Tennessee, defied the state constitution by using slave labor in the vicinity of San Francisco. Other California labor systems revealed that the principle of free labor was not carried out in practice. Chinese immigrants to California entered the country organized in companies, or district associations, indebted to merchants for their transportation and bound to work for an employer until the debt was repaid. Fearing competition from cheap labor, alarmed European Americans labeled these Asian workers “coolies” (i.e., enslaved laborers). By 1852 the Chinese in California (almost all of them men) had been pushed out of mining as a result of the discriminatory Foreign Miners Tax, a measure leveled with special force against both Chinese and Mexican miners. Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed U.S. citizenship rights to Mexicans, those rights were not enforced under the law. Many Mexicans found them- CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 433 ${bmicon} selves vulnerable to violence and land dispossession perpetrated by the growing European American majority. Delegates to California’s constitutional convention in 1849 stipulated that only white Californios (descendants of the original Spanish colonists) were entitled to vote, over the objections of the 8 Californios among the 48 delegates in attendance. The majority of delegates also approved a measure prohibiting Indians and blacks from testifying against white people in court. full view Slave Dockworkers, 1860 - Brady Photo Slaves are synonymous with plantation agriculture in the South, but they were found in almost every other kind of job as well. These dockworkers were photographed by Mathew Brady about 1860 in Alexandria, Virginia. (National Archives) At mid-century the legal, economic, and cultural tensions among different groups in California mirrored tensions within the country as a whole. Rapid population growth, the coming together of many different cultures, and dramatic economic changes all fueled the conflict over slavery. The controversy surrounding California statehood revealed that awkward and unjust Congressional “compromises” would satisfy neither side in a debate that was becoming increasingly strident and even violent. All over the nation, in the pages of the popular press, on the streets of Boston, in the cotton fields of Alabama, no less than in the courts of California, Americans gradually united around a radical proposition: that the question of whether or not human beings could be held as private property was an issue on which there could be no compromise. It is tempting to view the decade of the 1850s with an eye toward the impending firestorm of 1861. However, in the early 1850s, few Americans could have anticipated the Civil War. At mid-century the United States was going through a period of rapid transition. New developments such as railroads, the factory system, and more efficient farm equipment led to significant changes in regional economies and began to give shape to an emerging national economy. Annexation of land in the Southwest and West and the conquest of Indians on the Plains produced wrenching social upheavals for Native Americans in those regions. Meanwhile, Americans continued to wrestle with the role of slavery in this rapidly changing society. On the Plains, Indians confronted wrenching transformations in their way of life. Forced to relocate from the Southeast to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), the Five Southern (“Civilized”) Tribes, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole, grappled with the task of rebuilding their political institutions. By the 1850s the Cherokees had established a new capital at Talequah, along with public schools. They published a Cherokee newspaper (the Advocate) and created a flourishing print culture in their own language. To the north and west of Indian Territory, Plains Indian tribes such as the Sioux, Kiowahs, and Arapahos exploited the horse, which had been introduced by Europeans in the Southwest in the seventeenth century. By raiding, trading, and breeding, these groups increased their stock of horses, which they used to hunt bison and transport their lodges and food from site to site. With abundant food and the means to trade with whites, these groups prospered for a brief period in the mid-nineteenth century. Their beadwork and animal skin painting exemplified the artistic vitality of their cultures. In the 1850s U.S. officials negotiated treaties with various Plains Indian groups to enable European Americans to move west without fear of attack. Most settlers were bent on heading straight for California or the Northwest, traversing the Plains, which they called the Great American Desert in the mistaken belief that the absence of trees there demonstrated the infertility of the soil. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 and the Treaty of Fort Atkinson three years later provided that the government could build roads and establish forts along western trails and that, in return, Indians would be compensated with supplies and food for their loss of hunting PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 434 ${bmicon} rights in the region. A young Cheyenne woman, Iron Teeth, recalled “the government presents” to her people in these terms: “We were given beef, but we did not care for this kind of meat. Great piles of bacon were stacked upon the prairies and distributed to us, but we used it only to make fires or to grease robes for tanning.” She and her family sought out other items from government trading posts: “brass kettles, coffee-pots, curve-bladed butcher knives, boxes of black and white thread.” Thus as whites moved west in large numbers to “scrape the mountains clean and drain the rivers dry,” they overran the fragile settlements of Indians and disregarded U.S. treaties and tribal boundaries. Taking leave of the Fort Laramie conclave of 1851, Cut Nose of the Arapahos had declared, “I will go home satisfied. I will sleep sound, and not have to watch my horses in the night, or be afraid for my women and children. We have to live on these streams and in the hills, and I would be glad if the whites would pick out a place for themselves and not come into our grounds.” But within a generation, the Plains Indians were beseiged by the technology, weaponry, and sheer numbers of newcomers heading west. In the mid-nineteenth century the United States gained control over a vast expanse of land, provoking legal and political conflicts over the rights and labor of the people who lived there, both natives and newcomers. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded not only California but also the province of New Mexico, territory that included the present-day states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and southern Colorado. In 1853 the United States bought an additional tract of land from Mexico, 55,000 acres located in the area south of the Gila River (in present-day New Mexico and Arizona). Overseen by the U.S. secretary of war, a Mississippi planter named Jefferson Davis, the agreement was called the Gadsden Purchase (after James Gadsden, a railroad promoter and one of the American negotiators). The presence of so many Mexicans in this region prompted fears that any new state carved from the territory would remain under political control of Spanish speakers. European Americans charged that Mexicans were “not Americans, but ‘Greaser’ persons ignorant of our laws, manners, customs, language, and institutions,” and consequently “unfit for statehood.” New Mexico did not become a state until 1912. The outcome of the U.S.-Mexican War—the U.S. seizure of present-day Texas and the area west of it—intensified rather than lessened conflicts over the land. Newly arrived European Americans battled native Tejanos (people of Mexican origin or descent) for political and economic supremacy. White migrants from the southern United States brought their slaves with them to the region, claiming that the institution of slavery was crucial for commercial development. With their irrigated fields, Mexican and Indian farmers had already demonstrated that crops could grow in the Southwest, suggesting that the slave system could also flourish there. German immigrants came to central and east Texas, founding towns with German names such as Fredericksburg, Weimar, and Schulenburg. During the 1850s, commercial farming continued to replace subsistence homesteading as the cattle industry spread and the railroads penetrated the region. Although European Americans monopolized the courts and regional political institutions, Tejanos retained cultural influence throughout Texas, dominating the cuisine and styles of music and architecture. U.S. courts tended to disregard the land titles held by Californios and Tejanos. In the early 1850s California authorities battled Mexican social bandits such as Joaquin Murrieta, who, with his men, raided European American settlements. Murrieta and others argued that they were justified in stealing from privileged European Americans who, they claimed, disregarded the lives and property of Mexicans. In 1859 in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, tensions between the Tejano majority and groups of European American law enforcement officers called the Texas Rangers Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 435 ${bmicon} erupted into full-scale warfare. Juan Cortina, who had fought on the side of Mexico during the Mexican War, orchestrated attacks on European Americans and their property in the vicinity of Brownsville. U.S. retaliation led to Cortina’s War, pitting the Mexican leader against a young U.S. colonel, Robert E. Lee. Cortina himself became a hero to Tejanos. “You have been robbed of your property, incarcerated, chased, murdered, and hunted like wild beasts,” he declared, “to me is entrusted the work of breaking the chains of your slavery.” The Yankee Strip (named for the northeasterners who migrated there) ran through northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and encompassed the entire states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Here migrants from New England settled and established public schools and Congregational churches. Immigrants from western Europe also made a home in this region—the Germans, Belgians, and Swiss in Wisconsin, the Scandinavians in Minnesota. At times cultural conflict wracked even the smallest rural settlements. In some Wisconsin villages, equally matched numbers of Yankees and Germans contended for control over the local public schools, with the group in power posting notices for school board elections in its own language, hoping that its rivals would not show up at the polls. Yankees complained that the Scandinavian farmers put their wives to work in the fields and that Germans took their children with them to Biergarten (places where beer was served). full view Covered Bridge in Indiana Covered Bridge in Indiana (Photodisc, Inc.) The lower Midwest, including the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, retained strong cultural ties to the southern states. In this region, many settlers had migrated PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 436 ${bmicon} from the South. Though residing in free states, they maintained broad support for the institution of slavery. In some cases they outnumbered their Yankee counterparts and managed to shape the legal system in a way that reflected a distinct antiblack bias. For example, Indiana’s state constitution, approved in 1851, prohibited black migrants from making contracts with whites, testifying in trials that involved whites, voting, and entering the state. full view Iowa Cornfield Iowa Cornfield (Photodisc, Inc.) Most rural midwestern households followed the seasonal rhythms characteristic of traditional systems of agriculture. However, by the mid-nineteenth century family farming had become dependent on expensive machinery and hostage to the national and international grain markets. John Deere’s steel plow (invented in 1837) and Cyrus McCormick’s horse-drawn mechanical reaper (patented in 1854) boosted levels of grain production. Yet these devices also required farmers to invest an ever-greater proportion of their profits in technology and in labor provided by hired hands. In Titibawassee, Michigan, an immigrant recently arrived from Germany bought land and eastern-made farm machinery, noting proudly that his new steam engine (purchased at a cost of $2135) “has 10 horse power and is arranged so that the power can be used in two ways so that if grinding grain does not pay, I will saw wood.” Improved agricultural efficiency meant that the Midwest, both upper and lower, was fast becoming the breadbasket of the nation. At mid-century the South Atlantic states encompassed a number of regional economies. Bolstered by the high price of cotton on the world market, slave plantations prospered in the Black Belt, a wide swath of fertile soil stretching west from Georgia. In many areas of the South, planters concentrated their money and energy on cotton, diverting slaves from nonagricultural labor to toil in the fields. During the 1850s, enslaved Virginia sawmill laborers, South Carolina skilled artisans, and Georgia textile mill operatives all found themselves reduced to the status of cotton hands. In some cases, white laborers took their places in mills and workshops. In other parts of the South, slaves combined field work with nonagricultural work. For example, on expansive low-country South Carolina rice plantations, slaves worked in the fields, but they also processed the raw material, preparing it for market. Even modest farmers shared with the great planters a southern way of life that prized the supremacy of whites over blacks. Increasingly, northern critics described the South as a land of economic extremes, with wealthy planters enjoying their white-columned mansions while degraded blacks slaved obediently in the fields. The reality was more complicated. Even among whites, there were huge variations in material conditions and daily experiences. A large amount of wealth in land and slaves was concentrated among a small percentage of the white population, and many non-slaveholding whites were tenant farmers, leasing their land, mules, and implements from wealthy planters. In some areas as many as one of five farms was operated by tenant farmers. full view Covered Wagons at Eagle Rock, North Dakota Covered Wagons at Eagle Rock, North Dakota (Photodisc, Inc.) At the same time, about half the total southern white population consisted of yeoman farmers, families that owned an average of 50 acres and produced most of what they consumed themselves, with the occasional help of a hired hand (a leased slave or a wage-earning white person). In upcountry Georgia and South Carolina, yeoman farmers maintained local economies that were little affected by the cotton culture of the great planters in the Black Belt. These families grew what they needed: corn for themselves and their livestock and small amounts of cotton that the women spun, wove, and then sewed into clothing. Men and women alike labored in neighborhood networks of exchange, trading farm produce such as milk and eggs for services such as shoemaking and blacksmithing. Nevertheless, even modest farmers shared with the great planters a southern way of life that prized the independence of white households and the supremacy of whites over blacks. The institution of slavery discouraged immigrants from moving to the rural South in large numbers. German artisans realized that slave labor would undercut their own wages, and Scandinavian farmers understood that they could not compete with large planters in terms of landowning or slave owning. However, the ethnic diversity of southern port cities offered a CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 437 ${bmicon} striking contrast to the countryside, where native-born Protestants predominated. In 1860, 54 percent of all skilled workers and 69 percent of unskilled workers in Mobile, Alabama, were immigrants. On assignment from the New York Times in the 1850s, journalist Frederick Law Olmsted noted that in New Orleans, German and Irish workers labored shoulder-to-shoulder with slave artisans, and although white immigrants “were rapidly displacing the slaves in all sorts of work,” it was still possible to glimpse an “Irishman waiting on negro masons.” full view Slavery in the South By 1820, slavery had spread from coastal enclaves westward through the South, and by 1860 most southern states had large slave populations. Though the South never experienced a full-scale slave rebellion, white Southerners feared violent revolts from their large concentration of slaves. Throughout the slave states, black people continued to challenge the underpinnings of white supremacy. On the backroads of the plantation counties, late at night, poor workers of both races colluded to deprive the planter elite of their ill-gotten gain. Slaves swapped hams pilfered from smokehouses and bags of cotton lifted from storehouses for cash and goods offered by landless whites. In the vicinity of Augusta, Georgia, planters formed the Savannah River Anti-Slave Traffick Association in response to “the extensive and growing traffick unlawfully carried on with slaves by white persons and chiefly by Retailers of Spiritous Liquors.” Southern blacks were a diverse group. In the cities, planters allowed highly skilled slaves to hire themselves out and keep part of the money they earned for themselves. In their pride of craft and in their relative freedom to come and go as they pleased, these people inhabited a world that was neither completely slave nor completely free. Located primarily in the upper South and in the largest towns, communities composed of free people of color supported churches and clandestine schools, mocking the white notion that all black people possessed a childlike temperament and were incapable of caring for themselves. During the 1850s, the population of Virginia’s free people of color increased from 54,333 to 58,042; in North Carolina the number increased from 27,463 to 30,463. The reality of southern society was not captured by the simple picture of white prosperity and black enslavement. Not all black people were enslaved field hands, and not all whites were privileged landowners. The widespread mythology masked a more complicated social reality. In reaction to the southern slave system, the rural areas of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic spawned a potent free labor ideology, which held that workers should reap what they sow, unfettered by PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 438 ${bmicon} legal systems of slavery and indentured servitude. Free labor advocates glorified the family farmer, the sturdy landowner of modest means, the husband and father who labored according to the dictates of the season and owed his soul—and his vote and the land he tilled—to no master. Nevertheless, the reality that sustained this ideal was eroding in the North during the 1850s. More and more northerners were earning wages by working for bosses, rather than tilling their own land. Faced with competition from Midwestern farmers and burdened by unfavorable growing conditions imposed by rocky soil and a long winter, New Englanders were migrating to nearby towns and mill villages and to the West. By 1860 the region’s textile and shoemaking industries were largely mechanized. From New Hampshire to Rhode Island, growing numbers of water-powered factories perched along the fall line, where rivers spilled swiftly out of the foothills and into the coastal plain. The all-white factory workforce included men and women, adults and children, Irish Catholics and native-born Protestants, failed farmers and young men and women eager to leave the uncertain, hardscrabble life of the countryside for the promise of the mill towns. And yet the process of industrialization was an uneven one. For example, rural shoemaking workers labored at home, producing shoes for merchant capitalists who provided the raw materials and paid them by the piece. In contrast, in the huge new shoe factories of Lynn, Massachusetts, one worker at a Singer sewing machine (adopted by the John Woolredge Company for shoemaking) achieved the same output as 11 people doing the same task by hand in their homes. In the seaport cities, wage earning had become the norm, although many men and women continued to toil in the hope that they might eventually work for themselves. Thus the seamstress aspired to own a dress shop, the hotel waiter a tavern, the journeyman carpenter a small business. In New York, Boston, Cincinnati, and elsewhere, large numbers of Irish newcomers successfully challenged small numbers of black workers for jobs at the lowest echelons of the labor force. In 1853 fugitive slave Frederick Douglass noted with dismay, “White men are becoming house-servants, cooks and stewards on vessels—at hotels. They are becoming porters, stevedores, hod-carriers, brickmakers, white-washers and barbers, so that blacks can scarcely find the means of subsistence.” Stung by the contempt of Yankee Protestants, impoverished Irish Catholics sought to assert their equality through race. They distanced themselves from African Americans by claiming a white skin as a badge of privilege over the former slaves, a badge of equality with the native born. Although Northerners in general contrasted themselves to the “backward slave South,” their region of the country retained elements of unfree labor systems. New Jersey did not emancipate the last of its slaves officially until 1846, and throughout the North, vestiges of slavery lingered through the mid-nineteenth century. As a group of disproportionately poor people, blacks in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest were vulnerable to labor exploitation, including indentured servitude and a system of “apprenticeship” whereby black children were taken from their parents and forced to work for whites. In Delaware, an African American charged with a petty crime could be “disposed as a servant” by court authorities to the highest bidder for a term of seven years. Many nonslave workers did not receive pay for their labors. As is the case today, wives and mothers throughout the country performed almost all of their work in the home without monetary compensation, although the measure of a white man was rendered more and more in cash terms. On farms and in textile mills such as those of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, children played a key role in the livelihood of individual households but received little or noth- CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 439 ${bmicon} ing in cash wages. Some members of the white working classes began to condemn “wage slavery,” a system that deprived them of what they considered a fair reward for their labors and left them at the mercy of merchant capitalists and factory bosses. These workers charged that they were paid so little by employers, their plight was similar to that of black slaves in the South. Different regions developed specialized economies. In turn, these regions relied on each other for the production of staple crops and manufactured goods. The result was a national economy. Southern slaves produced the cotton processed in New England textile mills. Midwestern farmers grew the grain that fed eastern consumers. California Forty-Niners discovered the gold that expanded the national currency supply. Yet these patterns of economic interdependence were insufficient to resolve the persistent political question: Which groups of people are entitled to American citizenship, with all the rights and privileges that the term implies? TABLE 13-1 Nativity of Residents of the Boston Area, 1860 Country of Birth Middlesex County Norfolk County Suffolk County United States 166,126 83,693 125,439 England 4,273 2,494 4,472 Ireland 38,098 19,138 48,095 Scotland 1,272 607 1,440 Wales 28 34 61 Germany 629 1,159 1,290 France 187 133 397 Spain 39 9 59 Portugal 19 62 38 Belgium 5 6 19 Holland 67 17 177 Turkey 4 1 6 Italy 29 26 258 Austria 24 21 44 Switzerland 28 55 125 Russia 4 4 38 Norway 28 11 68 Denmark 26 18 97 Sweden 98 41 259 Prussia 150 103 744 Sardinia 1 1 64 Greece 3 3 10 China 9 5 4 Asia 19 13 29 Africa ---- 2 20 British America 4,784 1,563 7,503 Mexico 6 1 2 South America 24 18 44 West Indies 59 27 149 Sandwich Islands 15 9 10 Atlantic Islands 39 5 260 Bavaria 33 246 250 Baden 73 331 663 Europea 133 6 165 Hesse 14 32 107 Nassau ---- 4 18 Poland ---- 2 78 Wurttemberg 16 38 142 Australia 1 ---- 10 Pacific Islands 1 7 8 Other countries ---- 5 38 Total foreign 50,238 26,257 67,261 Total population 216,354 109,950 192,700 a Not specified. Source: Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants (New York: Atheneum, 1972), p. 245. Throughout the country, racist ideas and practices began to exert greater force. People were defined ever more strongly on the basis of their nationality, language, religion, and skin color. They were more and more limited in their legal status and the jobs they could obtain. Degrading images of legally vulnerable groups—blacks, Chinese, Hispanos—became a part of popular culture, in the songs people sang and the pictures they saw in books and magazines. Through these means, native-born Americans of British stock sought to distance themselves from people of color and from immigrants. Paradoxically, some writers also began to highlight the idea of American individualism during this time. Such authors extolled what they considered to be the universal qualities embedded in American nationhood. They believed that the United States consisted not of distinctive and competing groups, but of a collection of individuals, all bent on pursuing their own self-interest, variously defined. They believed that the “representative” American was ambitious and acquisitive, eager to make more money and buy new things. Yet not everyone could afford to embrace this optimistic form of individualism. Many who were marginalized found emotional support, and in some cases even political power, in a strong group identity. For example, on the Plains, the Sioux Indians resisted the idea that United States officials could carve up territory and sell land to individual farmers at the expense of a people that pursued the buffalo across artificial political boundaries. During negotiations at Fort Laramie in 1851, Black Hawk, a leader of the Oglala PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 440 ${bmicon} Sioux, condemned the whites with his understatement, “You have split my land and I don’t like it.” In contrast to the Plains Indians, who wanted no role in American politics, African Americans and white women strove for full citizenship rights. These groups looked forward to the day when each person was accorded the same rights and was free to pursue his or her own talents and ambitions. Everywhere, European American men sought to achieve or preserve the most stable, well-paying, and appealing jobs for themselves. By promoting ideas related to the inferiority of African Americans, Hispanos, and immigrants, white men could justify barring these groups from the rights of citizenship and landownership as well as from nonmenial kinds of employment. In Texas, Mexican leader Juan Cortina condemned Anglo interlopers whose “brimful of laws” facilitated the seizure of Tejanos’ land by U.S. law enforcement agents and the courts. In California, U.S. officials justified the exclusion of blacks, Indians, Chinese, and the poorest Mexicans from citizenship rights by claiming that members of these groups were nonwhite or, in the words of one state judge writing in 1854, “not of white blood.” (Of course, the concept of “white blood” has no scientific basis because the different blood types—A, B, AB, and O—are found among all peoples.) The precarious social status of various groups was revealed in patterns of their work. The precarious social status of various groups was revealed in patterns of their work. In California, white men pursued opportunities on farms and in factories while increasing numbers of Chinese men labored as laundrymen and domestic servants. Indians toiled as field hands under white supervision. In rural Texas, Anglos established plantations and ranches while more and more Mexicans worked as vaqueros (cowboys), shepherds, sidewalk vendors, and freighters. In Massachusetts mill towns, white men and women served as the forefront of an industrial labor force while many African Americans of both sexes and all ages were confined to work in kitchens and outdoors as sweepers, cart drivers, and hawkers of goods. Despite the divergent regional economies that shaped them, emerging ideologies of racial inferiority were strikingly similar. European Americans persisted in focusing on physical appearances, and they stereotyped all Chinese, Mexicans, and African Americans as promiscuous, crafty, “degraded,” and intellectually inferior to whites. They characterized these groups as “cheap labor” who got by with little money: the Chinese supposedly could subsist on rice, Mexicans on beans and tortillas, blacks on the “fatback” of the pig. Such prejudices, in places as diverse as Boston, San Antonio, and San Francisco, prevented many people of color from reaching the limits of their own talents in mid–nineteenth-century America. Ideas about ethnic and racial difference coexisted with notions of American individualism, which stressed forms of universal equality. The variety of voices that gave expression to the national ideals of personal striving and ambition suggested the growth, energy, and vitality of the United States in the 1850s. In the Northeast, writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman each crafted a unique writing style. At the same time, these men promoted a robust sensibility attuned to the challenges posed by the rigors of both the external world of natural beauty and the inner world of the spirit. full view Walt Whitman - Portrait Walt Whitman, the most romantic and the most distinctly American writer of his age. (The National Archives) Some forms of literature offered an explicit critique of American materialism, with its love of things. According to Emerson, people were too concerned about material possessions; as he put it, things were “in the saddle,” riding everyone. During the 1850s, Thoreau’s work became more explicitly focused on nature. In his book Walden (1854), he described swimming in the Massachusetts pond of the same name: “In such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon.” An apprecia- CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 441 ${bmicon} tion of the wonders of nature—wonders that could be felt and tasted, as well as seen—amounted to a powerful force of democratization; anyone and everyone could participate. In turn, Thoreau actively supported the abolition of slavery; his love of nature formed the foundation of his belief in the universal dignity of all people in general and the cause of freedom for black people in particular. In contrast, other writers celebrated busy-ness, whether in the field or workshop. In the introduction to his book of poetry titled Leaves of Grass (1855), Walt Whitman captured the restlessness of a people on the move: “Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses.” To Whitman, the expansiveness of the American landscape mirrored the American soul, “the largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen.” His sensuous “Song of Myself ” constituted an anthem for all Americans poised, gloriously diverse in their individuality (and their sexuality), to exploit the infinite possibilities of both body and spirit: “I dote on myself, there is a lot of me and all so luscious.” Many men and women remained skeptical of—and, in some cases, totally estranged from—the wondrous possibilities inherent in Whitman’s phrase, “Me, Me going in for my chances.” In northern cities, individualism spawned the kind of creative genius necessary for technological innovation and dynamic economic change, but it had little meaning for Native Americans Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 442 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Professor Howe on the Subordination of Women Antebellum southern elites prized what they called “natural” hierarchical social relations: the authority of fathers and husbands over daughters and wives, parents over children, rich over poor, and whites over blacks. According to slaveholders, clergy, and scholars, these relationships provided social stability and ensured that the weak and dependent would receive care from the rich and powerful. In July 1850, George Howe, professor of biblical literature at the Theological Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina, addressed the graduating class of a private women’s academy. Howe suggested that the roles of women (elite white women) were enduring and never-changing. The Endowments, Position and Education of Woman. An Address Delivered Before the Hemans and Sigourney Societies of the Female High School at Limestone Springs The duties of life to all human beings are arduous, its objects are noble—each stage of its progress is preparatory to some other stage, and the whole a preparation to an interminable existence, upon which, in one sense, we are hereafter to enter, and in another, have already entered. Others may slightly regard the employments, trials and joys of the school girl. I am disposed to put on them a higher value. Our wives, sisters, and our mothers were in the same position yesterday. You will occupy a like [position] with them tomorrow. Whatever of virtue, of patient endurance, of poignant suffering, of useful labor, of noble impulse, of generous endeavor, of influence exerted on society for its good, has been exhibited in their example, in a few short years we shall see exhibited also in yours. To woman,… there must be ascribed … acuteness in her powers of perception,… instincts … and emotions. When these are powerfully excited there is a wonderful vigor and determination of will, and a ready discovery of expedients to accomplish her wishes. She has readier sympathies, her fountain of tears is nearer the surface, but her emotions may not be so constant and permanent as those of man. She has greater readiness and tact, purer and more noble and unselfish desires and impulses, and a higher degree of veneration for the virtuous and exalted, and when she has found the way of truth, a heart more constant and more susceptible to all those influences which come from above. To the gentleness and quiet of her nature, to its affection and sympathy, that religion which pronounces its benediction on the peace-makers and the merciful, which recommends to them the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of the Lord, is of a great price, addresses itself with more force and greater attraction than it addresses man. Born to lean upon others, rather than to stand independently by herself, and to confide in an arm stronger than hers, her mind turns more readily to the higher power which brought her into being…. Providence, then, and her own endowments mark out the proper province of woman. In some cases she may strive for the mastery, but to rule with the hand of power was never designed for her. When she thus unsexes herself she is despised and detested by man and woman alike. England’s Queen Victoria at the present moment, if not more feared, is far more beloved in the quiet of her domestic life, than Elizabeth was, the most feared of her female Sovereigns. Howe ends his address by drawing an implicit comparison between the South and the North. Like many Southerners, he associated the North with labor radicalism, abolitionism, and challenges to the “natural” position of women. When women go about haranguing promiscuous assemblies of men, lecturing in public, either on infidelity or religion, on slavery, on war or peace—when they meet together in conventions and pass resolutions on grave questions of State—when they set themselves up to manufacture a public opinion for their own advantage and exaltation—when they meet together in organized bodies and pass resolutions about the “rights of woman,” and claim for her a voice and a vote in the appointment of civil rulers, and in the government, whether of Church or State, she is stepping forth from her rightful sphere and becomes disgusting and unlovely, just in proportion as she assumes to be a man. Source: George Howe, The Endowments, Position and Education of Woman. An Address Delivered Before the Hemans and Sigourney Societies of the Female High School at Limestone Springs, July 23, 1850 (Columbia, SC: I.C. Morgan, 1850), pp. 5, 9, 10–11. in the West, most of whom were desperately seeking a collective response to new threats in the form of cattle ranchers and the U.S. Cavalry. On the Great Plains, groups such as the Mandan and Pawnee performed ceremonies and rituals that celebrated kinship and village life above the individual. African Americans in the North forged a strong sense of group identity. Though they rejected notions of white people’s “racial” superiority, blacks had little choice but to think of themselves as a group separate and distinct from whites. Their sense of group solidarity was manifested in everyday life and in political rhetoric and action. In northern cities, blacks took in boarders and joined mutual-aid societies in order to affirm the collective interests of the larger black community. In contrast, well-to-do whites were increasingly emphasizing the sanctity of the nuclear family, composed solely of parents and children. Black leaders criticized the racist laws and ideas that affected the lives of black men, women, and children. For example, the charismatic Boston preacher Maria Stewart denounced the twin evils of racial and gender prejudice for condemning all black women to a life of menial labor: “How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles? The [white] Americans have practised nothing but head-work these 200 years, and we have done their drudgery.” Some groups of women embraced a collective identity of womanhood, although the definition of that identity took several forms. For example, in the North, writers such as Catherine Beecher articulated a vision of female self-sacrifice fueled by family obligations and emotional relationships. Beecher declared that self-sacrifice formed the “grand law of the sys- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 443 ${bmicon} tem” by which women should live their lives. Through poetry, short stories, and novels for popular audiences, other women writers posited an alternative to the world of masculine daring and individualism. Informed by religious devotion and sustained by labors of love in the home, this female world offered an alternative to the individualism necessary to profit-seeking, whether on the family farm or in the bank or textile mill. As consumers of store-bought food and goods, antebellum housewives believed they were deprived of the satisfactions supposedly enjoyed by their grandmothers and associated with maintaining a colonial household—churning butter, spinning flax, making candles, and weaving cloth. Yet middle-class women believed they could take pride in rearing virtuous citizens and caring for overworked husbands. Sarah Willis Parton (Fanny Fern) cautioned her readers in a series of sketches published in 1853 (Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio) that marriage is “the hardest way on earth of getting a living. You never know when your work is done.” Well-to-do white women in the Northeast yearned to be productive and useful although they stood outside the cash-based market economy. Nevertheless, other groups of women cherished different kinds of aspirations. Organizers of the country’s first conference devoted to the status of women, the Seneca Falls Convention held in upstate New York in 1848, derived inspiration from the abolitionist movement and protested the efforts of white men to exclude women from formal participation in it. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott recalled the humiliation they felt when they found themselves relegated to a women’s gallery at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. In their demands for women’s rights they PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 444 ${bmicon} linked the plight of the slave with the plight of free women, arguing that white men exploited and denigrated members of both groups. Stanton, Mott, and others received crucial support from African American leaders such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Delegates to Seneca Falls (including Douglass) approved a document called the “Declaration of Sentiments,” modeled after the Declaration of Independence: “When in the course of human events…. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” This group of women thus claimed for themselves a revolutionary heritage and all the rights and privileges of citizenship: to own property in their own names, to vote, to attend schools of higher learning, and to participate “in the various trades, professions, and commerce.” In the process they expressed at least an implied kinship with the freedom fighters of France, Italy, and Germany who also launched struggles for self-determination during the fateful year of 1848. Many women, including enslaved workers throughout the South and hard-pressed needleworkers toiling in cramped New York City tenements, could not devote themselves full time to the care of hearth and home, nor could they aspire to a career of public agitation. In her autobiographical novel, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North (1859), Harriet Wilson wrote bitterly of the fate of women such as her mother, a woman “early deprived of parental guardianship, far removed from relatives … left to guide her tiny boat over life’s surges alone and inexperienced.” Like the book’s main character, Alfrado, Wilson herself had suffered at the hands of tyrannical white women employers, but at the end of the story Alfrado achieves a measure of dignity and independence for herself by setting up a small business. She thus offered an explicit challenge to both the arrogance of propertied white men and the homebound sentimentality of wealthy white women. In sum, there was no single, transcendent American identity in the mid-nineteenth century. And yet, critiques of the dominant culture could at times uphold its lofty ideals while condemning everyday reality. In his 1852 speech “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” delivered in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass took the country to task for failing to live up to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence: “Stand by those principles,” he exhorted his listeners, “at whatever cost.” His words foreshadowed a great war. full view Underground Railroad - Advertisement 1844 advertisement from the Western Citizen for the Underground Railroad. Slavery needed to expand to survive. Decades of intensive cultivation were exhausting the cotton fields in the South. The planter elite was counting on the admission of new territories as slave states to preserve their threatened power in Congress. To slave owners, northern-sponsored efforts to block their expansion amounted to a death sentence for all that the white South held dear. In defense of the slave system, the white South had to mount a strong offense or die. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 445 ${bmicon} full view MAP 13.1 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY As a result of the Mexican War (1846–1848), the United States won the territory west of Texas by conquest. In 1853, James Gadsden, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, received congressional approval to pay Mexico $15 million for 55,000 square miles in present-day southern Arizona and New Mexico. That year marked the end of U.S. continental expansion. In the early 1850s, proslavery forces maintained firm control over all branches of the federal government. Nevertheless, southern planters felt increasingly defensive as the country expanded westward. In 1850 a writer for DeBow’s Review, a mouthpiece for the planter class, offered a peculiar combination of bravado and anxiety. Boasting of the South’s agricultural capacity and resources so integral to “the welfare of humanity at large,” the writer nonetheless claimed that the region’s “undisturbed progress” depended on “a firm adherence to the compromises of the constitution” and warned against “the abolition excitement,” which would necessarily upset the delicate balance between slave and free states. Gradually, this tension between southern strength and southern fears led to the fraying and then unraveling of the Jacksonian American party system, which had relied on a truce maintained between Whigs and Democrats on the issue of slavery. A new party, the Republicans, fused the democratic idealism and economic self-interest of native-born Northerners in such a powerful way that white Southerners believed that the institution of slavery was in danger of succumbing to the Yankee onslaught. And so a clash of ideas gradually slipped out of the confines of the polling place and into the realm of armed conflict. In 1848, eight years after the appearance of the antislavery Liberty party, cracks in the second two-party system (which pitted the Whigs against the Democrats) intensified with the founding of the Free-Soil party. Free-Soilers challenged the prevailing notion that the Whigs and Democrats PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 446 ${bmicon} could continue to smooth over the question of slavery in the territories with a variety of patchwork policies and piecemeal compromises. The Free-Soil platform promoted a forthright noslavery-in-the-territories policy and favored the Wilmot Proviso (introduced in Congress in 1846), which would have banned slavery from all land acquired as a result of the Mexican War. In the presidential election of 1848, the Free-Soil party nominated former President Martin Van Buren, Democrat of New York. At the same time, Free-Soilers extended their appeal to the Whig party by supporting federal aid for internal improvements, free western homesteads for settlers, and protective tariffs for northern manufacturers. TABLE 13-2 The Election of 1848 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Zachary Taylor Whig 1,360,967 163 Lewis Cass Democratic 1,222,342 127 Martin Van Buren Free-Soil 291,263 ---- Nevertheless, the two major parties persisted in avoidance politics. The Democrats chose General Lewis Cass as their standard-bearer, a man known as the “father of popular sovereignty” because he favored allowing citizens of new states to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery within their borders. The Whigs put forth General Zachary Taylor, although the Louisiana slaveholder and Mexican War veteran had never held elected office. Still, Taylor managed to parlay his military record into a close win in the fall of 1848. Slaveholders were concerned by the support that the Free-Soiler Van Buren had garnered among Democrats in New York State. He had drawn enough votes from the Democrats to allow the Whig Taylor to capture the election, and Northerners in general were demonstrating dissatisfaction with both the Whigs and the Democrats. In 1849 Southerners confronted a disturbing reality. Although slave owners controlled the presidency and the Supreme Court and outnumbered the North in the House of Representatives, the North maintained the upper hand in the Senate. Moreover, California’s application for statehood in 1849 raised the specter of an unbalanced federal system consisting of 16 free states and 15 slave states. And the abolitionist threat appeared in other guises as well: the territories of Utah and New Mexico apparently preparing to ban slavery once they became states, abolitionists clamoring for the immediate emancipation of all slaves, and black men and women, including former slave Harriet Tubman, working with abolitionists in the upper South and the North to facilitate the escape of slaves through a network of safe stops called the Underground Railroad. The “railroad” consisted of northerners, white and black, who sheltered fugitives from southern slavery in their flight to the North or, in some instances, to Canada. Against this backdrop of sectional controversy, Congress debated the terms under which California would enter the Union in 1850. In their physical demeanor, the three principals in the Senate debate revealed that the effort to placate those on both sides of the slavery question was on the verge of exhaustion. John C. Calhoun, dying of tuberculosis, argued that the North must concede that the South had the right to its own property, regardless of whether that property took the form of land or human beings. Together, the frail Henry Clay, age 73, and Daniel Webster, 68 years old and racked with disease, sought to wring concessions from both sides. full view The United States Senate, 1850 - Painting Henry Clay argues for the compromise package of 1850 in this painting by R. Whitechurch, titled The United States Senate, 1850. Clay warned that failure to adopt his bill would lead to “furious” and “bloody” civil war. (Library of Congress) full view The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act As westward expansion of the US continued through the 1850s, and more and more territories applied for statehood, a question was raised that would recur throughout the decade. Would slavery expand westward? The Compromise of 1850 seemed to answer the question, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act revealed its inadequacy only four years later. A young Democratic senator from Illinois, Stephen Douglas, helped to cobble together a complicated agreement that proved workable enough in the short run but only prolonged the showdown over slavery. Under the Compromise of 1850, California would enter the Union as a free state that year. New Mexico and Utah would eventually submit the slavery question to voters and thus put the idea of popular sovereignty to a practical test. The federal government would abolish the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (a move that did not affect the status of slaves already living there), and shore up the Fugitive Slave law of 1793 with a new, harsher measure. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 essentially did away with the notion of the North as free territory, for it required local and federal law enforcement agents to retrieve runaways no matter where they sought refuge in the United States. Blacks were denied a trial or the right to testify on their CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 447 ${bmicon} own behalf. Fugitive slave commissioners earned $10 for each runaway they returned to a claimant. By compelling ordinary citizens to aid in the capture of alleged fugitives, the law brought the issue of slavery to the doorstep of northern whites. In the fall of 1850, Millard Fillmore, who had assumed the presidency in July of that year after Taylor died in office, signed the bill. TABLE 13-3 The Election of 1852 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Franklin Pierce Democratic 1,607,510 254 Winfield Scott Whig 1,386,942 42 John P. Hale Free-Soil 155,210 ---- Despite these dramatic events, the presidential campaign of 1852 was a lackluster affair. The Democrats nominated an unknown lawyer, Franklin Pierce. Although he hailed from New Hampshire, Pierce supported slavery. The Whigs turned their back on President Fillmore and chose as their nominee General Winfield Scott, who had gained fame during the Mexican War of 1848. Yet the Whigs split into regional factions during the election; Northerners resented Scott’s support of the Fugitive Slave Law, and Southerners doubted Scott’s devotion to slavery. This split foreshadowed the end of national political parties and the emergence of regional parties, an ominous development indeed. full view Franklin Pierce - Portrait President Franklin Pierce, former brigadier general during the Mexican War. (Library of Congress) The interests of southern planters affected not only domestic politics, but debates and policies related to foreign affairs as well. Even as Congress was heatedly discussing the Compromise of 1850, Southerners were contemplating ways to extend their reach across and even beyond the continental United States. They wanted to find new fresh, fertile lands for cotton cultivation, and, they hoped, to incorporate those lands into the United States. Such expansion would also help to bolster the political power of slaveowners in Congress by someday adding new slave states to the Union. In 1850 the United States and Great Britain signed the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, agreeing that neither country would seek to control the rights to any canal spanning the Panama–Nicaragua isthmus. In 1848 President Polk had made a gesture to buy Cuba from Spain, an offer that was rebuffed but one that did not discourage two privately financed expeditions of proslavery Americans from making forays into Cuba in an effort to seize the island by force on behalf of the United States. In 1854 the American ambassadors to Great Britain, France, and Spain met in Ostend, Belgium, and issued a statement declaring that, if Spain would not sell Cuba, the United States would be justified in taking control of the island. According to the Americans, the Monroe Doctrine gave license to the United States to rid the western Hemisphere of European colonial powers. Noting that two of the three ambassadors hailed from slave states, abolitionists charged that the Ostend Manifesto was just one more ploy to extend the power of slaveholders throughout the northern hemisphere. In 1855 a young proslavery American adventurer, Tennessee-born William Walker, gathered a band of 58 mercenaries and managed to capture Granada, Nicaragua. Declaring himself president of Nicaragua, Walker encouraged the institution of slavery and won U.S. recognition for his regime in 1856. Walker was driven out of the country a year later, but his arrogance and bold move helped to set the stage for the Nicaraguan anti-American movement that would resurface in the twentieth century. Political maneuvering and military might combined to advance the march of European Americans across the American continent, fueling popular notions of “manifest destiny,” as if expansion were preordained by God and not furthered by rifles and bayonets. In 1853, Congress authorized the Gadsden Purchase, 30 million acres of land within the present-day states of New Mexico and Arizona. But, at least in a commercial sense, expansion failed to stop at the edge of the continental United States. Americans saw the Pacific Ocean as a trade route and East Asia as a trading partner. Commodore Matthew Perry commanded a fleet of U.S. Navy ships that steamed into Tokyo Harbor. The treaty Perry helped arrange with Japan PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 448 ${bmicon} in 1854 protected American whaling ships, sailors, and merchants in that part of the world and opened the door to an increase in trade later in the century. By the mid-1850s the uniting of the continent into what would eventually become the 48 contiguous states was a source of sectional tension as well as national pride. Fewer and fewer Northerners supported what they considered proslavery charades, so-called legislative compromises. And the territory of Nebraska, poised on the brink of statehood, forced national lawmakers to confront again the political problem of the expansion of slavery. Once more Senator Douglas from Illinois stepped in to fill the breach left by the dying generation of great compromisers. Committed to the idea of a transcontinental railroad traversing the Nebraska Territory, Douglas adhered to the traditional (if increasingly unlikely) goal of mutual accommodation between North and South, free and slave states, but he believed that such accommodation demanded a constant process of negotiation and flexibility on both sides. Thus he argued that the gigantic territory be split into two new states, Kansas and Nebraska, whose respective voters would decide the issue of slavery for themselves. His proposal necessitated that part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the part that forbade slavery above the 36–30 line, would have to be repealed. The Kansas–Nebraska Act became law in 1854. The Act enraged northern Free-Soilers, forced to watch the dismantling of the 1820 agreement. They became convinced that what they called the Slave Power Conspiracy would stop at nothing until slavery overran the entire nation. The measure also had a profound effect on the Plains Indians, for it deprived them of fully one-half the land they had been granted by treaty. Specifically, the act wrought havoc on the lives of Ponca, Pawnee, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne on the southern and central plains. European American settlers poured into the region, provoking Indian attacks. In September 1855, 600 American troops staged a retaliatory raid against an Indian village, Blue Water, in Nebraska, killing 85 Sioux and leading to an escalation in violence between Indians and settlers in the area. Among the young warriors involved in these battles was Crazy Horse, who became a famous leader of the Sioux in the coming years. In their impatience with the two major parties, Free-Soilers were not alone in the early 1850s. The American party, founded in 1852, departed from the bland consensus embodied by the Whigs and Democrats and built its movement on nativism—the belief that Americans must rule America—in the North and South. The party explicitly condemned the growing political influence of immigrants, especially Roman Catholics. It derived its nickname, the Know-Nothings, from members’ habit of claiming “I know nothing” when asked about their organization. With its ranks filled with former Whigs, the party tapped into a deep wellspring of resentment against immigrants on the part of urban, native-born workers as well as Protestant farmers anxious about retaining their influence in public affairs. Candidates for office who appealed to Irish voters ran the risk of incurring the Know-Nothing charge that Catholic priests were in league with “the worst class of American politicians, designing demagogues, selfish office-seekers, and bad men, calling themselves Democrats and ‘Old Line Whigs’!” During the early 1850s, the Know-Nothings revealed that anxiety over immigration was not limited to northeastern cities; the loosely organized party was responsible for bloody clashes—native born against newcomer—in Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis, and New Orleans. The rapid rise of the Know-Nothings further indicated that voters had grown disillusioned with the two-party system. Confirmation of that fact appeared on March 20, 1854, in the small town of Ripon, Wisconsin, when a group of disaffected Whigs created a new party called the Republicans. One core idea informed the party: that slavery must not be allowed to spread into the western territories. From this base the Republicans built an organization so powerful that it would capture the presidency within six years. The genius of the Republican party resided in its ability to create and maintain an alliance between groups with vastly different goals. Now forced by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to serve Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 449 ${bmicon} full view MAP 13.2 THE KANSAS–NEBRASKA ACT, 1854 Stephen A. Douglas, senator from Illinois, proposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Douglas hoped to ensure that any transcontinental railroad route would run through Illinois and benefit his constituents. To secure southern support for the measure, proponents of the bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1850. As a result of the act, settlers displaced many Plains Indians from their lands. In the mid–1850s, the territory of Kansas became engulfed in an internal civil war that pitted supporters of slavery against abolitionists. slaveholders (by returning runaway slaves to them) and fearful of the potential of slaveholding Southerners to capture their party, some northern Democrats cast their lot with the Republicans. From the ranks of antislavery men—the long-suffering adherents of the Liberty and Free-Soil parties—came another wing of the Republicans. These party members openly proclaimed their belief in the power of the federal government to halt the relentless march of slavery and ensure that, throughout the land, free soil would be tilled by free labor, free men and women. Yet antislavery Republicans were by no means unified on major issues apart from the extension of slavery. Many Northerners were willing to tolerate slavery as long as it could be confined to the southern states; they cared little or nothing for the rights of black people, slave or free. And in fact, in the Midwest, Republicans saw no contradiction in calling for the end of slavery in one breath and for the end of black migration to the area in the next. Likewise, members of various northern white working classes feared the encroachment of slavery into the free states. These white men believed that, given the chance, black people would gladly abandon the South in favor of economic opportunities in the North. As job competitors, blacks would force whites to work for less money than they were accustomed to, or would push whites out of jobs altogether—at least those were the fears of white men who sought to block all blacks from moving north. For these reasons white Republicans could dislike slavery as an institution and at the same time approve of the discriminatory legislation that limited the economic and geographical mobility of black people. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 450 ${bmicon} Many northern merchants supported the Republicans’ claims for the power of the federal government above that of the states. Still, some of the wealthiest and most influential in the cities of Philadelphia and New York maintained overtly racist views and retained cultural ties with southern slaveholders. Juxtaposed to these groups of whites were northern blacks, like those in Boston who in 1856 offered only limited support for the new party: “We do not pledge ourselves to go further with the Republicans than the Republicans will go with us,” they vowed. From the ranks of the newly formed Illinois state Republican party emerged a formidable leader capable of bringing all of these factions together. Born in 1809 in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln came from a modest background and followed a checkered path into Illinois Whig politics: from youthful plowhand and log-splitter, to local postmaster and county surveyor, and finally self-taught lawyer and member of the state legislature (1834–1842). Although his 6-foot 4-inch frame and humble background drew ridicule from wealthy people—a Philadelphia lawyer described him as “a tall rawly boned, ungainly back woodsman, with coarse, ill-fitting clothing”—Lincoln made good use of his oratorical gifts and political ambition in promoting the principles of free soil. full view Lincoln’s Birthplace in Kentucky Lincoln’s Birthplace in Kentucky (Photodisc, Inc.) The presidential election of 1856 revealed the full dimension of the national political crisis. The Democrats nominated James Buchanan, a “dough-face” (i.e., proslavery Northerner) from Pennsylvania, with John Breckinridge of Tennessee as his running mate. In their platform they took pains to extol the virtue of sectional compromise on the slavery issue, by this time a very unpopular position. Meanwhile, the enfeebled Whigs could do little but stand by helplessly and declare as their “fundamental article of political faith, an absolute necessity for avoiding geographical parties,” another plank decidedly out of favor with a growing number of voters. The Know-Nothings cast their lot with former President Millard Fillmore. They CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 451 ${bmicon} offered voters little more than the ringing declaration that only “native-born citizens should be selected for all state, federal, and municipal offices of government employment, in preference to all others.” TABLE 13-4 The Election of 1856 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote James Buchanan Democratic 1,832,955 174 John C. Frémont Republican 1,339,932 114 Millard Fillmore American 871,731 8 Drawing on former members of the Free-Soil and Whig parties, respectively, the Republicans nominated John C. Frémont of California for president and William Dayton of New Jersey for vice president. Their platform stated in no uncertain terms the party’s opposition to the extension of slavery, as well as Republican support for a transcontinental railroad and other federally sponsored internal improvements such as rivers and harbors. The document also included the bold, noble rhetoric—in favor of “the blessings of liberty” and against “tyrannical and unconstitutional laws”—that would be the hallmark of the Republican party in the decade to come. Despite his nickname “Old Fogy,” Democratic candidate James Buchanan won the election. Nevertheless, the fact that the Republican Frémont carried 11 of the 16 northern states boded well for the Republican party and ill for the slaveholders’ union. In Illinois, Frémont had benefited from the tireless campaigning of Abraham Lincoln, who electrified ever-growing crowds of people with the declaration that “the Union must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the integrity of its territorial parts.” Only a small subset of Americans—adult white men—participated directly in the formation of new political parties that set the terms for congressional debates over territorial expansion and slavery. Nevertheless, during the 1850s, increasing numbers of ordinary people were drawn into the escalating conflict over the South’s “peculiar institution” as some Northerners mounted concerted challenges, violent as well as peaceful, to the Fugitive Slave Law. The western territory of Kansas became a bloody battleground as abolitionists and proslavery forces fought for control of the new state government. Sites of struggle over the slavery issue included the streets of Boston, the Supreme Court of the United States, political rallies in Illinois, and a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. No longer would the opposing sides confine their disagreements to congressional debates over the admission of new states. Nor would words be the only weapons. The country was rushing headlong into nationwide armed conflict. full view Hypocrisy of Fugitive Slave Act - Cartoon, 1851 The hypocrisy of the Fugitive Slave Act and Henry Clay’s mixed motives are the focus of this 1851 cartoon. Whites preach the “blessings of liberty” at a free black man they are holding back from freedom as Clay turns his back on the fugitive slave and talks to a northerner about the tariff. (Library of Congress) The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 caused fear and alarm among many Northerners. In response to the measure, some African Americans, hiding in northern cities, fled to Canada, often with the aid of conductors on the Underground Railroad. In the summer of 1854 the National Emigration Convention of Colored Peoples drew more than 100 black leaders to Cleveland, where they debated the merits of migration to Canada, the West Indies, Central and South America, or Liberia in Africa. Abolitionists, white and black, made dramatic rescue attempts on behalf of men and women sought by their self-proclaimed southern owners. In Boston in 1851, a waiter named Shadrach Minkins (he called himself Frederick Jenkins) was seized at work and charged with running away from a Virginia slaveholder. During a court hearing to determine the merits of the case, a group of blacks stormed in, disarmed the startled authorities, and, in the words of a sympathetic observer, “with a dexterity worthy of the Roman gladiators, snatched the trembling prey of PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 452 ${bmicon} the slavehunters, and conveyed him in triumph to the streets of Boston.” Shadrach Minkins found safety in Montreal, Canada, and a Boston jury refused to convict his lawyers, who had been accused of masterminding his escape. The spectacular public rescue of Minkins, and other such attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, throughout the North, brought the issue of slavery into the realm of public performance in northern towns and cities. In Cincinnati, Ohio, a group of African American men met to press demands for equal rights and to declare that “we sympathize deeply with the man Shadrach of Boston, who fled from the American Fiery Furnace, to its contrast—the snows of Canada.” Throughout the North, African American conventions responded to the slavecatchers’ provocation, providing a forum not only for leaders such as Frederick Douglass of New York and John M. Langston of Ohio but also for barbers, farmers, and other workers. Black women remained conspicuous for their absence from these formal conventions. Delegates to the meeting in Troy, New York, in 1855 cast out the lone woman in attendance, Barbery Anna Stewart; several men objected to her presence “on the ground that this is not a Woman’s Rights Convention.” Nevertheless, black and white women working together became prominent supporters of the abolitionist cause. Though unable to vote, they made public speeches and petitioned politicians, and they coordinated local boycotts of products made by slave labor. Gradually, the war of words over slavery cascaded out of small-circulation abolitionist periodicals and into the consciousness of a nation. In particular, author Harriet Beecher Stowe managed to wed politics and sentiment in a most compelling way. Her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) sold more than 300,000 copies within 10 months and a million copies over the next seven years. The book, originally serialized in a magazine, The National Era, introduced large numbers of Northerners to the sufferings of an enslaved couple, Eliza and George. Slavery’s greatest crime, in Stowe’s eyes, was the forced severance of family ties between husbands and wives, parents and children. Southern slaveholders were outraged at Stowe’s attempt to portray their way of life as an unmitigated evil; a South Carolina slave-holding woman, Louisa McCord, wrote “We proclaim it [slavery], on the contrary, a Godlike dispensation, a providential caring for the weak, and a refuge for the portionless.” Another Southerner, George Fitzhugh, took this argument to its logical conclusion. In his book Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters (1857), Fitzhugh claimed that civil society demanded the enslavement of the masses, whether white or black: “Some were born with saddles on their backs, and others booted and spurred to ride them—and the riding does them good.” Fitzhugh also argued that slaves, whom he claimed were cared for by benevolent planters, were better off than northern factory workers, whom he asserted were exploited and neglected by indifferent employers. A roving reporter for the New York Times, Frederick Law Olmsted, expressed in journalistic terms what Stowe had described in her novel: cruel aristocrats lording over plantations operated by degraded slaves and non-slaveholding whites mired in sloth, ignorance, and poverty. Olmsted seemed most concerned about effects of slavery on whites; in one of his dispatches he quoted a Louisiana planter, who believed that the institution’s “influence on the character of the whites was what was most deplorable.” Thus in the 1850s the issue of slavery became a staple of both mainstream periodicals and the best-seller list. Few people could ignore the controversy. full view Verdict of the People - Painting, after 1855 In George Caleb Bingham’s Verdict of the People (after 1855), the American flag flies proudly over a happy throng celebrating the outcome of the political process. However, the process of deciding the Kansas Nebraska Act marked the collapse of the second party system and moved the Union a step closer to disruption and civil war. (Norton Art Gallery) As increasing numbers of Americans read the starkly drawn images of the South produced by northern printing presses, the territory of Kansas was becoming engulfed in a regional civil war. Proslavery settlers, aided and abetted by their compatriots (called Border Ruffians) from Missouri, installed their own territorial government at Shawnee Mission in 1855. Opposing these proslavery settlers were the Free-Soilers, some of whom had organized into abolitionist groups, such as the New England Emigrant Aid Company, and armed themselves with rifles. Antislavery groups called the guns Beecher’s Bibles, after Brooklyn’s Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother and a fundraiser for abolitionist forces in Kansas. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 453 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Systems of Unfree Labor The controversy over slavery ultimately precipitated the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in the nation’s history. Yet the abolition of slavery (with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865) did not eradicate forms of coerced labor. Indeed, systems of unfree labor—in which individuals are forced to work without compensation and for the benefit of someone else—have characterized the whole sweep of American history. In the seventeenth century, most tobacco field workers in the Chesapeake region were indentured servants. These young men and women received passage from Europe to the colonies. In return, they bound themselves to a master for a stipulated amount of time (usually seven years). Apprentices, children and young people, labored for a master artisan until they reached age 21. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the institution of slavery spread throughout the colonies. This system, which depended on the labor of Africans and their descendants, differed in crucial ways from indentured servitude and apprenticeship. Slaves remained slaves for life, and they had no rights under law. Children took the status of their enslaved mother. States outside the South had emancipated their slaves by the mid-nineteenth century. However, forms of bound labor persisted. In some Mid-Atlantic and New England small towns, local officials sold the labor of impoverished men, women, and children to the highest bidder, thereby relieving taxpayers of the expense of supporting them. Poor people confined to workhouses were forced to toil at many different kinds of jobs, such as growing crops, spinning thread, weaving cloth, and producing handicrafts. In some cases, ship captains kidnapped sailors and forced them to work for no pay on long voyages. Indian and African American children remained at risk as labor-hungry whites forcibly “apprenticed” them with the aid of the courts. By the late nineteenth century, peonage characterized the southern staple crop economy as well as the rural extractive sector (logging, sawmills, turpentine production, and mining). Held against their will, sharecroppers and railroad workers alike labored in isolated rural areas where law enforcement agents were few and far between. The outlawing of peonage in 1911 failed to end this practice. The southern states also pioneered in the use of convict labor, a means of channeling petty criminals (and random, innocent young African American men) into the rough and dangerous work of building roads through swamps and digging coal out of the earth. Convict labor officials often demonstrated a reckless disregard for human life. Unlike slave owners, prison officials and the private individuals who leased convicts had few incentives to treat these workers in a humane way. In the early twenty-first century, coerced labor persists. Some illegal immigrants continue to indenture themselves to smugglers and remain indebted to these smugglers for many years. Prisoners perform a variety of tasks for private companies, including entering data into computers and taking hotel reservations by phone. American labor unions publicize the fact that some products consumed in this country have been manufactured by unfree workers abroad, such as prisoners in China and child laborers in Pakistan and Vietnam. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 454 ${bmicon} This dangerous situation soon gave way to terrorism and insurrection on both sides. In 1855, in retaliation for a proslavery raid on the “Free-Soil” town of Lawrence, Kansas, an Ohio abolitionist named John Brown, together with his four sons and two other men, hacked to death five proslavery men at Pottowatamie Creek. The massacre only strengthened the resolve of proslavery advocates, who in the next year drew up a constitution for Kansas, which effectively nullified the principle of popular sovereignty over the issue of slavery. Called the Lecompton Constitution, the document decreed that voters might approve or reject slavery, but even if they chose to reject it, any slaves already in the state would remain slaves under the force of law. By throwing his support behind the Lecompton Constitution, President Buchanan alienated northern members of his own party, and the Democrats descended into north–south factionalism. The spilling of blood over slavery was not confined to the Kansas frontier. In 1856 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an outspoken abolitionist, delivered a speech on the floor of the United States Senate condemning “The Crime Against Kansas” (the Lecompton Constitution) and the men who perpetrated it, men he characterized as “hirelings picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization,” men who (like his own colleague Senator Butler of South Carolina) loved slavery the way that degenerates loved their prostitutes. Shortly after this speech, Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, a relative of Senator Butler, leapt to the defense of the white South and attacked Sumner on the floor of the Senate, beating him into unconsciousness with a cane. This was “southern chivalry” and “southern honor,” fumed an outraged northern press: a defenseless man beaten almost to death by a bully armed with a club. Soon, “Bleeding Kansas” became a rallying cry for abolitionists everywhere. They contemplated the necessity of defending themselves and their interests in the courtrooms of New England and the small towns of the West no less than in Congress. Across the street from the Capitol, proceedings in the Supreme Court were more civil but no less explosive. In 1857 a former slave named Dred Scott sued in federal court, claiming that he was a citizen of Missouri and a free man. Scott maintained that he had become free once his master had taken him onto free soil (the state of Illinois and the territory of Wisconsin). In the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), the court ruled that even residence on free soil did not render a slave a free person, for, regardless of their status, black people had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” With this single decision, then, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and the Court threw off the hard-won balance between slave and free states. In effect, the Court declared unconstitutional the Compromise of 1820, which had banned slavery in the region north of Missouri’s southern boundary, because, the justices held, slave owners could not be deprived of their property without due process. This decision threatened the precarious freedom of the South’s quarter million free people of color and extended the reach of slavery into the northern states. Most white people residing outside the South never read the Court’s ruling, but if they had, they probably would have agreed with the justices’ claim that, since the earliest days of the Republic, blacks “had been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations.” At the same time, northern opinion makers warned that the decision made Northerners complicit in the slave system. Of the “slave power,” the Cincinnati Daily Commercial thundered, “It has marched over and annihilated the boundaries of the states. We are now one great homogeneous slaveholding community.” Convening in Philadelphia, black leaders expressed the hope that white Northerners would condemn the Scott decision and “make common cause with us … and striking for impartial liberty, they will join with us in our efforts to recover the long lost boon of freedom.” full view Dred Scott Dred Scott garnered notoriety through one of the most famous trials in U.S. history, when the United States Supreme Court further inflamed the slavery question with a decision against him. As a slave in the slave state of Missouri, Scott claimed free status because he had once been taken into the free territories of Illinois and Wisconsin. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) Even nonabolitionists had good reason to fear the long-term implications of the ruling, for it suggested that the institution of slavery was about to spill out of the confines of the southern states and into the rest of the country. Free white men and women feared competing with slaves in the workplace, whether in the West or East. In 1857 a depression hit the northeastern and midwestern states, as the discovery of California gold produced inflation in the East. CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 455 ${bmicon} Businesses failed and debtors had a difficult time repaying their creditors. In New England, shoemakers responded to these economic pressures, and to the labor-saving machinery installed by their employers, by banding together and forming a union. Members of the new organization, called the Knights of St. Crispin, believed their future looked bleak. They reasoned that they would not be able to seek new economic opportunities out West if that part of the country were dominated by southern planters and cheap slave labor. Like other members of the northern laboring classes, the shoemakers also feared a mass migration of blacks out of the South and into the North. As a result, national unions such as the ones formed by bookbinders and printers in 1850 began to take precautionary measures by barring free people of color from apprenticeship positions and from certain workplaces altogether. Against this backdrop of economic turmoil and political conflict, the congressional elections of 1858 assumed great significance. In particular, the Senate contest in Illinois pitted full view Stephen Douglas Stephen Douglas, the most prominent spokesman of the Young Americans Movement, during the debate over Kansas. (Library of Congress) full view Stephen Douglas When Stephen Douglas spoke out against the Lecompton controversy, he lost the support of traditional southern Democratic voters. This move cost the US Senator from Illinois his shot at the presidency. (Library of Congress) full view A Young Abraham Lincoln A Young Abraham Lincoln PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 456 ${bmicon} incumbent Stephen A. Douglas against challenger Abraham Lincoln. In a series of seven public debates, the two men debated the political conflict over slavery as it had been shaped during the tumultuous decade after the Mexican War. Though no friend of the abolitionists, Douglas was quickly falling from favor within the Democratic party; the Supreme Court had nullified his proposal for popular sovereignty in the territories, and he had parted ways from his southern brethren when he denounced Kansas’s Lecompton Constitution. Yet in the last debate between Lincoln and Douglas, held in Alton on October 15, 1858, Douglas declared, “I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Christendom.” full view 1860 Election - Cartoon In this cartoon from the 1860 election, candidates Lincoln and Douglas struggle for control of the country, while Breckinridge tears away the South. John Bell of the Constitutional Union party futilely attempts to repair the damage to the torn nation. Lincoln ridiculed the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which he maintained was as thin as the “soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.” He had no desire to root out slavery in the South, but, “I have said, and I repeat, my wish is that the further spread of [slavery] may be arrested, and that it may be placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.” According to a reporter present, this last remark provoked great applause. And this was no minor confrontation between two candidates; it is estimated that in six of the seven debates the two men spoke before crowds exceeding 10,000 people each. Lincoln lost the election (in which blacks were not allowed to vote as a matter of Illinois law), but, more significantly, he won the loyalty of Republicans all over the North and put the white South on notice that the days of compromise were over. Meanwhile, with the admission as free states of Minnesota in 1858 and Oregon in 1859, Congress began to reflect a distinct antislavery bias. On a Sunday night in October 1859, John Brown and 19 other men (including at least five African Americans) launched a daring attack on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. They had received guns and moral support from some of the North’s leading abolitionists, and their plan was to raid the arsenal and distribute firearms to slaves in the surrounding area, thereby inciting a general rebellion that, they hoped, would engulf the rest of the South. The Virginia militia cornered Brown and his men, but not before the insurrectionist had killed seven people (including a free man of color) and injured ten others. Within two days a U.S. Marine force, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, had captured Brown and his surviving followers. Two weeks later Brown stood in a Virginia courtroom and declared that his intention indeed had been “to free the slaves.” Brown was convicted of several charges: treason against the United States for his raid on the federal arsenal, murder, and inciting an insurrection. On December 2, 1859, before being led to the gallows, Brown handed a scrap of paper to one of his guards: “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away: but with Blood.” Brown failed as the instigator of a slave rebellion, but he succeeded as a prophet. The raid on Harpers Ferry cast a shadow over the party conventions held in the summer of 1860. By then it was apparent that the national party system had all but disintegrated. Southerners in effect seceded from the Democratic party by walking out of their Charleston CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 457 ${bmicon} convention rather than supporting Stephen Douglas as candidate for president. Within a few weeks, representatives of both the northern and the southern wings of the party reconvened in separate conventions in Baltimore; Northerners gave the nod to Douglas and Southerners chose as their standard-bearer John C. Breckinridge, a proponent of extending slavery into the territories and annexing Cuba. Representing the thoroughly discredited strategy of compromise was the candidate of the Constitutional Union party, John Bell of Tennessee. TABLE 13-5 The Election of 1860 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Abraham Lincoln Republican 1,865,593 180 Stephen A. Douglas Democratic 1,382,713 12 John C. Breckinridge Democratic 848,356 72 John Bell Constitutional Union 592,906 39 In Chicago, the Republicans lined up behind the moderate Abraham Lincoln and agreed on a platform that had something for everybody, including measures to boost economic growth (as promoted by Henry Clay’s American System earlier in the century): a proposed protective tariff, a transcontinental railroad, internal improvements, and free homesteads for western farmers. The Republicans renounced the Know-Nothings. Lincoln himself had taken the lead in admonishing Republicans who sought to curtail the voting rights of European immigrants, such as the Germans and Scandinavians. Lecturing members of his own full view Abraham Lincoln, February 27, 1860 This Daguerreotype was taken by Matthew Brady several months before Lincoln was nominated by the Republican party for president. (Library of Congress) TABLE 13-6 U.S. Population, by Nativity and Race, for Regions, 1830–1860     White Negro   Year Total Total Native Foreign Born Total Slave Other Races Northeast 1860 10,594,268 10,438,028 8,419,243 2,018,785 156,001 18 239 1850 8,626,851 8,477,089 7,153,512 1,323,577 149,762 236 ---- 1840 6,761,082 6,618,758 ---- ---- 142,324 765 ---- 1830 5,542,381 5,417,167 ---- ---- 125,214 2,780 ---- Midwest 1860 9,096,716 8,899,969 7,357,376 1,542,593 184,239 114,948 12,508 1850 5,403,595 5,267,988 4,617,913 650,075 135,607 87,422 ---- 1840 3,351,542 3,262,195 ---- ---- 89,347 58,604 ---- 1830 1,610,473 1,568,930 ---- ---- 41,543 25,879 ---- South 1860 11,133,861 7,033,973 6,642,201 391,772 4,097,111 3,838,765 2,277 1850 8,982,612 5,630,414 5,390,314 240,100 3,352,198 3,116,629 ---- 1840 6,950,729 4,308,752 ---- ---- 2,641,977 2,427,986 ---- 1830 5,707,848 3,545,963 ---- ---- 2,161,885 1,980,384 ---- West 1860 618,976 550,567 406,964 143,603 4,479 29 63,930 1850 178,818 177,577 150,794 26,783 1,241 26 ---- 1840 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 1830 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Source: Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1960) pp. 11–12. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 458 ${bmicon} party in Massachusetts, he declared, “I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro, and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different languages from myself.” Yet Republicans held out little hope for other groups demanding the rights and protection that flowed from American citizenship. Spanish-speaking residents of California, Chinese immigrants, free people of color throughout the North, Indian tribes from North Carolina to the northwestern states, the wives and daughters of men all over the country—these groups were not included in the Republicans’ grand design for a country based on the principles of free labor. Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, although he received support from only 40 percent of the men who cast ballots. Lincoln won the Electoral College, and he also received a majority of votes. However, ten southern states had refused to list him on the ballot; in that region of the country he received almost no votes. Stephen Douglas won almost 30 percent of the popular vote; together, Douglas and Breckenridge outpolled Lincoln (2.2 million votes to 1.85 million). Nevertheless, the new president had swept New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the upper Midwest. Regional (northern and southern) interests took precedence over national political parties. full view President Abraham Lincoln The newly-elected Lincoln faced a crisis unlike any the nation had seen before. Yet through determination, humor, common sense, and political agility, Lincoln was able to ensure the preservation of the nation. (Library of Congress) Lincoln and his party represented the antislavery sentiments of northern family farmers. The South took heed of this dramatic shift in the national political landscape. By the end of 1860 South Carolina had seceded from the Union, and the nation headed toward war. During the 1850s, Americans on both sides of the slavery issue began to voice their opinions, and their frustrations, in ever more dramatic ways. Ultimately, these deep feelings led to war. People all over the country came to feel that the debate over slavery had relevance to their lives. In the slave states, black workers remained yoked to a system that denied their humanity and mocked the integrity of their families. In the nonslave states, free people of color understood that northern racial prejudice was but a variation of the slaveholders’ theme of domination. New England farm families looking to move west were convinced that western homesteads would not improve their economic security if these homesteads were surrounded by plantations cultivated by large numbers of enslaved workers. Although they expressed little regard for the rights of blacks, enslaved or free, the northern laboring classes feared that the expansion of slavery into the western territories would limit their own economic opportunities; whether shoemakers, wagon drivers, or seamstresses, they could not possibly compete with bound workers in the labor market. The Republicans drew inspiration from the anxieties of all these groups, and the party’s platform beckoned toward a future full of hope, a future that would fulfill the long-thwarted promise of the young country as a “republic of equal rights, where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship.” full view 1860 Presidential Election Banner (Republican) This banner from the 1860 presidential election campaign features a portrait of the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Most of the other candidates in the race had similar campaign banners, as well as other items that could be proudly displayed by voters. (Library of Congress) In contrast, southern whites of various classes agreed on a rallying cry that stressed independence from Yankee interlopers and freedom from federal interference. Yet this uni- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 459 ${bmicon} full view MAP 13.3 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD The Underground Railroad consisted of a network of people who helped fugitives in their escape from slavery en route to the North or Canada. An escaped slave named Harriet Tubman made an estimated 19 separate trips south to help an estimated 300 slaves escape to freedom. Like Tubman, most “conductors” on the Underground Railroad were blacks, many of them free men and women living in the North. full view Harriet Tubman Unable to read and write, Harriet Tubman used daring tactics in her Underground Railroad to free slaves and deliver them to safety, often all the way to Canada. (Library of Congress) fying rhetoric carried different meanings for different groups of southerners. The owners of large plantations were desperate to preserve their enslaved labor forces, and also hungry for fresh lands and renewed political power; these men scrambled to maintain their own privileges in the face of growing northern influence in Congress. Nonslaveholding farmers sought to produce all household necessities themselves and remain independent of the worldwide cotton market economy so crucial to the wealth of slave masters and mistresses. Yet almost PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 460 ${bmicon} all southern whites, rich and poor, stood allied, determined to take up arms to protect their households and their distinctive “southern way of life.” On the eve of the Civil War, complex forces roiled an ethnically diverse society. Ultimately the North and South marched into combat, each side united enough to mobilize huge armies. However, wartime strains would expose the fault lines in the free labor coalition as well as in the slaveholders’ republic. Secession Era Editorial Project history.furman.edu/∼benson/docs/ Furman University is digitizing editorials about the secession crisis and already includes scores of them on this site. John Brown trial links www.law.umkc/edu/faculty/projecs/ftrials/Brown.html For information about the John Brown trial, this site provides a list of excellent links. Abraham Lincoln and Slavery odur.let.nl/∼usa/H/1990/ch5_p6.html This site discusses Lincoln’s views and actions concerning slavery, especially the Lincoln–Douglas debate. The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4 From the series on Africans in America, an analysis of the Compromise of 1850 and the effect of the Fugitive Slave Act on black Americans. The 1850s: An Increasingly Divided Union nac.gmu/mmts/50proto.html A tutorial skill development site of the Multi-Media Thinking Skills project that focuses on events in the 1850s leading to the Civil War. Words and Deeds in American History leweb2.loc.gov/ammem/mcchtml/corhome.html A Library of Congress site containing links to Frederick Douglass; the Compromise of 1850; speeches by John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay; and other topics from the Civil War era. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin xroads.virginia.edu/∼HYPER/STOWE/stowe.html This site provides both text and descriptions of Stowe’s important books and information about the author’s life. Eric Foner, Free Labor, Free Soil, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970). William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion (1990). Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000). James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (1997). Nancy Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America (1998). Joan Cashin, A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier (1991). Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780–1860 (1990). Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890 (1983). Albert Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (1988). Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (2000). John D. Majewski, A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War (2000). David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (1987). Tomás Almaguer, Racial Faultlines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (1994). Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830–1860 (2000). Mary H. Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780–1910 (1988). Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (2000). Frances Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity over the Centuries (1999). CHAPTER 13 ###8226; THE CRISIS OVER SLAVERY, 1848###8211;1860 461 ${bmicon} David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991). Avery O. Craven , The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861 (1953). Lacy K. Ford, Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800–1860 (1988). Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (1973). Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1995). Leonard Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860 (2000). David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (1995). William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (1987). Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (1999). Stephen Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (1984). Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (2000). Albert J. Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s Boston (1998). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter13 To Chapter 13 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 462 ${bmicon}         Mobilization for War, 1861–1862       The Course of War, 1862–1864       The Other War: African American Struggles for Liberation       Battle Fronts and Home Fronts in 1863       The Prolonged Defeat of the Confederacy, 1864–1865       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 463 ${bmicon} PENSACOLA, FLORIDA, WAS THE SITE OF A DRAMATIC COURT MARTIAL TRIAL IN April 1862, when five men were charged with treasonous acts against the Confederate States of America. “Possessed of information well calculated to aid the enemy,” and thus capable of “giving intelligence” to the enemy, the defendants had endangered the security of Confederate troops stationed in the area, according to the chief prosecutor. At the conclusion of the three-day hearing, the court convicted the men and ordered that two of them, alleged ringleaders, be hanged. Later, the presiding officer claimed that “high Military Necessity” had mandated the swift trial and stern verdict: coastal communities were engulfed in a “general stampede” as planters tried to move slaves and livestock out of the way of the encroaching Union army. According to the officer, at stake in this trial was the very fate of the would-be new nation. By 1862, Confederate leaders knew full well that the war for southern independence would be a hard and long one. Indeed, the Pensacola court martial provided striking evidence of the political and military challenges faced by southern nationalists, for all of the defendants—George, Robert, Stephen, Peter, and William—were runaway slaves. The specific charges lodged against them read, “That the said slaves are intelligent beings possessing the faculties of Conveying information which would prove useful to the enemy and detrimental to the Confederate States.” Clearly, these five men were combatants in the war, as threatening to the well-being of the Confederacy as any Yankee sharpshooter in a blue uniform. The charges also suggest that the Confederates were forced to repudiate elements of their own proslavery beliefs, which held that black people were childlike and servile, incapable of acting on their own, and grateful for the guidance and protection of southern whites. The Pensacola slaves were assigned a defense lawyer, who attempted to show that they had not actually encountered any Union soldiers and so had had no opportunity to divulge information related to Confederate troop movement. Technically, then, they were not guilty of spying. In court, however, the accused men did admit that, ever since President Abraham Lincoln had taken office in early 1861, three white men in the vicinity (a whiskey seller, an employee of the slaves’ master, and a shingle maker) had been encouraging them to seek their freedom behind Union lines. Prosecuting officers believed that “strong measures” were needed to prevent the nefarious activities of “spys whether white or black.” These officials therefore were unprepared for the firestorm of criticism that followed the announcement of the verdict. The owner of the slaves, General Jackson Morton, expressed outrage that two of his men were marked for summary execution. In a formal complaint to Confederate authorities, Morton denounced the hearing as “vulgar and improper.” By the time the controversy faded, an impressive array of Confederate military officers (from sentinels to a lieutenant, a captain, a colonel, a major PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 464 ${bmicon} full view MAP 14.1 SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1860 In the South, the areas of the greatest concentration of slaves were also the areas of greatest support for the Confederacy. During the war, the Appalachian mountain region and the Upper Piedmont—the area between the mountains and the broad coastal plain—were home to people loyal to the Union and to people who became increasingly disaffected with Confederate policies as the war dragged on. general, and a general) had had to justify their actions in convening the trial. The Confederate adjutant and inspector general took time out from more pressing matters to review the case for the secretary of war. In the words of one Confederate official, “The sacrosanctity of slave property in this war has operated most injuriously to the Confederacy.” Though at a distinct disadvantage compared to the North in terms of troops and materiel, the white South managed to fight on for four long bloody years. Early on, politicians hailed slaves as a tremendous asset, an immense, easily managed labor force that would grow food and dig trenches. Instead, African American men and women became freedom fighters, a source of subversion in the heart of the Confederacy. In October 1862, in response to the crisis of wartime slave management, the Confederate Congress passed a measure that exempted from military service one white man for every 20 slaves on a plantation. Many slave owners used this law to shield themselves or their sons from combat duty. In turn, the Twenty-Negro Law inflamed resentment among non–slave-owning, small farmers who charged that this rich man’s war was actually a poor man’s fight. Even within the ranks of the elite, conflicts over military strategy and national mobilization policies hobbled the Confederate effort. Many slaveholding women gradually came to see the sacrifice of their husbands, brothers, and sons as too high a price to pay for southern independence. As defenders of slavery, the Confederates cast themselves as rebels in an age when the principle of individual rights was gaining ground. The citizens of France, Germany, and Italy were agitating on behalf of modern, democratic nation-states, and systems of serfdom and slavery throughout Europe and the Western Hemisphere were under siege. By early 1865, leading southern politicians and strategists had initiated a public debate over the possibility of offering slaves their liberty in return for military service. In acknowledging that African American men might serve as effective soldiers (as 179,000 of them had demonstrated in the Union army), the Confederates tolled their own death knell. White Southern- CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 465 ${bmicon} ers were fighting for their own nation, but African Americans were fighting to gain their own country as well. The Republican conduct of the war revealed the party’s long-range, guiding principles. Yet not all non-Southerners embraced the party’s brand of nationalism. Several groups objected to a strong federal government, one that would weld the country together geographically as well as economically. The Lincoln administration met bitter resistance from Indian tribes as diverse as the Santee Sioux of Minnesota, the Cheyenne of Colorado, and the Navajo and Apaches of the Southwest. In northeastern cities, Irish immigrants battled federal draft agents and attacked black women, men, and children, their supposed competitors in the workplace. The Civil War, then, was less a “brothers’ war” between the white farmers of the North and South exclusively and more a conflict that pitted diverse groups against each other over the issues of slavery, territorial expansion, federal power, and local control. Yet by the end of the war in April 1865, for the time being at least, the Republican vision of a union forged in blood had prevailed, at the cost of more than 600,000 lives. full view Civil War, 1861-1862 Much of the significant fighting and some of the most famous battles of the Civil War occurred in the East, in the area around Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. The West, however, was where the Union’s successful campaign to control the Mississippi River allowed Northern armies to strike at the heart of the Confederacy. This interactive map shows the major battles of the war on both the eastern and western fronts, covering the opening years of the war from 1861 to 1862. full view Civil War, 1863-1865 Much of the significant fighting and some of the most famous battles of the Civil War occurred in the East in the area around Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. It was in the West, however, that the Union’s successful campaign to control the Mississippi River allowed Northern armies to strike at the heart of the Confederacy. This map explains the latter half of the war from 1863 to 1865. On December 20, 1860, less than eight weeks after Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, South Carolina seceded from the Union, determined, in the words of its own Declaration of Independence, to “resume her separate and equal place among nations.” By February 1, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas (all states dependent on slave-based staple crop agriculture) had also withdrawn from the United States of America. Three days later, representatives of the seven states met in Montgomery, Alabama, and formed the Confederate States of America. They also adopted a new constitution for their new nation. Though modeled after that of the United States, this document invoked the power of “sovereign and independent states” instead of “we, the people.” Delegates to the Montgomery convention elected as their president Jefferson Davis, a wealthy Mississippi planter with an impressive record of public service. Davis was a graduate of West Point, a veteran of the Mexican War, and a former United States congressman and senator. He had also held the position of secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration. Chosen vice president was a former Whig from Georgia, Alexander H. Stephens. In devising a cabinet, Davis bypassed some well-known radical secessionsists—“fire eaters” such as William Lowndes Yancey (of Alabama) and Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr. (of South Carolina)—on the assumption that the builders of a new nation would need skills different from the destroyers of an old one. In some respects, the Civil War seems difficult to explain, for the two sides shared a great deal. Most of the people North and South were English-speaking Protestants with deep roots in the culture of the British Isles. Together they celebrated a revolutionary heritage, paying homage to George Washington and the other Founding Fathers. Why then was the white South, especially the slave South, so fearful of Abraham Lincoln? Although Lincoln enjoyed a broad Electoral College victory—180 votes to 123 for his opponents combined—the popular vote margin was slim. Six out of ten Americans cast their ballots for a candidate other than Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election. Together, Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge polled 366,484 more votes than did the lanky lawyer from Illinois. Lincoln received no votes from the Deep South (he was not on the ballot in those states), Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 466 ${bmicon} full view MAP 14.2 THE SECESSION OF SOUTHERN STATES, 1860–1861 The southern states seceded from the Union in stages, beginning with South Carolina in December 1860. Founded on February 4, 1861, the Confederate States of America initially consisted of only that state and six Deep South states. The four upper South states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina did not leave the Union until mid-April, when Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down the civil rebellion. The slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained in the Union, but each of those states was bitterly divided between Unionists and Confederate sympathizers. and five upper South states gave him only 4 percent of his popular vote total (and those came mostly from German immigrants in or near St. Louis). The Republicans failed to capture either the House of Representatives or the Senate, and the Supreme Court remained within the southern camp, with five of its nine justices determined to protect the institution of slavery. Political support for Lincoln thus appeared slim, and he did not seem likely to invoke his authority to move against slavery. He had made it clear that, as president, he would possess neither the authority nor the desire to disturb slavery as it existed in the South. However, he summed up his philosophy before the secession crisis this way: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this … is not democracy.” Not surprisingly, then, southern elites felt threatened by Lincoln in particular and the Republicans in general, pointing to the new president’s oft-repeated promise to halt the march of slavery into the western territories. Although he was in no position to achieve this goal by executive order, Lincoln did have the power to expand the Republican base in the South by dispensing patronage jobs to a small group of homegrown abolitionists. He could also make appointments to the Supreme Court as openings became available. The Republican party was not a majority party; it was a sectional party in that its power was all in the North and the Upper Midwest. Ominously for the South, this sectional party had managed to seize control of the executive branch of government. The antebellum balance of power between slave and free states had tipped decisively in favor of the North. CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 467 ${bmicon} Slaveowners reasoned that it was only a matter of time before the North—what some southern whites called the Anti–Slave Power Conspiracy—spread its tentacles all over the South. According to this view, John Brown’s 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, was just the first in a series of planned attacks on the slave South. Moreover, some Southerners feared that the swearing in of (what they saw as) the ugly, uncouth new president would encourage the growth of any number of northern evils, from labor unionism and women’s rights to free love and dress reform (promoted by the infamous “Bloomer women,” who wore pants instead of skirts). Submission to “Black Republicans” would bring the South only humiliation and degradation. Two last-ditch efforts at compromise failed to avert a constitutional crisis. In December 1860, as South Carolina was seceding and other states were preparing to join it, neither northern Republicans nor lower South Democrats showed any interest in a series of proposed constitutional amendments that would have severely curtailed the federal government’s ability to restrict the interstate slave trade or the spread of slavery. Called the Crittenden Compromise (after its sponsor, Senator John J. Crittenden, a Whig from Kentucky), this package of proposed amendments was defeated in the Senate on January 16, 1861. A peace conference, organized by the Virginia legislature and assembled in February, revised the Crittenden Compromise, but key players were missing: the seven Confederate states and five northern states. Congress rejected the conference’s recommendations at the end of February. By this time many Americans, radicals and moderates, Northerners and Southerners, were in no mood to compromise on the issue of slavery, especially its extension into the Western territories. Lincoln was faced with the task of cobbling together a cabinet composed of representatives of his Republican coalition. Shrewdly, he named four party leaders who had challenged him for the presidential nomination the previous year (William H. Seward as secretary of state, Edward Bates as attorney general, Simon Cameron as secretary of war, and Salmon P. Chase as secretary of the treasury). He appointed Montgomery Blair (from strategically located Maryland) as postmaster general. In his inaugural address of March 4, Lincoln appealed to the South to refrain from any drastic action, invoking the historic bonds of nationhood, the “mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone.” In his inaugural address of March 4, Lincoln appealed to the South to refrain from any drastic action. For the most part Lincoln’s plea for unity fell on deaf ears. However, among the Southerners who initially resisted the secessionists’ call to arms was the West Point graduate and Mexican War veteran Robert E. Lee of Virginia. As late as January 1861, Lee maintained that the framers of our Constitution would never have “exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation” if they had intended the Union to be so easily dismantled. Later, after Virginia seceded, Lee cast his lot with the Confederacy: “I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children,” he declared. By his home Lee meant the Commonwealth of Virginia, not the collection of disaffected states. full view Fort Sumter - Lithograph This Currier and Ives lithograph depicts the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12-13, 1861. The soldiers fired from Fort Moultrie in the Charleston harbor, which the Union had evacuated the previous December in its attempt to strengthen Fort Sumter. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) Indeed, in early April, the Confederacy was a rhetorical powerhouse, full of blustering firebrands. But it was also a poor excuse for an independent nation, with only one-third of the U.S. population and almost no industrial capacity. Over the next few weeks, as the seven Confederate states attempted to coax the upper South to join their revolution, Lincoln emerged as an unwitting ally in their effort. Located in Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter was one of two Union forts in southern territory, and in the spring of 1861 it was badly in need of supplies. On April 12, Lincoln took the high moral ground by sending provisions but not troops to the fort. The Confederates found the move provocative nonetheless and began firing on the fort. After a 33-hour Confederate bombardment, the heavily damaged fort surrendered without a fight. In response, many white Southerners, such as Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a high Confederate official, cheered and embraced the “pomp and circumstance of glorious war.” PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 468 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 14.1 DELEGATES TO THE ALABAMA SECESSION CONVENTION Three days after the capture of Fort Sumter, Lincoln (anticipating a conflict no longer than 90 days) called for 75,000 northern volunteers to quell a civil uprising “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” By the end of the month he had ordered a blockade of southern seaports. Condemning these moves as acts of “northern aggression,” the upper South, including Virginia (deprived of its western part, which now formed a new state called West Virginia), Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina all seceded from the Union by May 20. Grateful for the newfound loyalty of Virginia and eager to appropriate the Tredegar Iron Works (in Richmond), the Confederacy moved its capital from the down-at-the-heels Montgomery to the elegant Richmond on May 11. full view Mill in West Virginia A Mill in West Virginia (Photodisc, Inc.) CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 469 ${bmicon} The process by which the southern states left the Union foreshadowed the political rifts the new nation faced in the horrific years to come. With the exception of Tennessee, which placed the secession question before its state legislators, all of the states elected delegates to special secession conventions; acting separately, each of these bodies ultimately ratified an ordinance of secession. Some white Southerners (especially Union sympathizers called Unionists) refused to vote for convention delegates at all, considering the whole enterprise illegal. Other voters supported delegates who initially favored cooperating with other southern states in the hope that the South could broker some compromise on slavery with the North, but then later, in the heat of the moment, changed their minds and voted to secede. Most of the delegates to the North Carolina secession convention were slave owners, hardly a representative group from that state of yeomen. During the war, poor Southerners would charge that wealthy slave owners protected their own economic interests while ignoring those of ordinary people. Moreover, a core of Unionists would prove active traitors to the Confederate cause. full view Fort Sumter Under Seige After many hours of bombing, the Union forces had to surrender and give up Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Ironically, nobody was killed on either side in the opening exchange of what would be the bloodiest war in U. S. history. (Library of Congress) full view Confederate Flag Flies Over Fort Sumter The original “Stars and Bars” flag of the Confederate States of America flies over Fort Sumter in the aftermath of the Union retreat. The United States flag would not reappear here until 1865. (National Archives) Only Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee submitted their ordinances directly to the voters for approval, and although secession gained overwhelming approval in all three cases, it was not clear that those victories represented the will of the people. Moreover, certain segments of the southern population early demonstrated that they would withhold their support from the Confederacy; yeoman farmers in the upcountry, Louisiana sugar planters dependent on world markets for their product, and people in the hill country of east Tennessee all voted for Unionist delegates to their respective state conventions. The Border States of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware remained within the Union, but among their residents were many outspoken people who openly sympathized with the South. Commissioners from individual states helped to coordinate the secession process and justify the collective decision to leave the United States. As a group, the commissioners maintained that northern Republicans intended to dishonor and degrade southern white men. The commissioners highlighted slavery as the cause of secession, maintaining that Lincoln’s election threatened to provoke a rebellion among the slaves and thus destroy a way of life for all southern white men and women. Stephen Hale, Alabama’s commissioner to Kentucky, declared that the Republicans’ “new theory of government” was a direct attack on southern property rights. A Republican administration, he declared, would lead to “all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection.” Southern whites, Hale maintained, were in danger of losing not only their slaves but also their lives. This overheated rhetoric paved the way to war. Poised to battle each other, the South and the North faced similar challenges. Both sides had to inspire—or force—large numbers of men to fight. Both had to produce massive amounts of cannon, ammunition, and food. And both had to devise military strategies that would, they hoped, ensure victory. In early 1861 white Southerners were boasting of the stockpiles of cotton that, if needed, would serve as leverage for military support, diplomatic recognition, and financial assistance from the great European powers. Plantations brimming with hogs and corn, it was hoped, would sustain both masters and slaves, in contrast to the North, where cotton mills would lie idle and workers would soon descend to poverty and starvation. In defense of secession, white Southerners emulated the rhetoric of 1776—high tariffs on imported manufactured goods were latter-day taxes imposed without representation—and thus drew inspiration from the Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 470 ${bmicon} creation of the nation they now sought to dismantle. At the same time, however, Vice President Stephens acknowledged the revolutionary nature of the Confederacy. Repudiating the words of a famous Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, who had declared equality among men to be a “self-evident truth,” Stephens boldly asserted, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery … is his natural and normal condition.” full view Workers in D.C. during the Civil War This photograph of workers in front of a Washington, D.C., shop points to the vital role the home front workers played in the war. (Library of Congress) From the beginning of the war, Confederates aimed for a strategy calculated to draw on their strengths. They would fight a purely defensive war, a war of “annihilation,” by overwhelming Union armies that ventured into Confederate territory. Small units of troops would be deployed around the South’s 6000-mile border (a “dispersed defensive” tactic). Seasoned officers such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson would lead the charge to crush the Yankees. Finally, the South could command 3 million black people (a third of its total population of 9 million), all of whom, it was assumed, would do the bidding of planters and military men. Whereas the North would have to conquer the South to preserve the Union, the Confederacy would only have to survive to win its independence. White Southerners likened themselves to the Patriots of the American Revolution, boldly waging a defensive war against an arrogant, powerful enemy. At first, the North was inclined to think little past the numbers: in 1860, it possessed 90 percent of the manufacturing capacity and three-quarters of the 30,000 railroad miles in the United States. Its population, 22 million, dwarfed that of the South. More than 1 million Northerners were employed in factories and workshops, compared to 110,000 Southerners. The North retained control of the (admittedly less than formidable) U.S. Navy and all other resources of the federal government, including a bureaucratic infrastructure to facilitate troop deployment and communication. Its diversified economy yielded grain as well as textiles; it could not only mobilize a large army but count on feeding it as well. CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 471 ${bmicon} Early on, the North had a plan, but one that could hardly be dignified by the term strategy. It would defend its own territory from Southern attack and target Confederate leaders, under the assumption that latent Union sentiment in the South would arise to smash the rebellion before it went too far. Union gunboats positioned along the East Coast and up and down the Mississippi River would seal off the Confederacy from foreign supply lines (the so-called Anaconda Plan proposed by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott in the summer of 1861). The North would also launch a political offensive calculated to undermine Confederate sympathizers by bolstering Unionist sentiment everywhere. For example, from the beginning of the war, Lincoln made clear that he would continue to appeal to slaveholders loyal to the Union, whether those slaveholders lived in the Border States or deep in the heart of the Confederacy. Northerners also invoked a Revolutionary heritage to justify their cause. However, they downplayed the issue of unjust taxation and instead stressed the glories of the Union—in Lincoln’s words, “the last, best hope of mankind” in an age of kings and emperors. In an address to the nation on July 4, 1861, the president declared that the nation preceded—and thus created—the Union. He maintained that no person should be enslaved to another person and that all people must have equal opportunities to succeed in life, regardless of their background or skin color. The war, he argued, was “essentially a people’s contest”: its purpose was “to lift artificial weights from all shoulders … to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race for life.” Northerners as a whole found these words uplifting. In contrast, Confederates urged white Southerners to die so that other people would remain enslaved. This message, however, lost its appeal among nonelite Southerners over the coming months and years. On July 21, 1861, at Manassas Junction (Bull Run), about 30 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., Union and Confederate forces encountered each other on the field of battle for the first time. This was the fight that earned Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson his nickname and burnished his reputation, for Union troops skirmished briefly with the enemy and then turned and fled back to the capital, disgraced. In the coming weeks, Northerners gave up the idea that the effort to suppress the rebels would be an easy one, and Lincoln began to reorganize the country’s officer corps and fortify its armies. Contrary to the expectations of the women who had accompanied the Union forces out of the nation’s capital, planning to lunch while they observed the first battle of the war, this fight was no picnic, military or otherwise. To win this initial victory, the Confederates had relied on the massing of several huge forces: those of Generals Joseph Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard, as well as Stonewall Jackson. Consequently, southern military strategists decided they must continue to defend southern territory while going on the offensive against the Yankees (the “offensive-defensive” strategy was used for the duration of the conflict). In other matters, however, the South learned life-and-death lessons more slowly. Only gradually did the central paradox of the Confederate nation become abundantly clear: that a country Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 472 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY A Virginia Slaveholder Objects to the Impressment of Slaves During the Civil War, some southern slave owners bitterly resisted Confederate slave impressment policies. On December 4, 1861, John B. Spiece, an Albemarle County, Virginia, slaveholder and lawyer, wrote to the Confederate attorney general and protested government policy. Dr Sir, Although a stranger to you, yet in consequence of the excitement and distress in this section of the country, in reference to a certain matter; I am constrained to address you, not merely on my own account; but on behalf of a large number of most respectable citizens…. A practice has prevailed for some considerable time in this section of the country of impressing into service of the confederate army, the horses wagons and slaves belonging to the people. The “Press masters” will go to their houses, and drag of their property to Just Such an extent as they choose; until it has not only created great excitement and distress; but bids fair to produce wide spread ruin. And I am told that these “Press masters” are paid by the Government the enormous price of two dollars and fifty cents for each team with they impress;—hence their anxiety and untiring exertions to increase the number;—thus making thirty or forty dollars pr day— While I do not controvert the right of the Government to impress into its service wagons and teams; yet I do controvert the right to impress Slaves—It does seem to me that no one can be impress’d into military service of any kind, unless he is subject to military duty: because this whole business is relating to the Army, and is purely a military matter.— The people in this section of the country are much attached to their slaves, and treat them in a humane manner—consequently they are exceedingly pained at having them dragged off at this inclement season of the year, and exposed to the severe weather in the mountains of north western Virginia…. Some have already died, and others have returned home afflicted with Typhoid fever, which has spread through the family to a most fatal and alarming extent.— I am a practicing lawyer myself, but these “Press masters” will hear nothing from any one residing amongst the people.— Therefore Sir, in consequence of the distress produced by the causes before mentioned, I am constrained to write to you; requesting you if you please, to give your opinion upon the questions involved. To wit—If a man’s wagon and team should be impress’d into Service, can his slave be impress’d to drive the said team— Secondly—If a man has neither wagon or team can his slave be impress’d to drive some other team (some of the “Press masters” yield this last point, whilst others do not, and contend that they can impress just as many slaves as they choose from any plantation, taking all the negro men if they think proper.)— Some few of the people have not been able to sow their grain this fall:—and there is deep dissatisfaction amongst the people—therefore I deem it proper and expedient that the authorities should know it— Spiece goes on to cite the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, as amended in 1860, “by which it seems there is no power to impress Slaves.” In the absence of Confederate congressional legislation to that effect, he argues, government authorities lack the legal right to take slaves from their owners. Spiece concludes his letter by suggesting that in taking slaves far from their homes, Confederate authorities were endangering the security of the would-be-new nation. There is also a serious evil in impressing slaves for the service in North western Virginia:—whilst there they get to talking with Union men in disguise, and by that means learn the original cause of the difficulty between North & South: then return home and inform other negroes:—not long since one of my neighbors negro men went to his master, and desired to let him go again to the north western army—adding “I wish you to let me go further than I went before[”]—I have the honor to be most respectfully your Obt Servt. It is unknown whether Confederate officials responded to Spiece’s letter. Source: Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, Series 1, Vol. 1, The Destruction of Slavery (1985), pp. 782–783. founded on an agrarian ideal of “states’ rights” needed to industrialize its economy and centralize its government operations to defeat the Union. The first weeks of the war revealed that the South would pursue its antebellum aims of conquering western territory for slavery. An early victory of Texas forces over Union troops in New Mexico led to the formation of what slaveholders in that region called the Confederate Territory of Arizona. Over the next year the Confederates launched successful assaults on the cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, in present-day New Mexico. However, southern troops amounted to little more than a band of plunderers; in Rio Abajo, for example, farmers and ranchers switched their allegiance to the Union after the rebels raided their homesteads. Deprived of money raised from customs duties (the blockade brought a halt to established patterns of overseas trade), the Confederacy relied on floating bonds ($400 million worth), raising taxes, and a 10 percent tax on farm produce. The Confederate Treasury printed money at a furious rate ($1 billion over the course of the conflict), but its value declined precipitously; near the end of the war one Confederate dollar was worth only 1.6 cents. Raising a volunteer army and impressing slave labor (forcing slaves to labor for the military) met with stiff resistance from various quarters of southern society. For yeoman farm families, long defensive of the independence of their own households, Confederate mobilization efforts came as a rude shock. Antebellum Southerners believed that white fathers should pro- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 473 ${bmicon} tect and retain control over their dependents at all times. In August 1861, the attorney general of Virginia reluctantly informed the Confederate secretary of war that the residents of Shenandoah County, with a white population of 12,800, were balking at the call for 10 percent of its population in volunteers. Likewise, resentful of the impressment of the few slaves from their area, farmers in Randolph County, Alabama, pointed to the sacrifices of their own women and children, “industriously engaged on their farms,” their necks reddened by the sun, while in the city wealthy whites (and their slaves) went about business as usual. Some masters stood on principle in their efforts to keep their enslaved men and women out of the clutches of Confederate “press agents.” Planters also expressed a well-founded fear that slaves impressed for a wide range of tasks, whether saltmaking or chopping trees or tending brick kilns, were difficult to control now that plantation discipline had been loosened. All over the South, white men resisted the idea that they must relinquish their slaves to the Confederacy to preserve the institution of slavery. The Confederate call for volunteers failed to produce the number of soldiers (and menial laborers) needed to fight the Union, and so in March 1862 Davis received congressional authorization to implement a military conscription law (all men between ages 18 and 35 were called up for three years of service), the first draft on the North American continent. (By September the upper age had been raised to 45.) The law also exempted certain kinds of workers, such as railroad employees, schoolteachers, miners, and druggists, and allowed the buying of PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 474 ${bmicon} “substitutes” by draftees who could afford the $300 price for them. This last type of exemption allowed wealthy men to pay someone to fight in their place. These provisions provoked anger not only among ordinary citizens but also among principled states’ rights advocates such as governors Joseph Brown of Georgia and Zebulon Vance of North Carolina. Brown exempted large numbers of men from the draft, claiming that the Confederacy posed a greater threat to states’ rights than did the Union. On January 1, 1862, 209,852 southern men were present for duty. Yet the northern force was more than twice as large, with 527,204. In Confederate encampments, antebellum identities gave way to wartime necessity. Reduced to the status of menial laborers, washing their own clothes and cooking their own meals, digging trenches and hauling wood, some sons from elite families felt demeaned by their new responsibilities. Soon after the war began, Colonel Jonathan A. Winston complained to the commander of the Confederate post at Yorktown, Virginia, that his men were “laboring in the unloading of Ships”—a poor use of their time, he thought, and a job better suited to slaves. However, there were too few blacks in the immediate area to meet all the needs of the army and the needs of the white soldiers themselves. For the purposes of war, white men must serve other white men. Just as the Confederates failed in their attempt to use fully the labor of enslaved workers, so they failed to reap much gain from the vaunted military prowess of Indians, especially those in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). In 1861, southern military officials appealed to the Cherokees and the other Five Tribes for support, promising them arms and protection from CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 475 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 14.2 OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORIES OF UNION AND CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS Union forces in return. Only gradually and reluctantly did Cherokee leader John Ross commit his men to the Confederacy: “We are in the situation of a man standing alone upon a low naked spot of ground, with the water rising all around him.” More devoted to the Confederate cause was Stand Watie, the brother of Elias Boudinot (one of the Cherokee leaders to have signed the original removal treaty). Backed by many Cherokee slaveholders, Stand Watie proceeded to mobilize what he called the “United Nations of Indians” as a fighting force on behalf of the Confederacy. Among those responding to the call to arms were Chocktaw and Chickasaw men, who formed Company E of the 21st Mississippi Regiment, “the Indian Brigade.” Although Indian Territory was considered of great strategic value to the Confederacy, southern military officials at times expressed frustration with the traditional battle tactics of Indian warriors. They were unused to military encounters that pitted long, straight rows of men on foot against each other. At the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern (Pea Ridge) in March 1862, Indian troops abandoned the battlefield in the face of cannon fire, leading their commander, Albert Pike, to demand that in the future they be “allowed to fight in their own fashion” rather than “face artillery and steady infantry on open ground.” Yet most Confederate generals, like George Washington during the Seven Years’ War, measured Indians by European American standards of what made a “proper” soldier on the battlefield. In the summer of 1862 the Confederacy lost its advantage in Confederate territory; the Cherokee and Creek were divided in their loyalties, with some joining Union forces and all “undisciplined … [and] not very reliable.” By this time, the Comanche and Kiowa, resentful of the Confederacy’s broken promises (guns and money diverted from them), had joined Union troops and were threatening to invade Texas. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 476 ${bmicon} Even on the southern home front, ethnic loyalties among white men could disrupt services deemed necessary to Confederate manufacturing and transportation. The Confederate railroad director in Selma, Alabama, contended with a labor force of immigrants (most probably from Germany and Ireland), men who “do not feel identified in any great degree with the South” and who demanded high wages. They were constantly threatening to run away to Union lines, where they believed they could make more money and enjoy the luxuries denied them in war-torn Alabama. Complicating the Davis administration’s attempts to mobilize for war was the refusal of the Confederates to form a political party system, on the assumption that unity among whites was the highest priority. However, the lack of parties meant that real differences over military and diplomatic strategy were reduced to infighting between shifting groups of elected officials and military men. Davis and members of his cabinet were quick to label dissent of any kind as treasonous, squelching legitimate debate on significant issues. In wartime Richmond, pro- and anti-Davis factions were made and unmade on the basis of rumor, innuendo, and the friendships and feuds between the wives of officers and politicians. In this respect the white South clung to an outmoded identity as a collection of individuals bound to yield to no person, party, or government. When the time came to marshal resources in the service of the national state, Northerners were at a distinct advantage over the states’ rights men who dominated the Confederacy. Not only did the Union have more resources, but the Republicans’ support for the centralization and consolidation of power also facilitated the war-mobilization process. In Congress, the Republicans took advantage of their majority status and expanded federal programs in the realm of the economy, education, and land use. However, like Davis, Lincoln encountered vehement opposition to his wartime policies. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, Union losses were mounting. The United States confronted an uncertain fate. CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 477 ${bmicon} Worried about disloyalty in the vicinity of the nation’s capital, on April 27, 1861, Lincoln gave General Winfield Scott the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (a legal doctrine designed to protect the rights of people arrested) in Baltimore. By the end of the year, this policy, which allowed the incarceration of people not yet charged with a crime, was being applied in almost all of the loyal United States. Chief among those targeted were people suspected of interfering with war mobilization of men and supplies. Democrats stepped up their opposition to the president, denouncing him as a tyrant and a dictator. Meanwhile, from the other side of the political spectrum, abolitionists expressed their frustration with the administration’s conciliatory policy toward the South in general and toward Unionist slaveholders in particular. Claimed Frederick Douglass, “Sound policy, not less than humanity, demands the instant liberation of every slave in the rebel states.” Yet Lincoln persisted in appealing to masters’ loyalty to the Union, declaring that his objective was “to save the Union, and … neither to save or destroy slavery.” Wartime manufacturing and commerce proved to be a boon to enterprising Northerners. Manufacturers made new use of forms of technology (Singer sewing machines to produce uniforms for soldiers, McCormick reapers to harvest grain for soldiers and civilians alike). In Cleveland, a young commission-house operator named John D. Rockefeller was earning enough money to hire a substitute to serve in the army for him. In the middle of the war he shifted his business from trading grain, fish, water, lime, plaster, and salt to refining the crude oil (used in kerosene lamps) recently discovered in western Pennsylvania. War profiteers were not unique to the North. In 1862 the Southern Cultivator, a magazine published in Augusta, Georgia, ran an article titled “Enemies at Home,” denouncing the “vile crew of speculators” who were selling everything from corn to cloth at exorbitant prices. However, Republicans saw nothing wrong in enhancing one’s fortunes and at the same time contributing to the Union cause. Later recalling his rise to wealth and his effort to bring a bright, clean illuminant to the masses, Rockefeller melded morality with economic self-interest in a revealing and classic Republican way, “Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.” PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 478 ${bmicon} The Republicans’ willingness to centralize wartime operations led in 1861 to the formation of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which recruited physicians, trained nurses, raised money, solicited donations, and conducted inspections of Union camps on the front. During the war, as many as 20,000 white and black women served as nurses, cooks, and laundresses in Union military hospitals. Black women worked primarily in the latter two categories. Appointed superintendent of nurses, Dorothea Dix (an advocate of reform on behalf of the mentally ill during the antebellum period) oversaw a force of 3000 white, mostly middle-class, women nurses. These women served as professional caretakers, often over the objections of skeptical male physicians. The Republicans believed that the federal government should actively promote economic growth and educational opportunity. Not surprisingly, then, the war deepened the Republicans’ determination to enact measures that had previously been thwarted by Democratic presidents and Congresses. In July 1862, the Republicans pushed through an “Act to Secure Homesteads to Actual Settlers on the Public Domain,” which granted 160 acres of western land to each settler who lived on and made improvements to the land for five years. Congress also passed the Morrill Act, which created a system of land grant colleges. (Many of these colleges eventually became major public universities, including Colorado State University, Kansas State University, and Utah State University.) Also approved in 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act appropriated to the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads a 400-foot right-of-way along the Platte River route of the Oregon Trail and lent them $16,000 to $48,000 (depending on the terrain) per mile. Union military strategy reflected a prewar Republican indifference to the rights and welfare of both northern and southern blacks. During the first year and a half of war, Union military strategy reflected a prewar Republican indifference to the rights and welfare of both northern and southern blacks. In September 1861 Lincoln revoked a directive released by General John Frémont that would have authorized the seizure of property and the emancipation of slaves owned by Confederates in the state of Missouri. The president feared that such a policy would alienate slaveholders who were considering switching their allegiance to the Union. Later that fall, the capture of Port Royal, South Carolina, gave license to Union soldiers to treat blacks as “contraband of war,” the term implying that former southern slaves were now under the control of not southern but northern masters. The policy was an ambiguous one; it denied slaveholders their human property, but failed to recognize blacks as free people with rights. As Union forces pushed deeper into Confederate territory, U.S. officers devised their own methods for dealing with the institution of slavery. By early 1862, the North had set its sights on the Mississippi River valley, hoping to bisect the Confederacy and cut off supplies and men bound from Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana to the eastern seaboard. In February General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, the Union’s first major victory of the war, and in April New Orleans fell to Admiral David Farragut. In New Orleans, General Benjamin Butler attempted to retain the loyalty of Unionist slaveholders by returning runaway slaves to them. This policy was not always greeted with enthusiasm within Union ranks. A Massachusetts soldier, restless under the command of an officer sympathetic to “slave catching brutes,” vowed, “I never will be instrumental in returning a slave to his master in any way shape or manner.” Butler also inflamed local Confederates with his “Woman Order” of May 15, 1862, which held that any woman caught insulting a Union soldier should be considered a prostitute and treated as such. As far away as the British House of Commons, members of Parliament condemned the “infamous” conduct of Butler toward what they considered respectable American ladies. In the summer of 1862, the South suffered a hemorrhaging of its slave population, as the movement of Union troops up and down the eastern seaboard opened the floodgates to runaways. In August a group of Liberty County, Georgia, planters claimed that 20,000 slaves (worth $12 CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 479 ${bmicon} to $15 million) had absconded from coastal plantations, many of them holding “the position of Traitors, since they go over to the enemy & afford him aid and comfort” by providing information and erecting fortifications. full view Field Hospital, Virginia, 1862 Photograph of a field hospital in Virginia during a battle in the summer of 1862 shows surgeons trying to attend to the crowds of wounded lying on the ground. (Library of Congress) Yet over the course of the summer the Confederacy persevered on the battlefield, aided by the failure of Union armies to press their advantage. In June General George McClellan was turned back on the outskirts of Richmond, convincing Lincoln not only of the incompetence of his chief general but also of the value of a less forgiving approach toward the South. In July, intending to pursue a more aggressive strategy against the massive southern military force, Lincoln brought back the boastful General John Pope from the western campaign (“where we have always seen the backs of our enemies”) to command the 50,000-man Army of the Potomac. The second battle of Manassas in late August pitted Pope and the ridiculed “Tardy” George McClellan against Lee and Jackson. (Among Jackson’s footsoldiers in that battle were New Orleans’s Pelican Company F, a veritable “congress of nations” including native speakers of German, French, and Spanish.) Within five days the Union force had suffered 16,000 casualties (out of 65,000 men), whereas 10,000 men in Lee’s smaller force of 55,000 had been killed or wounded. The summer of 1862 highlighted the difficulties faced by both sides in fighting a war during warm weather (when roads were passable) in the southern swamps and lowlands. More deadly than bullets and cannon to troops were diseases, especially diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, and malaria. These killers affected major campaigns, including the failed Union attempt to capture Vicksburg in July. Languishing in the swamps near Richmond, one Union soldier wrote in his diary, “The Army is full of sick men.” In September, Lincoln sent Pope back west to battle on another front. Republican policies related to western homesteads and railroads, combined with a general Union lust for territory, were having a devastating impact on western Indian tribes. The Santee Sioux of Minnesota resented the encroachment of white settlers and the failure of the federal government to make good on pledges of annuity payments and food. Said one white trader, “So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.” That particular PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 480 ${bmicon} full view MAP 14.3 MESCALERO APACHES BATTLE CONFEDERATES, CENTRAL NEW MEXICO, 1861 The Confederates hoped to conquer all of the Southwest for slavery. In the summer of 1861, a force led by Colonel John R. Baylor invaded the Mesilla Valley in New Mexico Territory. The Southerners scored a series of notable successes until defeated at La Glorieta Pass, a battle called the Gettysburg of the West, in March 1862. Besieged by Apache and Navajo Indians, the Confederates retreated from New Mexico. CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 481 ${bmicon} comment helped ignite an uprising among the Sioux, who killed 500 whites before the Minnesota state militia quashed the rebellion at Wood Lake in the fall of 1862. The 38 Indian insurgents hanged by the U.S. Army in December 1862 constituted the largest mass execution in American history. In other parts of the country the Yankee war against the Confederates spilled over into savage campaigns against Indian tribes. General James H. Carleton routed the Texas Confederates, who had been occupying New Mexico and Arizona, and then provided what he called a “wholesome lesson” to the Mescalero Apache and Navajo who had been menacing Spanish American “placitas” (communities) in the area. Sending his troops out to locate the Mescaleros, Carleton ordered, “The men are to be slain whenever and wherever they can be found. Their women and children are to be taken prisoner.” Union soldiers captured Apache leader Mangas Colorado and later murdered him (although he had surrendered under a white flag). The Mescaleros were forced to accept reservation status at Bosque Redondo in the Pecos River Valley. Meanwhile, Colonel Kit Carson conducted a campaign of terrorism against the Navajos, burning hogans and seizing crops and livestock, claiming that “wild Indians could be tamed.” Many of the survivors undertook the “Long Walk” to Bosque Redondo, a forced march reminiscent of the Cherokees’ Trail of Tears a generation before. full view Battle of Antietam One of the first combat photos ever made, this grim picture shows the battle site in Antietam, Maryland in September 1862. (Library of Congress) In the East, on the banks of Antietam Creek, in northern Virginia, on September 17, the bloodiest single day of the war claimed 20,000 lives and resulted in a Union victory, although it was a dubious victory indeed. Part of the battle took place in a 30-acre corn-field, where Confederates had hidden themselves. Observing the tips of southerners’ bayonets glistening in the sunlight, General Joseph Hooker and his men mowed them down with firepower “as the grass falls before the scythe,” in the words of a newspaper reporter present at the slaughter. The corpses mingled among the cornstalks presented a grisly sight. Nevertheless, Hooker recalled of the encounter, “The conduct of my troops was sublime, and the occasion almost lifted me to the skies, and its memories will ever remain near me.” To journalists and soldiers alike, battles could offer stirring sights of long rows of uniformed men arrayed against each other, their arms at the ready, regimental flags unfurled in the wind. Yet for the women of Shepardstown, Maryland, left to clean up after the Antietam slaughter, there was no talk of the glory of war, only a frantic, round-the-clock effort to feed the Confederates and PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 482 ${bmicon} bind their wounds. Surveying the battlefield wreckage, one observer, Maria Blunt, lamented the carnage: the dead but also men “without arms, with one leg, with bandaged sides and backs; men in ambulances, wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, men carried on stretchers or supported on the shoulder of some self-denying comrade.” Maria Blunt was not alone in challenging gender conventions that decreed that nursing the wounded and comforting the dying in wartime was too gruesome a task for a woman. All over the South white women established temporary hospitals in barns, private homes, and churches and mourned each human sacrifice to the cause: “A mother—a wife—a sister had loved him.” In the summer of 1862, Richmond contained 21,000 wounded Confederates, some of them attended by Sally Louisa Tompkins, commissioned a captain in the Confederate army to facilitate the work of her infirmary. The extraordinarily high casualty rate in the war stemmed from several factors. Confederates and Federals alike fought with new kinds of weapons (rifles and sharpshooters accurate at up to 1000 yards) while troops massed in old-style (that is, close) formation. Soft minie balls punctured and lodged in limbs, leading to high rates of amputation that in turn fostered deadly infections. One Alabama soldier observed in 1862, “I believe the Doctors kills more than they cour [cure].” In fact, twice as many Civil War soldiers died of disease and infection as were killed in combat. Appalled by the loss of life but heartened by the immediate outcome of Antietam, Lincoln took a bold step. In September he announced that on January 1, 1863, he would proclaim all slaves in Confederate territory free. The wording of the Emancipation Proclamation itself suggested that Lincoln intended to bolster northern morale by infusing the conflict with moral purpose and at the same time to further the Union’s interests on the battleground by encouraging Southern blacks to join the U.S. army: “And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of almighty God.” The measure left slavery intact in the loyal Border States and in all territory conquered by the Union. Consequently, nearly 1 million black people were excluded from its provisions. Skeptical of the ability of blacks and whites to live together, Lincoln remained committed to the colonization of freed blacks outside the United States (in Central America or the West Indies). In the congressional elections of 1862, the Democrats picked up strength in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio and carried Illinois. The lower Midwest in general harbored large numbers of Democrats who opposed the war (especially now that it was an “abolition war”) and called for peace with the South; these so-called Copperheads disrupted Union enlistments and encouraged military desertions. full view Aftermath of Antietam - Brady Photo The aftermath of Antietam, September 17, 1862. Photograph by Mathew Brady. (Library of Congress) As the death toll climbed higher and higher, dissent in the North continued to grow. The Emancipation Proclamation electrified abolitionists, but the war effort was taking its toll among the laboring classes. Especially aggrieved were the working people who paid higher taxes (relative to those paid by the wealthy) to keep the war machine running, and the dockworkers and others who lost their livelihoods when trade with foreign countries ceased. Their resentment boiled over in the summer of 1863. full view “The Shackle Broken” “The Shackle Broken” From the beginning of the war, the North’s effort to blockade 3500 miles of southern coastline met with fierce resistance on the high seas. The South made up in resourcefulness what CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 483 ${bmicon} it lacked in a navy, relying for supplies on swift steamers manned by privateers (British arms smuggled onto remote southern beaches could bring up to 700 percent in profits). Seemingly invincible Confederate ships such as the ironclad Merrimack and the well-fortified British-built warships Alabama and Florida prowled the southeastern seaboard, sinking Union vessels and protecting the blockade runners. Nevertheless, by December 1861, Union forces had established beachheads in Confederate territory up and down the East Coast. full view Rebel Dead at Antietam Antietam was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War with combined casualties of 23,000. (Library of Congress) full view Dying Horse, Antietam This dying horse, stripped of saddle and bridle, was the mount of a Confederate officer killed during the battle of Antietam. (Library of Congress) full view Antietem Battlefield Antietam Battlefield (Photodisc, Inc.) In November 1861 Union naval forces intercepted a British packet ship, the Trent, and seized two Confederate diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell, who were en route to London and Paris, where they planned to plead the South’s case in a bid to gain diplomatic recognition. To avoid a rift with England, Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward released the two men. In the process Mason and Slidell lost whatever influence they might have had with European governments, and Lincoln enjoyed the praise of the British public for his moderation in handling the so-called Trent affair. More generally, Confederate hopes for diplomatic recognition foundered on the shoals of European politics and economics, in England and in the Western Hemisphere. English textile mills drew on their own immense prewar stockpiles of raw cotton and sought out new sources of fiber in Egypt and elsewhere. Also, English workers flexed their political muscle in a successful effort to forestall recognition of the slaveholders’ nation. Textile workers in particular did not want to compete with slave-produced material manufactured in an independent Confederacy. Early in the war the Confederates recognized the strategic importance of Mexico, both as a trade route for supplies and as a means of access to ports. (Moreover, an estimated 2500 Hispanics fought for the South, among them the Cuban-born Loreta Janeta Velásquez, who disguised herself as a man and joined the Confederate army under the name of Lt. Harry T. Buford.) In approaching Mexican President Benito Juarez for aid in late 1861, Confederate envoy John T. Pickett discovered that, although Mexicans still smarted from their defeat on their own land 13 years before, the Juarez administration remained an ally of the United States. However, another Confederate agent, Juan A. Quintero, did manage to win a trade agreement with the governor of a northern Mexican state, Santiago Vidaurri of Nuevo León. By the summer of 1862, Britain and France were inclined to mediate peace in favor of Confederate independence, for the two powers assumed that the South’s impressive full view Lincoln Visiting with General McClellan Privately at Antietam On November 1, 1861, Lincoln appointed General George B. McClellan to the post of General-in-Chief of the Union forces, but then relieved him of his command one year later. In this photo, Lincoln visits McClellan’s headquarters after the battle at Antietam, to urge the general to take stronger action. McClellan faces the President on the left. (Library of Congress) full view Lincoln Visiting General McClellan, Group Picture The Battle of Antietam provided President Lincoln with the occasion he wanted to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln relieved McClellan of command after failing to press the Union military advantage after the battle. (Library of Congress) PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 484 ${bmicon} victories in Virginia and Tennessee signaled a quick end to the war. Nevertheless, the Confederacy’s autumn setbacks of Antietam and Perryville (in Kentucky), combined with ennobling rhetoric of the soon-to-be-announced Emancipation Proclamation, proved that the Union was still very much alive, and the diplomatic recognition the white South so desperately craved remained elusive. full view Storming of Fort Wagner - Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts The storming of Fort Wagner by the 54th Massachusetts on July 18, 1863. The lithograph focuses on the death of their white abolitionist leader, Robert Gould Shaw. The experiences of the 54th were the focus of the Hollywood movie Glory. (Library of Congress) From the onset of military hostilities, African Americans, regardless of whether they lived in the North or the South, perceived the Civil War as a fight for freedom. Although they allied themselves with Union forces, they also recognized the limitations of Union policy in ending slavery. Therefore, blacks throughout the northern and southern states were forced to take action to free themselves as individuals, families, and communities. Twenty-year-old Charlie Reason recalled his daring escape from a Maryland slave master and his decision to join the famous 54th Massachusetts Infantry composed of black soldiers: “I came to fight not for my country, I never had any, but to gain one.” Soon after the 54th’s assault on Fort Wagner (outside Charleston Harbor) in July 1863, Reason died of an infection contracted when one of his legs had to be amputated. In countless ways, black people throughout the South fought to gain a country on their own terms. In late 1863 a U.S. gunboat picked up 13 black fugitives off the coast of Georgia. Included in the group were the leader, Cain, as well as Bella and her 6-year-old son, Romeo; Lizzie and her four children (ages 5 months to 12 years); and Sallie with four children ranging in age from 7 months to 11 years. Within a few weeks Cain had returned to the mainland to rescue his kinfolk, including Grace and her five children, Grace’s son-in-law, Charlie, and her four grandchildren. These groups of self-liberated slaves were like countless others; their ranks were dominated by women and children, for many black men were either “refugeed” farther inland by their masters (to keep them out of the clutches of the Yankees) or fighting in the Union army. Like the Revolutionaries of 1776, slaveholding whites were shocked when they could not always count on the loyalty of “petted” domestics. Soon after the war began, South Carolina’s Mary Boykin Chesnut had expressed unease about the enigmatic behavior of one of her trusted house slaves, Laurence, asking herself of all her slaves, “Are they stolidly stupid or wiser than we are, silent and strong, biding their time?” A few months later Chesnut’s cousin was murdered while sleeping, bludgeoned by a candlestick; the cousin’s slaves William and Rhody were charged with the crime. Of her own mulatto servant, one of Chesnut’s women friends remarked, “For the life of me, I cannot make up my mind. Does she mean to take care of me—or to murder me?” Now rising to the surface, such fears put whites on alert, guarding against enemies in their midst. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 485 ${bmicon} Yet no single white man or woman could halt the tide of freedom. Given the chance to steal away at night or walk away boldly in broad daylight, black men, women, and children left their masters and mistresses, seeking safety and paid labor behind Union lines. Throughout the South, black people waited and watched for an opportunity to flee from plantations, their actions depending on the movement of northern troops and the disarray of the plantations they lived on. In July 1862, the Union’s Second Confiscation Act provided that the slaves of rebel masters “shall be deemed captives of war and shall be forever free,” prompting Union generals to begin employing runaway male slaves as manual laborers. Consequently, military authorities often turned away women, children, older adults, and the disabled, leaving them vulnerable to spiteful masters and mistresses. For black men pressed into Union military and menial labor service, and for their families still languishing on plantations, “freedom” came at a high price indeed. In the North, the Emancipation Proclamation spurred the enlistment of black men in the Union army and navy. The proclamation itself allowed for such recruitment. Furthermore, many black men felt inspired to join U.S. forces since the Lincoln administration had declared the conflict a war for abolition. Eventually, about 33,000 northern blacks enlisted, following the lead of their brothers-in-arms from the South. For example, in October 1862, Massachusetts’s Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson organized a black regiment on the South Carolina Sea Islands, noting that the First South Carolina Volunteers (unlike their northern white counterparts) were “fighting for their homes and families.” The subsequent formation of the famous 54th Massachusetts regiment infuriated southern military leaders, many of whom refused to recognize black men as soldiers at all. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 486 ${bmicon} For black northern soldiers, military service opened up a wider world; some learned to read and write in camp, and almost all felt the satisfaction of contributing to a war that they defined in stark terms of freedom versus slavery. They wore their uniforms proudly. However, Northern wartime policies toward black men as enlisted men and toward black people as laborers revealed that the former slaves (as well as free people of color in the North) would continue to fight prejudice on many fronts. Some northern whites approved recruiting blacks, reasoning that for each black man killed in battle, one white man would be spared. Until late in the war, black soldiers were systematically denied opportunities to advance through the ranks and were paid less than whites. Although they showed loyalty to the cause in disproportionate numbers compared with white men, most blacks found themselves barred from taking up arms at all, relegated to fatigue work deemed dangerous and degrading to whites. They intended to labor for the Union, but, in the words of a black soldier from New York, “Instead of the musket it is the spade and the Whelbarrow and the Axe cuting in one of the horable swamps in Louisiana stinking and misery.” For each white Union soldier killed or mortally wounded, two died of disease; the ratio for blacks was one to ten. Many northern military strategists and ordinary enlisted men showed indifference at best, contempt at worst, for the desire of black fugitives to locate lost loved ones and begin to labor on their own behalf. In the course of the war, Union experiments with free black labor—on the South Carolina Sea Islands under the direction of northern missionaries, and in Louisiana, under the direction of generals Nathaniel Banks and Benjamin Butler—emphasized converting the former slaves into staple crop wage workers under the supervision of Yankees. Some of these whites, in their eagerness to establish “order” in former Confederate territory, saw blacks only as exploitable labor—if not cannon fodder, then hands to dig ditches and grow cotton. Many southern blacks later recalled grateful first encounters with Yankee soldiers, men who brought them the news of their freedom. But others recalled harsh treatment at the hands of the blue-coated invaders. For example, Union soldiers seized the goods that Nancy Johnson and her husband, Boson Johnson (he was “a good Union man during the war,” noted CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 487 ${bmicon} his wife), had spent a lifetime accumulating as slaves on a rice plantation in Canoochie Creek, Georgia: one mare, 625 pounds of bacon, 60 pounds of lard, 12 bushels of corn, 8 bushels of rice, 7 meat hogs, 11 stock hogs, and 25 chickens. For many blacks, the war brought a mixture of joy and fear. In her book Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (published in 1902), former slave Susie King Taylor recalled the heady, dangerous days of 1862, when she fled from Savannah and found refuge behind Union lines off the coast of Georgia. There she met and married Edward Taylor, and together they (along with her uncles and cousins) joined the First South Carolina Volunteers (later known as the 33rd United States Colored Cavalry). The soldiers received no pay for the first 18 months of their service, and even in camp they remained vulnerable to Confederate snipers and bushwhackers. Yet Taylor gained a great deal of satisfaction from conducting a school for black children on St. Simon’s Island and performing a whole host of tasks for the fighting men, from cleaning rifles to washing clothes and tending the ill. She understood that her own contributions to the war effort showed “what sacrifices we can make for our liberty and rights.” In 1863 the North abandoned the strategy of conciliation in favor of an effort to destroy the huge southern armies and deprive the Confederacy of its slave labor force. By this time the war was causing a tremendous hardship among ordinary white folk in the South. Meanwhile, Lincoln found himself caught between African American freedom fighters who resented the poor treatment they received from many white commanders and white Northerners who took their opposition to the war in general and the military draft in particular to the streets. Deprivation at home and the mounting casualty rates on the battlefields were reshaping the fabric of American society, North and South. full view Prisoner from Belle Isle Prison, Richmond The emaciated state of this prisoner of war, who was incarcerated in Belle Isle Prison, Richmond, shows the fearsome conditions experienced by some Union prisoners. (Library of Congress) The Civil War assaulted Southerners’ senses and their land. Before the war, slave owners and their allies often contrasted the supposed tranquility of their rural society with the rude, boisterous noisiness of the North. According to this view, the South was a peaceful place of contented slaves toiling in the fields, whereas the North was the site of workers striking, women clamoring for the vote, and eccentric reformers delivering streetcorner harangues. full view Railroad Destruction, Appomattox Station The breakdown of the Confederate transportation system through battle, sabotage, and simple wear and tear is evidenced in this photograph of the South Side Railroad at Appomattox Station in Virginia. (Library of Congress) full view Richmond in Ruins - April 1865 Richmond in ruins, April 1865. (Library of Congress) The war exploded on the southern landscape with ferocious force, and the rumble of huge armies on the march shook southern society to its foundations. For the first time many Southerners smelled the acrid odor of gunpowder and the stench of rotting bodies. They heard the booms of near and distant cannon and the mournful sounds of church bells tolling for the dead. They saw giant encampments of soldiers cover what used to be cotton fields and black people where they were not supposed to be: on the road, fleeing from their masters. Some people lived on diets of onions and berries in the absence of harvests of corn and rice. Seemingly overnight, both armies constructed gorge-spanning train trestles and huge riverside docks and warehouses, all in preparation for conflict. As soldiers withdrew from the battlefield, they left behind a scarred and blood-spattered land, corn-fields mowed down, fires smoldering in their wake. These sights and sounds were especially distressing to Southerners who objected to the war as a matter of principle or because of its disastrous effects on their own households. Scattered throughout the South were communities resistant to the policies of what many ordinary whites considered the Richmond elite—the leaders of the Confederacy. In western North Carolina a group calling themselves Heroes of America declared their loyalty to the Union. In northern Alabama, the “Free State of Jones [County]” raised troops for the Yankee army. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 488 ${bmicon} Throughout the rural South, army deserters were welcomed home by their impoverished wives and children; it is estimated that during much of the war, as many as one-third of all Confederate soldiers were absent without leave at any particular time. The antebellum South had celebrated individual households as the foundation of a slaveholders’ republic, but now women took the lead in putting the interests of their own families above those of the Confederacy. A letter from “Your Mary” addressed to “Dear Edward” in the service recounted their son’s crying the night before: “‘O mamma! I am so hungry.’ And Lucy, Edward, your darling Lucy; she never complains, but she is growing thinner and thinner every day. And before God, Edward, unless you come home, we must die.” full view Jefferson Davis - Closeup Photo Jefferson Davis, inaugurated as President of the Confederacy on February 18, 1861, was a West Point graduate who had served as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) Indeed, all over the South, groups of poor women resisted the dictates of the Davis administration, wealthy men and women who flaunted an extravagant wartime lifestyle of lavish dinners and parties. Women from Virginia to Alabama protested a Confederate 10 percent “tax-in-kind” on produce grown by farmers and the food shortages that reached crisis proportions. In April 1863 several hundred Richmond women, many of them wives of Tredegar Iron Works employees, armed themselves with knives, hatchets, and pistols and ransacked stores in search of food: “Bread! Bread! Our children are starving while the rich roll in wealth.” An enraged President Davis told the rioters that he would give them five minutes to disperse before ordering troops to fire on them; the women went home. In their desperation they had highlighted the contradiction between the increasingly efficient process of Confederate industrialization and the increasingly inefficient process of providing basic necessities to people on the home front. During much of the war, as many as one-third of all Confederate soldiers were absent without leave at any particular time. Whereas some white women resisted the Confederacy, others leaped to the fore to provide essential goods and services to the beleaguered new nation. Virginia’s Belle Boyd kept track of Union troop movements and served as a spy for Confederate armies. Poor women took jobs as textile factory workers, and their better-educated sisters found employment as clerks for the Confederate bureaucracy. Slaveholding women busied themselves running plantations, rolling bandages, and knitting socks for soldiers. In Augusta, Georgia, the Ladies Aid Society sewed garments for the troops, and the Augusta Purveying Association provided subsidized food for the poor. Still, many women felt their labors were in vain. Of the Confederacy’s stalled progress, Georgia’s Gertrude Thomas noted, “Valuable lives lost and nothing accomplished.” full view Women Working at US Arsenal During the war, many women replaced skilled male workers in the manufacturing labor force. These women are filling cartridges in the US Arsenal at Watertown, New York. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) In the fall of 1862 Lincoln replaced General McClellan with General Ambrose E. Burnside. In December, at a major battle at Fredericksburg, Virginia, the general’s blundering produced what was called Burnside’s Slaughter Pen: 13,000 northern casualties, many fallen in a small area near a stone wall. One survivor described the scene: corpses “swollen to twice their natural size, black as Negroes in most cases.” The ground was littered with “one without a head, … one without a legs, yonder a head and legs without a trunk … with fragments of shell sticking in oozing brain, with bullet holes all over the puffed limbs.” full view Robert E. Lee - 1863 Robert E. Lee in 1863 by Julian Vannerson. (Library of Congress) As the northern public tried to come to terms with these losses, Lincoln replaced Burnside with General Joseph (“Fighting Joe”) Hooker. In early May 1863, Lee and Jackson encountered Hooker at Chancellorsville, Virginia; the battle left Hooker reeling, but it also claimed the life of Jackson, mistakenly shot by his own men on May 2 in the early evening twilight. The South had lost one of its most ardent champions. Lee decided to press his advantage by invading Pennsylvania and, it was hoped, encouraging northern Peace Democrats and impressing the foreign powers. The ensuing clash at Gettysburg was a turning point in the war. Drawn by reports of a cache of much-needed shoes, Confederate armies converged on the town, in the south-central part of the state and across the border from Maryland. Union forces pursued. In a three-day battle that began on July 1, the CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 489 ${bmicon} full view MAP 14.4 THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, JULY 1–3, 1863 The three-day battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the war. This map shows that Confederate soldiers made repeated assaults on Union lines. Lee’s confidence in this strategy was misplaced, and some of his own staff recognized it. Recalled General James Longstreet of the third day of fighting, “My heart was heavy. I could see the desperate and hopeless nature of the charge and the hopeless slaughter it would cause…. That day at Gettysburg was one of the saddest of my life.” 92,000 men under the command of General George G. Meade were arrayed against the 76,000 troops of Robert E. Lee. full view Robert E. Lee on Horseback Robert E. Lee on Horseback Gettysburg later came to represent the bloody consequences of a war fought by men with modern weapons under commanders with a premodern military sensibility. On the last day of the battle, the men under Major General George Pickett moved slowly into formation, passing along the way hastily dug graves and the fragments of bodies blown to bits the day before. At 3 P.M. a mile-wide formation of 15,000 men gave the rebel yell and charged three-quarters of a mile across an open field to do battle with Union troops well fortified behind stone walls. Within half an hour Pickett had lost two-thirds of his soldiers and all 13 of his colonels. The battle’s three-day toll was equally staggering: 23,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate soldiers wounded or killed. Fully one-third of Lee’s army was dead or wounded. What made men of both sides fight on under these conditions? Some remained devoted to a cause. Others cared less about the Confederacy or the Union and more about proving their Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 490 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Civil Disorders During Wartime Throughout American history, fighting a war has both exacerbated old social tensions and created new ones. In mobilizing for combat, groups of Americans expressed their resentment toward other groups and clashed with each other over the allocation of food, housing, and jobs. People who dissented against the war effort found themselves branded as traitors and hounded by law enforcement authorities. Wartime civil disorders thus reveal political faultlines in a society that seeks to present a united front against an enemy. The American Revolution pitted not just Patriots against the British but also whites against enslaved blacks, whites against Indians, Patriots against Loyalists, and large Hudson Valley landowners against their tenants. In 1779 the New York state legislature sponsored an armed invasion of the territory occupied by the Iroquois Confederacy, leading to the destruction of that group’s villages and crops. In the Hudson Valley, New England interior, and port towns of Massachusetts, groups of women confronted merchants, demanded an end to price gouging, and then seized the staples they needed to feed their families. During the War of 1812, political disagreements between Democratic-Republicans and Federalists spilled over into bloodshed. In Baltimore, Republican mobs, enraged by the antiwar policies of a leading Federalist newspaper, attacked several of their political foes, three of whom died. A fourth, Revolutionary War hero Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee, later died from his injuries. Both the North and the South had to contend with violence on their respective home fronts during the Civil War. In April 1863, in the Confederate capital of Richmond, a crowd of several hundred women appealed to the Virginia governor for relief from high food prices. Rebuffed, they looted bakeries and other kinds of stores as well. President Jefferson Davis intervened and threatened the women with violence if they did not disperse. A few weeks later, riots broke out in the North as white laborers, many of them Irish immigrants, protested the new Union draft law of July 1. In New York City, workers turned their wrath on African Americans, leaving more than 100 people dead. Civil disorders during World War I revealed the contradiction between mobilizing for a modern war—a war to “make the world safe for democracy,” in the words of President Woodrow Wilson—on the one hand and maintaining racial segregation on the other. At Camp Logan near Houston, Texas, in 1917, African American soldiers protested segregationist policies. In the ensuing melee, 20 people were killed and 100 arrested. Nineteen black soldiers were convicted and later hanged. In the summer of 1919, 26 clashes between blacks and whites broke out in cities all over the nation. Black people sought to exercise their rights as free citizens. Whites were determined to maintain racial segregation and white supremacy at all costs. The bloodiest riot was in Chicago, where 38 people were killed. In World War II, blacks in Harlem launched a civil rebellion in 1943 in response to systematic discrimination in the defense industry. Elsewhere, white mobs attacked people of color who did not conform to traditional standards of submissiveness and deference. In June 1943, white soldiers in Los Angeles beat black and Mexican American youth, especially those wearing the zoot suits that were fashionable among urban Chicanos then. That same year, Detroit whites and blacks battled each other over limited housing space and job opportunities. The riots left 34 dead and 675 injured and resulted in 1 million hours of lost defense work. Between 1965 and 1973, opposition to the Vietnam War precipitated violent encounters between demonstrators and police. In the summer of 1968 in Chicago, protesters sought to disrupt the Democratic National Convention. Under orders from Mayor Richard Daley, police attacked the demonstrators with tear gas and billy clubs. In the two-year period from 1969 to 1970, radical student groups carried out or attempted 174 campus bombings of Reserve Office Training Corps offices, launching a violent campaign in protest of government war policies. In the fall of 2001, in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States began to wage an aggressive war against terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. Americans overwhelmingly supported this effort and, for the most part, the tactics used to fight it. Protests against specific Bush administration policies, such as the decision to use military tribunals to try certain people accused of terrorism, took the form of legal challenges, candlelight vigils, and newspaper opinion editorial pieces, not bloody riots in the streets. manhood and upholding their family’s honor. Still others sought to memorialize comrades slain in battle or to conform to standards of discipline drilled into them. A survivor of Pickett’s charge downplayed his own courage: “Instead of burning to avenge the insults of our country, families and altars and firesides … the thought is … Oh, if I could just come out of this charge safely how thankful would I be!” full view Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg (Photodisc, Inc.) full view Confederate Captives, Gettysburg - Matthew Brady Mathew Brady, Confederate Captives, Gettysburg. (National Archives) full view Gettysburg Battlefield Gettysburg Battlefield (Photodisc, Inc.) The Union victory at Gettysburg on July 3 brought rejoicing in the North. The next day General Ulysses S. Grant captured Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, a move that earned him the rank of lieutenant general (conferred by Congress). Within a year he assumed the position of supreme commander of the Union armies. Yet not all segments of northern society joined in the celebration. Even principled supporters of the Union war effort were growing weary of high taxes and inflated consumer prices, not to mention the sacrifices of thousands of husbands, sons, and brothers. In May, federal soldiers had arrested the defiant and outspoken Copperhead Clement Vallandigham at his home in Dayton, Ohio. Subsequently convicted of treason (he had declared the conflict “a war for the freedom of blacks and the enslavement of whites”), Vallandigham was banished to the South. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 491 ${bmicon} Following a military draft imposed on July 1, the northern white working classes erupted. Enraged at the wealthy who could buy substitutes, resentful of the Lincoln administration’s high-handed tactics, and determined not to fight on behalf of their African American competitors in the workplace, laborers in New York City, Hartford, Troy, Newark, and Boston (many of them Irish) went on a rampage. The New York City riot of July 11–15 was especially savage as white men directed their wrath against black men, women, and children. Members of the mob burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground and then mutilated their victims. full view Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (Photodisc, Inc.) A total of 105 people died before five Union troops were brought in to quell the violence. The regiments from Pennsylvania and New York were fresh from the Gettysburg battlefield; now they trained their weapons on citizens of New York City. In response to the rioting and to discourage other men from resisting the draft elsewhere, the federal government deployed 20,000 troops to New York. On August 19, the draft resumed. Meanwhile, the South had to contend not only with dissent and disaffection at home but also with the stunning battle and territorial losses it suffered at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. On August 21, Jefferson Davis proclaimed a day of “fasting, humiliation and prayer.” Throughout the PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 492 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 14.3 OHIO MEN DRAFTED FOR MILITARY SERVICE WHO REPORTED FOR DUTY OR HIRED SUBSTITUTES faltering Confederacy white clergy exhorted their congregations to pray for God’s mercy. Gone were the confident declarations that “God is on our side”; in their place were the self-doubts of generals and the wails of widows and fatherless children. Even as Davis was invoking the name of the Almighty, 450 rebels under the command of William Clarke Quantrill were destroying the town of Lawrence, Kansas (long a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment), and killing 150 of its inhabitants. With the exception of Quantrill and John Singleton Mosby (whose squads of men roamed northern Virginia attacking Union posts and troops in 1863), Confederate military leaders shunned guerrilla warfare, preferring to meet the enemy on a field of honor. The desperate Quantrill raid on Lawrence demonstrated that the Confederate cause was, if not lost, then losing in the late summer of 1863. Before the year was out Davis faced other setbacks as well. In January the French army occupied Mexico City, and the next year Mexican elites, with the aid of the French Emperor Napoleon III, placed Austrian Archduke Maximilian on the throne. With Mexico as part of the French Empire, Napoleon III hoped to use the country as a pawn in his scheme to spread his influence throughout Europe. Still, Grant’s successes at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, caused both France and England to draw back from offering overt support to the Confederacy in the form of sales of navy warships or diplomatic recognition. The Confederate president had long counted on securing the support of the great European powers; now those hopes were dashed. Dedicating the national cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered a short address that affirmed the nation’s “new birth of freedom” and its commitment that “the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Meanwhile, Grant, the hero of Vicksburg, was poised at the border of northern Georgia, ready to push south to the sea and cut in half what was left of the Confederacy. full view Union Artillery at Yorktown This 1862 photograph depicts the thirteen-inch mortars of Federal Battery No. 4 with officers of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery near Yorktown, Virginia. (Library of Congress) By 1864 northern generals, with Lincoln’s blessing, had decided to fight a “hard war” against their tenacious enemy. Union troops were authorized to live off the land (denying southern civilians the necessities of life in the process), to seize livestock and other supplies indiscriminately, and to burn everything that the Confederates might find useful. The purposes of this strategy were twofold: to harm irreparably (what was left of ) Confederate morale and to facilitate the movement of northern troops through hostile territory. If north- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 493 ${bmicon} full view MAP 14.5 AFRICAN AMERICANS IN CIVIL WAR BATTLES, 1863–1865 Confederates killed African American soldiers captured in battle at Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor (1863), the Union garrison of Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River (1864), and Petersburg, Virginia (1864), among other battles. By the end of the war, black men had fought in more than 200 battles. Their performance in combat no doubt contributed to the Confederate decision to arm slaves as soldiers in the last few weeks of the war. ern troops could sever the area west of Georgia from the Confederacy and take Richmond and destroy its surrounding armies, the Union would be safe at last. full view Southerners Fleeing their Home This photograph depicts southerners forced to leave their home by invading troops. They have packed what few belongings they could transport. (Library of Congress) The policy of “hard war” should not be confused with total war, characterized by state-approved terrorism against civilians. However, Confederate policies toward black soldiers and Union policies toward Indian insurgents in the West did show elements of total war against particular segments of the population. In April 1864 Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest destroyed Fort Pillow, a Union garrison on the Mississippi River. After surrendering, black soldiers were systematically murdered. Wounded survivors were bayoneted or burned to death. Among southern generals, conventions of war (providing for the detention and exchange of prisoners of war) did not apply to African American soldiers. Nor were Indian combatants and civilians accorded even the minimal respect shown to most white fighting men. In the early fall of 1864, a group of Cheyenne and Arapaho were camped along Sand Creek in the southeastern corner of Colorado. Black Kettle, a chief of the Cheyenne, had received promises from Union Col. John M. Chivington and others stationed at Camp Weld in Denver that the two sides would remain at peace with each other. Therefore, on the morning of November 29, 1864, when Black Kettle saw Chivington leading a Colorado volunteer militia toward his settlement, he waved a white flag and stood his ground. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 494 ${bmicon} Chivington did not come in peace. That day he and his men massacred 125 to 160 Indians, mostly women, children, and old people, returning later to mutilate the bodies. In response, the Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne launched their own campaigns on the white migrants traveling the South and North Platte trails. Chivington declared that it was “right and honorable” to use any means to kill Indians, including children (“nits make lice,” he said). Captain Silas Soule, who rode with Chivington but refrained from killing innocent civilians on principle, later testified against the colonel during a military investigation in early 1865; walking on the streets of Denver one day, Soule was murdered by a Chivington supporter. Lincoln’s wartime policies consisted of a calculated indifference toward the life and liberties of Native Americans on one hand and a noble defense of the principles of democratic government among white men on the other. The election of 1864 proceeded without major incident, although Lincoln himself faced some opposition within his own party. Together with his new running mate, a former slave owner from Tennessee named Andrew Johnson, Lincoln benefited from a string of preelection victories won for him by Admiral David G. Farragut at Mobile, Alabama, and by General Philip Sheridan in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. As a result, he defeated the Democratic nominee, his own former general, George McClellan, who managed to garner 45 percent of the popular vote. One of the keys to Lincoln’s success was the “peace platform” that the Democrats had drafted at their convention the summer before; full view Abraham Lincoln - Portrait, April, 10, 1865 Photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken on April 10, 1865. (Library of Congress) CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 495 ${bmicon} support among Union soldiers for “Little Mac” dropped precipitously as a result, and Lincoln won three-quarters of the army’s vote. TABLE 14-1 The Election of 1864 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Abraham Lincoln Republican 2,213,655 212* George B. McClellan Democratic 1,805,237 21 *Eleven secessionist states did not participate. Despite his limited military experience, Lincoln possessed a strategic sense superior to that of many of his generals. He played down his own military experience, making light of his minor part in the Black Hawk War of 1832; in that conflict, he reminisced, he had engaged in “charges upon wild onions … [and] bloody struggles with the Musquetoes.” However, he cared deeply about ordinary soldiers and talked with them whenever he had the opportunity. In return, Union troops gave “Father Abraham” their loyalty on the battlefield and, especially during the election of 1864, at the ballot box. full view Andrew Johnson - Brady Photo Andrew Johnson, photographed by Mathew Brady in 1865. (Library of Congress) Meanwhile, the transformation of the Confederacy—from a loose collection of agrarian states to a centralized war machine—was almost complete, and so the Confederacy itself, as a republic of slaveholders, was doomed. In September 1864 Lee, anxious for troops, had convinced Secretary of War James A. Seddon to impress 20,000 slave men and all free men of color and to organize them into military-like units. By December, only 1200 had been put to work and 800 had run away. Some slaveholders were acknowledging the “mechanical genius” of their slaves, an argument against pressing them into Confederate service as manual laborers, but an implicit argument in favor of their use as soldiers. If black men were intelligent beings, then they could become disciplined military troops, so this (new) Confederate reasoning held. In January 1865 Lee admitted that the fate of the Confederacy depended on black labor, not only as skilled artisans but as soldiers as well. He noted that the best way to attract men to any “service which imposes peculiar hardships and privations” was to ensure that they had a personal interest in the outcome: “Such an interest we can give our negroes by giving immediate freedom to all who enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to the families of those who discharge their duties faithfully (whether they survive or not), together with the privilege of residing at the South.” The South had shifted its cause from the preservation of slavery to the preservation of the Confederacy, with or without slavery. full view William T. Sherman William T. Sherman (Photodisc, Inc.) Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces overtook Atlanta in September 1864 and swept southeast toward the coast, living off the land and denying Confederate soldiers and civilians alike food and supplies along the way. En route to Savannah, Sherman’s men liberated Andersonville Prison, a 26-square-acre Confederate camp that held 33,000 prisoners in the summer of 1864. Unable to feed their own armies and so unwilling to commit large supplies of food to the prison, the Confederate commander, Henry Wirz, stood by while 13,000 died of starvation, disease, and exposure. (Wirz was the only Confederate officer to be tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes by the U.S. government.) Among the freed prisoners was Payson Wolfe, who had served with Michigan’s Company K, an all-Indian company of sharpshooters. Wolfe returned home to Michigan but never fully recovered from the time he spent at Andersonville. full view Southern Women Playing Croquet during the War Southern women playing croquet during the war, preserving the amenities of plantation life. (Library of Congress) Northerners expressed outrage over Andersonville. However, considering conditions at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, their denunciations had the ring of hypocrisy. This settlement was an internment camp for Apache and Navajo survivors of the campaign initiated against them in 1862; by spring of 1864 some 10,000 people were confined there, an estimated quarter of whom died before they were allowed to return home in 1868. After presenting Lincoln with the “Christmas gift” of Savannah in December, Sherman took his 60,000 troops north, slogging through swamps and rain-soaked terrain to confront PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 496 ${bmicon} full view MAP 14.6 SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA, 1864–1865 General William T. Sherman’s famous march to the sea marked the final phase of the Union effort to divide and conquer the Confederacy. Sherman’s men burned Atlanta to the ground in September 1864. In late December they made their triumphant entry into the city of Savannah. Sherman followed a policy of “hard war” in these final months of the war; he ordered his troops to seize from civilians any food and livestock they could use and to destroy everything else, whether rail lines, houses, or barns. White Southerners expressed outrage over these tactics. Still, Sherman never systematically attacked civilians, a characteristic of the Union’s “total war” against Native American peoples in the West. the original secessionists. Later, he recalled with satisfaction, “My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.” By mid-February, the state capital, Columbia, was in flames. African American troops were among the triumphant occupiers of the charred city. full view Largest Siege Guns at Petersburg The largest siege guns at Petersburg were the 8.5-ton mortar “Dictators.” (National Archives) In his second inaugural address, delivered March 4, 1865, Lincoln declared that the Almighty had rendered final judgment on the abomination that was slavery. The president vowed that the North would persevere “until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” By early April, Grant had overpowered Lee’s army in Petersburg, Virginia. Withdrawing, Lee sent a telegram to Davis, who was attending church in Richmond, warning him that the fall of the Confederate capital was imminent. Davis and almost all other whites fled the city. Arriving in Richmond on April 3, only hours after the city had been abandoned, CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 497 ${bmicon} was the commander-in-chief of the Union army, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln calmly walked the streets of the smoldering city (set afire by departing Confederates), flanked by a group of ten sailors. Throngs of black people greeted the president, exclaiming, “Glory to God! Glory! Glory! Glory!” When a black man kneeled to thank Lincoln, the president said, “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.” On April 9, Lee and his demoralized and depleted army of 35,000 men found themselves outnumbered by Grant and Meade, and Lee surrendered his sword at Appomattox Courthouse in northern Virginia. Lee had rejected a plea by one of his men that the army disband and continue to fight a guerrilla war in the woods and hills. The general predicted that such a force “would become mere bands of marauders,” destroying the countryside and with it what was left of the fabric of southern society. Union officials ensured rebel soldiers protection from future prosecution (for treason) and allowed the cavalry to keep their horses for use in spring planting. These policies were remarkably lenient treatment for traitors. Indeed, a sight on the day of the Confederate surrender suggested that Northerners would pay the defeated Confederates grudging respect. The ragtag members of the so-called Stonewall Brigade, men who had entered the war with Stonewall Jackson four years before, came forward to lay down their arms. In recognition, the Union army gave them a salute of honor, one group of fighting men acknowledging the bravery of another. However, this scene set the stage for the not-too-distant future, when the North and South reaffirmed their ties based on a shared “whiteness” in opposition to African Americans. Watching a comedy with his wife, Mary, at Ford’s Theater in Washington on the night of April 14, Lincoln was one of the last casualties of the war. Shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate loyalist fearful that the president was bent on advancing “nigger citizenship,” Lincoln lingered through the night but died the next morning. Booth himself was caught and shot within a matter of days. Of the departed president, Secretary of State Seward said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” full view Dead Confederate Soldier - Photo Photograph of a dead Confederate soldier in the trenches at Petersburg on April 3, 1865. Eighteen-year-olds were the largest age group in the first year of war in both armies. (Library of Congress) Rather than asking why the South lost the Civil War, we might wonder why it took the North four years to win it. Despite all the political dissent and social conflict in the white South, despite the crumbling of the institution of slavery and the lack of support from the European powers, the Confederacy was able to mobilize huge armies under the command of brilliant tacticians such as Lee and Jackson. The war was fought on the battlefield by regiments of soldiers, not on the sea by navies or in the countryside by guerrillas. Therefore, as long as Confederate generals could deploy troops and outwit their foes during brief but monumental clashes, the Confederacy could survive to fight another day. The South had as its immediate goal the slaughter of as many Yankees as possible. Meanwhile, the North staggered under the weight of mobilizing large numbers of men in enemy territory and supplying those men with the necessary resources far from home. full view Young Union Soldier Youthful idealism was still evident on the face of this young Union soldier, who had not yet learned that “war is hell.” (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) In terms of lives lost (620,000), the Civil War was by far the costliest in the nation’s history. (The death toll among American military personnel in the Revolution was 26,000; in World War I, 116,000; in World War II, 400,000; in Vietnam, 58,000.) At the end of the war, the Union was preserved and slavery was destroyed. Yet, in their quest for true freedom, African Americans soon learned that military hostilities were but one phase of a wider war, a war to define the nature of American citizenship and its promise of liberty and equality. Thus April 1865 marked not so much a final judgment as a transition to new battlefields. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 498 ${bmicon} The Valley of the Shadow: Living the Civil War Pennsylvania and Virginia jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow/vshadow.html This project tells the histories of two communities on either side of the Mason–Dixon line during the Civil War. It includes narrative and an electronic archive of sources. The Civil War in Charleston, South Carolina www.awod.com/gallery/probono/cwchas/cwlayout.html This site covers the history of the Civil War in and around Charleston. Abraham Lincoln Association www.alincolnassoc.com/ This site includes digital versions of Lincoln’s papers. United States Civil War Center www.cwc.lsu.edu/ Maintained by Louisiana State University, this site aims to promote the study of the Civil War by making available “all appropriate private and public data” related to the conflict. Civil War Women scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/collections/civil-war-women.html This Duke University library site includes original documents, links, and biographical information about several women and their lives during the Civil War. Library of Congress Civil War Documents and Photographs memory.loc.gov/ammem/ This Library of Congress site includes a wealth of texts and images related to the history of the Civil War. Civil War Timeline www.historyplace.com/civilwar/index.html This site offers a comprehensive Civil War timeline that includes photographs. National Civil War Association www.ncwa.org/ This site documents the activities of one of the many Civil War reenactment organizations in the United States. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (1995). Edward Hagerman, The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare (1988). Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (1980). James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988). Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Experiences (1988). Clarence Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (1986). Gabor Borit, ed., Lincoln’s Generals (1994). Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Southern Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (1988). Joseph L. Harsh, Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–62 (1998). Wilfrid Knight, Red Fox: Stand Watie and the Confederate Indian Nations During the Civil War Years in Indian Territory (1988). Alan Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (1991). George Rable, The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics (1994). Ralph Wooster, The Secession Conventions of the South (1962). Stephen Ash, When the Invaders Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861–1865 (1996). Howard Jones, The Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (1992). Elizabeth Leonard, All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies (1999). Heather Cox Richardson, The Greatest Nation on Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (1997). Stephen Sears, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam (1983). Emory Thomas, The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience (1991). Lee Ann Whites, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860–1890 (1995). Ira Berlin et al., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation: Series 1, Vol. I: The Destruction of Slavery; Series 2: The Black Military Experience (1982). Ira Berlin and Leslie Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era (1997). Robert F. Engs, Freedom’s First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861–1890 (1979). CHAPTER 14 ###8226; ###8220;TO FIGHT TO GAIN A COUNTRY###8221; 499 ${bmicon} Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family Since Slavery (1985). William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (1991). Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (1964). Stephen V. Ash, Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860–1870: War and Peace in the Upper South (1988). Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (1990). Paul D. Escott, Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850–1900 (1985). Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (1996). J. Matthew Gallman, The North Fights the War: The Home Front (1994). Frank Klement, Dark Lanterns, Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason in the Civil War (1990). Mark M. Smith, Listening to Nineteenth-Century America (2001). Michael B. Ballard, A Long Shadow: Jefferson Davis and the Final Days of the Confederacy (1997). Richard Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986). Ernest Furgurson, Ashes of Glory: Richmond at War (1996). Joseph Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolina Campaigns (1985). Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (1995). James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997). J. Tracy Power, Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox (1998). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter14 To Chapter 14 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 500 ${bmicon}         The Struggle over the South       Claiming Territory for the Union       The Republican Vision and Its Limits       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 501 ${bmicon} IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, IN MID-DECEMBER 1864, AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN, WOMEN, AND children rejoiced when the troops of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman liberated the city: the day of jubilee had come at last! The city’s black community immediately formed its own school system under the sponsorship of a new group, the Savannah Education Association (SEA). The association owed its creation to the desire of freedpeople of all ages to learn to read and write. A committee of nine black clergy began by hiring 15 black teachers and acquiring buildings (including the Old Bryan Slave Mart) for use as schools. By January 1, 1865, Savannah blacks had raised $800 to pay teachers’ salaries, enabling several hundred black children to attend classes free of charge. Following hard on the heels of the Union army, a group of northern white missionaries arrived in Savannah to seek black converts for two Protestant denominations, the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists. On the first day of school, in January 1865, these northern newcomers watched a grand procession of children wend its way through the streets of Savannah. The missionaries expressed amazement that the SEA was an entirely black-run organization; these whites had believed the former slaves incapable of creating such an impressive educational system. In March 1865, the federal government, under the auspices of the newly formed Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau), agreed to work with missionaries in opening schools for black children throughout the former Confederate states. In Georgia, missionaries and government officials soon became alarmed that black leaders were willing to accept financial aid from them but not willing to relinquish control of SEA schools to the whites in return. The Northerners were also distressed by the militancy of certain local black leaders. One of these leaders was Aaron Bradley, who, armed with a pistol and bowie knife, was urging other black men to vote as a bloc in all elections. In an effort to wrest control of the SEA from Savannah blacks, northern missionaries and agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau decided to withhold funds from the association. By March 1866, these efforts had paid off: The city’s black community, swollen by a refugee population, was no longer able to support its own schools. Northern whites took over SEA operations, and the association ceased to exist. Postwar political interest in the South unleashed a major conflict between supporters of African American rights and supportors of southern privilege. Republican congressmen hoped to reconstruct the South by enabling African Americans to own their own land and to become full citizens. Southern freedpeople sought to free themselves from white employers, landlords, and clergy and to establish control over their own workplaces, families, and churches. In contrast, President Andrew Johnson appeared bent on restoring the antebellum PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 502 ${bmicon} power relations that made southern black people field laborers dependent on white landowners. For their part, many southern whites were determined to prevent black people from becoming truly free. Most former rebels remained embittered about the outcome of the war and vengeful toward the freedpeople. The Civil War hardened the positions of the two major political parties. The Republicans remained in favor of a strong national government, one that promoted economic growth. The Democrats tended to support states’ efforts to manage their own affairs, which included regulating relations between employers and employees, whites and blacks. After the war, western economic development presented new challenges for men who had fought for the Union. In order to open the West to European American miners and homesteaders, the U.S. army clashed repeatedly with Native Americans. On the Plains and in the Northwest, Indians resisted white efforts to force them to abandon their nomadic way of life and take up sedentary farming. William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan, and George Custer were among the U.S. military officers who had commanded troops in the Civil War and now attempted to subdue the Plains Indians and further white settlement. Sherman declared, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.” The former head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, General Oliver O. Howard, oversaw the expulsion of Chief Joseph and his people, the Nez Perce, from their homeland in Washington’s Walla Walla Valley in 1877. U.S. soldiers also contributed to the building of the transcontinental railroad. A former Union military officer, Grenville Dodge, served as chief civil engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad, supervising huge workforces of immigrant laborers. The railroad industry was a potent symbol of postwar U.S. nationalism. It also represented a robust, Republican-sponsored partnership between private enterprise and the federal government. Between 1862 and 1872, the government gave the industry subsidies that included millions of dollars in cash and more than 100 million acres of land. On the Plains, U.S. soldiers protected Union Pacific Railroad land surveyors against the retaliatory raids conducted by Indians who were enraged by this incursion into their territory and by the government’s failure to abide by its treaties. The Civil War, and the economic growth unleashed after the conflict, transformed the physical landscape of the nation. In the South the scars of war were everywhere, in the form of ruined crop fields, pillaged forests, and smoldering cities. Pursuing a strategy of “total war” in the final months of the war, Sherman’s troops had destroyed many of the towns and farms that lay in their path on their famous march from Atlanta to Savannah and then north into South Carolina. New train trestles, wharfs, and warehouses stood as monuments to the recent efforts of both rebel and Union forces to move and supply their troops. In the West, construction of new towns and railroad tracks demanded tremendous amounts of lumber. Some observers warned of an impending timber famine, spurring interest in the conservation of natural resources of all kinds. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 503 ${bmicon} The Republicans’ triumph prompted dissent from diverse people who feared that the victorious Union would serve the interests of specific groups such as men, employers, and white property owners. Some women’s rights activists, for example, felt betrayed by the suggestion that this was “the hour of the Negro [man].” These women were not willing to wait indefinitely for their own voting rights. At the same time, in the bustling workshops of the nation’s cities, many workers realized that they remained at the mercy of employers bent on using cheap labor. The founding of the National Labor Union in 1866 revealed that members of the laboring classes had a national vision of their own, one that valued the efforts of working people to earn a decent living for their families. At great cost of human life, the Civil War decisively settled several immediate and longstanding political conflicts. The southern secessionists were defeated, and slavery as a legal institution was destroyed. Nevertheless, the relationship between federal power and group rights remained unresolved, leading to continued bloodshed between whites and Indians on the High Plains, as well as in the former Confederate states between Union supporters and diehard rebels. During the postwar period, federal government officials attempted to complete the political process that the military defeat of the South had only begun: the consolidation of the Union, North and South, East and West. This process encompassed the nation as a whole. The Civil War had a devastating impact on the South in physical, social, and economic terms. The region had lost an estimated $2 billion in investments in slaves; modest homesteads and grand plantations alike lay in ruins; and gardens, orchards, and cotton fields were barren. Along the seacoast and riverways, fish stocks were depleted. More than three million former slaves eagerly embraced freedom, but the vast majority lacked the land, cash, and credit necessary to build family homesteads for themselves. At the same time, landowning whites considered black people primarily as a source of agricultural labor; these whites resisted the idea that the freedpeople should be granted citizenship rights. This conflict—between blacks as family members determined to control their own lives and whites as landowners determined to reassert authority over blacks—assumed immense proportions. In the North, Republican lawmakers disagreed among themselves how best to punish the defeated but defiant rebels. President Abraham Lincoln had indicated early that after the war the government should bring the South back into the Union quickly and painlessly. However, his successor wanted to see members of the southern planter elite humiliated, but resisted the notion that freedpeople should become independent of white landowners. In Congress, moderate and radical Republicans argued about how far the government should go in ensuring the former slaves’ freedom. Southern and northern blacks, staunch defenders of the Republican party, hoped to achieve social and economic self-determination. After the war, southern whites condemned what they called the freedpeople’s “noxious liberty”: their tendency to move around. In fact, all over the South, African American men and women had set out to claim what they believed was rightfully theirs. They traveled great distances, usually on foot, in efforts to locate loved ones and reunite families that had been separated during slavery. They also went to great lengths to resist attempts by white employers to bind them out as apprentices, a new form of bondage. Freed parents turned their energies toward providing for their families, cultivating food crops for their own consumption, and trying to buy land whenever possible. Just as black people had proved to be a military and political force during the war, so they became major actors in the reconstruction of the postwar South. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 504 ${bmicon} The political and social complications of a northern victory became apparent long before the Confederates laid down their arms at Appomattox Courthouse. Wartime experiments with African American free labor in Union-occupied areas foreshadowed bitter postwar debates. As early as November 1861, Union forces had occupied the Sea Islands off Port Royal Sound in South Carolina. In response, wealthy cotton planters fled to the mainland. As many as 10,000 slaves stayed behind on the islands to fish and to cultivate corn for themselves. Over the next few months, three groups of northern civilians landed on the Sea Islands with the intention of guiding blacks in the transition from slave to free labor. Teachers arrived intent on creating schools, and missionaries hoped to start churches. A third group, representing Boston investors, had also settled on the Sea Islands to assess economic opporunities; by early 1862, they decided to institute a system of wage labor that would reestablish a staple crop economy and funnel cotton directly into northern textile mills. The freed slaves gave a cautious welcome to the teachers and missionaries, but they resisted growing cotton for the wartime market. They preferred to grow crops for their families to eat rather than cotton to sell, relying on a system of barter and trade among networks of extended families. Their goal was to break free of white landlords, suppliers, and cotton merchants. Not all Union military men relished the prospect of forcing blacks to work on the plantations where they had been enslaved. Meanwhile, in southern Louisiana, the Union capture of New Orleans in the spring of 1862 enabled northern military officials to implement their own free (that is, nonslave) labor system. General Nathaniel Banks, the Union officer in charge of occupied New Orleans, outlined the plan. Many blacks had fled from their former owners when the Union army occupied the area. Banks proclaimed that U.S. troops should forcibly relocate blacks to plantations “where they belong”; there they would continue to work for their former owners in the sugar and cotton fields, but now for wages supposedly negotiated annually. The Union army would compel blacks to work if they resisted doing so. Furthermore, said Banks, black men, women, and children must “work diligently and faithfully for one year, respectful of their employers.” In defiance of these orders, however, some blacks went on strike for higher wages, and others refused to work at all. Moreover, not all Union military men relished the prospect of forcing blacks to work on the plantations where they had been enslaved. Thus, federal policies returning blacks to plantations remained contested even within the ranks of the army itself. These disputes—between blacks and planters, and among Union officials—would continue throughout the postwar period. full view Massacre At New Orleans In the New Orleans riot of 1866, thirty-seven African Americans and three white sympathizers were killed after a Radical Republican meeting. Southern whites, having lost the Civil War, had little interest in cooperating in a bi-racial Reconstruction. (Library of Congress) The Port Royal and southern Louisiana precursors to Reconstruction offered variations on two themes: the Republicans’ insistence on preserving the southern plantation economy and the former slaves’ efforts to achieve freedom from white control. The Lincoln administration had no hard-and-fast Reconstruction policy to guide congressional lawmakers looking toward the postwar period. In December 1863 the president outlined his Ten Percent Plan. This plan would allow former Confederate states to form new state governments once 10 percent of the men who had voted in the 1860 presidential election had pledged allegiance to the Union and renounced slavery. Congress never acted on Lincoln’s plan because many Republicans felt the need for harsher measures. Instead, at the end of their 1864 session, legislators passed the Wade-Davis Bill, which would have required a majority of southern voters in any state to take a loyalty oath affirming their allegiance to the United States. By refusing to sign the bill before Congress adjourned, Lincoln vetoed the measure (the so-called pocket veto). However, the president approved the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1865. The Bureau was responsible for coordinating relief efforts on behalf of blacks and poor whites loyal to the Union, for sponsoring schools, and for implementing a labor contract system on southern plantations. Congress also created the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Bank in the hope that the former slaves would save a part of their earnings. At the time of his assassination, Lincoln seemed to be leaning toward giving the right to vote the southern black men. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 505 ${bmicon} When Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States, assumed office in April 1865, he brought his own agenda for the defeated South. Throughout his political career, Johnson had seen himself as a champion of poor white farmers in opposition to the wealthy planter class. A man of modest background, he had been elected U.S. senator from Tennessee in 1857. He alone among southern senators remained in Congress and loyal to the Union after 1861. Lincoln first appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee when that state was captured by the Union in 1862 and then tapped him as his running mate for the election of 1864. Soon after he assumed the presidency, Johnson disappointed congressional Republicans who hoped that he would serve as a champion of the freedpeople. He welcomed back into the Union those states reorganized under Lincoln’s 10 percent plan. On May 29, 1865, Johnson announced his own plan for Reconstruction. He advocated denying the vote to wealthy Confederates, though he would allow individuals to come to the White House to beg the president for special pardons. Johnson also outlined a fairly lenient plan for readmitting the other rebel states into the Union. Poor whites would have the right to vote, but they must convene special state conventions that would renounce secession and accept the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. Further, they must repudiate all Confederate debts—that is, they must default on any loans made by banks or private individuals to finance the southern PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 506 ${bmicon} war effort. The president opposed granting the vote to the former slaves; he believed that they should continue to toil as field workers for white landowners. Johnson failed to anticipate the speed and vigor with which former Confederate leaders would move to reassert their political authority. In addition, he did not gauge accurately the resentment of congressional Republicans, who thought his policies toward the defeated South were too forgiving. A warning came in December 1865, when Carl Schurz, a German immigrant and former Union brigadier general, issued his “Report on the Condition of the South.” In it, he warned that the Freedmen’s Bureau was “very unpopular” among white Southerners, who would no doubt fill a power vacuum left by federal weakness and indecision. Several developments quickly proved Schurz right. The southern states that took advantage of Johnson’s reunification policies passed so-called Black Codes. These state laws were an ill-disguised attempt to institute a system of near-slavery. They aimed to penalize “vagrant” blacks, defined as those who did not work in the fields for whites, and to deny blacks the right to vote, serve on juries, or in some cases even own land. The Black Code of Mississippi barred blacks from marrying whites and from owning land “except in incorporated towns or cities” and restricted the rights of a freedperson to “keep or carry fire-arms,” ammunition, and knives and to “quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service without good cause.” The vagueness of this last provision threatened any blacks who happened not to be working under the supervision of whites at any given moment. People arrested under the Black Codes faced imprisonment or forced labor. By January 1865, both houses of Congress had approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. At the end of the war, congressional Republicans were divided into two camps. Radicals wanted to use strong federal measures to advance black people’s civil rights and economic independence. In contrast, moderates were more concerned with the free market and private property rights; they took a hands-off approach regarding former slaves, arguing that blacks should fend for themselves and avoid dependence on federal aid. But members of both groups reacted with outrage to the Black Codes. Moreover, when the legislators returned to the Capitol in December 1865, they were in for a shock: among their new colleagues were four former Confederate generals, five colonels, and other high-ranking members of the Confederate elite, including former Vice President Alexander Stephens, now under indictment for treason. All of these rebels were duly elected senators and representatives from southern states. In a special session called for December 4, a joint committee of 15 lawmakers (6 senators and 9 members of the House) voted to bar these men from Congress. full view Plantation and Southern Commerce The individual plantation was the vital unit of southern commerce, pictured here with the steamboats and flatboats used to carry goods to world-wide markets. (Library of Congress) By January 1865, both houses of Congress had approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. The necessary three-fourths of the states ratified the measure by the end of the year. Unlike the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), which freed only slaves in Confederate territory, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery wherever it existed. The federal government now guaranteed freedom for all black people. However, President Johnson was becoming more openly defiant of his congressional foes who favored aggressive federal protection of black civil rights. He vetoed two crucial pieces of legislation: an extension and expansion of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Bill of 1866. This latter measure, a precursor to the Fourteenth Amendment, was an unprecedented piece of legislation. It called on the federal government—for the first time in history—to protect individual rights against the willful indifference of the states (as manifested, for example, in the Black Codes). Congress managed to override both vetoes by the summer of 1866. full view Andrew Johnson Southern Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln to the presidency. His battles with Congress over control of Reconstruction became legendary. (Library of Congress) In June of that year, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment. This amendment guaranteed the former slaves citizenship rights, punished states that denied citizens the right to vote, declared the former rebels ineligible for federal and state office, and voided Confederate debts. This amendment was the first to use gender-specific language, guarding against denying the vote “to any of the male inhabitants” of any state. The amendment, also, for the first time legally defined the rights of American citizenship and empowered the federal government to protect those rights. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 507 ${bmicon} Even before the war ended, Northerners had moved south; and the flow increased in 1865. Black and white teachers volunteered to teach the former slaves to read and write. Some white Northerners journeyed south to invest in land and become planters in the staple crop economy. White southern critics called all these migrants carpetbaggers. This derisive term suggested that the Northerners hastily packed their belongings in rough bags made of carpet scraps and then rushed south to take advantage of the region’s devastation and confusion. Former Confederates were not the only people suspicious of the newcomers. In 1865 a black abolitionist Union officer, Martin R. Delany, condemned the northern white people recently arrived in South Carolina. These Northerners, Delany told a group of freedpeople, had “come down here to drive you as much as ever. It’s slavery again: northern, universal U.S. slavery.” To many freedpeople, whether they worked for a white Northerner or Southerner, laboring in the cotton fields was but a continuation of slavery. Freedmen and white Southerners sometimes differed within their own camps about political and economic aims. For example, southern blacks united in their demands for land and the vote but disagreed among themselves over the necessity of political cooperation with whites in general. Some former southern (white) Whigs, who had been reluctant secessionists, now found common ground with northern Republicans who supported government subsidies for railroads, banking institutions, and public improvements. This group consisted of some members of the humbled planter class as well as men of more modest means. Southern Democrats, who sneered at any alliances with the North, scornfully labeled these whites “scalawags” (the term referred to a scrawny, useless type of horse on the Scottish island of Scalloway). full view Former Slaves At Cumberland Landing Wherever the Union Army went, long lines of slaves, like these at Cumberland Landing in 1862, followed. (Library of Congress) Soon after the war’s end, southern white vigilantes launched a campaign of violence and intimidation against freedpeople who dared to resist the demands of white planters and other employers. In 1866 former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had led the massacre of African American soldiers at Fort Pillow, founded a social club composed of Tennessee war veterans. Calling itself the Ku Klux Klan, this group soon became a white supremacist terrorist organization and spread to other states. In May 1866 violence initiated by white terrorists against blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, left 46 freedpeople and 2 whites dead, and in July, a riot in New Orleans claimed the lives of 34 blacks and 3 of their white allies. These bloody encounters demonstrated the lengths to which ex-Confederates would go to reassert their authority and defy the federal government. full view Ku Klux Klan Members A secret white supremacist organization, the Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865 and sought to terrorize African Americans prior to elections in order to keep them from voting. (Library of Congress) Back in Washington, Johnson was not content to veto Republican legislation. In the summer of 1866, he also began to lobby against the Fourteenth Amendment, traveling around the country and urging the states not to ratify it. He argued that policies related to black suffrage should be decided by the states. The time had come for reconciliation between the North and South, maintained the president. (The amendment would not be adopted until 1868.) full view Free Black Dockworkers Black dockworkers load bales of cotton in this undated photograph, which is evidence not only of the kinds of jobs that free blacks could secure but also of the continuing dominance of cotton in southern life. (Library of Congress) Congressional Republicans fought back. In the election of November 1866, they won a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. These numbers allowed them to claim a mandate from their constituents and to override any future vetoes by the president. Taking heart from their newfound legislative successes, moderates and radicals together prepared to bypass Johnson to shape their own Reconstruction policies. Throughout the South, black people aspired to labor for themselves and gain independence from white overseers and landowners. Yet white landowners persisted in regarding blacks as field hands who must be coerced into working. With the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865, Congress intended to form an agency that would mediate between these two groups. Bureau agents encouraged workers and employers to sign annual labor contracts designed to eliminate the last vestiges of the slave system. All over the South, freed men, women, and children would contract with an employer on January 1 of each year. They would agree to work for either a monthly wage, an annual share of the crop, or some combination of the two. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 508 ${bmicon} The Bureau established elementary schools and distributed rations to southerners who had remained loyal to the Union, blacks and whites alike. Agents also conducted wedding ceremonies for the former slaves, who had been denied the right to legalize their unions as marriages. Yet the agency’s most formidable challenge was its effort to usher in a new economic order in the South—one that relied on nonslave labor but also returned the region to prewar productivity levels in terms of planting and harvesting cotton. In April 1866, a white planter in Thomson, Georgia, wrote to a local Freedmen’s Bureau official and complained that the black wives and mothers living on his land had refused to sign labor contracts. The planter explained, “Their husbands are at work, while they are nearly idle as it is possible for them to be, pretending to spin—knit or something that really amounts to nothing.” These “idle” women posed a threat to plantation order, the white man asserted. Women who stayed home to care for their families were hardly idle. Yet Freedmen’s Bureau agents and white planters alike tended to define productive labor (among blacks) as work carried out under the supervision of a white man in the fields or a white woman in the kitchen. During the postwar period, a struggle ensued. Who should toil in the fields of the South? And under what conditions should they labor? The physical devastation wrought by the war gave these questions heightened urgency. Most freedpeople understood they must find a way to provide for themselves first and foremost. They thought of freedom in terms of welfare for their family rather than just for themselves as individuals. Men and women embraced the opportunity to live and work together as a unit. For many couples, their first act as free people was to legalize their marriage vows. Black women shunned the advice of Freedmen’s Bureau agents and planters that they continue to pick cotton. These women withdrew from field labor whenever they could afford to do so. Enslaved women had been deprived of the opportunity to attend to family life. Now freedwomen sought to devote themselves to caring for their families. The Freedmen’s Bureau’s functions in the areas of labor and education represented a new and significant federal role in the realm of social welfare. Yet the agency did not have the staff or money necessary to effect meaningful change. According to the Northerners, the benefits of this system were clear. Employers would have an incentive to treat their workers fairly—to offer a decent wage and refrain from physical punishment. Disgruntled workers could leave at the end of the year to work for a more reasonable landowner. In the postbellum South, however, labor relations were shaped not by federal decree but by a process of negotiation that pitted white landowners against blacks who possessed little but their own labor. For instance, blacks along the Georgia and South Carolina coast were determined to cultivate the land on which their forebears had lived and died. They urged General Sherman to confiscate the land owned by rebels in the area. In response, in early 1865, Sherman issued Field Order Number 15, mandating that the Sea Islands and the coastal region south of Charleston be divided into parcels of 40 acres for individual freed families. He also decreed that the army might lend mules to these families to help them begin planting. Given the provisions of this order, many freed families came to expect that the federal government would grant them “40 acres and a mule.” As a result of Sherman’s order, 20,000 former slaves proceeded to cultivate the property once owned by Confederates. Within a few months of the war’s end, however, the War Department bowed to pressure from the white landowners and revoked the order. The War Department also provided military protection for whites to return and occupy their former lands. In response, a group of black men calling themselves Commissioners from Edisto Island (one of the Sea Islands) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 509 ${bmicon} met in committee to protest to the Freedmen’s Bureau what they considered a betrayal. Writing from the area in January 1866, one Freedmen’s Bureau official noted that the new policy must be upheld but regretted that it had brought the freedpeople in “collision” with “U.S. forces.” During its brief life (1865 to 1868), the Freedmen’s Bureau compiled a mixed record. The individual agents represented a broad range of backgrounds, temperaments, and political ideas. Some were former abolitionists who considered northern-style free labor to be “the noblest principle on earth.” These men tried to ensure safe and fair working arrangements for black men, women, and children. In contrast, some agents had little patience with the freedpeople’s drive for self-sufficiency. Some bureau offices became havens for blacks seeking redress against abusive or fraudulent labor practices, but other offices had little impact on the postwar political and economic landscape. For agents without means of transportation (a reliable horse), Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 510 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY A Southern Labor Contract After the Civil War, many southern agricultural workers signed labor contracts. These contracts sought to control not only the output of laborers but also their lives outside the workplace. On January 1, 1868, the planter John D. Williams assembled his workers for the coming year and presented them with a contract to sign. Williams owned a plantation in the Lower Piedmont county of Laurens, South Carolina. He agreed to furnish “the said negroes” (that is, the three black men and two black women whose names were listed on the document) with mules and horses to be used for cultivating the land. The workers could receive their food, clothing, and medical care on credit. They were allowed to keep one-third of all the corn, sweet potatoes, wheat, cotton, oats, and molasses they produced. Presumably, they would pay their debts to Williams using proceeds from their share of the crop. According to the contract, Williams’s workers promised to bind them Selves to be steady & attentive to there work at all times and to work at keeping in repair all the fences on Said plantation and assist in cuting & taking care of—all the grain crops on Said plantation and work by the direction of me [Williams] or my Agent…. And should any of them depart from the farm or from any services at any time with out our approval they shall forfeit one dollar per day, for the first time and for the second time without good cause they shall forfeit all of their interest in the crop their to me the enjured person—they shall not be allowed to keep firearms or deadly wapons or ardent Spirits and they shall obey all lawful orders from me or my Agent and shall be honest—truthful—sober—civel—diligent in their business & for all wilful Disobedience of any lawful orders from me or my Agent drunkenness moral or legal misconduct want of respects or civility to me or my Agent or to my Family or any elce, I am permitted to discharge them forfeiting any claims upon me for any part of the crop…. Moses Nathan 1 full hand Jake Chappal ” ” Milly Williams 1/2 ” ” Easter Williams ” ” Mack Williams ” ” At the end of the contract is this addition: We the white labores now employed by John D. Williams on his white plains plantation have lisened and heard read the foregoing Contract on this sheet of paper assign equal for the black laborers employed by him on said place and we are perfectly Satisfied with it and heare by bind our selves to abide & be Governed & Controwed by it Wm Wyatte 1 full hand John Wyatte 1 full hand Packingham Wyatte 1/2 “ ” Franklin Wyatte 1/2 “ ” R M Hughes 1 full hand B G Pollard 1 full hand George Washington Pollard 1 full hand To sign the contract, all of the blacks and two of the whites “made their marks”; that is, they signed with an “X” because they were illiterate. Source: Rosser H. Taylor, “Postbellum Southern Rental Contracts” [from Furman University library, Greenville, South Carolina], Agricultural History 17 (1943):122–123. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 511 ${bmicon} plantations scattered throughout the vast rural South remained outside their control. Because white landowners crafted the wording and specific provisions of labor contracts, the bureau agents who enforced such agreements often served the interests of employers rather than laborers. full view White Landowners Weighing Sharecroppers’ Cotton Sharecropping soon replaced slavery in the South as the primary form of labor. In this photo, a white landowner weighs cotton grown by black sharecroppers. (National Archives) In fact, for the most part, postwar freed people pressed for their labor rights independently of the federal government. In the cotton regions of the South, freedpeople resisted the near-slavery system of gang labor that planters tried to enforce right after the war. Instead, extended families came together in groups called squads to negotiate collectively with landowners. Gradually, squads gave way to sharecropping families. The outlines of sharecropping, a system that defined southern cotton production until well into the twentieth century, were visible just a few years after the Civil War. Poor families, black and white, contracted annually with landlords, who advanced them supplies, such as crop seed, mules, plows, food, and clothing. Fathers directed the labor of their children in the fields. At the end of the year, many families remained indebted to their employer and, thus, entitled to nothing and obliged to work another year in the hope of repaying the debt. If a sharecropper’s demeanor or work habits displeased the landlord, the family faced eviction. Single women with small children were especially vulnerable to the whims of landlords in the postbellum period. Near Greensboro, North Carolina, for example, planter Presley George, Sr., settled accounts with his field worker Polly at the end of 1865. For her year’s expenses, Polly was charged a total $69.00 for corn, cloth, thread, and board for a child who did not work. By George’s calculations, Polly had earned exactly $69.00 for the labor she and her three children (two sons and a daughter) performed in the course of the year, leaving her no cash of her own. Under these harsh conditions, freedpeople looked to each other for support and strength. Soon after the war’s end, southern blacks set about organizing themselves as an effective political force and as free communities devoted to the social and educational welfare of their own people. As early as summer 1865, groups of freedpeople met in convention to press for their rights as U.S. citizens. A group calling itself Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Virginia, issued an address to the people of the United States, warning that the Emancipation Proclamation was insufficient to check the power of diehard rebels. Mass arrests of blacks had been authorized by “the rebel Mayor.” Former slaveholders were bent on keeping the blacks “in a state of serfdom,” charged the Norfolk petitioners. full view Free Black Church Churches for free blacks, rare before 1800, became a major source of social as well as religious activity by the 1840s. (Library of Congress) Differences among blacks based on income, jobs, culture, and skin color at times inhibited institution-building. Some black communities found themselves divided by class, with blacks who had been free before the war (including many literate and skilled light-skinned men) assuming leadership over illiterate field hands. In New Orleans, a combination of factors contributed to class divisions among people of African heritage. During the antebellum period, light-skinned free people of color, many of whom spoke French, were much more likely to possess property and a formal education compared to enslaved people, who were dark-skinned English speakers. After the Civil War, the more privileged group pressed for public accommodations laws, which would open the city’s theaters, opera, and expensive restaurants to all blacks for the first time. However, black churches and social organizations remained segregated according to class. Yet, citywide black conventions held in 1864 and 1867 brought together all groups of African descent in common cause, defined as “the actual liberation from social and political bondage.” For the most part, postbellum black communities united around the principle that freedom from slavery should also mean full citizenship rights: the ability to vote, own land, and educate their children. These rights must be enforced by federal firepower: “a military occupation will be absolutely necessary,” declared the blacks of Norfolk, “to protect the white Union men of the South, as well as ourselves.” Freedpeople in some states allied themselves with white PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 512 ${bmicon} TABLE 15-1 Comparison of Black and White Household Structure in 27 Cotton-Belt Counties, 1870, 1880, 1900 1870 (N = 534) Single Person % Nuclear % Ext. % Aug. % Ext./Aug. % Adults % Total   3.1 80.7 14.4 1.4 .3 .3 290 Black 2.1 71.3 7.4 17.6 1.2 .4 244 White 2.6 76.4 11.0 8.8 .7 .4 534   1880 (N = 679) Single Person % Nuclear % Ext. % Aug. % Ext./Aug. % Adults % Total   3.7 74.2 13.6 5.9 1.7 .8 353 Black 3.1 62.7 13.5 15.7 5.0 .0 319 White 3.4 68.8 13.5 10.6 3.3 .4 672   1900 (N = 644) Single Person % Nuclear % Ext. % Aug. % Ext./Aug. % Adults % Total   5.7 64.9 22.9 4.0 1.7 .8 353 Black 3.4 65.2 19.0 .7 1.7 .0 290 White 4.7 65.0 21.2 7.0 1.7 .5 643   Single person: one person living alone. Nuclear: father, mother, and children. Ext.: extended family consisting of parents, children, and kin. Aug.: augmented household consisting of family and nonfamily members (boarders, servants, hired hands). Ext./aug.: combination of extended and augmented. Unrelated adults: more than one unrelated adult living together. Source: Based on information from a sample of households (located in selected cotton staple counties in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas) listed in the 1870, 1880, and 1900 federal population manuscript censuses. yeomen who had long resented the political power of the great planters and now saw an opportunity to use state governments as agents of democratization and economic reform. Networks of freedpeople formed self-help organizations. Like the sponsors of the Savannah Education Association, blacks throughout the South formed committees to raise funds and hire teachers for neighborhood schools. Small Georgia towns, such as Cuthbert, Albany, Cave Spring, and Thomasville, with populations no greater than a few hundred, raised up to $70 per month and contributed as much as $350 each for the construction of school buildings. Funds came from the proceeds of fairs, bazaars, and bake sales; subscriptions raised by local school boards; and tuition fees. In the cash-starved postbellum South, these amounts represented a great personal and group sacrifice for the cause of education. Black families sought to care for people who could not care for themselves. Freedmen’s Bureau agents scoffed at blacks who took in “improvident” and “lazy” elderly kin: how could Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 513 ${bmicon} full view MAP 15.1 RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION Four of the former Confederate states, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia, were reorganized under President Lincoln’s 10 Percent Plan in 1864. Neither this plan nor the proposals of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, provided for the enfranchisement of the former slaves. In 1867 Congress established five military districts in the South and demanded that newly reconstituted state governments implement universal manhood suffrage. By 1870 all of the former Confederate states had rejoined the Union, and by 1877 all of those states had installed conservative (i.e., Democratic) governments. full view Worse than Slavery - Nast Cartoon As shown in this Thomas Nast cartoon, Worse than Slavery, white groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League used every form of terror, violence, and intimidation to restore a “white man’s government” and redeem the noble “lost cause.” (Harper’s Weekly, October 24, 1874) the former slaves hope to advance their own interests if they had to support such unproductive people? All over the South, black families charted their own course. They elected to take in orphans, to pool resources with neighbors, and to arrange for mothers to stay home with their children. These choices challenged the power of former slaveholders and the influence of Freedmen’s Bureau agents and northern missionaries and teachers. At the same time, in seeking to attend to their families and to provide for themselves, southern blacks resembled members of other mid-nineteenth-century laboring classes who valued family ties over the demands of employers and landlords. full view Attempted KKK Lynching Lynching accounted for more than 3,000 deaths in the US between 1899 and 1918. In this 1871 image, the KKK prepares to execute John Campbell. Fortunately, Campbell was later released. (National Archives) Tangible signs of the new emerging black communities infuriated southern whites. A schoolhouse run by blacks proved threatening in a society where most white children had little opportunity to receive an education. Black communities were also quick to form their own churches, rather than continue to occupy an inferior place in white churches. Other sights proved equally unsettling: on a main street in Charleston, an armed black soldier marching proudly or a black woman wearing a fashionable hat and veil, the kind favored by white women of the planter class. These developments help to account for the speed with which whites organized themselves in the Klan and various other vigilante groups, such as Young Men’s Democratic Clubs, White Brotherhood, and Knights of the White Camellia. Members of this last group took an initiation oath that stated, “Our main and fundamental object is the maintenance of the supremacy of the white race in this Republic.” The rise of armed white supremacist groups in the South helped spur congressional Republicans to action. On March 2, 1867, Congress seized the initiative. A coalition led by two full view Reconstruction From 1865 to 1877 the United States struggled to reintegrate the southern states into the Union after the Civil War, in a process known as Reconstruction. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 514 ${bmicon} radicals, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, prodded Congress to pass the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The purpose of this measure was to purge the South of disloyalty once and for all. The act stripped thousands of former Confederates of voting rights. The former Confederate states would not be readmitted to the Union until they had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and written new constitutions that guaranteed black men the right to vote. The South (with the exception of Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866) was divided into five military districts. Federal troops were stationed throughout the region. These troops were charged with protecting Union personnel and supporters in the South and with restoring order in the midst of regional political and economic upheaval. full view Thaddeus Stevens - Brady Photo Stalwart radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, photographed by Mathew Brady. (Library of Congress) full view “From the Plantation to the Senate” This illustrations celebrates the election of Hiram Revels of Mississippi to the Senate and the elevations of other African Americans to positions of respect in the post-Civil War era. (Library of Congress) Congress passed two additional acts specifically intended to secure congressional power over the president. The intent of the Tenure of Office Act was to prevent the president from dismissing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a supporter of the radicals. The other measure, the Command of the Army Act, required the president to seek approval for all military orders from General Ulysses S. Grant, the army’s senior officer. Grant also was a supporter of the Republicans. Both of these acts probably violated the separation of powers doctrine as put forth in the Constitution. Together, they would soon precipitate a national crisis. full view Black Senator and Congressmen, 1872 Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi (seated left) was the first black to sit in the U.S. Senate. The other men were congressmen in 1872. Sixteen African Americans served in the US Congress between 1869 and 1880. (Library of Congress) The radicals’ call for the redistribution of land from former slaveholders to freedpeople won few supporters among moderates in Congress. In contrast, both Republican factions threw their support behind an emerging southern Republican party, a move that had a significant impact on postwar politics. Alert to the designs of the “irritated, revengeful South,” Thaddeus Stevens, the leading House radical, urged Republicans, black and white, to assume control of the South; otherwise, “all our blood and treasure will have been spent in vain.” Giving the vote to black men spurred the growth of southern Republican party organizations, called Union Leagues, that provided a political forum for a host of black leaders. During Reconstruction, approximately 2000 black men served as local elected officials, sheriffs, justices of the peace, tax collectors, and city councilors. Many of these leaders were of mixed ancestry, and many had been free before the war. They came in disproportionate numbers CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 515 ${bmicon} from the ranks of literate men, such as clergy, teachers, and skilled artisans. In Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, black men constituted a majority of the voting public. Throughout the South, 600 black men won election to state legislatures. However, nowhere did blacks control a state government, although they did predominate in South Carolina’s lower House. Sixteen black Southerners were elected to Congress during Reconstruction. Most of those elected to Congress in the years immediately after the war were freeborn. However, among the nine men elected for the first time after 1872, six were former slaves. All of these politicians exemplified the desire among southern blacks to become active, engaged citizens. full view Five Generations of a Slave Family - Photo Thomas Nast cartoon condemning the actions of Liberal Republicans Horace Greeley and Charles Sumner. Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1872. Among this group of black leaders was war hero Robert Smalls of South Carolina, who early in the war had seized a Confederate gunboat and escaped from Charleston Harbor. Other prominent leaders included Tunis G. Campbell, a native of New Jersey who served as a Georgia state senator and justice of the peace; and the Reverend Henry M. Turner of Georgia, who warned against political divisions between dark- and light-skinned blacks. In Mississippi, in February 1870, Hiram Revels became the first black man to serve in the U.S. Senate. Another Mississippi politician, Blanche K. Bruce, dominated the political scene in Bolivar County, where he served as sheriff, tax collector, and superintendent of education all at the same time. In 1875 Bruce was elected to the U.S. Senate. full view Robert Smalls Twenty-three year old Robert Smalls commandeered the Planter, a Confederate steamship used to transport guns and ammunition. With the help of several black crewmen, Smalls surrendered the vessel to the Union’s USS Onward. (Library of Congress) Newly reconstructed southern state legislatures provided for public school systems, fairer taxation methods, bargaining rights of plantation laborers, racially integrated public transportation and accommodations, and public works projects, especially railroads. Nevertheless, the legislative coalitions forged between Northerners and Southerners, blacks and whites, were uneasy and, in many cases, less than productive. Southern Democrats (and later, historians sympathetic to them) claimed that Reconstruction governments were uniquely corrupt, with some carpetbaggers, scalawags, and freedpeople vying for kickbacks from railroad and construction magnates. In fact, whenever state legislatures sought to promote business interests, they opened the door to the bribery of public officials. In this respect, northern as well as southern politicians were vulnerable to charges of corruption. In the long run, southern Democrats cared less about charges of legislative corruption and more about the growing political power of local black Republican party organizations. In Washington in early 1868 President Johnson forced a final showdown with Congress. He replaced several high military officials with more conservative men. He also fired Secretary of War Stanton, in apparent violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Shortly thereafter, in February, a newly composed House Reconstruction Committee impeached Johnson for ingnoring the act, and the Senate began his trial on March 30. The president and Congress were locked in an extraordinary battle for political power. During the House debate and the Senate trial, political rhetoric verged on the melodramatic. Representative Stevens condemned Johnson as “the nightmare that crouched on the heaving breast of the nation.” Nevertheless, the president managed to avoid conviction. The final vote was 35 senators against Johnson, one vote short of the necessary two-thirds of all senators’ votes needed for conviction. Nineteen senators voted to acquit Johnson of the charges. The president celebrated his victory by sharing a round of whiskey with his lawyers. Nevertheless, to win acquittal, he had had to promise moderates that he would not stand in the way of congressional plans for Reconstruction. Johnson essentially withdrew from policymaking in the spring of 1868. TABLE 15-2 The Election of 1868 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Ulysses S. Grant Republican 3,013,421 214 Horatio Seymour Democratic 2,706,829 80 That November, Republicans urged Northerners to “vote as you shot” (that is, to cast ballots against the former Confederates) and elected Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency. Grant defeated the Democratic nominee, Horatio Seymour, a former governor of New York. An estimated half a million former slaves cast their ballots for Grant, whom they hailed as a liberator. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 516 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Two Presidents Impeached The president, a Democrat, had humble roots in the South. He was raised by a hard-working single mother. His tenure as a state governor ill prepared him for the hostility he encountered as chief executive in Washington, where people persisted in gossiping about his personal life. The Republicans, firmly in control of Congress, despised him and managed to impeach him. At the same time, many observers questioned whether his misdeeds rose to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” With the aid of skillful lawyers, members of his own party, and a core of Republican moderates, he avoided conviction in the Senate. Nevertheless, the political battle diminished his capacity to lead forcefully for the rest of his term in office. Andrew Johnson in 1868 or Bill Clinton 130 years later? The answer, of course, is both. Yet these superficial similarities in the careers of the two men mask dramatic differences between them. Andrew Johnson was charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act, a law that probably was unconstitutional in any case. His impeachment took place against the backdrop of a national debate over the course of Reconstruction, a debate that was intensely ideological. In contrast, Bill Clinton was charged with lying and obstructing justice, charges that stemmed from an extramarital affair the president had conducted with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. His impeachment reflected the bitter partisanship and personal animosity between Democrats and Republicans in the 1990s. (See Chapter 29.) Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808. At age 13, he was apprenticed to a tailor. As a young man, he moved to Tennessee. There he came to identify with the state’s yeoman farmers and artisans in opposition to the great planters. Although he served as governor of Tennessee and later U.S. senator, he had little formal education; his wife, the daughter of a Scottish shoemaker, taught him how to write and do arithmetic. In contrast, Bill Clinton attended Georgetown University and went on to graduate from Yale Law School. Clinton also appreciated the help and support of his wife, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was a unique First Lady. She possessed impressive skills as a political campaigner and maintained a keen interest in policy issues. In 2000, just as her husband was leaving office, she was elected U.S. senator from the state of New York. Generations of historians have disagreed about Johnson’s case. In the early twentieth century, pro-South scholars sympathized with Lincoln’s successor. Yet many scholars later in the century looked more favorably on the radical Republicans; influenced by the Civil Rights movement, these historians focused on Johnson’s anti–civil rights stance. Therefore, it is difficult to predict how history will judge Bill Clinton and his battle with congressional Republicans. Historians themselves are an unpredictable lot. The general had proved himself a brilliant strategist during the war, but he lacked political experience, a shortcoming that soon became abundantly clear. full view Freedmen’s Bureau - Engraving The Freedmen’s Bureau had fewer resources in relation to its purpose than any agency in the nation’s history. This Harper’s Weekly engraving depicts freedmen lining up for aid in Memphis in 1866. (Library of Congress) Political reunion was an uneven process, but one that gradually eroded the newly won rights of former slaves in many southern states. By the end of 1868, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida had met congressional conditions for readmission to the Union, and two years later, Mississippi, Virginia, Georgia, and Texas followed. The Fifteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified by the necessary number of states a year later, granted all black men the right to vote. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 517 ${bmicon} However, in some states, such as Louisiana, reunification gave Democrats license to engage in wholesale election fraud and violence toward freed men and women. In 1870–1871, a congressional inquiry into the Klan exposed pervasive and grisly assaults on Republican schoolteachers, preachers, and prospective voters, black and white. The Klan also targeted men and women who refused to work like slaves in the fields. In April 1871, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which punished conspiracies intended to deny rights to citizens. But Klan violence and intimidation had already taken their toll. Republican voting strength began to decline in rural areas where blacks were the majority population and freedmen had attempted to assert their citizenship rights. full view Freedmen at Rest on a Levee In March 1865 Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, generally known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. Often, former slaves found themselves without food, shelter, adequate clothing or work. Here, a group of freedmen rest on a levee. (Library of Congress) full view Freedmen’s School One of the many Freedmen’s schools in the postwar South. These schools drew African Americans of all ages, who were eager for the advantages offered by education. (Library of Congress) full view Ku Klux Klan Warning Ku Klux Klan graphic warning “of the fate in store for” their opponents. Taken from the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, September 1, 1868. (Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama) In 1871 poet Walt Whitman wrote an essay titled “Democratic Vistas.” In it he celebrated the “manly and courageous instincts” that propelled a brave, adventurous people west. Whitman hailed the march across the prairies and over the mountains as a cavalcade of progress. He and other Americans believed that the postbellum migration fulfilled a mission of national regeneration begun by the Civil War. Kansas’s population grew by 240 percent in the 1860s, Nebraska’s by 355 percent. full view Atlantic and Pacific Railroad - Map Contemporary map of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. The land grant, appearing as shaded squares, cut a 100-mile swath across Arizona. To unite the entire country together as a single economic and political unit was the Republican ideal. Achieving this ideal entailed both technological and military means. The railroads in particular served as vehicles of national integration. When the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869, the hammering of the spike that joined the two roads produced a telegraphic signal received simultaneously on both coasts, setting off a national celebration. In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell tolled. Meanwhile, regular units of United States cavalry, including two regiments of blacks, were launching attacks on Indians on the Plains, in the Northwest, and in the Southwest. Between PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 518 ${bmicon} 1865 and 1890, U.S. military forces conducted a dozen separate campaigns against western Indian peoples and met Indian warriors in battle or attacked Indian settlements in more than 1000 engagements. The war for the West pitted agents of American nationalism against Indian groups that battled to maintain their distinctive way of life in a rapidly changing world. In contrast to African Americans, who adamantly demanded their rights as American citizens, defiant western Indians battled a government to which they owed no allegiance. In 1871 the U.S. government renounced the practice of seeking treaties with various Indian groups. This change in policy opened the way for a more aggressive effort to subdue native populations. It also hastened the expansion of the reservation system, an effort begun in the antebellum period to confine specific Indian groups to specific territories. In the Southwest, clashes between Indians and U.S. soldiers persisted after the Civil War. In 1867 at Medicine Lodge Creek in southern Kansas the United States signed a treaty with an alliance of Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Plains Apache. This treaty could not long withstand the provocation posed by the railroad. The year before, the Seventh U. S. Cavalry, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, had been formed to ward off native attacks on the Union Pacific, snaking its way across the central Plains westward from Kansas. In November 1868 Custer destroyed a Cheyenne settlement on the Washita River, in present-day Oklahoma. The settlement’s leader was Black Kettle, who had brought his people to reservation territory after the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado in 1864. Custer’s men murdered women and children, burned tepees, and destroyed 800 horses. Sickened by the scene, one army officer later wrote sarcastically of the “daring dash” on the part of “heroes of a bloody day.” The soldiers left piles of corpses scattered among the smoldering ruins of the village. A series of peace delegations to Washington, several led by Red Cloud of the Sioux, produced much curiosity among whites but no end to the slaughter of people or animals in the West. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 519 ${bmicon} full view MAP 15.2 PLAINS INDIAN WARS, 1865–1900 This map reveals that between 1865 and 1890, many of the conflicts between Indians and U.S. troops occurred along either railroad lines or trails used by European American settlers. For example, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fiercely resisted travelers along the Bozeman Trail running from Colorado to Montana. Indians continued to attack the surveyors, supply caravans, and military escorts that preceded the railroad work crews. Lamenting the loss of his people’s hunting grounds to the railroad, Red Cloud said, “The white children have surrounded me and have left me nothing but an island.” full view Ghost Town in Montana Ghost Town in Montana (Photodisc, Inc.) The Apache Indians managed to elude General George Crook until 1875. Crook employed some of these Apaches to track down the war chief Geronimo of the Chiricahuas. Like many other Indian leaders, Geronimo offered both religious and military guidance to his people. He believed that a spirit would protect him from the white man’s bullets and from the arrows of Indians in league with government troops. Yet Geronimo was tricked into a momentary surrender in 1877. Sorrowfully, he agreed to bring his followers into the San Carlos reservation in eastern Arizona. There he was held in irons for several months before gaining his release and challenging authorities for another nine years. full view Sioux Encampment, Early 1890s Sioux encampment on White Clay Creek, near the South Dakota-Nebraska border in the early 1890s. (Library of Congress) In 1874 Custer took the Seventh into the Black Hills of the Dakotas, so-called unceded Indian territory. Supposedly, the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had rendered this land off-limits to whites. Custer’s mission was to offer protection for the surveyors of the Northern Pacific Railroad and to force Indians onto reservations as stipulated in the 1868 treaty. However, the officer lost no time trumpeting the fact that Indian lands were filled with gold. This report prompted a rush to the Black Hills, lands sacred to the Sioux. Within two years, 15,000 gold PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 520 ${bmicon} miners had illegally descended on Indian lands to seek their fortunes. The federal government proposed to buy the land, but leaders of the Sioux, including Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Sitting Bull, spurned the offer. “The Black Hills belong to me,” declared Sitting Bull. “If the whites try to take them, I will fight.” Indians throughout the West maintained their distinctive ways of life during these turbulent times. Horse holdings, so crucial for hunting, trading, and fighting, varied from group to group, with the Crow wealthy in relation to their Central Plains neighbors the Oglala and the Arikara. Plains and Plateau peoples engaged in a lively trading system. They exchanged horses and their trappings (bridles and blankets) for eastern goods such as kettles, guns, and ammunition. Despite their differences in economy, these groups held similar religious beliefs about an all-powerful life force that governed the natural world. People, plants, and animals were all part of the same order. Even in the midst of brutal repression, Indian cultural traditions survived and in some cases flourished. On the West Central Plains and the Plateau, among the Crow, Shoshone, Nez Perce and other tribes, women developed a new, distinctive style of seed beadwork characterized by variations of triangular patterns. These designs, made of beads selected for their quality and consistency, adorned leggings, gauntlets, and belt pouches. In these ways, the decorative arts were endowed with great symbolic meaning. When wives embellished moccasins with patterns signifying their husband’s military achievements, handicrafts assumed political as well as artistic significance. In the eyes of many European Americans, the West offered vast challenges and opportunities. To construct a railroad across the plains and mountains, to extract rich reserves of timber and minerals, to harvest immense crops of wheat—all of these tasks demanded large numbers of willing workers. But such workers were in short supply. Moreover, available workers wanted employers to pay and treat them fairly. full view Grave Markers at Custer Battlefield Grave Markers at the Custer Battlefield in North Dakota (Photodisc, Inc.) In 1865 the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad seemed poised for one of the great engineering feats of the nineteenth century. In the race eastward from California, they would construct trestles spanning vast chasms and roadbeds traversing mountains and deserts. Government officials in Washington were eager to subsidize the railroad. What the owners lacked was a dependable labor force. The Irish workers who began the line in California struck for higher wages in compensation for brutal, dangerous work. These immigrants dropped their shovels and hammers at the first word of a gold strike nearby—or far away. As a result, in 1866 the Central Pacific had decided to tap into a vast labor source by importing thousands of Chinese men from their native Guandong province. The Chinese toiled to extend the railroad tracks eastward from Sacramento, California, up to ten miles a day in the desert, only a few feet a day in the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains. They alternately loaded and dumped millions of tons of earth and rocks to clear the land and construct the roadbed. In nerve-wracking feats of skill, they lowered themselves in woven baskets to implant nitroglycerine explosives in canyon walls. Chinese CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 521 ${bmicon} full view Oglala Sioux Pictogram of the Battle of Little Bighorn This pictogram by Oglala Sioux Amos Bad Heart Bull is a Native American version of the battle of Little Bighorn, also know as Custer's Last Stand. (University of Nebraska Press) laborers toiled through snowstorms and blistering heat to blast tunnels and cut passes through granite mountains. Journalists marveled at the ability of a squad of Chinese to unload 200 tons of iron and 10 tons of spikes from railroad cars in just ten minutes. These reporters also commented on the strange sight of men in their native dress and traditional broad straw hats, taking afternoon tea breaks. full view Abandoned Wagons and House in Sierra Nevadas Abandoned Wagons and House in the Sierra Nevadas (Photodisc, Inc.) Charles Crocker, the general superintendent of the Central Pacific, observed of the Chinese, “Wherever we put them, we found them good.” Paid $1 a day (less than the wage paid to whites), the Chinese had little leverage with which to press for higher compensation. In the spring of 1867, 5000 (out of a workforce of 12,000) walked off the job. They demanded $1.50 a day and an eight-hour day. Crocker responded by withholding rations, and the laborers were forced to return to work within a week. With the final linking of the railroad in Utah in 1869, many Chinese returned to California. Signed in 1868, the Burlingame Treaty, named for Anson Burlingame, an American envoy to China, had supposedly guaranteed government protection for Chinese immigrants as visitors, traders, or permanent residents. Most immigrants were men. (Six out of ten California Chinese women were listed in the 1870 census as prostitutes, most the victims of their compatriots.) Yet the treaty did not inhibit U.S. employers, landlords, and government officials from discriminating against the Chinese. By 1870, 40,000 Chinese lived in California and represented fully one-quarter of the state’s wage earners. They found work in the cigar, woolen-goods, and boot and shoe factories of San Francisco; in the gold mining towns, now as laundry operators rather than as miners as PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 522 ${bmicon} they had before the Civil War; and in the fields as agricultural laborers. White workers began to cry unfair competition against this Asian group that was becoming increasingly integrated into the region’s economy. As a group, Chinese men differed from California Indians, who remained trapped in the traditional agricultural economy of unskilled labor. Whites appropriated Indian land and forced many men, women, and children to work as wage earners for large landowners. Deprived of their familiar hunting and gathering lands, and wracked by disease and starvation, California Indians had suffered a drastic decline in their numbers by 1870, from 100,000 to 30,000 in 20 years. By the early 1870s western manufacturers were faltering under the pressure of cheaper goods imported from the East by rail. At the same time, the growth of fledgling gigantic agricultural businesses opened new avenues of trade and commerce. Located in an arc surrounding the San Francisco Bay, large (“bonanza”) wheat farmers grew huge crops and exported the grain to the East Coast and to England. These enterprises stimulated the building of wharves and railroad trunk lines and encouraged technological innovation in threshing and harvesting. Western enterprises showed a growing demand for labor whatever its skin color or nationality. The end of the Civil War prompted new conflicts and deepened long-standing ones over the use of the land in a rich, sprawling country. In the South, staple crop planters began to share political power with an emerging elite, men who owned railroads and textile mills. Despairing of ever achieving antebellum levels of labor efficiency, some landowners turned to mining the earth and the forests for saleable commodities. These products, obtained through extraction, included phosphate (used in producing fertilizer), timber, coal, and turpentine. Labor in extractive industries complemented labor in the plantation economy. Sharecroppers alternated between tilling cotton fields in the spring and harvesting the crop in the fall, while seeking employment in sawmills and coal mines in the winter and summer. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 523 ${bmicon} As European Americans settled in the West and Southwest, they displaced natives who had been living there for generations. For example, the U.S. court system determined who could legally claim property. Western courts also decided whether natural resources such as water, land, timber, and fish and game constituted property that could be owned by private interests. In the Southwest, European American settlers, including army soldiers who had come to fight Indians and then stayed, continued to place Hispanic land titles at risk. Citing prewar precedents, American courts favored the claims of recent squatters over those of long-standing residents. In 1869 with the death of her husband (who had served as a general in the Union army), Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton saw the large ranch they had worked together near San Diego slip out of her control. The first Spanish-speaking woman to be published in English in the United States, de Burton was a member of the Hispanic elite. Nevertheless, she had little political power. California judges backed the squatters who occupied the ranch. As they controlled more land and assumed public office, some European Americans in the Southwest exploited their political connections and economic power. In the process they managed to wield great influence over people and vast amounts of natural resources. In the 1870s the so-called Santa Fe Ring wrested more than 80 percent of the original Spanish grants of land from Hispanic landholders in New Mexico. An alliance of European American lawyers, businesspeople, and politicians, the Santa Fe Ring defrauded families and kin groups of their land titles and speculated in property to make a profit. Whereas many ordinary Hispanic settlers saw land—with its crops, pasture, fuel, building materials, and game—as a source of livelihood, groups, such as the Santa Fe Ring, saw land primarily as a commodity to be bought and sold. Seemingly overnight, boom towns sprang up wherever minerals or timber beckoned: southern Arizona and the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, Virginia City in western Nevada, the Idaho–Montana region, and the Black Hills of South Dakota. In all these places, increasing numbers of workers operated sophisticated kinds of machinery, such as rock crushers, and labored for wages. When the vein was exhausted or the forests depleted, the towns went bust. Railroads facilitated not only the mining of minerals but also the growth of the cattle-ranching industry. By 1869 a quarter of a million cattle were grazing in Colorado Territory. Rail connections between the Midwest and East made it profitable for Texas ranchers to pay cowboys to drive their herds of long-horned steers to Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, or Dodge City, Kansas, for shipment to stockyards in Chicago or St. Louis. Large meatpackers, such as Swift and Armour, prepared the carcasses for the eastern market. Cattle drives were huge; an estimated 10 million animals were herded north from Texas alone between 1865 and 1890. They offered employment to all kinds of men with sufficient skills and endurance. Among the cowhands were African American horsebreakers and gunmen and Mexicans skilled in the use of the reata (lasso). Blacks made up about 25 percent and Hispanics about 15 percent of all cowboy outfits. Tracing the evolution of the Chisholm Trail, which TABLE 15-3 Estimates of Railroad Crossties Used and Acres of Forest Cleared, 1870–1910 Year Miles of Track Ties Renewed Annually (millions) Ties Used on New Construction (millions) Total Ties Annually (millions) Acres of Forest Cleared (thousands) 1870 60,000 21 18 39 195 1880 107,000 37 21 58 290 1890 200,000 70 19 89 445 1900 259,000     91 455 1910 357,000     124 620 Source: Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests (1989), 352. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 524 ${bmicon} linked southern Texas to Abilene, from Indian path to commercial route, one observer wrote in 1874, “So many cattle have been driven over the trail in the last few years that a broad highway is tread out, looking much like a national highway.” Yet this new “national highway” traversed Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), lands supposedly promised to Indians forever. In knitting regional economies together, federal land policies were crucial to the Republican vision of a developing nation. Yet a series of land use acts had a mixed legacy. The Mineral Act of 1866 granted title to millions of acres of mineral-rich land to mining companies, a gift from the federal government to private interests. In 1866 Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act to help blacks acquire land, but the measure accomplished little and was repealed in 1876. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 allotted 160 acres to individuals in selected western states if they agreed to plant one-fourth of the acreage with trees. Four years later, the Desert Land Act provided cheap land if buyers irrigated at least part of their parcels. full view Old Faithful Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park (Photodisc, Inc.) The exploitation of western resources raised many legal questions: Must ranchers pay for the prairies their cattle grazed on and the trails they followed to market? How could one “own” a stampeding buffalo herd or a flowing river? What was the point of holding title to a piece of property if only the timber, oil, water, or minerals on and in it (but not the soil) were of value? The Apex Mining Act of 1872 sought to address at least some of these issues. This law legalized traditional mining practices in the West by validating titles approved by local courts. According to the law, a person who could locate the apex of a vein (its point closest to the surface) could lay claim to the entire vein beneath the surface. The measure contributed to the wholesale destruction of certain parts of the western landscape as mining companies blasted their way through mountains and left piles of rocks in their wake. It also spurred thousands of lawsuits as claimants argued over what constituted an apex or a vein. It was during this period that a young Scottish-born naturalist named John Muir began to explore the magnificent canyons and mountains of California. Viewing nature as a means for regenerating the human spirit, Muir emphasized a deep appreciation of the natural world. He contrasted nature’s majesty with the artificial landscape created by and for humans. In the wilderness, there is nothing “truly dead or dull, or any trace of CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 525 ${bmicon} what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste,” he wrote; “everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons.” Muir believed that the need to protect breathtaking vistas and magnificent stands of giant redwoods compelled the federal government to act as land policy regulator. full view Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park (Photodisc, Inc.) Muir was gratified by the creation of the National Park system during the postwar period. By this time, pressure had been building on the federal government to protect vast tracts of undeveloped lands. Painters and geologists were among the first Easterners to appreciate the spectacular vistas of the western landscape. In 1864 Congress set aside a small area within California’s Yosemite Valley for public recreation and enjoyment. Soon after the war, railroad promoters forged an alliance with government officials in an effort to block commercial development of particularly beautiful pockets of land. In the late 1860s the invention of the Pullman sleeping car—a luxurious hotel room on wheels—helped spur the drive to protect these areas from farming, lumbering, stock raising, and mining. Northern Pacific railroad financier Jay Cooke lobbied hard for the government to create a two-million-acre park in what is today the northwest corner of Wyoming. As a result, in March 1872, Congress created Yellowstone National Park. Tourism would continue to serve as a key component of the western economy. Muir and others portrayed the Yosemite and Yellowstone Valleys as wildernesses, empty of human activity. In fact, both areas had long provided hunting and foraging grounds for native peoples. Yellowstone had been occupied by the people now called the Shoshone since the fifteenth century. This group, together with the Bannock, Crow, and Blackfeet, tried to retain access to Yellowstone’s meadows, rivers, and forests after it became a national park. However, U.S. policymakers and military officials persisted in their efforts to mark off territory for specific purposes, while Indians were confined to reservations. Before the war, Republicans had opposed any federal expansionist schemes that they feared might benefit slaveholders. However, after 1865 and the outlawing of slavery, some Republican lawmakers and administration officials advocated the acquisition of additional territory. Secretary of State William Seward led the way in 1867 by purchasing Alaska from Russia and trying unsuccessfully to buy the Danish West Indies. The purchase of Alaska immeasurably enriched the nation’s natural resources. For $7.2 million (about 2 cents an acre), the United States gained 591,004 square miles of land. Within the territory were diverse indigenous groups—Eskimos, Aleuts, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Athabaskan, and Haida—and a small number of native Russians. Though derided at the time as “Seward’s icebox,” Alaska yielded enough fish, timber, minerals, and water power in the years to come to prove that the original purchase price was a tremendous bargain. The impulse that prompted administration support for the Alaska purchase also spawned other plans for territorial acquisitions. In 1870 some Republicans joined with Democrats in calling for the annexation of the Dominican Republic. These congressmen argued that the tiny Caribbean country would make a fine naval base, provide investment opportunities for American businesspeople, and offer a refuge for southern freedpeople. Frederick Douglass, who had visited the country, claimed that annexing the Dominican Republic would “transplant within her tropical borders the glorious institutions” of the United States. However, Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opposed ratification of the annexation treaty. He warned against a takeover without considering the will of the Dominican people, who were currently involved in their own civil war. Some congressmen, in a prelude to foreign policy debates of the 1890s, suggested that the dark-skinned Dominican people were incapable of appreciating the blessings of American citizenship. In 1871 the treaty failed to win Senate approval. A firm supporter of annexation, President Grant felt personally betrayed by the Republicans who opposed him on this issue. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 526 ${bmicon} After the Civil War, victorious Republicans envisioned a nation united in the pursuit of prosperity. All citizens would be free to follow their individual economic self-interest and to enjoy the fruits of honest toil. In contrast, some increasingly vocal and well-organized groups saw the expansion of legal rights, and gving black men the right to vote in particular, as only initial, tentative steps on the path to an all-inclusive citizenship. Women, industrial workers, farmers, and African Americans made up overlapping constituencies pressing for equal political rights and economic opportunity. Together they challenged the mainstream Republican view that defeat of the rebels and destruction of slavery were sufficient to guarantee all people prosperity. full view Rutherford B. Hayes Even though he won fewer popular votes than his Democratic opponent in the election of 1876, Hayes was awarded the presidency after he received disputed electoral votes. The Republican compromises to secure Hayes’ victory may have included a promise to end the last vestiges of Reconstruction in the South. (Library of Congress) Government–business partnerships also produced unanticipated consequences for Republicans committed to what they believed was the collective good. Some politicians and business leaders saw these partnerships as opportunities for private gain. Consequently, private greed and public corruption accompanied postwar economic growth. Thus, Republican leaders faced challenges from two very different sources: people agitating for civil rights and people hoping to reap personal gain from political activities. full view Suffragist Speaking The women’s suffrage movement gained momentum in the early twentieth century, with more leaders speaking out and additional states giving women at least some voting rights. (Library of Congress) full view Suffragists in Cincinnati These suffragists are pasting up a billboard poster in support of women’s right to vote. (Library of Congress) full view Future Women Voters At a suffrage parade and pageant on Long Island, New York, in 1913, girls held signs reading “Votes for us when we are women.” New York enacted suffrage in 1917, three years before the passage of the 19th Amendment. (Library of Congress) After the Civil War, the nation’s middle class, which had its origins in the antebellum period, continued to grow. Dedicated to self-improvement and filled with a sense of moral authority, many middle-class Americans (especially Protestants) felt a deep cultural connection to their counterparts in England. Indeed, the United States produced its own “Victorians,” so called for the self-conscious middle class that emerged in the England of Queen Victoria during her reign from 1837 to 1901. At the heart of the Victorian sensibility was the ideal of domesticity: a harmonious family living in a well-appointed home, guided by a pious mother and supported by a father successful in business. Famous Protestant clergyman Henry Ward Beecher and his wife were outspoken proponents of this domestic ideal. According to Eunice Beecher, women had no “higher, nobler, more divine mission than in the conscientious endeavor to create a true home.” Her husband added, “The laborer ought to be ashamed of himself who in 20 years does not own the ground on which his house stands … who has not in that house provided carpets for the rooms, who has not his China plates, who has not his chromos [decorative photographs], who has not some books nestling on the shelf.” Yet the traumatic events of the Civil War only intensified the desire among a growing group of American women to participate fully in the nation’s political life. They wanted to extend their moral influence outside the narrow and exclusive sphere of the home. In countless everyday, unsung ways, Union women had supported the Union cause. They had managed farms, raised money for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, and sponsored patriotic rallies. Many women believed that they deserved the vote and that the time was right to demand it. In 1866 veteran reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone founded the Equal Rights Association to link the rights of white women and African Americans. Nevertheless, in 1867, Kansas voters defeated a referendum proposing suffrage for both blacks and white women. This disappointment convinced some former abolitionists that the two causes should be separated—that women should wait patiently until the rights of African American men were firmly secured. Frederick Douglass declined an invitation to a women’s suffrage convention in Washington, D.C., in 1868. He explained, “I am now devoting myself to a cause [if ] not more sacred, certainly more urgent, because it is one of life and death to the long enslaved people of this country, and that is: negro suffrage.” CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 527 ${bmicon} Douglass left African American women out of his call for “negro suffrage.” He implied that the chief advocates of women’s suffrage were white and middle class. As a result, Douglass failed to gauge the way in which the issue of universal suffrage connected all black people with all women. African American activist and former slave Sojourner Truth warned white women not to presume to speak for all women, and she also urged black men not to speak for themselves only. At a meeting of the newly formed Equal Rights Association, Truth pointed out, “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women get theirs, there will be a bad time about it.” In 1869 two factions of women parted ways and formed separate organizations devoted to women’s rights. The more radical wing, including Cady Stanton and Anthony, bitterly denounced the Fifteenth Amendment because it gave the vote to black men only. In 1868 the two leaders had attempted to organize a Working Women’s Party, which they hoped would appeal to female wage earners and serve as the foundation of a new political party dedicated to broad-based reform. The following year they helped to found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Members of NWSA argued for a renewed commitment to the original Declaration of Sentiments passed in Seneca Falls, New York two decades earlier. They favored married women’s property rights, liberalization of divorce laws, opening colleges and trade schools to women, a new federal amendment to allow women to vote. In 1869, women’s rights proponents Lucy Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell, founded the rival American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). This group downplayed the larger struggle for women’s rights and focused on the suffrage question exclusively. Its members supported the Fifteenth Amendment and retained ties to the Republican party. The AWSA focused on state-by-state campaigns for women’s suffrage. full view 1868 Democratic National Convention in New York City The Tammany Hall Democrats in New York City hosted the 1868 Democratic National Convention. Democrats refused to support the unpopular President Andrew Johnson for another term, instead endorsing New Yorker Horatio Seymour. Seymour lost in a fairly close contest to the Republican nominee-Union hero Ulysses S. Grant. (Library of Congress) In 1871 the NWSA welcomed the daring, flamboyant Victoria Woodhull as a vocal supporter, only to renounce her a few years later. Woodhull’s political agenda ranged from free love and dietary reform to legalized prostitution, working men’s rights, and women’s suffrage. (In the nineteenth century, free love advocates denounced what they called a sexual double standard, one that glorified female chastity while tolerating male promiscuity.) Woodhull’s speeches gained her a great deal of publicity; in one political cartoon she was labeled “Mrs. Satan.” This was hardly the kind of publicity the NWSA craved. At the group’s 1871 convention Woodhull startled many of the old guard with her declaration, “We mean treason! We mean secession…. We are plotting Revolution! We will overthrow this bogus republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead.” full view Woodhull Reading Suffrage Proposal, 1871 Victoria Claflin Woodhull reading a suffrage proposal to the House Judiciary Committee in 1871 vowing that women “mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the South” if denied the vote. (Library of Congress) In 1872 one of Woodhull’s critics successfully challenged her. Woodhull spent a month in jail as a result of the zealous prosecution by vice reformer Anthony Comstock, a clergyman PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 528 ${bmicon} who objected to her public discussions and writings on sexuality. Comstock assumed the role of an outspoken crusader against vice. A federal law passed in 1873, and named after him, equated information related to birth control with pornography, banning this and other “obscene material” from the mails. Also in 1872, Woodhull formed what she called the Equal Rights Party. This new party nominated its founder for the U.S. presidency. However, Woodhull’s proposed vice presidential running mate, Frederick Douglass, declined the honor. He announced that he planned to vote for Grant again. For her part, Susan B. Anthony used the 1872 presidential election as a test case for women’s suffrage. She attempted to vote and was arrested, tried, and convicted as a result. By this time, most women suffragists, and most members of the NWSA for that matter, had become convinced that they should focus on the vote exclusively; they therefore accepted the AWSA’s policy on this issue. In the coming years, they would avoid other causes with which they might have allied themselves, including black civil rights and labor reform. Many Americans benefited from economic changes of the postwar era. Railroading, mining, and heavy industry helped fuel the national economy and in the process boosted the growth of the urban managerial class. In the Midwest, many landowning farmers prospered when they responded to an expanding demand for grain and other staple crops. In Wisconsin, wheat farmers cleared forests, drained swamps, diverted rivers, and profited from the booming world market in grain. Yet the economic developments that allowed factory managers and owners of large wheat farms to make a comfortable living for themselves did not necessarily benefit agricultural and manufacturing workers. Several organizations offered laborers an alternative vision to the Republicans’ brand of individualism and nationalism. Indeed, during this period growing numbers of working people, in the countryside and in the cities, became caught up in a cycle of indebtedness. In the upcountry South (above the fall line, or Piedmont), formerly self-sufficient family farmers sought loans from banks to repair their war-damaged homesteads. To qualify for these loans, the farmer had to plant cotton as a staple crop, to the neglect of corn and other foodstuffs. Many sharecroppers, black and white, received payment in the form of credit only; for these families, the end-of-the-year reckoning yielded little more than rapidly accumulating debts. Midwestern farmers increasingly relied on expensive threshing and harvesting machinery and on bank loans to purchase the machinery. In cities all over the country, the mass production of shoes and textiles meant that members of the laboring classes depended more than ever on cash to buy such necessities, yet depressed wages and irregular employment put families at risk. full view The Purposes of the Grange The Purposes of the Grange: Gift for the Grangers, done in 1873, not surprisingly makes a sturdy farmer its focus. The scenes around the border picture rural life as farmers wished it to be rather than reality. (Library of Congress) Several organizations founded within five years of the war’s end offered laborers an alternative vision to the Republicans’ brand of individualism and nationalism. In 1867 Oliver H. Kelly, a former Minnesota farmer now working in a Washington office, organized the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, popularly known as the Grange. This movement sought to address a new, complex marketplace increasingly dominated by railroads, banks, and grain elevator operators. The Grange encouraged farmers to form cooperatives that would market their crops and to challenge discriminatory railroad rates that favored big business. Founded in Baltimore in 1866, the National Labor Union (NLU) consisted of a collection of craft unions and claimed as many as 600,000 members at its peak in the early 1870s. The group welcomed farmers as well as factory workers and promoted a general program of social reform. The group also favored legislation for an eight-hour workday and the arbitration of industrial disputes. William Sylvis, a leader of the Iron Molders’ International Union in Philadelphia and the second president of the NLU, sounded twin themes that would mark national labor CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 529 ${bmicon} union organizing efforts for generations to come. He called for an alliance of black and white workers. Yet at the same time, Sylvis defended the practice of excluding blacks from positions of leadership on the job and in the union. Impatient with such pronouncements, Isaac Myers, a black ship caulker from Baltimore, helped found the short-lived Colored National Labor Union in Washington, D.C., in 1868. (This association remained small and disbanded within three years.) Myers offered a view of citizenship that differed from white Republicans’ exclusive emphasis on the franchise: “If citizenship means anything at all,” the black labor leader declared, “it means the freedom of labor, as broad and as universal as freedom of the ballot.” In 1873 a nationwide depression threw thousands out of work and worsened the plight of debtors. Businesspeople in agriculture, mining, the railroad industry, and manufacturing had overexpanded their operations. The free-wheeling loan practices of major banks had PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 530 ${bmicon} contributed to this situation. The inability of these businesspeople to repay their loans led to the failure of major banks. With the contraction of credit, thousands of small businesses went bankrupt. The NLU did not survive the crisis. However, by this time, a new organization had appeared to champion the cause of the laboring classes in opposition to lords of finance. Founded in 1869 by Uriah Stephens and other Philadelphia tailors, the Knights of Labor began as a secret fraternal society. Extending their reach, the Knights aimed to unite industrial and rural workers, the self-employed and the wage earner, blacks and whites, and men and women. The Knights were committed to private property and to the independence of the farmer, the entrepreneur, and the industrial worker. The group banned from its ranks “nonproducers,” such as liquor sellers, bankers, professional gamblers, stockbrokers, and lawyers. Both the Knights and the Farmers’ Grange would enjoy their greatest successes in the 1880s. This period of depression also laid the foundation for the Greenback Labor Party, organized in 1878. Debtors feared that government policies were leading to a contraction of the money supply. Within three years after the end of the Civil War, the Treasury had withdrawn from circulation $100 million in wartime, paper currency (“greenbacks”). With less money in circulation, debtors found it more difficult to repay their loans. The government also ceased coining silver dollars in 1873, despite the discovery of rich silver lodes in the West. “Cheap-money men” protested what they called the “Crime of ‘73.” To add insult to injury, the Resumption Act (1875) called for the government to continue to withdraw paper “greenbacks.” Thus, hard money became dearer, and debtors became more desperate. In 1878 the new Greenback Labor Party managed to win one million votes and elect 14 candidates to Congress. The party laid the foundation for the Populist Party that emerged in the 1890s. TABLE 15-4 National and International Union Members of the National Labor Union (with dates of each union’s founding) National Typographical Union (printers and typesetters) (1850) Iron Molders’ I.U. (1859) Machinists’ and Blacksmiths’ I.U. (1859) American Miners’ Association (1861) Miners’ National Association (1873) Sons of Vulcan (steel workers) (1862) National Telegraphic Union (1863) Telegraphers’ Protective League (1868) Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (1863) Ship Carpenters’ and Caulkers’ I.U. (1864) Cigar Makers’ I.U. (1864) N.U. of Journeyman Curriers (tanners) (1864) Plasterers’ N.U. (1864, again 1871) Iron and Steel Heaters’ I.U. (1865, again 1872) Coachmakers’ I.U. (1865) Dry Goods Clerks’ Early Closing Ass’n. (1865) Tailors I.U. (1865) Carpenters’ and Joiners’ I.U. (1865) Bricklayers’ I.U. (1865) Journeyman Painters’ I.U. (1865, again 1871) Stationary Engineers’ N.U. (1866?) Mule Spinners’ I.U. (textile workers) (1866) Knights of St. Crispin (shoemakers) (1867) Conductors’ Brotherhood (1868) Workingmen’s Benevolent Association (1868) Wool Hat Finishers’ N.U. (1869) Daughters of St. Crispin (shoemakers) (1869) Coopers’ I.U. (barrel makers) (1870) Morocco Dressers’ N.U. (hide processors) (1870) American Bricklayers’ N.U. (1871) N.U. of Woodworking Mechanics (1872) Sons of Adam (cloth cutters) (1872) Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (1873) Boilers,’ Roughers,’ Catchers,’ and Hookers,’ N.U. (1873) Note: I.U.= International Union; N.U. = National Union. full view Women Delegates, National Meeting of Knights of Labor, 1886 Women delegates at the national meeting of the Knights of Labor in 1886. Women belonged to separate associations affiliated with local all-male unions. (Library of Congress) Federal money policies had a great impact on diverse groups of workers, whether they toiled in the fields, the factory, or the workshop. However, several factors made coalition building among these groups difficult. One was the nation’s increasingly multicultural workforce. Unions, such as the typographers, were notorious for excluding women and African Americans, a fact publicized by both Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, to no avail. In 1869 shoe factory workers (members of the Knights of St. Crispin) went on strike in North Adams, Massachusetts. They were soon shocked to see 75 Chinese strikebreakers arrive by train from California. Their employer praised the new arrivals for their “rare industry.” The CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 531 ${bmicon} shoemakers’ strike collapsed quickly after the appearance of what the workers called this “Mongolian battery.” Employers would continue to manipulate and divide the laboring classes through the use of ethnic, religious, and racial prejudices. Out of the new partnership between politics and business emerged an extensive system of bribes and kickbacks. Greedy politicians of both parties challenged the Republicans’ high-minded idealism. News related to the corrupt intertwining of government power and private economic interests burst upon the headlines in the early 1870s. In New York City, the New York Times exposed the schemes of William M. “Boss” Tweed. Tweed headed Tammany Hall, a political organization that courted labor unions and contributed liberally to Catholic schools and charities. Tammany Hall politicians routinely used bribery and extortion to fix elections and bilk taxpayers of millions of dollars. One plasterer employed on a city project received $138,000 in “payment” for two days’ work. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast portrayed Tweed with a bulging stomach and a sneering face, taunting the public, “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?” After the Times exposé, Tweed was prosecuted and convicted. His downfall attested to the growing influence of newspaper reporters. Another piece of investigative journalism rocked the political world in 1872. In 1867 major stockholders of the Union Pacific Railroad had formed a new corporation, called the Crédit Mobilier, to build railroads. Heads of powerful congressional committees received shares of stock in the new company. These gifts of stock were bribes to secure the legislators’ support for public land grants favorable to the new corporation. The New York Sun exposed a number of the chief beneficiaries in the fall of 1872, findings confirmed by congressional investigation. Among the disgraced politicians was Grant’s vice president Schuyler Colfax, who had lied under oath to a Congessional Committee investigating the scandal. Colfax denied accepting Crédit Mobilier stock, although bank records show he had deposited $1200 in cash from one of the finance company’s supporters. full view Greeley and Sumner - Nast Cartoon Thomas Nast cartoon condemning the actions of Liberal Republicans Horace Greeley and Charles Sumner. Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1872. full view Boss Tweed - Nast Cartoon Thomas Nast critically portrayed William “Boss” Tweed, head of New York City’s corrupt Democratic Tammany Hall, in many cartoons. Tweed typified bossism in its cynical disregard for morality, truth, and accurate ballot counting. (Harper’s Weekly, September 5, 1868) The 1872 presidential election pitted incumbent Grant against the Democratic challenger, New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Republicans, disillusioned with congressional corruption and eager to press forward with civil service reform, endorsed the Democratic candidate. Greeley and his Republican allies decried the patronage (or “spoils”) PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 532 ${bmicon} system by which politicians rewarded their supporters with government jobs. Nevertheless, Grant won the election. TABLE 15-5 The Election of 1872 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Ulysses S. Grant Republican 3,596,745 286 Horace Greeley Democratic Liberal Republican 2,843,446 66 In an 1872 article titled “The State of the South,” a writer for the Nation magazine decried northern whites’ apparent indifference toward the stalled process of Reconstruction. After four bloody years of war and seven squandered years of postwar opportunity, the federal government seemed prepared to hand the South back to unrepentant rebels. Together, the southern states readmitted to the Union would demonstrate little regard for black people as citizens or as workers. In 1874 the Freedman’s Savings Bank failed, taking with it the dreams of many depositors who had saved, on average, $25 out of their hard-won earnings. Neither Congress nor the president attempted to save the bank or reimburse the depositors. Meanwhile, the North showed what one House Republican called “a general apathy among the people concerning the war and the negro.” The Civil Rights Act of 1875 guaranteed blacks equal access to public accommodations and transportation. Yet this act represented the final, half-hearted gesture of radical Republicanism. The measure was never enforced, and the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1883 on the grounds that the government could protect only political and not social rights. White Southerners reasserted their control over the region’s political economy. Grant remained preoccupied by political problems plaguing his administration. In 1875 the so-called Whiskey Ring further tarnished his presidency. The St. Louis–based association consisted of the manufacturers of distilled liquors. Aided by Treasury Department officials and Grant’s own private secretary, General Orville E. Babcock, these manufacturers avoided paying sales taxes. With influential friends, members of the ring had eluded detection for years. The presidential election of 1876 intensified public cynicism about deal making in high places. A dispute over election returns led to what came to be known as the Compromise of 1877. The Republican nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes, a former three-term governor of Ohio, ran against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. In the popular vote, Tilden outpolled Hayes. However, when the electoral votes were counted, the Democrat had only 184, one short of the necessary number. Nineteen of the 20 votes in dispute came from Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, and these three states submitted two new sets of returns, one from each of the two main parties. A specially appointed congressional electoral commission, the Committee of Fifteen, was charged with resolving the dispute. It divided along partisan lines. The eight Republicans outvoted the seven Democrats to accept the Republican set of returns from Florida. TABLE 15-6 The Election of 1876 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Rutherford B. Hayes Republican 4,036,572 185 Samuel J. Tilden Democrat 4,284,020 184 To break the logjam, the Democrats agreed that Hayes could assume office in return for the withdrawal of all remaining federal troops from the South. The Republicans tacitly agreed that their work there was finished and that blacks in the region should fend for themselves. Hayes declined to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1875. White Southerners were free to uphold the principle of states’ rights that had been traditionally invoked to deny blacks their rights in the region. CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 533 ${bmicon} full view MAP 15.3 THE COMPROMISE OF 1877 During the presidential election of 1876, returns from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana (the only states that remained under Republican control) were disputed. Under a compromise reached by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became president, and Congress removed all federal troops from the South. As a result, in many areas of the South, the Republican party all but disappeared. During the dozen or so years after the Civil War, both northern Republicans and southern Democrats registered a series of spectacular wins and crushing losses. Though humiliated by the Union victory, southern white supremacists eventually won for themselves the freedom to control their own local and state governments. As landlords, sheriffs, and merchants, these men defied the postwar federal amendments to the Constitution and deprived African Americans of basic citizenship rights. By the end of Reconstruction, northern Republicans had conceded local power to their former enemies. Apparently, even an aggressive nationalism could accept traditional southern hierarchies: white over nonwhite, rich over poor. PART 5 ###8226; DISUNION AND REUNION 534 ${bmicon} On the other hand, at the end of Reconstruction, Republicans remained in firm control of national economic policy. The white South had secured its right to conduct its own political affairs, but the Republican vision of economic growth and development had become the law of the land. This vision was a guiding principle of historic national and, increasingly, international significance. Economic innovation in particular proved to be a force of great unifying power, stronger even than all the federal military forces deployed during and after the Civil War. The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson www.impeach-andrewjohnson.com/ This HarpWeek site about the impeachment includes images and text from the Reconstruction period. Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes www.ohiohistory.org/onlinedoc/hayes/index.cfm The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, maintains the searchable database of his writings. Freedmen and Southern Society Project (University of Maryland, College Park) www.inform.umd.edu/ARHU/Depts/History/Freedman/home.html This site contains a chronology and sample documents from several collections or primary sources about emancipation and freedom in the 1860s. History of the Suffrage Movement www.rochester.edu/SBA This site includes a chronology, important texts relating to women’s suffrage, and bibliographical information about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler (1904) www.library.okstate.edu/kappler This digitized text at Oklahoma State University includes preremoval treaties with the five Civilized Tribes and other tribes. National Museum of the American Indian www.si.edu/nmai The Smithsonian Institution maintains this site, providing information about the museum. The Northern Great Plains, 1880–1920: Photographs from the Fred Hulstrand and F. A. Pazandak Photograph Collections www.memory.loc.gov.ammem/award97/ndfahtml/ngphome.html This American Memory site from the Library of Congress contains two collections from the Institute for Regional Studies at North Dakota State University with 900 photographs of rural and small-town life at the turn of the century. Included are images of sod homes and the people who built them, farms and the machinery that made them prosper, and oneroom schools and the children who were educated in them. Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 (1978). Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988). David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (1967). Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (1998). Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993). Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846–1890 (1984). Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (1991). Peter Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South (1995). Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era (1997). CHAPTER 15 ###8226; IN THE WAKE OF WAR 535 ${bmicon} Dwight B. Billings, Planters and the Making of a “New South”: Class, Politics, and Development in North Carolina, 1865–1900 (1979). Lucy M. Cohen, Chinese in the Post–Civil War South: A People Without a History (1984). Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, eds., Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Post-Emancipation Societies (2000). Michael W. Fitzgerald, The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction (1989). Michael Golay, A Ruined Land: The End of the Civil War (1999). Thomas C. Holt, Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction (1977). Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873 (1980). Leslie Schwalm, “A Hard Fight for We”: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (1997). Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869 (2000). Orin G. Libby, ed., The Arikara Narrative of the Campaign Against the Hostile Dakotas, June, 1876 (1998). Ruth B. Moynihan, Susan Armitage, and Christiane Fischer Dichamp, eds., So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier (1990). Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (1997). Larry Sklenar, To Hell with Honor: Custer and the Little Bighorn (2000). Robert Wooster, The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865–1903 (1988). Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (1995). Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (1983). Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (1998). Lyde Cul len Sizer, The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War (2000). Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (1964). C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (1956). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter15 To Chapter 15 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 536 ${bmicon}   1877 All federal troops withdrawn from the South, ending Reconstruction. “Great Uprising” of railroad employees and other workers. 1878 Thomas Edison patents the phonograph. San Francisco Workingmen’s party stages anti-Chinese protests. 1879 First telephone line connects two American cities (Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts). 1880 New York City streets lit by electricity. 1881 Charles Guiteau assassinates President Garfield. 1882 Standard Oil Trust is created. Chinese Exclusion Act. 1883 Pendleton Act (civil service reform). 1884 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1885 Geronimo leads Apaches to Sierra Madres in Mexico. 1886 Accused Haymarket bombers tried and convicted. Geronimo and his followers are sent to Fort Marion, Florida; the children are sent to the government Indian school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. 1887 Interstate Commerce Act creates Interstate Commerce Commission. Dawes Severalty Act. United States claims right to Pearl Harbor, leases it as a coaling and repair station. 1888 Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward. 1889 First All-American football team, consisting of players from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. National Farmers’ Alliance is founded. 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Wyoming admitted to the Union, first state to enfranchise women. National American Woman Suffrage Association is formed. Wounded Knee Massacre. THE UNITED STATES BECAME A MODERN NATION DURING THE LAST quarter of the nineteenth century. Vast reserves of coal, timber, and water helped fuel a growing industrial economy. Railroad lines criss-crossed the nation and knit together regional economies. Large numbers of immigrants, many from eastern Europe, arrived in the United States, drawn by America’s rising standard of living, high demand for labor, and religious and political freedom. To raise the money needed to purchase expensive equipment and machinery, coal and oil producers and railroad owners formed modern corporations, businesses that were owned by stockholders rather than individuals. The largest businesses sought to dominate the marketplace by eliminating their competitors. Managers could cut production and operating costs by slashing the wages of workers or by installing labor-saving machinery. Either way, workers paid the price. The generation that came of age after the Civil War witnessed a series of violent confrontations between workers and employers. Standards of industrial work discipline required workers to labor for long hours at dangerous, disagreeable jobs. Some workers formed new kinds of labor unions to combat the power of big business. Some organizations, such as the Knights of Labor, were national in scope and inclusive in their membership; others represented the interests of specific groups of workers. Employers, local and state law enforcement officials, and judges used a variety of means to suppress strikes and other forms of collective action among workers. Nevertheless, local communities often supported the strikers, who were their friends and neighbors. During the late nineteenth century, the national economy began to shift to the production of consumer goods. New products gave Americans new ways to spend their money. Manufacturers of everything from toothpaste to bathtubs advertised their goods to a mass market. In cities, department stores offered a dazzling array of goods. Even as the country was becoming more ethnically diverse, advertisers promoted a single standard of physical beauty and material well- full view Geronimo and Natiche Surrender, 1886 Geronimo and Natiche as they prepared to surrender to General Crook. Photograph taken in the Sierra Madre mountains of New Mexico in 1886. (National Archives) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 537 ${bmicon}   being. At the same time, some scholars and politicians seized on a revolutionary new theory of natural history to argue for the superiority of white, middle-class Americans. Social Darwinism served as the intellectual justification for unfettered economic growth and for the subjugation of darker-skinned peoples, at home and abroad. Many Americans rejected the trends toward economic standardization and cultural homogeneity. Native Americans in the West continued to resist the railroad and its profound threat to their way of life. By 1890 the U.S. military had forcefully subdued most of these Indians, relegating many to reservations. Together with industrial workers throughout the nation, Hispanic villagers in the Southwest and African American sharecroppers in the South disputed the notion that progress could be defined exclusively in terms of economic growth and development. Middle-class reformers sought to mediate between what they perceived to be two dangerous groups: arrogant industrialists and discontented workers. These reformers feared that rapid urban and industrial growth would cause rifts in the social fabric. Middle-class women pioneered in the founding of social settlements and other urban institutions to ease the transition of immigrants into modern American society. The lines between national standards and local cultural interests often blurred. For example, for a short time Sioux chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) appeared with William (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody’s “Wild West” show, which played to enthusiastic audiences in the United States and Europe. Yet this Indian leader also led the Plains Indians as they attempted to resist U.S. military authorities. Some groups of Americans who sought to preserve their own cultural traditions nonetheless aspired to a middle-class way of life and its material comforts. Elite Hispanic families in the Southwest remained devoted to their Roman Catholic faith and at the same time followed up-to-date clothing fashions marketed by East Coast department stores. The promise and the conflicts inherent in the emerging modern social order met head on in the 1890s. A new political party called the Populists mounted a brief but potent challenge to entrenched economic and political power. The Populists failed in their attempt to capture the presidency in 1896, but they offered a vision of a new kind of political party, one that would bring black and white farmers and industrial workers together in opposition to landlords, employers, and bankers. In 1898, in an effort to protect its interests in the Western Hemisphere and to extend those interests into the Pacific, the United States went to war with Spain. This imperialist venture suggested the links among several impulses, including missionary outreach, commercial expansion, and white supremacist racial ideologies. By 1900 the United States was fast becoming a world leader in terms of manufacturing, technological innovation, and the rapid growth of its prosperous middle class. 1891 Populist Party formed. Eleven Italian immigrants are lynched in New Orleans. 1892 Ellis Island opens as screening site for immigrants. Miners strike in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Steelworkers strike at Carnegie’s Homestead plant near Pittsburgh. 1893 Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago. Pro-American interests stage a successful coup against Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii. Worst nationwide depression to date. 1894 Coxey’s Army marches on Washington, D.C. Pullman workers strike. 1896 Supreme Court decides Plessy v. Ferguson, upholds segregation. W. E. B. DuBois is first black person to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. 1898 U.S. annexes Hawaii. Maine blows up in Havana Harbor. U.S. defeats Spain in Spanish– American–Cuban–Filipino War. Spain cedes Guam and Puerto Rico to U.S., turns over Philippines in return for $20 million. 1899 Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo leads Filipino revolt against 70,000 U.S. occupying forces. 1900 U.S. troops sent to China to crush Boxer Rebellion. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 538 ${bmicon}         The New Shape of Business       The Birth of a National Urban Culture       Thrills, Chills, and Bathtubs: The Emergence of Consumer Culture       Defending the New Industrial Order       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 539 ${bmicon} THOMAS A. SCOTT’S EARLY LIFE PROVIDED FEW CLUES THAT HE WOULD SOMEDAY BECOME a powerful industrialist. Born in 1823 in a small town in south central Pennsylvania, he was the seventh of 11 children. After his father died in 1835, the youth went to live with relatives. Over the next few years, he worked in country stores, learning and developing bookkeeping skills. His clerking abilities eventually landed him a series of railroad jobs. As an employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad, he supervised the transfer of passengers and freight between trains. In 1858 Scott was promoted to the position of general superintendent of the railroad, and in 1874 he became president of the line. During his career, Scott gained a reputation as a tenacious defender of the railroad’s interests; in the words of one politician, Scott could “engineer” almost any bill through the Pennsylvania state legislature. For example, in 1864, Scott lobbied legislators to repeal the charter of a rival line and to grant a new charter to a trunk line of his own company. After the vote, a lawmaker rose to his feet and asked, “Mr. Speaker, may we now go Scott free?” In the summer of 1877, Scott and other railroad officials were forced to contend with a workers’ strike that spread throughout the country. Trying to cut costs in what had become a bitterly competitive business, many of the railroads had demanded that workers labor for longer hours for 10 percent less pay. Managers instituted the practice of “double-heading”—adding more cars to a train but not hiring more men to tend them, placing added burdens on engineers and other workers. In response, beleaguered rail workers walked off the job. Men and women in other struggling industries—from laundresses and longshoremen in Galveston, Texas, to coal miners in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to packinghouse laborers in Chicago—also went on strike during what came to be known as the Great Labor Uprising of 1877. That July the federal government deployed army troops as a strike-breaking force in Chicago, East St. Louis, and Terre Haute, among other cities. In a letter to the North American Review magazine in August 1877, Thomas Scott justified his railroad’s wage cuts and charged that the strikers were under the sway of vicious criminals. Scott hailed the railroads as truly national enterprises, “closely interwoven with the interests not only of our own but other countries.” During the Civil War, Union forces had commandeered private rail lines, Scott pointed out. Now it was appropriate that the federal government protect the railroads in this time of crisis. Indeed, according to Scott, “this insurrection,” the strike, presented a national emergency “almost as serious as that which prevailed at the outset of the Civil War.” By 1877 the emergence of a national rail system signaled the rise of big business. The railroad industry produced America’s first business bureaucracies, employing gigantic workforces to maintain, schedule, operate, and staff trains that traversed 93,000 miles of PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 540 ${bmicon} track. By 1890 the Pennsylvania Railroad had become the nation’s largest employer, with 110,000 workers on its payroll. About one out of seven people worked in the rail industry. The personnel in charge of coordinating these vast operations were among the country’s first professional, salaried managers. Andrew Carnegie, a young Scottish immigrant, absorbed critical lessons about the industry’s accounting and managerial procedures. A youthful assistant to Thomas Scott in the 1850s, Carnegie labored as a telegrapher and then as a superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s western division. In 1875 he began building the greatest steel empire in the country, using business principles that he learned while working for the railroad. The railroad industry was both a great centralizer and a great standardizer. Trains ran on schedules that were set by a central office, and those schedules relied on definitions of actual time that were standard throghout the nation. Moreover, trains broke down regional boundaries by transporting goods to all areas of the counry. For the first time, trains carried brand-name goods and commodities to a national market. A California wheat farmer could purchase replacement parts for his McCormick reaper manufactured in Chicago. An Iowa farm family ordered a new cookstove through a mail-order catalogue. Levi-Strauss, a small clothier in San Francisco, shipped its famous denim pants to cowboys in Texas. Pillsbury Flour of Minnesota distributed its products to bakeries throughout the Midwest. Armour Meatpacking of Chicago sent its sausages to the East Coast. With the introduction of the new refrigerated railroad car, trains also began carrying larger loads of fruits and vegetables over longer distances. The new traffic in produce stimulated commercial agriculture in the South and on the West Coast. full view Pembroke Iron Works As the number of textile mills in New England began to grow, industrialists realized the need for large numbers of workers, especially women and children. Iron works such as Pembroke, pictured here, were essential to the development of other industries. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) Few Americans amassed the fabulous fortunes of rich industrialists like Scott and Carnegie, yet most people aspired to a better life, even in modest terms. Proprietors, managers, and office workers filled the ranks of the comfortable middle class, men and women freed of the danger and drudgery of manual labor. Between 1880 and 1900, clerical workers tripled in number, and business managers increased from 68,000 to more than 318,000. Enjoying steady work and cash salaries, middle-class employees began to move their families out of the city. Urban areas were becoming increasingly befouled by smokestacks and congested with new factories and workshops. CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 541 ${bmicon} Providers of goods and services celebrated a “standard” American viewed as white, native-born, middle-class, heterosexual, and Protestant. This image assumed special significance in the marketing of consumer products and in the appeal of new forms of leisure activities. With technical innovations came novel ways for people to spend their money. Athletic contests, traveling road shows, and amusement parks provided exciting sensory experiences for young and old alike. At the same time, the mass marketing of goods gave rise to a consumer culture that valued newness, fashion, and luxury. full view Calico Factory, 1854 Gleason’s Pictorial, one of the many publications made cheaply by new steam-powered printing presses, included this picture of New Hampshire’s Manchester Print Works, a calico factory that seemed to embody the Industrial Revolution in America in 1854. (Library of Congress) Mass advertising techniques heightened distinctions that European Americans drew between themselves and people they considered inferior, exotic, or foreign. Yet the energy and vitality associated with American popular culture served as a magnet for people all over the world. Beginning in the 1880s, eastern European immigrants streamed to the United States. They were also eager to partake of the country’s plentiful jobs, material prosperity, and democratic openness. Well into the twentieth century, the nation still showed the ethnic and cultural diversity that was shaped by patterns of immigration during the late nineteenth century. Economic growth produced contradictory effects. Blessed with abundant and diverse natural resources, American industries became competitive in the world marketplace. However, miners and loggers tended to “cut and run,” despoiling streams and forests in the process. Economic growth and development transformed natural landscapes throughout the United States. Citizens in general benefited from the proliferation of new technological marvels, but consumers bore the brunt when big business raised prices and eliminated competition within an industry. Certain workers suffered when new machines displaced them from their jobs. During the last third of the nineteenth century, the rise of big business, the mass production of consumer goods, and innovations in transportation produced national standards that shaped the economic and social life of the nation. Placing advertisements in newspapers and popular magazines, large companies sought to market their products to all parts of the country. These products, from bathtubs to new fashions in dress, helped to set the standard for middle-class life. In addition, advertising conveyed to the buying public an image of “American” beauty; this standard was narrow by definition but supposedly universal in its appeal. New kinds of commercialized leisure activities, such as shows, athletic competitions, and amusement parks, promoted the idea that all Americans, regardless where they lived or what they did for a living, valued spectacles and thrilling forms of entertainment. At the same time, not all people embraced these standards or the assumption that underlay them—the notion that new kinds of goods and entertainment represented progress in American life. In 1882 prospectors discovered gold in the creeks of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene region (in Indian territory, about 90 miles east of Spokane, Washington). Multiethnic boomtowns mushroomed in the region, as they had in the California gold fields three decades earlier. Yet this new gold rush differed substantially from its predecessor. First, technology had already powerfully shaped the early history of Coeur d’Alene. The Northern Pacific Railway had promoted settlement, and the primitive techniques that had been used in surface mining soon yielded to far more efficient hydraulic methods of extraction (a process in which powerful water hoses wash the soil away to expose gold deposits). Second, the mining industry in the region soon emerged as a big business. In 1885 an unemployed carpenter named Noah S. Kellogg set in motion a dramatic chain of events. Kellogg discovered a lode containing not only gold but also zinc and lead. In short order, he sold his mines to a Portland businessman, who paid a whopping $650,000 for them. A group of eastern and PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 542 ${bmicon} California investors, and finally several large corporations, soon controlled major interests in the mines. Meanwhile, new railroad lines were lacing the area. With the advent of electrification across the region, lamps glowed in saloons and mining shafts. Finally, the miners themselves were not solo prospectors, seeking to make their own fortune, but wage-earning employees paid by the mining corporation. By the mid-twentieth century, mining companies had dug more than a billion dollars’ worth of metal out of Noah Kellogg’s original stake. Population growth spurred the growth of industries that expoited nature. Between 1880 and 1890, the U.S. population grew from 50 million people to almost 63 million, and six new states entered the Union: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington (all in 1889) and Idaho and Wyoming (both in 1890). Increased demand in turn hastened large-scale commercial mining, logging, and fishing. Advocates of standardized industrial processes and mass marketing hoped to break down regional barriers and create an integrated national economy. Crucial to the process of innovation were engineers, who mastered the technical aspects of construction and design. Many American engineers were trained in Germany, but others attended such schools as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or Cornell University, in New York state, both of which introduced electrical engineering into their curricula in 1882. Engineers were in the forefront of professional associations: civil engineers banded together in 1852, mining engineers in 1871, mechanical engineers in 1880, and electrical engineers in 1884 (chemists formed their own association in 1908). American engineers, such as those who worked in Mexico under the auspices of mining companies and the railroads, served as the vanguard of American capitalism throughout the world. Most engineers were men; however, Ellen Swallow Richards, a graduate of MIT and the first female member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers (in 1875), pioneered in home economics. Advocates of standardized industrial processes and mass marketing hoped to break down regional barriers and create an integrated national economy. Whether they specialized in railroads or shoes, wheat or steel, business owners and managers who possessed the necessary resources and resourcefulness pursued similar goals: to mine, grow, manufacture, or process large quantities of goods and then market them as widely, cheaply, and quickly as possible. Business put a premium on technological innovation, on the efficient use of workers, and on the reduction of uncertainties that accompanied a competitive marketplace. These guiding principles, formulated during the late 1870s and 1880s, laid the foundations of economic progress in late nineteenth-century America. Yet not all businesses during this period were big. The entrepreneurial spirit flourished, especially within local markets. In the 1880s, even the newest towns, such as Central City, Colorado, west of Denver, supported a rich mix of financiers, professionals, merchants, storekeepers, and skilled artisans. Central City supplied nearby mining and milling operations, but the trade and service industries patronized by those operations accounted for 52 percent of the city’s total wealth and more than a quarter of its population. Thus, the history of American enterprise during this period exhibited two seemingly contradictory impulses: one toward consolidation of industries, the other toward a proliferation of small businesses serving their immediate neighborhoods and regions. full view Edison in His Lab, 1888 Edison in his laboratory in 1888. He had patented the phonograph in 1878. (Eastern National Historic Site/ National Park Service/ U.S. Department of Interior) The free enterprise system thrived on innovation. Indeed, during the 1880s, new machines, new technical processes, new engineering feats, and new forms of factory organization fueled the growth and efficiency of U.S. businesses. Many devices that became staples of American life appeared during this period. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. Thomas A. Edison developed the phonograph in 1877 and the electric light in 1879. Cash registers, stock tickers, and typewriters soon became indispensable tools for American businesses. Beginning in the 1880s, railroad cars installed steam heat and electric lights, boosting the comfort of passengers. CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 543 ${bmicon} Lesser-known inventions revolutionized specific industries. In 1883 Jan Ernest Matzeliger, a young mechanic who was the son of a Dutch man and a Surinamese woman, developed a successful shoe-lasting machine in Lynn, Massachusetts. (A last was a wooden model of a human foot that shoemakers used to attach and shape the shoe leather.) The prototype of Matzeliger’s lasting machine consisted of old cigar boxes wired with pieces of wood. Massachusetts shoe manufacturers embraced the device once he had perfected it, for their highly skilled but poorly paid hand lasters were beginning to form a union. The Yankee lasters’ concerns had merit, for patent Number 274,207 ultimately spelled doom for them. Matzeliger’s machine had eliminated the need for skilled shoe laborers. During this period, more and more businesses perfected the so-called American system of manufacturing, which dated back half a century and relied on the mass production of interchangeable parts. Factory workers made large numbers of a particular part, each part exactly the same size and shape. This system enabled manufacturers to assemble products more cheaply and efficiently, to repair products easily with new parts, and to redesign products quickly. In the early 1880s the Singer Sewing Machine Company was selling 500,000 units a year. McCormick was producing 21,600 reapers annually. The American system also spurred technological innovation. For example, in 1884 the twine binder used in wheat harvesting was modified with new parts for use in harvesting rice. The engineers who designed the modern bicycle (which has wheels of equal size) used the American system to make their product affordable to almost anyone who wanted one. The bicycle craze of the late nineteenth century resulted from the novelty and cheapness of this new form of transportation and recreation, one enjoyed by males and females of all ages. Production techniques used to make bicycles were later adapted to the manufacture of automobiles. New technical processes also facilitated the manufacture and marketing of foods and other consumer goods. Distributors developed pressure-sealed cans, which enabled them to market agricultural products in far-flung parts of the country. Innovative techniques for sheet metal stamping and electric resistance welding transformed a variety of industries. Eager to satisfy a demand for steel (an alloy that was stronger and harder than iron), U.S. manufacturers stepped up production of the versatile metal. For the first time, they broke free of European suppliers. By 1880, 90 percent of American steel was made by the Bessemer process (named after its English inventor but developed in this country by William Kelly), which injected air into molten iron to yield steel. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 544 ${bmicon} full view MAP 16.1 AGRICULTURAL REGIONS OF THE MIDWEST AND NORTHEAST By 1890 several Midwestern cities served as shipping centers, getting wheat and corn to the growing metropolitan areas of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Farmers complained that the railroads gave discounts to large shippers, such as Standard Oil, and discriminated against small producers. The agriculture business benefited from engineering innovations as well. These technological advances included improvements in irrigation and new labor-saving devices, such as the self-binding harvester (1878) and the first self-steering, self-propelled traction engine (1882). These innovations and devices reached across national boundaries. As just one example, the first modern irrigation systems in the Southwest were constructed by Native Americans and mestizos (people of both indigenous and Spanish ancestry). And in the 1870s, Japan began importing American farm implements and inviting U.S. engineers to construct dams and canals for new steam- and water-powered gristmills and sawmills. Technology was a universal language, one that many peoples around the globe sought to master. Long active in territorial exploration and land surveying, the federal government continued to assume a leading role in applied science. In 1879 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was formed, charged with compiling and centralizing data describing the natural landscape, an effort that had originated in 1804 with the Lewis and Clark expedition. In the 1880s, the federal government also began to systematize and disseminate information useful to farmers through the United States Department of Agriculture. Created in 1864, the department originally consisted of several divisions organized around scholarly disciplines, such as chemistry and horticulture. Gradually, administrators looked for ways to solve specific problems faced by farmers. In 1881, for example, the department’s Entomology Bureau began to combine current research on insects with practical techniques for pest control. Like factory machines, new agricultural machinery benefited consumers but also disrupted traditional labor patterns. As farm productivity boomed, the need for hired hands evaporated. Early in the nineteenth century, producing an acre of wheat took 56 hours of labor; in 1880, that number dropped to 20 hours. Machines, such as the self-binding harvester, reduced labor needs by as much as 75 percent. One agricultural worker in Ohio observed, “Of one thing we are convinced, that while improved machinery is gathering our large crops, making our boots and shoes, doing the work of our carpenters, stone sawyers, and builders, CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 545 ${bmicon} TABLE 16-1 Amount of Forest Clearing Each Decade, by Major Region, 1850–1909 (in thousands of acres)   1850–1859 1860–1869 1870–1879 1880–1889 1890–1899 1900–1909 Total Northeast 1,417 619 1,339 62 80 228 3,745 Mid-Atlantic 4,283 2,811 4,278 295 646 87 12,400 Southeast 6,822 1,869 7,612 6,213 5,410 3,712 31,638 Northcentral 8,245 5,566 9,199 2,420 3,804 1,200 30,434 Southcentral 9,025 1,803 9,156 8,168 7,489 5,767 41,408 Lake 5,093 4,188 7,347 3,131 4,575 2,497 26,831 Southwest 3,018 1,422 7,796 7,148 8,020 7,832 35,236 Pacific 1,774 1,188 2,590 1,166 983 1,063 8,764 Total 39,677 19,466 49,317 28,603 31,007 22,386 190,456 Northeast: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island. Mid-Atlantic: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland. Southeast: West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida. Northcentral: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. Southcentral: Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma. Lake: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin. Southwest: Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. Pacific: Washington, Oregon, California. Source: Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests (1989), 36. thousands of able, willing men are going from place to place seeking employment, and finding none. The question naturally arises, is improved machinery a blessing or a curse?” Innovation altered the natural landscape and hastened the depletion of certain natural resources. By the mid-1870s, Texas had new steam-powered lumber mills equipped with saw rigs that could produce up to 30,000 board feet a day. This capacity made Texas lumbering a big business, especially when it was combined with infusions of capital and the expansion of railroad lines into the piney woods region, along the eastern edge of the state. Texas lumber mills were poised to benefit from the exhaustion of the great forests of the eastern and Great Lakes states. In the Chesapeake Bay, dredge boats were becoming more efficient in harvesting oysters, and shellfish reserves began to decline. In the mid-1880s oyster harvesters took a record 15 million bushels from the bay; the shellfish simply could not replenish themselves. New means of commercial fishing also reduced supplies of salmon in the Northwest. In 1884 in California, a federal court issued a permanent injunction against hydraulic mining, because it contributed to soil erosion and water pollution. Hydraulic mining had washed an estimated 12 billion tons of earth into San Francisco Bay, raising the floor of the bay several feet. At the same time, mercury flowing into nearby streams from gold mines in the San Jose hills was poisoning fish in the bay, creating pollution that would be felt well into the twentieth century. Similar cases of industrial pollution despoiled other parts of the country. In the absence of any laws to restrain them, Chicago meatpackers befouled the Chicago River with the byproducts of sausage, glue, and fertilizer. By stimulating manufacturing and extractive enterprises alike, the railroads powered these great environmental transformations, for better or worse. Trains enabled entrepreneurs to develop large-scale copper mines in Arizona, gigantic herds of longhorn cattle in Kansas, and vast textile mills in Georgia. Every western town clamored for a railroad station; they knew that places bypassed by the rails withered and died. The railroads enabled tourists to enjoy the PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 546 ${bmicon} full view Borax Wagon in Death Valley National Monument, CA Borax Wagon in Death Valley National Monument, CA (Photodisc, Inc.) beauty of western wilderness areas. Yet the railroads had an insatiable demand for lumber. Between the late 1870s and 1890, U.S. railroads accounted for 20 to 25 percent of all lumber consumed in the nation. They used wood for fuel, fences, trestles, and stations, along with countless railroad ties. In 1890 scientists estimated that the railroads would need 73 million board feet each year to make new ties to lay beneath expanding lines and to replace ties eaten by pests and decayed with age. full view Stuffed Buffalo Stuffed buffalo heads displayed at the Taxidermist’s Department of the Kansas Pacific Railway. (Library of Congress) Since buffalo herds impeded rail travel, railroads promoted the shooting of buffalo from trains, a “sport” that almost eradicated the species. By the mid-1880s, the great herds had disappeared, victims of ecological change (the incursion of horses into grazing areas), disease (brucellosis spread by domestic livestock), and commercial enterprise. Eastern consumers prized buffalo-hide coats, and eastern factories used the hides to make steam-engine drive belts. Sioux leader Black Elk decried the slaughter and the “heaps of bones” left to rot in the sun. As agents of economic development and cultural change, the railroads knew no peer. As private enterprises, however, they faced the same challenges that all big businesses ultimately must address. The proliferation of independent lines and the high fixed costs associated with the industry made profits slim and competition intense. As a result, railroad companies began to come together in informal pools to share equipment and set prices industrywide. In the 1880s these pools gave way to consolidation, a process by which several companies merged into one large company. Jay Gould’s Erie Railroad was a consolidated railroad business. In these years U.S. businesses grew larger and more quickly compared with their western European counterparts. This difference stemmed in large part from America’s astonishing population growth and its rich natural resources. (For example, American coal and iron, the ingredients necessary for making steel, existed in proximity.) Equally significant, the United States possessed a social and legal culture favorable to big business. The absence of an entrenched, conservative elite, along with the spread of state and national laws that protected CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 547 ${bmicon} TABLE 16-2 How Indians Used the Buffalo Meat Food and ceremonial use Fat and marrow Food, paint, and cosmetics Bones Tools, weapons, knives, pipes, soup, sleds Brain Food, used to tan hides Intestine Cord Hoofs Implements, utensils, glue, jewelry, food, ceremonial use Bladder Storage pouches Rawhide Moccasin soles, shields, containers, ornaments, rattles, snow shoes, mortars, lariats, bridles, boats, luggage, food boiling, medicine bundle, saddles, thongs, stirrups Hide Tipis, robes, dresses, gloves, breech cloth, shirts, leggings, moccasins, bedding, dolls, regalia, cradleboards, implements, drums, tipi furnishings Skull Ceremonial use Horns Implements, ornaments, ceremonial use, games Hair Rope, stuffing, ornaments, ceremonial use Dung Fuel Sinew and muscle Thread, cord bow strings Tail Flu brush Stomach Cooking vessel, container for carrying/storing water Source: Adapted from Arlene Hirschfelder and Martha Kreipe de Montaño, The Native American Almanac: A Portrait of Native America Today (New York: Prentice Hall, 1993), p. 18. private property, stimulated the entrepreneurial spirit. The U.S. government refrained from owning industries, although it heavily subsidized the railroad industry. It taxed business lightly and did not tax individual incomes at all until 1913. Finally, American bankers aggressively promoted growth through their lending practices and bond sales. For example, John Pierpont Morgan, a member of the banking firm of Drexel, Morgan, and Company in the 1880s, reorganized the firm under his own name in 1895 and played a leading role in financing a number of major American businesses. Several large enterprises began to conquer not just local but also national markets. Examples include Bell Telephone (founded in Boston), the Kroger grocery business (Cincinnati), Marshall Field Department store (Chicago), and Boston Fruit Company. In the South, Midwest, and West, investors rushed to finance gigantic agribusinesses, such as the 1.5 million acres devoted to rice cultivation in southeastern Louisiana and bonanza wheat farms (as large as 38,000 acres) in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. In 1886, a single enterprise, the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, in Montana, was producing 25,000 tons of copper each year, an amount that exceeded the total national output for every year before 1879. full view J. P. Morgan Edward Streichen, the noted photographer who took this picture of the financier in 1906, said that looking J. P Morgan in the eye was like facing the headlights of an oncoming train. He was the most powerful man on Wall Street and through his influence formed the United States Steel Corporation. (Library of Congress) Owners of these enterprises devised new forms of business organization that helped them grow and survive in a dynamic economy. By combining, or integrating, their operations, manufacturers cut costs and monopolized an entire industry in the process. Unable to withstand the ruthless competition that favored larger enterprises, smaller companies folded. The two icons of American big business in the 1880s—Andrew Carnegie in steel and John D. Rockefeller in petroleum—proved master innovators in both the managerial and technical aspects of business. In 1875 Carnegie opened the Edgar Thomson Steelworks in Pittsburgh. Within a year, he was producing steel at half the prevailing market price. Carnegie excelled at vertical integration, in which a single firm controls all aspects of production and distribution. Carnegie employed miners in the rich iron and copper deposits in northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Range and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (the Lake Superior region) to mine the raw material, and he owned the ships and railroads that brought the ore to the mills in Pittsburgh. Within the mills, he saved money by keeping fuel costs to a minimum (molten steel flowed easily from one processing stage to the next), by maintaining huge outputs, and by cutting labor costs to the bone. His personal connections to his former employer, the Pennsylvania Railroad, ensured a large and stable customer for his steel. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 548 ${bmicon} Another form of business consolidation was horizontal integration, in which a number of companies producing the same product merge to reduce competition and control prices. In 1882 John D. Rockefeller, a former bookkeeper, horizontally integrated the petroleum industry by forming Standard Oil Trust. Stockholders in small companies turned over their shares to Standard Oil, which then coordinated operations and eliminated competition from other smaller firms. Standard Oil also practiced vertical integration. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller controlled not only a raw material (in this case, crude oil) but also processing plants, or refineries. He managed to keep transportation costs low by negotiating discount rates from rail shippers. Soon he had positioned himself to buy out his rivals—or ruin them. Trusts placed a premium on efficient production, but they also worked to the disadvantage of consumers, who were hostage to high prices within industries that lacked competition. For the growing managerial class, trusts helped to eliminate some of the uncertainty associated with an unstable marketplace. They ensured industries’ access to raw materials, cheap transportation, expansive markets, and reliable credit institutions. This new form of business cropped up in other industries besides steel and oil. In 1887, the so-called Sugar Trust comprised 17 of the 21 U.S. sugar refiners and monopolized sugar refining east of the Mississippi River. To operate efficiently, expanding industries needed expanding supplies of workers to grow crops, extract raw materials, and produce manufactured goods. Many of these workers came from abroad. The year 1880 marked the leading edge of a new wave of immigration to the United States. Over the next ten years, 5.2 million newcomers entered the country, almost twice the previous decade’s level of 2.8 million. In the mid-nineteenth century, most immigrants hailed from western Europe and the British Isles—from Germany, Scandinavia, England, and Ireland. Between 1880 and 1890, Germans, Scandinavians, and the English kept coming, but they were joined by numerous Italians, Russians, and Poles. In fact, these last three groups predominated among newcomers for the next 35 years, their arrival rates peaking between 1890 and 1910. At the same time, immigrants from Asia, especially from China, were making their way to the Kingdom of Hawaii, which was annexed by the United States in 1898. Between 1852 and 1887, 26,000 Chinese arrived on the islands. Almost 40 percent of all immigrants to the United States during this period were known as “birds of passage,” men who were recruited by American employers and who, after earning some money, migrated back to their native land. Many of the new European immigrants sought to escape oppressive economic and political conditions in Europe, even as they hoped to make a new life for themselves and their families in the United States. Russian Jews fled discrimination and violent anti-Semitism in the form of pogroms, organized massacres, conducted by their Christian neighbors and Russian authorities. Southern Italians, most of whom were landless farmers, suffered from a combination of declining agricultural prices and high birth rates. Impoverished Poles chafed under cultural restrictions imposed by Germany and Russia. Hungarians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Armenians, among other groups, also participated in this great migration; members of these groups too were seeking political freedom and economic opportunity. Immigrants replenished America’s sense of itself as a haven for the downtrodden, a place where opportunity beckoned to hard-working and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 549 ${bmicon} full view MAP 16.2 POPULATION OF FOREIGN-BORN, BY REGION, 1880 After the Civil War, large numbers of immigrants settled in northeastern cities. In addition, the Upper Midwest and parts of the western mining frontier drew many newcomers from western Europe. The area along the country’s southwestern border was home to immigrants from Mexico. Cuban cigar makers established thriving communities in southern Florida. ambitious people. “The New Colossus,” written by American poet Emma Lazarus in 1883, pays tribute to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—people from all over the world who sought refuge in the United States. The words of her poem are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty at the entrance to New York Harbor. (The people of France presented the statue, called “Liberty Enlightening the World,” to America in 1884.) Most of the newcomers found work in the factories, mills, and sweatshops of New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. At the same time, large numbers of these fresh arrivals dispersed to other areas of the country to work in a wide variety of enterprises. Scandinavians populated the prairies of Iowa and Minnesota and the High Plains of the Dakotas. Immigrants from Mexico found work in the mines and beet fields of Colorado. In the South, some planters began to recruit immigrants—especially western Europeans of “hardy peasant stock”—to take the place of blacks who resisted working for whites. Nevertheless, planters’ experiments with recruiting immigrants amounted to little. Given the opportunity, many immigrants sought to flee from the back-breaking labor and meager wages of the cotton staple crop economy. A group of Germans brought over to toil in the Louisiana swamps soon after the Civil War quickly slipped away from their employers; they had agreed to the arrangement only to gain free passage to America. Thirty Swedes who arrived in Alabama also deserted at an opportune moment, declaring that they were not slaves. South Carolina planters who sponsored colonies of Germans and Italians gave up in exasperation. The few Chinese who began work in the Louisiana sugar fields soon abandoned the plodding work of the plantations in favor of employment in the trades and shops of New Orleans. Still, in 1890, immigrant worker PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 550 ${bmicon} TABLE 16-3 Immigration by Country of Origin, 1831–1940   1831–1840 1841–1850 1851–1860 1861–1870   1871–1880 1881–1890 1891–1900 1901–1910 1911–1920 1921–1930 1931–1940 Austria-Hungary       7,800   72,060 353,722 502,707 2,145,266 806,342 65,548 3,469a Belgium   22 5,094 4,738 6,734   7,221 20,174 18,167 41,635 33,746 15,846 12,189 Bulgaria                 160 39,280 22,533 2,945 375 Czechoslovakia                   3,426 102,194 8,347 Denmark   1,063 539 3,749 37,094   31,771 88,132 50,231 65,285 41,083 32,430 5,393 France   45,575 77,202 70,358 35,984   72,201 50,403 30,770 73,730 61,897 49,610 38,800 Germany   152,454 434,626 951,667 787,468   717,182 452,970 505,152 341,498 143,945 412,202 226,578b Greece               2,053 15,079 167,519 184,201 51,084 8,973 Italy   2,253 1,870 9,231 11,728   55,762 307,310 651,893 2,045,877 1,109,524 455,315 57,661 Netherlands   1,412 8,251 10,789 9,102   16,541 53,701 26,758 48,262 43,718 26,946 14,860 Norway 1,201 13,903 20,931 109,298 95,323 176,586 95,012 190,505 66,393 68,531 10,100 Sweden         115,922 391,776 226,266 249,534 95,074 97,249 10,665 Polandc   — — 1,164 2,027   12,970 51,806 96,720 — 4,813 227,734 7,571 Romania               5,938 12,750 53,008 13,311 67,646 1,076 Russiad   646 656 1,621 4,536   52,254 265,080 602,011 1,597,306 921,957 78,433 548 Spain 2,954 2,759 10,353 8,493 5,206 4,418 8,731 27,935 68,611 28,958 2,898 Portugal         4,627 11,017 28,323 69,149 89,732 29,994 7,423 Switzerland   4,821 4,644 25,011 23,286   28,293 81,088 31,179 34,922 23,001 29,676 10,547 Turkey in Europe             1,185 3,786 119,256 77,210 14,659 580 United Kingdom England   7,611 32,002 247,125 222,277   437,706 644,680 216,726 388,017 249,944 157,420 112,252 Ireland   207,381 780,719 914,119 435,778   456,871 655,482 388,416 339,065 146,181 220,501 25,377 Scotland   2,667 3,712 38,331 38,768   87,564 149,869 44,188 120,469 78,357 159,781 16,131 Wales   183 1,261 6,319 4,313   6,631 12,640 10,557 17,464 13,107 13,012 3,209 Not specified   63,347 229,979 132,199 349,538   16,142 186 67         Other Europe   96 155 116 210   658 1,346 122 665 18,238 22,983 11,813 Total Europe   495,686 1,597,522 2,453,821 2,074,434 2,274,874 4,783,413 3,655,673 8,175,296 4,407,336 2,427,787 621,704 Canada and Newfoundlande     59,304 153,878   383,640 393,304 3,311 179,226 742,515 924,185 171,718 Central America     449 95   157 404 549 8,102 17,159 15,769 21,665 Mexicoe     3,078 2,191   5,162 1,913 971 49,642 219,004 459,287 60,589 South America     1,224 1,397   1,128 2,304 1,075 17,280 41,899 42,215 21,831 West Indies       10,660 9,046   13,957 29,042 33,066 107,548 123,424 74,899 49,725 Total America     74,715 166,607   404,044 425,967 38,972 361,888 1,143,671 1,516,685 354,804f China   8 35 41,397 64,301   123,200 61,711 14,799 20,005 21,270 29,907 16,709 Japan                 25,942 129,797 83,837 33,462 1,555 Turkey in Asia               26,799 77,393 79,389 19,165 218 Other Asia   40 47 61 308   603 6,669 3,696 15,772 8,055 14,866 13,298 Total Asia 48 82 41,458 64,609   123,803 65,380 71,236 243,567 192,559 97,400 31,780 Africa       210 312   358 857 350 7,368 8,443 6,286 7,367 Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand       36   9,886 7,017 2,740 11,975 12,348 8,299 13,805 Pacific Islands           1,028 5,557 1,225 1,049 1,079 427 5,437 All other countries     29,169 17,969   700 789 14,063 33,523g 1,147 228 142 Total Immigration 495,736 1,597,604 2,599,373 2,323,967 2,814,793 5,292,980 3,794,259 8,832,666 5,766,593 4,057,112 1,035,039 aHungary only. bIncludes Austria 1938–1940 cFrom 1890–1919, Poland is included with Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia. dIncluding Finland 1831–1920. eNo reports from 1886–1893. fIncludes other Americas. gIncludes 32,897 people returning to their homes in U.S. After 1906, such aliens were considered nonimmigrants. Source: Lord & Lord, Historical Atlas of the U.S. (New York: Henry Holt). CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 551 ${bmicon} full view MAP 16.3 SOME PLACES WHERE CHINESE LOCATED, 1865–1880 Immediately after the Civil War, some southern whites believed that immigrants would prove to be more reliable and efficient workers than the freedpeople. Planters in Mississippi and Louisiana imported a small number of Chinese from California and others directly from Hong Kong. However, by the early 1870s most of these workers had deserted the fields and moved to nearby towns and cities to work as artisans, grocers, and laundry operators. enclaves were scattered throughout the South. Irish, Polish, and Italian men were swinging pickaxes in Florida railroad camps. Italian men, women, and children were picking cotton on Louisiana plantations. Hungarian men were digging coal out of mines in West Virginia. The story of Rosa Cassettari, a young woman who emigrated from northern Italy to the United States in 1884, suggests the challenges that faced many newcomers during this period. Rosa’s husband, Santino, had preceded her to America. He had settled in an iron mining camp in Missouri. Leaving her son with relatives, Rosa received the assurances of friends and relatives: “You will get smart in America. And in America you will not be so poor.” In the steerage section of a steamship bound for the United States, Rosa found herself surrounded not only by paesani (fellow Italians) but also by Germans, Swedes, Poles, and French—“every kind,” she remembered later. After arriving at Castle Garden (an immigration processing center at the tip of Manhattan and a predecessor of Ellis Island), Rosa and her paesani were approached by a smooth-talking, well-dressed, Italian-speaking man. Overcharging them for the train trip to Missouri, he left them with no money for food. Life in the iron camp proved harsh—nothing like what Rosa had expected. Her husband, who was much older than she, neglected her; he preferred the company of prostitutes in the town. The iron was almost depleted, and some workers and their wives had moved on to a new mine in Michigan. Rosa’s days centered on caring for her new baby and cooking for 13 of the miners. Despite these realities, within a couple of years, Rosa grew used to America and considered herself an American. She returned briefly to her hometown in Italy but expressed PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 552 ${bmicon} impatience with the rigid social etiquette that separated the rich from the poor. She also yearned for the hearty meals that had become her staple in the iron camp. Back in Missouri, she mustered enough courage to leave Santino, traveling to Chicago and making a new life for herself in the Italian colonia (community) there. She eventually married another Italian man (the two had fallen in love in Missouri) and found work as a cleaning woman at Chicago Commons, a social settlement house. Her new husband alternated between working in construction and peddling bananas and cranberries. Rosa herself gained a reputation as a storyteller; later she said, “Me, I was always crazy for a good story.” The influx of so many foreign-born workers transformed the American labor market. Native-born Protestant men moved up the employment ladder to become members of the white-collar (that is, professional) middle class, while recent immigrants filled the ranks in construction and manufacturing. By 1890 Italian immigrants accounted for 90 percent of New York’s public works employees and 99 percent of Chicago’s street construction and maintenance crews. Women and children, both native and foreign-born, predominated in the textile, garment-making, and food processing industries. These ethnic niches proved crucial for the well-being of many immigrant communities. They provided newcomers with an entrée into the economy. Specific groups of immigrants often gravitated toward particular kinds of jobs. For example, many Poles found work in the vast steel plants of Pittsburgh, and Russian Jews went into the garment industry and street-peddling trade in New York City. California fruit orchards and vegetable farms employed numerous Japanese immigrants. Cuban immigrants rolled cigars in Florida. In Hawaii, the Chinese and Japanese labored in the sugar fields; after they had accumulated a little money, they became rice farmers and shopkeepers. In Boston and New York City, second-generation Irish took advantage of their prominent place in the Democratic party to become public school teachers, firefighters, and police officers. These ethnic niches proved crucial for the well-being of many immigrant communities. They provided newcomers with an entrée into the economy; indeed, many men and women got their first jobs with the help of kin and other compatriots. Niches also helped immigrants advance within an industry or economic sector. Finally, they enriched immigrant communities by keeping profits and wages within those communities. The experience of Kinji Ushijima (later known as George Shima) graphically illustrates the power of immigrant niches. Shima arrived in California in 1887 and, like many other Japanese immigrants, he found work as a potato picker in the San Joaquin Valley. Soon, Shima moved up to become a labor contractor, securing Japanese laborers for the valley’s white farmers. With the money he made, he bought 15 acres of land and began his own potato farm. Eventually he built a large potato business by expanding his holdings, reclaiming swampland, and investing in a fleet of boats to ship his crops up the coast to San Francisco. Taking advantage of a Japanese niche, Shima had prospered through a combination of good luck and hard work. Just as whole industries consolidated to achieve new milestones in efficiency, productivity, and reliability, so did individual workplaces. Well-oiled machines helped entrepreneurs manufacture mass quantities of uniform parts. Employers now pushed workers to strive for the same level of performance. By the late nineteenth century, the typical industrial employee labored within an immense, multistory brick structure and operated a machine powered by water or steam. Smoky, smelly kerosene lamps gave way to early forms of electric lighting, first arc and then incandescent light bulbs. Long-standing industries, such as textiles and shoes, were now fully mechanized. The new products flooding the economy—locomotives and bicycles, cash registers and typewriters—streamed from factories designed to ensure maximum efficiency from both machines and the people who tended them. CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 553 ${bmicon} In the 1880s a few factory managers hired efficiency experts. The experts’ goal was to cut labor costs in the same way that industry barons had shaved the costs of extracting raw materials or distributing final products. With huge quantities of goods flowing from factories, even modest savings in wages could mean significant profits in the long run. As early as the 1880s, efficiency experts, such as Frederick Winslow Taylor, chief engineer for the Midvale Steel Plant outside Philadelphia, were pioneering in the techniques of “scientific management.” These techniques stressed uniform, plantwide procedures for routine machine operation and maintenance and labor organization. Southern textile mill owners devised their own strategies for shaping a compliant workforce. They employed only white men, women, and children as machine operators, but threatened to hire blacks if the whites protested low wages and poor working conditions. During the prewar period, enslaved workers—males and females, adults and children—had been forced to labor in the small textile mills that dotted the Piedmont region of South Carolina and Georgia. But after the Civil War, employers decided to reserve jobs in the expanding textile industry for whites only in order to preserve and extend divisions within the southern labor force. Poor whites lived in company housing, their children attended company schools, and they received cash wages. In contrast, blacks remained in the countryside, impoverished and without the right to vote. In 1874 the manager of a textile mill in Columbus, Georgia, rationalized his company’s exclusive policy: “We do not think the negroes adapted to the labor of cotton-mills. Their lack of quickness, sensitiveness of touch, and general sleepy characteristics disqualify them…. Being far better fitted for outdoor labor, they will no doubt always be kept so employed.” Prewar textile mill owners, who had used slave labor so profitably, would have been shocked by this later view. In the cities of the North as well as the textile villages of the South, factory workers remained exclusively white until well into the twentieth century. TABLE 16-4 Number of Firms by Number of Employees per Firm, 1850 and 1880   Number of Firms   1850 1880   No. of Employees No. of Employees Industry 0–5 6–50 50+ Total 0–5 6–50 50+ Total Iron and Steel 6 13 3 22 6 20 17 43 Textiles 46 87 53 186 25 59 8 92 Hardware 76 42 7 125 114 122 27 263 Machines and tools 42 44 6 92 96 113 19 228 Printing 36 60 10 106 105 148 36 289 Building construction 83 59 3 145 588 227 18 833 Clothing 165 294 43 502 301 255 93 649 Furniture 84 66 3 153 185 105 20 310 Metal 83 11 1 95 166 47 5 218 Meat 81 3 0 84 458 23 2 483 Harness 32 15 3 50 96 21 2 119 Baking 384 29 0 413 910 73 8 991 Shoes 339 224 20 583 441 139 34 614 Blacksmith 141 18 1 160 187 12 0 199 Note: Because the census recorded only firms producing more than $500 per year, there may be serious undercounting of firms with one or no employees. Source: Census of the United States, 1850 and 1880. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 554 ${bmicon} In the 1880s visitors to the territory of Utah marveled at the capital, Salt Lake City, where Mormon pioneers had made the desert bloom. Situated at the foot of the magnificent snow-covered Wasach Range, this oasis in the Great Salt Basin boasted a built landscape almost as impressive as the natural beauty that surrounded it. In the heart of Salt Lake City lay Temple Square. This broad plaza contained the Mormon Tabernacle, a huge domed structure. Next to it stood the Mormon Temple, a soaring six-spired granite cathedral still under construction. The city had the advantage of rail service (Promontory Point, where the transcontinental railroad was joined, was not far away). Mines in nearby Bingham Canyon yielded rich lodes of silver and large local smelters refined copper ores. Irrigation systems made the city self-sufficient in the production of foodstuffs. A settlement inspired by religious faith, Salt Lake City was at the same time thoroughly modern. Not just Salt Lake City, but other cities around the country began to assume monumental proportions. In New York, the 1880s marked the completion of Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge and the arrival of the Statue of Liberty from France. Chicago, rebuilding after a disastrous fire in 1871, became a sprawling rail hub dotted with yards for western cattle, northern timber, and the trains that hauled them. In 1885 Chicago also became the location for a major architectural breakthrough by engineer William LeBaron Jenney. He designed the ten-story Home Insurance Building, the world’s first metal frame skyscraper. The steel skeleton weighed only one third as much as the thick stone walls needed to support a similar masonry building, and the design left room for numerous windows. Urban architecture would never be the same again. Cities in general represented American notions of progress and prosperity; they were places where innovation, consumer culture, and new forms of entertainment grew and flourished. From 1875 to 1900, American cities developed increasingly sophisticated systems of communications and transportation. Streetlights, transportation networks, and sewer lines provided basic services to swelling populations of immigrants and rural in-migrants. Experts in the fields of urban design and architecture and ambitious entrepreneurs in the fields of entertainment and professional sports all left their mark on cities. In a country fascinated with new and bigger and better things, cities set the standard by defining a desirable way of life for a “typical” middle-class American. In their social and physical configurations, cities also represented a new cultural diversity in American life. At times uneasily, they accommodated immigrants from around the world. San Francisco’s Chinatown formed a “city within a city” as hostile European Americans sought to circumscribe its residents. Politics, prejudice, and technology came together to shape the urban landscape. full view Central Park Central Park, New York (Photodisc, Inc.) Northeastern and mid-Atlantic cities emerged as centers of concentrated manufacturing activity. Yet, with the aid of eastern capital, western cities also flourished. New York’s Wall Street and Boston’s State Street, home to the nation’s largest investment bankers, financed the Main Streets of the Midwest and West. Some urban areas prospered through milling, mining, or other enterprises, such as lumber and flour milling in Minneapolis and ore smelting in Denver. Others focused on manufacturing to serve a growing western population. Chicago was rivaled only by New York in terms of its industrial economy and the vast territory that it supplied with raw materials, processed food, and manufactured goods. Salt Lake City produced goods for the so-called Mormon Corridor of settlements that stretched west from the city to southern California. By the 1880s San Francisco had a commercial reach that encompassed much of the West as well as Hawaii and Alaska. Writer Henry George noted, “Not a settler in all the Pacific States and Territories but must pay San Francisco tribute. Not an ounce of gold dug, a pound of ore melted, a field gleaned, or a tree felled in all their thousands of square miles, but must add to her wealth.” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 555 ${bmicon} No trend supported urban growth more than the arrival of newcomers from abroad. To stoke its furnaces, mill its lumber, and slaughter its cattle, Chicago relied on immigrants from Ireland, Slovakia, Germany, Poland, and Bohemia. Of the three cities with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in 1880, San Francisco (45 percent) ranked higher than both Chicago (42 percent) and New York (40 percent). Yet all large cities also attracted migrants from America’s own countryside, as native-born men and women fled the hardship of life on the farm. The use of increasingly efficient agricultural machines meant that rural workers had fewer job opportunities. Most of the immigrants from rural areas to the cities were young women; they included Yankee girls from the hardscrabble homesteads of New England, daughters of Swedish immigrants in Minnesota, and native-born farm tenants in Indiana. full view Brooklyn Bridge Designed by John Roebling and completed by his son, Washington, the Brooklyn Bridge served as an elegant feat of modern engineering. (Library of Congress) full view Brooklyn Bridge Designed by John Roebling and completed by his son, Washington, the Brooklyn Bridge served as an elegant feat of modern engineering. (Library of Congress) Rural folk sought the steady work and wages afforded by jobs in the city, but they were also drawn to the excitement that had become the hallmark of the urban scene. In the early nineteenth century, Thomas Jefferson had located the heart of America in its sturdy yeoman farmers; by the late nineteenth century, that heart had shifted to the city. In 1886 the Reverend Josiah Strong, a proponent of Protestant missionary efforts abroad, condemned the American city as a “menace” to civilization. However, in decrying what he saw the evils of urban life, Strong described its appeal to people of all ages and both sexes: “It is the city where wealth is massed; and here are the tangible evidences of it piled many stories high…. Here are luxuries gathered—everything that dazzles the eye or tempts the appetite; here is the most extravagant expenditure.” Strong was right that this conspicuous display of wealth would have profound implications for American politics and culture. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 556 ${bmicon} In these years the American city was emerging as a technological marvel. Through a combination of money and engineering skill, cities managed to provide an adequate water supply for private and commercial purposes, move large numbers of people and goods efficiently, get rid of waste materials, and illuminate thoroughfares at night. Professionals, such as landscape contractors, construction architects, and civil engineers, designed the parks, bridges, public libraries, and museums that made the city so attractive. full view New York Street Scene, 1899 New York Street Scene, 1899 Throughout the country, new towns emerged as industrialists and factory owners sought to lure and retain workers. George M. Pullman, who manufactured railroad sleeping cars, built a town outside Chicago and named it after himself. In the South, company towns dotted the Piedmont region (textiles), the steep slopes of the Appalachian Mountains (coal and lumber), the piney woods of Texas (lumber), and the coast of Florida (phosphates). In the West, towns grew up around copper, coal, iron ore, and silver mines. These communities shared a unique characteristic: they directly linked housing, education, and commerce to a particular company. Cities grew upward and outward as a result of developments in mass production and technology. The availability of factory-assembled building materials accelerated the construction of private dwellings and office buildings. Elevators extended living and office spaces upward (in the Reverend Strong’s words, “wealth is massed … piled many stories high”). The invention of the electric streetcar in 1888 permitted cities to spread out. Soon, residential suburbs cropped up many miles from urban commercial cores. Wealthy and middle-class urban residents followed the streetcar lines out of the city, hoping to find a green refuge from the grime and noise of downtown while maintaining a manageable commute to work. CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 557 ${bmicon} As cities expanded, the challenges associated with providing services also grew more complex and expensive. A polluted water supply, for example, meant epidemics of diptheria and cholera, so city taxpayers demanded waterworks that delivered drinkable water through intricate systems of dams, pumps, reservoirs, and pipes. Chicago had long pumped its sewage into Lake Michigan, the source of its drinking water. In the 1880s the city financed the building of a canal and the reversal of the flow of the Chicago River. These changes sent the city’s sewage away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi River instead. Begun in 1889, the 28-mile Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was completed seven years later. One awed observer marveled at the “powerful machinery for digging and hoisting, steam shovels, excavators, inclines, conveyors, derricks, cantilevers, cableways, channelers, steam drills, pumps, etc.” The cost: $54 million. full view Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1911 - Streetlights at Night Electric light forever altered city life. In this photograph from 1911, rows of electric lights illuminate Court House Square in Scranton, Pennsylvania, providing enough brightness to permit the reading of newspapers as late as 10 o’clock at night. (Library of Congress) These new systems of services, combined with the mushrooming immigrant neighborhoods, changed both the quality and the quantity of urban problems. Zoning issues—who could build what, where, and when—became flashpoints for conflict as the interests of homeowners, developers, and municipal engineers collided. These controversies called for new forms of local government. Specifically, urban political leaders struggled to improve the city’s public works while meeting the needs of multiple ethnic groups. Governing a big city was becoming a big business. Rising tax rates and ballooning municipal debts told an even larger story. In 1845, the city of Boston spent $8.29 per resident and owed its creditors $748,000. Thirty years later, per capita annual expenditures had risen fivefold, and the city’s debt had multiplied several times to more than $27 million. Clearly, running a city was an expensive, full-time enterprise and one that had the potential to be very lucrative to businesspeople and politicians alike. Although New York’s “Boss” Tweed had been convicted on charges of corruption in the early 1870s, the infamous Tammany Hall gang carried on his legacy. The Democratic officials associated with this social and political organization perfected a system of kickbacks linked to municipal construction projects. Under this system contractors paid politicians for city construction contracts. For example, a New York City courthouse that was supposed to cost a quarter of a million dollars ended up costing taxpayers 52 times that amount, or twice as much as the United States paid Russia for Alaska! In the 1880s secretive networks of corruption linking law enforcement personnel, city officials, and construction contractors flourished in many cities. These webs, or “machines,” characterized urban life for decades to come. Local officials went out of their way to support the provision of illegal services demanded by their constituents. Urban machines existed to secure jobs for their loyal supporters and line the pockets of those at the highest levels of power. Deal-making blurred the lines between private enterprise and public service as everyone from mayors to local ward organizers benefited from the modernization of the American city. In the process, urban bosses ensured that the streets were paved, tenement buildings erected, sewer lines laid, and trolley tracks extended. But taxpayers footed the bill, which included outrageous amounts of money used for bribes and kickbacks. Local officials went out of their way to support the provision of illegal services, such as prostitution and gambling, demanded by their constituents. Money-grubbing politicians and police extorted “hush money” from brothels, gambling parlors, and unlicensed taverns. In turn, these places became absorbed into the bosses’ local empire. Extorted fees greased the palms of the cop on the beat and the judge on the take. Urban bosses had a vested interest in sponsoring new money-making venues for professional sports and supporting other forms of commercialized leisure activity. Baseball parks, boxing rings, and race tracks yielded huge sums in the form of kickbacks from contractors. Once built, stadiums and boxing rings generated profits indefinitely. Sporting events themselves also gave a city’s political, legal, and judicial leaders a chance to meet each other and seal business deals. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 558 ${bmicon} On a hot summer day in 1890, a young mother named Emily Scanlon, with her three-year-old daughter in tow, paid the five-cent admission fee to a popular ride called the Toboggan Slide at the Brandywine Springs Amusement Park near Wilmington, Delaware. The two of them ascended a stairwell to the top of the three-story-high structure and then stepped into a car that ran on a wooden trough. When the attendant released the brakes, the car descended, pulled by gravity. It moved slowly at first, then picked up speed around a curve. Suddenly, Emily Scanlon stood up in the car (perhaps to retrieve her hat, which had blown off ), and she and her daughter were thrown from the car. Mrs. Scanlon died instantly of a broken neck, but the youngster survived. Significantly, the tragedy did not provoke a shutdown of the ride or the installation of safety measures. Instead, park managers simply posted a sign that read, “Passengers must keep their seats.” Patrons continued to enjoy the thrills of the toboggan. Brandywine Springs boasted an ornate gateway that proclaimed “Let All Who Enter Here Leave Care Behind.” In cities around the country, amusement parks brought men and women, girls and boys together to enjoy merry-go-rounds, prizefights, and circus sideshows. By 1880, railroads and steamships were transporting crowds out of Manhattan to Coney Island, where working-class people mingled with the self-proclaimed “respectable” middle classes. Late in the century, Americans of all kinds began to sample a new realm of sensual experience—one of physical daring, material luxury, and visual fantasy—either as participants or as observers. The ride at Brandywine Springs was an early prototype of the modern roller coaster. The park afforded patrons not only the thrill of riding the Toboggan Slide but also the sights and sounds of a carnival. The calliope (pipe organ) music and the brightly colored signs beckoned visitors to an exciting world apart from the routine of everyday life. Ticket holders at Brandywine Springs were participating in an emerging consumer culture. With economic growth and high rates of productivity came the two ingredients necessary to a culture of consumption: industries that catered to the demand for novel experiences, or ready-made goods and people with enough money to buy them. Central to this culture was mass advertising, a form of appeal that sought to instill in consumers the desire for things that were new and visually attractive. Colorful spectacles of all kinds—whether in the form of a department store window or a well-publicized athletic event—became an integral part of American life. full view Baseball By the late 19th century, baseball had become entrenched as a popular sport all across America. Many believed it reinforced the nations pastoral ideal even as the country became more industrialized and urbanized. (Library of Congress) full view Football, 1920 Football, ca. 1920 (Photodisc, Inc.) full view Baseball, 1920 Baseball, ca. 1920 (Photodisc, Inc.) Public officials, college administrators, and ambitious entrepreneurs alike discovered that Americans craved new and stimulating forms of entertainment and were willing to pay for them. Athletic events began to draw large crowds, revealing their potential as big business. Traveling road shows promoted new products and services by charming their audiences with exotic performances. Though modest by today’s standards, such spectacles found a ready market in the United States and other countries. In the quarter-century after Reconstruction, three major sports began to attract large national audiences. Organized baseball had existed since 1846, when the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York met the New York Nine in Hoboken, New Jersey. (The score was 23 to 1, in favor of the Nine.) The National Baseball League, consisting of eight professional teams, was founded in 1876, the American League in 1900. In the 1880s, several new regulations—those governing the overhand pitch, foul balls, and swingless strikes—helped to standardize the game. Also in the 1880s, Walter Camp, a former Yale University football player, introduced rules—for instance, the system of downs and the center snap to the quarterback—that made CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 559 ${bmicon} that sport quicker and more competitive. Camp was also behind the selection of the first “All America” team (1889) to stimulate fan interest. By this time towns, high schools, and colleges were fielding football teams. full view Baseball - Lithograph Baseball, ca. 1920 (Photodisc, Inc.) Likewise, boxing emerged as a national, regulated sport. John L. Sullivan, an American, won renown as the world’s bare-knuckled champion in 1882, even as more and more fighters had started wearing gloves. Sullivan then joined a traveling theatrical group and demonstrated gloved boxing to enthusiastic crowds all over the country. These exhibitions revealed the fine line between displays of physical prowess and theatrical performances. In 1889, Sullivan defeated an opponent in a 75-round match, the last heavyweight, bare-knuckled championship. Performances based on skills of all kinds gained national audiences, as the career of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody reveals. Born in Iowa in 1846, Cody parlayed his early years as a Pony Express postal rider, cavalry scout, Indian fighter, and buffalo hunter into a form of mass entertainment. In his “Buffalo Bill Combination” show, cowboy and Indian actors performed skits depicting dramatic events in western history (from a European American point of view, at least). In 1876, Cody briefly left the stage to join a U.S. cavalry skirmish against the Sioux and Cheyenne. Soon he returned to the show to exhibit the dried scalp of the Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hand, whom he claimed he had killed in battle. Cody thus presented the subjugation of the Indians as a form of high drama, a scripted performance that audiences applauded from the comfort of their seats. In 1882 Cody produced “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” a traveling road show that featured sharpshooter Annie Oakley, cowboy musicians, and Sioux warriors performing authentic Native American dances. Sioux leader Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), long an admirer of Annie Oakley (he called her “Little Sure Shot”), joined the show in 1885. Like other Indians who PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 560 ${bmicon} worked for Cody, Sitting Bull took advantage of the opportunity to escape the confines of the reservation (in his case, Standing Rock in North Dakota). As a member of the “Wild West” troupe, he also enjoyed decent food and accommodations. At a time when whites were denigrating Indian culture, Sitting Bull affirmed that culture by demonstrating his shooting and riding skills. However, white audiences jeered him—they saw him as less an entertainer and more an enemy warrior—and he left after just a year. By the 1890s, Cody was playing to audiences in Europe as well as the United States, dramatizing a West that was fast disappearing. Still, the sight of Annie Oakley shooting glass balls and clay pigeons out of the air, as well as mounted cowboys leading “Custer’s last charge,” gave customers their money’s worth. One type of traveling road spectacle, the medicine show, had a single purpose: the selling of specific health-related products. In the 1880s N. T. (“Nevada Ned”) Oliver hawked an all-purpose remedy called Hindoo Patalka to gullible audiences in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. An ensemble of actors bedecked in Oriental costumes, with a live elephant as a prop, enthralled spectators. Nevada Ned himself testified to the increasing popularity of such presentations, noting that medicine shows were playing in “opera houses, halls, storerooms, ball parks, show boats, and tents, as well as doorways, street corners, and fairs.” Increasingly, entrepreneurs saw that many aspects of the American experience—sports, myths about western settlement, anxieties about health and public appearance—could generate profits for shrewd businesspeople. During the late nineteenth century, the act of shopping in cities for goods, especially luxury goods, became an adventure in itself. A new piece of the cityscape, the department store, welcomed customers into a world of luxury and abundance, a place of color, light, and glamour. These “palaces of consumption” showcased a variety of technological innovations. In Marshall Field’s “Grand Emporium” (Chicago), Wanamaker’s (Philadelphia), and Lord & Taylor (New York), shoppers glided from story to story on escalators and in elevators. Warmed by central heating, they browsed display cases, racks, and tables laden with enticing goods and illuminated by arc lighting. Their money streamed into cash registers or to a central clerk through cash conveyors. Thus, department stores not only offered a dazzling array of goods but also made shopping an exciting experience. This appealed particularly to middle-class women, who had the leisure time and the cash to indulge in day-long shopping excursions. In 1880 a New Yorker could arrive at Macy’s by taking the Sixth Avenue elevated train and spend the morning exploring any number of specialized departments: ribbons, women’s and children’s muslin underwear, toys, candy, books, men’s furnishings, china and glassware, and so on. Fatigued at noon, she might visit the lunchroom to partake of a modest meal and then devote the rest of her day to examining the colored dress silks, a new department established the year before. During the 1880s, Macy’s expanded its line of goods, introducing items as varied as dog collars and telescopes, mirrors, seeds and garden tools, and Goodyear’s rubber boots. The store sold brand names and products manufactured by the company itself, including Red Star silk and Red Star velveteen (a soft, plush fabric). One New York newspaper marveled Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 561 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Persuading People to Buy: Advertising in American History Over the last four centuries, American advertisers have become increasingly creative in using new media to reach potential customers. During the colonial period, inns and taverns identified themselves by hanging sideboards easily recognizable to pedestrians. Early newspapers, such as Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Gazette (founded in 1728), pioneered in print advertising. Franklin’s paper included descriptions of runaway slaves wanted by their owners as well as ads for slaves offered for sale. In the streets, peddlers called to passersby. Chimney sweeps hawked their services with their distinctive “Sweep O!” refrain. Dry goods merchants distributed cards (handbills) that listed their wares, from corduroy cloth to colorful ostrich feathers. The Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a two-shilling tax on every print advertisement. Colonial merchants rightly feared that this tax would hinder commercial development. In the antebellum period, mass circulation newspapers featured advertisements as prominently as news stories. In 1833 the New York Sun announced that it would provide “ALL THE NEWS OF THE DAY, and at the same time afford an advantageous medium for advertising.” After the Civil War, advertising served as the engine of an emerging consumer economy that depended on the marketing of large quantities of packaged goods. In the 1880s the Proctor & Gamble company initiated an aggressive marketing campaign, touting its brand of Ivory Soap (“99 and 44/100 percent pure”) with full-page ads in monthly magazines. (In 1890 the company sold 30 million cakes of the soap.) Traveling road shows advertised patent medicines and at the same time entertained young and old. The retail sales concerns Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck took advantage of Rural Free Delivery offered by the U.S. Postal Service and sent lavishly illustrated catalogues to households all over the country. In the fall of 1908, Sears distributed 3.7 million copies of its catalogue. An African American businesswoman, Madame C. J. Walker, built a successful cosmetics company through a variety of modern means; she used print advertising, attractive packaging, endorsements by such celebrities as dancer Josephine Baker, and door-to-door saleswomen called “Walker agents,” to enhance her own fame and sell more products. By the 1920s large advertising agencies were drawing on research in the field of psychology in an effort to create ads that appealed to people’s deepest desires as well as their deepest insecurities. In 1957, in The Hidden Persuaders, author Vance Packard argued that advertisers used subtle psychological techniques to persuade people to buy goods and services they did not need. In its 1976 Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Council, Inc. decision, the Supreme Court ruled that advertising was a form of free speech, protected under the Constitution. As a result, professionals such as physicians and lawyers began to advertise their services. Innovations in communication and transportation opened new channels of advertising. As early as the 1920s, billboards and the sides of barns were used to advertise products to automobile passengers. Radio advertisers specialized in catchy slogans and jingles. In the 1950s television ads became increasingly sophisticated in their use of music and striking visuals. By the late twentieth century, movies and orbiting space capsules provided opportunities for product placement. Airplanes flew advertising banners over crowded summertime beaches and packed football stadiums. Telemarketers pitched their wares over the telephone. Channel One, a closed-circuit television outlet, offered corporate-sponsored educational programming for public school students. In 1999, U.S. companies, entrepreneurs, and individuals spent more than $200 billion to advertise. By this time, advertising represented a blend of traditional and high-technology methods. The World Wide Web was full of ads, but passersby on city streets were still receiving a barrage of handbills advertising a variety of goods and services. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 562 ${bmicon} at the selection and pronounced the store “a bazaar, a museum, a hotel and a great fancy store all combined.” The department store was an exclusively urban phenomenon, but mass merchandising reached far beyond cities. The material riches of American society became accessible to rural people through the mail-order catalogue. This marketing device was pioneered in 1872 by the Chicago company Montgomery Ward, the official supply house for the Farmers’ Grange. On homesteads throughout the Midwest, family members gathered to pore over the thousands of items displayed in “The Great Wish Book.” The company’s motto? “Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.” Farm wives delighted in the latest Parisian fashions, their husbands pondered the intricacies of McCormick threshing machinery, and the children studied the newest line of toys and fishing rods. Late in the decade, a competitor appeared on the scene in the form of the Sears, Roebuck Catalogue. A former mail-order watch salesman, Richard Sears soon gained a reputation as a man who could “sell a breath of fresh air.” Sears helped pioneer the field of modern advertising hyperbole, claiming, for example, that the sewing machine he offered was the “Best on Earth.” Selling was fast becoming a circus sideshow. The mass production needed to satisfy eager customers itself depended on mass advertising, an enterprise still in its infancy in the 1880s. Yet, some of the principles that would shape the future of this business were in place even at this early date. For instance, soon after the Civil War, the makers of Sozodont dentifrice (toothpaste) plastered the name of their product all over weekly religious magazines and more mainstream publications, such as Harper’s and Scribner’s. They labeled the natural landscape as well. Indeed, the word Sozodont on Maiden’s Rock in Red Wing, Minnesota, was so large that steamboat passengers on the Mississippi River three miles away could plainly read it. The career of L. Frank Baum illustrates the convergence of modern ideas about theatrical performances and sales spectacles. Born to a wealthy German American family in 1856, Baum grew up in upstate New York. His father had made a great deal of money from the oil industry, particularly Pennsylvania gushers that yielded a distinctive emerald green oil. The younger Baum was drawn to what he called the “dream life,” with its guilt-free indulgence in pleasure. Together with his wife, he founded a theater troupe that toured the Midwest in the 1880s. He then made a brief foray into merchandising. He marketed Baum’s Castorine (axle grease) and opened his own department store, Baum’s Bazaar, in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in the northeast corner of the state. There, he also became editor of the town newspaper, the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Baum eventually moved his family to Chicago, where he embarked on a career as a department store window designer. He founded the National Association of Window Trimmers in 1898 and started a trade magazine, The Show Window. The magazine encouraged designers to strive for a “sumptuous display” of goods and to highlight their rich textures and colors. Baum went on to become a popular writer of children’s fiction. His famous book The Wizard of Oz (1900), an allegory of late-nineteenth-century life, covered themes as diverse as feminism and rural poverty. An accomplished and successful showman, Baum understood that Americans were eager to buy fantasy wherever they could find it: in a theater, department store, or children’s book. Whether positioned behind a department store display case or in a show window, featured in a magazine advertisement or in a mail-order catalogue, the face of modern mer- CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 563 ${bmicon} chandising was bound to be young, white, and well-to-do, brimming with health and material well-being. The new consumer culture was marked by a glaring double standard: Although advertisers marketed to the millions, they established a very narrow standard of the “normal” American. By the late 1870s, intense conflict over fundamental issues had all but evaporated from national politics. Although ethnic and cultural loyalties continued to inflame local and state elections, Republicans and Democrats at the national level disagreed about little except the tariff. Adhering to tradition, Republicans favored a higher tariff that would benefit domestic businesses by making imported goods more expensive. In contrast, Democrats argued that a higher tariff, and resulting higher prices for goods produced in the United States, would harm consumers. Members of the Republican Party called themselves the Grand Army of the Republic; they “waved the bloody shirt”—that is, reminded voters that many of their Democratic opponents, especially those in the South, had supported secession a generation before. Still, the two major parties openly shared a similar goal: to win as many jobs as possible for their respective supporters. Politics served as a vehicle for patronage and favors rather than as a conduit for ideas and alternative visions of the nation’s future. Many politicians also shared a belief in the idea of laissez-faire (a French phrase meaning to leave alone, referring to the absence of government interference in the economy). Laissez-faire was actually a flexible concept, invoked to justify government indifference in some areas but government intervention in others. Indeed, politicians tended to favor laissez-faire in PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 564 ${bmicon} social matters more than in the economy. Thus, support for manufacturers and railroads in the form of tariff protection and land grants, for example, was justified. At the same time, however, Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court were reluctant to enact bold measures to redress the growing gap between rich and poor. In fact, certain clergy, businesspeople, and university professors sought to explain and defend the inequality between the captains of industry and the masses of ill-paid laborers. They argued that the system of industrial capitalism was desirable because it was “natural.” full view Mark Twain’s Home Mark Twain’s Home (Photodisc, Inc.) Nevertheless, many advocates of laissez-faire in social welfare policy supported government intervention in the economy. These observers argued that the government was justified in providing tangible support (in the form of tariff protection and land grants, for example) to businesses such as manufacturers and railroads. In 1873 writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) published his first novel, which he cowrote with friend and fellow writer Charles Dudley Warner. Titled The Gilded Age, the book satirized the trend toward corruption in public affairs and the wild financial speculation that produced both poverty and great wealth. The growth of large businesses that received economic and political support from government officials served to enrich employers, investors, and politicians at the expense of workers and farmers. The term Gilded Age became synonymous with the excess and extravagance on the part of politicians and businessmen alike during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1880 the undistinguished President Rutherford B. Hayes chose not to run for office again. That summer the Republicans nominated James A. Garfield of Ohio, a former mule driver who had become a Civil War general. To counter the “bloody-shirt” effect, Democrats put forth their own former Union general: Winfield S. Hancock, who had been wounded at Gettysburg. (Hancock had nevertheless garnered the support of southern whites while presiding over a military Reconstruction district.) The campaign itself was notable for its lack of attention to victims of the recent nationwide depression, such as industrial laborers and southern and midwestern farmers. Garfield won the popular vote by a narrow margin but overwhelmed Hancock in the Electoral College. TABLE 16-5 The Election of 1880 Candidate Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote James A. Garfield Republican 4,453,295 214 Winfield S. Hancock Democratic 4,414,082 155 James B. Weaver Greenback-Labor 308,578 0 Garfield’s arrival in the White House set off a race for patronage jobs among loyal Republicans. Indeed, overwhelmed by office-seekers, the new president remarked, “My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?” Then on July 2, 1881, disaster struck. Charles J. Guiteau, who had unsuccessfully sought the position of U.S. consul in Paris, shot Garfield in a Washington, D.C., train station. Garfield languished for a few months, finally dying on September 19. Guiteau tried to finance his own legal defense by asking for contributions from politicians who might enjoy political gains as a result of the president’s death. This audacious strategy did not prevent him from being convicted and executed. Vice President Chester A. Arthur, a former New York politician, assumed the reins of government. Arthur’s administration supported certain forms of government intervention in society, or “social engineering.” Arthur and others believed that laissez-faire policies had their limits; strong measures were needed to counter what they and other conservatives considered immoral personal behavior. In 1882 Congress passed the Edmunds Act. Targeting Mormons, the act outlawed polygamy (the practice of having more than one spouse at a time), took the right to vote away from the law’s offenders, and sent a five-member commission to Utah to oversee local elections. That same year, Congress responded to pressure from West Coast CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 565 ${bmicon} European American politicians, the San Francisco’s Workingmen’s Party in particular, and approved the Chinese Exclusion Act. The act became the first piece of legislation to bar a particular group from entering the United States. Supported by congressmen from other areas of the country as well, this measure was approved after a series of hearings in California and on Capitol Hill. In a petition to Congress, California legislators had charged that Chinese men posed a direct threat to “the most needy and most deserving of our people—those who are engaged, or entitled to be engaged, in industrial pursuits in our midst.” In fact, most Chinese immigrants took jobs that native-born whites shunned. Moreover, unemployment among California white manufacturing workers in the 1870s was caused not by Chinese competitors, but by the flood of cheap eastern-made goods carried into the state by the transcontinental railroad. As eastern goods entered California, manufacturers in the West laid off workers and closed factories. The Chinese, thus, became scapegoats for groups hit hard by larger economic changes. At the national level, then, members of both political parties sought to use congressional power to shape the size and ethnic composition of the domestic workplace. In 1883 the Supreme Court hurt the cause of blacks’ civil rights by declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. (The act had guaranteed blacks equal rights to public accommodations and facilities.) This decision, called the Civil Rights cases, involved five separate cases from Kansas, California, Missouri, New York, and Tennessee. The main issue focused on exclusions of blacks from hotels, railroad cars, and theaters. The court held that state governments could not discriminate on the basis of race but that private individuals could do so. This decision put an official stamp of approval on racist practices of employers, hotels, restaurants, and other providers of jobs and services. Arthur surprised his critics by embracing the cause of civil service reform. This movement sought to inject professional standards into public service and rid the country of the worst excesses of the corrupt “spoils system,” where political victors put loyal supporters into public jobs regardless of their qualifications. In response to Garfield’s assassination by Guiteau, the disappointed patronage-seeker, Congress passed the Pendleton Act (1883). This measure established a merit system for federal job applicants and created the Civil Service Commission, which administered competitive examinations to candidates in certain classifications. Within a year, the new regulations covered 10 percent of all federal offices, or about 14,000 jobs. In 1884 Arthur fell ill (he would die shortly), and the Republicans nominated James G. Blaine of Maine as their candidate for the presidency. Blaine, who had benefited from corrupt deals in the past, offended the sensibilities of a group of reform-minded Republicans, who called themselves Mugwumps. (The term reportedly had its roots in an Indian word that meant “holier than thou.”) As a result, Blaine was bested in the national election by the former mayor of Buffalo, Grover Cleveland, who became the first Democratic president in 28 years. Both nominees had avoided making controversial pronouncements on policy issues. Instead, the campaign had a markedly personal tone. Cleveland publicly accepted responsibility for a son born out of wedlock, although apparently there was more than one candidate for paternity of the child. Still, he was unable to avoid the taunts of his rivals, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” The Democrats countered with a prophetic chant: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.” TABLE 16-6 The Election of 1884 Candidate Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Grover Cleveland Democratic 4,874,986 219 James G. Blaine Republican 4,851,981 182 Throughout the 1880s, Congress and the chief executive applied the laissez-faire principle selectively—for example, to the status of Indians. Critics of federal Indian policy had come forward to expose, as writer Helen Hunt Jackson put it, the “cheating, robbing, breaking promises” that had devastated the native population since the nation’s founding. Published in 1881, Hunt’s book A Century of Dishonor called for the “protection of the law to the Indian’s rights of PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 566 ${bmicon} property.” Moved to act, Congress passed the Dawes General Allotment (Severalty) Act. The new act was intended to improve the economic condition of Indians by eliminating common ownership of tribal lands in favor of a system of private property. Presumably, the government would withdraw from protecting and supplying Indians (on reservations) and let the free market based on private property run its course. The law distributed plots of land to individual Indians who renounced traditional customs. Such people could gain American citizenship, and their families could receive land grants of up to 160 acres. The law also encouraged these landowners to become sedentary farmers and to adopt “other habits of civilized life.” In the end, however, the act amounted to little more than a land-grab on the part of whites; between 1887 and 1900, Indian-held lands decreased from 138 million acres to 78 million acres. The Dawes Act intensified the deep distress of Plains Indians, now deprived of their vast hunting grounds. full view Native American Land Cessions Almost as soon as foreigners began moving to North America, Native Americans were forced to cede their land. The problem was the result of a difference in approach to the relationship with land. By the 1880s, Native Americans had lost most of their territories. full view Grover Cleveland New York Governor Cleveland was elected president in 1884 and again in 1892, making him the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. (Library of Congress) By the 1880s, local citizens, through the Grange and their elected public officials, were calling for the states to restrict the monopolistic practices of the railroads. Nevertheless, in Wabash v. Illinois (1886), the Supreme Court invalidated a state law regulating railroads, ruling that only Congress, and not the states, could control interstate transportation. The next year Congress took the initiative and passed the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. This legislation outlawed secretive combinations, such as pools, and mandated that the railroads charge all shippers the same rates and refrain from giving rebates to their largest customers. The act also established the Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee and stabilize the railroad industry. Congress, thus, acknowledged that the public interest demanded some form of business regulation, although enforcement of the act was less than vigorous. Cleveland invoked laissez-faire principles in 1887 when he vetoed legislation that would have provided seeds for hard-pressed farmers in Texas. As the president put it, “Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.” Furthermore, with his insistence on lower tariff rates, Cleveland alarmed members of his own party, who feared he was handing the Republicans an advantage for the 1888 campaign. As it turned out, most Americans favored government protection of domestic manufacturing in the form of higher CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 567 ${bmicon} tariffs. The Republicans exploited Cleveland’s unpopular views on this issue, nominating Benjamin Harrison, grandson of President William Henry (“Tippecanoe”) Harrison. The younger Harrison defeated his rival in the electoral college but not in the popular vote. TABLE 16-7 The Election of 1888 Candidate Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Benjamin Harrison Republican 5,447,129 233 Grover Cleveland Democratic 5,537,857 168 Clinton B. Fisk Prohibition 249,506 0 Anson J. Streeter Union Labor 146,935 0 The principle of government laissez-faire was of little use in addressing a central paradox of the late nineteenth century: The free enterprise system was being undermined by the very forms of business organization it had spawned and nourished. Trusts and combinations were inherently hostile to competition. In 1890 Congress passed a piece of landmark legislation, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, designed to outlaw trusts and large business combinations of all kinds. However, the act lacked adequate enforcement mechanisms, and many industrialists simply ignored it. Nevertheless, together with its predecessor, the Interstate Commerce Act, the Sherman Act acknowledged that the largest businesses routinely fixed prices, to the detriment of smaller rival businesses and consumers alike. In the coming years, lawyers and government officials would find the act effective primarily as a tool against another form of “combination”: labor unions. The Standard Oil Company, which boldly defied the provisions of the act and continued its trust-building, would not be called to account (and dissolved) until 1911. full view Harrison and Morton Campaign Ad Note the great presidents hovering over candidates Benjamin Harrison and Levi P. Morton in this campaign ad. No Gilded Age president would approach the reputations of those earlier Republicans. (Library of Congress) In the late nineteenth century, human-made devices and engineering feats helped create a new social order, one marked by a few very wealthy industrialists, a growing middle class, and an increasingly diverse workforce of ill-paid field and factory hands. Brazenly borrowing from the theories of Charles Darwin, a British naturalist who had pioneered the study of evolution, some prominent clergy, businesspeople, journalists, and university professors sought to defend this new order as God-ordained, or “natural.” These observers drew parallels between Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” and the workings of modern society. (In his book Origin of the Species, Darwin had discussed the study of animals, not people or societies.) In the United States, Social Darwinists warned that “unnatural” forms of intervention—specifically, labor unions or social welfare legislation—were misguided, dangerous, and ultimately doomed to failure. In essence, Social Darwinists distorted a sound scientific theory, misusing it to justify exploitation of the poor and laboring classes. The ideology of Social Darwinism evolved in response to class conflict and other forms of social turbulence in the 1870s and 1880s. For example, Thomas A. Scott invoked its language when he argued that railroad industry wage cuts were the result of a policy “founded on sound business principles” and that those principles merely reflected “the instincts of humanity.” About the same time, famed Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher cited what he called “the great laws of political economy” to preach the virtues of poverty (“it was fit that man should eat the bread of affliction”) and the evils of labor unions. In Beecher’s view, unions amounted to “tyrannical opposition to all law and order.” Thus, they “could not be defended” and should not be tolerated. However, Beecher and like-minded thinkers agreed that the government had the right and the obligation to come to the rescue of private companies threatened by angry workers or consumers. These observers also made a distinction between public subsidies to railroads and tariff protection for domestic manufacturers on one hand and public intervention on behalf of workers on the other. Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner declared that society was like a living organism. For the species to remain healthy, individuals must prosper or decline according to their inherent characteristics. “Society, therefore, does not need any care or supervision,” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 568 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Andrew Carnegie and the “Gospel of Wealth” In an article titled “Wealth,” published in the North American Review in 1889, steel manufacturer Andrew Carnegie defended the amassing of large fortunes on the part of a few. He hailed this trend as a sign of progress. “Wealth,” North American Review The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In the former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilized man then was. When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to-day measures the change which has come with civilization. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor…. Whether the change be for good or ill, it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticise the inevitable. Carnegie believed that wealthy people had the responsibility to give away their money before they died, although he had distinct ideas about to whom—or to what—such money should be given. He elaborated on what came to be called the “gospel of wealth”: There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor—a reign of harmony—another ideal, differing indeed, from that of the Communist in requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization…. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many, because it is administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this, and to agree that the great sums gathered by some of their fellow-citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered through the course of many years in trifling amounts. In 1901, Carnegie sold his steel company to banker J. P. Morgan for $480 million. By the time of his death, Carnegie had given away an estimated $350 million to a variety of causes and institutions. Source: Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review (1889). Sumner wrote in his 1883 treatise, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other. These views rationalized not only the hierarchies of the workplace but also the triumph of “Anglo Saxons” on the North American continent and beyond. Editors of the New York Times interpreted Darwin’s ideas as suggesting that “the red man will be driven out, and the white man will take possession. This is not justice, but it is destiny.” In his book Our Country (1885), the Reverend Josiah Strong also drew on the ideas of Social Darwinism to claim that just as the fittest plants and animals endure in the natural kingdom, so “civilized” whites would eventually displace “barbarous,” dark-skinned peoples, whether on the High Plains of South Dakota or on the savannas of Africa. CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 569 ${bmicon} Not all Americans studied or debated the theories of Charles Darwin, of course. Nevertheless, middle-class opinion-makers, many of them Victorian Protestants, believed that their own religious and cultural values remained culturally superior to those of other groups of people, at home and abroad. The United States was becoming increasingly diverse in both economic and ethnic terms. At the same time, white, prosperous, native-born Protestants contended that they set the standards for the rest of the nation. These standards revolved around the middle-class domestic ideal, with its rigidly proscribed gender roles, devotion to personal achievement (for men at least), and commitment to moral suasion (that is, regulating a person’s behavior by appealing to his or her conscience). Agents of the Victorian middle class included schoolteachers, clergy, magazine editors, business leaders, and other well-educated people able and willing to influence the beliefs of others. Some historians suggest that the great captains of industry were the chief representatives of widely held values in late-nineteenth-century America. Men such as Carnegie and Rockefeller had the vision and personal ambition necessary to build large corporate enterprises. They became fabulously wealthy by providing the United States with the ingredients necessary to an economic revolution: steel, oil, and other materials. Their ideology of unbridled individualism encouraged many people to aspire to entrepreneurial independence: the tailor’s hope that he would someday own his own store, the waiter’s dream of opening his own restaurant. The explosion of economic activity during this period—a second American industrial revolution—widened the middle class and lent credence to the notion of widespread upward mobility, modest though it was in most cases. Nevertheless, a case can be made that engineers were the true representatives of the age. As designers of railroad routes, gravity-defying skyscrapers, and new systems of shop floor management, they oversaw the technical aspects of economic growth and development. Engineers melded science with mass production to yield a form of capitalism that thrived on consumers’ deepest desires and anxieties. That enterprise was not without complications. Throughout the nation, various groups rejected standardization in favor of local tradition or new forms of collective action. Thus, politicians and the Social Darwinists were forced to defend their outlook on life. Some of their critics advanced the idea that society was not a living organism at all. Rather, it was like a machine, a creation of people who had the ability—and the duty—to repair or adjust it. Around the country, in fact, the standardizers met with stiff resistance. Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/bellhome.html This site contains papers from 1862 to 1839 as well as a chronology, images, selected documents, and interpretive essays about Bell. John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company www.micheloud.com/FXM/SO/ This study with accompanying images by François Micheloud tells of the rise of Rockefeller and his mammoth company. The Transcontinental Railroad www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rail.html This Museum of the City of San Francisco site has excellent information on the railroad. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 570 ${bmicon} Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880–1920 www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/detroit/dethome.html This Library of Congress collection has thousands of photographs from turn-of-the-century America. Shadow Ball: The Negro Baseball Leagues www.negro-league.columbus.oh.us/jimcrow1.htm This Harlan William article examines the African American baseball leagues. African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murry Collections, 1818–1907 www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphome.html This collection includes writings of famous African Americans, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love. The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850–1920 www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html This American Memory site brings together scores of primary sources and photographs about the historical formations and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America’s natural heritage. Inside an American Factory: The Westinghouse Works, 1904 www.lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/papr/west/westhome.html Part of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, this site provides a glimpse inside a turn-of-the-century factory. Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). Jon Gjerde, The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830–1917 (1997). Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (2000). T. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (1994). Walter Licht, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (1995). Carroll Pursell, The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology (1995). Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (1982). C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (1951). James R. Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers, 1894–1922 (1987). Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998). Thomas C. Cochran, Two Hundred Years of American Business (1977). Wendy Gamber, The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860–1930 (1997). Thomas Parke Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970 (1989). A. J. Millard, Edison and the Business of Innovation (1990). Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920 (1975). David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (1990). Donald J. Pisani, Water, Land, and Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy, 1850–1920 (1996). C. J. Schmitz, The Growth of Big Business in the United States and Western Europe, 1850–1939 (1993). George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu, The American Railroad Network, 1861–1890 (1956). David O. Whitten, The Emergence of Giant Enterprise, 1860–1914 (1983). Gunther Paul Barth, City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (1980). Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (1999). Howard P. Chudacoff and Judith E. Smith, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 5th ed. (2000). CHAPTER 16 ###8226; STANDARDIZING THE NATION 571 ${bmicon} William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991). Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000). Eric Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban: The Development of U.S. Cities and Towns, 1780–1980 (1988). David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (1993). Steven A. Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (1989). Stanley K. Schultz, Constructing Urban Culture: American Cities and City Planning, 1800–1920 (1989). Robert Twombly, Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work (1986). Boris Emmet and John E. Jeuck, Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company (1950). Allen Guttmann, A Whole New Ball Game: An Interpretation of American Sports (1988). John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (1978). Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory and Popular History (2000). William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (1993). Kathy Lee Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in New York City, 1880 to 1920 (1986). Robert C. Toll, On with the Show! The First Century of Show Business in America (1976). Thomas L. Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science: the American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (1977). Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1914, rev. ed. (1955). Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth-Century America (1977). Valerie S. Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy (1990). Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter16 To Chapter 16 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 572 ${bmicon}         Resistance to Legal and Military Authority       Revolt in the Workplace       Crosscurrents of Reform       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 573 ${bmicon} IN THE SPRING OF 1889 MEN IN SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, NORTHERN NEW MEXICO TERRITORY, armed themselves and donned masks. Mounting their horses, they rode out to attack their enemies. As members of a secret organization called las Gorras Blancas (the Whitecaps), they banded together in the dead of the night and destroyed the fences of local cattle ranchers, chopping the wooden posts to pieces and scattering the barbed wire. In some of their raids, the rebels shot and wounded ranchers. Over the next year and a half, las Gorras Blancas broadened their targets. They burned bridges, haystacks, and piles of lumber; cut telegraph wires; and took axes to electric light poles and to railroad ties belonging to the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. The membership of the group overlapped with that of the Knights of Labor, a national labor union that boasted 20 local assemblies in San Miguel County, east of Santa Fe. On the night of March 11, 1890, las Gorras Blancas nailed pieces of paper to the buildings of East Las Vegas, the largest town in the county. These pages, copies of the insurgents’ “platform,” declared, “Our purpose is to protect the rights and interests of the people in general; especially those of the helpless classes.” Who were these determined nightriders? They consisted of Hispanos—Spanish-speaking natives of the area. Their movement began when Juan Jose Herrera, together with his two brothers, Pablo and Nicanor, organized their neighbors in an effort to block European American ranchers from fencing their land. Labeled las masas de los hombres pobres (the masses, the poor people) by a local newspaper, las Gorras Blancas were desperately struggling to preserve a traditional way of life that was rapidly disappearing. Fenced lands prevented the area’s Hispanic settlers from grazing their stock herds in the customary, open-range manner. The fence-cutters believed they were upholding American principles of justice and fair play. Released from jail in the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, a group of them marched down the main street. At the head of their procession, women waved the American flag and sang “John Brown’s Body,” a song beloved by Union supporters during the Civil War. Many Hispanos lived in adobe (baked-clay) dwellings in small river valley villages surrounded by breathtaking mesas, ponderosa pine forests, and high dry plains. In addition to raising chickens and grazing sheep, families grew chiles, pinto beans, squash, and wheat. Together, villagers relied on the common lands that had come down to them from their ancestors—land originally bestowed through grants from Spain and then Mexico. After the Civil War, European American interlopers—sheep and cattle ranchers, lawyers, speculators, commercial lumberers, and the railroads—began to encroach on these common lands. Through local courts, the newcomers installed a system of private property that granted exclusive ownership to single individuals. It was these groups, with their fences and their laws governing land title registration, that las Gorras Blancas targeted. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 574 ${bmicon} Northern New Mexico had long witnessed battles between successive waves of settlers; for example, Mexicanos had fought Comanches and Jicarilla Apaches for the land in earlier generations. Yet the upheaval in San Miguel County in 1889 and 1890 did not simply pit Hispanic subsistence farmers against European American “land grabbers.” The Spanish-speaking population itself was divided between poor villagers and elite ricos (merchants and landowners). Members of las Gorras Blancas quarreled among themselves over whose fences to cut and whose barns to burn. They also broke with European American members of the Knights, insisting that, as Hispanos, they had the right and the obligation to protect their common lands, by force if necessary. The insurgents even renounced some of their own Hispanic political leaders. These men, they charged, had become corrupted by greed and were willing to do the bidding of European American interlopers. Las Gorras Blancas had only mixed success. They managed to discourage new European Americans from settling in the area, and they prevented the railroads from buying more rail ties in northern New Mexico. Yet the nightriders could not stem the tide of land loss throughout the Southwest. The Court of Private Land Claims, established in 1891 by the U.S. government, resolved land disputes between Hispanic and European American claimants. Of the more than 35 million acres of land in dispute in the early 1890s, Hispanic claimants received title to little more than 2 million acres—barely one-twentieth of the land they had held in common. Las Gorras Blancas represented a unique response to local conditions. But it was also part of a growing, nationwide movement against the standards imposed by industrialization and capitalism. Around the country, a wide variety of individuals and organizations emerged in the late 1870s and the 1880s to challenge employers, landlords, and military and government officials. Members of these latter groups responded with a challenge of their own: Business, they proclaimed, must be allowed to develop fully and freely without “unnatural” intervention in the form of regulatory legislation or grassroots rebellions such as that of las Gorras Blancas. It is difficult to generalize about those who contested the emerging order. Even their own names could be misleading. In the early 1890s, another group called “white caps,” this one in Mississippi, consisted of whites who terrorized black landowners and mill workers. And although the Knights of Labor was a national union, it shaped its program in accordance with local issues. In San Miguel County, for instance, the issue was land—who controlled it and under what conditions. In Washington, D.C., the Knights’ concern was the welfare of workers in the building trades. The Richmond, Virginia, Knights pioneered interracial organizing, living up to the group’s motto, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” In contrast, the San Francisco Knights spearheaded the move to bar Chinese laborers from the United States and to limit job opportunities for those who remained. Indeed, groups that challenged the authority of government and large business interests often disagreed among themselves about goals and strategies for change. Las Gorras Blancas had only mixed success. The nightriders could not stem the tide of land loss throughout the Southwest. Rejecting new business principles that favored aggressive profit-seeking above all else, nightriders, union organizers, machine breakers, visionary prophets, investigative journalists, and settlement house workers all offered alternative visions for America. Members of these groups debated among themselves the changes overtaking American society and the means to control them. Some wielded pens or typewriters to effect change; others took photographs, collected data, or conducted interviews. Still others shouldered arms or torched haystacks. In some cases they sought to preserve local religious and social customs; in others they promoted the health and welfare of factory workers. CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 575 ${bmicon} Some proponents of change advocated radical action that challenged the very foundations of American society. Others stressed the need to reform, but not change radically, certain elements of society and politics. Radicals and reformers alike derived both ideas and inspiration from their European counterparts, for the issues confronting a rapidly industrializing society were not unique to the United States during this period. Nevertheless, Americans remained divided in their vision of the good and just society—a vision that would require the commitment of more than any one political party, labor union, reform association, or band of rebels to become reality. America’s march toward national economic centralization and integration was not steady. On the battlefield and in the courts, European Americans pressed their advantage, but these efforts met with stiff resistance from a variety of aggrieved groups. Members of these groups rightly believed they had much to lose from so-called progress. Often the term was used to protect the interests of white men of property and did not result in any real progress for people of color. Violent prejudice characterized the tactics of elites in expanding and preserving their privileges; vulnerable groups used various strategies to protect themselves and assert their own interests. European Americans repeatedly used the notion of “racial” difference as a justification for depriving darker-skinned peoples of their claims to land, jobs, and even life itself. For example, California lawmakers at both the state and local levels approved legislation that discriminated against the Chinese as workers and as parents of school-aged children. In an effort to seek redress, some Chinese took their claims to court. In a similar vein, prejudice against African Americans assumed the form of discriminatory legislation and random violence. Blacks chafed under restrictions intended to bar them from good jobs and from associating with white people on an equal basis. Varieties of black resistance to white authority included migration out of the South, creation of community institutions, and violent retaliation. For their part, during the late 1880s the Plains Indians responded to encroaching railroads, settlers, and military regiments by embracing a movement of spiritual regeneration. On the Plains, whites, and especially U.S. military officers, perceived this movement as more dangerous than an armed uprising, and they reacted accordingly. In San Francisco in 1878 Irish-born Denis Kearney founded the Workingmen’s Party of California, composed primarily of unemployed whites. Kearney and others agitated for the violent expulsion of Chinese from jobs. They blamed Chinese shoemakers, tailors, and cigarmakers for the distress that native-born factory workers and tradespeople were suffering. One critic remarked that the temperance Kearney “practiced and preached as to liquor and tobacco did not extend to opinions or their expression.” In rural California, job-hungry whites formed anti-Chinese groups such as the American and European Labor Association, founded in Colusa County in 1882. The association also included employers who resented Chinese demands for equal pay. (Most of these immigrants received two-thirds the wages of their white counterparts for the same work.) Yet despite all the personal and legal discrimination, the Chinese resisted. Opposition to the Chinese hardened in the 1880s. In San Francisco, the Knights of Labor and the Workingmen’s Party of California helped to engineer the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, approved by Congress in 1882. This measure denied any additional Chinese laborers PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 576 ${bmicon} entry into the country while allowing some Chinese merchants and students to immigrate. (Put to the voters of California in 1879, the possibility of total exclusion of Chinese had garnered 150,000 votes for and only 900 against.) In railroad towns and mining camps, vigilantes looted and burned Chinese communities, in some cases murdering or expelling their inhabitants. In 1885 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, white workers massacred 28 Chinese and drove hundreds out of town in the wake of an announcement by Union Pacific officials that the railroad would begin hiring the lower-paid immigrants. While white women cheered from the sidelines, their husbands and brothers burned the Chinese section of the town to the ground. Such attacks erupted more and more frequently throughout the West in the late 1880s and into the 1890s. White men contended that they must present a united front against all Chinese, who, they claimed, threatened the economic well-being of white working-class communities. Whites held that the Chinese, with their distinctive customs, would never fit into American life. Nevertheless, early on the Chinese demonstrated an understanding and appreciation of American political and legal processes. Beginning in Gold Rush days, Chinese immigrants had taken their grievances to court. Chan Young sued for citizenship in San Francisco’s federal district court in 1855. In 1862 in the same city, Ling Sing protested the $2.50 personal tax levied on Chinese exclusively. The California Supreme Court agreed (in Ling Sing v. Washburn ) that the group could not be singled out for special taxes. In the 1870s Chinese merchants used the provisions of the Civil Rights Act to challenge state and local laws that forbade them from holding certain jobs, living in white neighborhoods, and testifying in court, among other legal liabilities. In the fall of 1885 Chinese residents of Rock Springs, Wyoming, wrote a lengthy appeal to the Chinese consul in San Francisco, relating their story of the massacre and appealing for justice; 559 people signed the document. In San Francisco in 1885 laundry operator Yick Wo was convicted under an 1880 municipal law prohibiting the construction of wooden laundries without a license. A native of China, Yick Wo had arrived in the United States in 1861. By the time of his arrest, he had operated a legal laundry for 22 years. When he applied for a license, the board of supervisors turned CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 577 ${bmicon} him down. His prominent European Americans lawyers soon learned that the board had denied licenses to all Chinese laundry operators who applied. However, it had granted licenses to almost all of their white counterparts. In 1885 the lawyers petitioned the California Supreme Court, which upheld Yick Wo’s arrest. The lawyers continued their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, maintaining that the board of supervisors intended to bar Chinese from independent laundry work altogether. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), the Supreme Court reversed the state court’s decision. The higher court held that the San Francisco laundry-licensing board had engaged in the discriminatory application of a law that on the surface was nondiscriminatory. (The local board had admitted favoritism toward white license applicants but offered no justification for its actions.) The majority opinion noted, “The very idea that one may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another” has been considered “intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.” (In 1954, the Supreme Court cited this case [Hernandez v. Texas] when it overturned the criminal conviction of a Mexican American defendant who showed that the county judicial system systematically excluded people of his background from jury service.) Still, many cases challenging discriminatory laws never made it to the nation’s highest court. And state and local courts in general often refused to acknowledge that Chinese immigrants had any civil rights at all. (Chinese immigrants were not granted citizenship until World War II, although their children born in this country qualified as citizens.) In 1885 the California Supreme Court heard the case Tapev. Hurley, brought by Joseph and Mary Tape on behalf of their daughter Mamie. Joseph Tape was a Chinese immigrant with some standing in the San PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 578 ${bmicon} Francisco Chinese community. Mary Tape had been raised in a Shanghai orphanage and had come to the United States with missionaries when she was 11 years old. She grew up to speak English fluently and dressed as a European American. Their daughter Mamie was quite westernized as well. Even so, Mamie Tape was barred from the city’s public school system. The school board claimed that Mamie’s presence in the classroom would be “very mentally and morally detrimental” to her classmates. The Tapes sued the city and won (Tape v. Hurley), but the school board retaliated by creating a separate school for children of Asian descent within Chinatown. Mary Tape wrote an angry letter to the board: “Dear Sirs, Will you please to tell me! Is it a disgrace to be Born a Chinese? Didn’t God make us all!!! What right! have you to bar my children out of the school?” In the end, the Tapes decided to enroll their two children in the segregated school. Yet their legal protest kept alive the ideal of equality under the law. In other instances, local white prejudice overwhelmed even Chinese who sought legal redress from violence and discrimination. In 1886 the Chinese living in the Wood River mining district in southern Idaho faced down a group of whites who had met and announced that all Chinese had three months to leave town. Members of the Chinese community promptly hired their own lawyers and took out an advertisement in the local paper stating their intention to hold their ground. As a community they managed to survive. Still, their numbers dropped precipitously throughout Idaho as whites managed to hound many of them out of the state. In 1886 Henry Grady, the young editor of the Atlanta Constitution, traveled north to deliver a speech to the New England Society of New York. A graduate of the University of Georgia, the 36-year-old Grady had achieved prominence in Georgia politics. In his speech that day Grady hailed what he called the “New South.” The former Confederate states, he claimed, were now forward-looking, prepared to embrace industrialization and promote the reconciliation of blacks and whites. According to the journalist, it was time for the South to march forward and join with a larger, modernizing America. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 579 ${bmicon} full view MAP 17.1 SOUTHERN TENANCY AND SHARECROPPING, 1880 Tenants and sharecroppers were landless families who worked for a landowner. Tenant families usually owned a mule (to pull a plow); sharecropping families depended on their employers for food and farm supplies. This map shows that rates of tenancy and sharecropping were highest in the areas dominated by the cotton staple crop economy, the same areas where slavery prevailed in the antebellum period. Grady’s speech about the “New South” provided a label that stuck. Yet he doubtless spoke too soon and in terms too grandiose. True, he could point with pride to some dramatic industrial developments in the South. The eastern Piedmont (foothills region), for example, was undergoing a fledgling industrial revolution in the 1880s. Soon after James Bonsack invented a cigarette-rolling machine in 1880 James Buchanan Duke pioneered the production of machine-made cigarettes. In 1884 Duke’s Durham, North Carolina, company was selling 400,000 of them each day. The southern textile labor force more than doubled between 1880 and 1890, from 17,000 men, women, and children to 36,000, many of them concentrated in the Carolinas and Georgia. full view Farmer’s Delight Tobacco Advertisement, 1889 This advertisement for Farmer’s Delight tobacco from the May 21, 1889, issue of the Progressive Farmer is an example of the type of products sold through Alliance cooperatives. (North Carolina Division of Archives & History) In the mid-1880s, with the backing of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railway Company, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, specialized in pig iron production. Local manufacturers remained at the mercy of high shipping rates imposed by northern-owned railroads, which provided discounts only to raw materials going north and manufactured goods coming south. However, in 1889 even Andrew Carnegie acknowledged the formidable challenge posed by Birmingham blast furnaces to iron and steel producers in the North and abroad. Factory and professional work in towns and cities offered new opportunities in the South as industry developed. However, these jobs were dominated by white men. Low-paid heavy labor, primarily in rural areas, continued to be the primary source of work for black men. After they finished harvesting cotton in the fall, many black men worked at sawmills or in railroad construction camps during the winter. The hardest and lowest-paid jobs, such as digging ore out of a hill in northern Alabama or constructing a railroad through the swamps of Florida, often went to convicts whom private employers had leased from the state. Most of these “convict lease” workers were black men who had been arrested on minor charges and then bound out when they could not pay their fines or court costs. In Mississippi a black man could be picked up for “some trifling misdemeanor,” in the words of one observer, fined $500, and compelled to work off the fine (at a rate of 5 cents a day) for a local planter. With an almost unlimited supply of such workers, employers had little incentive to ease the brutal living and working conditions endured by these convicts. Patterns of migration within and outside the South reveal blacks’ efforts to resist discrimination. Some blacks fled the countryside and settled in southern cities where good jobs were limited but personal freedom was greater. In 1890, 15 percent of the southern black population lived in towns and cities; they represented a third of the South’s total urban population. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 580 ${bmicon} TABLE 17-1 Percentage of Farms Operated by Tenants or Sharecroppers   1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 North 19.2 22.1 26.2 26.5 28.2 New England 8.5 9.3 9.4 8.0 7.4 Middle Atlantic 19.2 22.1 25.3 22.3 20.7 East North Central 20.5 22.8 26.3 27.0 28.1 West North Central 20.5 24.0 29.6 30.9 34.2 South 36.2 38.5 47.0 49.6 46.9 South Atlantic 36.1 38.5 44.2 45.9 46.8 East South Central 36.8 38.3 48.1 50.7 49.7 West South Central 35.2 38.6 49.1 52.8 52.9 West 14.0 12.1 16.6 14.0 17.7 Mountain 7.4 7.1 12.2 10.7 15.4 Pacific 16.8 14.7 19.7 17.2 20.1 U.S. 25.6 28.4 35.3 37.0 38.1 Source: U.S. Special Committee on Farm Tenancy, Farm Tenancy (1937), pp. 39, 36. Gradually, a new black elite arose. These physicians, lawyers, insurance agents, and undertakers reached out to an exclusively black clientele. They also nourished a sense of community. Black men and women continued to sustain their own institutions, such as schools, lodges, benevolent societies, burial organizations, and churches. Black men formed fraternal organizations such as the Colored Masons and the Colored Odd Fellows. Black women created social and service organizations, such as the United Daughters of Ham and the Order of the Eastern Star. Despite Henry Grady’s pronouncements, clearly the South had not abandoned its historical legacy of white supremacist ideologies. In fact, in the late 1880s white Democrats feared the assertiveness of the new black elite. According to whites, this generation of men and women born as free persons and not as slaves must be “put in their place,” quite literally. As a result, new state and local laws mandated separate water fountains for blacks and whites, restricted blacks to separate railroad cars and other forms of public transportation, and excluded them altogether from city parks and other public spaces. Long-standing customs barring black people from white-owned theaters, restaurants, and hotels now carried the weight of law. Taxpayers’ money went into state school funds, which were then sent back to local districts. There the money was used to support two separate school systems, one white and well funded, one black and starved of cash. Legal discrimination against blacks came to be called the Jim Crow system. The term itself (a reference to a minstrel show character named Jim Crow) had originated during the antebellum period. full view Paris, Texas, Lynching, 1893 “Little Myrtle Vance Avenged” – a lynching in Paris, Texas in 1893 seen by a crowd of 10,000 as public spectacle. (Library of Congress) Black leaders throughout the country tried to keep a national spotlight on the Jim Crow system, its legal and violent manifestations. A rising tide of lynching (it would crest in the 1890s) engulfed the South, but white officials did little or nothing to halt it. Black men, women, and children were all vulnerable to the fury of the white lynch mob—on the most flimsy pretext. Perpetrators of these atrocities were rarely if ever apprehended and punished. Other blacks throughout the segregated South rightly feared that they too would be targeted if they spoke out against lynching. Yet northern blacks did not hesitate to highlight the hypocrisy of the federal government, which turned a blind eye toward this practice. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an educator and writer living in Philadelphia, issued the following challenge to an audience of white club women: “A government which has the power to tax a man in peace, draft him in war, should have the power to defend his life in the hour of peril.” Harper condemned “the government which can protect and defend its citizens from wrong and outrage and does not.” CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 581 ${bmicon} Racial segregation was not limited to the South. The U.S. military enforced its own set of Jim Crow regulations. In 1869 Congress created the 24th and 25th Infantries (Colored) composed of African American soldiers. White officers were appointed to lead these segregated units; consequently, black men who aspired to positions of military leadership found their way blocked. (Before 1900, only three black men received commissions from West Point, and they faced systematic harassment at the academy and after graduation.) Some white officers, such as George Custer, refused to command black troops at all. Military officials assigned black soldiers to the West, where they became known as buffalo soldiers. (The origins of the term are unclear. It may refer to the buffalo robes worn by many of the soldiers or to Plains Indians’ respect for the black men’s skills on horseback.) Many of these men were proud to wear a U.S. soldier’s uniform, an emblem of their newly won citizenship rights. Organized in two cavalry and two infantry regiments, the soldiers stationed in western outposts found that military duty entailed a combination of new opportunities and old forms of humiliation. full view Buffalo Soldiers Despite Hollywood portrayals, more than 2,000 African American cavalrymen served on the western frontier between 1867 and 1890. Known as the buffalo solders, they made up one-fifth of the US Cavalry. (Library of Congress) Within their garrisons, they performed a variety of tasks related to everyday military drills and maintenance. Black soldiers helped to construct new roads and forts, protect wagon trains of settlers, and patrol the border between the United States and Mexico. They were an integral part of campaigns to subdue the Cheyenne, Comanche, Sioux, Ute, Kiowa, and Apache Indians. They were among the soldiers deployed to quash strikes among workers (silver miners in Idaho, for example) and to fight forest fires in the Northwest. As members of a novel, all-black regimental musical band, one group played for white audiences from Montana to Texas. Often the buffalo soldiers encountered hostility from local townspeople, who resented their patronage of local establishments. In 1881 Tenth Cavalry troops stationed at Fort Concho near San Angelo, Texas, reacted angrily when a local white man killed a black soldier in a saloon. Another soldier had died at the hands of a local white within the previous two weeks. In the absence of justice for the murderers, the soldiers blanketed San Angelo with handbills. Signed “U.S. soldiers,” the message read, “If we do not receive justice and fair play … someone will suffer, if not the guilty, the innocent. It has gone far enough.” When some of the soldiers attacked PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 582 ${bmicon} full view MAP 17.2 BUFFALO SOLDIERS In 1866 Congress authorized the creation of four permanent military units consisting of African American Civil War veterans. These soldiers played a prominent role in the Indian wars of the West from 1866 to 1890. They were stationed in federal forts scattered throughout the western states. one of the men they believed guilty, the Texas Rangers entered the town to restore order. The army transferred the black companies out of the area and disciplined the leaders of the protest. Once they were mustered out of the army, some black soldiers decided to settle permanently in the West. There they joined thousands of black migrants who were fleeing the Jim Crow South. In the late 1870s, 20,000 blacks from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, called “Exodusters,” migrated into western Kansas. The migrants cited the South’s convict lease system, poor schools, and pervasive violence and intimidation as reasons for their flight. Henry Adams, a native of Shreveport, Louisiana, and a U.S. army veteran, expanded on the migrants’ grievances when he pointed to the failed promise of Reconstruction as the root cause of migration: “The whole South—every State in the South—had got into the hands of the very men that held us as slaves … and we thought that the men that held us slaves was holding the reins of government over our heads in every respect almost, even the constable up to the governor.” Some of these migrants established all-black towns in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico. Though generally small and poor, such towns were necessarily free of the trappings of Jim Crow. They provided places for blacks to live life on their own terms. Their lands and way of life threatened by whites, western Indians sought desperately to revitalize their culture and protect themselves. In 1889 an Indian named Wovoka offered the Plains Indians CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 583 ${bmicon} a mystical vision of the future, a vision that promised a return to the beloved past. A leader of the Paiute in Nevada, Wovoka preached what came to be called the Ghost Dance, part religion and part resistance movement. In 1889 a solar eclipse occurred while Wovoka was wracked by fever, and he claimed that the conjunction of the two events enabled him to glimpse the afterworld. The Indians themselves could usher in a new day of peace, Wovoka proclaimed, and this new day would be a time free of disease and armed conflict. The buffalo would return, he promised, and the Indian men and women who had died would come back to replenish depleted villages. Wovoka’s call found its warmest reception among the Plains Indians. In 1890 an anthropologist recorded an exhortation that Wovoka (called Jack Wilson by whites) delivered to the Cheyennes and Arapahos: “When you get home you must make a dance to continue five days. Dance four successive nights, and the last night keep up the dance until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then disperse to their homes. You must all do in the same way.” Some Indians donned so-called ghost shirts, made of white muslin and adorned with images of the sun, moon, stars, and various animals. They believed these garments would provide them with magical powers and protect them from the white men’s bullets. Many of the Indians who performed the Ghost Dance fell into a trance-like state, bringing inspiration to impoverished and disheartened reservation communities. However, as the ritual spread across the Plains, U.S. military officials panicked. In November 1890, E. B. Reynolds, a Special U.S. Indian Agent, described to his superiors in Washington the strange, seemingly dangerous behavior that had gripped the Indians on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota: “The religious excitement aggravated by almost starvation is bearing fruits in this state PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 584 ${bmicon} of insubordination; Indians say they had better die fighting than to die a slow death of starvation, and as the new religion promises their return to earth, at the coming of the millennium, they have no fear of death.” As tensions between whites and Indians mounted, a Sioux named Sitting Bull emerged as a leader. Born in the early 1830s, he had gained respect among his people as a Wichasa Wakan (“holy man”). At the Battle of the Little Big Horn, he helped protect Indian women and children from Custer’s soldiers. Wooden Leg, a Northern Cheyenne, later described Sitting Bull as “altogether brave, but peaceable. He was strong in religion—the Indian religion.” After leading his followers into Canada, Sitting Bull returned to the United States in 1881. He surrendered at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory, where he was held prisoner for two years. His brief stint as a performer in Buffalo Bill Cody’s “Wild West” show left him disgusted with the ways of white people. Sitting Bull offered a pointed critique of the sedentary, materialistic way of life promoted by whites: White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tepees here and there to different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in open country, and live in our own fashion. Sitting Bull rejected white notions of “progress” in favor of his people’s traditions. In mid-December 1890 military officials ordered Indian police to arrest Sitting Bull at his cabin on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota. Alarmed by what they perceived as rising Indian military, white settlers in Nebraska and South Dakota pressured the government to rid the area of the “savages … armed to the teeth,” men who were “traitors, anarchists, and assassins.” While arresting Sitting Bull, his Indian captors killed him. The great man’s followers, who had revered him as a prophet, decried the murder. A week later, on December 28 and 29, soldiers of the 7th Cavalry under Colonel James Forsyth, agitated by the tensions over Sitting Bull’s death, attacked and killed 146 Indians at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. More than 60 women and children were among those slain as they fled the oncoming troops. Of the 25 U.S. soldiers who perished, most apparently died from shots fired by their own comrades; according to a government eyewitness, the Indian men were unarmed when the cavalry attacked. The massacre at Wounded Knee proved the last major violent encounter between Plains Indians and U.S. cavalry forces. By this time, many Indians throughout the Midwest lived on reservations and engaged in farming. In Oklahoma, for example, the Cheyenne learned how to grow cotton and watermelons. Government agents, eager to create independent farmers, instructed Indian men in the use of the plow. But John Stands-in-Timber, a Cheyenne, later recalled how plowing became a collective effort. It engaged the energies of Indian men from Oklahoma to Montana, he noted, as bands would work together until their task was done. Thus some Indian groups attempted to maintain customs of collective endeavor in opposition to the European Americas glorification of ambition and individualism. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 585 ${bmicon} full view MAP 17.3 INDIAN LANDS LOST, 1850–1890 Between 1850 and 1890, many “treaties” signed by Indian groups and the U.S. government provided that Indians turn over land in exchange for cash payments. Yet U.S. military forces seized a large portion of western Indian lands by force, without signing any treaty agreements at all. By 1890 many Indians lived on reservations, apart from European American society. During the late nineteenth century, workers challenged employers and the new industrial order for many reasons. Factory operatives objected to long hours and to low pay in return for tending dangerous machines. Miners labored daily under hazardous conditions, often without necessary safety equipment or precautions. Field hands worried that they would soon be displaced by machines such as the giant threshers that were far more efficient—quicker and cheaper—than human labor. Small farmers resented their dependence on bankers and owners of grain elevators and railroads. Throughout the country, many different kinds of workers feared that the large influx of immigrants would provide a vast reserve of cheap labor that would serve to depress the wages of and threaten the job security of everyone. full view Organizing American Labor in the Nineteenth Century More than 14,000 strikes involving millions of workers occurred in the 1880s and early 1890s. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket Square Riot, the Homestead Strike, and the Pullman Strike were some of the more infamous. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 586 ${bmicon} Workers launched different kinds of challenges against the system of industrial capitalism, which, many charged, enriched a few industrialists and bankers at the expense of the vast majority of laboring people. Workers joined together in unions, and in many cases they fought the violence of private company security forces with violence of their own. Some men and women destroyed the machinery that threatened to replace them in the workplace. By the early 1890s, critics of the new industrial order—a system driven by technological innovation—had come together in the form of a new political group, the People’s Party. This organization aimed to bring together urban and rural, male and female, agricultural and industrial workers to protest the hardships suffered by laborers of all kinds and to demand that the federal government take strong action in rectifying social ills. Nevertheless, in workplace conflicts, the lines were not always strictly drawn between employees and employers. For example, the late-nineteenth-century laboring classes never achieved the level of unity called for by the Populists. White workers often expressed intense hostility toward their African American and Chinese counterparts. Within small towns, shopkeepers and landlords at times showed solidarity with striking workers; in these cases community ties were stronger than class differences. Also, despite their critique of big business, workers often embraced the emerging consumer culture. In fact, many of them fought for shorter work days and higher wages so that they could enjoy their share of the material blessings of American life—in department stores, movie theaters, and amusement parks. In the late summer of 1878 the combined effects of the recent national depression and the loss of jobs to labor-saving technology catalyzed a rash of machine breaking throughout rural CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 587 ${bmicon} TABLE 17-2 Estimated Membership, by State, of the National Farmers’ Alliance, 1890 Alabama 75,000 Arkansas 100,000 California 1,000 Colorado 5,000 Florida 20,000 Georgia 100,000 Illinois 2,000 Indiana 5,000 Kansas 100,000 Kentucky 80,000 Louisiana 20,000 Maryland 5,000 Mississippi 60,000 Missouri 150,000 New Jersey 500 New Mexico 5,000 New York 500 North Carolina 100,000 North Dakota 40,000 Ohio 300 Pennsylvania 500 South Carolina 50,000 South Dakota 50,000 Tennessee 100,000 Texas 150,000 Virginia 50,000 West Virginia 2,000 Total 1,271,800 Source: Appleton’s Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1890 (New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1891), p. 301. Ohio. The tactics of the machine-breakers bore some resemblance to those of las Gorras Blancas in northern New Mexico. In the Midwest, displaced farmhands burned the reapers, mowers, and threshers of their former employers. By autumn the violence had spread to Michigan and Indiana. Scattered reports of torched reapers, mowers, barns, and crops emanated from Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota also. Some wealthy farmers responded by abandoning their machinery and rehiring their farmhands. Technology, one noted, “ought to be dispensed with in times like these.” Critics charged the machine-breakers with “short-sighted madness.” True, seasonal farmhands were fast losing their usefulness in the new machine age. However, the protests revealed that even family farming had become a business. Now farmers needed to secure bank loans, invest in new machinery, and worry about the price of crops in the world market. These changes had profoundly altered labor relations between farm workers and farmers and between farmers and their creditors. On the Northern Plains, farmers endured extremes of weather and the anxiety of uncertain harvests. This area was home to immigrants from Scandinavia and Russia, drawn to the region by abundant rainfall and cheap land prices in the late 1870s and early 1880s. These men and women concentrated on ranching and farming and built sod houses out of rectangular bricks cut from the hard prairie soil. Warm in winter and cool in summer, the houses nevertheless had roofs that needed shoring up after every rainfall. In Madison County, Nebraska, a family of five lived in a dirt-floor sod house built into the side of a ravine. Their furnishings consisted of a cookstove, a bed, a milk cooler, “and a few other articles.” In the mid-1880s the plight of these Plains farmers worsened when a series of natural disasters highlighted their vulnerability to the elements. No form of modern technology could prevent the drought of 1886, which dragged on for a decade. Combined with declining wheat prices, the prolonged dry weather drove fully half the population of western Kansas and Nebraska back east to Iowa and Illinois during 1888 to 1892. Meanwhile, the bitterly cold winter of 1886–1887 decimated cattle herds throughout the region. The resulting “great die up” ended the days of the huge herds that ranged the Plains. Thereafter, ranchers would concentrate on smaller stock holdings and selective breeding. Some American writers captured the bleakness of prairie life, highlighting the condition of farmers dependent on predatory institutions and machines, such as banks and railroads. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 588 ${bmicon} Writing from first-hand experience of his native Wisconsin, Hamlin Garland portrayed the harsh life endured by men and women who toiled “under the lion’s paw” of scheming creditors and landlords. Other chroniclers of life on the Plains portrayed nature as a pitiless adversary that promised bountiful harvests one day but rained plagues of locusts the next. Things took a radical turn in the 1880s, when a national movement of farmers emerged and tapped into a wellspring of anger and discontent in farming regions throughout the nation. Men and women from the Plains states (organized in the National Farmers’ Alliance, or Northern Alliance) joined with their counterparts in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas (the National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union, or Southern Alliance). The Colored Farmers’ Alliance was formed in 1886. The Southern Alliance pressed for an expanded currency, taxation reform, and government ownership of transportation and communication lines. Its members tended to ally with the Democratic party. The Northern Alliance also focused on the expansion of the currency supply—specifically, the coinage of silver—but advocated the formation of a third political party to advance its interests. Both of these large regional groups found adherents in the mountain West. There, miners and farmers joined together to protest the monopolistic powers of the railroads, privately owned water companies, and silver mining interests. These monopolies drove up consumer prices and depressed workers’ wages. Most alliance men and women farmed modest parcels of land. As small producers, they felt powerless to influence the businesspeople and politicians who affected their livelihoods and their life possibilities. Members of the alliance also presented themselves as the last line of defense for the noble yeoman in the face of the corrupting influences of modern capitalism. In rural Alabama, where the Farmers’ Alliance had links with local schools and churches, the group’s newspapers railed against the “filthy city,” a “wicked place” of vice, crime, and dissipation. Farm folk thus distanced themselves from the “New South Creed,” which promoted materialism and industrialization. In many local groups, or suballiances, women stepped forward to claim their due as wives, mothers, and workers. In Tennessee, farm wives who raised chickens and produced milk and butter for market encountered middlemen who set unfair prices for both producers and consumers. Women argued that they were more than their husbands’ helpmeets; they were partners in a family enterprise. As such, they demanded respect and a political voice. Wrote one woman to The Weekly Toiler, the paper of the state’s Farmers’ Alliance, “It would be better, methinks, if the men would say, ‘come join us in the fight against your enemy’ with as bold a front as he says, ‘come Betsy, help me hang the meat, and drop the corn and potatoes.’” Suffering from a recession in the late 1880s, farmers in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas began to mobilize into a new political party. Organizing work among Alliance members at the local level laid the foundation for the creation of the People’s, or Populist, party. In Johnson County, Wyoming, in 1890, small farmers joined the Populist Party in response to attacks on their property by gunmen hired by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, a monopoly of large cattle ranchers. CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 589 ${bmicon} Although the Farmers’ Alliance identified itself primarily with agricultural interests, it made some notable forays into coalition-building. In 1889 the northern and southern groups attempted to combine with the Colored Farmers’ Alliance. Together, these groups claimed more than 4 million members. They also sought to join with the Knights of Labor and thus bring all members of the “producing classes” together. By representing the financial interests of all farmers and highlighting the vulnerabilities of debtors, the organization foreshadowed the wider national appeal of the Populist party in the 1890s. The new economy wrought profound hardship on members of the urban laboring classes as well as on small farmers. Many industrial workers faced layoffs and wage cuts during the depressions of the 1870s and 1880s. The great railroad strikes of 1877 (see Chapter 16) foreshadowed an era of bitter industrial conflict. Because no laws regulated private industry, employers could impose 10- to 15-hour workdays, six days a week. (By the 1890s, bakers were working as long as 65 hours a week.) Industrial accidents were all too common, and some industries lacked safety precautions. Steelworkers labored in excessive heat, and miners and textile mill employees alike contracted respiratory diseases. With windows closed and machines speeded up, new forms of technology created new risks for workers. The Chicago meatpackers, who wielded gigantic cleavers in subfreezing lockers, and the California wheat harvesters, who operated complex mechanical binders and threshers, were among those confronting danger on the job. full view Women in the Work Place, Late Nineteenth Century This photograph shows women at work in a factory around the turn of the century. Although married middle class women were not expected to work outside the home for pay, millions of working class women-married or single-had to work. (Library of Congress) full view Women Working in a Factory African American women working in a factory in April 1919. Those who could not find jobs in industry often found employment as domestic employees, working as cooks, laundresses, or maids. (National Archives) Women wage-earners also faced dangerous working conditions. In 1884 the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor issued a report outlining the occupational hazards for working women in the city of Boston. In button-making establishments, female workers often got their fingers caught under punch and die machines. Employers provided a surgeon to dress an employee’s wounds the first three times she was injured; thereafter, she had to pay for her own medical care. Women operated heavy power machinery in the garment industry and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 590 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Rural Protests and Rebellions In New Mexico in the 1880s, las Gorras Blancas expressed the grievances of Hispanic farmers against commercial interests. Throughout American history, groups of farmers have protested government policies they considered unfair and harmful to their own interests. Specific farmers’ grievances, and the strategies used to express those grievances, have varied through the generations. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, impoverished backcountry settlers charged that colonial authorities were indifferent to their plight. Some settlers turned their wrath on the Indians in their midst and on government officials located in eastern towns. Sometimes, protest turned into organized uprising as in Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1676 and Culpeper’s Rebellion in North Carolina the following year. In 1763 farmers of backcountry Pennsylvania staged a revolt, claiming that the government promoted trade with Indians over the safety of settlers. The so-called Paxton Boys attacked the nearby Conestoga Indians, although their real grievances lay with the colonial legislature. In 1770 the Green Mountain Boys in Vermont disrupted local courts to protest the proprietary rights of large landowners. In all of these cases, a lack of available land, plus official policies that appeared to favor entrenched political and economic interests, fueled resentment among farmers. Many farmers believed that the American Revolution failed to go far enough in securing their rights. During the postwar monetary crisis, they faced foreclosures on their property and long sentences in debtors’ prison. Shays’s Rebellion in the Connecticut River Valley and western Massachusetts in 1786–1787 and the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania in 1793–1794 pitted local farmers against militia mobilized by the new national government. The Civil War represents the country’s most dramatic agrarian revolt against the central government. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, wealthy southern planters claimed that Washington was in the hands of Republicans who favored free, as opposed to slave, labor. The Confederates’ uprising cost the country more than 600,000 lives and culminated in the abolition of the institution that they were seeking to defend. Postwar national economic development put family farmers at risk. In the 1890s the Populist Party appealed to farmers in the South, the Midwest, and the Rocky Mountain region. Faced with rising costs and the monopolistic power of railroads and banks, these farmers called for government policies that would be more responsive to the needs of the small landowner. The party achieved some success at the local and state levels. In the 1930s a number of different farmers’ groups protested government policies that drove down crop prices. In the Midwest the Farmers’ Holiday Association sought to intimidate local bankers and judges. The Sharecroppers’ Union in Alabama and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Missouri, like the Populist Party of the 1890s, represented biracial coalitions of farmers. In 1979, the Nevada state legislature seized 49 million acres of federal land within the state. This measure ushered in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a political coalition of western ranchers who opposed government regulation of the land. Elected to the presidency in 1980, Ronald Reagan served as an advocate of western business interests. In 1999 the U.S. Department of Agriculture settled a class action suit brought by southern African American farmers, the largest class action civil rights settlement in U.S. history, worth $2 billion. The claimants, most of whom came from Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee, successfully charged that for decades the government had engaged in racial discrimination in its farm lending program. exposed themselves to dangerous chemicals and food-processing materials in paper-box making, fish packing, and confectionery manufacturing. Some women workers, especially those who monopolized certain kinds of jobs, organized and struck for higher wages. Three thousand Atlanta washerwomen launched such an effort in 1881 but failed to get their demands met. Most women found it difficult to win the respect not only of employers but also of male unionists. Leonora Barry, an organizer for the Knights of Labor, sought to change all that. Barry visited mills and factories around the country. At each stop, she highlighted women’s unique difficulties and condemned the “selfishness of their brothers in toil” who resented women’s intrusion into the workplace. Barry was reacting to men such as Edward O’Donnell, a prominent labor official who claimed that wage-earning women threatened the role of men as family breadwinners. For both men and women workers, the influx of 5.25 million new immigrants in the 1880s stiffened job competition at worksites throughout the country. To make matters worse, vast outlays of capital needed to mechanize and organize manufacturing plants placed pressure on employers to economize. Many of them did so by cutting wages. Like the family farmer who could no longer claim the status of the independent yeoman, industrial workers depended on employers and consumers for their physical well-being and very survival. Not until 1935 would American workers have the right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers. Until then, laborers who saw strength in numbers and expressed an interest in a union could be summarily fired, blacklisted (their names circulated to other employers), and harassed by private security forces. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, founded in 1850 by a Scottish immigrant named Allan Pinkerton, initially found eager clients Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 591 ${bmicon} among the railroads. The Pinkertons, as they were called, served as industrial spies and policemen during some of the most bitter and violent strikes of the late nineteenth century. For example, in 1876 a Pinkerton detective, James McParlan, was hired by railroad operators to infiltrate a local union of Irish immigrant miners in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. The miners, members of a secret society called the Molly Maguires, were determined to do battle against the mine owners, who not only suppressed union activity but also controlled local courts and law enforcement agencies. In 1875 the Mollies had called a strike, but their leaders were arrested and charged with waging a guerrilla war against the mines (and their Welsh and English superintendents). In court McParlan offered testimony against the men, evidence that led to the conviction and execution (by hanging) of 20 of them. In the coming years, employers in a number of industries justified their repressive tactics by claiming that all unions represented a threat to law and order. In small towns where one or two large industries predominated, workers often could count on their middle-class neighbors as allies. In many cases, shopkeepers, tradesmen, clergy, and landlords objected to the arrival of out-of-town strikebreakers, Pinkerton detectives, or federal troops during labor disputes. Local politicians solicited the support of their working-class constituents. As members of churches and voluntary associations, middle-class and working-class people together upheld community values of family welfare in opposition to large industrialists concerned only with profits and worker productivity. During a boycott of anti-union hat factories in Orange, New Jersey, in 1885, the community rallied around the workers. Brewers and bakers refused to supply establishments that opposed the boycott. Service providers of all kinds, from owners of roller-skating rinks to “knights of the razor” (barbers), PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 592 ${bmicon} closed their doors to patrons who expressed sympathy with what was generally called “the foul.” In Orange and other towns, then, coalitions of middle-class and working-class residents severely curtailed the industrialists’ power. The Knights of Labor, a secret fraternal order founded in 1869, came under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly a decade later. With this Irish American at the helm (he was called Grand Master Workman), the labor union made impressive gains in the 1880s. Under Powderly, the Knights launched a concerted effort to organize European American, African American, and Hispanic men and women workers. In the late 1880s the Knights attempted to organize the laboring classes of San Miguel County, New Mexico, and the other parts of the Southwest. The Knights welcomed cowboys into their organization at the same time they were urging railroad workers to join their ranks. One cowhand said, “No class is harder worked, none so poor paid for their services.” A cattle drive north from Texas could last for three months and cover more than a thousand miles. On such drives, a single cowboy would be responsible for keeping 250 to 300 head of cattle in line. Wages remained miserable, and unrest spread. In the spring of 1883, an extensive strike among cowboys enraged the owners of large ranches in the Texas panhandle. To quell the uprising, ranchers paid gunmen to intimidate the strikers and enlisted the support of the state’s law enforcement agency, the Texas Rangers. It was a year before the strikers gave up. According to the Knights, business monopolies and corrupt politicians shared an interest in exploiting the labor of ordinary men and women. In appealing to many different kinds of workers around the country, the Knights blended a critique of the late-nineteenth-century wage system with a belief in the dignity of labor and a call for collective action. According to the Knights, business monopolies and corrupt politicians everywhere shared a common interest in exploiting the labor of ordinary men and women. The Knights advocated a return to the time when workers controlled their own labor and received a just price for the products they made. “We declare an inevitable and irresistible conflict between the wage system of labor and republican system of government,” the Knights proclaimed. In condemning the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, the Knights drew on the ideas of popular social critics of the day. In New York City, Henry George, an economist and land reformer, gained the Knights’ support when he ran for mayor on the United Labor party ticket in 1886. (He came in second, with 31 percent of the vote, ahead of a young, up-and-coming Republican named Theodore Roosevelt.) George had achieved national prominence with his book Progress and Poverty (1879), in which he advocated a single tax on property as a means of distributing wealth more equally. Journalist-turned-novelist Edward Bellamy echoed these themes. In his popular novel titled Looking Backward (1888), Bellamy envisioned a “cooperative commonwealth” in the year 2000, a socialist paradise in which poverty and greed had disappeared and men and women of all classes enjoyed material comfort and harmonious relations with their neighbors. This utopia was within reach, the author argued, if Americans could simply share in the nation’s abundance. full view Terence Powderly at Knights of Labor Convention Introduction of Terence V. Powderly at a Knights of Labor convention in Richmond, Virginia. (Library of Congress) The Nationalist movement, a network of clubs inspired by Bellamy’s book, included Terence Powderly as a member. Powderly declared, “We work not selfishly for ourselves alone, but extend the hand of fellowship to all mankind.” Between 1885 and 1886, the Knights undertook the difficult task of organizing black workers. Many blacks remained suspicious of white-led unions, and for good reason. Historically, the white labor movement had conceived itself as a way to exclude black men and women from stable, well-paying jobs. full view Tredegar Ironworks, Richmond - Slave Labor The small number of slaves who were not employed in agriculture worked mainly in textile mills, ironworks, tobacco factories, and saltworks. In port cities, slaves might be dock workers or longshoremen. The Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond, Virginia was one of the South’s largest industrial users of slave labor. (Library of Congress) In the city of Richmond, Virginia, where workplaces were strictly segregated by race, the Knights made great gains. African American women there found their job opportunities limited to domestic service, laundry work, and unskilled jobs in tobacco factories. Black men were almost entirely excluded from the artisan crafts. By the mid-1880s, the Richmond Knights boasted a total membership of 7000, with a ratio of four blacks to three whites. Yet members were organized into two district assemblies, one for blacks, the other for whites. In early 1886 a wave of strikes hit Richmond as painters, coopers (barrel makers), typographers, cotton press workers, and foundry workers, among others, all decried their low wages. CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 593 ${bmicon} A coalition between the Knights and black Republicans posed a formidable threat to the entrenched Democratic leadership. That spring, labor Republican candidates won a majority of seats on the Richmond city council and gained half the board of aldermen slots. Yet the issue of racial equality proved the undoing of the Knights’ fragile biracial coalition. Throughout the South, a generation of blacks and whites had allied themselves with different political parties (the Republicans and Democrats, respectively). Moreover, white workers widely perceived blacks as potential strikebreakers. In Richmond, mutual distrust, combined with pressure from white groups such as the local Law and Order League, fragmented the Knights. Throughout the South, segregation was the norm within biracial unionism. Whites, whether New Orleans dockworkers, Birmingham District coal miners, or lumber workers in East Texas and Louisiana, insisted on separate locals from blacks. Yet African Americans did not necessarily acquiesce to this arrangement. In 1886 Jere A. Brown, a member of the Carpenter and Joiners’ Union of Cleveland, wrote to the New York Freeman, declaring to readers of the black newspaper, “For years I have been importuned to enter into the formation of an assembly to be composed exclusively of colored men, but have persistently refused, believing as I do in mixing and not in isolating and ostracizing ourselves, thereby fostering and perpetuating the prejudice as existing today.” In 1886 workers around the country began to mobilize on behalf of the eighthour day. “Eight hours to constitute a day’s work” was their slogan. The issue had broad appeal, but the growing diversity of the labor force made unity difficult. For example, among the white workers of the Richmond Knights were leaders with names such as Kaufman, Kaufeldt, Kelly, and Molloy, suggesting the ethnic variety of late-nineteenth-century union leadership. This diversity paralleled the composition of the general population. In 1880, between 78 and 87 percent of all workers in San Francisco, St. Louis, Cleveland, New York, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Most hailed from England, Germany, or Ireland, although the Chinese made up a significant part of the laboring classes on the West Coast. By 1890 Poles and Slavs were organizing in steel mills, and New York Jews were providing leadership in the garment industry. Italians were prominent in construction and the building trades. In many places, the laboring classes remained vulnerable to divisive social and cultural animosities. The diversity of ethnic groups, coupled with the fact that many newcomers adopted racist ideas to become “Americans,” drove wedges between workers. The year 1886 marked the end of an era dominated by the Knights of Labor as the organization experienced first-hand the difficulties of overcoming its members’ diverse crafts, racial loyalties, and political allegiances. In 1886 the Knights suffered serious setbacks in their efforts to organize railroad workers. Industrialists dug in their heels and, with the aid of hired detectives, took union leaders to court on charges of sabotage, assault, conspiracy, and murder. full view Handbill, Haymarket Square Bombing Bilingual handbill printed on the day of the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago in 1886. On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers in 11,562 business establishments went out on a one-day strike as part of the eight-hour workday movement. In Chicago, home to militant labor anarchists (men and women who opposed government authority of any kind), 40,000 workers participated in the strike. Among the Chicago leaders was Albert Parsons. A descendant of New England Puritans and a printer by trade, Parsons had lived in Waco, Texas, where he met his future wife, Lucia Gonzalez, an Afro-Latina (probably born a slave). In 1873 the Parsonses had moved to Chicago to avoid Texas laws against “race mixing,” which prohibited interracial marriage. There Albert joined the International Typographical Union, and Lucia took up dressmaking. They were counted among the most famous and feared radicals in the city. On May 4, things took a bloody turn. Strikers called a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to protest the murder of two McCormick Reaper strikers the day before. During the rally, a bomb went off, killing a police officer and wounding seven others, who later died. Although the identity of the culprit was never discovered, eight anarchists, including Albert Parsons, were PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 594 ${bmicon} arrested. All eight (several of whom were German immigrants) were tried and sentenced to death for conspiring to provoke violence. Parsons was not even present when the bomb exploded. Nevertheless, in November 1887, he and three other detainees were hanged. Another committed suicide in his cell, and the rest received pardons years later. After her husband’s death, Lucia (“Lucy”) Parsons remained active in Chicago anarchist circles. In 1905 she became a founding member of a new, radical labor union called the Industrial Workers of the World. The Haymarket hangings demoralized the labor movement nationwide. Now associated in the minds of the middle class with wild-eyed bomb throwers, the Knights suffered repercussions from employers and local police forces alike. After reaching a membership high of 700,000 in 1886, the Knights saw their ranks plummet to 100,000 by the end of the decade. Still, the execution of the Haymarket anarchists inspired young radicals, among them a recent Russian immigrant named Emma Goldman, to devote their lives to the cause of working people. With the demise of the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) emerged to become the most powerful national labor movement. Samuel Gompers, an English immigrant cigarmaker, had founded the new group in 1886 partly in response to the Knights’ attempts to usurp the Cigar Makers’ International Union with a socialist-dominated local. The AFL garnered the allegiance of skilled trade workers (most of them white men) and promoted basic goals such as better wages and working conditions. The AFL emphasized the walkout and boycott as strategies of labor protest. By the mid-1890s, the AFL had embraced a narrow base: skilled trades dominated by white men. Yet the radical labor tradition persisted. Meeting in Paris in 1889, a congress of world Socialist parties voted to commemorate the American workers who had marched in support of the eight-hour day during the turbulent year of 1886. The congress voted to set aside May 1, 1890, as a day of worldwide celebrations in support of labor and demonstrations in favor of the eight-hour workday. (May 1 became an international labor day, celebrated annually.) In the United States, the United Mine Workers (founded in 1890) and the American Railway Union (1893) followed the radical labor-organizing principles of the Knights of Labor long after the AFL had attained its ascendancy. In the 1880s a young Danish-born journalist named Jacob Riis prowled New York’s East Side slum district in search of stories for the New York Tribune and the Associated Press bureau. In this part of the city, more than 37,000 tenement buildings housed more than 1 million people–newcomers from the far reaches of Europe and Asia. As a result of Riis’s stories documenting the inhuman living conditions endured by so many men, women, and children, the city formed the Tenement House Commission in 1884. Riis persisted in his exposés. In 1890 he published a collection of his own photographs, along with explanatory notes, under the title How the Other Half Lives. Reformers later called Riis “the most useful citizen of New York.” His book galvanized the public in support of slum clearance and housing codes. How the Other Half Lives is a powerful indictment of greedy landlords, indifferent city officials, and rapacious sweatshop owners. The photos of sleeping street urchins huddled around sidewalk heating grates, of impoverished English coal heavers and Indian needleworkers, are powerful even today. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, reformers adopted a range of causes. Some, like Riis, focused on the plight of the urban poor. Others challenged the Indian reservation system, which, they charged, left Indians poor and dependent on the federal government. Settlement house workers aimed to improve the lives of immigrant families. Middle-class women sought to protect and empower women by aiding abused or vulnerable wives and mothers, promoting temperance in alcohol use, and supporting women’s suffrage. Many reformers participated in a trans-Atlantic community of ideas, learning about reform strategies and CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 595 ${bmicon} institutions from their European counterparts. They stressed legislation, education, and moral rewards over coercion in their efforts to change society. One factor leading to reform was middle-class Americans’ fear that the poor would lash out in angry frustration in order to call attention to social injustice. The reformers reasoned that even modest improvements in the lives of the poor would stave off violent conflict between the classes. Dramatic labor disputes, from the railroad workers’ “great uprising” of 1877 to the Haymarket bombing of 1886, frightened many well-to-do people, especially in the nation’s largest cities. Yet many reformers were also motivated by a genuine sense of concern for less privileged groups—including American Indians, the country’s earliest inhabitants. Although reformers professed to favor the full integration of various ethnic groups into American life, at times they could hardly help but look down on the people they aimed to help. (How the Other Half Lives, for all its sympathetic portrayals of the poor, reinforces negative stereotypes of many immigrants.) Some of the people whom reformers hoped to help rejected part of their benefactors’ package of values—Protestantism, for example—while accepting forms of concrete aid, such as shelter from abusive husbands. Thus the history of late-nineteenth-century reform reveals the values and goals of not just middle-class Americans, but the values and goals of a wide variety of other social groups as well. In the mid-nineteenth century many European Americans, including government officials, believed that the reservation system was itself a much-needed reform to protect western Indians. Reservations were tracts of land set aside for the exclusive use of Indians. Whites reasoned PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 596 ${bmicon} that reservation Indians would remain separate from the rest of American society, to the benefit of everyone. Indians could preserve their own culture, and they would remain safe from the attacks of both homesteaders and U.S. army troops. By segregating this group, European Americans were free to settle on rich farmlands, mine for gold and silver, and take advantage of timber resources in the West. By the 1870s the harsh reality of the reservation system had prompted a group composed of both Native Americans and European Americans to call for reform. The reformers pointed out that most western Indians had previously roamed the Plains in search of buffalo and other sources of food, clothing, and shelter; confining whole tribes to reservations meant that they lost not only their traditional means of feeding and housing themselves but their entire way of life. Reservation lands were often unsuitable for farming, leaving the residents on them without jobs or any other means to make a living. They depended on supplies of food, blankets, and clothing provided by the federal government. Kept apart from the rest of American society, denied the rights of citizenship such as education and the vote, many Indians fell victim to self-destructive behavior, including alcoholism and suicide. Convinced that the reservation system was a failure, in 1879 reformers began to call for the assimilation of Native Americans into American life. This cause was promoted by some Indians as well as Protestant missionaries. In 1879, Ponca chief Standing Bear toured the East Coast, speaking before large, receptive audiences in Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. The reformers believed that the values of white middle-class Protestants provided the best guide for Indians. The chief had already received national attention for his role in the case Standing Bear v. Crook (1879). Attempting to leave Indian Territory and return to his homeland in Dakota Territory, to bury his son and daughter who had recently died, the chief and 30 warriors were captured by a U.S. cavalry force commanded by General George Crook. The Indians were imprisoned in Omaha, Nebraska. Two European American lawyers offered to represent the aging Indian. They argued, “In time of peace, no authority, civil or military, exists for transporting Indians from one section of the country to another … nor to confine them in any particular reservation against their will.” In his decision, the judge ruled that Indians were indeed persons under the law, with inalienable rights. The decision called into question the government’s attempts to force Indians onto reservations and to keep them there. On tour, addressing well-to-do listeners, Standing Bear criticized the federal Indian Office and demanded that Indians be granted full citizenship rights. When he spoke, he was accompanied by two young Omaha Indians who themselves seemed to represent the promise of assimilation. Susette LaFlesche, of French and Indian heritage, assumed the name Bright Eyes for the purpose of the tour. She announced that her people “ask you for their liberty.” Her brother Joseph, attired in European American clothing, served as translator for Standing Bear, who appealed to crowds saying, “We are bound, we ask you to set us free.” Standing Bear’s appeal helped to galvanize eastern reformers. The Boston Indian Citizenship Committee, the Women’s National Indian Association, and the Indian Rights Association, all founded between 1879 and 1882, proclaimed the need to abolish the reservation system, much as their antebellum predecessors had called for the abolition of slavery. Indeed, the campaign for Indian assimilation bore a marked resemblance to the antislavery crusade before the Civil War. Both movements focused on the wrongs perpetrated by the U.S. government (slavery and the Indian reservation system). Both argued that the group in question deserved full citizenship rights. And both promoted the ideal of group self-sufficiency: blacks and Indians tilling the soil, embracing mainstream Christianity, and learning trades. Beginning in 1883, advocates of Indian assimilation sponsored annual conferences at Lake Mohonk, New York, to plot strategy for the coming year. These conferences brought together scholars, clergy, reformers, and politicians, all of whom considered their cause as part of the tradition of Protestant missionary outreach work. CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 597 ${bmicon} The reformers believed that the values of white middle-class Protestants provided the best guide for Indians seeking to rid themselves of the hated reservation system. The Women’s National Indian Association promoted “civilized home-life” on Indian reservations throughout the West. The Connecticut Branch organized a medical mission to the Omaha tribe in the 1880s. Branch members also paid for the education of another LaFlesche sibling, Susan (a graduate of Hampton Institute) at the Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia. Although LaFlesche’s sponsors believed that Indian women could serve as effective agents of civilization, they had less faith in the capacity of Indian men to abandon their traditions and embrace the ways of whites. Advocates of assimilation received support from people who simply wanted the Plains Indians removed from their land to make way for European American settlers. The New Orleans Times–Picayune agreed that the reservation system was flawed, but not because Indians had suffered hardships under the system. The editorialist charged that Indians should not “any longer be permitted to usurp for the purpose of barbarism, the fertile lands, the products of mines, the broad valleys and wooded mountain slopes,” which the dominant white society needed. Out of these conflicting impulses—one on behalf of the Indians’ welfare, the other in support of the destruction of Indians’ claims to large tracts of land—came two major initiatives that would shape federal Indian policy in the years to come. The first was the Indian boarding school movement, begun in 1879 with the founding of a school near Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The purpose of the movement was to convert Indian children to Christianity, and to force them to abandon their native culture and learn literacy skills. The second was Dawes Severalty Act, PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 598 ${bmicon} passed by Congress in 1887 with the intention of encouraging Indians to farm and apply for citizenship. By allowing reservation land to be divided into separate farms for individual Native American families, the federal act attacked the Indian tribal way of life directly. Moreover, ambitious land speculators and corrupt government officials sought to enrich themselves from the provisions of the act which allowed the sell-off of Indian lands to white buyers. American reformers derived ideas and inspiration from their European counterparts. This trans-Atlantic exchange of ideas was greatly facilitated by improvements in sea transportation. During the 1870s and 1880s, ocean travel became cheaper and safer as well as more efficient and comfortable. The great shipping lines, such as Cunard, began to offer intermediate fares for middle-class passengers who did not want to travel in steerage but could not afford first-class compartments. In 1890 a tourist embarking from New York could cross the Atlantic in just 10 days for about $30.00 (the price of a bicycle) on a well-appointed steamship. Writer Henry James (1843–1916) traveled extensively in Europe before making his home in London in the mid-1870s. In his 1881 novel, Portrait of a Lady, the heroine, Isabel Archer, replies to an English gentleman who says he finds her motives for touring Europe “mysterious”: “Is there anything mysterious in a purpose entertained and executed every year, in the most public manner, by fifty thousand of my fellow countrymen—the purpose of improving one’s mind by foreign travel?” Contacts between European and American scholars, students, artists, clergy, writers, and reformers enriched the intellectual life of the United States and bolstered the reform impulse. American women’s rights supporters conferred with their counterparts in London. American college students attended classes at German universities. For example, American scholars at German universities absorbed ideas related to “reform Darwinism,” the notion that state and private charitable intervention could improve modern social relations. Out of these ideas came the Social Gospel, a moral reform movement that stressed the responsibility of Christians to address the ills of modern urban life. Furthering this exchange of ideas, municipal and federal commissions studied labor unions and prisons on both sides of the Atlantic. Popular journals such as the Nation and the New Republic reported on social policy initiatives of European governments. Contacts between European and American scholars enriched the intellectual life of the United States and bolstered the reform impulse. An idealistic graduate of Rockford (Illinois) Female Seminary, Jane Addams journeyed to Europe for the first time in 1883. The sight of large numbers of poor people in London’s East End made a lasting impression on her. She returned home, searching for a way to be useful, and for “an outward symbol of fellowship … some blessed spot where unity of spirit might claim right of way over all differences.” In 1888 she went again to England and visited Toynbee Hall, a social settlement founded to alleviate the problems of the laboring classes. Back in Chicago, she and her friend and fellow classmate Ellen Gates Starr decided to open a settlement house of their own. Called Hull House, it was located in the Nineteenth Ward, home to 5000 Greek, Russian, Italian, and German immigrants. Social settlement houses—so-called because their goal was to help immigrants with the transition of settling in the United States—provided a variety of services for immigrants, including English language classes, neighborhood health clinics, after-school programs for children, and instruction in personal hygiene and infant care. In 1891, six settlements were in operation, including the Neighborhood Guild of New York City (1886) as well as Addams’s Hull House in Chicago (1889). By 1900, the number stood at 200. Later, Addams recalled that, with the opening of Hull House, she hoped to counter the anarchists and strikers. Like other reformers, Addams believed that social-welfare activities would improve the lot of the poor and thus diffuse their radical, violent impulses. Moreover, she hoped to offer a sphere of useful work for young, well-educated women. Within the set- CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 599 ${bmicon} tlement house, she believed, these women reformers “might restore a balance of activity along traditional lines and learn of life from life itself.” This was a place “where they might try out some of the things they had been taught.” Like the Indian assimilation movement, women’s reform work in general during this period had a strong missionary strain. In San Francisco, the Occidental Branch of the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society enlisted the aid of well-to-do women in sponsoring a rescue home for Chinese prostitutes. Without the protection of traditional kin ties, these immigrants remained vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse. The rescue home enabled the young women to escape the men who exploited them and, in some cases, to reenter society, now as married women or factory wage-earners or small merchants. In Salt Lake City, a group of women challenged the Mormon practice of plural marriage. In 1886 their Industrial Christian Home Association received a subsidy from Congress to provide shelter for “women who renounce polygamy and their children of a tender age.” That same year some Denver women founded the Colorado Cottage Home, a rescue home for pregnant girls and women. Many women sought out by these reformers welcomed services such as job training and shelter from abusive men. However, some women declined to embrace other aspects of these charitable organizations, such as religious lessons. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an apt example of the missionary impulse behind late-nineteenth-century reform. Though best known for its antialcohol crusade, the WCTU also sponsored homes for unwed mothers and day and night nurseries for the children of working women. It also stressed the need for women’s “purity,” claiming that women and children were the chief victims of men’s alcohol consumption. But the group went further to denounce women’s victimization at the hands of men in general. full view Medical College for Women A female teacher instructs young women in anatomy in 1870 at this New York City Medical College for Women. (Library of Congress) Like national labor unions at the time, the WCTU organized African American women into local chapters separate from those of whites. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper served as head of the black division of the organization between 1883 and 1890. Harper, much in demand as a lecturer, also organized Sunday schools for black children and enlisted the aid of black clergy in her campaign against juvenile delinquency in Philadelphia. In 1887 middle-class black women in Atlanta formed the West Atlanta chapter of the WCTU. The group reached out to the students of Atlanta University with talks on topics with titles like “Character Building,” “Mother’s Influence,” and “Unfermented Wine.” Frances Willard proved a popular national speaker from the time she founded the WCTU in 1879 until her death in 1898. She served as the organization’s first president during those years and in 1883 formed a world temperance union. Willard believed in the power of direct Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 600 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Platform Statement of Presidential Candidate Belva Lockwood, 1884 In 1884 a group of women calling themselves the National Equal Rights Party convened in California and nominated Belva Lockwood for president of the United States. Born in Royalton, New York, in 1830, Lockwood was the first woman admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court (in 1879). She was a staunch proponent of woman suffrage and of equal pay for equal work. Lockwood believed that her presidential candidacy would bring much-needed publicity to the cause of women’s rights. She accepted the nomination by outlining her platform: “Two Unpublished Letters from Belva Lockwood” It will be my earnest effort to promote and maintain equal political privileges to every class of our citizens irrespective of sex, color or nationality, and to make of this great and glorious Country in truth what it has been so long in name, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” I shall seek to insure a fair distribution of the public offices to women as well as to men, with a scrupulous regard to civil service reform after the women are duly installed in office. I am also in accord with the platform of the party in the desire to protect and foster American industries, and in my sympathy with the working men and women of the country, who are organized against free trade, for the purpose of rendering the laboring classes of our country more comfortable and independent. I sympathize with the soldier and the soldier’s widow;… believing that the surplus revenues of the country cannot be better used than in clothing the widows and educating the orphans of our Nation’s defenders…. I am opposed to monopoly in the sense of the men of the country monopolizing all of the votes and all of the offices, and at the same time insisting upon having the distribution of all of the money both public and private…. I am in full sympathy with the Temperance advocates of the country, especially the W.C.T.U., but believe that Woman Suffrage will have a greater tendency to abolish the liquor traffic, than prohibition will to bring about woman suffrage. If the former is adopted, the latter will be its probable sequence. If elected, I shall recommend in my Inaugural speech, a uniform system of laws as far as practicable for all the States, and especially for marriage, divorce, and the limitation of contracts, and such a regulation of the laws of descent and distribution of estates as will make the wife equal with the husband in authority and right, and an equal partner in the common business. I favor an extension of our commercial relations with foreign countries, and especially with the Central and South American States, and the establishment of a high Court of Arbitration to which shall be referred all differences that may arise between these Several States, or between them and the United States. My Indian policy would be, to break up their tribal relations, distribute to them their lands in severalty, and make them citizens, amenable to the laws of the land as other white and colored persons are…. Again thanking you Ladies for your expression of esteem. Lockwood received 4149 votes cast in six states in the 1884 election. In the late 1880s and 1890s she devoted her energies to the cause of world peace. Belva Lockwood died in Washington, D.C., in 1917. Source: Madeleine B. Stern, “Two Unpublished Letters from Belva Lockwood,” Signs 1 (Autumn 1975):274–275. action. She exhorted groups of women to descend on taverns and rum shops and to shame customers into taking the “cold water pledge.” The pledge required its adherents to quench their thirst with cold water, not alcohol. An enthusiastic advocate of woman suffrage, Willard was instrumental in bringing women’s issues into the political realm. In her speeches, she quoted women such as “a CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 601 ${bmicon} Presbyterian lady” who declared, “For my part, I never wanted to vote until our gentlemen passed a prohibition ordinance … and a month later … chose a saloon keeper for mayor.” By the 1870s the issue of woman suffrage had captured the attention of men and women throughout the country. And in fact, the issue had special resonance in the West for several reasons. When European American women overcame the hardships associated with the challenge of settling the trans-Mississippi West, they considered themselves worthy of having an equal voice in the polling booth. Reflecting on her hard life as a settler in Circle Valley, Utah, Mrs. L. L. Dalton wrote in 1876 that she was “proud and thankful” to see women “beginning to burst the bonds of iron handed custom” and asserting their “co-heirship” with fathers, brothers, and husbands. Abigail Scott Duniway, who sympathized with the plight of overworked and lonely farm wives, published a women’s rights journal, New Northwest, in Portland, Oregon, from 1871 to 1887. In 1873 she had helped found the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association and served as its president. Western politics pitted cattle ranchers against farmers and religious and cultural groups against each other. These conflicts prompted the men of various groups to seek allies wherever they could find them—within their own households if necessary. The territorial legislature of Wyoming granted women the right to vote in 1869. Utah Territory followed suit in 1870, and Washington Territory in 1883. Territorial governments facilitated the enactment of woman suffrage, for they required only that the measure win the approval of a majority of the legislature and the approval of the governor. In contrast, states had to approve a constitutional amendment, which required support of two-thirds of the legislators and a majority of the voters. The states of Wyoming (in 1890), Colorado (1893), and Utah and Idaho (both in 1896) approved suffrage for women. Colorado’s victory was the only one resulting from a successful statewide referendum. The nature of the western suffrage movement points to the need to view women’s rights, and women’s activism in general, in their historical and regional contexts. For example, African American women also pressed for the right to vote, and their demands assumed special urgency amid violence and terrorism. Ida B. Wells-Barnett would later lead an African American women’s suffrage club in Chicago and play a pivotal role in the national suffrage movement. She began her public career as a crusading journalist in Memphis in the 1880s. In the early 1890s she clashed with Frances Willard over the issue of lynching, charging that the WCTU president refused to condemn the barbaric practice. Although Willard had been an active abolitionist and a steadfast campaigner for women’s suffrage, according to Wells-Barnett, she was “no better or worse than the great bulk of white Americans on the Negro question.” Thus women’s political issues reflected tensions between blacks and whites as well as between women and men. In the 1870s and 1880s the Americans who challenged the power of government and big business represented a wide spectrum of ideologies, tactics, and goals. Some resisted violently, smashing the machines, trains, and telegraph poles that were transforming American society. The Ohio machine-breakers and southwestern Gorras Blancas destroyed property in an effort to assert their claims to a traditional way of life. Others formed new institutions such as settlement houses, reform associations, or political parties to advance their agenda on the national scene. Some people hoping to effect social change used the language of evangelical Protestantism, echoing the reform activities of persons who called for the abolition of slavery before the Civil War. Others collected data and interviewed specific groups of workers, women, or immigrants in an effort, first, to expose the conditions under which these groups lived and labored and second, to propose specific legislation to remedy those conditions. Plains Indians embraced religious mysticism in a failed attempt to halt the incursion of European PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 602 ${bmicon} Americans into their ancient hunting grounds. Thus, powerful groups encountered much resistance from people opposed to their narrow idea of progress—the idea that bigger factories, more efficient farm machinery, and a nationwide network of railroad lines would bring prosperity to all Americans. As Americans began to think more broadly about their place in the world, some men and women hoped to apply the principles of moral and civic reform to other countries west of the United States. The 1880s thus laid the foundations not only for a trans-Atlantic republic of cultural exchange, but also for a trans-Pacific empire of missionary work and trade. In the process, a new ideology of expansionism emerged, one that blended elements of economic gain, national security, and Christian missionary outreach to peoples in far-off lands. Anarchist Archives at Pitzer University http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/archivehome.html This archive includes classic anarchist texts, especially information about and graphics of the Haymarket Riot. Labor–Management Conflict in American History www.history.ohio-state.edu/projects/laborconflict/ This Ohio State University site includes primary accounts of some of the major events in the history of the labor–management conflict in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Samuel Gompers Papers at the University of Maryland www.inform.umd.edu/HIST/Gompers/web1.html This site includes information about the papers project. It also has a photo gallery, selected documents, and a brief history of the first president of the American Federation of Labor. African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murry Collections, 1818–1907 http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aapone.html This collection includes writings of famous African Americans, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love. Coal Mining During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era www.history.ohio-state.edu/projects/Lessons_US/Gilded_Age/Coal_Mining/default.htm This Ohio State University site examines the development of the coal industry, including the sometimes violent labor–management conflict. African American Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/ The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture maintains this site, which contains a large number of digital texts by African American women of the nineteenth century. Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (1992). Sarah Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier, 1880–1940 (1987). Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (1976). Patricia N. Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Pastof the American West (1987). David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (1987). Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917 (1999). Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (1994). Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970). Arlen L. Fowler, The Black Infantry in the West, 1869–1891 (1971). Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (1996). CHAPTER 17 ###8226; CHALLENGES TO GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE POWER 603 ${bmicon} Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998). Robert J. Rosenbaum, Mexicano Resistance in the Southwest: The Sacred Right of Self-Preservation (1981). Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1971). Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull (1993). Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (1984). Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (1983). Philip S. Foner, The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 (1977). Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, James Leloudis, Robert Korstad, Mary Murphy, LuAnn Jones, and Christopher B. Daly, Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (1987). Stuart B. Kaufman, Samuel Gompers and the Origins of the American Federation of Labor, 1848–1896 (1973). Theodore R. Mitchell, Political Education in the Southern Farmers’ Alliance, 1887–1900 (1987). Bruce Nelson, Beyond the Martyrs: A Social History of Chicago’s Anarchists, 1870–1900 (1988). Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy (2001). Barbara L. Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance (1980). Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex and America (1984). Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 (1984). Jane Taylor Nelsen, ed., A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie (1992). Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (1990). Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1971). Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (1998). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter17 To Chapter 17 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 604 ${bmicon}         Frontiers at Home, Lost and Found       The Search for Alliances       American Imperialism       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 605 ${bmicon} IN THE EARLY 1890S, LUTHER STANDING BEAR, A YOUNG MAN OF LAKOTA SIOUX ORIGIN, found himself suspended between two worlds. Born in 1868 in South Dakota, he had learned to hunt buffalo in the traditional manner of the Western Sioux. In 1879 he bowed to the wishes of his father, Standing Bear (not to be confused with the Ponca leader of the same name), who insisted that he learn the ways of “Long Knives,” or whites. And so the youth was among the first pupils to attend the new federal Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. En route to Carlisle, the 11-year-old regarding his journey—by boat and train—as an ordeal that he must endure with honor. Once at the school, he discovered that he was to become an “imitation of a white man”—and quickly. Called Ota Kte, or Plenty Kill, at home, now he was required to pick a new first name from among those listed on a classroom blackboard. He chose Luther. His teachers took away his blanket and moccasins and gave him a coat, pants, and vest to wear. They forbade him to speak his native language, and they cut his long hair. One of his classmates protested, “If I am to learn the ways of the white people, I can do it just as well with my hair on.” Like most other youths at Carlisle, Standing Bear learned to read and write English and to practice a craft (in his case, tin-smithing). His teachers encouraged him to embrace Christianity. In 1884, as part of his government-sponsored training, Luther Standing Bear traveled to Philadelphia to work at the Wanamaker department store. The head of Carlisle, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, had sent the youth on his way with the words, “You are to be an example of what this school can turn out. Go, my boy, and do your best. Die there if necessary, but do not fail.” After spending a year stocking shelves and performing other tasks at the famous store, Standing Bear returned to South Dakota. There he taught Sioux children in a school near the place of his birth, now the Rosebud Indian Reservation. He married the daughter of an Indian mother and a white father. The massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in December 1890, which was not far from his home, left the young man fearful for the safety of his family. He subsequently moved with them to the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation, where he began work as a shopkeeper and postal clerk. In the late 1890s, Luther Standing Bear served as an interpreter for Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West” show during its tour in London. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 606 ${bmicon} By 1912 he had become an American citizen and settled in southern California, where he began his acting career in the new motion picture industry. He appeared in some of the first movie westerns together with famous actors Douglas Fairbanks and William S. Hart. At the same time, Luther Standing Bear also became an Indian activist, serving as president of the Los Angeles American Indian Progressive Association and speaking out against the “government prison” known as the reservation. Standing Bear died in 1939 while working on a film called Union Pacific. In the 1890s, Luther Standing Bear’s journey took place amid the depression, civil strife, and war of the era. Throughout the decade, workers challenged the idea that the United States was immune to the bloody class conflict that had long plagued Europe. Some scholars lamented the closing of the western frontier, prompting fears that America’s unique dynamic of growth and social improvement had come to an end. Domestic developments had a profound effect on American foreign policy. Native-born whites began to seize upon new categories of racial difference to draw distinctions between various groups in the United States and around the world. Faced with declining consumer demand at home, politicians and businesspeople joined forces to expand American markets and American influence abroad. Economic and humanitarian interests often went hand in hand. Reformers claimed that the blessings of American consumer society would “civilize” darker peoples everywhere. In 1896 Merrill Gates, a philanthropist and advocate of Indian boarding-school education, described the goal of such education: “We need to awaken in him [the Indian] wants…. Discontent with the tepee and the starving rations of the Indian camp in winter is needed to get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers—and trousers with a pocket in them, and with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars!” America’s imperialistic ventures would reveal a similar blend of economic interests and missionary outreach. Native-born whites began to seize upon new categories of “racial” difference. Thus, the 1890s was a time of stark contrasts. The same year the depression hit, the Chicago World’s Fair, called the Columbian Exposition, celebrated American architectural and technological progress. Among the exhibits was an early motion picture camera. This was a decade when bicycling became a craze, and the syncopated rhythms of a new form of music called ragtime became all the rage. But during the same decade, southern lynch mobs burned alive black men and women and American military forces pursued a brutal war in Cuba and the Philippines. Whereas some Americans tried to define rigid racial and nationalistic boundaries, others sought avenues of connections. A new political party, the Populist, or People’s, party, aimed to bring together men and women of all backgrounds and regions. By advocating grassroots democracy as well as government action to regulate the economy, the party paved the way for the Progressive reforms of the early twentieth-century. Relying on a variety of means, from new legal and educational systems to commercial expansion and the deployment of military might, American elites attempted to consolidate their political power and cultural influence. In the process, the United States confronted not only the domestic challenges of sustaining a modern industrial society but also the worldwide challenges that pitted the enduring ideal of democracy against the emerging reality of colonialism. CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 607 ${bmicon} In 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote an essay titled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Delivered as an address to a group of historians at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the essay presented a new way of thinking about American history. According to Turner, the process of settling the West had shaped all of American history. He argued that during the colonial period, the rigors of taming the land had transformed English colonists into more resourceful, more democratic people—in other words, into Americans. With each successive wave of western settlement, American society renewed itself. In his view, the West served as a “safety valve,” a place of opportunity that beckoned people out of crowded eastern cities. However, Turner noted, an 1890 Census Report had concluded that the frontier—the unsettled area of the western part of the country—had recently disappeared. The historian sounded an ominous note at the end of his address: “And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period in American history.” Turner’s thesis promoted the idea of American “exceptionalism”: the idea that its individualism and democratic values made the United States unique among the nations of the world. Yet his association of geography with an “American character” was simplistic at best. In his celebration of the sturdy frontiersman, Turner ignored the bloody legacy of western settlement and its devastating effects on native peoples and Spanish-speaking settlers. Nevertheless, at the end of the nineteenth century, Turner and others were asking questions. Did America need to conquer new lands and “tame” certain peoples to preserve its distinctive character? Now that the frontier had disappeared, what was to prevent the United States from becoming more like Europe? These urgent concerns led to efforts to assimilate and Americanize certain groups of people and to tighten systems of legal discrimination against others. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 608 ${bmicon} As less and less land was available for cultivation, grazing, and mining, the politics of rural development entered a new phase. In the early 1890s, the last great parcel of Indian land was opened to European American farmers. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 had authorized the federal government to use force in relocating the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast to newly designated “Indian Territory.” Survivors of the “trail of tears” reestablished native political and cultural institutions in the territory. Between 1830 and 1880, representatives of as many as 50 native groups had settled in this area, including tribes forced out of the Upper Midwest and refugees of the Plains Indian wars. full view Resources and Conflict in the West Natural resources and wide open lands brought many European American settlers westward, which furthered the conflict with Native Americans that had begun centuries before. European American ranchers and farmers in nearby states coveted the fertile lands in Indian Territory. In 1889 President Benjamin Harrison opened to white settlement the unoccupied lands in the present state of Oklahoma. (The name combines two Choctaw words: okla, meaning “people,” and humma, meaning “red.”) On April 22 of that year, as many as 60,000 settlers rushed in to claim parcels of land amounting to 2 million acres of the territory. Congress established the Territory of Oklahoma in 1890, and three years later, the Cherokee Outlet in the north central part of the territory, combined with Tonkawa and Pawnee reservations, was thrown open to settlers and oil developers. On September 16, 1893, 100,000 people claimed 6.5 million newly opened acres in a single day. The “sooners,” people who rushed to claim the land, gave the state of Oklahoma its nickname. The “Sooner State” was admitted to the Union in 1907. Congress took other steps to manage western lands during the 1890s. The Court of Private Land Claims (1891) oversaw land disputes in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. This court favored recent European American claimants over the Hispanic settlers who had received title to the lands from either Spain or Mexico generations earlier. Dispossessed of their land, many Hispanic sheep sharecroppers (partidarios) became dependent on European Americans for land and credit. Some were forced to earn a living as wage workers in the mines and beet fields of Colorado. Land courts were only one example of an expanded federal role in the settlement of the West and management of the land. During the 1890s, the federal government continued to provide information and services for farmers through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Among other programs, the USDA encouraged Texas cotton planters to diversify their crops in response to damage caused by the boll weevil, a pest that entered the state from Mexico in 1892. A forerunner of the National Weather Service, the Weather Bureau supplied farmers with forecasts and information related to rainfall and temperatures. The Division of Road Inquiries, formed in 1893 in response to pressure from bicyclists and farmers, aimed to study road building and sponsor pilot projects, including concrete roads. The Division of Biological Survey catalogued and classified species of plants that were disappearing as the population increased and the wilderness disappeared. Government policymakers argued over the proper balance between conserving natural resources for use by farmers, loggers, and oilmen and preserving the beauty of unspoiled panoramas for the enjoyment of all. In 1890 Congress established a national park in California’s spectacular Yosemite Valley. The Yosemite Indians had lived in the valley for hundreds of years, fishing, hunting, and foraging for sustenance. Nevertheless, park officials were determined to create “frontier-like” conditions. These officials stocked local lakes with both native and nonnative fish. The 1891 Forest Reserve Act set aside forest reserves in the public domain; (that is, vast tracts of land still owned by the federal government). Logging companies were allowed to exploit these areas for their timber. With his appointment as chief of the Division of Forestry in 1898, Gifford Pinchot sought to bring the issue of natural resource conservation to national attention. He believed that a managed forest could provide lumber and then renew itself. His approach suggested that conserving natural resources and using them commercially could be compatible goals. CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 609 ${bmicon} full view MAP 18.1 INDIAN TERRITORY AND THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA, 1885–1907 In the early 1890s, the federal government began to purchase land from the so-called Five Civilized Tribes and other Indian groups to open Indian Territory to European American settlement. The lands of the Potawatomi, Shawnee, Iowa, Sauk, and Fox were opened in 1891; Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1892; the Cherokee Outlet in 1893; Kickapoo in 1895; and Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and Wichita between 1901 and 1906. In 1907, Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory merged to become the state of Oklahoma. Pinchot found his views challenged by John Muir and others who argued that uninhabited regions should be preserved in their natural state, unmarred by dams, mines, or logging operations. In 1892 Muir founded the Sierra Club, a group devoted to preserving wilderness. In 1899 both Muir and the Northern Pacific Railroad lobbied successfully for two new national parks, Mount Rainier in Washington and Glacier in Montana, highlighting the ongoing significance of railroad tourism. The philosophical disagreements between Pinchot and the conservationists on one hand and Muir and the preservationists on the other shaped a wider debate between conservationists and preservationists in the early twentieth century. “Rusticating,” or hiking and enjoying the beauty of nature, became a popular pastime for many Americans in the 1890s. By 1890, tourists from Boston could board a train and, eight hours later, reach the rocky coast of Maine’s Frenchman’s Bay, where large hotels provided comfortable accomodations and breathtaking views. Throughout northern New England, religious groups and extended families established summer colonies on the coast and in the mountains so that they could live close to “the great outdoors,” renewing social ties and refreshing the spirit. Although the frontier of the cattle rancher and farmer was receding, the frontier of recreational tourism was growing by leaps and bounds, as excursion trains provided greater access to beach resorts and mountain retreats. The supposed closing of the western frontier, and with it the disappearance of the “safety valve” for restless Easterners, highlighted urban America’s increasing class and cultural diversity. In an effort to categorize social groups, many national opinion-makers—scholars, journalists, and politicians—claimed that people should be distinguished from one another by their inborn, “natural” characteristics, ranging from skin color to facial bone structure and intelligence. Supposedly, these differences defined specific racial categories, such as Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 610 ${bmicon} full view MAP 18.2 POPULATION DENSITY, 1890 In 1890 the United States still contained vast tracts of wilderness. Some Americans worried that the Northeast was overpopulated and that, as a result, the country would face the same problems as Europe—class conflict, poverty, and urban ills. Negroid. In fact, so-called racial differences between groups were cultural differences. Prewar nativists had opposed foreign immigration because they considered native-born Protestants to be superior to people born in other countries. In contrast, late-nineteenth-century scientific racists ranked “superior” and “inferior” races on an elaborate hierarchy encompassing all groups, native and foreign-born. Several factors account for this renewed obsession with race in the 1890s. European and American efforts to colonize and explore the far reaches of the globe brought whites face-to-face with darker-skinned peoples, whom scholars in the new discipline of anthropology studied and classified. The “New Immigration” from Eastern Europe raised concerns about conferring citizenship on non-Anglos, such as Russian Jews, Poles, and Italians. Persistent violence along the U.S.–Mexican border, combined with the resistance of Indians and African Americans to the authority of white people, alarmed local and federal officials. Theories of “racial difference” were used to justify attempts to subordinate these groups, by violence if necessary. Identification of racial categories pervaded the nation’s popular, political, and legal cultures. Scientists filled scholarly journals and books with “evidence” of the superiority of the “white race,” citing the size and weight of bones of various groups and comparing blacks and Jews in the United States with each other and with Eskimos in Greenland and Tapuyan Indians in Brazil. Based on poor science, this scholarship revealed the researchers’ fascination with factors irrelevant to intelligence, such as the size of the skull and jaw projection. First published in 1895, the Encyclopedia Britannica listed the physical characteristics that allegedly distinguished the races from each other, including jaw projection and facial angles. Most people did not read these highly technical reports, but images in advertising and other forms of popular culture portrayed blacks and Asians as inferior, servile people. CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 611 ${bmicon} In the South, the doctrine of white supremacy had disastrous consequences for African Americans. Beginning with Mississippi in 1890, over the next 20 years, white Democrats in all the southern states met in state constitutional conventions and imposed restrictions on the voting rights of African American men, using a variety of means: literacy requirements, poll taxes (fees that people had to pay to vote), and “grandfather clauses.” These last measures stipulated that only men whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote before ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment could vote themselves. In some instances, the literacy requirements and poll taxes disenfranchised poor white men as well. In 1896 the Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on segregated schools, trains, and streetcars in its Plessy v. Ferguson opinion. Four years earlier in New Orleans, a black man named Homer Plessy had refused to sit in a segregated railroad car. By a seven-to-one majority, the Supreme Court ruled that states could exercise “reasonable” authority by segregating public accommodations. Such Jim Crow laws, according to the court, did “not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race.” Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented from the majority view, pointing out the obvious: “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race,” a view that conflicted with the “colorblind” U.S. Constitution. Between 1882 and 1901, more than 100 people, most of them black men, were lynched every year in the United States; the year 1892 set a record of 230 deaths. In the South, lynch mobs targeted black men and women who refused to subordinate themselves to whites. In 1892 a black woman born in slavery, newspaper editor Ida B. Wells, incurred the wrath of whites in her native Memphis when she condemned the killings of three black men. They had operated a Memphis store, the People’s Cooperative Grocery Store, which competed for black customers with a nearby white-owned establishment. While defending their store from a mob of whites, the three men were lynched, their bodies mutilated. In the words of a friend, “They were succeeding too well. They were guilty of no crime but that.” Many black men victimized by lynch mobs were falsely accused of raping white women. In her newspaper Free Speech, Wells charged (correctly) that accusations of rape were merely a pretext for the murder of black men. The southern white man, wrote Wells, “had never gotten over his resentment that the Negro was no longer his plaything, his servant, and his source of income.” Death threats forced the editor to move north. full view Iroquois Indians, Early Twentieth Century - Panoramic Photo There were still vestiges of tribal life in the early twentieth century, when this panoramic photograph of Iroquois Indians was taken, despite years of efforts by the United States government at assimilation. (Library of Congress) In Wilmington, North Carolina, in November 1898 whites again attacked assertive black men and women, those “out of their place,” especially professionals and property owners. Alex Manly, an African American newspaper editor, had labeled white men “a lot of carping hypocrites.” He charged that white men who exploited black women sexually felt free to call for the murder of alleged black rapists. In retaliation, a mob destroyed Manly’s offices and then turned on the city’s black residents, driving them into the swamps and chasing them out of town at gunpoint. At least ten blacks were killed in the violence. full view Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), one of the most important cases to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, changed the lives of millions of black and white Americans. Interpreting law in a way that lasted for more than a half century, it permitted the segregation of blacks in public facilities throughout the land. (Library of Congress) Yet even in the South, racial definitions were never as clear-cut or self-evident as racists, scientific or otherwise, claimed. For example, Italians and Jews occupied a middle ground between black and white, as class issues intermingled with racial categories. In 1891 in New Orleans the lynching of a group of 11 Italian prisoners accused of conspiring to murder the city’s chief of police met with no public outcry. Instead, a local newspaper condemned the “lawless passions” and “the cutthroat practices” that it claimed were characteristic of all Italian immigrants. However, the Italian government protested loudly against the incident. Armed conflict between the two nations was averted only when the United States agreed to compensate the victims’ families. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 612 ${bmicon} At the same time, Jewish shopkeepers and merchants in the South gained a conditional entry into the ranks of “whites.” In Natchez, Mississippi, the small but prosperous Jewish community owned 45 businesses, about a third of all in the town. Merchant Simon Moses and others like him built grand, Victorian-style houses and worshipped in an imposing synagogue, Temple B’Nai Israel. However, anti-Jewish feeling manifested itself in subtle ways. Living in an overwhelmingly Protestant region of the country, many southern Jews found themselves barred from local social organizations. A variety of organizations sought to enforce the notion of Anglo superiority in the workplace and in the courts. In 1890 the San Francisco Boot and Shoemakers’ White Labor League convinced a shoe manufacturer to fire 15 Japanese workers. The 1891 lynching of the New Orleans Italian workers (deemed nonwhites) was organized by the White League, a terrorist group similar to the Ku Klux Klan. In 1893 the newly formed Immigration Restriction League launched a campaign to impose a literacy test on incoming aliens. Thus definitions of race served as political strategies to limit the power of blacks and other minorities as workers and as voters. Between 1890 and 1899, nearly 3.7 million immigrants entered the United States, fewer than 1.4 million of them English speakers from the United Kingdom and Ireland, compared to nearly 2.3 million non-English speakers from Germany, Italy, Austria–Hungary, and Russia. During this period, public displays of patriotism became increasingly characteristic of American life. The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance was introduced into public classrooms and courtrooms in the 1890s. Victorians (in England and the United States) saw formal education as a great equalizer of social groups. Moreover, many younger immigrants and the children of immigrants eagerly embraced American schooling as a means of upward mobility. However, schools did not always fulfill their promise as agents of equal opportunity for all. Increasingly, schools separated and grouped children according to their culture, religion, and class as well as race. Reformers, missionaries, philanthropists, and government officials alike extolled the virtues of schooling tailor-made for particular groups. Presbyterian missionary women founded the Presbyterian College of the Southwest to instruct Spanish-speaking girls in both English and Protestantism. European American teachers taught young Indian women at the Cherokee Female Seminary near the Cherokee Nation capital at Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Whether designed for Indians, Hispanics, or African Americans, boarding schools enabled teachers to exercise authority over pupils day and night. The head of Carlisle, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, expressed the school’s principles this way: “I am a Baptist, because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked.” At the school, boys learned to make harnesses, tin pots and pans, wagons, and carriages, among other products, many of which were sold to local residents to raise money for the school. Girls took in laundry and ironed, also part of the school’s moneymaking effort. The goal of such activities was to enable the pupils to become self-supporting upon graduation. Indians who taught in Indian schools tried to counter the message that whites had nothing to learn from Indian culture. Born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in Dakota Territory, Gertrude Bonnin chose the pen name Zitkala-Sa to write about her experiences as a teacher at the Carlisle school. She recounted the shame she felt when one of the white CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 613 ${bmicon} full view MAP 18.3 INDIAN RESERVATIONS, 1900 The Dawes Severalty Act, passed by Congress in 1887, intended to abandon the reservation system and integrate Indians into mainstream American society. Nevertheless, many reservations remained intact. As a group, Indians remained apart from European Americans. By the early twentieth century, the Indian as a “vanishing American” had become a stock character in novels and films. Yet Indian activists continued to press the cause of their people: to preserve native cultures and, at the same time, protest persistent poverty. teachers taunted a young man by reminding him “that he was nothing but a ‘government pauper.’” She lamented, “I wished my heart’s burdens would turn me to unfeeling stone. But alive, in my tomb, I was destitute!” The school as a vehicle for vocational instruction also found support among northern philanthropists concerned about education for southern black children and young people. A generation after the Civil War, the persistent poverty of many rural southern blacks convinced northern reformers that this group of Americans should be educated for a distinct form of second-class citizenship. Philanthropists, such as Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, upheld the notion of segregated public education. They created new institutions, or modified existing ones, to stress the trades and “domestic arts” at the expense of such subjects as philosophy, mathematics, and foreign languages. Embracing the “industrial education movement,” the white Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 614 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Systems of Education Efforts to educate and socialize young people assume many forms. Americans have transmitted skills and moral and religious values to younger generations at home, in the workplace, at school, and through religious institutions. America’s history of religious instruction is as old and as varied as the history of the land itself. In ancient America, in what is now New Mexico, native peoples built kivas, underground ceremonial chambers. There men initiated their sons in the customs and beliefs of their society. European settlers adhered to and adapted their own distinctive traditions. Catholics and many Protestant denominations offered religious instruction, culminating in a young person’s confirmation in the church. Beginning in the 1920s, Jewish girls in reform synagogues celebrated their bat mitzvah, a coming-of-age ritual for 13-year-olds. In Europe, such rituals had been reserved for boys (the bar mitzvah). Much secular instruction took place within the family or workplace. Traditionally, native youth learned from their parents—the boys to hunt and fish; the girls to raise crops, process food and hides, and make garments. In the British colonies, children learned a trade, embraced Christianity, and became responsible community members by participating in a thick web of family, church, and town activities. In the early nineteenth century, literacy assumed political significance. Southern planters feared that literate blacks would learn of the work of northern abolitionists and communicate among themselves to foment rebellion. Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, in Virginia, led many southern states and towns to crack down on clandestine black schools. In the North at the same time, Horace Mann and other reformers were promoting tax-supported schools that would provide a “common” (i.e., standard) education for all children. The purpose of the common school system was to educate efficiently the large numbers of immigrants arriving in the United States. The result was the growth of municipal and state educational bureaucracies in the Northeast and Midwest. Challenges to the reformers came from several quarters. Roman Catholics objected to the use of the King James version (that is, the version favored by Protestants) of the Bible in the public schools. In the early twentieth century, adherents of Progressive education criticized public school instruction as “rigidly prescribed” and “mechanical.” The Progressives urged teachers to appeal to their pupils’ natural sense of curiosity and love of learning. Some formal instruction took place outside schools. For example, founded in 1891, the International Correspondence Schools of Scranton, Pennsylvania, boasted more than 2 million students by the 1920s. The schools offered mail-order lessons for land surveyors and mining engineers among others. Meanwhile, class and racial distinctions had become institutionalized in the public school system. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had approved the segregation of black children into separate schools. In the 1980s, some poor school districts began to challenge the local property tax as a method of funding public education. Schools in their communities lacked the small class sizes and other advantages enjoyed by their affluent suburban counterparts. In the early twenty-first century, self-proclaimed education reformers began promoting statewide standardized tests as the key to high-quality instruction. Advocates argued that tests, such as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, administered to all fourth, eighth, and tenth graders each year, would monitor pupils’ progress and hold teachers and principals accountable for the work they did. By this time, home schooling had undergone a resurgence. Some parents believed that the home was a superior learning environment, especially compared with that of large public schools. trustees of the state-sponsored North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College (a segregated black college) voted to exclude women from the school altogether. They reasoned that “neither the girls or boys wanted to engage in the harder kinds of manual labor in the presence of the other sex, but would strive to dress up in fine clothes to impress the other.” This emphasis on vocational training evoked varied reactions from African American leaders. Born a slave in 1858, Booker T. Washington had labored in a West Virginia coal mine before attending Hampton Normal (teacher-training) and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. In 1881 he assumed the leadership of Tuskegee Institute, an Alabama school for blacks founded on the Hampton model. Speaking at the Cotton States Exposition, a fair held in Atlanta in 1895, Washington urged southern blacks to “Cast down your buckets where you are”—in other words, to concentrate on acquiring manual skills that would bring a measure of self-sufficiency to black families and communities. In the same address, Washington proposed that blacks refrain from agitating for civil rights, such as the vote. In return, whites should refrain from attacking innocent men, women, and children. Ignoring this last part of the speech, whites hailed Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” proposal as one that endorsed racial segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks. Nevertheless, in the coming years, Washington worked secretly to undermine the legal foundations of some of the white South’s most cherished institutions, including segregated railroad cars and rural forced labor. full view Booker T. Washington Booker T. Washington, who served as the first president of Tuskegee Institute, advocated work efficiency and practical skills as keys to advancement for African Americans. Students studied academic subjects and received training in trades and professions. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) full view Chemistry Lab at the Tuskegee Institute This photograph from the early 20th century shows a chemistry lab at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute which, already some twenty years old, continued to grow in this era. (Library of Congress) full view Chemistry Students at Tuskegee Institute Chemistry Students at Tuskegee Institute Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 615 ${bmicon} Challenging Washington’s message, scholar-activist W. E. B. DuBois ridiculed the notion that blacks should be content to become maids, carpenters, and sharecroppers. Similarly, in 1896, John Hope, a young professor at Roger Williams University in Nashville, Tennessee, and future president of Morehouse College and later Atlanta University, renounced Washington’s apparent accommodationist stance: “If we are not striving for equality, in heaven’s name for what are we living?” he demanded. “Rise, Brothers! Come let us possess this land. Never say, ‘Leave well enough alone.’” full view American History Students at Tuskegee Institute Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of black advancement through accommodation to the white status quo was put into practice at Tuskegee Institute. These students were studying white American history, though most of their time was spent on more practical subjects. (Library of Congress) Some immigrant groups, responding specifically to the Protestant agenda of most public school systems, preferred to sponsor their own schools. In many urban areas, Roman Catholic nuns founded and staffed parochial (parish) schools that appealed to certain immigrant communities. By 1900 Catholics constituted the largest single denomination in the country, with 9 million members from diverse backgrounds. Catholic newcomers from southern and eastern Europe opposed what they claimed was the attempt by the Irish-dominated church hierarchy to “Americanize” Catholicism. One Chicago Catholic communicant, writing in the Polish-language paper Zgodat, charged that the effort to force Polish churchgoers to listen to and speak English was “an insult to all Polish parishes in Chicago as well as in the United States.” Catholic churches and schools “built with the hard-earned money of us Polish people” should be kept under community control, he argued. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 616 ${bmicon} full view MAP 18.4 COMPULSORY SCHOOL ATTENDANCE LAWS, BY STATE Several northeastern, midwestern, and West Coast states enacted compulsory school attendance laws before 1880. A large number of states joined this trend in the 1880s and 1890s. By 1900 the former Confederate and border states, plus Iowa, were the only states not to have laws requiring young children to attend school for part of the year. New forms of schooling reinforced class and cultural distinctions. No longer dependent on the income their children might earn in the workplace, late nineteenth-century urban middle-class families could allow their sons and daughters to prolong their schooling. High school came to be considered a logical extension of public schooling. Between 1890 and 1900, the number of students graduating from high school doubled, from 43,731 to 94,883. The spread of private institutions of higher education reflected the wealth of a new industrial owner class and new forms of socialization for young people of privilege. In 1891 Central Pacific Railroad builder Leland Stanford founded Stanford University in California in honor of his recently deceased son. The previous year, Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller established the University of Chicago. College life was becoming associated with a particular stage of personal development, a stage marked not only by academic endeavors, but also by uniquely American group activities, such as playing with or cheering for the school football team. In 1893 an editorial in the Nation decried “the inordinate attention given to athletics in college” and suggested that “debt, drink, and debauchery” were the natural consequence. The writer singled out athletic scholarships and the recruitment of college baseball players by professional scouts as especially unfortunate developments. College football games had become spectacles, drawing thousands of paying spectators but also costing a great deal of money to produce and staff. The 1892 Yale University athletic budget included funds to pay for transporting the football CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 617 ${bmicon} team and its retinue of doctors, trainers, cooks, and coaches from one game to the next. The game of basketball was invented in 1891, and, soon after, many colleges formed teams that played the new sport. In the 1890s some scholars and writers proposed that, although America’s geographic frontier was closed, the “interior” frontier (of the human will and imagination) still attracted the curious. In Vienna, professor–physician Sigmund Freud pioneered the study of the human unconscious, the mysterious realm of thought and feeling that lies hidden beneath the mundane activities of everyday life. Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) suggested that dreams reveal the dreamer’s unconscious desires and that these desires shape routine behavior. In the United States, the new discipline of psychology owed much to the work of Harvard University professor William James. In his Principles of Psychology (1890), James described the human brain as an organism constantly adjusting itself to its environment; people’s surroundings profoundly influence their behavior, he argued. In The Will to Believe (1897), he explored the psychology of religious faith. According to James, religion, science, and philosophy all have immediate relevance to the way people live their lives, and these ways of thinking and believing can cast light on social problems and their possible solutions. Henry James, William’s brother, explored the psychological dimensions of class, gender, and national identities in his short stories, plays, and literary criticism. In much of his fiction Henry James probed the consciousness of his subjects and experimented with methods of controlling points of view. Such works as Daisy Miller (1878), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904) reveal his intense interest in encounters between European and American elites and the clash of cultures between the two groups. Novelist Stephen Crane combined an unflinching look at reality—a blood-soaked Civil War battlefield or the slums of New York City—with a sensitive probing of human psychology. In The Red Badge of Courage (1894), Crane explores the fears and self-delusions of a Union soldier, basing his account on first-hand descriptions of the fighting a generation before. By stripping the story of all ideology—northern soldiers are hardly distinguishable from southern soldiers, and political issues are never mentioned—Crane suggests that the real war was that of the combatants battling their own private demons. Kate Chopin wrote about gender roles in New Orleans Creole, or French-influenced, society. Her novel The Awakening (1899) prompted outrage among critics. They objected to the sympathetic portrayal of the wealthy married heroine, Edna Pontellier, who anguishes over her inability to reconcile her artistic, free-spirited temperament with her roles of wife and mother. At the end of the story, she chooses to commit suicide rather than submit to a life of convention. The novel focuses on Edna’s reaction to the expectations other people have of her and on her gradual awakening to the idea that she must live life—or die—on her own terms. The new discipline of psychology owed much to the work of Harvard University professor William James. Psychologists and novelists were not the only people to explore the uncharted territory of the mind. Some religious leaders saw human consciousness as the key to understanding spiritual growth and development. In the late nineteenth century, the Church of Christ, Scientist, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, prospered and grew. Eddy held that physical illness was a sign of sin and that such illness could be healed by Christian faith and prayer. By linking religious life to physical health, Eddy affirmed a crucial link between belief and personal well-being. She also suggested that reality was spiritual in nature and not bounded by the material, or physical, realm. In 1892 she reorganized her Christian Science faith around a mother church in Boston. Through branch churches, the American-born sect has now spread to more than 60 countries throughout the world. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 618 ${bmicon} In the 1890s, groups of Americans seemed to be estranged from each other as they never had been before. A few were enjoying the fruits of astonishing wealth, building for themselves magnificent, multimillion-dollar “summer cottages” reminiscent of glittering European palaces. In 1899 University of Chicago sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption to describe the expensive tastes of the ostentatious rich. Meanwhile, working men and women toiled long hours under dangerous conditions—when they had jobs. In 1895 the average worker was unemployed for three months of the year. Categories of race pitted various groups, native-born and immigrant, against one another. Self-styled sophisticated city folk derided the “hayseeds” on the farm. Still, the prosperous middle class believed that certain unifying forces would connect different classes and ethnic groups. Members of the elite, including businessmen, lawyers, and other professionals, placed their faith in public schools, such cultural institutions as public museums and libraries, and the consumer impulse to instill “American” values in newcomers and the poor. The 1890s also witnessed some remarkable alliances between groups of people who had never before found common ground. Some of these alliances were tentative and temporary, others widespread and enduring. The Populist party had a profound impact on the nation’s political landscape in the 1890s. And women, through their local and national organizations, helped to blend domestic concerns with politics, offering a new model of civic involvement. Their activities suggested that the boundary separating the household from the wider world had blurred. Under President Benjamin Harrison, the Fifty-First, or “Billion-Dollar,” Congress earned its nickname by becoming the first body in peacetime to spend that much money on new initiatives. The Pension Act of 1890 provided pensions for all disabled men who had served in the Union army during the Civil War. By the middle of the decade, 970,000 pensioners were receiving a total of more than $135 million in cash annually. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act became law in 1890. This measure received congressional support when western interests agreed to a high tariff (tax) on a wide variety of imported goods (named the McKinley Tariff after Representative William McKinley of Ohio). In return, the federal government promised to buy a total of 4.5 million ounces of silver each month and to issue banknotes for that amount redeemable in gold or silver. As a result, Westerners paid more for home-produced manufactures, but their region benefited from the infusion of federal cash used to purchase silver mined in the West. The northeastern states, more dependent on domestic manufacturing, traditionally supported a high tariff. The tariff was necessary to pay for the Pension Act, but the pairing of a high tariff with the purchase of silver produced explosive political and economic results. The tax on imported manufactured goods hurt consumers, and when wages did not keep pace with prices, workers revolted. Some employers exploited the vulnerability of workers in this era of rising prices. For example, in 1892 steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and his company chairman Henry Clay Frick launched an all-out assault on the Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, a craft union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Called the “aristocrats of labor,” members of the Amalgamated took pride in their skills and the strength of their union. Carnegie and Frick initiated a drastic wage cut at the Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead plant, near Pittsburgh. Workers struck in June. They armed themselves with rifles and dynamite and engaged in a pitched battle with some 300 detectives from the Pinkerton agency, men hired by Frick to break the strike. (Homestead town officials had refused Frick’s request to subdue the strikers.) Ten people died, and 60 were wounded. In response to the violence, the governor of Pennsylvania mobilized the state’s National Guard. The troops escorted strikebreakers to work. The company cut its workforce by 25 per- full view Homestead Strikers Surrendering - Engraving In this 1892 engraving of the Homestead strikers surrendering, done for Harper’s Weekly, the sympathy of the artist lies with the detectives in the foreground, who are portrayed in detail with kindly faces, opposed to the unruly crowd in the distance. (Library of Congress) CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 619 ${bmicon} cent and reduced the wages of the strikebreakers. All over the country, the Amalgamated Union lay in ruins. Gloated Frick, “Our victory is now complete and most gratifying.” full view Breaking a Strike at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914 The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company hired guards to break a worker’s strike. On April 20, 1914, these men sprayed workers’ tents with gunfire, and then soaked the tents with kerosene and set the colony ablaze. This image captures the destructive aftermath of those fires. (National Archives, Still Pictures Branch) In the West, gold, copper, and silver miners faced daunting barriers to labor organization from within and outside their ranks. Protestants harbored suspicions of Roman Catholics. Ancient hatreds prevented the Irish from cooperating with the English. European Americans disdained Mexicans and the Chinese. However, the workers in Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene mines managed to overcome these animosities and strike for union recognition. In March 1892 mine owners in the region formed a “protective association” and slashed wages. When workers walked off the job, the owners imported strikebreakers from other areas of the West. The strikers retaliated by blowing up a mine with dynamite. Fifteen hundred state and federal troops arrived on the scene, and the resulting clash left seven miners dead. The troops confined 300 striking miners in bullpens, where they remained for several weeks before their trials. In this case, too, the strikers met with defeat. However, out of this conflict came a new organization, founded in Butte, Montana, in 1893: the Western Federation of Miners. TABLE 18-1 The Election of 1892 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Grover Cleveland Democratic 5,555,426 277 Benjamin Harrison Republican 5,182,690 145 James B. Weaver Populist 1,029,846 22 John Bidwell Prohibition 264,133   Widespread discontent over the tariff and simmering resentment on the part of debtors clamoring for unlimited coinage of silver helped unseat President Harrison in the election of 1892. The victorious Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, took office once more in 1893 (the only defeated president to be reelected). A new and noteworthy player in the election of 1892 was the People’s (Populist) party, which nominated an old Greenback Labor party man, James B. Weaver. Weaver polled more than 1 million votes, putting both the Republicans and Democrats on notice that the Populists had the potential to swing future national elections. The first national convention of the Populist party took place in Omaha, Nebraska, in the summer of 1892. The party had emerged from the Farmers’ Alliances that had so effectively organized black and white midwestern and southern farmers in the 1880s. In the 1890s the plight of western farmers reflected the state of American agriculture in general. On the Plains, farmers incurred ever deeper debts as they bought more land and invested in expensive machinery to raise pigs, cattle, wheat, and fruit for market. But to put food on their own tables, they had to pay cash for bacon, beef, bread, and canned peaches at the store. The price of wheat had been a dollar a bushel in 1870, but it was only 35 cents 20 years later. Dakota farmers lost 15 cents on every bushel of wheat they sent to market. TABLE 18-2 Work Hours Needed to Produce Specified Amounts of Wheat, Corn, and Cotton, 1880 and 1900   1880 1900 Wheat Work hours per acre 20 15 Yield per acre (bu) 13.2 13.9 Work hours per 100 bushels 152 108 Corn Work hours per acre 46 38 Yield per acre (bu) 25.6 25.9 Work hours per 100 bushels 180 147 Cotton Work hours per acre 119 112 Yield of lint per acre (bl) 179 191 Work hours per balea 318 280 aYields are five-year averages, centered on year shown. For statistical purposes, a bale of cotton is 500 pounds gross weight or 480 pounds net weight of lint. Actual bale weights vary widely. Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (1961) 281. As early as 1890 the Populist party was making gains in state legislatures, and a number of Populist orators were making their mark on the political scene. In Nebraska, party activist Luna Kellie explained the fine points of international finance to her listeners, denouncing foreign investors in the state economy and at the same time extolling the opening of foreign markets for the state’s crops. “Stand up for Nebraska, so fertile and fair,” she urged farmers. The Populist party platform endorsed at the Omaha convention supported “free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 620 ${bmicon} ratio of sixteen to one”; a graduated income tax; government ownership of railroad, telegraph, and telephone companies; and an end to land speculation. The delegates also condemned government subsidies to private corporations (for example, land grants to railroads) and called for the direct election of U.S. senators. Populists supported other measures designed to make the political process more open and democratic, such as provisions for voters to recall corrupt elected officials and public referenda on pressing policy issues of the day. full view 1892 Election - Painting Lost Bet, by John Klir, depicts the outcome of the1892 election between Harrison and Cleveland. In the spirit of public humiliation -- a common phenomenon in the nineteenth century -- the loser pulls his victorious opponent down the city streets. Note the ethnic, race, and class diversity of the crowd of onlookers. The urban landscape brought many groups into contact with one another. (Library of Congress) The Populists sought to extend their reach beyond the cotton fields of the South and the plains of the Midwest to working men and women in the nation’s cities. Though separated by geography and history, farmers and wage earners could lay claim to certain common interests. The Populists’ 1892 platform included resolutions sympathizing “with the efforts of organized workmen to shorten the hours of labor” to an eight-hour work day (many workers were forced to toil 12–14 hours daily) and expressing solidarity with the Knights of Labor in their struggles against “tyrannical” employers. Although the Populist platform sounded radical in comparison to its Democratic and Republican counterparts, it foreshadowed both the substance and spirit of the early-twentieth-century Progressives and the New Deal of the 1930s. The Populists gained strength when a national depression hit in 1893. This dramatic downturn stemmed from several causes. As debtors clamored for “free silver,” foreign investors in the United States became nervous, and European bankers began to call in their loans. A bubble of overbuilding and land speculation burst. full view Jacob Coxey’s Arrest Jacob Coxey (left) and two of his associates in a police station lockup after their arrest for trespassing on the lawn surrounding the U. S. Capitol. On the fiftieth anniversary of his march to Washington, Coxey was permitted to finish the speech that had been interrupted by his arrest in 1894. (Library of Congress) The effects of the depression were widespread. Within six months, 8000 businesses failed, throwing thousands of men and women out of work. As many as 20 percent of all workers lost their jobs. Some took to the road as tramps or hoboes to seek employment; others begged for handouts. In 1894, Jacob S. Coxey, an Ohio quarry owner, dubbed himself a “general” and mobilized his own “army” of 5000 men to march to Washington, D.C. There, the marchers protested the failure of the federal government to provide relief, now that the country was in the midst of the worst depression ever. “Coxey’s Army” petitioned Congress to create extensive public works projects at the federal and local levels. However, the “army” met with an abrupt end when Coxey and his men were arrested for trampling the grass on Capitol Hill. Though separated by geography and history, farmers and wage earners could lay claim to certain common interests. Also in 1894, Eugene V. Debs, head of the American Railway Union (ARU), inspired the union’s 150,000 members to protest conditions at the Pullman Palace Car Company. Employees in the company town of Pullman near Chicago felt squeezed when Pullman cut their wages by one-third but left intact the rents on their company-owned houses. The resulting strike crippled railroads from Chicago to California. The U.S. attorney general, Richard Olney, a former attorney for the railroads, urged President Cleveland to intervene in the strike. Cleveland heeded Olney’s advice, declaring that he could not stand by while the strikers interfered with the delivery of the U.S. mail. The president sent troops to quell the uprising, crushing the strike. For the first time, a federal court issued an injunction to force workers to go back to their jobs. Debs and other ARU leaders defied the order and went to jail. To workers all over the country, the response to the Pullman strike signaled a troublesome alliance between government and big business, two powerful forces that the poor and the unemployed could not hope to counter. That alliance seemed to be solidified in 1895 when federal gold reserves fell to a dangerous low of $41 million (it was widely believed that a minimum of $100 million in gold was necessary to sustain the paper currency in circulation). Cleveland authorized the sale of government bonds for gold, but he also turned to J. P. Morgan, a Wall Street banker, for a loan. Morgan and a group of bankers agreed to lend the government $65 million, earning a $7 million commission for themselves in the process. Judicial decisions confirmed the belief of many farmers and workers that all branches of the federal government were conspiring to favor the rich at the expense of the poor. In 1895 the Supreme Court rendered two opinions that favored big business and the wealthiest Americans. In United States v. E.C. Knight, the court ruled that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 621 ${bmicon} full view MAP 18.5 MANUFACTURING IN THE UNITED STATES, 1900 During the late nineteenth century, most manufacturing took place in the northeastern United States. Exceptions included flour milling in Minneapolis, the growing textile industry in the southern Piedmont, and the emergence of steel production in Birmingham, Alabama, thanks to rich local deposits of iron and coal ore. applied only to interstate commerce and not to manufacturers. The court had decided in favor of the subject of the suit, the sugar trust that controlled 98 percent of the industry. In Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, the court struck down a modest federal income tax (2 percent on incomes over $4,000 per year). These decisions helped set the stage for the showdown between the Populists and the two major parties in 1896. In 1896 the Republicans nominated Congressman William McKinley of Ohio, whose name had graced the widely unpopular tariff bill of 1890. The Democrats turned their back on Cleveland, regarded as a pariah by members of his own party for his deal with Morgan and his high-handed tactics against the Pullman strikers. Without an obvious presidential candidate at their convention in Chicago in July, the Democrats seemed at loose ends. Then, out of the audience, a young man rose to address the 15,000 delegates. William Jennings Bryan, a 36-year-old Populist from Nebraska, electrified the assembly with his passionate denunciation of arrogant industrialists and indifferent politicians. The country must abandon the gold standard once and for all, he thundered: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” One awestruck listener, an alternate member of the Nebraska delegation, later said of Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech, “There are no words in our language to picture the effect it produced upon the vast multitude which heard it.” The next day, the Democrats chose Bryan as their candidate for president. full view McKinley and Hobart Campaign Poster Campaign poster showing Republicans William McKinley and his running mate, Garret Hobart, including the slogan “Protection vs. Free Trade.” (Library of Congress) full view William Jennings Bryan William Jennings Bryan, surprise nominee at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, was a vigorous proponent of the “cause of humanity.” His nomination threw the country into a frenzy of fear and the Populist party into a fatal decision over “fusion.” (Library of Congress) PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 622 ${bmicon} TABLE 18-3 The Election of 1896 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote William McKinley Republican 7,102,246 271 William J. Bryan Democratic 6,492,559 176 By nominating this eloquent upstart, the Democrats took on the Populist cause of free silver. Conservative Democrats bolted the party or sat out the election. Meanwhile, some Populists were appalled that the Democrats had picked conservative Maine banker Arthur Sewall as Bryan’s vice-presidential running mate. Meeting in their own convention later in the summer, the Populists chose Bryan as their candidate for president and Thomas E. Watson of Georgia for vice president. Thus, during his presidential campaign in the fall, Bryan had to contend with two different running mates from two different parties. In the general election, McKinley received much support from his friend and political supporter, Marcus (Mark) Hanna. A wealthy iron magnate and chair of the Republican National Committee, Hanna coordinated an effort to raise large sums of money for the Republicans ($16 million in total, compared with the Democrats’ $1 million). He also fueled a nationwide hysteria over the possibility that Bryan would become president, blanketing the country with leaflets declaring “In God we trust, in Bryan we bust.” Hanna charged that Bryan as president would mean disaster for businessmen, bankers, and other creditors, who would now be at the mercy of working people, small farmers, and other debtors. Benefitting from Hanna’s strategy and from divisions between the populists and Democrats, McKinley triumphed in November. As a national force, the People’s Party rapidly disintegrated after the election of 1896. Yet as a political movement encompassing disparate elements, the Populists left a mixed legacy. In some areas of the country, the party yielded some remarkable, if short-lived, interracial coalitions. In Grimes County, Texas, in the cotton-growing eastern part of the state, the Populist spirit survived for a few years beyond 1896. Some whites had split from the Democratic party, and some blacks had renounced their traditional allegiance to the Republican party. The alliance brought together blacks, such as school principal Morris Carrington, and whites, such as Garrett Scott, a Populist sheriff. In the fall of 1899, the White Man’s Union (WMU) emerged to oppose this biracial coalition. A member of the WMU tried to put its aims to poetry: Twas nature’s laws that drew the lines Between the Anglo-Saxon and African races, And we, the Anglo-Saxons of Grand Old Grimes, Must force the African to keep his place. The WMU made good on its vow to rid the county of “Negro rule.” A November 1900 shootout at Anderson, the county seat, left Garrett Scott wounded and his brother Emmett and two other men dead. The gun battle effectively ended the Populist presence in Grimes County. The Populists were unable to sustain a regionwide biracial coalition in the South. This failure suggests the power of white supremacist beliefs. The threat of cooperation between Republican and Populist voters was powerful, especially in such states as North Carolina. In that state, Republican–Populist fusion had captured the state legislature in 1894 and the governorship in 1896. Throughout the South, the black population was growing—a total of 10 million people in 1890 compared with 4.5 million on the eve of the Civil War. Frightened by this development, white southern Democrats campaigned to disfranchise black men, beginning in the 1890s. Landless blacks and whites would find no common political ground again until the 1930s. In the 1890s, workers in Europe were forging new political parties to represent their interests and, in some cases, to press a bold socialist agenda, in the forum of national politics. Although late-nineteenth-century America showed dramatic evidence of bitter class conflict, it produced CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 623 ${bmicon} no viable workers’ party or socialist movement. Why? The answer is not simple. Together, farmers and members of the industrial laboring classes aspired to self-sufficiency, a life free of debt that released their wives and children from unremitting toil and provided some measure of material comfort. Nevertheless, both groups found it difficult to ally with each other. The large influx of immigrants meant that competition for even low-paying jobs remained fierce among wage-earning men and women. Employers manipulated racial, ethnic, and religious prejudices among workers to keep them estranged. Between 1890 and 1900, at least 29 major strikes—primarily in the iron, steel, coal-mining, meatpacking, railroad, and longshore industries—prompted management to employ African American strikebreakers. White Protestant workers seized on ethnic and religious distinctions to win for themselves advantages in the workplace. Their unions excluded certain racial and ethnic groups altogether. Even somewhat egalitarian unions fell prey to racial prejudice. For example, the United Mine Workers (UMW) professed to welcome both black and white workers into its ranks. However, an 1892 report from an African American organizer in Jellico, Tennessee, stated that “the whites declare that they won’t work” under an African American boss. At best, whites relegated their black and female coworkers to segregated unions and enforced a discriminatory division of labor within the workplace. Moreover, the pace and processes of mechanization and technological development varied from job to job, making it difficult for workers in one industry to form alliances with workers in another. By 1900 the steel, shoe, and textile industries were fully mechanized. In contrast, skilled craft workers dominated the cigar, garment, and glass-blowing industries, although women machine operatives were beginning to challenge male cigarmakers. Taking pride in their craft and its traditions, skilled workers distanced themselves from those who tended machines. Many American workers, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or industry, continued to believe that they could eventually own their own businesses; thus, they resisted casting their lot TABLE 18-4 Categories of Employment, 1880–1910 Occupation 1880 Percentage 1890 Percentage 1900 Percentage 1910 Percentage Agriculture, forestry, and fishing 8,705 50.1 10,170 42.8 10,920 37.6 11,590 31.6 Extractive industries 310 1.8 480 2.0 760 2.6 1,050 2.9 Manufacturing 3,170 18.2 4,750 20.0 6,340 21.8 8,230 22.4 Construction 830 4.8 1,440 6.1 1,660 5.7 2,300 6.3 Commerce and finance 1,220 7.0 1,990 8.4 2,760 9.5 3,890 10.6 Transportation and communications 860 4.9 1,530 6.4 2,100 7.2 3,190 8.7 Services 2,100 12.1 3,210 13.5 4,160 14.3 5,880 16.0 Other 195 1.1 170 0.7 370 1.3 600 1.6 Total 17,390 100 23,740 100 29,070 100 36,730 100 Numbers given in thousands. Source: International Historical Statistics, 154. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 624 ${bmicon} permanently with unions or other working-class organizations. High rates of geographic mobility also prevented workers from committing themselves to a particular union in a particular place. The power of antistrike forces proved daunting. Private security agencies, such as the Pinkertons, as well as state-deployed National Guard troops, backed up the authority of employers, judges, mayors, and governors. And finally, unlike European parliamentary systems, U.S. politics was based on a “winner-take-all” principle. In America, the two major parties tried to capture the political center, discouraging coalition-building among smaller parties. Such alliances might have pushed the country farther to the left or right. These factors help to account for the success of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in attracting and retaining members. By the end of the nineteenth century, the AFL had rejected the rhetoric of radical labor leaders in favor of organizing a select group of workers, mostly skilled white men. Leaders of AFL union affiliates denounced “cheap labor” competitors, whether women workers or Japanese or Chinese immigrants. In the coming years, the AFL would prove that it had staying power, although it represented primarily the interests of white male craftsmen. In the 1890s the women’s suffrage, club, missionary, and social settlement movements emerged as significant political forces. Nevertheless, for the most part, white women in these movements remained steadfast in their refusal to embrace their nonwhite counterparts. In 1890 the two major national woman suffrage associations, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association, merged to form the National–American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Elizabeth Cady Stanton served as the new group’s first president for two years. The suffrage movement exhibited contradictory impulses. On one hand, it brought together supporters from around the country and yielded striking examples of international cooperation. Beginning in 1890 and every year thereafter until 1920, members of NAWSA branches scattered throughout the United States met in convention to debate strategy. American women consulted with their counterparts in England and western Europe to advance their cause. full view Margaret Sanger’s Newspaper, 1914 Masthead of Margaret Sanger’s radical newspaper. The first issue, published in 1914, included an article titled “The Prevention of Conception,” in which Sanger said she would defy the law that prohibited the distribution of birth control information. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) On the other hand, in an effort to become “respectable,” white native-born Protestant American suffragists sought to distance themselves from the poor, immigrants, African Americans, and the laboring classes within their own country. When NAWSA leaders called for an “educated franchise,” they implicitly left out immigrant and poor women. They also refused to admit black women’s suffrage clubs into their umbrella organization. In the process, the white women turned their backs on some of the most committed supporters of their own cause. Identifying themselves primarily as wives and mothers, some women entered the political realm through local women’s clubs. They believed that personal intellectual development and group political activity would benefit both their own families and society in general. In the 1880s, the typical club focused on self-improvement through reading history and literature. By the 1890s, many clubs had embraced political activism. They lobbied local politicians for improvements in education and social welfare and raised money for hospitals and playgrounds. CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 625 ${bmicon} The General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), founded in 1892, united 100,000 women in 500 affiliate clubs throughout the nation. Yet the GFWC specifically excluded African American clubs. Black women formed their own national federation, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), in 1896. Through club work, they spoke out against lynch mobs and segregationists and worked to improve their local communities. In 1899 the first president of NACW, Mary Church Terrell, appeared before a mostly white organization, the National Congress of Mothers. She minced no words in contrasting the resources available to white mothers and children with the inferior medical care afforded their African American counterparts. Declared Terrell, “So rough does the way of her infant appear to many a poor black mother that instead of thrilling with the joy which you feel, as you clasp your little ones to your breast, she trembles with apprehension and despair.” In some areas of the country, black and white women did make common cause—to further the goals of temperance, for example—although white women embraced these alliances uneasily. At the end of the century, black women in North Carolina sought to circumvent the sometimes violent political realm dominated by white men. They worked with middle-class white women through voluntary organizations, such as the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. In the West, Protestant-sponsored “mission homes” ministered to women in need. The San Francisco Presbyterian Chinese Mission Home offered a safe haven for Chinese women fleeing abuse and exploitation. In 1898 a young Chinese woman, Lee Yow Chun, appeared before a government official and testified to the poverty of her family in Hong Kong and to the web of deception that had led to her arrival in the United States as a prostitute. Encountering an immigration official in San Francisco, Lee “fell in a lump on the floor and cried loudly, saying I did not want to be landed by those people [who had tricked her]; that I would jump into the sea rather than be taken by them.” As a result, she was allowed to go to the mission home. In response to stories such as Lee’s, eastern women opened their pocketbooks to further not only the San Francisco mission but also shelters for unwed mothers and abused girls in other cities, in the name of virtuous womanhood. The daily operations of the settlement house reflected the priorities of its founders. Religious beliefs inspired some women to go beyond national boundaries in their efforts to reach out to like-minded people. In the 1880s and 1890s, a group of American women participated in an interdenominational, international campaign to support the work of Pandita Ramabai, a native of India who had converted to Christianity and worked to challenge the subordinate role of women in her own country. In 1890 almost 60 “Ramabai Circles” claimed more than 4000 members in the United States and Canada. Ramabai chose not to ally herself with the growing Indian nationalist movement (in opposition to Great Britain, the colonial power that ruled India); in her view, Christianity, not nation-state loyalties, should shape the identities of both men and women. Social settlements were unique institutions, founded and staffed by well-educated women, many of whom had attended elite women’s colleges. The daily operations of the settlement house reflected the priorities of its founders, who often brought activists, public health officials, journalists, and laboring men and women together around the dinner table to discuss problems of the poor. Settlement house workers hoped to instill in poor women the values of domesticity and pride in American citizenship. By 1900 more than 200 social settlement houses were helping to acculturate immigrants by offering classes in a variety of subjects, including English, health, and personal hygiene. In 1893 the women social workers of Hull House successfully lobbied Illinois state legislators for the passage of anti-sweatshop legislation that would protect female employees and prohibit child labor. Florence Kelley, who served for three decades as the general secretary of the National Consumer League, was a resident of Hull House in the early 1890s. In 1899 she moved to New York’s Henry Street Settlement (founded by a nurse named Lillian Wald in 1893). The settlement’s neighbors included the 500,000 people packed into the Lower East Side, many of them from Italy, Russia, Germany, Greece, and Hungary. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 626 ${bmicon} Although often associated with immigrants in the largest cities, settlement houses reached diverse populations. In the late 1890s, a coalition of the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs and other organizations sponsored several teachers who organized a summer settlement called Camp Cedar Grove in the eastern part of the state. This venture provided the foundation for the Hindman Settlement School. The school, still in existence, initially aimed to acculturate mountain people to middle-class ways in dress, eating habits, and manners and to preserve traditional mountain music and crafts. Sensitive to the racial prejudices of their clients and their neighbors, most early settlements failed to reach out to African Americans. This policy stimulated the development of black-led settlements, such as the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement in Minneapolis and the Neighborhood Union in Atlanta. Founded by Lugenia Burns Hope in 1908, the Neighborhood Union aimed “to bring about a better understanding between the races.” In the tradition of Frances Wright and Victoria Woodhull, some women challenged traditional gender relations that relegated women to dependence on men. Emma Goldman, a Russian immigrant and self-proclaimed anarchist, paired the sexual liberation of women with the rights of workers to live a decent life. A radical by any measure, Goldman was, nevertheless, not alone in rejecting the idea that marriage should always be permanent. Between 1890 and 1900, the divorce rate increased from 1 out of every 17 new marriages to 1 out of 12. More and more couples, middle-class and working-class, native-born and immigrant, were seeking means to dissolve marriages that had failed. CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 627 ${bmicon} Charlotte Perkins Gilman was among the most prolific and well-known critics of the conventional division of labor in the home. Through fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she claimed that humankind had progressed beyond the point where brute strength was the determinant of social status. Gilman proclaimed that women, no longer content to remain dependent on men, must take their rightful place within the economy, working as equals with their brothers and husbands. In Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relations Between Men and Woman as a Factor in Social Evolution (1898), she proposed that housework be divided into its specialized tasks to be performed by professionals. This system would free women from the unpaid, mind-numbing task of combined “cook–nurse–laundress–chambermaid–housekeeper–waitress–governor.” In her critique of gender conventions, Gilman anticipated the feminist movement of the 1960s. full view Collage Celebrating the Career of Teddy Roosevelt A collage celebrating the career of Theodore Roosevelt as Rough Rider, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, builder of the Panama Canal, organizer of the Bull Moose party, and carrier of the “big stick.” (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) Men also pondered the effects of industrializing society on their own roles. Some elite men revolted against the trappings of Victorian culture. These men worked every day in business offices, not out of doors. Some yearned for “manly” activities such as courageous exploits against nature or other men. They believed that overstuffed parlors represented “feminine” interiors. Life indoors—singing religious hymns around the piano or reading aloud to family members—stifled men’s “natural” instincts for bravery and adventure, they claimed. They yearned to embrace the outdoors and prove their masculinity in the process. As assistant secretary of the Navy in the late 1890s, Theodore Roosevelt worried that, in this age of machines, young men lacked the opportunities for “the strenuous life” their grandfathers had PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 628 ${bmicon} enjoyed. He argued that unapologetic masculine bravado provided the key to American strength and rejuvenation on both a national and personal level. In his multivolume history, The Winning of the West (1889–96), Roosevelt extolled America’s relentless march to the Pacific: “The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him.” Imperialism at home and abroad, he declared, was a “race-important work,” one that should claim the energies of men as politicians and soldiers. In the 1890s the United States began to extend its political reach and its economic dominance to other parts of the world. Americans looked beyond their borders and saw exotic peoples who represented a variety of opportunities—as consumers of American goods, producers of goods Americans wanted to buy, and objects of American benevolence. This view represented an extension of the reform impulse at home. Indeed, broader thinking about the United States’ place in the world reflected a new desire among those who benefited from prosperity to spread American standards—in behavior, productivity, and quality of life—to other peoples. The country’s mighty industrial manufacturing sector demanded new markets and a wider consumer base. The depression of 1893, in particular, raised fears that manufacturers would have to contend with surpluses of goods that Americans could not afford to buy. American businesspeople and state department officials established a partnership that combined private economic self-interest with national military considerations. Some molders of public opinion used the new languages of race and masculine virility to justify an “Anglo-Saxon” mission of conquest of “childlike” peoples. Meanwhile, European countries were carving up Africa and making economic inroads into China. Many Americans believed their own country should join the “race” for riches and “march” to glory as part of the international competition to exploit the natural resources and trade potential of weaker countries. In early October 1897, 30,000 spectators paid their 25-cent fee to enter New York’s Excursion Wharf and observe the strange cargo of the recently arrived steamship Hope. Arctic explorer Robert Peary had returned from Greenland, bringing with him six Greenland Eskimos and a 37.5-ton meteorite dislodged from the Cape York region. Among the native Greenlanders were Qisuk and his seven-year old son, Minik. The American public hailed the intrepid explorer Peary as a hero. The American Museum of Natural History put the Eskimos on display, and New Yorkers regarded their odd clothing, language, and eating habits with intense curiosity. But their curiosity was only superficial and did not extend to protection for the young Minik. Over the next year, four of the Eskimos (including Qisuk) died, and one other returned to his native land. The orphaned Minik survived and remained in the United States. Within a few years, he was abandoned by Peary and museum officials who had initially touted him as a significant scientific discovery. Minik returned to Greenland when he was a young man, but he was restless and unhappy there. He returned to the United States in 1916, eventually CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 629 ${bmicon} finding some peace with a New Hampshire farm family. He died in 1918, a victim of a worldwide flu epidemic. Minik’s short, tragic life reveals certain aspects of Americans’ encounter with “exotic” peoples in the late nineteenth century. The Museum of Natural History subjected him and the other members of his group to close study. When Qisuk died, the museum conducted a mock burial for the benefit of his son but then created a public exhibit of Qisuk’s bones. (Nearly 100 years later, the passage of the Native American Grave and Burial Protection Act provided an incentive for museum authorities to send the remains of the four Eskimos back to Greenland for burial.) During the late nineteenth century, Americans were fascinated by artifacts and images dealing with far-away places, especially Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. This impulse, revealed in high art as well as popular culture, stereotyped darker-skinned, non-Christian peoples as primitive, sensual, and inscrutable. Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 featured exhibits depicting harems, spice merchants, and turbaned warriors and performances of “hootchy kootchy dancers,” scantily clothed young women writhing to the music of exotic instruments. Throughout the late nineteenth century, photographers took pictures of Middle Eastern nomads and African villagers. American artists, such as Frederic Edwin Church and John Singer Sargent, traveled abroad to render romantic scenes of deserts, ancient ruins, and mysterious peoples in oils and in watercolors. Painter Eric Pape arranged to have himself tied to a pyramid so that he could partake of an “Egyptian experience”; he produced a painting called Site of Ancient Memphis in 1891. These cultural tendencies could be used to sell products and entertainment. The glassmaker–jeweler Tiffany and Co. evoked Islamic art in its tea services and silver patterns. Tobacco companies marketed mass-produced cigarettes with “Oriental” brand names: “Fatima,” “Omar,” and “Camel.” Thus, a fascination with the exotic encompassed a wide range of impulses in American life and letters, bringing together explorers, scientists, artists, and advertising agents. The opening of Asia to American trade, combined with the military challenges posed by the major European imperial powers, stimulated the growth of the U.S. Navy in the 1880s. In 1883, Congress appropriated funds to build 90 small ships, one-third made of wood, the rest out of steel. Seven years later, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan argued for a modern force of large seagoing battleships. In his book The Influence of Sea-Power in History, 1660–1763 (1890), Mahan contended that if the United States aspired to be a world power, it must control the seas. Seeking way stations for its ships, the United States negotiated control over both Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and the harbor at Pago Pago in Samoa in 1887. The state department even achieved a voice in Samoan foreign relations to stave off rivals Great Britain and Germany, which also coveted Pago Pago. In 1889 warships of these three powers gathered in the Samoan harbor. Fortunately, a hurricane thwarted a showdown. The powers, unnerved by their near brush with war, agreed to establish joint control over the islands for the next ten years. full view Our Top-Heavy Navy - Puck Cartoon This 1881 cartoon depicted “our top-heavy navy,” a decrepit vessel sinking with idle officers portrayed as various birds. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) In October 1890, Secretary of State James G. Blaine hosted the first Pan-American Conference in Washington, D.C. a gathering of representatives from 19 independent Latin American republics. Topics included the adaptation of standardized weights and measures for all participants in the conference and a possible intercontinental railroad. These developments suggested the blurring of military, diplomatic, strategic, and economic interests—a mix that characterized American foreign policy for decades to come. In 1895 the United States signaled to Great Britain that it was prepared to go to war to bar Europeans from colonizing or intervening in the Americas, a policy outlined in the Monroe PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 630 ${bmicon} Doctrine more than 70 years before. Britain had persisted in its long-standing claims to the jungle boundary between its colony of British Guiana and the country of Venezuela on the north central coast of South America. President Cleveland made clear his intention to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Britain, sensitive to other threats posed by European imperial powers on the far-flung British empire, backed down. Thereafter, Britain began to concentrate on strengthening its diplomatic ties with the United States. Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, the Hawaiian Islands seemed to pose both a threat and an opportunity for American interests. Located 2000 miles from the California coast, Hawaii had a population of 150,000 in 1890. When English explorer James Cook had landed there in 1778, the islands were inhabited exclusively by the descendants of ancient seafaring Polynesians. Protestant missionaries began to arrive in 1820, and the first sugar plantation appeared 15 years later. In 1875 sugar planters and merchants, many of whom were related to missionaries, negotiated a treaty with the United States that let them ship the crop to the United States duty-free. Production of Hawaiian sugar increased from less than 10,000 tons in 1870 to 300,000 tons 30 years later. In 1895 the United States signaled to Great Britain that it was prepared to go to war to bar Europeans from colonizing or intervening in the Americas. By this time, the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, the Japanese, and the Portuguese had made their way to the Hawaiian Islands. These groups formed the bulk of the plantation labor force, for disease had decimated the native population. In the fields and in their barracks, immigrant contract workers followed a disciplined regimen under the supervision of mounted, whip-wielding overseers called lunas. Indeed, these laborers’ workday bore a marked resemblance to that of sharecroppers on the largest cotton plantations of the U.S. South. Not surprisingly, both clergy and growers were alarmed by the laborers’ resistance to regimentation in the fields and in the quarters. Some men and women workers drank on Saturday night, smoked opium, and gambled. Worse, in the eyes of their employers, many grabbed any opportunity to flee the plantation in search of jobs as wage earners or shopkeepers in the city of Honolulu. Some even became rice farmers on their own. Planters were forced to suspend operations to accommodate traditional festivals, such as the Chinese New Year, when workers decorated their barracks and cottages with colorful flags and lanterns. Missionaries and sugar planters alike hoped to transform the workers into more stable, predictable employees. The McKinley Tariff of 1890 raised duties on imports of the islands’ sugar. This served to overturn the 1875 pro-planter treaty, causing planters (mostly Americans) to panic about their livelihood. They received no support from the islands’ native leader, Queen Liliuokalani, who believed foreigners should be barred from running the country. In 1893 the planters, backed by American Marines, launched a successful revolt that deposed the queen. They then called for the United States to annex the islands as a territory. Upon investigation, President Cleveland discovered that native Hawaiians opposed annexation and so refused to agree to the move. His refusal incurred the wrath of American imperialists, who claimed that the “Hawaiian pear” had been “ripe for the plucking.” full view Queen Liliuokalani, 1887 - Portrait Portrait of Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani in 1887. A determined nationalist, she was deposed in 1893 by sugar planters who were requesting United States annexation. (Hawaii State Archives/ Historical Records Branch) In the Caribbean, Cuban nationalists staged an uprising against the Spanish in 1895. The leader of the insurrection was José Julian Martí. He had lived in exile in the United States from 1881 to 1895. Rebelling against the repressive Spanish colonialists who had ruled the island for more than 400 years, native insurrectos under the leadership of Martí burned crops of sugar cane and attacked passenger trains. American companies with large investments in the Cuban sugar industry (a total of about $50 million) were outraged at the destruction of their property; they had no sympathy for the insurrectos. Yet the arrival of Spanish military officials, who herded the rebels into barbed-wire concentration camps, inflamed public opinion in the United States. Both businesspeople and humanitarians urged McKinley to intervene in Cuba. full view Our Victorious Fleet in Cuban Waters - Illustration Our Victorious Fleet in Cuban Waters by an unknown artist. The new American ships steaming in every direction capture the expansive mood of the nation. (Library of Congress) CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 631 ${bmicon} Two American newspaper publishers, William R. Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, seized the chance to boost their respective circulations by highlighting Spanish atrocities against Cubans. Pulitzer owned the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the New York World, and Hearst challenged him with the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Journal. On February 9, 1898, Hearst published a letter written by the Spanish minister in Washington, D.C. Dupuy de Lôme, in which de Lôme denounced President McKinley as a spineless politician. Six days later, the American battleship Maine, which had been sent to Havana harbor to evacuate Americans should the need arise, exploded and sank. Two hundred sixty officers and men were killed. Subsequent investigations concluded that the heat from one of the coal bins had ignited an adjacent powder magazine. But the Hearst papers implied that the Spanish were responsible for the blast. Attempting to expand their readership, the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers engaged in “yellow journalism”: sensational news reporting that blurred the line between fact and fiction, spontaneous reality and staged theater. War sold papers. During the crisis in Cuba, the Journal was selling at a rate of a million copies a day. McKinley responded to American businesspeople who feared for their interests in Cuba and to other Americans who decried Spain’s brutality toward the insurrectos. On April 11, 1898, McKinley called on Congress to declare a U.S. war against Spain. His own assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, had reportedly called the president a “white-livered” poor excuse for a man. To Roosevelt and other pro-warriors, much was at stake: the large American sugar investment, trade with the island, and American power and influence in the Western Hemisphere. Congress responded to McKinley’s message by adopting the Teller Amendment, which declared that the United States would guarantee Cuba its independence once the Spanish were driven from the island. America went to war on April 29. full view Iolani Palace, Hawaii The `Iolani Palace, former home of Queen Lili`uokalani, was the scene of annexation ceremonies in 1898, when Hawaii became a U.S. territory. President McKinley declared it to be “manifest destiny.” (Library of Congress) McKinley hoped to hobble the Spanish navy by making a preemptive attack on the fleet in the Philippines. Commodore George Dewey, stationed with the American Asiatic Squadron in Hong Kong, was dispatched with his ships to Manila Bay, where on May 1, 1898, his force of four battleships sank all ten rickety Spanish vessels, killing 400, with only a few minor American casualties. full view Explosion on the Maine This illustration dramatizes the explosion on the USS Maine in Havana harbor February 1898, killing over 250 American sailors. Theodore Roosevelt, then serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, proclaimed, without any evidence, “The Maine was sunk by an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spanish.” (Library of Congress) full view Suspicions of Spain - New York Journal Headline Headlines like these in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal inflamed suspicions about Spain. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 632 ${bmicon} full view MAP 18.6 THE SPANISH–AMERICAN– CUBAN–FILIPINO WAR OF 1898 In Cuba, the United States combined a blockade of the island with an army invasion to defeat Spanish forces. In the Philippines, the U.S. triumph over the Spanish opened a wider war between American occupying forces and native Filipinos. Dewey waited in the harbor until American reinforcements arrived in August. Then, with the help of Filipino nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo, U.S. forces overran Manila on August 13. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans had found the necessary votes to annex Hawaii. They claimed that the United States needed the Pacific islands to secure a refueling way station for Dewey’s troops. McKinley signed the congressional resolution on July 7, 1898. Hawaiian residents were granted citizenship rights, and the islands became an official U.S. territory in 1900. full view Teddy Roosevelt - Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt led the Rough Riders, a military unit, in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photo Division) Earlier in the summer of 1898, halfway around the globe, 17,000 American troops traveled to Tampa, Florida, in preparation for their incursion into Cuba. Among them were the Rough Riders, a crew of volunteers organized by Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who had resigned his post as assistant secretary of the Navy to serve as an officer. The troops, woefully unprepared for combat in the tropical heat, landed near Santiago, Cuba, in late June. full view Emilio Aguinaldo Delighted to help the U. S. defeat the Spanish in the Philippines, Aguinaldo later struggled to liberate his country from control by the United States. He was eventually taken prisoner by American forces. (National Archives) On July 1, Roosevelt and his men engaged an unprepared Spanish force of about 2000 men at El Caney and San Juan Hill. The Rough Riders charged up nearby Kettle Hill (they were on foot, not on horses) and into American legend. Later in speeches, Roosevelt boasted of shooting a Spanish soldier at point-blank range. But Roosevelt neglected to mention that he and his men had received crucial backup support from two African American regiments that day. Blacks had formed a skirmish line at the bottom of the hill, and, according to an eyewitness, “with an unearthly yell, charged up it” in company with the white soldiers. Federal military authorities had assigned African American men prominent combat roles in Cuba and the Philippines, believing that blacks were better able than whites to withstand the withering heat of the tropics. By late July, American warships had destroyed the Spanish fleet in Santiago Bay. Again, Spanish losses were high (500 men killed) and American losses slight (1 man killed). According to Secretary of State John Hay, it had been “a splendid little war,” just 113 days long. Battles claimed 385 American lives (although many times that number died from disease—malaria, typhoid, dysentery, and yellow fever—and from the rotten meat the soldiers ate). On August 12, 1898, Spain signed an armistice and later in the year ceded its claim to remnants of its empire, including Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the island of Guam in the Pacific. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 633 ${bmicon} The United States forced Cuba to incorporate into its constitution (written in 1901) the so-called Platt Amendment, which guaranteed continuing U.S. influence over the country, including the stationing of American troops at a naval station on Guantanamo. Meeting with Spanish negotiators in Paris, the United States agreed to pay $20 million for the Philippines. McKinley’s motives in acquiring the islands stemmed from both commercial interests (the Philippines as a gateway to China) and religious concerns (the opportunity for Protestants to convert Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics). full view African American Troops in Spanish American War A great number of African American soldiers participated in the fighting during the Spanish American War. Four African American regular army regiments fought in Cuba: the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th (pictured here) and 10th Cavalry. Spanish troops referred to these African American soldiers as “Smoked Yankees.” (Library of Congress) But Filipino rebels were not about to bow to a new colonial power. Over the next two years, the United States committed 100,000 troops to subdue the rebels, using tactics that foreshadowed the U.S. war in Vietnam 70 years later. Hunting down guerrillas hiding in the jungle, American soldiers torched villages and crops. They forced water down the throats of suspected rebel leaders—in a form of torture known as the “water cure”—in an effort to extract information. Four thousand Americans and 20,000 Filipinos died in combat. As many as 600,000 Filipino civilians succumbed to disease and starvation. Not until 1901 could the Americans claim victory over their “little brown brothers,” as future president William Howard Taft referred to the Filipino people. full view Activities of the United States in the Caribbean, 1898-1930s The US policed the Caribbean during the first three decades of the twentieth century, claiming the right to intervene when it determined that Latin American countries could not run their own affairs. Ownership of the Philippine Islands gave the United States a foothold in Asia. In 1894–1895, Japan had waged a successful war against China, and European traders rushed in to China to monopolize local markets and establish their own spheres of influence. Secretary of State John Hay issued a communication called the Open Door note in the summer of 1899; in it, he urged the imperial powers to respect the trading interests of all nations. The Europeans were reluctant to cede anything to their international competitors, and only Italy agreed to the terms of Hay’s policy. But in 1900, the Boxer Uprising in China prompted cooperation between the western powers. The Boxers, Chinese ultranationalists, killed 200 foreign missionaries and other whites in an effort to purge China of outsiders. Together, the Germans, Japanese, British, French, and Americans sent 18,000 troops to quell the revolt. The United States and European nations continued to compete for the China market well into the twentieth century. full view U.S. Soldiers in the Philippines, 1899 American soldiers stood guard over captured guerrillas in 1899, as part of a mission to bring “civilization” to the Philippines. (Library of Congress) full view Filipino Guerillas Filipinos who fought against American control used brutal guerilla tactics that denied American victory for three years and led to severe retaliatory acts by American troops. (Library of Congress) full view Americans Guard Filipino Prisoners, 1899 American soldiers stood guard over captured guerrillas in 1899, as part of a mission to bring “civilization” to the Philippines. (Library of Congress) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 634 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Proceedings of the Congressional Committee on the Philippines In January 1900, Congress established the Committee on the Philippines. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts was appointed chair of the committee. Its task was to review the American conduct of the war. The testimony of two U.S. officers, which follows, foreshadows the difficulties faced by the United States in fighting a guerilla war in Vietnam six decades later. Brigadier General Robert P. Hughes testified in response to questions posed by committee members: Q: In burning towns, what would you do? Would the entire town be destroyed by fire or would only offending portions of the town be burned? GEN. HUGHES: I do not know that we ever had a case of burning what you would call a town in this country; but probably a barrio or a sitio; probably a half dozen houses, native shacks, where the insurrectos [rebels] would go in and be concealed, and if they caught a detachment passing they would kill some of them. Q: What did I understand you to say would be the consequence of that? GEN. HUGHES: They usually burned the village. Q: All of the houses in the village? GEN. HUGHES: Yes, every one of them. Q: What would become of the inhabitants? GEN. HUGHES: That was their lookout…. The destruction was as a punishment. Q: The punishment in that case would fall, not upon the men, who would go elsewhere, but mainly upon the women and little children. GEN. HUGHES: The women and children, are part of the family, and where you wish to inflict a punishment you can punish the man probably worse in that way than in any other. Q: But is that within the ordinary rules of civilized warfare? Of course you could exterminate the family, which would be still worse punishment. GEN. HUGHES: These people are not civilized…. Sergeant Charles S. Riley also testified in response to the following questions: Q: During your service there [in the Philippine Islands] did you witness what is generally known as the water cure? A: I did. Q: When and where? A: On November 27, 1900, in the town of Igbaras, Iloilo Province, Panay Island…. [Riley describes a Filipino man, 40–45 years of age, stripped to the waist, with his hands tied behind him.] Q: Do you remember who had charge of him? A: Captain Glenn stood there beside him and one or two men were tying him…. He was then taken and placed under the tank, and the faucet was opened and a stream of water was forced down or allowed to run down his throat; his throat was held so he could not prevent swallowing the water, so that he had to allow the water to run into his stomach…. When he was filled with water it was forced out of him by pressing a foot on his stomach or else with their hands…. Q: What had been his crime? A: Information had been obtained from a native source as to his being an insurgent officer. After the treatment he admitted that he held the rank of captain in the insurgent army—an active captain…. Q: His offense was treachery to the American cause? A: Yes, sir…. Source: Proceedings of the Congressional Committee on the Philippines, in Harvey Graff, ed., American Imperialism and the Philippine Insurrection (Boston, 1969), pp. 64–79. Theodore Roosevelt seemed to personify the late-nineteenth-century idea of American manifest destiny: the notion that the core of the nation’s history was a militant mission to expand its territorial reach. However, not all Americans agreed with Roosevelt. New York financier Mark Hanna called him a “madman” and “that damned cowboy.” Writer Mark Twain believed him “clearly insane” and “insanest upon war and its supreme glories.” Twain and other prominent people founded the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 in an attempt to stem the rising tide of militarism. full view Uncle Sam Teaching the World - Puck Cartoon Uncle Sam teaches a diverse group of students about civilization in this Puck cartoon. In the first row, receiving special attention, are recent U.S. acquisitions: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. (New York Public Library) full view World Colonial Empires, 1900 Events of the nineteenth century increased European hegemony over the world. By 1900 most independent African nations had disappeared, and the major European nations had divided the continent among themselves. In the East, the European powers and Japan took advantage of China’s internal weakness to gain both trading ports and economic concessions. It is difficult to generalize about the politics of anti-imperialists during this period. AFL president Samuel Gompers and industrialist Andrew Carnegie both considered themselves members of the anti-imperialist camp, but clearly that stance did not mean they agreed on much, or even on anti-imperialism. Some critics of imperialism advocated a hands-off policy toward other nations in the belief that all peoples were entitled to self-determination. In contrast, other anti-imperialists used arguments about racial hierarchies to justify their opposition to expansion. Yale sociology professor William Graham Sumner, a proponent of Social Darwinism, argued that “uncivilized and half-civilized peoples” were hostile to democratic self-government and unprepared for its rigors. Thus, Sumner believed that American efforts to “civ- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 635 ${bmicon} ilize” and colonize foreign peoples would inevitably fail because those peoples were incapable of embracing American values. Recent newcomers to the United States resented the idea that the “march of the flag” was an enterprise to be led by Anglo-Saxons (that is, people of English descent), as some imperialists claimed. German immigrants invoked their heritage of conquest, and the Irish juxtaposed their native culture with what they called the historic “brutal savagery” of the English. Nevertheless, supporting imperialism was one way for immigrants to proclaim their own Americanness and distance themselves from allegedly inferior peoples. In the summer of 1900, the Democrats and Republicans prepared for the upcoming presidential election. Receiving the Democratic nomination once again, William Jennings Bryan was eager to press the outdated cause of free silver. He also condemned the American presence in the Philippines, although this issue, too, was rapidly losing the attention of the electorate. At the Republican convention, Roosevelt’s supporters managed to win for him the slot as McKinley’s running mate. That fall, the former Rough Rider waged an exuberant campaign. Accompanied by a retinue of gun-toting cowboys, he wrapped the Republicans in the American flag. When McKinley swept back into office in the fall, few Americans could have anticipated how central Roosevelt’s vision would become to the country over the next two decades. PART 6 ###8226; THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA, 1877###8211;1900 636 ${bmicon} As Americans greeted the twentieth century, they might have marveled at the dramatic changes that had occurred in their country over the last 100 years. In 1800 the United States was home to 5.3 million people who lived in 16 states. One hundred years later, the country included 45 states and boasted a population of 76 million people. Many workplaces, fields as well as factories, were dominated by machines and the people who tended them. The economy was shifting toward the mass production of consumer goods. In 1900 the United States exerted control over the land and peoples of Alaska, the Hawaiian and Samoan Islands, the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and (through the Platt Amendment), Cuba as well. These holdings, notable for their strategic significance, illustrated the growing willingness of the United States to extend its influence and economic reach—by armed force if necessary—to the far corners of the earth. The 1890s foreshadowed many of the major themes of the twentieth century. The Populists looked to the federal government to address social ills, paving the way for Progressives in the early twentieth century and New Dealers in the 1930s. Conversationists provided the foundation for the environmentalist movement of the 1970s. And suffragists were the foremothers of the modern women’s movement. Yet for Americans, a generations-old contradiction lingered between prosperity and political equality for some groups and poverty and political subordination for others. On the international stage, the United States was quick to take advantage of weaker nations if such action was deemed crucial to the “national interest.” The new drive for worldwide economic and political power was fast eclipsing America’s revolutionary heritage, with its values of democracy and self-determination. The Spanish–American War www.loe.gov/rr/hispanic/1898 This site provides resources and documents about the Spanish-American War, the period before the war, and the people who participated in the fighting or commented on it. Imperialism Web Page www.smplanet.com/imperialism/toc.html Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this site includes much information about American imperialism. Hispanic Voices/Voces Hispanas www.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC This interactive site on Latinos in California is maintained by the Bancroft Library in Berkeley. The autobiographical narratives include late-nineteenth-century oral histories with Latinos. Late Nineteenth-Century Authors xroads.virginia.edu/∼HYPER/hypertex.html This University of Virginia site includes material on prominent nineteenth-century writers, including William Dan Howells, Mark Twain, and Joel Chandler Harris. Mary Baker Eddy www.tfccs.com/GC/MBE/MBEmain.jhtml This site looks at the founding of Christian Science. National Arts and Crafts Archives www.arts-crafts.com/index.html This site serves as a guide to materials related to the Arts and Crafts movement, which lasted from about 1890 to 1929. Samuel Gompers Papers www.inform.umd.edu/HIST/Gompers/page4.html This site includes information about the Samuel Gompers Papers project at the University of Maryland. It also has a photo gallery, selected documents, and a brief history of the first president of the American Federation of Labor. The Era of William McKinley www.history.ohio-state.edu/projects/mckinley/ This Ohio State University site contains a bibliography and numerous images from various periods of McKinley’s career. It also includes a section with an excellent collection of McKinley-era cartoons. CHAPTER 18 ###8226; POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN A DECADE OF DEPRESSION AND WAR 637 ${bmicon} Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (1996). Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (2000). Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898 (1963). Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945 (1982). Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (1984). David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians andthe Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (1995). Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–1903 (1975). Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998). Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (1989). Donald J. Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California, 1850–1931 (1984). Barbara M. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (1985). Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (1999). David B. Tyack, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (1982). Paul Buhle, From the Knights of Labor to the New World Order: Essays on Labor and Culture (1997). Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–1940 (2000). Patricia R. Hill, The World their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (1985). Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890–1945 (1993). Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks. It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (2000). Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History (2000). David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (1983). Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (1968). H. W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (1992). Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (1997). Kenn Harper, Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo (2000). Thomas J. McCormick, China Market: America’s Quest for Informal Empire, 1893–1901 (1967). William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1972). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter18 To Chapter 18 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 638 ${bmicon}   1901 McKinley is assassinated; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes president. 1902 New Lands Act spurs dam building and irrigation in the Southwest. 1903 First motorized flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright. Henry Ford founds Ford Motor Company. 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to Monroe Doctrine. 1905 Industrial Workers of the World founded. Japan defeats Russia. 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle. Pure Food and Drug Act. 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Japan. Oklahoma (former Indian Territory) becomes state. Indiana becomes first state to pass compulsory sterilization law. 1908 Muller v. Oregon limits maximum hours for working women. 1909 New York City garment workers’ “Uprising of the 20,000.” Peary–Henson expedition reaches North Pole with four Greenland Inuit. 1910 Mexican Revolution begins. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded. 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, New York City. Society of American Indians founded. 1912 Theodore Roosevelt helps form Progressive party. Woodrow Wilson elected president. 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Sixteenth Amendment (federal personal income tax) ratified. 1914 U.S. sends troops to block German arms shipment to Mexico. War breaks out in Europe. 1915 U.S. Marines occupy Haiti. Germans sink Lusitania. Film Birth of a Nation released. MANY AMERICANS GREETED THE FIRST YEARS OF THE TWENTIETH century with optimism. Developments at home and abroad seemed to promise a new era of prosperity and progress. The mass manufacturing of automobiles proved a boon to the economy and transformed patterns of travel, leisure, and consumption. The beginning of commercial air flights heralded a revolution in communication and transportation. Moving pictures and new musical forms such as jazz delighted millions. Focused on the new challenges of urbanization and industrialization, Progressive reformers sought to use science to solve a wide range of problems related to public health and welfare. Some advocated overhauling the system of public education; others pressed for legislation banning the sale and distribution of alcohol. Some lobbied for worker health and safety legislation, and still others sought to exercise social control through eugenics and state-mandated sterilization. A variety of groups challenged white men’s exclusive claim to civil rights. African Americans took the national stage to argue for equality under the law and for freedom from state-sanctioned violence in the form of lynching and debt peonage. Beginning with the Great Migration of World War I, southern blacks abandoned the cotton fields to seek jobs in northern cities. The changing roles of women bolstered the women’s suffrage movement. Growing numbers of women were becoming labor organizers, reformers, and college professors. Rising divorce rates and the emergence of birth control as a political as well as a medical issue signaled challenges to the traditional patriarchal family. At the same time, conflicts among reformers emerged. For example, white middle-class suffragists hoped to maintain their “respectability” in an effort to win the support of reluctant male leaders; in the process, these women distanced themselves from members of the working class and even the African American women active in the suffrage movement. Suffragists’ efforts paid off in 1920, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 639 ${bmicon}   With its lively consumer culture and rising standard of living, the United States continued to attract newcomers from abroad. Immigrants from Mexico and eastern Europe sought refuge from poverty, oppression, and civil strife at home. In 1914, 1.2 million immigrants came to America, the largest number in a single year before or since that date. Between 1900 and 1930, more than 1 million Mexicans migrated north, most settling into existing Mexican American communities in the Southwest or creating new communities there or in the Midwest. World War I shattered the belief among many Progressives that conflicts could be solved in a rational, peaceful way. The end of the war had permanently entangled U.S. interests in European affairs. Moreover, revolutions in Mexico (1910) and Russia (1917) affected the United States directly, the former by spurring immigration across the country’s southwest border, the latter by challenging the nation’s system of industrial capitalism. Nevertheless, many Americans remained convinced that the country could and should isolate itself from world affairs. Natural forces also remained beyond the control of reformers and government officials. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the great Mississippi flood of 1927, and the Florida hurricane of 1928 exacted devastating tolls in terms of human life and property damage. The local communities that were directly affected struggled for years to recover from these disasters. But for many Americans, the 1920s was a period of peace and prosperity. New household appliances and conveniences lightened the burdens of housework. Radios and movies proved to be popular forms of entertainment. Traditional social mores gave way to expressions of sexual freedom. Progressive impulses waned as business values rose to take their place. The decade after the end of World War I revealed both the persistence of old conflicts and the emergence of new conflicts within American society. Conservatives branded labor union organizers and socialists as unpatriotic and subversive. Asian immigrants on the West Coast and blacks in the rural South and urban North faced continued legal discrimination in the workplace and in the courts. Protestant fundamentalists challenged the move toward secularism and rationalism, claiming that religious faith, not science, set the standard for morality in modern life. Responding to those who feared that foreign immigration represented a threat to American society, Congress imposed immigration restrictions in 1924. Put into effect in 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The three Republican presidents who served during the 1920s—Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover—retreated from the activist stance favored by their predecessors, including Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The stock market crash of 1929 revealed fundamental weaknesses in the American economy. A tide of bank failures engulfed individual American families even as it threatened businesses abroad. As the depression deepened, Americans looked to the federal government to address the crisis. 1916 Jeannette Rankin elected first female member of Congress. U.S. Marines occupy Dominican Republic. 1917 U.S. enters World War I. U.S. Marines occupy Cuba. Russian Revolution. Residents of Puerto Rico granted U.S. citizenship. 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic kills 20 million worldwide. Sedition Act. Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” speech to Congress. 1919 Versailles Treaty ends World War I. U.S. Senate rejects League of Nations. Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition) ratified. 1920 Nineteenth Amendment (women’s suffrage) ratified. 1921 Tulsa whites attack black community. Sheppard–Towner Act. 1922 Five-Power Naval Treaty. 1923 Equal Rights Amendment proposed. 1924 Johnson–Reid Act. Portable radio introduced. 1925 Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tennessee. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. 1926 Gertrude Ederle is first woman to swim across English Channel. 1927 Charles Lindbergh flies nonstop from New York to Paris. Al Jolson stars in The Jazz Singer, first talking movie. Sacco and Vanzetti executed. Buck v. Bell upholds compulsory sterilization laws. 1928 Tamiami Trail across Florida Everglades completed. 1929 Stock market crash. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 640 ${bmicon}         Migration and Immigration: The Changing Face of the Nation       Work, Science, and Leisure       Reformers and Radicals       Expanding National Power       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 641 ${bmicon} “I AM A WORKING GIRL,” DECLARED CLARA LEMLICH IN HER NATIVE YIDDISH, “ONE OF those striking against intolerable conditions.” Still in her teens, the petite young woman took the podium on the night of November 22, 1909, in front of thousands of striking workers in New York, and roused them with her passionate, direct call for action: “I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared—now.” The next morning, 15,000 garment workers went on strike, demanding that the work week be reduced to 52 hours, with overtime pay and union recognition. Soon, the strikers swelled in number to more than 20,000. Observers at the time were astonished to see lively, fashionably dressed young women filling the picket lines. Ninety percent of the striking workers were women; they were overwhelmingly young Jewish immigrants, with Italian women constituting about 6 percent. Quickly, the strikers drew a wide coalition of support from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), and middle-class reformers and activists for women’s suffrage. The strike was a demand for union recognition, reasonable wages and hours, and safe and decent working conditions, including an end to sexual harassment on the job. But at the same time, the strikers insisted that they should be treated as “ladies” and have access to the consumer goods and leisure culture taking shape in American cities. Although the young women were bullied and arrested by police, their high spirits prompted some observers to make light of their struggle. Sarah Comstock, a reporter for Collier’s magazine, wrote of the strike, “This was a scene of gaiety and flirtation. My preconceived idea of a strike was a somber meeting where somber resolutions were made…. But they don’t look as if they had any grievances.” In response to those who tried to trivialize the women’s mobilization and in defense of their desire to be part of the new consumer culture, Lemlich stated, “We like new hats as well as other young women. Why shouldn’t we?” Ultimately, the strike ended with a failed compromise when the striking workers overwhelmingly rejected an offer of better wages and working conditions that did not include recognition of their union. Calling the strikers “socialists,” their more moderate allies broke from the union and left the young female workers vulnerable to the power of the company owners. The coalition of support fell apart, and most of the strikers eventually went back to work. Less than two years later, a fire broke out in the top floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, one of the major centers of the 1909 strike. Eight hundred workers, most of them young Jewish and Italian women, were trapped in the inferno because company officials had locked interior doors to prevent the women from taking unauthorized breaks or leaving work early. The flames tore through the building in less than half an hour, leaving 146 young women dead. Those who did not succumb to flames and smoke jumped to their PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 642 ${bmicon} deaths. “One girl after another fell, like shot birds, from above, from the burning floors,” remembered one witness. “They hit the pavement just like hail,” reported a firefighter. Parents rushed to the scene to find their young daughters dead, dying, or maimed. “My little girl lies dead, shrouds instead of a wedding gown,” cried one of the bereaved. One reporter wrote, “I looked upon the dead bodies and I remembered these girls were the shirtwaist makers. I remembered their great strike of last year in which the same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. Their dead bodies were the answer.” In the investigation that followed, the owner of the factory was never charged with a crime or held responsible for the tragedy. He claimed that his building was in full compliance with safety laws, but compliance with the laws did not ensure safety for the workers. No laws required sprinklers, adequate fire escapes, or fire drills. Just a few months before the fire, the building had been inspected and declared “fireproof.” Defending himself after the fire against accusations of negligence, the building owner pointed to the sturdy brick structure, which, as the New York Times noted, “showed hardly any signs of the disaster.” The “uprising of twenty thousand,” as the 1909 strike came to be called, and the tragic factory fire that ignited in its aftermath, are two among many dramatic episodes in the early twentieth century that expose the fractures and tensions within the nation at the time. Immigrants and racial minorities demanded the full promise of American life; workers struggled against the exploitation, poor pay, and dangerous conditions that characterized industrial jobs; young women insisted on respect at work and access to the playful environment of urban fashion and popular culture; female voices called for full citizenship and the vote and claimed their right to be heard by male bosses and union leaders; and activists across the political spectrum tried to control and manage the changes taking place around them in accord with their widely differing values. During the first years of the twentieth century, the nation began to emerge as something profoundly different than it had been in the past. Even the landscape changed as cities continued to grow not only outward but also upward, with the construction of towering skyscrapers, and downward, with the creation of subway systems. But human enterprise continued to be vulnerable to the forces of nature. On April 18, 1906, an earthquake virtually leveled San Francisco. The nation saw in one deadly instant that human technological genius paled in the face of nature’s fury. After the quake, fire devoured the city. In the words of writer Jack London, “All the cunning adjustments of a twentieth century city had been smashed by the earthquake. The streets were humped into ridges and depressions, and piled with the debris of fallen walls. The steel rails were twisted into perpendicular and horizontal angles. The telephone and telegraph systems were disrupted. And the great water mains had burst. All the shrewd contrivances and safeguards of man had been thrown out of gear by thirty seconds’ twitching of the earth-crust.” If New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Company building—unscathed after the young women inside perished in flames—was a monument to corporate arrogance, the crumbled buildings of San Francisco offered a lesson in humility. “Never, in all San Francisco’s history, were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror,” noted London. Railroads carried thousands of refugees out of the city, free of Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 643 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Rose Freedman Major historical events sometimes take on a life of their own, locked in a single frame of historical memory. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire is one such event. Rose Rosenfeld Freedman, one of the young women working at the factory on that fateful day, provides a reminder that events are not simply frozen in time. The tragic fire that she survived fueled in her a lifelong committment to the rights of workers. Rose Rosenfeld was not born into a working class community that might have nurtured her committment to workers’ rights. The daughter of a prosperous business owner, she emigrated from Vienna to the United States in 1909 at age 15. She did not need a job, but as a young Jewish immigrant, she recalled, “I wanted to show that I’m [a] real American and I want to work like everybody else. And I went on my own, found a job…. And then, I almost paid with my life.” She was 16 when she went to work at Triangle, sewing buttons at a wage of $3 for a six-day week. Rose was working on the ninth floor when the fire alarm sounded at 4:43 P.M. on March 25, 1911. Finding the exit doors locked, she ran up to the tenth floor, where the executives worked, but the bosses were gone. “They saved themselves already.” She pulled her dress over her head and followed the bosses to the roof, where firefighters hoisted her to safety on the top of the adjacent building. The fire inspired her to action. Nearly a century later, her memory of the fire remained vivid: “The executives with a couple steps could have opened the door. But they thought they were better than the working people…. What good is a rich man [if] he hasn’t got a heart? I feel it. Still. I feel very bad about it.” Outrage over the fire led to the passage of 36 labor and safety laws in the next three years. Rose Rosenfeld left the garment business and went on to college, but she remained a passionate advocate for workers’ rights. In another dramatic brush with history, Rosenfeld demonstrated her willingness to stand up for others whose rights and safety were threatened. She was visiting Austria just as World War I erupted. A Russian Jew who had been spying for Austria arrived at the house where she was staying, begging for protection from Russian soldiers. She hid him in a coal bin in the basement and when the soldiers arrived, she told them to leave. Weeks later, the wife of the man she hid came to the house to thank her for saving the father of their five children. In 1927, Rose married Harry Freedman, who ran a typewriter business. During World War II, in the midst of a terrifying polio epidemic, she escaped another tragedy. Two of her children were stricken with the disease but recovered. For Freedman, it was another miracle, like her escape from the Triangle fire. Widowed in 1952, Freedman entered business school at age 59 and got a job with a pen company in New York. At 64, she lied about her age and got a job in customer relations at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. She stayed there for 15 years, retiring at age 79. Still an active crusader, Freedman moved to Los Angeles when she was in her nineties. At age 100, she went to Mexico to study Spanish. Like the shirtwaist workers who wore hats and stylish clothes on the picket line in 1909, Rose Freedman still wore high heels, had her hair done every week, and did her own shopping. Cherishing her independence, she refused to move in with her children, explaining that “young people belong together and I have a life of my own.” In 2000, at age 106, Rose Freedman lectured on sweatshops to enthralled students at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “She loved her career…. She believed quite fully in doing things that make you happy,” said her granddaughter Dana Walden, head of 20th Century Fox Television. Rose Freedman died in 2001 at age 107, the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 644 ${bmicon} charge. And the national government stepped in immediately, as it would countless times throughout the twentieth century in the face of disaster. full view Downtown Scene with Cars, 1911 Downtown Scene with Cars, 1911 (Photodisc, Inc.) The San Francisco earthquake symbolized American life at the dawn of the twentieth century in one word: upheaval. When the smoke and dust cleared, Chinatown was destroyed, as were the modest homes of laborers, the new houses of the middle class, the palaces of the wealthy, sturdy banks and businesses, and the brick and steel constructions of modernity. But out of death and destruction, the city and its people came back. San Francisco, along with the rest of the country, grappled with upheaval as the nation continued on its path toward the diverse, urban, industrial society that characterized American life in the twentieth century. The dramatic changes taking place in the nation at the dawn of the new century, from industry and technology down to the most intimate levels of life, sparked equally dramatic efforts to control, tame, and regulate them. Because of the flurry of reform activity during this period, historians call it the Progressive Era. Politicians from all parties participated in the wide range of reform efforts known as Progressivism, fueled by a faith in progress and a belief in the possibility for social improvement. Charismatic young labor leader Clara Lemlich was one of millions of immigrants at the time who were changing the face of the nation. This migration, which began in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, resulted largely from international economic and political upheavals. Facing severe hardships in their home countries, many migrants took the desperate action of departing for foreign lands. Between 1900 and 1910, nearly 9 million immigrants entered the United States, by far the largest number for any single decade in the nation’s history before or since. The United States was one of several potential destinations for these courageous and hopeful sojourners. It was particularly appealing because of its often exaggerated, but nonetheless real, opportunities for jobs and economic advancement, its official commitment to freedom of religion and political thought, and its reputation as a nation that welcomed newcomers from abroad. Many immigrants followed kin or fellow townsfolk who had come in the nineteenth century; others were drawn to the promise of a better life, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. On arrival, many found that the “promised land” was not the paradise they expected. They faced crowded living conditions in urban tenements, jobs in sweatshops and factories with long hours, low wages, and miserable working conditions, and a hostile reception. Many Americans—including some whose own parents or grandparents had come to the United States as immigrants—looked down on the newcomers as “racially inferior” and morally suspect, feared competition for jobs, and worried that the masses of poor foreigners in their midst would become a burden on taxpayers and public institutions. The Statue of Liberty may have held Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 645 ${bmicon} full view MAP 19.1 FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION, 1900 Although the most famous points of entry for immigrants during the turn-of-the-century decades were New York’s Ellis Island for people from Europe, and Angel Island off of San Francisco for people from Asia, most immigrants actually settled in the Upper Midwest and the Southwestern region bordering Mexico. up the torch of welcome, but many citizens, from union halls to legislative chambers, wanted the newcomers to leave. full view New York City Tenements Poor immigrant families often lived in tiny, windowless rooms in crowded tenement districts such as this one in New York’s Lower East Side. Disease was common in such places. (Library of Congress) full view Hester Street, New York City Hester Street was the hub of Jewish settlement on the Lower East Side of New York City around 1900. Anzia Yezeirska’s semi-autobiographical novel, Bread Givers, immortalized the daily struggle on Hester Street. (Library of Congress) full view Families Working in Sweatshops The work in unregulated sweatshops was dangerous, tedious, and characterized by long hours at low pay. (Library of Congress) full view New York, Lower East Side New York’s Lower East Side crowded with immigrants. (Library of Congress) Many did leave. One-third of immigrants to the United States returned to their home countries. Some came for only a few years and returned to their native lands, including nearly 90 percent of migrants from the Balkans. Other groups, especially those who faced severe hardships in the lands of their birth, were more likely to make the United States their permanent home, settling with their families and building communities. Only 11 percent of the Irish and 5 percent of the Jews returned between 1908 and 1923. Although some of the newcomers moved to rural areas and worked in agriculture, most settled in the cities, where they were joined by rural Americans leaving farms for new opportunities in the rapidly growing urban centers. In the first decade of the twentieth century, more than four and a half million Americans moved from east to west, and nearly 80,000 migrated from south to north. Each person who took part in this huge global and national migration brought hopes, anxieties, and fears. But over time, these newcomers transformed almost every aspect of American life: political, economic, cultural, and social. Known as the nation’s heartland, the upper Midwest carries associations of small towns dotted with Protestant churches and inhabited by hardy Anglo-Saxon pioneers and their descendants. But at the dawn of the twentieth century, it was not the coastal cities, with their visible PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 646 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 19.1 NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS ENTERING THE UNITED STATES, 1821-1990 The number of immigrants entering the United States peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century and dropped drastically as a result of the immigration restriction laws passed by Congress in the 1920s. Immigration increased again as laws changed after World War II, allowing new immigrant groups to enter. immigrant ghettos, but the settlements in the upper Midwest, along with the lower Southwest, where the greatest concentration of foreign-born residents lived. In the growing towns and cities of the Midwest, newcomers from central Europe and Italy joined the earlier settlers from Germany and Scandinavia to form farming and mining communities on the rich soil and abundant iron deposits of the region. Immigrants from central and southern Europe settled in the region, which came to be known as the “iron range.” In the 1890s, the area was sparsely settled. As a result of the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided tribal lands into individual parcels, much of the land orginally held by Indians had been divided and sold. Most of the Indians who were native to that region were removed to reservations. The iron-rich areas, previously the hunting, fishing, and gathering areas of the Native Americans, were now inhabited by lumberjacks who cut the forests. The harsh climate, ranging from −40°F in the snowy winters to more than 110°F in the sweltering summers, plus aggressive swarms of biting insects made it a difficult place to settle. Nevertheless, mining companies discovered the iron deposits and began recruiting workers, first from northern Europe and then, after 1900, from southern and eastern Europe. By 1910, the iron range was home to 35 European immigrant groups. Gradually, these cohesive working-class communities, like others elsewhere, developed their own brand of ethnic Americanism, complete with elaborate Fourth of July celebrations and other festivities that expressed both their distinctive ethnic identities and their allegiance to their adopted country. In 1904 a train carrying Irish orphans from a New York Catholic foundling home chugged westward to deliver its small passengers to waiting Catholic families in Clifton and Morenci in the Arizona territory. Church officials at the New York orphanage had screened the families carefully to be certain that the couples hoping to adopt these children were virtuous church-going Catholics, industrious workers, and respectable members of the community. The local parish priest approved these couples, and on the appointed day, they waited eagerly as the orphans, dressed in their best clothes with their pink cheeks scrubbed clean, departed from the CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 647 ${bmicon} train. Along with the expectant couples, the waiting crowd included many women of the town. But when the Anglo-Protestant residents of the town discovered that Mexican Catholic foster parents claimed these fair-skinned children, they were outraged. That night, the Anglo women gathered to mobilize their husbands into a vigilante posse. In the middle of the night, during a driving rainstorm, the men went to the homes of the Mexican couples, banged on the doors, and kidnapped the children at gunpoint. The next day, the children were distributed to the vigilantes’ wives and other Anglo foster parents. Although the Catholic foundling home that had placed the children with the Mexican couples fought a lengthy legal battle to regain custody of the children, the Anglos managed to keep the orphans. The Arizona Supreme Court validated the kidnapping in the name of the “best interests of the children,” and the U.S. Supreme Court let the ruling stand. The struggle over the orphans reflected tensions and divisions in the region along lines of class as well as race. Longtime residents of this borderland region of Arizona included many Mexicans, mainly farmers, ranchers, and miners. In the early twentieth century Mexico’s deteriorating economy prompted large numbers of Mexicans to migrate to California and the Southwest, looking for work. The year before the arrival of the orphans, Mexican mine workers had struck for better wages and working conditions against the Anglo owners of the Arizona Copper Company. The owners put down the strike, and the conflict left bitter feelings on both sides. The vigilante kidnapping of the orphans was, in part, retaliation against the Mexican workers who had organized the strike the previous year. The upheavals of the Mexican Revolution increased migration after 1911. Most of the migrants to the Southwest found work in mining, railroads, and agriculture, usually as unskilled workers earning meager wages. Excluded from most labor unions until the 1920s, they nevertheless organized strikes from time to time to improve wages and working conditions. During the first decade of the century, and especially after the Mexican Revolution, nativist hostility to the Mexicans intensified. Although the orphan abduction was unique, the conditions and tensions that gave rise to it existed across the region. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 648 ${bmicon} full view MAP 19.2 AREAS EXCLUDED FROM IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, 1882–1952 In 1882 the United States barred Chinese immigrants from entering the country; Japanese and Koreans were barred in 1924. In 1917 the exclusion was extended to people from India, Indonesia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Those laws remained in effect until 1943 and 1952, respectively. Asians continued to face the most severe restrictions on immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited most Chinese from immigrating to the United States, was renewed and extended in 1902. As a result, the mostly bachelor Chinese community in the United States declined by nearly half between 1890 and 1920. Many died or returned to China, reducing the numbers from more than 107,000 to about 61,000. The sex ratio remained severely imbalanced, with about 14 men for every woman. During the exclusion era, certain categories of Chinese immigrants were allowed entry. Wives of Chinese men already in the United States could enter, as could teachers, students, and merchants. These exceptions made it possible for more than 20,000 Chinese to enter the country during the first decade of the new century. One such emigrant was Sieh King King, an 18-year-old student. In 1902, at a meeting of the Protect the Emperor Society, a reform party that advocated restoring the deposed emperor and establishing a constitutional monarchy in China, she addressed a packed hall in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that she “boldly condemned the slave girl system, raged at the horrors of foot-binding [a traditonal Chinese practice in which girls’ feet were tightly bound to keep them small] and, with all the vehemence of aroused youth, declared that men and women were equal and should enjoy the privileges of equals.” Like Clara Lemlich, her eastern European Jewish peer in New York, Sieh King King expressed ideas that were emerging among urban radicals in the United States but also reflected political movements in their home countries. Sieh King full view Chinese-Americans in San Francisco, 1897 This photograph shows an elderly Chinese American with two youngsters in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Chinese immigration was banned by Congress in 1882 as a result of anti-Chinese pressure on the west coast. (Library of Congress) full view Chinese-Americans in California Despite strong racist attitudes toward Asians, immigration from China and Japan greatly increased between 1901 and 1920. In this photograph, immigrants from Asia arrive at the quarantine station at Angel Island, near San Francisco. (National Archives, Still Pictures Branch) full view Dumbbell Floor Plan, 1879 This 1879 dumbbell floor plan was meant to provide four apartments to a floor. Crowded, unsanitary conditions contributed to the spread of tuberculosis, the chief cause of death in the United States until 1909. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 649 ${bmicon} King’s sentiments were directly linked to the women’s rights and nationalist movements in China, which were central to efforts to modernize China and strengthen it against further foreign encroachments. The radicalism she brought with her from China called for changes in her native land as well as in her adopted country. Individual Chinese could also immigrate if they had family members in the United States. As a result, American-born Chinese frequently traveled back and forth, claiming on their return that they left a child in China and requesting permission for their offspring to emigrate. In this way they created spaceholders for imaginary kin, allowing other Chinese to enter the country. The American authorities knew of this system of “paper sons” and “paper fathers” and tried to stop the practice with elaborate and lengthy investigations that could last a year or more while hopeful Chinese immigrants waited as virtual prisoners in wretched conditions on Angel Island, the immigrant gateway off the coast of San Francisco. full view Asian Immigrants at Angel Island Despite strong racist attitudes toward Asians, immigration from China and Japan greatly increased between 1901 and 1920. In this photograph, immigrants from Asia arrive at the quarantine station at Angel Island, near San Francisco. (National Archives, Still Pictures Branch) Not easily thwarted, Chinese Americans on the mainland smuggled information to their fictional relatives, cleverly providing details of their families and communities back home so that their stories would match. Since it was illegal to transmit such information and letters were read and confiscated, these messages often arrived concealed in walnut shells or other camouflages. These subterfuges provided essential information for the hopeful migrants while also contributing to the stereotype that the Chinese were inscrutable and sneaky. The Chinese resisted their exclusion and their unfair treatment in the United States with open and collective action as well. They persuaded China and other Chinese communities overseas to boycott U.S. goods, which led to some improvements in their treatment. Nevertheless, the restrictions remained. Before the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, more than 332,000 Chinese immigrants had entered the United States, most of them unskilled laborers. White Californians, fearing that the Chinese would compete for jobs and drive down the wages, pressured Congress to prohibit Chinese immigration. Only Chinese immigrants were excluded. At the time, there were only about 3000 Japanese immigrants in mainland United States. Japanese immigrants could still enter the country, and nearly 300,000 did so between 1890 and 1920, when opportunities for high-paying jobs in Hawaii and California offered an alternative to the economic crisis they faced in Japan. As one Japanese immigrant wrote in traditional Haiku poetic form, Huge dreams of fortune Go with me to foreign lands Across the ocean. When the Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed in 1902, nearly as many Japanese immigrants entered the country as had the Chinese during the peak years before their exclusion in 1882. Most of the men came as workers; most of the women arrived as wives. Marriages in Japan generally were arranged by families, and some men returned to Japan to meet and marry their brides. But cost and distance often prevented those meetings. Some women came to the United States as “picture brides” after an exchange of photographs. Although some women were disappointed with their often much older husbands, most accepted their fate as they would have accepted an arranged marriage in Japan. Others were delighted PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 650 ${bmicon} with the opportunity for adventure and life in the new land. As one picture bride explained, many of the people from her village had already gone to the United States, and she wanted to go, too: “I didn’t care what the man looked like.” Although the Japanese comprised less than 1 percent of California’s population, they faced intense nativist hostility. The Japanese in California protested against the discrimination they faced, and in one case they successfully turned a local case of school segregation into an international incident. In response to the segregation of Japanese children in San Francisco, the Japanese government expressed its extreme displeasure. Hoping to avoid a confrontation with Japan—a significant military power that had just won a war with Russia—President Theodore Roosevelt interceded and convinced the San Francisco school board to rescind its segregation order. This incident led to the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” of 1907, in which the Japanese government agreed to limit the number of immigrants to the United States. The numbers of immigrants from Japan dwindled, and Japanese immigrants instead began to settle in Brazil. full view Tenement Families - Riis Photo 1889 photograph by Jacob Riis of impoverished immigrant families in tenements. (Library of Congress) full view Slum Children Less than a half a mile from Jane Addams’s Hull House, slum children played in fil streets. (Library of Congress) Eastern European Jews were among the most numerous of the “new” immigrants in the early twentieth century. In 1880, there were about 250,000 Jews in America; by 1920, there were 4 million, the vast majority from eastern Europe. During those 40 years, a number of factors motivated Jews to leave their small towns, or shtetls. Antisemitic policies in Russia and eastern Europe confined them within the Pale of Settlement, an area restricted for Jews. Eco- full view Immigrants at Ellis Island For most immigrants beginning in 1895, entrance into the United States meant processing at Ellis Island in New York Harbor. Here, new arrivals are shown into holding pens while they await processing. (Library of Congress) full view Ellis Island Established as an immigration center in 1892, Ellis Island was the gateway to America for over 12 million people, although immigration dropped following 1924 legislation that severely limited immigration and gave preference to northern and western Europeans. (Library of Congress) full view Immigrants to America During the decade from 1901-1910, immigrations in to the U. S. soared, approaching one million per year. (Library of Congress) full view Health Check at Ellis Island Ellis Island inspectors checked newly arrived immigrants for diseases. (Library of Congress) CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 651 ${bmicon} full view MAP 19.3 RUSSIAN AND ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1910 Immigrants from Russia and Italy settled across the Northeast, Midwest, and West, with concentrations in large cities. Louisiana was the only southern state with a large concentration of Eastern or Southern European immigrants. nomic turmoil and restrictions on Jewish land ownership, trade, and business left many Jews impoverished. Even more devastating was the increase in anti-Semitic violence in the form of riots, or pogroms, in which Jewish towns were attacked and many Jews were beaten and killed. Although Jews were denied civil rights and faced frequent attacks, they were, nevertheless, subject to the draft. Many young boys emigrated to avoid being conscripted into the czar’s army. One such emigrant was young Morris Bass. At age 12 he left his family and ventured alone across the Atlantic. The uncle who was to meet him forgot about his arrival, stranding Morris in the quarantine building on Ellis Island. Although he was among the lucky ones who passed the medical exam and was declared healthy enough to enter the country, he could not be released until a relative came to claim him and guarantee that the boy would be provided with support. After two weeks, just as immigration officials were preparing to send the boy back to Russia, his uncle appeared. He brought Morris home and showed him where to sleep. But as soon as the boy heard his uncle snoring, Morris ran away, furious at this relative who had left him to suffer two miserable weeks in captivity. He did not wander long in the crowded Jewish ghetto before a butcher offered him a job and a place to sleep on a straw mat behind the shop. full view “The Role of Immigrants in America” The Chinese became famous for their laundries in the west not because they had expertise in such a trade in their native country. Running a laundry service required very little overhead and it was work that most other Americans looked down upon. (Library of Congress) full view “Looking Backward” at Immigrant Origins - Cartoon In a Puck cartoon titled Looking Backward, the shadows of their immigrant origins loom over the rich and powerful who wanted to deny the “new” immigrants from central and southern Europe admission to America. (New York Public Library) full view Foreign-Born Population, 1890 Immigrants tended to settle in regions where jobs were relatively plentiful, or where conditions were similar to those they had left in their homelands. Cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West offered job opportunities, while land available for cultivation drew immigrant farmers to the plains and prairies of the nation’s midsection. Morris did well in the new land. Although he did not live out the rags-to-riches dream, few immigrants did. Like many others, he prospered modestly. After a few years, he was able to strike out on his own as a pushcart peddler. Eventually, he sent home enough money to bring his parents and siblings to America. Some Jewish immigrants struggled to retain the faith and practices of Jewish orthodoxy that had defined their lives in the shtetl. But Morris was among those who wanted to assimilate into American life. He retained Jewish cultural practices but abandoned many religious rituals, such as refraining from work on Saturdays (the Jewish Sabbath) and wearing distinctive clothes. Nevertheless, he lived his life as a Jew among Jews, speaking Yiddish, celebrating the religious holidays, and maintaining a kosher home according to Jewish dietary laws, even though he rarely set foot in a synagogue. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 652 ${bmicon} Italian immigration also reached its peak between 1900 and 1914. While 90 percent of the Jews who migrated from Russia came to the United States, Italians ventured to many countries around the world. Turmoil in their home country resulting from the political and economic consequences of unification of the Italian peninsula, prompted 27 million Italians—a third of Italy’s population—to migrate between 1870 and 1920. The majority of Italians who came to the United States arrived with their families and settled permanently, establishing strong communities and mutual aid societies. Most Italians were committed Catholics, and they preserved their rituals, festivals, and faith in the new country. As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, working women and men could increasingly expect to be employed in industry rather than farms, in large organizations rather than small shops, and in enterprises that relied more on efficiency than crafts-manship. Towering skyscrapers began to dot the urban landscape, symbolic of the triumph of commerce and corporate power. Science and technology reigned, changing the nature of work as well as the fruits of production. Professional organizations of educators, social workers, physicians, and scientists emerged, while experts with academic credentials became leaders of many public institutions. It seemed as though science could solve virtually any problem. Advances in medical science contributed to improved public health. But in some cases, experts relied on scientific principles to address social problems rather than confronting the underlying structural causes, such as widespread poverty. Breakthroughs in science and medicine led to improvements in public health. Reformers exposed the dangers of potions and remedies sold by street vendors, as standards for medications improved. But crowding and lack of sanitation still fostered the spread of disease, especially among the poor. In 1900 the death rate for African Americans was 69 percent higher than the rate for whites. Lack of access to clean water was one of the major causes of disease, along with crowding, lack of medical care, and other chronic problems of poverty. Public sanitation alleviated the problem considerably in the early years of the twentieth century, reducing the incidence of typhoid fever by 70 percent. Among those who contributed to better conditions were community nurses. In 1900 the New York Charity Organization Society hired Jessie Sleet Scales, the first African American public health nurse, to address problems related to tuberculosis. Scales and other public health professionals implemented sanitation standards and provided care for poor communities, helping to control the spread of disease. full view African-American Population, 1910 and 1950 The Great Migration was a massive movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. A comparison of African-American populations in the US in 1910 and 1950 illustrates the extent of this population shift, which had far-reaching effects on race relations in America. Public sanitation remained a problem, however, especially in crowded cities. An outbreak of typhoid among well-to-do New Yorkers led to Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant, who had worked as a cook for a number of prominent families. When six members of a household where she worked developed typhoid, she was identified as a carrier of the disease. Later, authorities discovered that typhoid outbreaks occurred in seven of eight households that had employed her. Although Mallon had no symptoms, she was forced to remain in a hospital for people with contagious diseases until she sued for her release in 1909 and was released in 1910. She was instructed not to cook for a living, but as she had no other means to support herself, she went back to work as a cook. In 1915, she was arrested again after more typhoid cases were traced to her, and this time she was placed in isolation on an island virtually as a prisoner for 26 years, until her death in 1939. The local press vilified Mallon, whom they dubbed “Typhoid Mary,” and blamed her for the spread of the illness. As a carrier of the disease, she did indeed infect several people. CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 653 ${bmicon} But she was not the only source of contagion in the city. Typhoid, like many other diseases, was a public health problem. Although Mallon was not the only healthy carrier of typhoid at this time, she was the only healthy person who had never been accused of a crime but was subjected to what amounted to a life sentence of imprisonment. City officials might have pursued other alternatives, such as helping Mallon find a job in which she would not endanger others and developing a broad-based public health approach that would have improved sanitation in the city. Reflecting a similar impulse to blame social problems on allegedly flawed individuals or groups was the eugenics movement, which advocated scientific breeding to improve the nation’s racial stock. The pseudoscience of eugenics emerged in the nineteenth century in England and spread to the United States, where it gained wide support. Drawing on theories of white racial superiority and unscientific notions of genetic inheritance, eugenicists believed that character traits were inherited, including tendencies toward criminality, sexual immorality, and lack of discipline leading to poverty. Eugenicists claimed that social problems resulted from the high birthrate of immigrants and others they considered to be racially inferior to Anglo-Saxon Americans and the low birthrate of educated middle-class whites. President Theodore Roosevelt was an outspoken advocate of eugenics reform. One of his major concerns was that Americans were shirking their duty to create a robust citizenry for the future. Alarmed by the dramatic decline in the birthrate of native-born Americans and the tendency of college-educated women to remain single and childless, he feared that the immigrants, with their much higher birthrate, would overrun the nation. Roosevelt called upon Anglo-Saxon women to prevent what he called “race suicide,” much as male citizens had an obligation to defend the country if called to military duty. In his sixth annual message to Congress in 1903, Roosevelt warned: When home ties are loosened, when men and women cease to regard a worthy family life … as the life best worth living, then evil days of the commonwealth are at hand. There are regions in our own land, and classes of our population, where the birth rate has sunk below the death rate. Surely it should need no demonstration to show that willful sterility is, from the stand-point of the nation … the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death…. No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other reason, and retain his or her self-respect. Some eugenics crusaders proposed compulsory sterilization of those they deemed unfit for parenthood. Indiana enacted a eugenic sterilization law in 1907, and other states soon followed. These laws gave legal sanction to the surgical sterilization of thousands of men and even greater numbers of women whom government and medical officials deemed “feebleminded.” The criteria for determining “feeblemindedness” were vague at best; often sexual impropriety or out-of-wedlock pregnancy landed young women—generally poor and often foreign-born—in institutions for the feebleminded, where the operations took place. The Supreme Court upheld compulsory sterilization laws in the 1920s. Increasingly, women of color were targeted, and the practice continued well into the 1980s. In 1911 Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote The Principles of Scientific Management, his guide to increased efficiency in the nation’s industries. Taylor began his career as a laborer in the Midvale Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 654 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Defining Whiteness Naturalization laws pertaining to immigrants in the early twentieth century were based on racial categories. Asian immigrants, classified racially as “Mongolians,” were not allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship. Naturalization was available only “to aliens being free white persons and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.” Because racial theories were imprecise and fluid, and racial identities were not linked to nationality, immigrants occasionally challenged their racial classification to claim that they were “white.” John Svan, who was Finnish, petitioned in federal court to contest the labeling of Finns as Mongolians, claiming that he was white and, therefore, allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship. The petition demonstrates the acceptance of racial definitions based on phenotype—particularly skin color—as well as the imprecise nature of those definitions. The court granted Svan’s petition, legally changing his racial identity from Mongolian to white and reclassifying Finns as white people. Here is the court’s memorandum, which allowed Svan to become a citizen: John Svan was born in Finland and calls himself a Finn…. According to ethnologists, the Finns in very remote times were of Mongol origin; but the various groupings of the human race into families is arbitrary and, as respects any particular people, is not permanent but is subject to change and modification through the influences of climate, employment, intermarriage and other causes. There are indications that central and western Europe was at one time overrun by the Finns; some of their stock remained, but their racial characteristics were entirely lost in their remote descendants, who now are in no danger of being classed as Mongols. The Osmanlis, said to be of Mongol extraction, are now among the purest and best types of the Caucasian race. Changes are constantly going on and those occurring in the lapse of a few hundred years with any people may be very great. The chief physical characteristics of the Mongolians are as follows: They are short of stature, with little hair on their body or face; they have yellow-brown skins, black eyes, black hair, short, flat noses, and oblique eyes. In actual experience we sometimes, though rarely, see natives of Finland whose eyes are slightly oblique. We sometimes see them with sparse beards and sometimes with flat noses; but Finns with a yellow or brown or yellow-brown skin or with black eyes or black hair would be an unusual sight. They are almost universally of light skin, blue or gray eyes, and light hair. No people of foreign births applying in this section of the country for the full rights of citizenship are lighter-skinned than those born in Finland. In stature they are quite up to the average. Confessedly, Finland has often been overrun with Teutons and by other branches of the human family, who, with their descendants, have remained within her borders and are now called Finns. They are in the main indistinguishable in their physical characteristics from those of purer Finnish blood. Intermarriages have been frequent over a very long period of time. If the Finns were originally Mongols, modifying influences have continued until they are now among the whitest people in Europe. It would, therefore, require a most exhaustive tracing of family history to determine whether any particular individual born in Finland had or had not a remote Mongol ancestry. This, of course, cannot be done and was not intended. The question is not whether a person had or had not such ancestry, but whether he is now a “white person” within the meaning of that term as usually understood. This is the practical construction which has uniformly been placed upon the law…. Under such law Finns have always been admitted to citizenship, and there is no occasion now to change the construction. The applicant is without doubt a white person within the true intent and meaning of such law. The objections, therefore, in my opinion should be overruled and it will be so ordered. Steel Works near Philadelphia in 1878 and rose through the ranks to become the plant’s chief engineer. There he developed a system to improve mass production in factories in order to make more goods more quickly. Taylor’s principles included analysis of each job to determine the precise motions and tools needed to maximize each worker’s productivity, detailed instructions for workers and guidelines for their supervisors, and wage scales with incentives to motivate workers to achieve high production goals. Over the next decades, industrial managers all over the country drew on Taylor’s studies. Business leaders rushed to embrace Taylor’s principles, and Taylor himself became a pioneering management consultant. Henry Ford was among the most successful industrialists to employ Taylor’s techniques. Born in 1863 on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan, the mechanically inclined Ford became an apprentice in a Detroit machine shop in 1879. Although he did not invent the automobile—the first motor cars were manufactured in Germany—he developed design and production methods that brought the cost of an automobile within the reach of the average worker. Experimenting with the new internal combustion engine in the 1890s, he built his first automobile in 1896. In 1903 Ford established the Ford Motor Company and began a profitable business. He introduced the popular and relatively inexpensive, mass-produced Model T automobile in 1908, which sold for $850. In 1913 Ford introduced assembly line production, a system in which each worker performed one task repeatedly as each automobile in the process of construction moved along a conveyor. Assembly-line manufacturing increased production while cutting costs. In 1914 Ford increased his workers’ wages to $5 per day at a time when industrial laborers averaged only $11 per week. By 1916 the price of the Model T dropped to $360. In this sense Ford was a pioneer not only in production but also in consumption. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 655 ${bmicon} Although an industrial genius, Ford was narrow-minded and bigoted. A ferocious anti-Semite, he later became an active supporter of Adolf Hitler. He fought unionization fiercely with a private police force. But his production methods, as well as the Ford motor car, became fixtures of twentieth-century business and consumer culture. Ford embodied many contradictions: he helped to create modern life, but he was also repulsed by it. He created a nostalgic theme park in Deerfield Village, Michigan, where he brought together old houses and artifacts to recreate a small town of the nineteenth century, where there were no cars or factories. Yet Ford’s own life’s work had contributed to the disappearance of the way of life represented in Deerfield Village. As Americans increasingly moved from rural to urban areas, and from farms to factories, new institutions of leisure emerged in the growing cities. Consumer culture was the flipside of business culture in the early twentieth century, and it represented a major change not only in leisure time pursuits but also in cultural values. Newcomers and “outsiders” were largely responsible for those changing values. One of the great ironies of American history in the twentieth century is that its popular culture—which more than anything else identifies the United States to the rest of the world—was largely a creation of immigrants and people of color. During the very years when these groups faced intense discrimination, they developed the cultural products that came to define America itself. full view Thomas Edison “Just tried experiment,” Thomas A. Edison wrote in a laboratory notebook on July 18, 1877. Speaking into a metal diaphragm connected to a needle, he had watched the needle trace indentations into wax paper. (Edison National Park) The motion picture industry is a case in point. In 1888 Thomas Edison invented the kinetoscope, the early motion picture camera. The pragmatic Edison thought that his new PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 656 ${bmicon} device might be used in education and industry. But he did not see much commercial potential for the gadget. As he wrote in 1893, I have constructed a little instrument which I call a Kinetoscope, with a nickel and slot attachment. Some twenty-five have been made, but I am very doubtful there is any commercial feature in it, and fear that they will not earn their cost. These zeotropic devices are of too sentimental a value to get the public to invest in. Because of his lack of enthusiasm as well as his lack of investors, Edison did not even bother to take out a foreign patent on the kinetoscope or to seek markets for his invention at home. Not until the early twentieth century, when Jewish immigrant entrepreneurs recognized its potential for mass entertainment, did the moving picture begin to reach a wide audience. Moviemakers left the East Coast and moved to the West, taking advantage of the even climate, cheap land, and nonunion labor. Within a few years, the moviemakers, mostly Jewish immigrants from Europe, established the film industry. By the late teens and twenties, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Fox Studios—all founded by Jews—had become leaders in moviemaking. Hollywood emerged as a major center of American popular culture, sending its products across the nation and abroad. The first audiences for the motion pictures were in the working-class neighborhoods of the growing cities. New York offers a vivid example of the rapid expansion of the movies as well as other urban amusements. In that city alone, by 1910, there were 1000 small storefront theaters and fun houses known as penny arcades where there had been none 20 years earlier. The numbers of saloons also increased from 7000 to 9000, while the Coney Island amusement park drew thousands to its shimmering lights and thrilling rides. During these same years, the sounds of African American music began to attract audiences among immigrants as well as native-born whites. Youths from all ethnic groups flocked to dance halls where they danced to the lively tunes often played by black musicians who “ragged” the beat with new jazz rhythms. Working-class youth were not the only ones drawn to the new urban amusements. Glamorous night clubs, known as cabarets, also began to appear, offering dining, dancing, music, and entertainment to the wealthy. Jesse Lasky opened the Follies Bergeres in New York in 1911. Lasky filled his cabaret with lavish furnishings, hired black musicians to play ragtime music, and charged high prices. “Everything about the Follies,” Lasky wrote, “was unheard of in New York, including the prices.” In an effort to render these upper-class cabarets respectable and distinguish them from the rowdy working-class dance halls, owners tamed the erotic dances to express a more moderate sensuality. The sexual mores and behavior of Americans seemed to be changing so dramatically that one observer announced that “sex o’clock” had struck. Indeed, the codes of the past were challenged at every turn. Among the middle class, unchaperoned dating began to replace the previous system of a man “coming to call” at the home of a woman he hoped to court. Automobiles gave young couples more freedom and privacy. Physical intimacy became more acceptable, and even unacceptable sexual behavior became more common. Immigrants often brought traditional courtship patterns to the new world and extended them into the next generation. One Italian man described his thwarted efforts to woo his fiancée in private. When he visited her home, “She sat on one side of the table, and I at the other. They afraid I touch.” Finally, less than a month before their wedding, he got permission to take her to the theater. But the family was unwilling to let them go alone. “We came to the aisles of the theater. My mother-in-law go first, my fiancée next, my little sister, my father in law. I was the last one. I had two in between…. I was next to the old man.” He tried to steal a kiss a few days before the wedding, but his fiancée rebuffed him: “No, not yet.” CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 657 ${bmicon} In spite of efforts by their elders, native-born as well as immigrant youth challenged the sexual codes of the past. Young working women looked forward to fun in their leisure hours and sometimes exchanged physical intimacies for “treats” from men who took them out to a meal or a dance. These women were known as “charity girls” to distinguish them from prostitutes. Increasing sexual intimacy among unmarried men and women reflected heightened expectations for sexual satisfaction—for women as well as men. These years also witnessed a rise in the proportion of brides who were pregnant at marriage, from a low of 10 percent in the mid-nineteenth century to 23 percent by 1910. Marriage increasingly held the promise not only of love, intimacy, and mutual obligation, but of sexual fulfillment and shared leisure pursuits. Marriage increasingly held the promise not only of love, intimacy, and mutual obligation, as it had in the nineteenth century, but of sexual fulfillment and shared leisure pursuits. As expectations for marital happiness rose, so did the divorce rate. Liberal divorce laws, combined with expanding opportunities for women to support themselves, prompted increasing numbers of men and women to end unhappy marriages and try again. The rising divorce rate did not signal a decline in the popularity of marriage, however; a greater proportion of Americans married and at increasingly younger ages. Those who divorced were likely to remarry, a pattern that continued through the twentieth century. Some women did not marry but instead formed lifelong attachments to other women. Rarely identified as lesbian but often described as “Boston marriages,” these unions signified long-term emotional bonds between women who lived together. The widely admired reformer Jane Addams shared her life with Mary Rozet Smith for more than thirty years. Meanwhile, lesbians, as well as gay men, gained greater visibility in the cities. They frequented bars and clubs in such places as Greenwich Village and Harlem, hoping to avoid the attention of police, who were likely to arrest them for indecent conduct. Heterosexual men and women also came to these neighborhoods for entertainment. Drag balls became elaborate annual events that drew thousands of spectators and participants, including large numbers of heterosexuals. full view Jane Addams - Portrait The young Jane Addams was one of the college-educated women who chose to remain unmarried and pursue a career and as “urban housekeeper” and social reformer, serving immigrant families in the Chicago neighborhood near her Hull House. (The University of Illinois at Chicago, The University Library, Jane Addams Memorial Collection) Artists, composers, writers, and architects all contributed to enriching, expressing, interpreting, and transforming the urban industrial landscape. Among the most controversial was a group of painters who focused their attention on portrayals of life in the cities—including urban amusements and diverse working-class subjects. Although these artists did not pioneer new styles of painting, their content was revolutionary. Robert Henri painted scenes of the city including ethnic minorities, William Glackens depicted cabarets and night life, Everett Shinn portrayed prostitutes and other “low-life” characters, and John Sloan evoked New York’s Lower East Side, immigrants, and theaters. This art exuded the vitality of urban life and conveyed a gritty reality without moral condemnation; these artists treated their subjects with dignity and humanity. Contemptuous critics referred to them as the “Ashcan School,” a label they embraced. The artistic movement known as realism, characterized by a detached and skeptical approach to subject matter, also infused in the writing of fiction. The novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote in this new style. His 1900 novel Sister Carrie narrates the story of an independent young woman who comes to Chicago and uses her sexuality to advance her ambition. Contrary to the morality tales popular at the time, Carrie does not suffer for her sins. Rather, she prospers, while her male lovers are destroyed by their infatuation with her. Because of the novel’s scandalous content, Dreiser’s publisher did not promote the book, although it was revived and republished in later years. Photography also began to exhibit a new realism in the work of such documentary photographers as Lewis Hine, who photographed immigrants, industrial work, and urban street PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 658 ${bmicon} life, and such avant-garde artists as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, who drew inspiration from artistic innovations in Europe, such as Cubism. Popular music also flourished in the first decade of the century, especially jazz. From its roots in African musical traditions, slave songs, spirituals, and ragtime, jazz brought together the various strains of African American music and developed new forms. Centered in New Orleans, artists such as pianist Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and cornet player Charles “Buddy” Bolden played the new syncopated rhythms. The broad movement for social reform known as Progressivism included two distinct impulses. On the one hand, many Anglo-Saxon Protestants tried to impose order on a rapidly changing nation. They hoped to stem the tide of immigration, bolster the rapidly eroding sexual codes, and quell the movements for social change. On the other hand, women’s rights activists, workers, and African Americans struggled to achieve the rights and privileges available to white men of property and standing. The tensions between these two very different approaches to reform shaped the politics of the era. full view John D. Rockefeller - Cartoon, 1901 This 1901 cartoon satirized John D. Rockefeller with the popular view of the tycoon as the equivalent of a royal tyrant. Rockefeller is enthroned on oil, the base of his empire, while his crown is girded by other holdings. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) In the early twentieth century, a group of investigative journalists began to expose the ills of industrial life. President Theodore Roosevelt dubbed them the “muckrakers” in 1906 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 659 ${bmicon} to signal their tendency to unearth the dirtiest aspects of the nation’s political and economic institutions. Although Roosevelt intended the term as an insult, the muckrakers embraced their label. Their best-known works illuminated corruption in business and politics. Ida Tarbell wrote a powerful exposé of ruthless business practices of John D. Rockefeller, who transformed the Standard Oil company into a monopoly. Lincoln Steffens unearthed scandals in city and state politics. By 1912, more than 1000 muckraking articles appeared in widely read and popular magazines such as McClure’s, Everybody’s, and Collier’s. One of the best-known muckraking novels was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published in 1906. A dedicated socialist, Sinclair hoped that his novel would illuminate the exploitation of immigrant workers. The Jungle tells the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, and his family and friends and provides a grim exposé of horrid living and working conditions. Depiction of the meatpacking plant where Rudkus works includes descriptions of the filth, rats, and even the body parts of workers that end up ground into the packages of meat. The book had a powerful impact, but the effect was not what Sinclair had hoped. Rather than spark interest in socialism or even improved wages and working conditions, the novel aroused consumer indignation and, within months of its publication, led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and a Meat Inspection Act, which prohibited adulterated or fraudulently labeled food and drugs from interstate commerce. Sinclair later wrote with regret, “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident hit it in the stomach.” The Pure Food and Drug Act was the first of a series of consumer protection laws passed in the twentieth century. full view Children Working in Coal Mine - Lewis Hine Photo These breaker boys spent their days sorting coal in western Pennsylvania. They were carefully posed by documentary photographer Lewis Hine for this picture, as part of an assignment for the National Child Labor Committee in 1911. (Records of the Children’s Bureau, The National Archives, Office of the Chief Signal Officer) Child labor was another concern of reformers. Children worked in fields and factories across the country, picking cotton in Texas, mining coal in West Virginia, working in the textile mills of North Carolina, and sewing buttons in urban sweatshops. The National Child Labor Committee, organized in 1904, as well as many state committees, endeavored to regulate or eliminate child labor. Children of immigrants and rural migrants often assisted parents on farms or in shops, their labor an accepted part of the household economy. Many parents felt that work also offered children opportunities to learn discipline as well as a trade and to gain a sense of pride and satisfaction as contributors to the family’s needs. But the sorts of jobs available to children in the urban industrial world often were dangerous and unhealthy, characterized by long hours, low pay, and miserable working conditions. Reformers attempted to improve the conditions under which children worked and to establish age limits so that children could attend school and spend time in healthful recreation rather than in grim sweatshops and factories. Ultimately, child labor activists succeeded in passing legislation at the state level that restricted child labor, although these efforts were more successful in northern states than in the South. Protective legislation for women was also controversial. Reformers campaigned for laws that would establish minimum wages, maximum hours, regulations against night work, and restrictions on heavy lifting. When they were unable to secure such safety measures for all workers, they PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 660 ${bmicon} argued that women needed special protections because of their physical frailty and their role as future mothers. Women’s rights activists disagreed over these measures. Some argued that they were necessary to protect women from exploitation and dangerous working conditions. Others claimed that women should be treated the same as men, arguing that protective legislation implied that women needed special care and were not suited for particular kinds of work. These debates continued throughout the century. Women were prominent among Progressive reformers. Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, the immigrant neighborhood center in Chicago, became the most admired woman of her day. But many other influential women left their stamp on the culture and public policies of the era. Florence Kelley, the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family, joined Addams’s Hull House community and later headed the National Consumers’ League (NCL) from 1898 until her death in 1932. Under her leadership, the NCL became the most effective lobbying agency for protective labor legislation for women and children. Kelley was instrumental in the successful defense of the ten-hour working day for women, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in its 1908 decision, Muller v. Oregon. Women were prominent among Progressive reformers and left their stamp on the culture and public policies of the era. Another noted reformer was Helen Keller, whose work on behalf of the blind called attention to the needs of the disabled. Keller lost her sight and hearing from an illness at the age of 19 months and learned to communicate through Braille and sign language, which she mastered through touch, with the help of her extraordinary teacher, Anne Sullivan. Keller went on to study at schools for the deaf and graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904. A passionate socialist and advocate of women’s rights along with other radical causes, Keller wrote several books and lectured widely all over the world, with the assistance of interpreters. Most Progressive reformers were prosperous American-born Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Along with their efforts to improve living and working conditions and alleviate the suffering of the poor, they also hoped to eradicate vice from their society. At the level of local government, many reformers promoted zoning laws that would keep commercial entertainments out of residential neighborhoods. Vice crusaders in most of the nation’s large cities tried to eliminate prostitution and to patrol dance halls, movie theaters, and saloons. Gay men and lesbians risked arrest if they were discovered mingling in public. At the national level, vice crusading culminated in the passage of the Mann Act in 1910, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral purposes.” The Mann Act resulted in 1,537 convictions by 1916. Over the years, authorities used the Mann Act not only to police prostitution but also to regulate interracial sex. One such case garnered national attention. African American boxer Jack Johnson had defeated white fighters in the ring to become the world heavyweight champion in 1910. He was a hero to black Americans but a villain to many whites, who resented not only his athletic success but also his relationships with white women. In 1912, Lucille Cameron, a young white woman from Minnesota, visited Johnson’s Chicago nightclub, and the two began an affair. Cameron’s mother brought charges of abduction against Johnson, but the young woman refused to testify, so the case was dismissed. The couple later married. Authorities continued their efforts to punish Johnson for his racial and sexual transgressions. When federal agents persuaded one of Johnson’s former lovers, a white prostitute, to testify that Johnson had paid for her travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago, he was convicted under the Mann Act and sentenced to one year in prison. The movement for women’s rights, including the effort to gain the vote, was already more than half a century old by 1900. But the movement gained momentum at the dawn of the twentieth century. A new generation of women’s rights leaders came together in the suffrage move- CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 661 ${bmicon} ment. They included working-class women and young college-educated women, some of them with experience in the settlement movement, and others who had participated in socialist and labor circles. They initiated new grassroots strategies, such as door-to-door campaigns, to gather support for woman suffrage. The militance of the suffrage movement in England inspired American activists to develop new tactics and international alliances. These activists achieved legislative success when several western states granted women the right to vote: Washington in 1910, California in 1911, and three more states in 1912. Eventually the movement united around the goal of enacting a federal amendment. The required three-quarters majority of the states ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, granting women the vote. Women Suffragists Visit Roosevelt at Sagamore, 1917 Here women suffragists visit former President Roosevelt to convince him to support universal suffrage for women. Three years after this film was made, the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote. (Library of Congress) full view Women’s Suffrage Before the Nineteenth Amendment In the early years of the twentieth century, state-by-state gains in women’s suffrage were agonizingly slow and limited to the far West. The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment finally granted women the right to vote across the nation. The suffrage movement, for all its radicalism, was largely a movement of white middle-class women. White suffrage leaders feared that any alliance with women of color would alienate Southern voters whom they needed for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. They also hoped to win over to their cause racist and nativist critics in the North who feared that granting the vote to women would enfranchise “undesirable” voters, specifically immigrant and minority women. Some women’s rights leaders argued that granting the vote to women would increase the voting power of white Anglo-Saxons. Belle Kearney, a southern suffragist, saw the ballot for women as a means of keeping African Americans in their place: “The enfranchisement of women would insure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained.” The suffrage movement also gained the support of conservatives who believed that women would vote for conservative causes such as prohibition and immigration restriction. Many minority women, such as Hispana activist Adelina Otero Warren, also supported the suffrage movement even though white leaders kept their distance and refused to embrace the antiracist campaigns of their nonwhite sisters. The African American antilynching activist Ida B. Wells (also known by her married name as Ida B. Wells-Barnett) supported woman suffrage but was unable to convince the white women’s rights leaders to denounce lynching. Ultimately, the passage of the suffrage amendment resulted from a combination of factors, including radical activism, strong support of a wide range of reformers, and an alliance with conservative, racist, and anti-immigrant forces. Progressive reformers believed that American capitalist democracy was a fundamentally sound system that simply needed to be fixed to achieve its full promise. Radicals of the era believed that the system itself was flawed and needed to be fundamentally transformed. Emma Goldman, a Russian Jewish immigrant, was one of many radical activists who gained both fame and notoriety for her outspoken support of radical causes. Like Sieh King King and Clara Lemlich, Goldman was among the growing numbers of women who were leaders in the labor struggles of the day. But women were excluded from most unions. Only 3.3 percent of the 4 million women engaged in nonagricultural jobs in 1900 were members of trade unions. The number doubled in the wake of the successful wave of strikes by young immigrant garment workers in 1909–1910, including the 1909 shirtwaist makers’ strike. In 1903 the WTUL brought together elite reformers and female laborers to help working women in their efforts to unionize while also connecting those efforts to the broader movement for women’s rights. full view Turn-of-the-Century Political Cartoon The beauty of American political cartoons during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century was that they appealed to and informed the immigrant population who often could not read English but could understand the abuses and problems of politics. (Library of Congress) full view Chicago Steelworks Visitor to Chicago’s famous Columbian Exposition in 1893-1894 might have seen this modern industrial scene en route to the cleansed “White City” on the fairgrounds. Steel mills symbolized America’s manufacturing might in the late 19th century and well into the 20th. (Library of Congress) full view Logo for the International Workers of the World Logo for the Industrial Workers of the World, the “Wobblies,” in 1920. (National Archives) Socialism also attracted followers during these years. Socialism was never as strong in the United States as it was in Europe, but it did gain strength at the turn of the century. Socialists promoted labor unions and the rights of women and formed their own political party. Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs gained national fame for his role in the 1894 railroad strike. Radicalized by his involvement in the labor movement, he turned to socialism at the turn of the century as a means for improving the conditions of the working classes. Forging alliances with a number of immigrant socialist groups, he became the spokesperson and leader of the Socialist party. Between 1900 PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 662 ${bmicon} and 1920, he was the party’s candidate for president, gaining nearly a million votes, or 6 percent of the electorate, in the 1912 election. Although the socialists never gathered a large enough following to win national elections, they elected hundreds of candidates to local office. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies, offered another possibility for labor radicalism. Organized in 1905 by socialists and labor militants, its founders included Debs, William “Big Bill” Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners, the well-known labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and the Tejana of Mexican and African American heritage Lucia Gonzales Parsons, whose husband had been executed as a result of the Haymarket bombing of 1886. The IWW included women, blacks, immigrants, and unskilled and migratory laborers, workers generally shunned by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The Wobblies organized workers in the mines of the Rocky Mountain states, in the lumber camps of the Pacific Northwest and the South, and in the eastern textile and steel mills. Its membership reached about 3 million people, although no more than 150,000 were members at any one time. Although the Socialist party and the IWW were open to black members, they had no particular interest in combating racism or addressing the unique needs of African American workers. They assumed that labor activism would improve the lives of all workers. To address their unique concerns, black Americans organized on their own behalf. The Progressive Era was anything but progressive for nonwhite Americans. Although there were notable exceptions, such as Jane Addams, many white Protestant reformers were either indifferent to racial minorities or actively hostile to them. Moreover, most blacks lived in the rural South, not in northern cities where Progressives were most active. Lynching continued into the twentieth century, with nearly 100 lynchings per year between 1900 and 1910. African Americans were the primary targets of lynch mobs, although other minorities were also vulnerable. Black leaders spoke out against lynching and other forms of racial injustice. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who had launched an international crusade against lynching in the 1890s, worked to establish local and national networks of black women’s clubs. As a highly respected national leader, she had a profound impact on black life during these years and formed important alliances with other reformers. Although she was unable to persuade white suffrage leaders to support the cause of racial justice, she worked closely with Jane Addams to prevent the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago. A number of other black leaders came to prominence in the first decade of the twentieth century as African Americans formed a wide range of organizations that grew and flourished. In 1905 scholar and civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois joined with other black leaders to form the Niagara Movement, which called for an end to segregation and discrimination in unions, the courts, and public accommodations, as well as equal economic and educational opportunity. In 1908 black leaders joined with white progressive allies—Hull House founder Jane Addams, philosopher John Dewey, and novelist William Dean Howells, among others—to establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The new organization adopted the platform of the Niagara Movement, and Du Bois became the editor of its journal, The Crisis. Wells-Barnett insisted that the organization go on record as opposed to lynching. The NAACP has remained a major voice for African American civil rights and racial justice to this day. CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 663 ${bmicon} Along with flourishing radical and reform movements at the grassroots, the Progressive Era gave rise to a reformist impulse at the national level. The person who most fully embodied the national Progressive movement was Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1908. Roosevelt’s primary goals as president were to expand the power of the presidency and the federal government and to strengthen American nationalism at home and national power abroad. Roosevelt used his power to regulate big business, intervene in labor disputes, extend the reach of the nation across the world, and control the uses of the natural environment. full view Theodore Roosevelt Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901 when William McKinley was assassinated. “Teddy” was a man of action-a Progressive reformer at home, a frequent militarist abroad. (Library of Congress) Theodore Roosevelt rose to prominence in the Republican party in the 1880s and held a number of important political posts, including assistant secretary of the Navy (1897–1898) and governor of New York (1899–1900). In 1900 Republican party leaders selected Roosevelt as William McKinley’s running mate, and when McKinley was reelected, Roosevelt became vice president. But in September 1901, McKinley was assassinated, and at age 42, Roosevelt became the youngest person ever to become president. TABLE 19-1 The Election of 1900 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote William McKinley Republican 7,207,923 292 William Jennings Bryan Democratic-Populist 6,358,133 155 Roosevelt was a strong proponent of American military and commercial presence in the world. He expanded the power of the federal government both at home and abroad and used the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to exert moral leadership. He favored big government and limitations on corporate power, yet he cooperated with business to foster capitalism and free trade. Using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which gave the federal government the power to break up monopolies, Roosevelt in 1902 ordered the Justice Department to prosecute the Northern Securities Company, a $400-million monopoly that controlled all railroad lines and traffic in the Northwest. Within a year, the company was dissolved. Although this bold act earned Roosevelt the title of “trust-buster,” it was not his intention to weaken big business. In fact, he believed that a strong country needed large, powerful industries, and he hoped to regulate them to keep big business strong. His antitrust efforts actually helped big business by fostering competition. full view “The Verdict” - Anti-Monopoly Cartoon, 1899 The Verdict, cartoon by George Luks on January 30, 1899, in which he portrayed monopoly as a savage animal preying on the public. (Library of Congress) full view TR as “Jack the Giant Killer” - Puck Cartoon A 1904 Puck cartoon depicts Theodore Roosevelt as “Jack the Giant-Killer,” battling the Wall Street titans. Actually, Roosevelt “busted” relatively few trusts. His successor, William Taft, dissolved nearly twice as many as Roosevelt. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) The same year that Roosevelt took on the Northern Securities Company, he also used the powers of the federal government to intervene in a labor dispute. Striking coal miners in eastern Pennsylvania wanted recognition of their union, a 10 to 20 percent increase in wages, and an eight-hour day. But the mine owners refused to negotiate. Roosevelt summoned the mine owners and John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers union, to the White House for a meeting. He threatened to send in troops if the mine owners did not agree to the union’s request for arbitration. The mine owners backed down, and the arbitrators awarded the miners a 10 percent wage increase and a nine-hour day. Roosevelt’s efforts to strengthen the state and foster American nationalism extended to his attitudes toward immigrants. He believed that discrimination against loyal newcomers harmed the democracy: “It is a base outrage to oppose a man because of his religion or birthplace…. A Scandinavian, a German, or an Irishman who has really become an American has the right to stand on exactly the same footing as any native-born citizen in the land, and is just as much entitled to the friendship and support, social and political, of his neighbor.” He was proud of appointing a cabinet in which “Catholic and Protestant and Jew sat side by side.” But to Roosevelt, becoming an American meant renouncing any loyalties to one’s original homeland or culture: “We must Americanize them in every way…. [The immigrant] PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 664 ${bmicon} must not bring in his Old-World religious[,] race[,] and national antipathies, but must merge them into love for our common country, and must take pride in the things which we can all take pride in. He must revere our flag; not only must it come first, but no other flag should ever come second. He must learn to celebrate Washington’s birthday rather than that of the Queen or Kaiser, and the Fourth of July instead of St. Patrick’s Day…. Above all, the immigrant must learn to talk and think and be United States.” Roosevelt did not believe in cultural pluralism, the idea that the United States could include citizens who retained their ethnic heritage. Rather, he promoted the idea of a melting pot that would blend all diverse cultures into a unique American “race.” Although Roosevelt was a firm believer in Anglo-Saxon superiority, he was the first president to invite an African American leader, Booker T. Washington, to the White House. Roosevelt’s meeting with Washington demonstrated his willingness to stand up to southern politicians, but he did not follow that gesture with meaningful policy initiatives such as antilynching or civil rights laws. In the 1904 presidential election, Roosevelt won 57 percent of the popular vote against his Democratic rival, Alton B. Parker. TABLE 19-2 The Election of 1904 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Theodore Roosevelt Republican 7,623,486 336 Alton B. Parker Democratic 6,358,133 155 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 402,283 0 Industrial smoke had long been a problem in both European and American cities, and Progressive Era reformers established organizations in major cities to fight air pollution. At the same time, CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 665 ${bmicon} mining and other industries were depleting natural resources while destroying the natural beauty of the land. More than any previous president, Roosevelt used the federal government to control the natural world. Although his actions did not please everyone on all sides of the debate, Roosevelt’s environmental efforts were among his most enduring legacies. Roosevelt advocated both preservation and conservation (see Chapter 18). His preservation policies doubled the number of national parks, created 16 national monuments, such as Muir Woods in California, and established 51 wildlife refuges. At the same time, he shared the view of conservationists that timberlands, areas for livestock grazing, water, and minerals were at risk of being depleted. He believed the federal government should extend its reach into the management of these resources. Roosevelt transferred 125 million acres of public land into the forest reserves to prevent the depletion of timber, and he set aside land for dam sites, oil and coal reserves, and grazing lands. Some of these efforts faced strong opposition from preservationists because of their negative impact on the natural environment. Conservationists and preservationists battled frequently, and no issue was more divisive than water. Conservationists favored damming rivers to create reservoirs and aqueducts to provide water and electricity for western settlements. John Muir and the Sierra Club campaigned to protect the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, but Congress passed the Raker Act in 1913, allowing the city of San Francisco to build a dam and a reservoir, flooding the valley. Residents of the Owens Valley also protested the building of an aqueduct to divert water to the Los Angeles area. Dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts brought water and electricity to arid regions, allowing such cities as Las Vegas and Los Angeles to flourish in environments that would otherwise be unable to support large populations. The decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century marked the high point of European and American imperial expansion, bringing 80 percent of the world’s land under the control of Europeans or their descendants. Unlike several Western European countries, the United States did not aquire a large colonial empire. Nevertheless, Theodore Roosevelt believed that the United States should be an imperial power with moral and military superiority over what he considered to be less “civilized” lands. He hoped to strengthen the federal government at home, develop the nation’s military and commercial might, and extend American power abroad. To further these ends, he sent troops to China as part of the international expedition to crush the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. He also proposed the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and Congress approved the Panama Canal project in 1902. full view TR and his “Big Stick” - Cartoon Cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt carrying a “big stick” to strike down the bloated oil and railroad trusts. (Library of Congress) In 1904 Roosevelt increased the authority of the United States to intervene in the affairs of nations in the Western Hemisphere through what came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Fearing political uprisings that might threaten American commercial interests, Roosevelt asserted that “chronic wrongdoing” might require the intervention by “some civilized nation” in the affairs of another and that “in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.” The Roosevelt Corollary justified later interventions into the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Haiti. full view The World’s Constable - Cartoon A cartoon from Judge titled “The World’s Constable.” The Roosevelt Corollary claimed the right of the United States to exercise “an international police power.” Roosevelt also continued the U.S. war against Filipino nationalists that began in 1899. The bloody and costly war lasted four years before the Americans crushed the revolt and established PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 666 ${bmicon} firm colonial rule in the Philippines. William Howard Taft, the future American President, became the colony’s first governor-general in 1901. As the war against the rebels continued, Taft developed a program of public works that included an infrastructure of roads, bridges, and schools. He also transferred government functions to those Filipinos who cooperated with American colonial powers. Although the United States promised to grant Philippine independence, that promise was deferred until 1946. full view William Howard Taft William Howard Taft, known for his immense size, was Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor as president. Taft won, but Roosevelt was so unimpressed with his policies that he ran against his successor in the 1912 election. Their candidacies split the Republican vote, allowing Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson to win. (Library of Congress) A financial panic in 1907 prompted Roosevelt to increase his efforts to overhaul the banking system and the stock market. But the president’s critics among Republican conservatives and the business elite blamed Roosevelt’s reform policies for the economic downturn. In the face of increasing rifts within his own party, along with his own earlier pledge to step down, Roosevelt declined to run for reelection in 1908. The Republicans selected Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, who won the election with 52 percent of the votes against William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate. Prior to his service in the Philippines, Taft had been a federal circuit judge. In 1904 Roosevelt appointed him secretary of war. Taft was a loyal ally who worked closely with Roosevelt on foreign and domestic policies. Roosevelt assumed that Taft would fulfill his reform agenda. TABLE 19-3 The Election of 1908 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote William H. Taft Republican 7,678,908 321 William Jennings Bryan Democrat-Populist 6,409,104 162 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 420,793 0 At first glance, the most obvious difference between Roosevelt and Taft was their appearance. The energetic Roosevelt was a proponent and model of physical fitness, compared with the 300-pound Taft. Political cartoonists never tired of mocking the rotund chief executive. The two presidents also differed in their leadership styles: Roosevelt, relishing the rough-and-tumble of politics; Taft, cautious and averse to taking risks. Taft’s respect for the separation of powers spelled out in the U.S. Constitution made him dubious about some of Roosevelt’s extensions of the powers of the presidency. Nevertheless, Taft initiated far more antitrust suits than Roosevelt had during his presidency. Despite similar political inclinations, Roosevelt’s support for his protégé cooled. Although Roosevelt counted major business leaders among his own advisors, he was displeased when Taft appointed corporate lawyers rather than activist reformers to his cabinet. His displeasure increased when Taft abandoned the fight for an inheritance tax and a reduction in tariffs. Taft departed from Roosevelt’s foreign policy as well. In contrast to Roosevelt, who emphasized military might, Taft claimed that “Dollar Diplomacy” was the best way for the United States to exert influence in the world: This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims. It is an effort frankly directed to the increase of American trade upon the axiomatic principle that the government of the United States shall extend all proper support to every legitimate and beneficial American enterprise abroad. Taft’s relationship with the Philippines illustrates both his policy of Dollar Diplomacy and his reinforcement of American imperialism abroad. Taft took Roosevelt’s bloody rule of the islands a step further by establishing U.S. business interests there. As El Renacimiento, a Filipino newspaper, put it at the beginning of Taft’s administration: For [Taft] the present generation is a generation of children, incapable of assuming the responsibilities of self-government; and this point of view we can never accept. Yet we recognize CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 667 ${bmicon} the power that lies in his hands…. President Taft, with the avowed purpose of helping the Filipinos, will encourage the introduction into this country of large capital which will buy up and exploit everything here worth having; and the inevitable result will be the complete domination of American commercial interests. When that day comes, of what benefit will be all this policy of education, this long preparation for self government, except to make servitude more intolerable? full view Taft’s Inefficiency - Puck Cartoon A 1910 Puck cartoon shows Taft snarled in the intricacies of office as his disappointed mentor looks on. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) When Taft signed the Payne–Aldrich Tariff in 1909, he disappointed progressive Republicans and aligned himself with the conservative old guard of the party, those who had been most critical of Roosevelt. The breach between Taft and the Progressives widened when Taft’s secretary of the interior, Richard A. Ballinger, opened up for commercial development 1 million acres of land that Roosevelt had placed under federal protection. In a further affront to conservationists, Gifford Pinchot, still head of the National Forest Service, discovered that Ballinger had sold Alaskan coal deposits to corporate moguls J. P. Morgan and David Guggenheim. When Taft defended Ballinger, Pinchot leaked the news to the press and called for a congressional investigation. Taft subsequently fired Pinchot, but Roosevelt publicly supported Pinchot and signaled his break from Taft. Roosevelt returned from big-game hunting in Africa to enter the political spotlight once again. He toured the country in 1910, describing his plan for a “New Nationalism,” a far-reaching expansion of the federal government to stabilize the economy and institute social reforms. The election of reformers of both parties to Congress in 1910 indicated that Roosevelt’s vision had popular support. With that encouragement, Roosevelt challenged Taft for leadership of the Republican party and announced his intention to run in the Republican presidential primary in 1912. Although Roosevelt had wide public support and easily defeated Taft and the other challenger, Robert La Follette, in the 13 states that held preferential primaries, the old guard still dominated the national party, and they nominated Taft at the Republican National Convention. The day after Taft’s nomination, Roosevelt and his supporters withdrew from the Republican party and formed the Progressive party. They nominated Roosevelt for president and California governor Hiram W. Johnson for vice president. Roosevelt boasted, “I am as strong as a bull moose,” inspiring his followers to call themselves the “Bull Moosers.” Their reformist platform called for extensive controls on corporations, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, a graduated income tax, and woman suffrage. But the Republican vote split between Taft and Roosevelt, and the victory went to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey. Wilson also ran on a strong reform platform. Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist party candidate vowed reform as well. The three reform candidates, Wilson, Debs, and Roosevelt, all agreed that the large corporations had too much power. But they disagreed as to what to do about it. Debs argued that the national government should take over the trusts. Roosevelt argued for a “New Nationalism,” in which a strong federal government would regulate the trusts and, if necessary, curb their power. Wilson, reluctant to vest so much power in the government, called his approach the “New Freedom,” believing that the government should dismantle the trusts and then revert to limited powers. Wilson won the election with 42 percent of the vote, but all three reform candidates together gained 75 percent of the total. Debs won 6 percent, the strongest showing ever for the Socialist party. Wilson took office amid an overwhelming popular mandate for reform. TABLE 19-4 The Election of 1912 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Woodrow Wilson Democratic 6,293,454 435 Theodore Roosevelt Progressive 4,119,538 88 William H. Taft Republican 3,484,980 8 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 900,672 0 full view Woodrow Wilson Inauguration Woodrow Wilson Inauguration PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 668 ${bmicon} When Woodrow Wilson took office, the nation looked and behaved differently than it had at the turn of the century. Millions of immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Mexico had arrived in the United States and settled in towns and cities across the nation. Growing urban areas with new amusements and increasingly diverse populations emerged as centers of a national mass culture. New developments in science and technology brought the automobile and the motion picture to American consumers. At the same time, industrial production contributed to environmental damage, pollution, and dangerous working conditions. Progressive reformers and labor activists mounted efforts to curb the ill effects of urban industrial society. Faith in science and expertise gave rise to pervasive optimism that social problems could be solved. Technological changes converged with the widespread belief that society is the sum of interdependent parts that can work together to mitigate the harmful effects of industrial life. At the local level, as well as through state and national institutions, reformers sought to solve society’s ills. Muckrakers exposed corruption, women’s rights activists pushed for the vote, and African American leaders organized for civil rights and against lynching. In the West and Southwest, Mexicans and Asians challenged discriminatory laws and labor practices. At the same time, moralists and vice crusaders sought to tame what they considered to be dangerous challenges to the social order. These years also witnessed a major expansion of national power, within the nation as well as abroad. Presidents Roosevelt and Taft strengthened the role of the federal government through new efforts to regulate big business and by extending American military and economic presence abroad. By 1912 most Americans supported a strong reform agenda. But within a few years, the nation became embroiled in a major world war that would challenge the inherent optimism of Progressivism, signaling the end of an era. Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880–1920. memory.loc.gov/ammem/detroit/dethome.html This Library of Congress site includes thousands of photographs from turn-of-the-century America. Coal Mining during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era www.history.ohio-state.edu/projects/Lessons_US/Gilded_Age/Coal_Mining/default.htm This Ohio State University site examines the development of the coal industry, including experiences of miners and sometimes violent labor-management conflict. W.E.B. DuBois Resources www-unix.oit.umass.edu/%7Ecscpo/db.html Included here are writings by and about the great African American intellectual and civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois. The Triange Shirtwaist Factory Fire, March 25, 1911 www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/ Oral histories, cartoons, images, and essays about the fire are included here. Inside an American Factory: The Westinghouse Works, 1904 lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/papr/west/westhome.html This site provides a glimpse inside a turn-of-the-twentieth-century factory. Theodore Roosevelt www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/troosevelt.html This Internet Public Library site contains biographical information about Theodore Roosevelt and his election to the presidency and links to Internet biographies and resources about him. William Howard Taft www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/whtaft.html This Internet Public Library site contains biographical information about William Howard Taft and his election to the presidency and links to Internet biographies and resources about him. The Emma Goldman Papers sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/ This site includes information about the famous immigrant radical and selections of writings by and about her. CHAPTER 19 ###8226; THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1900###8211;1912 669 ${bmicon} Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1800–1917 (1995). John R. Borchert, America’s Northern Heartland: An Economic and Historical Geography of the Upper Midwest (1987). Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909). Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1998). Sara Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (1989). Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (2001). Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society (1977). Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (1999). Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad (2000). Riv-Ellen Prell, Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation (1999). Vicki L. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (1998). Judith Smith, Family Connections: A History of Italian and Jewish Immigrant Lives in Providence, Rhode Island, 1900–1940 (1985). Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (1989). George Chauncey, Gay New York (1994). John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (1988). Elaine Tyler May, Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America (1980). Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (1980). Stephen Meyer, III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908–1921 (1981). Leon Stein, The Triangle Fire (1962). Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910). W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (1999). Dorothy Herrmann, Helen Keller: A Life (1999). Louise Michelle Newman, White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States (1999). Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (1985). Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (1980). William H. Harbaugh, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1975). Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (1955). Hazel M. McFerson, The Racial Dimension of American Overseas Colonial Policy (1997). George Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (1946). Robert Weibe, The Search for Order (1967). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter19 To Chapter 19 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 670 ${bmicon}         A World in Upheaval       The Great War and American Neutrality       The United States Goes to War       The Struggle to Win the Peace       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 671 ${bmicon} ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 6, 1909, SIX PEOPLE ARRIVED AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD. They had fulfilled at last the dream of two generations of Arctic explorers to reach the North Pole. Exhausted from a month of walking across the treacherous ice of the Arctic Sea, they rested for 30 hours at their polar camp. Then they turned south—the only direction available—and raced for their lives against the brutal cold that threatened to kill them. Who were these men? Four were Greenland Inuit (“Eskimos”), for whom the Arctic region was home, even if they rarely ventured out on the frozen sea that covered the last 400 miles to the Pole. Two were American. The leader of the party, Bowdoin College graduate and renowned Arctic adventurer Robert Peary, had already built a reputation as a leading figure in the explorations of the Earth’s last remote places. The other American to reach the North Pole that day received no such fame. Yet by the accounts of his fellow travelers, Matthew Henson was the indispensable man on the trip. A skilled dogsled driver, a master carpenter who built the expedition’s shelters and fixed its sleds, and the only American on the voyage to learn the Inuit language, Henson was the one person Peary said he could not get along without. Henson was also African American. He had grown up during Reconstruction in rural Maryland and Washington, D.C. As a young man he developed a taste for exotic travel by working as a sailor on ships that took him to east Asia, north Africa, and the Black Sea. Back in Washington, Henson worked as a clerk at an exclusive fur company to which Peary brought furs from his early trips to Greenland. Despite living on opposite sides of the increasingly stark color line of Jim Crow, the two men made strongly positive impressions on each other. Peary, ten years older, hired Henson as his assistant in 1888. Over the next 21 years, as white Americans unleashed a growing torrent of violence against their black fellow citizens, these two men built a relationship of great mutual respect as they pressed northward on several journeys into the icy wilderness of the Arctic. In his intimate working relationship with Henson, Peary acted so much as an equal that he sometimes offended other white Americans on the expeditions. Twelve years after Henson and Peary stood together to plant the American flag in the Inuit world of the far North, the relations between white and black Americans appeared in a sharply different light in Oklahoma. The former Indian Territory had become a state in 1907 and had more than 50,000 Cherokee and other Native American residents, more than any other state. The discovery at the turn of the century of vast oil reserves along the Arkansas River made Tulsa a boom town, with all the social tensions that accompany rapid growth. The vibrant African American section of the segregated city along Greenwood Avenue offered a strong example of black economic independence. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 672 ${bmicon} That entire community was destroyed on the night of May 31, 1921, in the largest American race riot of the twentieth century. In previous years, similar riots had erupted in St. Louis, Chicago, and elsewhere, when white resentment over black mobility and declining deference exploded around a petty pretext. In Tulsa, a false charge against a young black man of attempted rape of a white elevator operator sparked thousands of angry white Tulsans to descend on the county courthouse to seize the suspect from jail. The city’s white newspaper spurred them on with an editorial titled “To Lynch Negro Tonight.” But many black Tulsans were determined not to let that happen. Veterans just back from World War I insisted that their sacrifices to make the world “safe for democracy” not be marred by terrorism. A group of 75 African Americans drove down to the courthouse to defend it from the mob. Their leader was a former serviceman who, others remembered, “came back from France with exaggerated ideas of equality.” The two groups exchanged words and then gunfire. Several people fell dead. Enraged, the much larger and better-armed white crowd poured across the railroad tracks into Greenwood, shooting and burning. Rather than restraining them, the Tulsa police force deputized hundreds of the marauders with instructions to kill. In the next few hours, the invaders executed as many as 300 African Americans and burned the entire Greenwood district to the ground. Mary E. Jones Parrish, a Greenwood resident, felt as though World War I had come to her town: “The enemy had organized in the night and was invading our district, the same as the Germans invaded France and Belgium.” No white Tulsans were ever punished by the law for their actions that night. The decade that stretched from the discovery of the North Pole to the Tulsa race riot was marked by unusual turbulence in American life. From 1910 to 1914 optimism about solving the nation’s social problems rose as reformers attempted to ameliorate some of the worst aspects of modern industrial life. International developments then turned American attentions abroad. Traumatic social revolutions swept through Mexico, China, and Russia, and the conflagration of the Great War—World War I—consumed all of Europe and eventually drew in the United States. What President Woodrow Wilson called the war “to make the world safe for democracy” encouraged people of color, both in the vast European-ruled colonies of Asia and Africa and in the segregated United States, to claim a place of greater equality. But at home the war also created pressures for conformity and an intolerance for dissent. The events in Tulsa were part of a broad pattern of violence against political radicals and people of color that was rampant by 1920. The United States emerged from the war with great prestige and power, but most Americans were not yet convinced of the nation’s obligations abroad, and the Versailles Treaty ending World War I failed to create a lasting structure for world peace. American politics between 1910 and 1920 and the U.S. involvement in World War I must be understood within the context of change and uncertainty in the international system. While world affairs were still dominated by the wealthy nations of western Europe and North America, the first wave of the great revolutions of the twentieth century was beginning to wash away much of the old order. Tensions also sharpened within the United States over traditional hierarchies of color, gender, and class. The struggle between reform and reaction pervaded public life in the United States and much of the rest of the world. CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 673 ${bmicon} On the eve of World War I, all but a quarter of the world’s population lived under the rule of Europeans or their descendants. Explorations of the most remote parts of the globe filled in the last blank spaces on world maps, including the North (1909) and South (1911) poles. A 1913 expedition led by Episcopalian missionary Hudson Stuck reached the top of Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, at 20,320 feet the highest peak in North America. The granting of statehood to Arizona and New Mexico in 1912 filled out the 48 mainland states. With U.S. control of the continent complete, its native inhabitants began to seem to white Americans less a current threat than a piece of the past to be preserved. The U.S. Treasury issued the first Indian head nickel the following year. Technological innovations in transportation and communication tied the world more closely together. Just as the Suez Canal (1870) and the trans-Siberian railroad (1904) linked Europe more directly to Asia, the Panama Canal (1914) cut in half the travel time by water between the East and West coasts of the United States. Cables laid on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean in 1914 inaugurated telephone service between Europe and the United States. The first motorized flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright along the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1903 led to transcontinental airmail service by 1920. full view Building the Panama Canal The United States sponsored the coup which created Panama in order to secure a government supportive of a massive canal project to connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. (National Archives) The competition that arose from the expansion of European power sowed the seeds of World War I. Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and Russia raced each other for new colonies and greater influence across Africa and Asia. Conflicts within Europe over disputed borders (Alsace–Lorraine) and nationalist movements (the Balkans) further heightened tensions. The central rivalry emerged between a newly unified Germany (1871) and traditionally dominant Britain. France had been defeated by Germany in the last armed clash in Europe (the Franco-Prussian War of 1870) and feared a renewed conflict with its larger, stronger neighbor. Anticipating trouble, each of the major European powers sought allies to bolster its position. Britain, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy (when war came in 1914 Italy switched sides and the Ottoman Empire—modern Turkey—joined Germany and Austria–Hungary as the Central Powers). These unprecedented peacetime alliances between global empires meant that a single spark could ignite a worldwide war. The United States had been born in the first successful revolution by colonies against a European empire. full view Teddy Roosevelt at Panama Canal, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt on a steam shovel at the Culebra cut in the Panama Canal in 1906. (Library of Congress) The United States emerged as a global power in this same period around the turn of the century. Fifteen years after it seized an overseas empire in 1898, the country’s economic growth was stunning. U.S. consumption of energy from modern fuels (coal and oil) in 1913 equaled that of Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and Austria–Hungary combined. The United States brought a different history to the world stage. It had been born in 1776 in the first successful revolution by colonies against a European empire. Americans had long understood themselves as a people who opposed empires and supported self-government. The events of 1898 contradicted this legacy, and Americans remained ambivalent about their country’s imperial venture. The U.S. Congress promised eventual independence to the Philippines in 1916 and granted U.S. citizenship to residents of Puerto Rico in 1917. The American rise to world power came just as the major revolutions of the twentieth century began to shatter the structures of imperialism. The United States became the leading status quo power when much of the globe was beginning to reject that status quo. The great example of anticolonial revolution now stood as one of the foremost counterrevolutionary states. Rather than new colonies, however, Americans sought expanded economic opportunities abroad, and they expected their government to help them. While president of Princeton University in 1907, Woodrow Wilson explained that because “the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him … even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process.” Wilson’s victory in the election of 1912 brought the first native Southerner to the White House since before the Civil War, a Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 674 ${bmicon} symbol of a reunited majority white population ready to turn out ward. More than most people, Wilson feared social upheaval. Born in 1856, he had grown up in Augusta, Georgia, amid the destruction of the Civil War, and he made his career as a political scientist and as governor of New Jersey (1910–1912) during a period of labor strife. Whatever Wilson’s hopes for a stable social order at home and abroad, the global process of western capitalist expansion into decentralized, preindustrial societies was producing a widespread backlash by 1910. The first signs had already appeared of a broad rejection of the world order dominated by the white nations of Europe and North America. Ethiopia crushed an invading Italian army in 1896 in the first victory of an African state over a modern European one. In 1905 Japan destroyed the Russian army and naval fleet, putting Europeans on notice that their days of having their way in Asia were over. Harassed across eastern Europe in brutal pogroms, Jews under the leadership of Theodor Herzl founded the Zionist movement in 1897 for a national homeland in Palestine. Blacks organized the African National Congress in 1912 to struggle against racial oppression in South Africa, just as African Americans formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. As nationalist movements in China, Russia, and Mexico overturned weak central governments controlled by foreign investors, American economic and security interests seemed to be at stake on three continents. In Asia, the Chinese deeply resented exclusive foreign enclaves that dominated their nation’s coastal region and exempted foreigners from the constraints of Chinese laws. Signs in Shanghai reading “No dogs or Chinese” suggested the attitudes that accompanied European and American control of the bulk of China’s wealth. In 1911 nationalist revolutionaries inspired by Sun Yat-sen, a Hawaiian-educated democratic reformer, overthrew the Manchu dynasty that had proven unable to resist western incursions. The American desire for an open door into China’s trade—a door that no other powerful nation could close at will—conflicted with the rising imperial power of the region: Japan. The Tokyo government, which had annexed Korea in 1910, responded to the outbreak of World War I by seizing the valuable German-held Shantung Peninsula in northeastern China. In its famous 21 Demands to China, issued in January 1915, Japan made clear its plans to dominate the development of the Chinese economy. The American relationship with both China and Japan was undercut at home by continued discrimination and violence against immigrants from Asia, who remained ineligible for naturalization as U.S. citizens (unlike any children born on American soil, who were U.S. citizens regardless of their race or ethnicity). In 1913 the California legislature passed the Alien Land Act to prevent ownership of land in the state by people “ineligible to citizenship”—people born in Asia, particularly those from Japan. Revolutionary struggles with implications for America also threatened the monarchs who ruled eastern Europe. For Russians, defeat at the hands of Japan in 1905 helped precipitate a thwarted revolution in 1905 followed by two years of political turmoil. The Czar survived to rule another decade, and thousands of political activists—unionists, anarchists, and socialists—joined a growing wave of immigration from Russia to the United States. The wave crested in 1914 at 1.2 million people, most of them from east or south of the Alps. That same year, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo in June provided the spark that ignited the Great War. Russia’s defense of the Serbs put the alliance system into action as the Entente went to war with the Central Powers. The most important region of the world for the United States before World War I was Latin America, especially Central America and the Caribbean islands. This area guarded the nation’s Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 675 ${bmicon} full view MAP 20.1 U.S. INTERESTS AND INTERVENTIONS IN THE CARIBBEAN REGION, 1898–1939 By its size, wealth, and military power, the United States dominated the Caribbean region to its south. American capitalists invested heavily in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands, and U.S. troops often intervened to protect those investments. Puerto Rico (by acquisition from Spain) and the Panama Canal Zone (by lease from Panama) became particularly important territories ruled by the United States. strategic southern flank, and American citizens and corporations invested more money in Latin America than in any other region of the world. President Wilson spoke of the ability of Latin Americans to govern themselves “when properly directed” and proceeded to provide that direction. U.S. Marines occupied Haiti (1915), the Dominican Republic (1916), and Cuba (1917) and maintained their earlier presence in Nicaragua to defend American-owned property and ensure that local debts were paid to American creditors. The Bryan–Chamorro Treaty of 1916 guaranteed that no other nation would build a competitor to the Panama Canal through Nicaragua. The United States purchased the Danish Virgin Islands in 1917 to keep them out of German hands. American anxieties about stability to the south centered on Mexico. “Land for the landless and Mexico for the Mexicans” became the slogan of revolutionaries there between 1910 and 1920. After troops led by Francisco Madero overthrew the long-standing dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in 1911, various factions competed to determine the course of the revolution. U.S. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 676 ${bmicon} stakes in the Mexican revolution were high. American investors owned 43 percent of all Mexico’s wealth (other foreigners owned another 25 percent), and more than half of the country’s trade flowed north to the United States. Moreover, by 1921 Mexico became the world’s second largest exporter of oil. Washington feared the spread of radical political ideas northward as almost a million Mexicans crossed their northern border during the revolutionary decade, tripling the number of Americans with recent roots south of the Rio Grande. Many came through El Paso, the “Ellis Island” for immigrants from the south. Fleeing poverty and violence, they found both discrimination and employment. Dam building and irrigation in the American Southwest since the Newlands Act of 1902 had created a boom in commercial agriculture across California and Arizona and a desperate need for farm workers. Employers often recruited south of the border. “I believe that the Mexican laborers are the solution to our common labor problem in this country,” one cotton company executive told President Wilson. It was not an easy life, especially for women who had to balance paid employment with taking care of families. Grace Luna remembered picking cotton in Madera, California, where women scaled ladders with 100 pounds of cotton on their backs and “some carried their kids on top of their picking sacks.” Whereas most immigrants sought unskilled positions, members of Mexico’s professional classes came north for political asylum as well, including teachers, architects, and lawyers. New arrivals of all classes joined Mexican Americans who had lived in the region since it was part of Mexico. They had not crossed the border; in 1848, the border had crossed them. Mexican Americans had lived in the region since it was part of Mexico. They had not crossed the border; in 1848, the border had crossed them. Wilson sought unsuccessfully to reestablish in Mexico a political order respectful of the rights of foreign property owners. He refused to recognize the government of Victoriano Huerta, which had deposed and murdered Madero in 1912. Wilson instead supported the forces around Venustiano Carranza while opposing the more radical opposition led by Emiliano Zapata in the south and Francisco (“Pancho”) Villa in the north. Wilson twice sent U.S. troops into Mexico, at Veracruz in April 1914 to block a German arms shipment to Huerta’s forces and then in pursuit of Villa and his army after their 1916 assault on Columbus, New Mexico. The American forces under General John J. Pershing withdrew in early 1917 as the president prepared to enter the much larger war in Europe. Land redistribution and national control of Mexico’s abundant mineral wealth, particularly oil, were written into the new constitution passed a few days later, and the revolutionary upheaval ended by 1920. Just as social upheaval threatened monarchies and international investors abroad, less privileged Americans contested traditional lines of hierarchy and control in the United States. For example, racial lines were not always clear. Native-born whites continued to disagree about whether the millions of new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were also “white.” Anthropologists led by Franz Boas at Columbia University began to question the supposed significance of racial differences. Americans of all colors applauded the spectacular successes of Native American athlete Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympic Games in Sweden. In 1916 Wilson appointed Louis Brandeis as the first Jewish justice of the Supreme Court, but that same year anxieties about the future of white supremacy found a voice in the popular new book of a conservative New York intellectual named Madison Grant. The Passing of the Great Race, a bigoted sociology tract, identified Jesus as “Nordic” to distance the central figure of the Christian faith from the many new Jewish immigrants in America. The Wilson administration’s “New Freedom” slogan did not apply to African Americans, who faced continuing discrimination in employment and housing. The president filled his cabinet with white Southerners who segregated the few federal agencies that had employed blacks. CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 677 ${bmicon} blacks. When Wilson took office African Americans continued to be murdered publicly by vigilante mobs across the South at a rate of more than one person per week. But the president ignored requests from the recently formed NAACP for an antilynching law, and the United States remained one of the few societies in which human beings were burned at the stake. Instead, the historian–president endorsed D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation as “history written with lightning.” Griffith, a Kentucky-born champion of the “Lost Cause” of slavery in the South, had created a racist blockbuster that celebrated the Ku Klux Klan of the 1860s and helped inspire the Klan’s rebirth that fall at Stone Mountain, Georgia. Women of all colors lived under particular burdens of discrimination. Their uniquely intimate relationships—as daughters, wives, mothers—to those who did not treat them as equals complicated their efforts at reform. So did their dilemma about women’s roles in society: some sought full legal equality with men, and others wanted special protections for women on the grounds that they were fundamentally different. At issue was the nature of women’s political identity. Was their primary identification in their attachment to individual men or to the nation? American women lost their U.S. citizenship by marrying a foreigner, whereas American men did not. A growing chorus of female activists rejected this kind of double standard and focused on the key issue of suffrage. American women’s long struggle to vote came to a head in this decade. By 1912, a growing number of European nations and nine American states, all in the West, granted the franchise to citizens of both sexes. Jeannette Rankin, a Republican feminist and pacifist from Montana, won election in 1916 as the nation’s first female member of Congress. Suffragists varied in the tactics they believed most effective for winning the vote. The more moderate National American Women Suffrage Association under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt worked PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 678 ${bmicon} within the political system, building an alliance with President Wilson after he endorsed women’s suffrage in 1916 and supporting the U.S. entry into World War I the next year. Alice Paul and other militants formed the National Women’s Party and opposed the war effort as inherently undemocratic because half the adult population could not vote. In 1917 five picketers were imprisoned for seven months for obstructing traffic in front of the White House; despite brutal force-feedings, Paul and Rose Winslow persisted in a hunger strike so “that women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners.” In 1918 suffragist organizers helped elect a more sympathetic Congress that passed the Nineteenth Amendment, ending sex discrimination in voting two years later. Contention over women’s social roles also divided Americans. Traditionalists promoted the declaration of the first Mother’s Day in 1913. The desire to provide special protections for women resulted in the Sheppard–Towner Act of 1921, which expanded the role of the new federal Children’s Bureau in providing infant and maternal health services. The struggle over contraception foreshadowed the conflict over abortion that dominated women’s politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Socialist Margaret Sanger campaigned for women’s access to contraception, opening the nation’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916. Sanger’s experiences as a public health nurse with working-class New Yorkers convinced her that controlling pregnancy was the central issue for helping women gain greater autonomy. Unable to separate sexual experience from reproduction and facing poverty and unsanitary living conditions, married women in the lower classes suffered frequent pregnancies and the often debilitating and sometimes fatal consequences of abortions, an illegal but common operation. “The menace of another pregnancy hung like a sword over the head of every poor woman I came in contact with,” Sanger recalled. She reached a turning point after hearing the joking response of a physician to the desperate plea of one frail 28-year-old mother of three for help in preventing another pregnancy: “Tell Jake to sleep on the roof!” Sanger was appalled, and the young woman’s subsequent death as a result of a botched abortion pushed Sanger to begin her crusade for contraception. Most adult Americans—workers—continued to find themselves in frequent conflict with the owners who employed them. Industrial capitalism’s efficiency produced great material wealth, but 60 percent of it belonged to 2 percent of the population, whereas two-thirds of Americans owned only 2 percent of the wealth. President Wilson acknowledged that as factories grew larger, “the individual has been submerged.” Skills became less necessary in the assembly-line workplace and workers more interchangeable. The anticapitalist aspirations of the Socialist party and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) frightened both industrialists and the more conservative labor leaders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), especially when the western-based IWW led two major strikes in the East, one a success in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 and the other a failure in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1913. The campaign against a wage cut at the vast Lawrence textile factory was especially impressive in uniting 20,000 workers of 40 different national backgrounds. Businesses had long opposed workers’ efforts to build unions. Some owners sought to undercut union campaigns by providing better working conditions and even company-run “unions.” These carrots of concession were accompanied by the stick of force. Bolstered by sympathetic federal courts and state governors, companies usually refused to negotiate with work- CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 679 ${bmicon} full view MAP 20.2 SOUTHERN COLORADO AND NORTHERN NEW MEXICO The mountainous region of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in the 1910s had an economy based on mining, ranching, and lumbering—like much of the rural West. A large Indian population included Navajos, Apaches, Pueblos, and Utes. Since the 1920s, Santa Fe and Taos supported important communities of artists enchanted by the area’s natural beauty. That same beauty attracted growing numbers of visitors later in the twentieth century, as the tourist trade surpassed older extractive industries as the chief source of employment in much of the mountainous West. ers who went on strike. This pattern reached a shocking climax on Easter night in 1914 outside Ludlow, Colorado, in a mining camp owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. State militia and company guards broke a strike there with torches and machine guns, burning the miners’ tent colony and killing 2 women and 11 children. A total of 66 strikers and strike supporters died before federal troops eventually restored order. Ludlow recalled the actions of the Colorado militia exactly 50 years earlier, when it had destroyed the Cheyenne Indian camp at Sand Creek. Immigrant coal miners and their families had replaced Native Americans as the apparent threat to Colorado’s social order. Such brutality by owners against workers appalled most Americans. The Wilson administration slowly began supporting the right of laborers to organize for collective bargaining with their employers. Wilson’s strong backing from Samuel Gompers and the AFL in the 1912 election initiated the modern Democratic–labor alliance. The president named William B. Wilson, a U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania and a former labor activist with the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers, to head the new U.S. Department of Labor, the permanent agency established “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of working people” by improving their working conditions and mediating labor disputes. The president appointed labor lawyer Frank Walsh to chair the separate short-term U.S. Committee on Industrial Relations, which for two years explored the causes of industrial violence in public hearings. Walsh even grilled Rockefeller about the events at Ludlow, embarrassing the corporate titan by revealing his close involvement and clear responsibility for what happened. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 680 ${bmicon} Most Americans had roots of some kind in Europe and had long defined themselves in relation to life on “the continent.” But they also considered themselves part of the New World that was separate from the Old World of kings, castles, and rigid social classes. When Europe stepped off the precipice in August 1914 into a war larger than any previously fought or imagined, few Americans wanted any part of it. Make “no entangling alliances,” George Washington had urged his fellow citizens. Europeans must stay out of our hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine had declared. For generations, the preoccupation of the United States had been constructing the world’s “best” society, however Americans might disagree about its proper contours. But migration and commerce had reduced the nation’s isolation. International ties proved too important to the well-being of Americans for the country to remain indefinitely on the sidelines of World War I. “It would be an irony of fate,” Wilson told a friend, “if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.” But so it was for the scholar of American history and politics who entered national office with a large domestic agenda. Just a year and a half into his presidency, Americans were stunned as “civilized” Europe slid into savage conflict. “The lamps are going out all over Europe,” British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey observed. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” Following traditional U.S. policy, Wilson urged Americans to remain neutral “in fact as well as in name” to promote an eventual “peace without victory.” Neutrality was profitable. Wilson stoutly defended the rights of neutrals to trade with belligerents, the same principle that had led the United States into the War of 1812 against England. American industries depended on overseas trade, he believed, and “they will burst their jackets if they cannot find a free outlet to the markets of the world.” After the recession of 1913–1914, war-related demands from abroad for American farm and factory products jumpstarted the economy. In the course of World War I, American bankers extended $10 billion in loans to the Entente (primarily Britain and France), and the United States changed from a debtor nation to the world’s largest creditor. The nature of the fighting in Europe bolstered the American determination to avoid being drawn into the conflict. Industrialized warfare brought fiendish new ways to kill human beings, including machine guns and poison gas. Gone were the days of bold maneuvers and dashing cavalry charges; now was the time of trench warfare, with its unrelenting misery, terror, and helplessness. Eight and a half million young men lost their lives and another 21 million were wounded, devastating an entire generation of European society. Eight million civilians also died as a result of the fighting, and an international outbreak of influenza in 1918 killed another 20 million around the world. Continuous shelling rendered whole sections of the landscape of northern France a wasteland. Prewar optimism about human progress swiftly disappeared. full view Warning of Influenza Epidemic, 1918 - Poster A poster distributed by the Commission of Health to movie theaters in Chicago reveals the fear and near panic that many Americans felt in the face of the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918. (National Library of Medicine) In the United States, neutrality also made political sense. Immigrants from every part of Europe lived and voted in the United States, so Americans had blood ties to all the belligerents. Commercial and political elites tended to identify with Britain and France, as did many other Americans. But among two of the largest groups of Americans, those with roots in Germany and Ireland, many took a different view. Few Irish Americans equated England with the cause of democracy after centuries of British rule in Ireland, and London’s severe repression of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin underscored their case. The sheer scale of the immigrant stream to the United States between 1900 and 1914 reinforced the need to avoid Europe’s conflicts. Native-born white Americans were already concerned with preserving unity in their increasingly varied and urban society. Allowing in the hatreds from Europe’s battlefields would only exacerbate the ethnic and class tensions that worried social reformers and many politicians, including President Wilson. CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 681 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 20-1 CASUALTIES OF THE GREAT WAR, 1914–1918 Compared to the European combatants who fought for several years, the United States suffered far fewer casualties in its 18 months in World War I. Americans traditionally considered powerful government a primary threat to individual liberty, but the rise of mammoth corporations at the start of the twentieth century altered that calculation. Competition was disappearing, particularly in critical sectors of the economy such as oil production and railroads. Laissez-faire policies, by which federal agencies encouraged economic expansion, were no longer adequate; only government could balance the new might of the largest companies. This meant modest regulation of some aspects of the marketplace. Wilson’s first term also encouraged such democratic reforms as the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment for the direct popular election of U.S. senators (1913), previously chosen by state legislatures. Until American entry into the Great War in 1917 turned the nation to a very different task, this period marked the climax of the first chapter of twentieth-century liberalism. Three areas topped the Wilson administration’s reform agenda: taxes, the money system, and monopolies. The Underwood–Simmons Tariff of 1913 cut duties—taxes—on imported goods by almost one-half, helping American consumers and promoting freer trade. The Sixteenth Amendment (1913) allowed a federal income tax, which the 1916 Revenue Act put into effect. This was a progressive tax, one that took a larger percentage of the income of the rich than it took from the poor. The legislation also levied higher taxes on corporate profits and created the first federal estate tax on inheritances. Though small, a tax on inheritances supported the principle of equality of opportunity. It implied that children of the wealthy PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 682 ${bmicon} should not receive an enormous head start in life and that Americans growing up without an inheritance should not be handicapped by the large inequalities among past generations. Congress moved to regulate money in another new way as well. The absence of a centrally managed money system had long contributed to the exaggerated boom-and-bust cycles in the American economy. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created a system of 12 Federal Reserve Banks to control the amount of currency in circulation, increasing it in deflationary times and decreasing it when inflation threatened. The system aimed to abolish depressions and prevent bank closures. It did not fully succeed, as the years after 1929 showed, but the Federal Reserve System stabilized the American banking industry and helped position the dollar to become the central global currency. No issue so dominated American politics between 1913 and 1915 as the tension between huge new corporations and the nation’s antimonopoly tradition. The size and market share of companies such as U.S. Steel, American Tobacco, and Du Pont (chemicals) inhibited competition, just as Microsoft dominated computer software at the end of the twentieth century. Investigations by a congressional committee chaired by Arsene Pujo in 1913 revealed the concentration of financial power in the hands of J. P. Morgan and a few other New York bankers, dubbed the Money Trust. Congress created the Federal Trade Commission (1914) to investigate business practices that unfairly prevented competition. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 supplemented the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act by outlawing specific unfair business practices such as local price cutting and granting rebates to undermine competitors. The Clayton Act also delighted the AFL by declaring that unions should not be “construed to be illegal combinations in restraint of trade.” Most federal judges remained unsympathetic to unions, but they could no longer wield the Sherman Act against striking workers rather than against the corporate trusts it had originally intended to target. The early years after 1910 witnessed the rise of legislation to protect particular groups of citizens, especially women, children, and certain workers. States led the way, with half by 1913 passing workers’ compensation laws to provide assistance to workers injured on the job and their Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 683 ${bmicon} full view MAP 20.3 PROMINENT NATIONAL PARKS OF THE AMERICAN WEST The federal government owns much of the land in the American West. The U.S. Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture manages the forests that cover the region’s mountains. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the Department of the Interior oversees the more arid rangelands at lower altitudes. The National Park Service cares for the parks established to protect and display some of the nation’s most spectacular natural scenery. families. In 1916 Congress passed the first federal law limiting child labor, the Keating–Owen Act. The Supreme Court later found it to be unconstitutional, but state child labor laws remained in place. The Adamson Act (1916), providing for an eight-hour day for railroad workers, was the first case of the federal government regulating the hours of workers in the private sector. Another kind of protective legislation focused on conservation through the preservation of natural landscapes. An increasingly urban, industrial society looked to its most beautiful rural places for solace. Local and state governments set aside parklands throughout the Progressive era. Wilson followed in Roosevelt’s conservationist footsteps by creating the National Park Service in 1916 to provide unified management of such new national treasures as Glacier National Park in Montana (1910), Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado (1915), Lassen Volcanic National Park in California (1916), and Acadia National Park in Maine (1919). The so-called Progressive era of 1900–1920 was anything but progressive from the viewpoint of African Americans, who experienced little progress. White mob violence reached its apex in these years, with hundreds of lynchings and dozens of race riots. Most African Americans lived in the South, where segregation and discrimination trapped the majority in poverty. Many therefore seized the unprecedented opportunity offered by the outbreak of the Great PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 684 ${bmicon} War. War-related orders created huge needs for workers in northern factories, and the war also closed the spigot of European immigration, drying up the standard source of new labor. Along with other cities, Chicago and Detroit became centers of the Great Migration of more than half a million African Americans out of Dixie during the war years. Encouraged by black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and sometimes assisted by northern labor recruiters, black Southerners wanted to go “where a man is a man” regardless of his color. They still found plenty of discrimination in the urban North. But the large black communities of Philadelphia, Cleveland, and New York offered far greater independence than the rural South they left behind. Here “I don’t have to humble to no one,” one former Southerner wrote home. African Americans could vote, earn higher wages, send their children to better schools, and even sit where they wanted on streetcars. One woman newly arrived in Chicago was stunned the first time she boarded a trolley and saw black people sitting next to whites. “I just held my breath, for I thought any minute they would start something. Then I saw nobody notices it, and I just thought this is a real place for Negroes.” The Great Migration fit in a broader pattern of oppressed peoples seeking greater freedom and opportunity in the industrial workplaces of the American North. African Americans could not change their color and escape from discrimination, as could ethnic Europeans such as Irish, Italians, and Jews who struggled successfully against widespread prejudice to be identified as “white” (while still enduring elements of discrimination). But black Southerners moving north in pursuit of work and liberty acted much as European immigrants had, and they joined other newcomers seeking urban work. The 1920 census showed for the first time a majority of Americans living in towns and cities of at least 2500 people. When war in Europe shut off most Atlantic immigration after 1914, it opened the door to newcomers who did not have to cross the submarine-infested ocean. Blacks who boarded trains for the North were joined by a similar number of white Southerners leaving rural poverty CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 685 ${bmicon} to look for jobs. A small stream of French Canadians found work in New England factories. A much larger stream of Mexicans and Mexican Americans flowed to jobs across the American Southwest and Midwest. Like African Americans, who had been leaving the South since the Civil War, people of Mexican descent had been moving across the American West for economic reasons since the mid-nineteenth century. World War I and the Mexican Revolution increased their numbers sharply, with the growing cities of Los Angeles, San Antonio, and El Paso remaining particular magnets for new immigrants. The number of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles soared from 6000 in 1910 to nearly 100,000 in 1930. A steady undertow of interests and inclinations pulled against American neutrality after 1914. Most Americans who paid attention to events abroad favored the Entente over the Central Powers. The diversity of Americans’ ethnic roots across Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America could not mask fundamental cultural and linguistic connections to England, the one-time “mother country.” President Wilson deeply admired British political values and institutions, and most influential newspaper editors supported the British cause. Even Americans critical of the British Empire did not want to see the European continent under the autocratic rule of the German Kaiser. full view Couple Hanging a War Flag Couple Hanging a War Flag (Photodisc, Inc.) Concrete economic interests also tied the United States to the Allied side. During three years of neutrality, American bankers lent 85 times as much to the Entente nations as to the Central Powers ($2.3 billion versus $27 million). Opponents of American entry into the war later pointed out that bankers and weapon makers had lobbied for joining the British cause, which fattened their wallets. But millions of other Americans also benefited from the nation’s trade with Britain and France. Large corporations reaped the bulk of the profits, and agricultural and industrial workers earned decent wages in filling Entente war orders. Certain powerful Americans, concentrated on the East Coast, tried from the start to prepare the country for entering the war. They emphasized that the U.S. military was much smaller than the forces of European states because of Americans’ traditional aversion to large standing armies. Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt and former Secretary of State Elihu Root led the war preparedness movement, which sought to pressure new immigrants into “100 percent Americanism” and to establish universal military training as “the only way to yank the hyphen out of America.” Progressives themselves split over the war. More radical reformers opposed joining it as a matter of principle. “Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses,” Socialist Eugene Debs wrote in 1914, “and there will never be another war on the face of the earth.” Settlement house leader Jane Addams and black labor organizer A. Philip Randolph likewise opposed the war throughout, as did writer Randolph Bourne. They feared, presciently, that going to war would take the wind out of the sails of domestic reform. TABLE 20-1 The Election of 1916 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Woodrow Wilson Democratic 9,129,606 277 Charles E. Hughes Republican 8,538,221 254 A. L. Benson Socialist 585,113 0 Most Progressives followed President Wilson’s leadership, opposing U.S. involvement in Europe at first but gradually shifting to support it. Roosevelt’s return to mainstream Republicanism and his enthusiasm for war left Wilson the standard-bearer of Progressivism in the 1916 election. This allowed the president to squeak by conservative Republican nominee Charles Evans Hughes, winning a second term in the White House. “He kept us out of war,” his supporters declared, but Wilson himself was less optimistic. He knew where German submarine warfare might lead: “Any little German lieutenant can put us into the war at any time by some calculated outrage.” PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 686 ${bmicon} Like Lyndon Johnson in 1964 regarding Vietnam, Wilson won reelection as a liberal reformer and a man of peace, only to go to war within six months. On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany “to make the world safe for democracy.” Congress agreed by a large majority, and four days later the United States entered the Great War. Mobilization went slowly; it took almost a year before American soldiers in large numbers saw combat in the trenches of northern France. But troops of the Entente took heart from the knowledge that the Yanks were finally coming. American foodstuffs and munitions arrived more quickly, as did American naval ships protecting cargo vessels bound for England. The U.S. entry into the war ultimately provided the narrow margin of victory against the Central Powers. Wilson’s insistence on the traditional rights of neutral nations to trade with belligerents clashed with German and British efforts to prevent trade destined for their enemy. The German use of the new submarines or U-boats (from the German Unterseeboots) against superior British surface forces pulled Americans into the war. Submarines were extremely vulnerable when not submerged. Before firing on a merchant or passenger ship that might be armed or carrying contraband (war materials), they refused to surface and warn civilian passengers—as required under international law—to evacuate on lifeboats. With Britain arming merchant ships and stowing munitions in the holds of passenger ships, U-boats were the key element in the German campaign to weaken the enemy. The British navy, in turn, seized American goods bound for Germany. But Britain’s blockade of the German coastline and neutral ports nearby did not endanger civilians in the same way. “One deals with life; the other with property,” Secretary of State Robert Lansing explained. full view Sinking of the Lusitania - New York Tribune The sinking of the Lusitania shocked Americans and illustrated the complexity and horror of modern warfare. New York had fifteen daily papers in 1915, and all produced “Extra” editions to announce the sinking. This was front page of the New York Tribune. (New York Tribune, May 8, 1915) The deaths of civilians without warning on the high seas shocked and angered the American public, especially the sinking of the magnificent British ocean liner Lusitania in May 1915, which killed 128 U.S. citizens and a thousand others. However, some Americans believed Wilson to be less than neutral in negotiating with the British over their offenses while giving ultimatums to Germany. Lansing’s predecessor, William Jennings Bryan, resigned in June 1915 to protest the president’s manner of defending American trading rights. Bryan found both sides—stalemated and unable to gain victory in the trenches—reprehensible for trying to win by killing “noncombatant men, women, and children.” Only their methods differed: Germany drowned innocent civilians; England starved them with its blockade. Hoping not to draw the United States into the war, the German government twice put its unrestricted submarine warfare on hold (the Arabic pledge of September 1915 and the Sussex pledge of May 1916). By January 1917 the British blockade had reduced German food rations per person to less than half the prewar level. Facing imminent starvation, Berlin decided to take one last chance with unrestricted submarine warfare. The German government calculated that it could force a British and French surrender before enough American assistance arrived. “Not one American will land on the continent,” the chief of the German naval staff confidently promised the Kaiser. Two days later, on February 3, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany. full view Soldiers Taking an IQ Test during WWI Administered to groups of soldiers, the IQ test was used in World War I to classify recruits and to determine which of them were “officer material.” The results of the tests raised questions not only about the mental abilities and backgrounds of the men but also about possible biases in the tests themselves. full view Nurse, Soldier, and Sailor, 1919 Nurse, Soldier, and Sailor, 1919 (Photodisc, Inc.) Preparing for war with the Americans, German Ambassador Arthur Zimmermann secretly offered German aid to the revolutionary Mexican government “to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona” if it joined the Central Powers. Mexico declined, but the Zimmermann telegram leaked to the press on March 1 and outraged Americans. The German threat seemed finally to have reached American soil. One last hindrance to joining the Entente disappeared with the revolution that same month in Russia, which replaced the monarchy with a social democratic government, which Wilson called “a fit partner for a league of CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 687 ${bmicon} honor.” The president could now more genuinely call for a war to make the world “safe for democracy,” with France a republic and Britain ruled by Parliament. Politics and economics merged as Lansing underlined the “industrial depression” and “general unrest and suffering among the laboring classes” that an Entente defeat would cause in America. Still jealous of American autonomy and wary of close identification with the French, British, and Russian empires, however, Wilson took the nation into war as an “Associated” power rather than a full-blown member of the Entente. The president believed that the United States, unique among the belligerents, sought only to defend principles rather than to acquire territory, assuring it of distinctive moral leadership at an eventual postwar peace conference. “We have no quarrel with the German people” themselves but only with the “Prussian autocracy” whose U-boats were engaged in “a warfare against mankind,” Wilson declared in calling Americans to a great crusade in Europe. “We desire no conquest, no dominion,” but merely to be “one of the champions of the rights of mankind.” Going to war entailed a complete reorientation of the American economy. For the Army and Navy to succeed abroad, mass production of war materials had to be centrally planned, and full view Woman Recruiting Poster for the Marines Woman Recruiting Poster for the Marines PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 688 ${bmicon} only the federal government could fulfill this role. Such an expansion of government regulation fit with the broader agenda of Progressive reform. Federal agencies could mediate some of the tensions between capital and labor as they focused on ensuring adequate food, clothing, and weapons for the troops at the front. The Wilson administration created several new agencies to manage the war effort at home. The Selective Service Act established local boards to draft young men into the military. The U.S. Railroad Administration took control of the nation’s primary transportation system to solve railroad tie-ups caused by heavy demands for war materials. The War Industries Board supervised all war-related production, allowing large manufacturers to coordinate their schedules without fear of antitrust action. The War Labor Board resolved disputes between workers and employers, providing the most advanced solution to industrial conflict before the New Deal of the 1930s. The Committee on Public Information (CPI), run by Progressive journalist George Creel, provided the government’s version of information about the war. The CPI had the crucial task of inspiring and maintaining public support for Wilson’s war policies. full view World War I Recruiting Poster Recruitment posters such as this helped sell the U.S. involvement in World War I to an uncertain American public. (National Archives) full view “Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man” Poster “Be a Man and Do It” this poster for the U.S. Navy Recruiting Station admonishes. (National Archives) full view “The Navy Needs You” Poster This government poster encourages women to join the WAVES (the women’s branch of the Navy) with the message “Your Country Needs You Now.” Some 35,000 women served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. (Library of Congress) The close cooperation between industry and government, combined with strong demand for American goods from the Allied governments, caused corporate earnings to soar. Cost-plus contracts guaranteed profits by eliminating competition and risk. “We are all making more money out of this war than the average human being ought to,” one steel company official admitted privately. And some of the war gains were spread, for a collab- CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 689 ${bmicon} orative effort entailed keeping workers productive and content. Taking a position unprecedented in the U.S. government, the War Labor Board promoted an 8-hour workday and the right of workers to form unions. But even as the economy bustled, social unity proved elusive, especially when word of American casualties arrived from Europe. The deaths of U.S. soldiers and sailors made support for the war an emotional issue, and a pattern of repressing dissent took hold that outlasted the war itself. Everything German was particularly suspect. Several states banned teaching the German language (Nebraska briefly banned teaching any foreign language, even Latin, in a preview of the 1980s “English only” campaign). Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage,” frankfurters became hot dogs, and many German Americans anglicized their names. Temperance reformers cited German beer drinking in their successful campaign for a constitutional prohibition of alcohol production. Congress approved the controversial Eighteenth Amendment in December 1917 as a way to save grain for the war effort, and the states ratified it in 1919. Anti-German sentiment led to sometimes deadly violence against Americans of German descent by the summer of 1918. Congress passed sharply restrictive immigration legislation in 1917 as anti-German feelings fed broader prewar fears of new immigrants. A wave of discontent among working Americans redoubled anxieties about national unity. The draft and reduced immigration thinned the ranks of labor as the war created a greater need for workers. For the first time in memory laborers could choose between jobs, and corporations were dismayed by rising employee turnover rates. Workers worried about inflation, which doubled between 1914 and 1920. Seeking better wages and more control over the workplace, they joined unions and went out on 6000 strikes during the year and a half in which the United States was in the war. Working-class women and men identified their cause with the war for democracy abroad by calling for the “de-Kaisering of industry” at home. Industrialists saw the strikers differently. “All they seem to think of is money,” one complained, mirroring what workers often said of employers. Anti-unionists tried to tar all of organized labor with the brush of disloyalty. The government passed the Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918) to ban written and verbal organizing against the war. Socialists who encouraged draft resistance, such as Eugene Debs and Wisconsin Congressman Victor Berger, went to prison. The Supreme Court in Schenck v. United States (1919) upheld restrictions on free speech in the case of a “clear and present danger” to the nation’s security. The Justice Department worked closely with private “patriotic” organizations such as the National Security League, which helped spy on potential dissidents. Hostility to unions mixed with fervent prowar sentiment to produce a devastating campaign against labor activists in the West. Along the Rocky Mountains from Montana to the Mexican border, striking copper miners under IWW leadership found federal, state, and local police forces as well as vigilantes lined up against them. Sheriff Harry Wheeler of Bisbee, Arizona, arrested more than a thousand strikers, many of them Mexican Americans suspected of sympathies with Pancho Villa. Wheeler, a former Rough Rider with Theodore Roosevelt in Cuba, locked the strikers into boxcars in the July heat of 1917 and towed them into the southern New Mexico desert before releasing them. Federal agents eviscerated the antiwar IWW by raiding its offices two months later and putting 166 of its leaders on trial. A visiting British coal-mining executive found “hostility to a quite unbelievable extent against organized labor.” full view Sheet Music from WWI Sheet music cover for “Let’s Keep the Glow in Old Glory,” an unofficial but nonetheless popular bit of propaganda during the World War I era. full view “Feminine Patriotism” This government poster encourages women to join the WAVES (the women’s branch of the Navy) with the message “Your Country Needs You Now.” Some 35,000 women served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. (Library of Congress) full view “Buy War Bonds” Poster To finance United States involvement in World War I, the government encouraged Americans to buy war bonds with dramatic posters such as this. (National Archives) PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 690 ${bmicon} Most African Americans agreed with W. E. B. Du Bois’s call to “close our ranks shoulder to shoulder” with white fellow citizens in support of the war effort, despite escalating antiblack violence. The arrival of 300,000 to 500,000 black Southerners in northern cities increased competition for jobs and housing, causing resentment among many whites. Employers contributed to tensions by recruiting African Americans as strikebreakers and pitting them against white workers. Whites rioted in East St. Louis on July 1, 1917, causing at least 47 fatalities, most of them black. Black soldiers from the North rebelled against the Jim Crow restrictions they found on southern military bases. On August 23, 1917, African American troops from Camp Logan near Houston intervened to protect a black woman being beaten by police on a downtown street. The resulting gunfire killed 16 whites and 4 African Americans. Swift Army court-martials resulted in executions of 19 of the black soldiers and life imprisonment of 63 others. full view Mrs. Hearst Reviews a Liberty Loan Parade Most of America’s costs in fighting W.W. I were raised through bond sales in Liberty Loan drives. This photo shows the wife of publisher William Randolph Hearst reviewing a parade that was part of such a drive. (National Archives) When the United States entered the war in Europe in 1917, crisis gripped the Entente. In the east, much of the war effort collapsed in the confusion of Russia’s revolution against the Czar. In the west, 49 divisions of the French army mutinied, refusing orders to make further suicidal advances. And in the South, at Caporetto, Austro-Hungarian forces inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Italian army. It was not clear whether the Americans had joined soon enough to stave off Allied defeat. full view Saying Goodbye Throughout the country, families said goodbye to soldiers as they prepared to fight “Over There.” Over 100,000 would not return alive. (National Archives) No battle-ready American army waited at ports for immediate shipment to the trenches of northern France. U.S. commanders instead had to conscript and train nearly 5 million young men for an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) under General Pershing, and 16,000 young women volunteered for service overseas as nurses and Red Cross workers. U.S. troops participated in their first offensive operations in February 1918, although the veteran French and British lines had to stand largely on their own against the final German spring offensive. American soldiers later engaged in fierce combat at Belleau Wood, Château-Thierry, and St. Mihiel, ultimately losing 114,000 men. As the only army growing stronger in 1918, the AEF contributed crucially to the fall offensive that convinced Germany to surrender on November 11. Fighting with French and British allies gave many American GIs an appreciation for Europeans that balanced the anti-immigrant sentiments common back home. White U.S. soldiers also bonded with each other across ethnic and religious lines while engaged in the supremely dangerous task of deadly combat. One young captain from Missouri, Harry Truman, returned from the war with a stronger appreciation for Europe that would help alter America’s role in the world when he became president in 1945. Truman wrote home to his fiancée, Bess Wallace, from Nice on the south coast of France, “There is no blue like the Mediterranean blue.” Almost 400,000 African American soldiers served with particular determination to prove their loyalty and courage, despite being segregated and given the hardest and least inspiring work. The French, delighted to have all who would help defend them, treated black GIs with a respect they had rarely known from whites in America. When acceptance led to growing pride among black troops abroad, U.S. commanders reacted with consternation. “It has gone to their heads,” President Wilson worried. full view Life in the Trenches Life in the trenches in WWI was a particularly brutal new form of warfare. (National Archives) full view Trench Warfare These American soldiers are manning the front line trenches near Chaussers, France in June 1918. Trench life was an unpleasant reality for millions of soldiers on both sides of the Western Front from the English Channel to the Swiss border. (National Archives) full view Temporary Shelter for American Wounded This damaged church in Neuvilly served as a temporary shelter for wounded American soldiers during the 1918 campaign against the German line. (National Archives) Events in Russia provoked the greatest long-term concerns. On April 8, 1917, just two days after the United States entered the war, Vladimir Lenin and 32 fellow Bolshevik refugees from Czarism left their asylum in Zurich, Switzerland, on a train ride into history. They arrived in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg and in October seized control of the government, building a dictatorship of the Communist party in the name of the working class. The Bolsheviks opposed the Great War, condemning the battle for greater wealth and power as a demonstration of pure greed among rival capitalists. In the Czar’s archives, they found and published the secret treaties of the Entente for dividing up their prospective conquests after the war, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 691 ${bmicon} full view MAP 20.4 WORLD WAR I IN EUROPE AND THE WESTERN FRONT, 1918 By the time the U.S. troops arrived in force on the western front in northern France, the new Bolshevik (Communist) government of Russia had made peace with the Germans and withdrawn from the war. Germany now faced enemies only on one front—the western front—and moved all its troops there. In this dire situation for the French and British, American soldiers helped fill the gap in 1918. both in Europe and in the colonies overseas. While Wilson spoke of a war for democracy, the Bolsheviks asked Russians, “Are you willing to fight for this, that the English capitalists should rob Mesopotamia and Palestine?” full view Anti-VD Poster, WWI Anti-VD poster issued by the U.S. Commission on Training and Camp Activities. (Army Educational Commission) full view American Troops on the Road in Esnes, France U.S. troops are here in France with guns ready for action. (National Archives) full view French Couple Welcomes Two American Soldiers French Couple Welcomes Two American Soldiers The answer, as Wilson feared, was no. In January 1918 the president gave the famous “14 Points” speech to the U.S. Congress, outlining his aims of a postwar world built not on expansion and revenge but on national self-determination, open diplomacy, and freedom of commerce and travel, to be guaranteed by a new League of Nations. He hoped to dissuade the Bolsheviks from making a separate peace with Germany that would allow Germany to move PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 692 ${bmicon} full view African-American Recruiting Poster Seeking to encourage black participation in World War I, this government poster presents a very idealized picture of the patriotic African American family. (National Archives) all its troops to the western front. But Lenin, facing civil war at home, conceded huge swaths of the old Czarist empire in eastern Europe to the Germans to gain peace with the Brest–Litovsk Treaty of March 3, 1918. The competing visions of Wilson and Lenin for world order contained the roots of the Cold War that would dominate American life after 1945. They agreed that the old diplomacy of imperialist states competing for pieces of property around the globe would no longer work and that only the creation of democratic states would prevent further wars. But they understood democracy very differently. For Wilson, it meant self-governing nations with capitalist economies and republican political practices (at least in Europe and North America, and eventually elsewhere). For Lenin, it meant workers in every land overthrowing the owners of capital and setting up Soviet governments. Whereas Wilson viewed the world as a collection of nations, Lenin saw it as a battleground between two classes. full view African-American Soldiers under French Command, WWI The 369th Infantry Regiment in trenches with French army gear in 1918. The members of the 369th were attached to the French army to avoid placing black combat troops under US Army command. (National Archives) full view Segregated Recreation - Black Soldiers in WWI Not only were black soldiers assigned to segregated units, but they were also excluded from white recreation facilities. Here, black women from New Jersey entertain black servicemen, aided by white social workers. (National Archives) World War I killed more than 16 million people and wrought immeasurable physical, social, and psychological damage. Was it worth it? Citizens of the belligerent nations emerged from 1918 convinced that only a guarantee of a future free of war could legitimate such suffering. Some put their hopes in the radical solution unfolding in Russia. Some in the Allied states believed that severe measures against Germany would ensure peace. Most looked to Woodrow Wilson in the winter and spring of 1919 as the world leader whose vision for a more peaceful, democratic postwar order was “all that had made the war Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 693 ${bmicon} full view African-American Women Workers, WWI African American women working in a factory in April 1919. Those who could not find jobs in industry often found employment as domestic employees, working as cooks, laundresses, or maids. (National Archives) INTERPRETING HISTORY African American Women in the Great War Just as black American men served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France in 1917–1918, black American women served in auxiliary organizations such as the Red Cross and the Young Men’s and Women’s Christian Associations (YMCA and YWCA), which worked to boost the soldiers’ morale. They staffed canteens set up to provide social and educational support for American troops as an alternative to entertainments such as prostitution and gambling. Addie W. Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson felt a particular calling to encourage African American soldiers, who suffered from discrimination and segregation even as they fought for democracy. As devout Christians, the two women believed they must model a life of service and compassion, even in the face of persecution. An account of their time in Europe published soon after they returned to the United States suggests some of the complications of a segregated society sending people abroad. Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces The relationship between the colored soldiers, the colored welfare workers, and the French people was most cordial and friendly and grew in sympathy and understanding, as their associations brought about a closer acquaintance. It was rather an unusual as well as a most welcome experience to be able to go into places of public accommodation without having any hesitations or misgivings; to be at liberty to take a seat in a common carrier, without fear of inviting some humiliating experience; to go into a home and receive a greeting that carried with it a hospitality and kindliness of spirit that could not be questioned. These things were at once noticeable upon the arrival of a stranger within the gates of this sister democracy, and the first ten days in France, though filled with duties and harassed with visits from German bombing planes, were nevertheless a delight, in that they furnished to some of us the first full breath of freedom that had ever come into our limited experience. The first post of duty assigned to us was Brest. Upon arriving there we received our first experience with American prejudices, which had not only been carried across the seas, but had become a part of such an intricate propaganda, that the relationship between the colored soldier and the French people is more or less a story colored by a continued and subtle effort to inject this same prejudice into the heart of the hitherto unprejudiced Frenchman. [An order posted by white officer of black battalion read:] “Enlisted men of this organization will not talk to or be in company with any white women, regardless of whether the women solicit their company or not.” [Another order read:] “There are two Y.M.C.A.’s, one near the camp, for white troops, and one in town, for the colored troops. All men will be instructed to patronize their own Y.” … Quite a bit of unpleasantness was experienced on the boats coming home…. On [one] boat there were nineteen colored welfare workers; all the women were placed on a floor below the white women, and the entire colored party was placed in an obscure, poorly ventilated section of the dining-room, entirely separated from the other workers by a long table of Dutch civilians. The writer immediately protested; the reply was made that the southern white workers on board the ship would be insulted if the colored workers ate in the same section of the dining-room with them, and, at any rate, the colored people did not expect any such treatment as had been given them by the French. Source: Addie W. Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson, Two Colored Women with American Expeditionary Forces (New York: Brooklyn Eagle Press, 1920), 28–30, 182–183, 186. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 694 ${bmicon} tolerable to many of us,” as one admirer put it. The president sailed for Europe in January to lead the conference that would shape the peace. Vast crowds greeted him enthusiastically as he toured England, Italy, and France. War and revolution destroyed the four great empires of Russia, Germany, Austria–Hungary, and the Ottomans (based in modern Turkey). Meeting in Paris from January to June 1919, the “Big Three” of Wilson, French President Georges Clemenceau, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George took on two major tasks to shape the postwar order. (The Italian prime minister left the conference after failing to get the new territories he had sought.) First, the three leaders redrew the map of eastern and central Europe to create nation-states out of the vanished empires. Second, they had to decide what to do about a defeated Germany. The possible spread of revolution gave the negotiations a particular urgency. Anticolonial revolts broke out in India and China, and pro-Soviet workers’ councils seized power briefly in Hungary and southern Germany. “We are running a race with Bolshevism,” Wilson warned, “and the world is on fire.” full view Woodrow Wilson This damaged church in Neuvilly served as a temporary shelter for wounded American soldiers during the 1918 campaign against the German line. (National Archives) full view Salvation Army Workers, WWI Salvation Army workers making doughnuts for the servicemen. The lives of women workers in World War I had changed and many went into organizations that ran services for American Troops. (National Archives) full view Women Workers during WWI Women proved during World War I that they could handle “men’s work,” even backbreaking work like delivering ice. This did not, however, change the idea that a woman’s proper place was in the home. (National Archives) To put out the fire, the Big Three created a string of new nations running from Finland in the north to Yugoslavia in the south. Eastern Europeans were to be self-governing within the new political boundaries. Ultimately, some of the new states—Czechoslovakia and especially Yugoslavia—lacked the sense of nationhood necessary for success and broke apart into smaller ethnic components in the 1990s. But a major purpose of these new nations for the negotiators in Paris was to establish an anticommunist belt keeping Russian communism out of Europe while satisfying their residents’ desire for greater self-determination. How far would “self-determination” go? Secretary of State Lansing worried that the president’s language of democracy was “loaded with dynamite.” The world’s nonwhite majority wondered whether it applied to them. “Security of Life for Poles and Serbs—Why Not for Colored Nations?” asked one black newspaper in New York. A young nationalist from Vietnam named Ho Chi Minh tried but failed to get an audience with Wilson to ask for the 14 Points to apply to his French-ruled country; a generation later, Ho led the Vietnamese people’s armed struggle against France and then the United States. The Big Three instead created the mandate system to provide for eventual self-determination for colonies after a period of tutelage under an established power, and they rejected Japan’s proposal to include racial equality as a principle of the new League of Nations. full view African-American Soldiers Return Home Despite strong racist attitudes toward Asians, immigration from China and Japan greatly increased between 1901 and 1920. In this photograph, immigrants from Asia arrive at the quarantine station at Angel Island, near San Francisco. (National Archives, Still Pictures Branch) The German question predominated at the Paris conference. To create a long-term peaceful order in Europe, Wilson wanted lenient terms for Germany. But the French and British had lost much more in the war than the Americans, and they believed Germany must pay for that. French security seemed to depend on keeping its powerful and aggressive neighbor down. The Versailles Treaty (named for the famous estate of King Louis XIV outside Paris, where it was signed) reflected compromises that gave each of the Allies what it most wanted. To satisfy France and England, Germany had to admit guilt for causing the war and pay $33 billion in reparations, while losing much of its eastern territory to the new Polish and Czechoslovakian states. For Wilson the League of Nations was the key: this new and unprecedented global organization would keep the peace by ensuring collective security for all nations. Disputes between nations would be mediated before they escalated to armed conflict, and potential aggressors would be deterred by the promise of collective action in defense of any threatened league member. The absence of certain crucial players from the Paris negotiations undermined the resulting international order. The Soviets and the Germans did not participate. Wilson took in his entourage no representatives of the Republican party. This proved important, for Republicans had won the congressional elections two months earlier, giving them control of the process for ratifying any treaties. Most Republicans objected on principle to one key aspect of the Versailles Treaty: Article 10 of the League of Nations charter, guaranteeing ahead of time a collective response to defend any member’s territory from attack. Treaty opponents were deter- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 695 ${bmicon} full view MAP 20.5 EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR I The outcome of World War I led to significant changes in the boundaries of Europe, particularly its eastern parts. Four great empires in the region—Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans—collapsed. Negotiations at Versailles created a band of new nations, providing both self-determination and a bulwark against Russian communism. full view Leaders of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Leaders of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom who argued in favor of US participation in a worldwide peace organization such as the League of Nations at the end of the Great War. Jane Addams is in front, fourth from left. (Library of Congress) full view France Demands War Reparations - Cartoon 1922 cartoon from the Los Angeles Times in which France demands war reparations from Germany. (Library of Congress) mined to preserve complete American autonomy, including freedom of action in Latin America. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts, the powerful Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, organized the two Senate votes rejecting American membership in the league. Hoping to stave off defeat for his idealistic plan, Wilson undertook an ill-advised national speaking tour to promote the League. His strenuous effort failed to win American participation in the league, and it ultimately broke his fragile health. Wilson suffered a stroke on October 2, 1919, that left him incapacitated for the rest of his presidency. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 696 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY The League of Nations and International Security The experience of World War I stunned Europeans and Americans. Never before had an armed conflict killed and wounded so many people in so brief a time. Observers from outside the Central Powers, like most historians since, placed primary responsibility for the onset of the war on the aggressive actions of German Kaiser Wilhelm II. Other critics noted the expansive empires of every member of the Entente and wondered whether more than just German imperialism was troubling the international system. The sheer scale of the carnage, especially the continuing slaughter of soldiers in indecisive battles on the almost immovable western front for four long years, suggested that something deeper might be wrong with the way nations waged both diplomacy and war. The intensifying rivalry of the European nations after 1910 created the conditions for the Great War. In the international arena few rules guided how powerful nations behaved, in contrast to the domestic sphere of any particular nation, which had clear guidelines for how its citizens could act. A handful of international conventions created some general expectations for “civilized” actions in peace and war, but no form of effective enforcement backed these up. When a rising power such as Germany (unified in 1871) chose to upset the existing balance of power between nations, the only recourse available was on the battlefield. The new tools of warfare on display in World War I—machine guns, poison gas, submarines, airplanes—made this a grim prospect. Woodrow Wilson’s original vision for the League of Nations was a bold effort to come to terms with this challenge. Rejecting the amoral old diplomacy of nations strengthening themselves at the cost of weakening others, Wilson called for a new diplomacy of collective security. All nations would agree to protect each other and the status quo, deterring potential aggressors by promising to come to the defense of any nation under attack. Without arms races to destabilize the international order, militarism would subside. The U.S. failure to join the League of Nations undermined its effectiveness, however, as did the competing desire of national leaders to preserve maximum autonomy for pursuing their nations’ own interests. World War II seemed to prove Wilson correct. His vision of substituting collective internationalism for competitive nationalism helped shape the United Nations (UN) in 1945, especially its General Assembly of all nations. However, the UN’s powerful Security Council with its five permanent members (Britain, France, Russia, China, and the United States) who each retained the right to veto any action by the organization, limited the degree of collective security that members could depend on. The Cold War (1946–1989) also reduced the UN’s effectiveness by dividing the world into two competing collective security systems, one headed by the Soviet Union (Russia) and one by the United States. In the 1990s the UN gained renewed prominence, first in the international coalition fighting against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War and subsequently as the source of mediation efforts and peacekeeping forces for civil conflicts around the globe. The growing seriousness of problems that were unarguably international in nature, such as global warming and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, provided a potent argument in favor of collective action. Americans nonetheless remained ambivalent about the UN at the start of the new millennium. As the world’s most powerful nation in military and economic terms, the United States expected to lead the UN. But U.S. leaders did not like to be hemmed in by its collective decision-making process. Unilateral freedom of action in the international sphere, like that suggested two centuries earlier by George Washington’s warning to avoid “entangling alliances,” continued to appeal to many citizens. CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 697 ${bmicon} Soon after Russia withdrew from the war, the western members of the Entente intervened in the civil war there between the Bolsheviks (the “Reds”) and the various counterrevolutionary forces (the “Whites”). The initial military rationale in the summer of 1918 was to reopen the eastern front against Germany. The United States landed 7000 troops in Vladivostock, on Russia’s far Pacific coast, to help rescue a large group of former Czech prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian army who now wanted to join the Allied side and to deter Japanese expansion into Siberia. In conjunction with the British, 5000 U.S. soldiers went ashore at Archangel in northern Russia to prevent Allied supplies from falling into German hands. They quickly became involved in fighting the Red Army. The Wilson administration meanwhile funneled money and military intelligence to leaders of the White forces. The Bolsheviks rejected certain values cherished by most Americans: the sanctity of private property and contracts, political liberty, and religious freedom. They liberalized divorce laws and legalized abortion, challenging conservative American attitudes about the relationships between women and men. And they established the Comintern in 1919 to promote similar revolutions around the world. Allied intervention in the Russian civil war failed to overthrow Lenin’s government, and American troops pulled out in 1920. They left behind a powerful legacy of anti-American sentiment in Russia, exacerbated by Washington’s refusal for the next 13 years to recognize the Soviet government. Anticommunists used the metaphor of infection to describe Bolshevism. The Kaiser, they said, had allowed Lenin to pass through Germany on a “sealed train,” lest the bacillus of revolution leak out and spread through the German population. This image had unusual power in 1918–1919 because of the spread of one of the twentieth century’s worst killers. The “Spanish influenza” (named for one of its early victims, the King of Spain) hit the United States much harder than the Great War had, killing six times as many people (675,000). In an era before effective vaccines and antibiotic drugs, little could be done for the 20 million Americans stricken besides comforting them, so nurses were in much greater demand than doctors. Not until the longer-lasting AIDS crisis after 1980 did Americans again live in such fear of a disease. Four million American workers, one out of every five, went out on strike in 1919—the highest proportion of the workforce ever. They sought improved wages and working conditions as well as recognition of the right to collective bargaining. The scale of industrial unrest provoked fears of a Soviet-style revolution. In Seattle a walkout by shipyard workers mushroomed into a general strike that shut down most of the city for a week. In Pittsburgh, the AFL led a bitter strike against U.S. Steel in pursuit of union recognition. The United Mine Workers led walkouts by hundreds of thousands of coal miners, which evolved into open warfare between miners and coal companies in West Virginia over the next two years. In Boston three quarters of the police force went on strike to protest wages lower than those of common laborers. Traditional May 1 (May Day) parades celebrating the dignity of labor featured violent clashes PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 698 ${bmicon} between socialist marchers and heckling veterans in Cleveland, New York, and other cities. Between April and June, anarchists mailed or delivered bombs to 36 prominent public figures, including Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. All were defused except two, one wounding the wife and maid of a U.S. senator from Georgia, the other destroying the front of Palmer’s house and dismembering its anarchist deliverer. Whereas many Americans sympathized with struggles for unionization, others viewed them as dangerous to private property and social order. They associated strikes with radical immigrants and anarchists and considered them “un-American.” “Unionism is nothing less than bolshevism,” declared the National Association of Manufacturers. The “Red Scare” of 1919 associated reform and social justice of any kind with subversion. To break strikes, employers hired private armies from “detective” agencies such as the Pinkertons and the Baldwin–Felts, often staffed by World War I veterans. Private organizations promoting “100 percent Americanism,” such as the Ku Klux Klan and the new American Legion, monitored and harassed potential subversives and the foreign-born. Attorney General Palmer directed the deportation to Russia of 249 foreign-born radicals aboard the Buford in December 1919, including anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. “Palmer raids” led to the arrest of thousands more within a month. U.S. Army troops and state militias brought the ultimate force to bear against union organizers, as at the Battle of Blair Mountain on August 31, 1921, against several thousand striking West Virginia miners. Violence against workers extended to African Americans after World War I. An upsurge in lynching included at least ten black veterans still in uniform and was not limited to the South. In Nebraska white residents of Omaha butchered William Brown with such frenzy that thousands of federal troops had to be called in to restore calm. White mobs burned entire black communities to the ground, including Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood (1921) and the all-black town of Rosewood, Florida (1923). The Red Scare and the “Black Scare” merged in Phillips County, Arkansas, where black sharecroppers, many of them veterans, formed a union in 1919 to pursue equitable crop settlements from landlords. Fearing insurrection, local white leaders used 2500 federal troops and white vigilantes to massacre more than 200 sharecroppers. But any inclination toward deference in the face of brutality was gone, and African Americans fought back fiercely against white marauders in deadly riots in Washington and Chicago in the summer of 1919. One black woman recalled hearing news that in Washington “our men had stood like men” and crying for joy: “Oh, I thank God, thank God!” Where was the president during this turmoil? Incapacitated by his stroke, he lay resting in his bed in Washington, the administration managed largely by his wife, Edith, and his secretary, Joseph Tumulty. In any case, Wilson’s segregationist policies suggested that he would have been unlikely to provide effective leadership in bridging the nation’s racial divides. The only Republican of similar stature, Theodore Roosevelt, had died a few months earlier. “There is no leadership worthy of the name,” a veteran reporter lamented. Wilson’s breakdown came in the middle of the 1919 baseball World Series, which the heavily favored but poorly paid Chicago White Sox intentionally lost to the Cincinnati Reds, in arrangement with gamblers. Eight “Black Sox” were banned from the sport. With its president out of action and its national pastime corrupted, the nation seemed adrift as the lights dimmed on the Progressive era. CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 699 ${bmicon} How much success could a varied generation of Progressive reformers claim? Women had won the vote with the Nineteenth Amendment, in an expansion of democracy second only to the combination of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Fifteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery. African Americans who moved north usually could vote as well, unlike those who stayed in Dixie. On either side of the Mason–Dixon line, however, daily life for Americans of darker hue entailed picking one’s way through a maze of discrimination. Most union campaigns stalled by 1920, beaten back by the physical force and cleverness of corporate employers and their government sympathizers. When the Red Scare dissipated, Americans did not return to the reform spirit of Progressivism. Many turned away from politics. Voter turnout in 1920 dipped below 50 percent for the first time in a century. Those who did vote that year gave the Republican party a sweeping victory. Promising “not revolution, but restoration,” Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding took the White House. His speeches may have been, as one rival said, “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea,” but most of the nation sought calm after the upheavals of the previous decade. full view Warren G. Harding Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding promised the American people something called “Normalcy,” and he was easily elected president in 1920 over Democratic nominee James Cox. Harding was a popular president who died in office while on a western vacation in 1923. His administration was tarnished by the exposure of evidence of the “Teapot Dome” and other scandals. (Library of Congress) PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 700 ${bmicon} American contributions to democracy abroad were similarly ambivalent. Whereas eastern Europeans named streets in their newly independent nations for President Wilson, few Latin Americans believed that U.S. invasions of Caribbean and Central American countries promoted self-government. Russians admired much about American society and the U.S. economy while resenting American troops in their land. Above all hung the problem of Germany, still the most powerful single nation in Europe. The Versailles Treaty imposed harsh terms and embittered a generation of German people. “If I were a German, I think I should not sign it,” Wilson admitted privately. The Weimar Republic that replaced the abdicated German Kaiser lasted through the 1920s. But the storms of the Great Depression swamped Germany’s republican experiment and gave rise to Adolph Hitler. The Great War, 1914–1918 www.pitt.edu/∼pugachev/greatwar/ww1.html This site offers an array of narratives, photos, documents, statistics, maps, and bibliography, plus links to other useful World War I sites. Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775–1940 womhist.binghamton.edu Maintained by two Binghamton University historians, this site has a rich trove of documents on the history of American women as well as excellent links to others. The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm Researchers can find here the texts of a large number of the most important primary documents illuminating U.S. relations with other countries, including materials on American responses to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Temperance and Prohibition prohibition.history.ohio-state.edu/Contents.htm Cartoons, newspaper articles, and other primary documents available here illuminate in fascinating ways the struggle over whether to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages. The Emma Goldman Papers sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/ This site has photos and excerpts from the writings and speeches of one of America’s most influential radicals and feminists from this era. Divining America: Religion and the National Culture scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/ This site has essays by prominent historians on diverse aspects of the religious history of the United States. Up South: African-American Migration in the Era of the Great War www.ashp.cuny.edu/video/south.html Maintained by the American Social History Project at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, this site offers details of the mass migration of rural black Southerners to the urban north during World War I. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/ A variety of information, documents, and photos of the deadly global outbreak of the “Spanish flu” can be found here. CHAPTER 20 ###8226; WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1912###8211;1920 701 ${bmicon} Kendrick A. Clements, Woodrow Wilson: World Statesman (1987). John M. Cooper, Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900–1920 (1990). Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (1991). Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (1987). Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (1998). Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (1981). Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1987). Arthur Link, ed., Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World (1982). Joseph A. McCartin, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912–1921 (1997). George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945 (1993). John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (1981). Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1998). James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (1989). Vicki I. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (1998). Martin Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (1988). Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (1987). Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History (1994). David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980). Kathleen Kennedy, Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens: Women and Subversion During World War I (1999). Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (1987). Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (1982). Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (1989). Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (1982). David S. Foglesong, America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1920 (1995). Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (1992). Gordon N. Levin, Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution (1968). William M. Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (1970). Betty M. Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia, and the Rise of Czechoslovakia (1989). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter20 To Chapter 20 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 702 ${bmicon}         The Decline of Reform       Hollywood and Harlem: National Cultures in Black and White       Science on Trial       The Business of Politics       Consumer Dreams and Nightmares       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 703 ${bmicon} IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES IN 1920, LORIMER LINGANFIELD, A RESPECTABLE barber, filed for divorce. Although his wife, Marsha, held him in “high regard and esteem as her husband,” there were “evidences of indiscretion” in her conduct. She wore a new bathing suit, “designed especially for the purpose of exhibiting to the public the shape and form of her body.” To his further humiliation, she was “beset with a desire to sing and dance at cafes and restaurants for the entertainment of the public.” When Lorimer complained about her “appetite for beer and whisky” and extravagant tastes for luxury, she replied that he was “not the only pebble on the beach, she had a millionaire ‘guy’ who would buy her all the clothes, automobiles, diamonds and booze that she wanted.” But the ultimate insult was her refusal to have any sexual intercourse, claiming that she did not want any “dirty little brats around her.” The judge was sympathetic, and Lorimer Linganfield won his suit. The Linganfields’s difficulties represent a larger struggle as Americans shifted their sensibilities from the producer economy of the nineteenth century, complete with clearly defined gender roles and sexual mores, to the consumer ethic of the twentieth century with its new amusements, changing sexual behavior, and flamboyant “new women.” Marsha Linganfield was a “flapper,” one of the young women of the 1910s and 1920s who broke from time-honored conventions. With short, “bobbed” hair, knee-length dresses, and boyish styles unencumbered by layers of petticoats, flappers flirted, petted, and danced “wild” dances like the Charleston, an African American dance brought north from South Carolina juke joints. Flappers blurred the line between “good girls” and “bad girls” that had previously defined proper female behavior. Marsha was fond of fancy clothes and night life. Lorimer undoubtedly was attracted to the lively young flapper whom he wooed and wed. He was surely anticipating conjugal bliss, as experts at the time approved of female sexual pleasure in marriage. New patterns of courtship allowed couples some intimacy now that chaperones were no longer required when a man “came calling.” The widespread availability of automobiles offered increased mobility and privacy. So Marsha’s sexual refusal, as well as her scandalous rejection of motherhood, must have been intolerable for Lorimer. The “new woman” of the age was allowed more leeway in her dress, demeanor, and behavior, but she was still expected to be virginal at marriage and eager for marital sex and motherhood. The Linganfields met and married in Los Angeles, home of Hollywood, the beacon of the new culture. The most successful film director of the era, Cecil B. DeMille, made several films in which modern couples seek the right balance between fun and virtue in marriage. The popular DeMille formula offered a blueprint for couples like the PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 704 ${bmicon} Linganfields. In the typical DeMille plot, either the husband or the wife becomes bored with a spouse who, unable to shed drab old-fashioned virtue, refuses to take part in the leisure-oriented, sexually charged life of the 1920s. In Why Change Your Wife (1920), for example, the heroine loses her husband by refusing to go dancing with him or to wear the sexy lingerie he buys for her. He abandons his wife for a fun-loving flapper, but he leaves the new flame when he finds that she wants only his money and has no interest in settling down to family life. By this time his ex-wife has discovered the error of her ways and transformed herself into an alluring “new woman.” The former husband finds her at a beach resort, wearing a revealing swimsuit and surrounded by admiring men. The two renew their love and settle again into marriage, now combining the virtues of domestic life with the excitement of modern consumer culture and sexuality. The final caption of the film warns, “Ladies, if you want to be your husband’s sweetheart, you must simply forget [that] you are his wife.” New forms of popular entertainment that developed in the 1920s, especially Hollywood movies and jazz music, became defining features of the nation itself. The popular arts offered Jews and blacks a space for innovation. At a time when white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men had control of nearly all government and business institutions, Jewish moviemakers and African American musicians were creating the culture that would soon represent the nation. During the years when Congress largely closed off immigration, Jewish immigrants built Hollywood into the most American of all industries. In the midst of the Jim Crow era, African Americans created the music that gave the 1920s its identity as the Jazz Age. The great heroes of the 1920s were celebrities admired for their individual achievements in sports and adventure. The great heroes of the 1920s were celebrities admired for their individual achievements in sports and adventure. In 1927, the same year that Babe Ruth hit a record 60 home runs, Charles Lindbergh flew his small monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, nonstop from New York to Paris in 33½ hours, a feat that electrified the world and made him an instant hero. Professional sports came of age in the 1920s, giving rise to new heroes such as baseball’s Babe Ruth, football’s Red Grange, and boxing’s Jack Dempsey. It was also a decade of tremendous visibility in women’s sports, with such stars as tennis sensation Helen Wills and swimmer Sybil Bauer. In 1926, 19-year-old Olympic gold medalist Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel. She broke the world’s record with her time of 14 hours and 31 minutes, 2 hours shorter than those of the six men who had preceded her. On her return to the United States 2 million cheering fans lined the streets of New York City to welcome her home. The nation idolized this new generation of heroes, who dominated headlines and drew cheering crowds wherever they went. full view Charles Lindbergh and Spirit of St. Louis Charles Lindbergh with his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis. His 1927 flight from New York to Paris instantly made him an American hero. (Library of Congress) full view Charles Lindbergh Lindbergh became a hero to millions for his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. He is shown beside his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, shortly before he took off for Paris from Roosevelt Field, Long Island. (Library of Congress) The glamorous life, however, was available to few. Often characterized as the “roaring twenties” of giddy prosperity and reckless good times, these were also years of widespread poverty, especially in rural areas and urban ghettos. Much of rural America and an estimated 40 percent of the working class remained mired in poverty, with inadequate food and housing. Few Americans were able to afford the new consumer goods that were being mass-produced and were more widely available. At the end of the decade, fewer than half of all households owned a car or a radio; fewer than one in three owned a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner. Only 1 percent of households earned more than $10,000 per year, and two-thirds lived on an annual income of less than $1999. CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 705 ${bmicon} Conservative politics at the national level prevailed throughout the decade. Disenchantment after World War I prompted national leaders to emphasize economic ties and foreign trade and to shrink from military entanglements. The politics of the era favored big business, but the disparity between rich and poor left the country vulnerable to the downturn of the economy. Business values of material acquisition spread as the expansion of consumer credit weakened the traditions of saving and frugality. For those with money to invest, Wall Street beckoned. The stock market rose to perilous heights, only to collapse at the end of the decade. The voices of workers, sharecroppers, and other poor people were muffled in the 1920s, a decade of a booming economy and conservative politics. Reformers who had championed the causes of the marginalized and disadvantaged lost influence. Progressive politics declined precipitously in the wake of World War I. After achieving the vote the women’s rights movement splintered as younger women sought new freedoms not through politics but through a social and sexual revolution. Widespread hostility toward immigrants and various ethnic groups were at the root of the outlawing of liquor, new laws restricting immigration, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. But progressive political impulses did not entirely disappear, especially among African Americans, who continued to mobilize and organize for civil rights. One indication of the waning of progressive reform was the fragmentation of women’s rights activism in the 1920s. The more radical wing of the suffrage movement, the National Women’s Party (NWP), under the leadership of Alice Paul, in 1923 launched a campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was introduced in Congress two decades later with these words: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The debate over the ERA in the 1920s reflected the fundamental question that would permeate women’s rights activism throughout the rest of the twentieth century. On one side were those who believed that women were fundamentally the same as men and deserved equal rights; on the other side were those who argued that women were different and deserved special privileges and protections. Many women’s rights activists opposed the ERA because it would undercut efforts to gain special legislative protections for women based on their presumed physical weakness and their potential for childbearing, such as maximum hours, regulations against night work, and limitations on the weights they could lift. These women disapproved of the goals and tactics of the NWP and formed their own nonpartisan organization, the League of Women Voters, which promoted social and political reform. Legislative gains for women did not entirely disappear in the 1920s. In 1921 Congress passed the Sheppard–Towner bill for maternal and infant health education. The bill provided for public health nurses to educate mothers in prenatal and infant health care to reduce infant mortality. Physicians opposed the legislation because they were consolidating their control over medical practice and did not want nurses functioning as independent health care providers, even though PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 706 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 21.1 MATERNAL DEATH RATES FROM ALL CHILDBIRTH-RELATED CAUSES, UNITED STATES, 1901–1950 During the early decades of the twentieth century, childbirth increasingly took place in hospitals. But the rate of deaths from childbirth actually increased during those years and did not decline until the 1930s. the nurses offered only preventive health care and advice. Doctors also worried that government-sponsored programs would compete with their private practices. Nevertheless, Sheppard–Towner remained in force until the end of the decade, when its budget was cut, a casualty of the conservative temperament in Congress that saw such forms of government support as socialistic. One way in which women continued their political influence was by seeking elective office. In 1922, for example, Adelina Otero Warren ran as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, the first New Mexican woman and the first Hispanic woman to run for national office. During the campaign, a cousin publicly revealed that Warren had lied about her marital status, claiming to be widowed when she was really divorced. That revelation dashed her political ambitions. But neither her divorce nor her effort to pass as a widow was unusual at a time when marital breakdown still carried a heavy negative stigma, especially for women. The divorce rate doubled between 1900 and 1920 and continued to rise throughout the 1920s, in part the result of women’s increasing independence. As job opportunities for women increased, more women felt able to abandon unhappy marriages. The Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol, went into effect in January 1920. Several diverse interests came together to promote the ban on liquor. Temperance crusaders in the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 707 ${bmicon} had argued since the late nineteenth century that women and children suffered when men spent their paychecks at the saloon and returned home drunk and violent. World War I prompted others to support a ban on the manufacture of liquor to save grain for the war effort. Anti-immigrant “drys” had political motives for promoting prohibition. They hoped to undercut the power bases of immigrant and ethnic politicians who used local saloons to forge their constituencies and political machines. The “wets” included alienated intellectuals, Jazz Age rebels, and many city dwellers whose social lives revolved around neighborhood pubs, especially in Irish and German communities. Enforcement was impossible. The 1919 Volstead Act established a Prohibition Bureau within the Treasury Department to allocate funds for enforcement, but budget cuts weakened its effectiveness. Federal agents had responsibility for enforcing the law, but their numbers were inadequate. In order to be effective, federal agents had to work closely with local law enforcement officials. In some urban areas, local officials refused to cooperate with federal agents. New York repealed its prohibition enforcement law in 1923, leaving a small number of federal agents with the daunting task of shutting down illegal clubs where liquor was sold, known as “speakeasies.” In sporadic raids, the beleaguered agents closed down some of the speakeasies, only to have them pop up again in new locations. Americans who wanted to drink liquor found many ways to acquire it. Illegal speakeasies abounded where customers could buy drinks delivered by rumrunners who smuggled in liquor from Canada, Mexico, and the West Indies. Many people concocted their own “bathtub gin” or “moonshine whiskey,” homemade brews using readily available ingredients and household equipment. Prohibition was intended to cure society’s ills. Instead, it provided vast opportunities for crime and profit, both among criminals and law enforcement agents. Nightclubs and restaurants with an urban middle-class clientele found it difficult to make a profit when they could no longer serve liquor. Many went out of business, opening the way for gangsters and petty criminals to cater to the nightlife crowd. Organized crime received a major boost when violence erupted in the scramble to profit from illegal liquor. Chicago witnessed 550 gangland killings in the 1920s, with few arrests or convictions. Police looked the other way when rival gangs engaged in bloody wars to control the city’s liquor business. By 1929 Chicago mob king Al Capone controlled a massive network of speakeasies that raked in $60 million annually. Those charged with upholding the law often benefited from the illegal trade themselves. Authorities in St. Paul, Minnesota, for example, struck a bargain with gangsters who smuggled in liquor from Canada through the poorly patrolled wilderness in northern Minnesota. After paying a bribe to the local police, the smugglers hid their stash in St. Paul’s chalk caves along the banks of the Mississippi River until they were able to transport it down the river. Prohibition failed to live up to its promise. Within a year of the passage of the amendment, alcohol consumption declined by two thirds. But by 1929 the consumption of alcohol had climbed back up to 70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. Expenditures for alcoholic beverages actually increased by 50 percent during the Prohibition era, no doubt due in part to higher black-market prices. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 708 ${bmicon} The Red Scare after World War I (see Chapter 20) inaugurated a decade of hostility to political radicals and foreigners. Shoemaker Nicola Sacco and fish peddler Bartolomeo Vanzetti were both: Italian aliens and self-proclaimed anarchists. In May 1920 the paymaster and guard of a South Braintree, Massachusetts, shoe company was robbed and murdered, and Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the crime. Sacco testified that he was in Boston at the time, applying for a passport, and his alibi was corroborated. Both men proclaimed their innocence and insisted that they were on trial for their political beliefs rather than the crime itself. Their Italian accents and advocacy of anarchism in the courtroom did not help their case with many Americans suspicious of foreign radicals, including the judge presiding at their trial. Despite a weak case against them, Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Lawyers for the two anarchists appealed the case several times to no avail. The convictions sparked outrage among Italian Americans, political radicals, labor activists, and liberal intellectuals who believed the two men were falsely convicted. The case soon generated mass demonstrations, appeals for clemency, and petitions from around the world. In response the governor of Massachusetts appointed a commission to review the case, but the commission concluded that there were no grounds for a new trial. Finally, on August 23, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed by electric chair at Charlestown State Prison. full view FIGURE 21.2 NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS AND COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN, 1891–1920 AND 1921–1940 Before the immigration restriction laws passed in the 1920s, most immigrants came from Russia and southern and eastern Europe. After immigration restriction, most came from Western Europe and Canada. The case of Sacco and Vanzetti underscored the anti-immigrant sentiment that prevailed in the 1920s. Although efforts to curtail immigration since the late nineteenth century had resulted in numerous fed- CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 709 ${bmicon} eral laws, none were as harsh as those passed in the 1920s, which cut the flow of immigrants down to a tiny trickle. The 1921 immigration restriction act set a limit on the number of European immigrants allowed into the United States. The numbers of immigrants permitted to enter was limited to a percentage of immigrants from each country who lived in the United States in 1910. In that year large numbers of immigrants from southern and eastern European countries lived in the United States, so the quota from each country, while limited, still allowed newcomers from those countries to enter. Then, in 1924, Congress passed the Johnson–Reid Act, imposing a limit of 165,000 immigrants from countries outside the Western Hemisphere and pushing back the quota basis to 1890, a time when British, German, and Scandinavian immigrants dominated the foreign-born population. The Johnson–Reid Act limited entry every year to 2 percent of the total number of immigrants from each country who were present in 1890. This measure effectively barred Jews, Slavs, Greeks, Italians, and Poles because their numbers were so small in 1890. In addition, the 1924 law reaffirmed the exclusion of Chinese immigrants and added Japanese and other Asians to the list, effectively closing the door to all migrants from Asia. Further modification of the immigration laws in 1927 reduced the quota to 150,000 per year, with most slots reserved for northern Europeans. Few Americans objected to these measures, other than the groups whose kin and compatriots were excluded. full view FIGURE 21.3 PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION FOREIGN BORN, 1850–1990 The immigration restriction laws had a dramatic effect on the foreign-born population, which reached nearly 15 percent of the American population in the first two decades of the century. After immigration restriction, the percentage dropped precipitously until the 1960s, when new laws allowed more immigrants to enter. Agricultural interests in California and Texas lobbied hard to keep the door open to Mexicans because of the low-waged labor they provided. In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, many Mexicans hoped to find stability and jobs in the United States. Between 1910 and 1930, more than 1 million Mexicans, nearly one-tenth of Mexico’s population, migrated to the United States, where they found work in the farms, railroads, and mines. Recruiters often stood along the border, waiting to sign up laborers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted in 1930 that Mexican agricultural workers picked more than 80 percent of the perishable goods produced in the Southwest. In the midst of a decade of reactionary policies toward outsiders and political activists, African Americans continued their struggle for civil rights. Jamaican-born black nationalist Marcus Garvey moved to New York City’s Harlem in 1916 and opened a branch of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). By the 1920s, Garvey’s organization had 30,000 members in New York, another 6000 each in Philadelphia and Cincinnati, and 4000 in Detroit. Garvey urged black people to establish their own nation-state in Africa: “Africa was peopled with a race of cultured black men, who were masters in art, science, and literature…. Africa shall be for the black peoples of the world.” The UNIA staged colorful parades, which Garvey led in military uniform. His followers proudly wore the UNIA uniform to express their support for the movement and joined the parades in large numbers. Garvey published a journal, The Negro World, and encouraged the establishment of black-owned businesses such as grocery stores and laundries. The UNIA gained nearly 1 million followers and called for political justice and labor rights for black Americans. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 710 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY The Persistence of the Ku Klux Klan In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan became the most powerful white supremacy group in the nation, remaining active throughout the twentieth century. The original Klan emerged during Reconstruction to intimidate the former slaves through terrorism. Klan members used secrecy and violence to maintain white supremacy in the South. Their vigilante activities included threatening cross-burnings, beatings, and lynchings. The original KKK faded in the 1870s. But the Klan revived in the early twentieth century, moving north and targeting not only blacks but other minorities and immigrants. The new KKK was inspired in part by Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel, The Clansman, and its 1915 film version, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, an epic that portrayed the post–Civil War Klan as a heroic group of vanquished Southerners protecting white womanhood from sexually predatory black men. The Klan revival remained small until 1920, when its leaders mounted a national membership drive. Under the banner “100 percent Americanism,” the Klan promoted itself as a civic organization and claimed to uphold the traditional American values that Klan members believed to be threatened in the new order, harking back to what they considered the true moral and religious virtues of the nation. Klan membership included laborers, businessmen, physicians, judges, social workers, and women who felt that their homogeneous small-town Protestant culture was threatened by the evils of modern life, brought on by the influence of morally suspect outsiders. The women who joined the Klan championed women’s rights and worked on behalf of temperance, child welfare measures, public education, good citizenship, morality, and militant Christianity while also supporting white supremacy and initiating whisper campaigns and boycotts against Jewish and Catholic shopkeepers. The Klan used vigilante violence and politically savvy mobilizations to attack African Americans, communists, feminists, Jews, and Catholics who were making economic and social gains in the cities, and divorced or allegedly promiscuous women. The Klan also appealed to voters who were sympathetic to their views. Growing to 3 million members by the early 1920s, the Klan wielded great power, especially in Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Indiana. Some Klan members continued to engage in vigilante violence, while others held elaborate rallies and parades, burned crosses to intimidate and threaten their foes, and endorsed political candidates. Klan efforts in Oregon persuaded the state’s lawmakers to pass a compulsory public schooling bill in 1922 that would have closed private and parochial schools, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law. The Klan-controlled legislature in Oklahoma impeached and removed an anti-Klan governor. The Klan dwindled and finally disbanded in 1944. But a new Klan emerged barely two years later, once again centered in the South, in reaction to the civil rights movement taking shape after World War II. The membership of this third Klan peaked in the 1960s with about 17,000 members. The Klan’s efforts largely backfired as their actions repulsed most white Americans and helped gain support for the civil rights movement. The Klan declined after the 1960s but did not disappear, often joining forces with other white supremacy groups, such as the Aryan Nations and the Skinheads. In 1991 former Klan leader and Nazi sympathizer David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana and garnered 39 percent of the votes. He won 55 percent of the white vote, but Louisiana’s African American voters defeated him. At the end of the twentieth century, the Klan still had influence in some localities—running candidates for office, holding rallies and parades, and seeking legitimacy through civic volunteer projects. CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 711 ${bmicon} In keeping with his belief in black-owned businesses, Garvey established the Black Star Line and encouraged his followers to invest in the shipping company: “The Black Star Line Corporation presents to every Black Man, Woman, and Child the opportunity to climb the great ladder of industrial and commercial progress. If you have ten dollars, one hundred dollars, or one or five thousand dollars to invest for profit, then take out shares in the Black Star Line.” Nearly 40,000 African Americans invested three quarters of a million dollars to purchase shares of Black Star stock. But the business ran into problems. Managers purchased ships that needed extensive and costly repairs, and the company ran up huge debts. Garvey claimed that he had paid for a ship that was never delivered. In 1922 Garvey was arrested and charged with mail fraud for advertising and selling stock for a ship that did not exist. Although the government lacked any concrete evidence to prove the case against him, Garvey was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. Garvey kept up his political activities from prison, sending a message to his followers: “My work is just begun. Be assured that I planted well the seed of Negro or black nationalism which cannot be destroyed even by the foul play that has been meted out to me.” Garvey was released after two years and deported to Jamaica as an undesirable alien. Nevertheless, the momentum he sparked continued. The black publication The Spokesman declared, “Garvey made thousands think, who had never thought before. Thousands who merely dreamed dreams, now see visions.” In 1920, for the first time, the majority of Americans lived in towns and cities with populations greater than 2500. Although this shift often is considered a watershed in the transformation from rural to urban America, it is worth noting that because the census defined any town with more than 2500 inhabitants as urban, the majority of Americans still lived in PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 712 ${bmicon} full view Population Shifts 1940-1950 In the 1940s and 1950s, the West experienced a huge growth in population while the Southeast and Northeast saw less extensive increases. full view FIGURE 21.4 TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENTS AND FARM AND NONFARM POPULATION, 1880–1980 With the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the population increased in both farm and nonfarm areas. When automobiles, tractors, and trucks became available, the nonfarm population continued to grow, but the farm population declined. small and ethnically homogeneous towns. Many small-town Americans still viewed big-city life with suspicion. They feared the decline of traditional Protestant American values of hard work, thrift, and discipline. Yet they were drawn to the new urban life. Jewish filmmakers, African American jazz artists, Irish and Italian club owners, and other “outsiders” created new leisure institutions where mainstream Americans shed their daytime routines for nightlife pleasures. Hollywood on the West Coast and Harlem on the East Coast became centers of cultural innovation that spanned the nation. Both had national reach, and both were the creations of outsiders to the national mainstream. Eventually, the artistic productions of both centers attracted audiences of all racial, class, and regional backgrounds. Increasingly, as Americans moved from place to place, they encountered similar entertainments, music, arts, and consumer products. Movies, automobiles, radios, and advertising all fostered this emerging national culture. As movie theaters spread into towns and cities across the country, the messages of Hollywood began to reach a mass audience and forge a nationwide popular culture. Movie stars and their films provided models for how to adopt new styles of manhood and womanhood. Douglas Fairbanks showed middle-class men how to break free from the hum-drum of white-collar work into the world of leisure. His attire of sports clothes changed the way men dressed in their off-work hours. Female stars, such as Clara Bow, epitomized the flapper and taught female viewers how to be “naughty but nice.” Ironically, as the nation closed its doors to immigrants, foreigners on screen captivated the imagination of a native-born population drawn to the allure of the outsider. Movie stars like Greta Garbo from Sweden, Dolores del Rio, Lupe Velez, and Ramon Navarro from Mexico, and Rudolph Valentino from Italy drew audiences with their foreignness. And yet, because movies were silent until the late 1920s, their accented voices were CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 713 ${bmicon} not heard. Sound arrived in the late twenties, bringing the voices and dialects of ethnic performers into the movies. For native-born Americans watching films in small towns and cities, sound movies brought the diverse voices of the cities into their communities. For immigrants, sound movies carried their own familiar accents and allowed for a greater sense of identification with the stars on the screen. In 1927 the Jewish performer Al Jolson starred in the first complete talking film, The Jazz Singer, about the son of Jewish immigrants who is drawn to jazz music against the wishes of his Orthodox father. While Hollywood in the 1920s developed on the West Coast, a flourishing center of African American culture emerged on the East Coast. The black arts movement known as the Harlem Renaissance drew on European as well as African and African American artistic traditions and gathered white as well as black intellectuals and artists. The young black poet Arna Bontemps was among the many artists drawn to Harlem. In 1924 he described Harlem as “a foretaste of paradise. A blue haze descended at night and with it strings of fairy lights on the broad avenues. From the window of a small room in an apartment on Fifth and 129th Street, I looked over the rooftops of Negrodom and tried to believe my eyes. What a city! What a world!” Like many other Americans in the 1920s, Bontemps had moved around the country. Born in Louisiana, at age four he moved to Los Angeles with his parents who left the South in the hope of raising their children in an atmosphere less hostile to African Americans. The family settled in Watts, in the center of Los Angeles, and at the time a white neighborhood. He PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 714 ${bmicon} recalled, “We moved into a house in a neighborhood where we were the only colored family…. The people next door and up and down the block were friendly and talkative, the weather was perfect, there wasn’t a mud puddle anywhere, and my mother seemed to float about on the clean air.” When Bontemps’s Uncle Buddy arrived from Louisiana bringing stories of black life in the South, filled with “signs and charms and mumbo-jumbo,” the boy was entranced. His father thoroughly disapproved of these stories, but Bontemps was drawn to the earthy sensuality of Uncle Buddy. He did not realize then that life in Jim Crow Louisiana had crushed Buddy’s Creole pride and left him ruined and penniless. When Bontemps finished school, the 21-year-old moved to Harlem. There he looked for the “Negro-ness” he felt his upbringing in California had lacked. In Harlem he found a thriving black community unlike anything he had known before. He landed a teaching job, married, and settled with his family, becoming one of the most prolific writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Renaissance writers laid claim to their identity as Americans while articulating the culture, aesthetics, and experiences of African Americans. Many of their works contained antiracist political messages. The poet Langston Hughes challenged white America to accept African Americans in his 1925 poem, “I, too, sing America:” I, too, sing America I am the darker brother They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh And eat well And grow strong Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed - I, too, am America. Although portraying the “exotic” and sensual in black culture was controversial among Renaissance critics, some of its greatest artists gained huge followings among black as well as white audiences with unabashed and uninhibited celebrations of sexuality. Josephine Baker gained large audiences dancing to jazz rhythms in her trademark banana skirt. She also used her visibility to criticize American racism and to crusade against lynching. Moving to Paris in 1925, Baker opened her own Paris nightclub, Chez Josephine, where she danced every night. Later, during the Cold War era, she defied anticommunist censors by traveling and performing all over the world and speaking out against American racial discrimination. Baker also adopted 12 children of different races and nationalities. CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 715 ${bmicon} The music of black America was such an important marker of the era that it provided the decade with its most lasting moniker, the Jazz Age. Emanating not from Harlem but from New Orleans, Chicago, and St. Louis, jazz was, nevertheless, central to the black arts movement and the emerging national culture. With the help of the recording industry and radio, jazz and the blues began to reach a wide audience, primarily among blacks but increasingly among whites as well. Blues lyrics expressed themes of working-class protest and resistance to racism. Women who sang the blues, including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ethel Waters, asserted their sexuality, their passion for men or for women, their resistance to male domination, their sorrows, and their strength. In “I’m No Man’s Mamma Now,” Waters sang about divorce not in lament but in celebration: You may wonder what’s the reason for this crazy smile, Say I haven’t been so happy in a long while. Got a big load off my mind, here’s the paper sealed and signed, And the judge was nice and kind all through the trial. This ends a five-year war, I’m sweet Miss Was once more. I can come when I please, I can go when I please. I can flit, fly and flutter like the birds in the trees. Because I’m no man’s mamma now. Hey, hey. I can smile, I can wink, I can go take a drink, And I don’t have to worry what my hubby will think. Because I’m no man’s mamma now. Black filmmaking flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. Pioneer filmmaker Oscar Micheaux made dozens of films spanning three decades, including Within Our Gates (1919) and Body and Soul (1924). His films addressed complex themes of class and racial conflict. Known for his style as well as his talent, the six-foot-tall Micheaux wore long Russian coats and wide-brimmed hats and used his charm to raise the necessary funding for his films. As one of his leading actors recalled, he entered meeting halls as if “he were God about to deliver a sermon…. Why, he was so impressive and so charming that he could talk the shirt off your back.” Micheaux managed to persuade white theater owners in the South to show his films because of the revenues they promised. Southern theater owners showed his films to all-black matinees and at special midnight screenings to white audiences drawn to the allegedly sensual and exotic black experience. Few people outside the black community took the Harlem Renaissance seriously as a major artistic movement until the Civil Rights era decades later. Nevertheless, the cultural vitality of the black community in the 1920s contributed to the forging of a national mass culture. White patrons who went “slumming” in Harlem or danced to jazz music in clubs across the country incorporated the creativity and vitality of black America into their understanding and experience of modern American life. Still, African Americans continued to face segregation and lynching as well as limited political and economic opportunities. Hungarian Rag, 1914 Ragtime music was very popular toward the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the twentieth century. Here the New York Military Band performs in a 1914 recording at Thomas Edison’s studios in West Orange, New Jersey. (Library of Congress) Over There Performed by Billy Murray. This song was written in 1917 by George M. Cohan, and became an instant wartime favorite. (Library of Congress) full view The Living Room, 1916 The Living Room, 1916 (Photodisc, Inc.) Radio played a major role in linking people across regions through shared information, advertising, and entertainment. Annual radio production increased from 190,000 in 1923 to almost 5 million in 1929. Zenith created the first portable radio in 1924 and added pushbutton tuning three years later. By the end of the decade, more than 6 million radios were in use PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 716 ${bmicon} nationwide. Radios brought jazz and other forms of popular music to the airwaves, transforming the way music was enjoyed in American homes. Americans became more inclined to listen to music on their Victrolas and radios than to make music themselves. By the mid-1920s, sales of records surpassed those of sheet music; production and sales of pianos also dropped precipitously. full view Family around the Oil Heater, 1921 Family Around the Oil Heater, 1921 (Photodisc, Inc.) The number of radio stations soared from 30 in 1922 to 556 the following year, and national broadcasts began to supersede local ones. Airwaves became so cluttered that by the mid-1920s, the federal government, through the leadership of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, created the Federal Radio Commission to regulate and organize access. Meanwhile, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) combined to form the first national network system, which gave programs and advertisers access to audiences across the country. As radios entered millions of American homes, automobiles began to extend the mobility of Americans. The automobile offered the possibility of commuting to work without relying on public transportation, encouraging the expansion of suburban communities. The number of passenger cars in the nation more than tripled during the twenties. The Federal Highways Act of 1916 had produced a network of roads all over the country, providing construction jobs and a slew of new roadside businesses, from restaurants to garages. Automobiles also stimulated the tourist industry; Florida, California, and Arizona became vacation destinations in this period. At the same time, tourism disrupted Native American communities in the Southwest as curious motorists intruded into previously isolated reservations. full view The Family Car, 1911 The Family Car, ca. 1911 (Photodisc, Inc.) Automobile production also revolutionized the consumer industry. The pragmatic Henry Ford built inexpensive, functional automobiles that he expected his workers to be able to purchase and keep. But Ford faced serious competition from General Motors’ Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., who developed the concept of planned obsolescence and put a new emphasis on auto styling to encourage customers to trade in their old cars for newer and more expensive models. Ford responded to Sloan’s low-priced Chevrolet with the Model A in 1927, which had a more stylish look than the Model T and came in a variety of colors. full view Pump Boy with Hose, 1924 Pump Boy with Hose, 1924 (Photodisc, Inc.) More than style, however, automobiles offered Americans mobility. Many people mortgaged their homes or did without indoor plumbing to purchase a car. Americans of modest means could expect their car to empty their wallets. In the late 1920s, writer Ernesto Galarza noted that Mexican migrant laborers knew “that the Ford is not a perennial flower … far too much of his meager income is left in the tills of gasoline stations and tire shops in his long treks along the Pacific Coast.” Cherokee humorist Will Rogers quipped that “America is the only nation in the world that is going to the poor house in an automobile.” The automobile was part of a consumer society increasingly focused on leisure, pleasure, and intimacy. Courtship patterns changed, and sexual activity increased as young couples abandoned the front porch for the back seat. Women gained new freedom and autonomy when they, too, took the wheel. Moralists worried that the automobile would provide youth with too much independence and privacy. One juvenile court judge announced that “the automobile has become a house of prostitution on wheels.” CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 717 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 21.5 TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES, 1900–1980 As increasing numbers of Americans acquired automobiles, roads were built to accommodate all the cars. Starting in 1920, passenger trains decreased, along with train tracks. Although advances in technology and medicine improved the quality of life for many Americans in the early twentieth century, scientific efforts to alter the natural world did not always lead to expected social benefits. One case in point was the engineering project to build levees along the Mississippi River to prevent flooding. These human-made structures were expected to protect the human-built settlements and agricultural developments in the fertile floodplains where the river would normally expand. As it turned out, the engineers were no match for the river. Scientific ideas were tested not only along the banks of the Mississippi River but also in the nation’s courtrooms. Two major cases, the Scopes trial and the Supreme Court’s decision in Buck v. Bell, subjected scientific ideas to judicial and cultural scrutiny. Although decisions in both cases resolved the immediate legal issues, the questions they raised continued to generate controversy and debate throughout the rest of the century. For half a century the engineers of the Mississippi River Commission had adhered to a policy of building levees, assuming that strong barricades against the river’s banks would prevent flooding. Presumably, the levees would allow the rich soil of the floodplains along the river to be settled and farmed rather than leaving the basins empty to provide places for the river to expand and contract. But the levee policy proved to be a disastrous example of human efforts to master the natural contours of the land. In March 1927, the rains came, and the river rose. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 718 ${bmicon} Public authorities and river experts assured those who watched and worried that the levees would hold. But they were wrong. Torrential rains caused the river to rage across the levees and the land beyond, submerging 26,000 square miles of prime farmland in 170 counties across seven states. More than 900,000 people were forced from their homes. One-third of the refugees found shelter in ill-equipped and understaffed Red Cross camps, and another third received Red Cross rations. The flood caused more than $100 million in crop losses and $23 million in livestock deaths. Journalists at the time called it “America’s greatest peacetime disaster.” With the help of the Department of Commerce and the National Guard, the Red Cross set up 154 relief camps for flood victims. The camps were racially segregated. Refugees in the white camps were free to come and go and had more comfortable and generous accommodations and rations than those in the black camps. Armed guards patrolled the camps for black refugees and restricted people attempting to enter or leave. Black laborers had to register and give the names of their employers to receive any shelter or assistance. Only those planters were allowed to enter the camps and reclaim their workers. Relations between plantation owners and sharecroppers had been strained across the South before the flood, and many black laborers hoped to leave the plantations and find work elsewhere. But when labor agents came to the camps looking for workers to fill northern jobs, those patrolling the camps denied them entry. Federal authorities, including Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, refused to intervene in local camp management. As a result, southern whites were able to force black sharecroppers back to work on their plantations. Despite the prisonlike conditions, many African American refugees managed to escape and made their way north. In 1924 racial theorist Lothrop Stoddard wrote a best-selling book, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. In this polemic, Stoddard predicted a war among the “primary” races of the world and warned of the “weakening” of the white race through immigration and “mongrelization.” Stoddard wrote, “The melting pot may mix, but does not melt. CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 719 ${bmicon} full view MAP 21.1 THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER FLOOD OF 1927 The Mississippi River flood in 1927 sent water across a huge area of the South, extending as far west as Texas, covering most of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, and reaching north into Kansas, Illinois, and Indiana. Each race type, formed ages ago … is a stubbornly persistent entity. Each type possesses a special set of characters: not merely the physical characters visible to the naked eye, but moral, intellectual, and spiritual characters as well.” Stoddard’s views were so familiar that F. Scott Fitzgerald placed them in the dialogue of his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s intention was to discredit the theory by showing it to be as ludicrous as other fantasies of his hapless protagonist, Tom Buchanan, who mused, “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” Fitzgerald may have hoped to discredit Stoddard’s ideas, but many Americans, including large numbers of policymakers, believed in white racial superiority. Supposedly scientific theories of race bolstered claims that distinct, biologically based characteristics divided humans into superior and inferior races. These theories had no scientific merit and were later thoroughly discredited. But in the 1920s, these dubious theories of racial superiority supported measures such as immigration restriction and eugenic sterilization laws. Eugenics was a pseudo-science based on notions of racial superiority. Eugenicists claimed that the Anglo-Saxon Protestant “race” was superior to all others, including Jews, Southern Europeans, Catholics, as well as nonwhites. Racial superiority, according to eugenic reformers, might be compromised not only by mixing with inferior groups but also by the propagation of individuals whose mental or moral condition rendered them inferior, and whose offspring would diminish the quality of the Anglo-Saxon “stock.” These ideas were consistent with the theories of social Darwinists, who misused the ideas of Charles Darwin. Darwin’s work on evolution focused on the origins of species in the animal world. Darwin found that weaker species died out, while stronger species evolved. Darwin did not study humans. But social Darwinists claimed that Darwin’s evolutionary theories PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 720 ${bmicon} were relevant to human society, arguing that only the fittest ought to survive. Social Darwinists argued against government aid to the poor and infirm, claiming that such assistance interfered with “natural selection” of the “fittest.” Social Darwinism also supported eugenic theories that provided the rationale for sterilization of the “unfit.” Several states had enacted eugenic laws that allowed the state to sterilize “inferior” individuals without their knowledge or consent. These laws authorized government and medical officials to determine whether or not an individual was inferior, or “feebleminded,” and to order that the person be sterilized. Opponents of eugenic sterilization, mostly Catholic activists, challenged these laws in several states. In an effort to put an end to such challenges, eugenic advocates decided to test the constitutionality of the Virginia compulsory sterilization law. Their plan was to bring the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which they expected to uphold the law. The proponents of the law selected the case of Carrie Buck, in part because she was white. Eugenic advocates did not want race to be at the center of the case, especially because eugenic sterilization laws did not target particular races; they simply targeted the “feebleminded.” Feeblemindedness was a loosely defined criterion often used to label poor, immigrant, or minority women who were sexually active. At the age of 17 Carrie Buck was raped and became pregnant; as a result she was sent to a state institution for the feebleminded. Buck was labeled as feebleminded because she had borne a child out of wedlock and was therefore deemed morally unfit for parenthood. The noted eugenicist Harry Laughlin pointed out that Buck herself was born out of wedlock, as was her daughter, and described them as part of the “shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South.” Carrie Buck was sterilized in 1927. The following year, Buck’s sister Doris was taken to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded and sterilized at age 16. She was told that she had an appendectomy. Later, Doris Buck married and tried to get pregnant. None of the physicians she consulted told her why she could not conceive. She finally learned the truth in 1979. “I broke down and cried. My husband and I wanted children desperately. We were crazy about them. I never knew what they’d done to me.” No evidence established that Carrie Buck, her mother, or her daughter was below normal intelligence. Buck’s daughter died as a child, but her teachers described the girl as bright. In writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court that upheld the law, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Within the next few years, 30 states had compulsory sterilization laws, and the number of operations rose dramatically. In the 1930s the Nazis in Germany modeled their sterilization policies on the California law. Although eugenics in the United States received less publicity during World War II as Nazi sterilization policies became known, the practice continued. Over the next several decades, increasing numbers of coerced sterilizations took place in public clinics and hospitals. Nearly all of these later sterilizations were performed on women of color, including well-known civil rights leader Fanny Lou Hamer in the 1960s. Only the Catholic Church consistently mounted organized opposition to the practice. Finally, in the 1980s, in a rare alliance of traditional Catholics and feminist activists over an issue of reproductive choice, compulsory sterilization laws were repealed. Although there was little organized protest against sterilization laws, many Americans were troubled by eugenics and its corollary, Social Darwinism. The populist leader William Jennings Bryan was among them. Bryan, three times the Democratic candidate for president and Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state, for 30 years had been a powerful voice for reform and social justice. Bryan believed that Social Darwinism was an ill-founded misapplication of scientific theory used to support the subjugation of women, the second-class status of ethnic and racial minorities, the neglect of the poor, and the practice of eugenic sterilization. In Bryan’s last public crusade, he defended his principles in a courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee, in July 1925. Tennessee had recently enacted the Butler Act, which made it illegal to CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 721 ${bmicon} teach the theory of evolution in the schools. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it would defend any teacher charged with violating the Butler Act. A 24-year-old science teacher from the local high school, John Thomas Scopes, agreed to test the law. Using a state-approved textbook, Scopes taught a lesson on evolutionary theory on April 24 to his Rhea County High School science class. He was arrested on May 7 and quickly indicted by a grand jury. Bryan agreed to represent the prosecution; famed Chicago criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow headed the ACLU’s team of defense lawyers. Bryan did not oppose science, but he objected to its misapplication. Darrow did not oppose religion. But he argued that religious fundamentalists—“creationists” who believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible—should not determine the way science was taught in the schools. Reporters at the time, and since, cast the trial as a struggle between religion and science, with rural and small-town Americans on the side of creationism and secular urbanites supporting evolution. But the divide was not so clear-cut. In a poll taken in Arkansas in 1928, city dwellers were more inclined to support creationism than rural residents. Almost all advocates on both sides of the Scopes trial were Christians who disagreed over how to interpret the Bible. They were also believers in science; those opposed to the teaching of evolution considered it to be an unscientific theory. In the 1920s evangelical religion did not necessarily represent old-fashioned values resisting the new urban consumer culture. To take just one example, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson regularly filled the 52,000 seats in her elaborate Angelus Temple in Los Angeles and reached many thousands more via radio, preaching the message of her Foursquare Gospel Church with the style and flair of a Hollywood celebrity. McPherson drew followers to 600 branches of her church using the latest techniques of advertising and mass culture. On one occasion, she used a gigantic electric scoreboard to illustrate the triumph of good over evil. Combining show-biz glitz with faith healing, she gathered a wide urban and rural following. Almost all advocates on both sides of the Scopes trial were Christians who disagreed over how to interpret the Bible. The Scopes trial also contained elements of popular entertainment. Dubbed “the Monkey trial” because Darwin’s theory of evolution demonstrated that humans evolved from an earlier primate form that included monkeys and chimpanzees, the trial was one of the first national media events. The judge invited reporters from around the country, including broadcast journalists. The Scopes trial was the first jury trial broadcast on live radio. More than 900 spectators packed into the courtroom, and hundreds more gathered in the streets, where PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 722 ${bmicon} a carnival atmosphere prevailed, complete with souvenir stands, food vendors, itinerant preachers, and hucksters, including numerous chimpanzees accompanied by their trainers. The trial did not deal with the question of the First Amendment, which guaranteed freedom of speech, nor the matter of who should decide the content of classroom education. Rather, religious fundamentalism was on trial. Although rules of evidence cannot apply to matters of faith, Darrow forced Bryan to defend his religious beliefs in a court of law. Darrow fully expected to lose the case so he could appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the jury obliged, reaching a guilty verdict in just nine minutes. Scopes was fined $100, but the fine was never imposed. Exhausted by the trial and ill with diabetes, Bryan died a week later. Bryan technically won the case, but most reporters deemed the spectacle a victory for Darrow and the teaching of evolution. That assessment was premature. The Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict on a technicality, robbing Darrow of his chance to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Before the trial, most science textbooks included discussion of evolution; after the trial, material on evolution began to disappear. Laws against the teaching of evolution remained on the books until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas law in 1968. The Scopes trial did not resolve the debate between creationists and evolutionists, and the controversy continued throughout the century. As late as 2000, the Board of Education in Kansas ruled that creationism and evolution were both unproven theories and that both could be taught in the schools. The Scopes trial may not have resolved anything, but it did have one significant unintended consequence. The trial generated tremendous interest in nonhuman primates. After the trial, attendance at the nation’s zoos skyrocketed, boosting their funding and their prestige. So in the end, the real winners in the “Monkey trial” were the monkeys. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge declared, “The business of America is business.” Despite its many critics, with the support of national political leaders, business reigned. After an initial recession following World War I, the economy grew steadily. The Gross National Product (GNP) increased 5.5 percent per year, from $149 billion in 1922 to $227 billion in 1929. Official unemployment remained below 5 percent throughout the decade, and real wages rose 15 percent. These trends fueled the popularity of the conservative, business-friendly presidents of the 1920s. Economic interests also drove foreign policy during the decade. After World War I, with much of Europe in shambles, the United States made loans to foreign countries, becoming the world’s leading creditor nation. International markets opened up for American-made products, leading to a tremendous expansion in foreign trade. Warren G. Harding, a former newspaper editor and U.S. senator from Ohio, won the 1920 presidential election by the biggest landslide since 1820. Once elected, he released 66-year-old Socialist party leader Eugene V. Debs from prison. He then appointed a strong cabinet, including Herbert Hoover as secretary of commerce, Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state, and Andrew Mellon as secretary of the treasury. Harding established the conservative agenda that would last throughout the decade. His administration favored tariff protection, which placed a tax on goods entering the United States from abroad. Tariffs helped American industries by increasing the cost of imported goods. Harding also supported immigration restriction and opposed labor unions. In the wake of World War I, Harding distanced himself from Woodrow Wilson’s peace settlement but promoted international treaties. In 1921 and 1922 Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes achieved the first major disarmament accord, the Five-Power Treaty, signed by Japan, Britain, CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 723 ${bmicon} France, Italy, and the United States. The five nations agreed to scrap more than 2 million tons of warships in the first such pact of its kind. Instead of an arms buildup, Hughes extended the power of the United States abroad through economic ties, encouraging banks to provide loans to war-ravaged Europe and using the government to protect such investments. TABLE 21-1 The Election of 1920 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Warren G. Harding Republican 16,152,200 404 James M. Cox Democratic 9,147,353 127 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 919,799 0 But Harding’s presidency was marred by scandal. He had built his political base by handing out favors and deals to his friends, and he continued to do so as president. His buddies used their offices and influence for personal gain, while Harding caroused with them, drinking, despite Prohibition, and engaging in notorious extramarital affairs. At first, the press ignored these obvious abuses, but by 1923, the many scandals finally broke. Harding’s cronies were exposed for selling government appointments and providing judicial pardons and police protection for bootleggers. The most serious scandal of Harding’s presidency involved the large government oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California. At the urging of Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, Harding transferred control over the reserves from the Navy to the Department of the Interior. After accepting a bribe of nearly $400,000 from two oil tycoons, Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, Fall secretly issued leases to them without opening up the competition to other oil companies, thereby allowing Sinclair and Doheny to pump oil from the wells in exchange for providing fuel tank reserves to the Navy. Fall went to jail for a year as a result. In another scandal, Charles R. Forbes, head of the Veteran’s Bureau, went to prison for swindling the government out of $200 million worth of hospital supplies. Forbes’s lawyer committed suicide, as did a close associate of Attorney General Harry Daugherty, who was forced out of the Harding administration in disgrace. When he learned of the scandals that occurred in his close circle, Harding grew deeply worried. The stress probably contributed to the illness that killed him in 1923. Harding’s vice president, Calvin Coolidge, took over the presidency when Harding died in 1923. Sober, serious, and humorless, Coolidge was not vulnerable to scandal as his predecessor had been. Coolidge believed that the government should meddle as little as possible in the affairs of the nation. He took long naps every day and exerted very little presidential leadership. Known mostly for his hostility to labor unions and his laissez-faire attitude toward business, he was a popular president during the complacent mid-1920s. full view Presidents Harding and Coolidge Warren G. Harding (left) and Calvin Coolidge (right) were immediately popular in the 1920s, but later historians have criticized them and rated them among the worst of American presidents. (Library of Congress) Not everyone was pleased with Coolidge’s probusiness politics, and opposition mobilized for the 1924 election. Progressive Republicans formed a new Progressive party and nominated Robert M. La Follette for president, with Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana for vice president. The Progressive platform promoted conservation measures, higher taxes on the wealthy, doing away with the electoral college in favor of direct election of the president, and the abolition of child labor. The Democrats deadlocked between Catholic candidate Alfred E. Smith, an urban politician from New York, and Protestant William G. McAdoo, who had a base of support in the South and West. On the 103rd ballot, the delegates finally chose a compromise candidate, John W. Davis, a corporation lawyer, with Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska (William Jennings Bryan’s brother) as his running mate. The Republicans nominated Coolidge, with Charles G. Dawes of Illinois as TABLE 21-2 The Election of 1924 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Calvin Coolidge Republican 15,725,016 382 John W. Davis Democratic 8,386,503 136 Robert M. LaFollette Progressive 4,822,856 13 PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 724 ${bmicon} his running mate. Coolidge claimed responsibility for the nation’s prosperity and won easily, receiving more votes than the other two candidates combined. Coolidge took pride in measures that prevented the government from interfering in the economy, such as his vetoes of the 1926 and 1928 McNary–Haugen bills, which would have provided government subsidies to farmers if farm prices dropped. The passage of the Revenue Act of 1926, a form of trickle-down economics intended to boost the economy, reduced the high income and estate taxes that Progressive reformers had put into place during World War I. Coolidge also continued Harding’s efforts to sustain world peace. In 1928, under the leadership of Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, delegates from the United States, France, and 13 other nations gathered in Paris to sign the Kellogg–Briand Pact, in which they agreed to resolve conflicts through peaceful means rather than war. Unfortunately, with no means to enforce the agreement, the pact did nothing to alleviate the international hostilities that later erupted into World War II. The 1928 election was a major turning point for the presence of ethnic minorities in politics, for the Democrats broke tradition by selecting an Irish Catholic, Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York, as their candidate. It was the first time a major party had nominated a Catholic for president. Coolidge decided not to run for reelection in 1928, and the Republican party selected Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as its nominee. Prohibition figured prominently in the 1928 presidential campaign. Although the Democratic platform gave lukewarm support to the continuation of Prohibition, Smith made no secret of his support for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. By contrast, Republican Herbert Hoover praised Prohibition as “a great social and economic experiment.” The other major issue of the campaign was religion. Anti-Catholic sentiment was strong throughout the country, especially in the South, where Democrats either sat out the election or voted Republican. Smith’s opponents attacked his Catholicism, charging that he was more loyal to the Vatican than to the United States. Although Hoover won by a substantial majority, Smith carried the nation’s 12 largest cities, indicating the strength of the ethnic vote in urban centers and the political and cultural rift between urban and rural Americans. Smith’s candidacy also laid the groundwork for another Irish Catholic, John F. Kennedy, who ran successfully on the Democratic ticket 32 years later. TABLE 21-3 The Election of 1928 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Herbert Hoover Republican 21,391,381 444 Alfred E. Smith Democratic 15,016,443 87 Norman Thomas Socialist 267,835 0 Herbert Hoover epitomized the values of the self-made man. He was orphaned as a child and raised by relatives of modest means. These early hardships fortified Hoover’s ambition to overcome adversity, and he set his sights on business success. After graduating from Stanford University, he went into mining and rose through the ranks to become a wealthy corporate leader. By age 40 he was already a millionaire. Hoover began his career in government during World War I, when he earned widespread admiration for handling the distribution of food relief to European war refugees. He then served ably as secretary of commerce in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. President Hoover believed that his government experience rendered him ideally suited to secure prosperity for the nation’s future. Shortly after the election, he predicted, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” But less than a year into his presidency, his optimism, along with the nation’s economy, came crashing down. CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 725 ${bmicon} During the 1920s, spending on recreation nearly doubled. Faith in continuing prosperity promoted the extension of consumer credit to unprecedented heights. Previously, the only major item routinely purchased on credit was a house. But in the twenties, installment buying became the rage for a wide range of consumer goods, from autos and radios to household appliances. Consumer debt rose from $2.6 billion in 1919 to $7.1 billion in 1929. As one official in a midwestern loan company remarked, “People don’t think anything nowadays of borrowing sums they’d never have thought of borrowing in the old days. They will assume an obligation for $2000 today as calmly as they would have borrowed $300 or $400 in 1890.” This habit of buying on credit boosted the standard of living for many but also left families in a precarious situation and vulnerable to the vagaries of the broader economy. Advertising fueled much of the new spending. As one contemporary reporter noted, “Advertising is to business what fertilizer is to a farm.” According to advertisers, consumer goods promised health, beauty, success, and the means to eliminate personal and embarrassing flaws, such as bad breath or dandruff. Cigarette companies used advertising to promote smoking as a symbol of independence for women and as a means to achieve beauty. Clever advertising campaigns promised women that if they would “reach for a Lucky Strike” instead of a sweet they would remain slim, healthy, and sexually appealing. Advertising also fostered a vision of big business as a benevolent force, promoting individual happiness. In his 1925 best-seller, The Man That Nobody Knows, advertising executive Bruce Barton portrayed Jesus as a businessman who gathered a group of 12 followers who believed in his enterprise and, through effective public relations and advertising, sold his product to the world. The consumer culture had its temples: movie palaces, department stores, and the 1920s innovation, the shopping center. Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza, the first shopping center in the nation, was the brainchild of Jesse Clyde (J. C.) Nichols, who purchased 55 acres of swampland for the project. Like the architects of the movie palaces, Nichols looked to European aristocratic styles for inspiration. He chose a Spanish–Moorish theme for the plaza that included court-yards and stucco buildings with red tile roofs and ornate towers. He adorned the plaza’s streets and sidewalks with works of art, columns, wrought iron, and fountains. Most significantly, he designed his shopping center with the car in mind. The shopping center originally boasted eight filling stations and numerous garages and parking lots. Skeptical city leaders called it “Nichols’ Folly,” but the Country Club Plaza was a commercial success. A much less successful venture was the Florida land boom, based on fantasies of a consumer paradise. When PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 726 ${bmicon} World War I closed off routes to the European playgrounds of the American elites, shrewd developers in Florida began to advertise: “Go to Florida, Where enterprise is enthroned. Where you sit and watch at twilight the fronds of the graceful palm, latticed against the fading gold of the sun kissed sky.” These promotional efforts sparked a frenzy of investment in Florida real estate. To create “earthly paradises” and resorts, developers rushed to construct roads and find new land on which to build. Forging the Tamiami Trail across 90 miles of Everglades swamp entailed dredging a canal, blowing up the submerged limestone layer with dynamite, piling the broken limestone beside the canal, and then crushing it into a road surface. The dangerous work claimed the lives of many laborers and severely damaged the sensitive ecology of the vast Everglades wetland. When the road was finally completed in 1928, the land boom had collapsed. Human folly and nature’s fury contributed to the Florida land boom and bust. The boom peaked in 1925 and quickly collapsed. In 1926 a Danish ship, being renovated to become a floating cabaret, sank and blocked the entrance to the Miami harbor, stranding dozens of ships filled with building materials necessary for ongoing construction. Then a hurricane hit Miami, killing 130 people and causing millions of dollars of property damage. Another hurricane in 1928 killed more than 1000 people and destroyed several towns. The destruction wrought by the hurricanes, and the exposure of exaggerated promotional advertisements and inflated prices, quickly put an end to land speculation. The collapse of the Florida land boom foreshadowed the collapse of the stock market in 1929. Some social critics claimed that consumerism fostered not only economic disasters such as the Florida land boom but also a stifling conformity. Sinclair Lewis was one of several novelists of the twenties whose books expressed biting criticism of the frantic pursuit of material gain and status. George Babbitt, the protagonist of Lewis’s novel Babbitt (1922), struggles to become accepted and successful in his small town by conforming to the empty materialism and standardized opinions accepted and prized by his neighbors. In Main Street (1920), Lewis explores similar themes through the character of a woman, Carol Kennicott. She resides in Gopher Prairie, a thinly disguised version of Lewis’s own hometown, Sauk Centre, Minnesota. But unlike Babbitt, Kennicott rebels against the stifling small-town life that traps her. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote not about small-town conformity, as Lewis did, but about the modern urban life that was its antithesis. Fitzgerald glamorized, criticized, and in many ways embodied the giddy nightlife and status seeking of the Jazz Age. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, into a family of modest means, he grew up admiring and emulating the CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 727 ${bmicon} wealthy. He married glamorous flapper Zelda Sayre, daughter of a prominent Alabama judge, and together they embodied the dizzy, indulgent, free-spirited life of the decade. But Fitzgerald’s novels, including This Side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), and The Great Gatsby (1925), criticized the era’s obsessions with success, glamour, consumerism, advertising, and the infatuation with status. The Fitzgeralds, along with other writers who were critical of American superficiality and conformity, moved to Paris. Eventually, the life Fitzgerald both lived and criticized caught up with him. By the end of the decade, he—like the nation—was broken by his excesses. In 1931 he came home to Baltimore an alcoholic; Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent the rest of her life in mental institutions. full view Ernest Hemingway on Safari Ernest Hemingway on Safari in Africa. (J.F. Kennedy Library) During their years in Paris, the Fitzgeralds often joined other expatriate writers at the salon of Gertrude Stein, a prolific author of novels, plays, operas, poems, and biographies. Born in 1874 to German Jewish parents in Pennsylvania, she grew up in California and attended Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. In 1903 she moved to France, where she remained for the rest of her life, looking back to America for her subject matter. In Paris she met another American, Alice B. Toklas, who became her lifetime partner. Their openly lesbian relationship gave Stein material for her writing, including The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). In the 1920s, she dubbed the writers who gathered at her salon the “Lost Generation.” Most Americans in the 1920s were neither investing in Florida real estate nor frequenting Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon. Even so, they were not immune to the desires and dreams that the consumer society sparked. The middle class and the more prosperous members of the working class enjoyed many of the comforts, amusements, and appliances that the booming economy made available; the poor struggled just to make ends meet. Throughout the twenties, the nation’s poorest people continued to be the most mobile, moving in search of jobs, security, and a place they could settle and call home. Henry Crews, son of a white Georgia sharecropper, longed for “that single house where you were born, where you lived out your childhood … your anchor in the world.” But he never had such a home. Like that of many other hardworking sharecroppers and factory workers, his family moved frequently in search of a better life, a dream that often proved elusive. If Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald embodied the Jazz Age, Myrtle Terry Lawrence embodied the experience of the sharecropper. Born in Alabama in 1893, she began chopping and hoeing cotton at age six. She spent two weeks in school in the first grade, which was the full extent of her formal education. She married Ben Lawrence when they were both 13 years old and had her first child at 14. With her husband she worked in the cotton fields for nearly three decades, eventually becoming a major organizer of black and white sharecroppers in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU), which fought for the rights of tenant farmers. Myrtle Lawrence was poor, but she did not consider herself a victim. Her children described her as a “lady,” although the tough-talking, tobacco-chewing Lawrence was hardly a southern belle. She took pride in vigorous outdoor work, which she preferred to indoor housework. As her daughter-in-law recalled, “She wasn’t no housekeeper. Bless her heart.” One of her sons boasted that his mother was paid extra to set the pace for the other workers, including the men, because “she was the best man.” In the words of one daughter, “Mama wasn’t slow at nothing.” Myrtle Lawrence’s energy and wits, as well as her refusal to be bullied, won her the admiration of her family and the respect of coworkers and propelled her in the 1930s to leadership in the STFU. Sharecropping required hard work and careful planning to carve out a meager life, but many did so with pride. Ed Brown, a young black sharecropper, had no formal education but considered himself “pretty schemy.” He worked on six different plantations, moving about in PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 728 ${bmicon} full view MAP 21.2 AMERICANS ON THE MOVE, 1870s–1930s Between the 1870s and the 1930s, millions of Americans moved around the country, mostly from east to west, but also from south to north. search of better circumstances or to escape from debt or threats of violence. Although he and his wife, Willie Mae, were never able to buy a place of their own, they did improve their circumstances over time. When they finally got out of debt and secured a bit of cash, they used it to adorn their meager cabin. In 1929 they bought an old Model T Ford. But finding it too costly to maintain, they swapped it for a cow and a butter churn and dasher, which provided more practical benefits. Meanwhile, Ed took odd jobs to earn extra money, while Willie Mae took care of the children, picked cotton, took in laundry, and, as Ed noted with appreciation, kept “things … lookin very pretty.” Life was a struggle for southern sharecroppers, black and white. But African Americans faced the most difficult jobs and the added insults of racism. Blacks continued to move north in huge numbers in search of improved opportunities. Immigrants had a better chance of moving into semiskilled jobs, while blacks were relegated to unskilled jobs. Many ended up in domestic service, where they worked long hours for low pay. They tried to avoid live-in work, where they had little freedom from the watchful gaze of employers and barely any time with their own families. If they returned to the South, they faced work in the fields or factories for long hours under miserable conditions or in the extracting industries of coal mining, logging, and saw milling, where dangerous working conditions killed thousands of laborers. Latinos joined African Americans at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in the Southwest and Midwest, working in jobs that offered almost no opportunity to save money or acquire property. Plantation owners kept sharecroppers in debt, and mine owners paid their workers in scrip that had to be used in company stores while forcing them to live in company housing. Immigrants from Asia who arrived on the West Coast also faced difficulty finding stable jobs with decent pay and working conditions. Many ended up in domestic service. A young Japanese woman went to work for a family in Oakland, California, less than a month after arriving in the country. “I had to bring the coal up, all the time I went up and down,” she later recalled. “Then I had to wash diapers. Me, I grew up on a farm, so I never had to do that. When I came to America, I didn’t know anything. So I just had to cry.” Loss of a job also meant loss of housing, creating constant mobility. Nevertheless, the poor maintained strong ties of kinship and community and helped each other survive under difficult conditions. CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 729 ${bmicon} Industrial workers struggled throughout the decade, especially in a political climate hostile to unions. With the crushing of labor radicalism in the Red Scare after World War I, union organizing and strikes declined. But workers continued to protest low wages and poor working conditions. In March 1929 young women textile workers in Elizabethton, a small town nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of eastern Tennessee, closed down the American Glanzstoff plant in protest against low wages, petty rules, and arrogant employers. Soon, the protest spread to textile mills across the region. At Glanzstoff, the strikers returned to work when the company promised better pay and agreed not to discriminate against union members. But the employers broke their promises, so the women struck again. The governor sent in the National Guard, armed with machine guns. More than 1000 people were arrested in confrontations with the troops. The strikers were young women mostly in their teens and early twenties. They combined labor militance with an air of playfulness. On the picket lines, they expressed their autonomy and independence, but they also found opportunities to flirt and carouse beyond the watchful eyes of parents. Although the strike was ultimately crushed and many of the participants were blacklisted, few expressed regrets. Bessie Edens knew she would not get her job back, but she “didn’t care whether they took me back or not. I didn’t! If I’d starved I wouldn’t of cared, because I knew what I was a’doing when I helped to pull it. And I’ve never regretted it in any way…. And it did help the people, and it’s helped the town and the country.” The symbolic end of the 1920s arrived on “Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929, when the inflated and overextended stock market came crashing down. In one day, stocks fell in value $14 billion. By end of the year, stock prices were down 50 percent; by 1932, they had dropped another 30 percent. In three years, $74 billion of the nation’s wealth had vanished. The effect on the economy was catastrophic. Industrial production fell by half. More than 100,000 businesses went bankrupt. Banks failed at alarming rate: more than 2000 banks closed in 1931 alone. Unemployment rose to staggering levels, reaching 25 percent by 1932 and rarely dropping below 17 percent throughout the 1930s. In keeping with the social policies that had prevailed throughout the 1920s, relief efforts were slim. No federal relief or welfare, no unemployment insurance, no Social Security, no job programs existed to help those who had lost their jobs, their savings, and their homes. Although many wealthy people lost their fortunes, which had been built on speculative investments, the poor suffered the most. People who lost their homes and farms moved into makeshift shelters in shantytowns, which they nicknamed “Hoovervilles” to mock the ineffectual efforts of President Herbert Hoover to respond to their plight. The causes of the stock market crash and the decade-long depression that followed were complex and varied. Stock prices rose dramatically, especially at the end of the 1920s. Speculators had been purchasing stocks on 10 percent margins, meaning they put down only 10 percent of the cost and borrowed the rest from brokers and banks. The popularity of installment buying in the consumer goods market had devastating effects when applied in this manner to the stock market. Investors expected to get rich quickly by selling their stocks at a higher price and paying back the loans from their huge profits. This system worked for a few years, encouraging investors with limited funds to make risky investments in the hope of gaining large fortunes. When the price of stocks spiraled out of control, far beyond their actual value, creditors demanded repayment of their loans, and investors were unable to pay their debts. The collapse of the stock market alone would not necessarily have caused such a severe and prolonged depression. Poor decision making by financial and political leaders exacerbated underlying weaknesses in the economy. The Federal Reserve curtailed the amount of money in circulation and raised interest rates, making it more difficult for people to get loans and pay off Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 730 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim Italians, like most other European immigrants, established households where almost everyone worked to support the family. Fathers earned wages, mothers often took in boarders or did piece-work at home to earn extra money, and sons and daughters found jobs in sweatshops and factories. Young Italian women, along with their Jewish peers, often worked for garment manufacturers, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, scene of the strike of 1909 and the tragic fire that followed. Most immigrants married within their own ethnic groups. Often, immigrant families were torn by fierce generational conflicts, as old-world parents tried to maintain traditional ways while their American children struggled to break free. This generational struggle beset nearly every immigrant group. Mario Puzo, the Italian American novelist best known for The Godfather, was among the many children of immigrants to express the cultures and experiences of newcomers through the arts. His autobiographical novel, The Fortunate Pilgrim, is a portrait of life in the Italian community of New York City in the early years of the century. The book depicts the struggles and triumphs of an Italian immigrant family. The men work long hours for meager wages while the women struggle to maintain the family. Mothers gather on tenement stoops to bemoan the behavior of their Americanized children, yet they dream the American dream of a better life. At the end of the book the mother’s dream comes true, and the family moves to a suburban home in Long Island. Yet it is a bittersweet ending, for she and her family realize the loss of the vibrant community that, for all its hardship and poverty, had sustained them in the city. Each tenement was a village square; each had its group of women, all in black, sitting on stools and boxes and doing more than gossip. They recalled ancient history, argued morals and social law, always taking their precedents from the mountain village in southern Italy they had escaped, fled from many years ago. And with what relish their favorite imaginings! Now: What if their stern fathers were transported by some miracle to face the problems they faced every day? Or their mothers of the quick and heavy hands? What shrieks if they as daughters had dared as these American children dared? If they had presumed. The women talked of their children as they would of strangers. It was a favorite topic, the corruption of the innocent by the new land. Now: Felicia, who lived around the corner of 31st Street. What type of daughter was she who did not cut short her honeymoon on news of her godmother’s illness, the summons issued by her own mother? A real whore. No no, they did not mince words. Felicia’s mother herself told the story. And a son, poor man, who could not wait another year to marry when his father so commanded? Ahhh, the disrespect. Figlio disgraziato. Never could this pass in Italy. The father would kill his arrogant son; yes, kill him. And the daughter? In Italy—Felicia’s mother swore in a voice still trembling with passion, though this had all happened three years ago, the godmother recovered, the grandchildren the light of her life—ah, in Italy the mother would pull the whore out of her bridal chamber, drag her to the hospital bed by the hair of her head. Ah, Italia, Italia; how the world changed and for the worse. What madness was it that made them leave such a land? Where fathers commanded and mothers were treated with respect by their children. Each in turn told a story of insolence and defiance, themselves heroic, long-suffering, the children spitting Lucifers saved by an application of Italian discipline—the razor strap or the Tackeril. And at the end of each story each woman recited her requiem. Mannaggia America!—Damn America. But in the hot summer night their voices were filled with hope, with a vigor never sounded in their homeland. Here now was money in the bank, children who could read and write, grandchildren who would be professors if all went well. They spoke with guilty loyalty of customs they had themselves trampled into dust. Source: Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim (New York: Random House, 1997), pp. 10–11). CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 731 ${bmicon} their debts. These policies had profound worldwide implications and contributed to an international crisis. Banks in Germany and Austria, for example, depended on loans from the United States, and many went bankrupt, causing a ripple effect across Europe. The Tariff Act of 1930, known as the Hawley–Smoot Tariff, also contributed to the downward spiral. The tariff included industrial products as well as agricultural goods and raised duties from 32 to 40 percent. Although industrialists had convinced the Republican-controlled Congress that the tariff would protect American commodities from competition from cheaper foreign goods, they were wrong. Foreign governments retaliated by raising their own tariffs to keep out American goods. These monetary and trade policies backfired, and the economic crisis spread throughout the western industrial world. Within the United States, the unequal distribution of wealth exacerbated the effects of the economic downturn. The nation may have looked prosperous, but most of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of a small number of people. The gap between the rich and the poor widened during the 1920s, in part because of Coolidge administration policies that lowered taxes on the wealthy. The majority of the population lost purchasing power, resulting in the decline of consumer-oriented industries as the market for their products shrank. Although the wealthy spent money extravagantly, they spent a smaller percentage of their money on consumer goods than wage earners. If average Americans had been able to buy more cars, household appliances, and other products, those industries might have survived, and the economy might have recovered more quickly. Political leaders, and the business-oriented public policies they had promoted throughout the decade, left the country ill prepared to address the crisis and meet the needs of families deprived of their means of livelihood. As the curtain came down on the 1920s, the nation was left suffering. The stock market collapse, and the prolonged depression that followed, revealed the flaws in the economic system that spurred the apparent prosperity of the 1920s. Beneath the visible affluence was the hidden poverty that prevailed throughout the decade. The aftermath of World War I and the end of Progressive reform led to an era of conservative politics. National leaders promoted business interests and paid little attention to social welfare, the environment, or the need to regulate the economy. By the end of the 1920s, it was clear that Prohibition was a dismal failure and that the federal government was ill equipped to enforce it. Although political reform withered, cultural vitality flowered. Hollywood emerged as a major industry, and the Jazz Age reflected the widespread appeal of African American music. A black arts movement flourished, centered in Harlem, and writers of the “Lost Generation”—disenchanted with the status quo—gathered in Greenwich Village or moved to France. Across the country, a youth culture challenged the gender and sexual mores of the past. Consumer culture expanded as increasing numbers of families purchased cars, radios, and new fashions. Few who were involved in the private preoccupations of the decade could have foreseen the disaster ahead. When the stock market crashed and the Depression set in, President Hoover tried to address the crisis by extending the political philosophy that had prevailed throughout the decade: Private enterprise would bring the economy back to health. But Hoover soon discovered that the old formulas would not work in the new reality and that the nation’s major economic and political institutions had lost their credibility. PART 7 ###8226; REFORM AT HOME, REVOLUTION ABROAD, 1900###8211;1929 732 ${bmicon} Harlem: The Mecca of the New Negro etext.lib.virginia.edu/harlem/ This site is the on-line text of the March 1925 Survey Graphic Harlem Number, which includes writings of many Harlem Renaissance writers. Calvin Coolidge www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/ccoolidge.html This site contains basic information about Coolidge’s election and presidency and online biography. Warren G. Harding www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/wgharding.html This site contains basic information about Harding’s election and presidency and online biography. Herbert Hoover www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/hchoover.html This site contains basic information about Hoover’s election and presidency and online biography. Harlem 1900–1940: An African American Community www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem/ This site of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture includes information and articles about the history of Harlem as a center of African American cultural life. The Scopes Trial xroads.virginia.edu/∼UG97/inherit/1925home.html This site from the University of Virginia’s American Studies program includes images, documents, and articles relating to the Scopes Trial. Temperance and Prohibition prohibition.history.ohio-state.edu/ This site from Ohio State University covers the history of temperance and prohibition in the United States. The Flappers www.geocities.com/flapper_culture/ This site includes images, descriptions, and information on famous “flappers” of the 1920s. Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (1995). Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (1995). David J. Goldberg, Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s (1999). Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd. Middletown (1929). George Mowry, The Twenties: Fords, Flappers, and Fanatics (1963). Kathleen Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (1991). Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (1987). Kenneth Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 (1967). Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998). Desmond S. King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (2000). Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (1994). Andrew Sinclair, Prohibition: The Era of Excess (1962). Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in 20th Century America (1988). Ray Batchelor, Henry Ford, Mass Production, Modernism and Design (1994). Nathan Irvin Huggins, The Harlem Renaissance (1971). Angela J. Latham, Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s (2000). Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (1991). CHAPTER 21 ###8226; THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE 733 ${bmicon} John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1997). Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (1944). Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (1985). Lawrence Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, the Last Decade, 1915–1925 (1987). Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (1990). Kendrick A. Clements, Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism: Engineering the Good Life (2000). John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929 (1955). William E. Leuchtenberg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 (1958, 1993). Robert K. Murray, The Politics of Normalcy: Governmental Theory and Practice in the Harding–Coolidge Era (1973). Burl Noggle, Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s (1962). William Frazer and John J. Guthrie, Jr., The Florida Land Boom: Speculation, Money, and the Banks (1995). Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed: America’s Underclass from the Civil War to the Present (1992). Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (1994). Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream (1985). Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography (1970). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter21 To Chapter 21 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 734 ${bmicon}   1930 Beginning of construction of Hoover Dam. Hawley–Smoot Tariff. 1352 U.S. banks fail. 1931 Nine young African Americans (the “Scottsboro Boys”) arrested on charges of rape. 1932 Black unemployment rates reach 50 percent. “Bonus Army” marches on Washington, D.C. 1933 Initial New Deal (“Hundred Days”) legislation: AAA, FERA, CCC, TVA, NIRA. Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. Twenty-First Amendment ratified. 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) created. Federal Housing Authority created. 1935 National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act. Social Security Act. Committee of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organized. 1936 Civil war in Spain. Hoover Dam on Colorado River completed, creating Lake Mead. 1937 Japan invades China. 170,000 workers participate in sit-down strikes. FDR’s court-packing plan fails. 1938 Boxer Joe Louis defeats Max Schmeling. Fair Labor Standards Act. Congress creates Special Committee on Un-American Activities. 1939 First meeting of El Congreso de Pueblo de Hablan Espanola. 1940 Smith Act. Nazis invade Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. 1941 A. Philip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement. FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. 1942 Executive Order 9066 (internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans). Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) founded. Japan conquers the Philippines. THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND WORLD WAR II TESTED AMERICANS’ FAITH in their federal government to a degree unmatched in the nation’s history. Economic collapse in the 1930s and the threat of Nazi and Japanese aggression from 1941 to 1945 presented challenges beyond the reach of ordinary citizens, local communities, and businesses acting alone. The federal government began to take more responsibility for economic and social well-being at home and for the spread of American values around the world. The Great Depression resulted in a fundamental reordering of American politics. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who took office in 1933, believed that the federal government must assume an active role in banking, agriculture, and social welfare. He sponsored a large number of federal initiatives, known collectively as the New Deal. The New Deal aimed to put people back to work, restore faith in American businesses, boost purchasing power among consumers, and cushion the effects of economic downturns on industrial workers. The effects of the New Deal were uneven. Many workers, including domestic servants, agricultural laborers, and part-time and seasonal employees, did not qualify for Social Security and other benefits. In the South government policies that discouraged landowners from planting crops led to the displacement of many black and white sharecropping families. On the other hand, employees of many large companies won higher wages and improved job security as a result of militant labor protests. African American civil rights activists, such local communist organizations as urban Unemployed Councils, and southern sharecroppers’ and tenants’ unions gave voice to the groups hit hardest by the Depression. The New Deal did not end the Depression. On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese conducted a surprise air attack on the U.S. Pacific naval fleet stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Americans reacted with shock and outrage to what the president called this “day of infamy.” The U.S. entry into World War II put large numbers of Americans back to work, many of them in the expanding defense industries. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 735 ${bmicon}   The conflict brought Americans together in shared hardship, sacrifice, and national purpose. At the same time, the war placed strains on the social fabric. All over the country, family members separated from one another to search for work. In the Midwest blacks and whites competed for scarce wartime resources, such as housing. On the West Coast more than 100,000 Japanese immigrants and U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were forced into internment camps. Elected to an unprecedented fourth term in 1944, Roosevelt proved to be a commanding leader during wartime as well as depression. In the last stages of the war, the president met several times with his British and Soviet counterparts, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, to plan for the postwar reconstruction of Europe and Asia. Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 catapulted Vice President Harry S. Truman into the presidency. Germany surrendered to the Allies the next month. In August 1945, the new president authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively ending the war in the Pacific. Together, the two bombs killed 120,000 Japanese civilians and wounded at least 130,000 more. The Atomic Age ushered in a new chapter in the history of human warfare. Together with its allies, the United States emerged victorious from the war, but unlike its allies, America escaped physical destruction. Yet in many respects the postwar world was radically different from the world of the 1930s. The Soviet Union, an ally in the war against Germany and Japan, emerged as America’s greatest enemy. The development of weapons of mass destruction introduced a new and profound threat to the natural environment, as well as to humans. To secure its supremacy in world affairs, the United States helped to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). For the first time, Americans were part of a multination peacetime alliance, one that required them to defend a member of the alliance even if they themselves were not attacked. World War II also profoundly altered life in the United States. The perceived communist threat led some Americans to suspect domestic groups of internal subversion: African Americans agitating for their civil rights, labor leaders attempting to organize southern factories, and leftists who expressed support for communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular. Supported by government contracts, the defense industry became an integral part of the nation’s economy. Recovering quickly from the disruptions of war, returning soldiers and their wives hoped to settle down to a normal family life. These couples produced the baby boom, a generation that shaped American culture and society in significant ways. In the new and growing suburbs, many (predominantly white) Americans achieved their dream of home ownership, and businesses found plenty of room to expand in new industrial parks. Yet, not all Americans shared in this new found prosperity and security, and not all were willing to forgo their rights to free speech and free assembly in the struggle against communism. 1943 Smith–Connally Act. Zoot-suit riots in Los Angeles. Attacks on blacks in Detroit. 1944 Normandy invasion on D-Day (June 6). Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill). 1945 Harry S. Truman becomes president upon death of Roosevelt. First test of atomic bomb, Alamagordo, New Mexico. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. V-E Day (May 7); V-J Day (Sept. 2). United Nations created. 1946 Morgan v. West Virginia outlaws segregation in interstate transportation. Winston Churchill gives “Iron Curtain” speech, Fulton, Missouri. 1947 Jackie Robinson joins Brooklyn Dodgers. Taft–Hartley Act. Truman Doctrine of containing communism announced. 1948 New Mexico and Arizona grant Indians right to vote. Modern state of Israel founded. Armed Services desegregated. Organization of American States (OAS) founded. 1949 Billy Graham launches his first evangelical crusade in Los Angeles. Establishment of People’s Republic of China. USSR acquires nuclear weapons. 1950 North Korean troops invade South Korea. Internal Security Act of 1950. Sen. Joseph McCarthy accuses State Department of harboring communists. 1951 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg convicted of treason. 1952 McCarran–Walter Act. Puerto Rico becomes self-governing commonwealth. 1953 Korean War ends. Soviet leader Josef Stalin dies. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 736 ${bmicon}         The Great Depression       Presidential Responses to the Depression       The New Deal       A New Political Culture       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 737 ${bmicon} IN 1934, WILL ROGERS COMMENTED ON THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION DURING HIS weekly radio broadcast. He noted that it was “not the working classes that brought on the economic crisis, it was the big boys that thought the financial drunk was going to last forever, and overbought, overmerged and overcapitalized.” As a result, the “difference between our rich and poor grows greater every year…. Our rich are getting richer all the time…. There was not a millionaire in the country whose fortune did not come from the labor of others. We need to arrange it so that a man that wants work can get work, and give him a more equal division of the wealth the country produces.” Rogers was a Cherokee, a comedian, a plainspoken critic of the nation’s rich and powerful, a movie star, journalist, and advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Rogers articulated a new vision of American national identity that took shape in the 1930s. In contrast to an earlier notion of the United States as an Anglo-Saxon country into which newcomers might assimilate, this new Americanism included ethnic minorities, particularly those of European immigrant background. The Great Depression tarnished the status of the nation’s business elite and opened up the political process to party realignments and new leaders. The popular culture expressed and reflected this new Americanism; Will Rogers was its most prominent voice. When the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times condemned him for his criticism of corporate elites, Rogers responded with a humorous assault on the nation’s Anglo-Saxon leaders and their myths: I have a different slant on things, for my ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower. They met the boat…. I hope my Cherokee blood is not making me prejudiced, I want to be broad minded, but I am sure it was only the extreme generosity of the Indians that allowed the Pilgrims to land anywhere. Suppose we reverse the case. Do you reckon the Pilgrims would have ever let the Indians land? Yeah, what a chance, what a chance. The Pilgrims wouldn’t even allow the Indians to live after the Indians went to the trouble of letting them land, of course, but they’d always pray…. You’ve never in your life … seen a picture of one of the old Pilgrims praying when he didn’t have a gun right by the side of him. That was to see that he got what he was praying for. Born in Oolagah in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma in 1879, Rogers got his start as a rope-twirling Indian cowboy on the vaudeville circuit. Like earlier Indian adventurers, including Sitting Bull, he worked his way through Wild West shows, which offered him an opportunity to demonstrate his impressive riding and roping skills, even though he found the spectacles demeaning to Native Americans, who were always defeated in the shows’ mock battles. He came to Hollywood in the 1920s, where his Cherokee identity shaped both his humor and his social criticism. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 738 ${bmicon} In the 1930s the Great Depression gave rise to a cultural and political upheaval that helped propel Rogers to stardom and political influence. President Franklin Roosevelt coveted his support, and Rogers obliged by promoting the New Deal, the president’s program for economic recovery. However, Rogers also pushed the president to the left by advocating such measures as taxing the rich and redistributing wealth. In 1932 Oklahoma nominated Rogers for president as the state’s favorite son; three years later, California Democratic leaders urged him to run for the Senate. But in 1935, before any of these possibilities could come to fruition, Rogers died in a plane crash. The response to Rogers’s death illustrates his stature as a national leader and spokesperson for a new multicultural Americanism. Congress adjourned in his memory, President Roosevelt sent a well-publicized letter to Rogers’s family, the governor of California proclaimed a day of mourning, flags flew at half mast, bells rang in Rogers’s honor in more than 100 cities, and nearly 100,000 people filed by his coffin at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Radio stations across the country broadcast his memorial service from the Hollywood Bowl, presided over by a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest, while a Yiddish performer sang a Hebrew mourning chant. Across town, Mexican American citizen groups placed a wreath on Olvera Street that read “Nosotros Lamentamos la Muerte de Will Rogers” (“We Mourn the Death of Will Rogers”). In the predominantly black Los Angeles community of Watts, an African American fraternal group called the Friends of Ethiopia joined black performers from Rogers’s films in a parade to honor the Cherokee movie star who had spoken out publicly against Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. Back in his hometown of Claremore, Oklahoma, the Cherokee Indians performed a death dance in memory of their fallen kinsman. The economic crisis opened the door for a politically radical Cherokee Indian to become one of the most popular figures of the Great Depression. This massive national grieving reveals not only Rogers’s popularity, but also the culture of 1930s America. The economic crisis unleashed changes in society that opened the door for a politically radical Cherokee Indian to become one of the most popular figures of the Great Depression. Millions of Americans experienced poverty—many for the first time. The shared experience of loss and suffering permeated the country. In the face of widespread hardship, many people felt a common bond and a fresh sense of themselves as Americans. This new type of Americanism was articulated most powerfully by Will Rogers. Those who subscribed to a changing national vision opposed the power of big business, participated actively in the emerging popular culture, and voted Democratic. Many of them came to the polls for the first time to vote for Roosevelt. They included native-born and foreign-born, working class and middle class, Anglo-Saxons and ethnic minorities, and people of color. Roosevelt drew a new political coalition into the Democratic Party that elected him to the presidency four times. The Depression gave him the opportunity to forge a strong national government and to promote a more representative democracy. His inclusiveness efforts brought citizens of recent immigrant background into the political mainstream but stopped short of the color line. Nevertheless, African American voters abandoned the Republican party to vote for FDR. The New Deal, a package of remedies put together by Franklin Roosevelt to address the problems of the Depression, provided relief to many Americans in need but did not eradicate poverty or end the Depression. Yet, as American families from every region of the country drew around their radios to hear the president’s “fireside chats,” as they made heroes of Will Rogers and other outsider celebrities, and as they held onto their faith in the nation’s promise in spite of its worst economic crisis, they helped forge a more inclusive nation. CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 739 ${bmicon} The Great Depression defined the 1930s in the United States. It shaped the culture, the political life of the nation, the public policies that resulted, and the cultural expressions that reflected the spirit of the people during a time of national crisis. Its effects permeated the lives of Americans from the mansions of the wealthy to the shanties of the poor and from the boardrooms to the bedrooms. But the story is not simply one of despair and hardship. It is also one of strong communities, resourcefulness, and hope. The Great Depression of the 1930s was the worst depression in the nation’s history. But it was neither the first nor the last. Capitalism, the economic system that forms the basis of the American economy, has cycles of ups and downs. Under capitalism, the free market operates with minimal interference from the government. In the United States, prior to the 1930s, the government stepped in to regulate the economy primarily to protect economic competition. Progressive-era reforms prevented corporations from establishing monopolies, so that competition could flourish and businesses could prosper. In the free market economy, consumers would determine which companies would succeed, based on the quality of their products and services. Because the government did not determine the levels of industrial or agricultural productivity, and did not set the prices, the economy was subject to changing circumstances that led to times of prosperity and times of recession or, in the case of severe economic downturns, depression. The circumstances that affected the up-and-down cycles of the economy included international economic trends, as well as the workings of capitalism itself. The story of the Depression is not simply one of despair and hardship. It is also one of strong communities, resourcefulness, and hope. Communism and socialism provide different economic systems, with greater levels of government regulation. Communist countries have state-directed economies in which the government owns and operates the means of production, sets prices, and pays all workers’ wages. There is no free market and no competition among businesses. In socialist states, governments own and operate certain industries and services, such as electricity and other utilities, or health care systems. Socialist countries also provide citizens with certain welfare benefits such as medical care, relief from poverty, income for the unemployed, and old age insurance. A number of capitalist countries offer these kinds of benefits to their citizens. These countries operate under a system known as “welfare capitalism,” or a “welfare state.” Before the 1930s the United States provided none of these welfare state benefits. Without any policies that would serve as a safety net for workers who lost their jobs, many wage earners and their families fell into poverty during times of economic downturn. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, the economic crisis was so severe that one quarter of the nation’s workers, nearly 14 million people, lost their jobs, leaving them and their families—40 million people in all—without any income or security. Many of these people had never known poverty before. Among the newly poor were thousands of middle-class Americans who now faced the loss of their homes and savings. For working-class and poor Americans, the impact of the depression was devastating because they had little economic security to begin with. The Depression was a global economic catastrophe. Of the major world powers, only the Soviet Union—as a communist society, with state-directed labor, agriculture, and production—was immune to the collapse of the capitalist system after 1929. In fact, its economy grew throughout the 1930s. The relative health of the Soviet economy led many people in troubled capitalist systems to look to communism as an alternative. Socialism gained many converts across Europe, as did communism. The powerful nations of the world all moved toward greater government intervention in their economies. England, France, and the United States moved toward deficit spending to help stimulate the economy and instituted relief programs. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 740 ${bmicon} Italy, Germany, and Japan also increased government intervention into the economy, but they used different strategies to address the crisis, particularly military spending. These varied responses to the Depression contributed to the conflicts and alliances that would eventually culminate in World War II. Within the United States, the business values that had prevailed throughout the 1920s were now suspect. Business practices in every area of the economy, from finance to factories to agriculture, contributed to the disaster. For many Americans the Depression really began in the 1920s. Food production and distribution stumbled along weakly throughout the 1920s, leaving widespread rural poverty in its wake. Large corporations bought up smaller companies, putting many independent shops and manufacturers out of business. During the 1920s, 1200 big corporations absorbed more than 6000 independent businesses. By 1929, 200 corporations controlled nearly half of all industry, which limited competition and made it difficult for new, smaller businesses to flourish. The concentration of wealth among the richest Americans during the 1920s contributed to the persistence of the crisis in the 1930s. Although the economy looked healthy on the surface, prosperity rested on an unsound foundation. Many people obtained consumer goods on credit, so when people lost their jobs, they could not pay their debts. Throughout the 1920s, the gap between the rich and poor increased. By 1929 the top 1 percent of Americans earned 14.7 percent of the nation’s income, while the poorest 40 percent shared 12.5 percent. Nearly 80 percent of the nation’s families had no savings at all. Those with high annual incomes of $10,000 or more—2.3 percent of the people—held two-thirds of all savings. As Will Rogers and many other social critics would later point out, the concentration of wealth among the richest Americans during the 1920s contributed to the persistence of the crisis in the 1930s. International factors also played a role in the economic collapse. American overseas loans soared in the 1920s, reaching $900 million by 1924 and $1.25 billion by 1928. Germany was a large borrower, for example. Following its defeat in World War I, Germany had been required to make large reparation payments to France and other countries. The United States provided loans to Germany to help the country make its payments; Germany then made debt payments to the United States. When the stock market crashed, foreign economies like that of Germany also weakened and could not repay their debts. To make matters worse, American exports fell $1.5 billion between 1929 and 1933. The United States had established high tariffs to keep foreign goods out of the country so that Americans would buy only American-made goods. This, in turn, encouraged other countries to establish their own tariff barriers. Between 1929 and 1933, the Gross National Product (GNP) fell by $12 billion. In human terms the Depression of the 1930s dealt a devastating blow to large numbers of Americans: crushing poverty, hunger, humiliation, and loss of dignity and self-worth. Many felt a profound shame that they could no longer earn a living and support their families. The few jobs available often went to the young, strong, well-fed, and well-groomed. Thousands of citizens poured out their hearts in letters to the president, hoping that the government could provide some assistance. In 1934 an Oklahoma woman lamented, “The unemployed have been so long without food-clothes-shoes-medical care-dental care etc—we look prety bad—so when we ask for a job we dont’ get it. And we look and feel a little worse each day—when we ask for food they call us bums—it isent our fault … no we are not bums.” Yet, the shabby appearance of the jobless helped neither their self-respect nor their work prospects. An unemployed worker from Oregon explained the difficult choices: “We do not dare to use even a little soap when it will pay for an extra egg [or] a few more carrots for our children.” CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 741 ${bmicon} full view “World’s Highest Standard of Living” Billboard The billboard along U.S. Highway 99 in California in 1937 proclaimed “There is no way like the American Way.” For those who migrated west only to find low paying jobs, the message would have seemed sadly ironic. (Library of Congress) full view Depression-Era Breadlines The Great Depression devastated millions who lost their jobs and often the means to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families. Breadlines stretched as far as the eye could see as impoverished workers lined up in the hope of obtaining some meager rations for their hungry families. (Library of Congress) Families provided the first line of defense against disaster, especially in the early days of the crisis. Many families adapted to hard times by abandoning time-honored gender roles. As men lost jobs, women went to work. More than 6 million single women held jobs during the Depression. Married women also took jobs to support their families, often providing the only source of income if husbands were out of work. These women often faced hostility from those who assumed that employed wives with husbands to support them took jobs from unemployed men. But, in fact, working women did not take jobs from men; rather, they held jobs defined as “traditional women’s work” as secretaries, nurses, and waitresses. These jobs offered lower wages than most jobs held by men. Still, they provided at least a modicum of much-needed income. Sons and daughters also went to work. For the younger generation, taking on the responsibilities of adulthood provided a sense of independence and self-respect. Marriage rates plummeted as young people delayed or decided against wedlock. As one daughter of Italian immigrants from Providence, Rhode Island, remarked, “It’s not that I didn’t want to get married, but when you are working and have your own money,” there was no hurry to find a husband. Recalled another, “During all the years I worked, I had a boyfriend, but we both had responsibilities at home…. Now they say ‘career woman’but at the time you wouldn’t call yourself that. It’s just because you felt you had a responsibility at home, too.” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 742 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Songs of the Great Depression Popular songs expressed the spirit, sorrows, and longings of Depression-era Americans. According to folk music historian Alan Lomax, the 12-year-old daughter of a striking Harlan County, Kentucky, mine worker wrote “Which Side Are You On?” in 1937. The song became a popular anthem for labor militancy. Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) wrote more than a thousand songs about the struggles of common people and the dispossessed. As a teenager, Guthrie left home to hitchhike, ride the rails, live in hobo camps, and follow migrant workers around the country. His song “Union Maid” expresses the hopes and spirit of union workers, and “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh” captures the sorrows of Dust Bowl migrants. “Which Side Are You On?” by Florence Reece (sung to the tune of an old English song, “Jack Munro”) Come all of you good workers Good news to you I’ll tell Of how the good old union Has come in here to dwell. Chorus: Which side are you on, Tell me, which side are you on? My daddy was a miner, He’s now in the air an’ sun, Stick with him, brother miners, Until this battle’s won. They say in Harlan County There are no neutrals there You’ll either be a union man, Or a thug for J. H. Blair. O gentlemen, can you stand it, O tell me if you can, Will you be a lousy scab, Or will you be a man? Don’t scab for the bosses, Don’t listen to their lies, Us poor folks haven’t got a chance, Unless we organize. Source: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? by Florence Reece © Copyright 1947 by STORMKING MUSIC, INC. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Union Maid” by Woody Guthrie (first verse and chorus) There once was a union maid Who never was afraid Of goons and ginks and company finks And the deputy sheriffs who made the raids; She went to the union hall When a meeting it was called And when the company boys came ‘round She always stood her ground. Chorus: Oh, you can’t scare me. I’m sticking to the union, (3 times) Oh, you can’t scare me. I’m sticking to the union, (2 times) Till the day I die. Source: UNION MAID. Words and music by Woody Guthrie. TRO-© Copyright 1961 (Renewed) 1963 (Renewed) Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, NY. Used by permission. “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust)” by Woody Guthrie (selected verses and chorus) I’ve sung this song, but I’ll sing it again, Of the place that I lived on the wild, windy plains, In the month called April, the county called Gray And here’s what all of the people there say: Chorus: So long, it’s been good to know you; (3 times) This dusty old dust is a-getting my home, And I’ve got to be driftin’ along. A dust storm hit, and it hit like thunder; It dusted us over, and it covered us under; Blocked out the traffic and blocked out the sun. Straight for home all the people did run. The sweethearts sat in the dark and they sparked, They hugged and they kissed in that dusty old dark, They sighed and cried, hugged and kissed Instead of marriage, they talked like this: Honey, so long, it’s been good to know you… Now, the telephone rang, and it jumped off the wall; That was the preacher a-making his call. He said, “Kind friend, this may be the end; You’ve got your last chance of salvation of sin.” The churches was jammed, and the churches was packed, And that dusty old dust storm blowed so black; The preacher could not read a word of his text, And he folded his specs and he took up collection, said: So long, it’s been good to know you…. Source: SO LONG It’s Been Good To Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust). Words and music by Woody Guthrie. TRO-© Copyright 1940 (Renewed) 1950 (Renewed) 1963 (Renewed) Folkways Music Publishers, Inc., New York, NY. Used by permission. Many parents struggled to provide for their families under difficult conditions, sometimes risking their health and safety to do so. Erminia Pablita Ruiz Mercer remembered when her father was injured while working in the beet fields in 1933. “He didn’t want to live if he couldn’t support his family,” so he risked experimental back surgery and died on the operating table. Young Erminia then dropped out of school to work as “a doughnut girl” to support her mother and sisters. For many poor families, hard times were nothing new. As one black man noted, “The Negro was born in depression. It only became official when it hit the white man.” Throughout the 1930s black Americans suffered the impact of economic hard times disproportionately. By 1932 black unemployment reached 50 percent. As increasing numbers of white workers joined the ranks of the unemployed, they began seeking the jobs that were usually held by black workers, even though they would have shunned such work during prosperous times. With local white Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 743 ${bmicon} authorities in charge of relief, impoverished Southern blacks had few places to turn for assistance. African Americans also faced increasing violence; the number of lynchings increased from 8 in 1932 to 20 in 1935. Many poor people joined the growing ranks of hobos, riding the rails from town to town looking for work. But poverty did not erase racial hierarchies or sexual codes, especially for nine young blacks who came to be known as the “Scottsboro Boys.” On March 25, 1931, the youths, ranging in age from 13 to 21, were taken from a train in Paint Rock, Alabama, after a fight with a group of white men. Two white women, also on the train, accused the nine of rape. Narrowly avoiding a lynching, the youths were taken to jail in Scottsboro, where they began a long ordeal. Within two weeks an all-white jury convicted them of rape, and they were sentenced to death. The communist-backed International Labor Defense (ILD) took up the case and appealed it to the Alabama Supreme Court. The ILD also organized protests and rallies across the country, calling for justice for the Scottsboro Boys. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also tried to get control of the case but withdrew when the defendants committed themselves to the ILD. In spite of the ILD efforts, the PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 744 ${bmicon} Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions, but in November 1932 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial on the grounds that the defendants did not get a fair trial. The first defendant to be re-tried was quickly convicted again and sentenced to death. At this point, the ILD and the NAACP organized new protests and gained support from across the political spectrum. The case became a major rallying point for civil rights activists, liberals, and radicals throughout the 1930s. Support for the young men came from all over the world, including the British Parliament and the Communist Party. In 1935 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the second set of convictions on the grounds that excluding blacks from the jury denied the defendants due process. Yet in the next two years, five of the defendants were again tried and found guilty. Although none of the Scottsboro Boys was executed, they all spent long years in prison. The charges against the youngest four were eventually dropped. Although all appeals failed and the five remaining prisoners were never cleared of the crime, several were paroled, and the last of the nine was released from prison in 1950. In 1976 the repentant former segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, pardoned one of the nine, Clarence Norris. Racial discrimination intensified the suffering of African Americans during the Depression. By 1935, 90 percent of employed black women worked as either domestics or agricultural laborers. As these jobs became scarce, black women’s labor-force participation fell from 42 percent to 38 percent over the decade. A white woman working for wages earned, on average, 61 percent of a white man’s wages; a black woman earned a mere 23 percent. Mexican American families could barely survive on the low wages paid to Mexican laborers. According to a 1933 study, working children’s earnings constituted more than one-third of their families’ total income. The work was often grueling. Julia Luna Mount recalled her first day at a Los Angeles cannery: “I didn’t have money for gloves so I peeled chilies all day long Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 745 ${bmicon} full view MAP 22.1 DUST AND DROUGHT, 1931–1939 Drought cut a giant swath across the middle of America during the years of the Great Depression. The hardest hit region was the Dust Bowl area of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. Many people fled the afflicted areas, abandoning farms, piling their belongings on their cars, and driving along Route 66 to California. by hand. After work, my hands were red, swollen, and I was on fire! On the streetcar going home, I could hardly hold on my hands hurt so much.” Young Julia was lucky—her father saw her suffering and did not make her return to the cannery. But Carmen Bernal Escobar’s father could not afford to be soft-hearted about work: “My father was a busboy and to keep the family going … in order to bring in a little more money … my mother, my grandmother, my mother’s brother, my sister and I all worked together” at the cannery. full view Mexican Workers and Their Cars Even Mexican farm workers, who often found themselves deported back to Mexico in the 1930s, shocked foreign observers because they drove automobiles, though often old and repaired. In much of the rest of the world, only the wealthy drove cars. (Library of Congress) Those with cannery work, hard as it was, were among the fortunate. Many more Mexicans were deported. Between 1931 and 1934, more than 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans—approximately one-third of the Mexican population in the United States—were sent to Mexico. Most were children born in the United States. Throughout the century, the United States opened or closed its doors to Mexican immigrants depending on the need for their labor. They were deported during the Depression when unemployment was high, then recruited again during the labor shortage of World War II. In the 1930s Mexicans who applied for relief were offered assistance only if they agreed to return to Mexico. But deportation brought more sorrows. In Ciudad Juarez 2000 repatriates lived in a large open corral without resources or shelter; dozens died from disease. full view Abandoned Oklahoma Farmstead, 1937 This abandoned farm in rural Oklahoma was one of thousands left deserted due to the drought and dust storms of the 1930s. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers were hit the hardest of all. (National Archives) full view Agricultural Worker’s Shack In the photograph, taken by the Farm Security Administration, one gets a sense of the poor living conditions endured by millions of Americans in the 1930s. (Library of Congress) full view Despair in the Texas Panhandle Photograph by Dorothea Lange which captures the despair of a typical migrant California family during the Depression. (Library of Congress) Severe drought exacerbated the difficulties of farmers across Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, an area that came to be known as the Dust Bowl. Farmers had used PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 746 ${bmicon} the land mainly for grazing until high grain prices during World War I enticed them to plow under millions of acres of natural grasslands to plant wheat. Plowing removed root systems from the soil, and years of little rainfall caused the land to dry up. By the middle of the decade high winds picked up the loose topsoil, creating dust storms across the open plains, as far as 1000 miles. The worst storm occurred on April 14, 1935, when winds up to 70 miles per hour carried clouds of dust that turned the sky black, suffocated livestock, and lodged in people’s homes, clothes, hair, and lungs. The ecological disaster drove 60 percent of the population out of the region. full view Family in a Dust Storm During the 1930s, drought conditions in the West and Midwest only aggravated the economic calamity for millions of rural Americans. Here a father and his son struggle through a dust storm in Oklahoma in 1936. (Library of Congress) full view Abandoned Oklahoma Farmstead, 1937 This abandoned farm in rural Oklahoma was one of thousands left deserted due to the drought and dust storms of the 1930s. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers were hit the hardest of all. (National Archives) full view From Texas Farmer to Migratory Worker From Texas Farmer to Migratory Worker full view Arkies on the Road This photo show an Arkansas woman performing chores is a makeshift camp. The sight of people “on the road,” often with all of their belongings, was very common in the Depression Era. (Library of Congress) Migrant farm families fleeing the Dust Bowl came to symbolize the suffering wrought by the Depression. The photographs of Dorothea Lange, the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the writings of John Steinbeck all immortalized their plight. Steinbeck’s Pulitzer prize–winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and its film version have remained classics of American popular art. Writing in The Nation three years before the publication of The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Steinbeck described the Dust Bowl migrants streaming into California: full view John Steinbeck John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath (1939). His novel is the best portrayal of the desperate plight of the millions of people impoverished by the Depression. Poverty-stricken after the destruction of their farms, their last reserves used up in making the trip, they have arrived so beaten and destitute that they have been willing at first to work under any conditions and for any wages offered…. They are not drawn from a peon class, but have either owned small farms or been farm hands in the early American sense, in which the “hand” is a member of the employing family. They have one fixed idea, and that is to acquire land and settle on it…. They are not easily intimidated. They are courageous, intelligent, and resourceful. Having gone through the horrors of the drought and with immense effort having escaped from it, they cannot be herded, attacked, starved, or frightened. CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 747 ${bmicon} Thousands of “Okies” piled belongings on their cars and made their way to California in hopes of starting over. There they joined Mexican migrant farm workers, African American laborers, and others down on their luck hoping for work. full view FIGURE 22.1 URBAN AND RURAL POPULATION, 1890–1990 In the nineteenth century the American population was primarily rural. During the twentieth century, the population became predominantly urban. Until the collapse of the economy, President Herbert Hoover’s political achievements had earned wide admiration. He seemed the perfect embodiment of the spirit of the prosperous 1920s. But his ideas about politics and economics were ill suited to the crisis of the 1930s. Dissatisfaction with Hoover’s response to the Depression gave Franklin Delano Roosevelt a landslide victory in the 1932 presidential election. Promising to take action to ease the nation’s suffering, the optimistic Roosevelt seemed to embody hope for an end to the crisis. Hoover’s first major political achievement came in Europe during World War I, when he headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium. There he organized a massive effort funded by private and government contributions that fed more than 9 million people for nearly five years. Later, he became the U.S. food administrator and headed the American Relief Administration. He earned praise as a visionary progressive for his ability to mobilize volunteer efforts and to find efficient ways to meet people’s needs. President Warren Harding then appointed him Secretary of Commerce. It is no surprise that the popular Republican won the presidency in 1928. But even Hoover worried about “the exaggerated idea the people have conceived of me. They have a conviction that I am a sort of superman, that no problem is beyond my capacity…. If some unprecedented calamity should come upon the nation… I would be sacrificed to the unreasoning disappointment of a people who expected too much.” The unprecedented calamity arrived, and Hoover’s predictions were correct. Had prosperity continued, Hoover might have left a legacy of outstanding leadership. Declaring that “excessive fortunes are a menace to true liberty,” he favored steeply graduated inheritance and income taxes on the wealthy, with no tax burden on the poor. He believed that society had a responsibility to care for those in need and that the prosperous should bear much of the burden. After the stock market crash, Hoover increased spending for public works—programs in which the government created jobs for people who needed employment—to the unprecedented sum of $700 million. He established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make government credit available to banks and other financial institutions. Seeking to restore confidence in the economy, he strove for a balanced budget by raising taxes and cutting spending—a strategy that underestimated the depth of the Depression and made the situation worse. full view Seattle, WA, Shantytown A shantytown on the outskirts of Seattle, where many unemployed had to erect hovels from scraps of lumber, tar paper, and cardboard. (University of Washington Libraries, Special Collection Division) full view Children with “Hoover’s Poor Farm” Sign Children with sign “Hoover’s Poor Farm.” Hoover was blamed for everything that went wrong after the 1929 crash. (Library of Congress) As the Depression set in and brought widespread misery, Hoover fully expected that charitable organizations would step in and provide charity to the poor. He believed that government relief to the needy had demoralizing effects on people. In 1931 he pledged that if voluntary and local efforts were unable “to prevent hunger and suffering in my country, I will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal Government.” But he had “faith in the American people that such a day [would] never come.” Even when it was clear that the crisis was beyond the help of charitable groups, Hoover remained strongly opposed to direct relief for the poor. Private giving did increase to record levels; unfortunately, it was not sufficient. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 748 ${bmicon} Hoover felt that giving people the means to make a living was better than offering them direct relief. Thus, for example, he approved a grant of $45 million to feed livestock during the 1930 drought but rejected a proposed grant of $25 million to feed farmers and their families. His logic was consistent: Livestock provided farmers with the means to make a living so they could feed their families. But this philosophy offered little comfort to farmers who watched their families starve as their hogs lapped up food provided by the government. Hoover’s popularity reached its lowest ebb in 1932. A group of World War I veterans in Portland, Oregon, organized a march on Washington D.C. called the Bonus March. The veterans were due to receive a bonus of $1000 each in 1945. The group had asked to have their bonuses early, in 1932, to help ease their suffering during the Depression. But Hoover refused. More than 20,000 veterans traveled to Washington to petition Congress. The House passed a bill to pay the bonus immediately, but the Senate refused to follow suit. The determined veterans set up a tent city and settled in with their families. On the last day of the congressional session, when Hoover again refused to meet with the protesters, the veterans began to leave. But some did not depart quickly enough, and a police officer began shooting at the unarmed demonstrators, killing one person. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur stepped in and escalated the violence. His troops used tear gas and bayonets to prod the veterans and their families to vacate the area, then set fire to the tent city. The attack injured more than 100 people and killed one baby. The image of federal troops assaulting a group of peaceful veterans horrified the public. Although MacArthur had ordered the brutality, the public directed its outrage against Hoover. As most people saw it, Hoover had heartlessly spurned the veterans’ legitimate request. By the time of the 1932 election, Hoover had lost most of his public support. In contrast to Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born into a family of wealth and privilege whose ancestors included European aristocrats and passengers on the Mayflower. Pampered as a child, at age 14 he went to Groton, the nation’s most exclusive boarding school; from there he attended Harvard College and Columbia Law School. In 1905, during his first year at Columbia, he married a distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the niece of former president Theodore Roosevelt. Like Franklin, Eleanor came from a sheltered, upper-class background. But her early life, unlike his, was filled with sadness. Both her parents died when she was a young child, and at age 10 she went to live with her grandmother, who left her in the care of a harsh governess. The young woman began to flourish when she went abroad to study. The rigorous education developed her strengths and confidence, which would serve her well during her marriage to FDR. full view Burning Bonus Army Shacks, 1932 U.S. soldiers burn the Bonus army shacks within sight of the Capitol in the summer of 1932. This image of the failure of the American dream was published widely around the world. (National Archives) full view Evicting the Bonus Army To evict the Bonus Army marchers, troops, under the direction of the Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur and Major George S. Patton, donned gas masks, fixed bayonets and, with sabers drawn, moved down Pennsylvania Avenue. (National Archives) full view Bonus Expeditionary Force March on Washington Unsuccessfully seeking early payment of a ‘bonus’ all World War I veterans were to receive in 1945, several thousand “Bonus Army” marchers converged for a rally on the steps of the Capitol in 1932. (Library of Congress) Eleanor bore six children in ten years. A reserved woman raised in the Victorian tradition of sexual reticence, she turned to abstinence to avoid additional pregnancies. In 1918 Eleanor discovered that Franklin was having an affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Eleanor offered him a divorce, but Franklin promised to end the affair, and the two remained married—although they did not live together. The Roosevelts developed a strong bond of friendship and a deep political alliance. FDR’s fondness for Mercer did not end, however. When he was on his deathbed, Eleanor was out of town and Mercer was at his side. Franklin Roosevelt was elected to the New York State Senate in 1911, and in 1913 he became Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1920. His political plans derailed suddenly in 1921 when he was stricken CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 749 ${bmicon} with polio. The painful and incapacitating illness threw the normally ebullient young man into despair. He had always assumed that he would control his own destiny. Now he could no longer use his legs. The formerly athletic Roosevelt depended on braces, crutches, and a wheelchair to move around. But his upbringing had given him extraordinary reserves of self-confidence and optimism, and these qualities helped to sustain him in the face of his paralysis. TABLE 22-1 The Election of 1932 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 22,821,857 472 Herbert Hoover Republican 15,761,841 59 Norman Thomas Socialist 881,951 0 FDR’s bout with polio and subsequent paralysis did nothing to dampen his political ambitions. He became governor of New York in 1928, following in the footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt. But, unlike his Republican cousin, Franklin was a Democrat. In the 1932 presidential campaign, FDR made few specific proposals, but promised the American people a “New Deal.” Although Hoover was intensely unpopular, he had supporters within the Republican party who defended his record and supported his efforts to balance the budget. Along with the Republican incumbent, there were other alternatives on the ballot, notably socialist Norman Thomas and communist William Z. Foster. Polls showed that 5 percent of the electorate favored Thomas, but in the end only half of those, fewer than 1 million voters, actually marked their ballots for Thomas, and a much smaller number for Foster. Many voters on the left cast their ballots for Roosevelt, fearing that a vote for Thomas might throw the election to Hoover. FDR won a landslide victory, the largest electoral margin since 1864. Like Theodore Roosevelt before him, FDR was committed to strengthening the federal government. But Franklin was less interested in protecting and preserving old-stock Anglo-Saxon Americans from the cultural and demographic impact of immigration than his Republican cousin had been. Lawmakers in the 1920s closed off immigration, silenced dissenters, deported foreign radicals, and suppressed labor insurgency. In contrast, FDR identified the Depression as the nation’s enemy rather than particular groups of Americans. His strategy was one of inclusion rather than exclusion; he welcomed the newcomers into his vision of America and cultivated their allegiance. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were among FDR’s most ardent supporters. Millions of them became naturalized citizens and voted for the first time in the 1930s, overwhelmingly as Democrats. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt endeavored to ease the nation’s anxieties with reassuring words: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Roosevelt launched his advance immediately. Panic had prompted many Americans to pull out their bank savings, causing many banks to fail. To stop the run on banks, FDR called Congress into a special session and announced a “bank holiday,” temporarily closing all the nation’s banks. He could have nationalized the banking system, a move toward socialism that would likely have received widespread support. But Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 750 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Presidents and the Media Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of several American presidents who used the media and the realm of popular culture to communicate effectively with the public and achieve political goals. Roosevelt broke new media ground with his use of the radio, particularly in his “fireside chats,” in which he reassured the people during the Great Depression and explained his New Deal programs in order to gain public support. Before the radio, presidents used their oratorical skills in stump speeches and public declarations. Abraham Lincoln was a gifted orator at a time when political rallies were not only important civic events but also major arenas of popular entertainment. Some of Lincoln’s major speeches, including his Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural, have become part of the national democratic canon. Theodore Roosevelt used the expanding popular press as a “bully pulpit” to gain public support for his domestic agenda of progressive reform and “trust busting” of large corporations, as well as for his military exploits abroad. John F. Kennedy took the media presidency to new heights with his effective mastery of television. Kennedy was the first president to inject an element of celebrity stardom into his media image, projecting an air of charm, grace, and wit. Although some found his media presence arrogant and aggressive, especially in televised debates during the 1960 campaign with his Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon, he used television effectively throughout his presidency to cast himself as a tough Cold Warrior, a vigorous athlete (despite serious chronic disabilities), and a devoted family man (despite his adulterous behavior). During tense moments of the Cold War, particularly in the midst of confrontations with the Soviet Union over control of Berlin and missiles in Cuba, he appeared on television to warn the Soviet leadership of his resolve and to rally the nation behind him. Ronald W. Reagan, known as the “great communicator,” was the first professional actor elected to the presidency. His ease in front of the camera and his talent as a communicator allowed him to achieve a personal connection with his audience. Reagan’s mastery of the media enabled him to convey his conservative political ideology to the nation and maintain broad-based popular support throughout his presidency. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton went one step further, appearing on talk shows, comedy hours, and MTV, where he played his saxophone, talked about his marital troubles, and answered personal questions about such things as the style of underwear he wore. By the time Clinton became president, the private lives and sexual behavior of politicians had become fair game for reporters. FDR and JFK had used the media to cultivate their images as strong leaders, while keeping their physical disabilities and their adulterous affairs far from public view. In those years journalistic ethics and etiquette placed the sexual behavior of presidents out of bounds. But all that had changed by the 1990s. The media exposed Clinton’s affair with a White House intern, flooding the nation and the world with massive and detailed coverage. Roosevelt favored government regulation, not government ownership. He proposed the Emergency Banking Bill, providing government support for private banks. Congress passed the bill instantly, to the applause of the bankers who helped draft it. In the first of his “fireside chats” to millions of radio listeners, whom he addressed as “my friends,” Roosevelt assured citizens that the banks that reopened were sound. He used the medium of radio skillfully to explain his policies and to communicate comforting and reassuring messages that reached people in the intimate setting of their homes. The next day, bank deposits exceeded withdrawals as a result of the confidence he inspired. full view FDR with Leg Braces The prevailing belief during FDR’s presidency was that a physical handicap was an indication of a deeper flaw, perhaps mental. To conceal his paralysis when he appeared in public, he concealed his heavy braces and leaned on the strong arm of a companion--usually one of his sons. (FDR Library) The New Deal drew on Progressive-era reform impulses to extend the reach of the federal government to solve social problems. It provided assistance to many Americans suffering the effects of the Depression and established the welfare state that would last half a century. Based on pragmatism, experimentation, and shrewd political calculation, FDR’s plan began with a flurry of activity in the first 100 days of his administration and developed Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 751 ${bmicon} into a more progressive agenda by 1935, often called the “second New Deal.” New Deal programs countered the cyclical nature of capitalism and offered a safety net for industrial workers. They legitimized labor unions and established a system of regulation and cooperation between industry and labor. Many New Deal programs failed, but those that succeeded created the foundation of the modern American state. The broad-based reform effort, however, did not end the Depression or eradicate poverty. FDR understood that the people wanted “action, and action now.” Roosevelt acted quickly and pragmatically. As one of his first acts, he encouraged Congress to repeal Prohibition. In 1933 the states quickly ratified the Twenty-First Amendment, repealing the Eighteenth. Repeal of Prohibition helped the economy by providing additional tax revenues from liquor sales, since they were now legal, and a market for farmers’ corn and wheat, which were used in the production of liquor. Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to oversee the stock market and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to reform the banking system and provide insurance for deposits. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 752 ${bmicon} TABLE 22-2 Key New Deal Legislation, 1933–1938 Year Act or Agency Key Provisions 1933 Emergency Banking Act Reopened banks under government supervision   Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Employed young men in reforestation, flood control, road construction, and soil erosion control projects   Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) Provided federal funds for state and local relief efforts   Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) Granted farmers direct payments for reducing crop production; funds for payment provided by a processing tax, later declared unconstitutional   Farm Mortgage Act Provided funds to refinance farm mortgages   Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Constructed dams and power projects and developed the economy of a seven-state area in the Tennessee River Valley   Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Provided funds for refinancing home mortgages of nonfarm homeowners   National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) Established a series of fair competition codes; created National Recovery Administration (NRA) to write, coordinate, and implement these codes; NIRA’s Section 7(a) guaranteed labor’s right to organize (act later declared unconstitutional)   Public Works Administration (PWA) Sought to increase employment and business activity by funding road construction, building construction, and other projects   Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Insured individual bank deposits   Civil Works Administration (CWA) Provided federal jobs for the unemployed 1934 Securities and Exchange Act Created Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate trading practices in stocks and bonds according to federal laws   Indian Reorganization Act Restored ownership of tribal lands to Native Americans; provided funds for job training and a system of agricultural and industrial credit   Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Insured loans provided by banks for the building and repair of houses 1935 Works Progress Administration (WPA) Employed more than 8 million people to repair roads, build bridges, and work on other projects   National Youth Administration (NYA) WPA program that provided job training for unemployed youths and part-time jobs for students in need   Federal One WPA program that provided financial assistance for writers, artists, musicians, and actors   National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) Recognized the right of employees to join labor unions and to bargain collectively, reinstating the provisions of NIRA’s Section 7(a); created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce laws against unfair labor practices   Social Security Act Created a system of social insurance that included unemployment compensation and old-age survivors’ insurance; paid for by a joint tax on employers and employees 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act Established a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour and a standard work week of 44 hours for businesses engaged in interstate commerce full view Dr. William H. Hastie - “Black Cabinet” Member Although not actually cabinet rank, “Black Cabinet” members’ high visibility and real, rather than symbolic, advisory roles provided support for change and a model for hope. In 1933, Dr. William H. Hastie left his private law practice to accept the position of assistant solicitor of the Department of the Interior. (National Archives) Roosevelt appointed a cabinet composed of a number of liberals, including Henry A. Wallace of Iowa as Secretary of Agriculture, Harold L. Ickes of Illinois as Secretary of the Interior, and Frances Perkins of New York as Secretary of Labor—the first woman ever appointed to the Cabinet. In addition to his cabinet, FDR appointed several academics to serve as advisors. Known as the Brain Trust, they included Raymond Moley, Adolfe Berle, and Rexford Tugwell of Columbia University; attorney Basil O’Connor; and Felix Frank- CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 753 ${bmicon} furter of Harvard Law School. They helped shape the New Deal into a program of reform that would preserve American capitalism. One of FDR’s most pressing challenges was to prop up prices for producers while keeping them low enough for consumers. Poverty in the midst of plenty was one of the Depression’s cruelest ironies. Because farmers could no longer afford to transport their goods to market, food rotted while millions of people went hungry. FDR took action by developing the Farm Relief Act. Included in the Farm Relief Act was the Farm Mortgage Act, which lowered mortgage rates for farmers to help them keep their farms. Also included was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). In a highly controversial provision of the AAA, the government sought to prop up farm prices by limiting supply. That is, it paid farmers to destroy livestock and take acreage out of production. Many Americans recoiled at the systematic slaughter of 6 million piglets and the plowing under of 10 million acres of cotton. This policy boosted profits for larger farms but did little to alleviate the problems of smaller, poorer farmers. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers fared even worse. The desperation and pride of rural Americans came through in countless letters to Eleanor Roosevelt. A woman from Winnsboro, Louisiana, pleaded with the First Lady: “I don’t want on the relif if I can help it i want to work for my livin byt the last thing we have is gone. … Don’t you know its aful to have to get out and no place to have a roof over your sick child and nothing to eat I cant tell all my troubles.” Most Americans in need desperately wanted to work. They considered government relief a signal of failure and a source of deep shame and humiliation. Many citizens searched for ways to preserve their pride. One woman wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt asking to borrow money in order to avoid charity: full view Dorothea Lange Photo for FSA Roy Stryker, director of the Farm Security Administration’s resettlement program, wanted photographs to convince the public that rural Americans faced difficulties but with help were capable of overcoming those troubles. Dorothea Lange, who took this photograph, experimented with compositions to meet Stryker’s needs. (Library of Congress) full view Dorothea Lange Photo - “Migrant Mother” “Migrant Mother,” by Dorothea Lange, is one of the best-known photographs commissioned by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the 1930s. (Library of Congress) Please Mrs. Roosevelt, I do not want charity, only a chance from someone who will trust me…. I am sending you two of my dearest possessions to keep as security, a ring my husband gave me before we were married, and a ring my mother used to wear…. If you will consider buying the baby clothes, please keep them (rings) until I send you the money you spent. It is very hard to face bearing a baby we cannot afford to have, and the fact that it is due to arrive soon, and still there is no money for the hospital or clothing, does not make it any easier. I have decided to stay home, keeping my 7 year old daughter from school to help with the smaller children when my husband has work…. The 7 year old one is a good willing little worker and somehow we must manage—but without charity. The writer of the letter included a list of items she needed. She concluded with, “If you will get these for me I would rather no one knew about it. I promise to repay the cost … as soon as possible.” In March 1933 Congress passed the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which provided $500 million in grants to the states for aid to the needy. Roosevelt placed Harry Hopkins in charge. Hopkins, an energetic and brash young reformer, disbursed $2 million during his first two hours on the job. He then persuaded Roosevelt to launch a temporary job program, the Civil Works Administration (CWA). The CWA provided government-sponsored Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 754 ${bmicon} full view MAP 22.2 AREAS SERVED BY THE TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) brought electricity to a large area in western Appalachia, one of the poorest regions in the country. The government-owned project strengthened the economy and improved living conditions in the area. jobs for more than 4 million workers. But the program came under fire from conservatives, and FDR ended it a few months later. full view Evicted Black Sharecroppers - Arthur Rothstein Photo Arthur Rothstein photograph of evicted black sharecroppers along a Missouri road in 1939. (Library of Congress) full view African-American Family on the Road Even before the US entered WWII, black families like this one moved north to look for work and a better life. This massive migration would change the racial mix in many northern cities but was often disappointing to those who made the journey. (Library of Congress) The New Deal included two major programs that addressed conservation and environmental issues. In 1933, Roosevelt combined his interest in conservation with his goal of providing work for unemployed young men. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) operated under the control of the Army. CCC workers lived in camps, wore uniforms, and conformed to military discipline. They planted millions of trees, dug canals and ditches, built more than 30,000 wilderness shelters, stocked rivers and lakes with nearly 1 billion fish, and preserved historic sites. Their work revived depleted forests and provided flood control. By 1935 the CCC had employed more than 500,000 young men and kept them, in FDR’s words, “off the city street corners.” full view The Tennessee Valley Authority For many Americans, especially those who lived in the Tennessee Valley, the TVA epitomized the New Deal as the largest federal construction project ever, bringing jobs and modernization to the area. The facilities at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, were established during WWI and became the basis for a larger project that was approved by Congress in May 1933. Another measure that linked natural resources to the recovery effort was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). On May 18, 1933, Roosevelt signed into law the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, an experiment in government-owned utilities that brought power to rural areas along the Tennessee River in seven states in western Appalachia—among the poorest areas in the nation. This far-reaching government-owned project offered a radical alternative to American capitalism, based on private enterprise. Under the TVA, the government built five dams, improved twenty others, and constructed power plants; it produced and sold electricity to the valley’s farmers and facilitated the development of industry in the region. The TVA also boosted local economies by selling fertilizer and electricity, and by providing flood control, and improving river navigation. Business conservatives and Southern Democratic congressmen opposed the plan because it used government money to provide jobs and electricity to rural African Americans in the Tennessee Valley. Nevertheless, the TVA became one of the largest CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 755 ${bmicon} and cheapest suppliers of power in the nation. Although years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower condemned the TVA as a New Deal example of “creeping socialism,” it was one of Roosevelt’s most successful and enduring projects. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), passed by Congress in 1933, became the centerpiece of the first New Deal. The NIRA established the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to oversee the regulation of the economy. In his second “fireside chat,” Roosevelt called the NRA “a partnership in planning” between business and government. The NRA enabled businesses in each sector of the economy to form trade associations and set their own standards for production, prices, and wages. But in return, businesses had to agree to recognize labor unions. Section 7(a) of the NIRA guaranteed collective bargaining rights to workers, sparking new hope for union organizers. FDR’s first 100 days also included the creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, providing refinancing of home mortgages at low rates. Because the plan helped stem the tide of foreclosures and also guaranteed the repayment of loans, it pleased homeowners, banks, and real-estate interests. It also gained for FDR the support of a large segment of the middle class. One of the boldest New Dealers was John Collier, whom Roosevelt appointed as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Collier opposed the policy of land allotment that the Dawes Act of 1887 had enacted. Under allotment, Native American land holdings had dwindled from 130 million acres to 49 million acres—much of it desert. Collier also rejected the assumption that Indians’ survival depended on their assimilation into white culture. He altered the government boarding schools’ curriculum to include bicultural and bilingual education and eliminated military dress and discipline. full view WPA Project At Tonawanda Reservation As part of a WPA project at Tonawanda Reservation near Buffalo, New York, Jesse Cornplanter of the Senecas is shown working on ancient tribal masks. Preserving major elements of the nation’s cultural history was a major legacy of the WPA. (Library of Congress) Collier’s ideas came to fruition in the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which recognized the autonomy of Indian tribes, did away with the allotment program, and appropriated funds to help Indians add to their land holdings. It also provided for job and professional training programs as well as a system of agricultural and industrial credit. In keeping with Collier’s goal of Indian self-government, each tribe decided whether to accept the terms of the Indian Reorganization Act. In the end, 181 tribes voted to accept the law, while 77 opted out of it. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 756 ${bmicon} The Navajos were among the tribes that rejected the Indian Reorganization Act. Many Navajos perceived Collier as yet another heavy-handed government agent. This tension heightened during an environmental conflict over Navajo herding rights. Convinced that the Navajos were herding far more sheep and goats than the fragile desert ecosystem could support, Collier proposed a plan by which the federal government would purchase 400,000 head of Navajo livestock. Although Collier had been more receptive to Indian concerns than almost any other federal authority who had preceded him, he could not reconcile the conflicting interests of tribal autonomy, environmentalism, and development. Challenges to Roosevelt’s New Deal took many forms. In spite of FDR’s efforts to help businesses survive and remain profitable during the Depression, many business leaders continued to oppose the New Deal, charging that FDR was a dictator and that his program amounted to socialism. At the same time, FDR faced criticism from the left. Many people believed that Roosevelt’s policies did not go far enough to ease the suffering caused by the economic crisis. Some thought that New Deal policies aimed at bolstering capitalism were ill-advised, and that capitalism itself was the problem. Disenchantment with capitalism drew many Americans to the cause of socialism and swelled the ranks of the Communist party. The Communist party drew its inspiration from the Soviet Union and, during the 1930s, developed a strategy known as the Popular Front to build alliances with sympathetic American liberals. Not all liberals belonged to the Popular Front, but many people with progressive political leanings shared with the socialists and the Communist party a commitment to economic justice, unemployment relief, civil rights, and union organizing. The actual membership of the Communist Party remained small—it peaked at 100,000 during World War II when the United States and the Soviet Union were allies—but its influence increased during the Depression. By 1934 and 1935 much of the pressure on Roosevelt came from workers, whose hopes that the NIRA would guarantee collective bargaining rights were dashed by the intransigence of employers. The 1920s had taken a toll on labor unions. Membership had declined from a high of 5 million in 1920 to 2 million by 1933. But workers continued to strike for improved wages and working conditions. In 1934 nearly 1.5 million workers participated in 1800 strikes. Often, unemployed laborers joined picket lines, refusing to work as strikebreakers. Many people believed that Roosevelt’s policies did not go far enough to ease the suffering caused by the economic crisis. Workers all over the country organized for better working conditions. Birmingham, Alabama, provides an apt example. The Depression hit Birmingham early and hard. By 1928, unemployment had reached 18 percent. Many impoverished black steelworkers, along with farm laborers in the surrounding countryside, joined the “invisible army” of the Communist party. Together, they fought for better working conditions and racial justice. One young black coal miner, Angelo Herndon, recalled the dangers of organizing and the need for secrecy: “With our few pennies that we collected we ground out leaflets on an old rickety mimeograph machine, which we kept concealed in the home of one of our workers. We were obliged to work very quietly, like the Abolitionists in the South during the Civil War, behind drawn shades and locked doors.” Although most African Americans supported FDR and the Democratic party during the Depression, between 3000 and 4000 members of Birmingham’s black community joined the Communist party and related organizations during the 1930s. Mexican laborers in California launched similar efforts. They faced not only persistent exploitation in fields and factories but also the constant threat of deportation. During the Depression, approximately one-third of the Mexican population in the United States—more than half a million people—was deported to Mexico, even though the majority were native-born citizens. Some of those who remained organized unions and struck for better pay and CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 757 ${bmicon} working conditions. During 1933, agricultural workers mounted 37 major strikes in California alone. They scored a number of successes; more than half of the conflicts led to wage increases. Dorothy Ray was only 16 years old when she began organizing Mexican workers at the grassroots level in California. She found it particularly rewarding to witness “the diminishing of bigotry … watching all those Okies and Arkies … all their lives they’d been on a little farm in Oklahoma; probably they had never seen a Black or a Mexicano. And you’d watch in the process of a strike how those white workers soon saw that those white cops were their enemies and that the Black and Chicano workers were their brothers.” Another successful effort at biracial organizing occurred in the Arkansas delta in 1934. The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) brought together black and white tenants and sharecroppers to fight for better working conditions. In addition to the communists, socialists, labor unions, and grassroots organizations that sprang up all over the country, a number of individuals proposed alternatives to Roosevelt’s program and gained large followings. The most influential of these were Dr. Francis Townsend, Father Charles E. Coughlin, and Senator Huey P. Long. In 1934, Townsend, a retired physician and health commissioner from Long Beach, California, introduced an idea for a pension plan that sparked a nationwide grassroots movement. Townsend proposed a 2 percent national sales tax that would fund a pension of $200 a month for Americans over age 60. The “Townsend Plan” became hugely popular, especially among elderly Americans. In 1936, a national survey indicated that half of all Americans favored the plan. Though the plan was never implemented, the groundswell of support that it generated probably hastened the development and passage of the old age insurance system contained in the 1935 Social Security Act. Coughlin also inspired a huge following. A Catholic priest from Canada, he served as pastor of a small church outside Detroit, Michigan. He began to broadcast his sermons on the radio, using his magnetic personality to address political as well as religious issues. Soon he became a media phenomenon, broadcasting through 26 radio stations to an audience estimated at 40 million. The “Radio Priest” called for a redistribution of wealth and attacked Wall Street, international bankers, and the evils of capitalism. When a Minnesota radio station polled listeners to see whether they wanted to hear Coughlin’s program, 137,000 said yes. Only 400 said no. full view “PWA In Action” Poster As indicated on the painting of the map, the PWA hired workers to build schools, dig irrigation ditches, construct sewage treatment plants, and erect bridges across the country. (Library of Congress) Initially, Coughlin strongly supported Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. But he soon grew impatient with what he considered the slow pace of New Deal reforms. In 1934, Coughlin launched his own political party, the National Union for Social Justice, which he used to challenge Roosevelt’s leadership. The activist priest promoted a populist message that was hostile to both capitalism and communism. He told his radio listeners, “I call upon every one of you who is weary of drinking the bitter vinegar of sordid capitalism and upon everyone who is fearsome of being nailed to the cross of communism to join this Union which, if it is to succeed, must rise above the concept of an audience and become a living, vibrant, united, active organization, superior to politics and politicians in principle, and independent of them in power.” Soon, his message turned from social justice populism to right-wing bigotry. His PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 758 ${bmicon} virulent anti-Semitism and admiration for the fascist regimes of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy drove away many of his followers. By 1940, Coughlin had ceased broadcasting and abandoned all political activities, under orders of the Catholic Church. Huey P. Long was among the most powerful, and colorful, politicians of the era. He rose from modest origins to become a lawyer and a public service commissioner. In 1928, Long won the governorship of Louisiana. His progressive leadership inspired tremendous loyalty, especially among poor workers and farmers. He did more for the underprivileged people of Louisiana than any other governor. He expanded the state’s infrastructure; developed social services; built roads, hospitals, and schools; and changed the tax code to place a greater burden on corporations and the wealthy. He proved unique among Southern politicians in that his public statements were free of racial slurs. But he also trampled the democratic process. His ambition had no bounds, and he used any means to accumulate power. Through his tremendous popular appeal, Long developed a massive power base and eventually gained control of Louisiana’s legislature, courts, state bureaucracies, and even local governments. In 1932 Long resigned the governorship and won election to the U.S. Senate. Soon, he gained a huge national following. Initially he supported FDR, but by 1933 he had broken with the president and forged his own political movement based on his Share-Our-Wealth Plan. Giving voice to the resentments many Americans felt toward “wealthy plutocrats,” Long advocated a radical redistribution of the nation’s wealth. He called for new taxes on the wealthy and proposed to use the funds to guarantee a minimum annual income of $2500 for all those in need. As he put it, “How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what was intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat? The only way you’ll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of the grub he ain’t got no business with.” Long’s plainspoken radicalism won the hearts of his followers, including Will Rogers, who publicly urged FDR to back Long’s proposals. However, many of his congressional colleagues considered him an agitator. Such skepticism did little to limit Long’s ambition, and by 1935 he was planning to challenge FDR in the next presidential election. But he never had the chance. In September 1935 the son-in-law of one of his vanquished political opponents assassinated him. Huey P. Long was among the most powerful, and colorful, politicians of the era. Other challenges took the form of viable third parties. In Wisconsin, the legacy of Progressive senator Robert M. LaFollette was alive and well, particularly in the political popularity of his two sons, Senator Bob and Governor Phil. In 1934, the brothers formed the Wisconsin Progressive party, which supported the New Deal but pulled it strongly to the left. The state’s voters endorsed the radical rhetoric of the LaFollette brothers, reelecting them on the Progressive party ticket with overwhelming victories over their Democratic party rivals. Meanwhile in neighboring Minnesota, a coalition of workers and farmers formed the Minnesota Farmer–Labor party. In 1930 populist Floyd Olson became the nation’s first Farmer–Labor governor. At the party’s 1934 convention Olson made his position clear: “I am not a liberal. I enjoy working on a common basis with liberals for their platforms, etc., but I am not a liberal. I am what I want to be—I am a radical. I am a radical in the sense that I want a definite change in the system, I am not satisfied with tinkering, I am not satisfied with patching, I am not satisfied with hanging a laurel wreath upon burglars and thieves and pirates and calling them code authorities or something else.” Olson considered the possibility of a third-party bid for the presidency in 1936, but his plans never reached fruition. He contracted cancer and died in August 1936 at age 44. On the West Coast, discontented voters mounted a similar challenge to party-politics-as-usual. Some Democrats persuaded Upton Sinclair, a veteran socialist and author of the 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle, to run for governor on their ticket in 1934. Sinclair ran on his End Poverty in California (EPIC) plan, which would have let the state take over idle land and factories and permit unemployed laborers to use them for their own needs. Sinclair won the CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 759 ${bmicon} Democratic primary with an overwhelming majority. But Democratic party regulars, including FDR, refused to support his candidacy. Without the support of his own party and facing opposition from wealthy Republicans who spared no expense to defeat him, Sinclair lost the election. Nevertheless, Sinclair’s tremendous popularity signaled to Roosevelt that if he hoped to retain the support of his constituents, he would need to move significantly to the left. Eleanor Roosevelt also pushed FDR to the left, particularly on the issue of civil rights. A political activist in her own right and the most powerful First Lady until Hillary Clinton entered the White House in 1992, Eleanor was among FDR’s closest advisors. Although FDR was reluctant to support an anti-lynching bill in Congress for fear of alienating Southern white voters, the First Lady campaigned vigorously against lynching. When the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) denied the African American opera star Marian Anderson the right to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Eleanor promptly resigned from the DAR in protest and arranged for Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939, where a huge audience stood in the cold to hear her sing. Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts notwithstanding, FDR tread softly on the issue of race. He knew that Southern blacks were disenfranchised, but he depended on Southern white voters to be reelected and to get his New Deal measures through Congress. So he was careful not to alienate Southern Democrats by cultivating African American voters. However, he did reach out to industrial workers. In the spring of 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, which strengthened and guaranteed collective bargaining and gave a huge boost to labor unions. Also in 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act, perhaps the most important and far-reaching of all the New Deal’s programs. The Act established a system of old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and welfare benefits for dependent children and the disabled. The framework of the Social Security Administration shaped the welfare system for the remainder of the century. The welfare state established by the Social Security Act, extensive as it was, did not reach all Americans and left out many of the most needy. It also established a two-track system of welfare. One track provided workers with unemployment insurance and support in their old age. Programs like Social Security, designed primarily for male wage earners, paid retired workers, based on a percentage of the wages they earned while in the workforce. Social Security provided an important safety net for large numbers of workers and the elderly, but it did not cover domestics, seasonal or part-time workers, agricultural laborers, or housewives. The other track made matching funds available to states to provide relief for the needy, mostly dependent women and children with no means of support. Unlike Social Security, which was provided to all retired workers regardless of their circumstances, relief programs, which came to be known as “welfare,” were administered according to need. full view Social Security Act Poster The Social Security Act of 1935 was signed by President Roosevelt. Despite the administration’s public relations efforts, like this poster, many believed Social Security could not fulfill its promises. (Library of Congress) full view Eleanor Roosevelt Eleanor Roosevelt visited many sites in her efforts to bring the New Deal to the forgotten and the dispossessed. She is shown here visiting an African American nursery school run by the WPA in Des Moines, Iowa. The architects of this welfare system included top New Deal advisors, many of them women who had been active reformers, such as Eleanor Roosevelt. These advocates hoped to protect women and children from the destitution that almost certainly resulted if a male breadwinner lost his job, deserted his family, or died. The system presumed that a man ordinarily earned a “family wage” that let him support his wife and children and that women were necessarily economically dependent on men. Thus, a deeply entrenched gender system prevailed Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 760 ${bmicon} through the 1930s. As a result, some—though not all—male breadwinners received benefits like Social Security. Impoverished women and children, on the other hand, received public charity. These payments were usually meager, not enough to lift a woman and her children out of poverty. Inadequate welfare payments never helped the needy become self-sufficient and did nothing to eradicate poverty. Because there were no nationally established guidelines on how to distribute welfare funds, states could determine who received assistance. As a result, the Social Security Act did little to assist African Americans, especially in the South, where black women were deliberately excluded by local authorities who preferred to maintain a pool of cheap African American labor rather than to provide relief for black families. One Southern public assistance field supervisor, explaining the low numbers of African American families on the welfare rolls, articulated the prevailing attitude: “The number of Negro cases is few due to the unanimous feeling on the part of the staff and board that there are more work opportunities for Negro women and to their intense desire not to interfere with local labor conditions. The attitude that they have always gotten along, and that ‘all they’ll do is have more children’ is definite…. There is hesitancy on the part of lay boards to advance too rapidly over the thinking of their own communities, which see no reason why the employable Negro mother should not continue her usually sketchy seasonal labor or indefinite domestic service rather than receive a public assistance grant.” In 1935 Congress allocated the huge sum of nearly $5 billion for the Emergency Relief Appropriation. Roosevelt used a significant portion of the money to expand his public works program. By executive order he established the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which provided millions of jobs for the unemployed. The project mandated that WPA jobs would make a contribution to public life and would not compete with private business. The jobs included building streets, highways, bridges, and public buildings; restoring forests; clearing slums; and extending electricity to rural areas. The WPA National Youth Administration gave work to nearly 1 million students. full view Eleanor Roosevelt Visiting WPA Nursery Eleanor Roosevelt visited many sites in her efforts to bring the New Deal to the forgotten and the dispossessed. She is shown here visiting an African American nursery school run by the WPA in Des Moines, Iowa. CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 761 ${bmicon} The wages paid to WPA workers proved pitifully low. And like most other New Deal programs, the WPA left out the most needy. It provided work only to those already on the relief rolls, and just one person per family could hold a WPA job. This policy ruled out most women as well as older children. It also neglected the vast majority of the unemployed who were not on relief. A 1937 letter to Harry Hopkins from the Workers’ Council of Colored People in Raleigh, North Carolina, pointed to the failure of the WPA to provide jobs for black women. The writer explained that the wages paid to domestic and farm laborers were so low that, even if they worked 14-hour days, they could not pay their rent. “If we cannot work on WPA Projects & be compel to take these poor paying jobs; [we request] that food, clothes & rent money be provided for us at once because we are suffering. We the Workers Council understood that no colored women [can] be hired this winter on any of the WPA projects. We wish you to tell us why.” The most effective WPA program was Federal One, which provided financial support for writers, musicians, artists, and actors. The Federal Theater Project, under the direction of Hallie Flanagan, former head of Vassar College’s Experimental Theater, shaped the project into an arena for experimental community-based theater. Flanagan focused on contemporary issues and developed such innovations as the “Living Newspaper.” The Federal Theater Project included 16 black theater units. Their most notable production was an all-black version of Macbeth set in Haiti and staged in Harlem. Federal One supported thousands of artists and brought the arts to a wide public audience through government-funded murals on public buildings, community-theater productions, local orchestras, and the like. By the late 1930s the program came under political attack for supporting artists who expressed leftist sensibilities, and Congress cut off its funding. In 1943 the WPA was dissolved. full view WPA’s Federal Art Project The most ambitious of all New Deal programs provided was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Out-of-work artists were employed by the WPA’s Federal Art Project to exhibit their works to the public. (Library of Congress) full view Index of American Design One of the specific programs overseen by the Federal Art Project was the Index of American Design. Illustrators were hired to document American crafts and decorative objects nationwide, leaving a valuable legacy while employing out-of-work talent. (National Archives) full view The Caravan Theater The WPA’s Federal Theatre Project employed writers, actors and others to produce plays and other performances for live audiences around the country. (National Archives) The New Deal did not reach everyone. Programs were geared toward full-time industrial workers, most of whom were white men. Domestic workers, Mexican migrant laborers, black and white sharecroppers, Chinese and Japanese truck farmers—all were among those ineligible for Social Security, minimum wages and maximum hours, unemployment insurance, and other New Deal benefits. But the New Deal established the national welfare state and provided assistance and security to millions of working people along with disabled, dependent, and elderly Americans. Such sweeping programs also solidified Roosevelt’s popularity among the poor, workers, and much of the middle class. In the 1936 campaign FDR claimed that the election was a battle between “the millions who never had a chance” and “organized money.” He boasted that the “forces of selfishness and of lust for power” had united against him: “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.” His strategy paid off. Roosevelt won the election by a landslide of more than 60 percent of the popular vote. Six million more voters cast ballots than had done so in 1932, and 5 million of those new votes went to Roosevelt. His strongest support came from the lower ends of the socioeconomic scale. The election also swept Democrats into Congress, giving them a decisive majority in both the House and the Senate. TABLE 22-3 The Election of 1936 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 27,751,597 523 Alfred M. Landon Republican 16,679,583 8 William Lemke Union 882,479 0 With such a powerful mandate, Roosevelt was well positioned to promote a new legislative program. As his first major effort, he took on the Supreme Court. Dominated by conservative justices, the court had invalidated some major legislation of Roosevelt’s first term, including the AAA and the NIRA. Roosevelt feared that the justices would unravel the New Deal by striking down its progressive elements. To shift the PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 762 ${bmicon} balance of power on the court, he proposed a measure that would let the president appoint one new justice for every one on the court who had at least 10 years of service and who did not retire within six months after turning 70. Emboldened by his landslide victory, FDR believed that he could persuade Congress and the nation to go along with any plan he put forward, but he was mistaken. Many viewed his “court packing” plan as a threat to the fundamental separation of powers and feared that it would set a dangerous precedent. Some considered it an affront to the more aged justices, such as the respected liberal Lewis Brandeis, a man in his eighties. Powerful Republicans in Congress forged an alliance with conservative Democrats, mostly from the South, to defeat the plan. This informal alliance dominated Congress for the following two decades. The court blunder cost Roosevelt considerable political capital and empowered his opponents. In the end, his plan proved unnecessary anyway. The court did not undercut the New Deal. Within the next few years Roosevelt succeeded in appointing several new justices who tipped the balance in his favor. FDR continued to face strong opposition from conservatives on the right and radicals, communists, and socialists on the left. But his political fortunes benefited from the emergence of a new and more inclusive national culture. This new Americanism emanated from the working class and found expression in the labor movement, the popular culture, and the political coalition that came together in the Democratic party. These nationalizing forces cut across lines of class and region and occasionally challenged hierarchies of gender and race. The labor insurgency that erupted during the early years of the New Deal demonstrated the need for a new national labor movement. The American Federation of Labor (AFL), restricted to skilled workers, left out most of the nation’s less skilled industrial laborers. John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers (UMW) rose to meet these laborers’ need for new leadership. Lewis was one of several union leaders from a number of industries—including mining, steel, rubber, and automobile—who left the AFL to form a new and more broad-based labor organization, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Lewis played a key role in the organization’s growth into a national force, but the impetus came from the workers themselves. Sidney Hillman, leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, was among the labor leaders who organized the CIO. Hillman had a broad vision of labor unions working with management and government to achieve a strong economy and social justice. Under his leadership, the Amalgamated provided its members with education, subsidized housing, health care, and unemployment insurance long before the New Deal incorporated these programs into national policy. His economic ideas were also in keeping with New Deal efforts to pump money into the hands of consumers. Known as Keynesian economics, named after John Maynard Keynes, this strategy promoted increased spending to stimulate economic recovery. Hillman argued that higher wages were good for the economy because workers would then be able to purchase consumer products, benefiting industry as well as workers. Although Henry Ford also understood that principle (see Chapter 19), Ford was vehemently anti-union. Hillman argued that powerful unions could help to strengthen and regulate the economy and avoid devastating wage wars. Hillman’s leadership in the labor movement brought him into the Roosevelt administration, where he served as Associate Director of the Office of Production Management and became a major political force. The CIO’s first major action came in 1936 in Akron, Ohio, where workers in the rubber industry had organized a “sit-down strike,” a new strategy whereby laborers stopped CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 763 ${bmicon} work and simply sat down, shutting down production and occupying plants so that strikebreakers could not enter and take their jobs. Sit-down strikes became a prominent labor tactic during 1936 when 48 strikes broke out across the nation. The numbers shot up the following year to about 500 strikes that lasted more than one day. March 1937 alone witnessed 170 sit-down strikes that affected about 170,000 workers. Striking workers expressed their enthusiasm for the tactic in song: When they tie the can to a union man, sit down! Sit down! When they give him the sack, they’ll take him back, sit down! Sit down! When the speed up comes, just twiddle your thumbs, sit down! Sit down! When the boss won’t talk, don’t take a walk, sit down! Sit down! The most powerful demonstration of workers’ discontent came in the automobile industry, where speed-ups of the assembly line drove workers to rebellion. Charlie Chaplin’s poignant film Modern Times (1936) expressed workers’ frustration at being treated as little more than cogs in machines. “Where you used to be a man,” lamented one auto worker, “now you are less than their cheapest tool.” In 1936 a spontaneous strike erupted against General Motors in Atlanta; it soon spread to Kansas City, Missouri; Cleveland, Ohio; and the main plants at Flint, Michigan. Two weeks into the strike, workers clashed with police. Frank Murphy, Michigan’s prolabor governor, refused to use National Guard troops against the strikers, and Roosevelt declined to send in federal troops. John L. Lewis negotiated on behalf of the workers, who demanded recognition of their union. Women as well as men participated actively in the Flint strike. Twenty-three-year-old Genora Johnson Dollinger, wife of a striker and mother of two young sons, organized 500 women into the Women’s Emergency Brigade, made up primarily of strikers’ wives, sisters, and girlfriends. Wearing red berets and armbands, they ran soup kitchens and first-aid stations. They also entered the fray when necessary, as when they broke plant windows so that the company could not use tear gas effectively against the strikers inside. Dollinger arranged a children’s picket line as well, in which her two-year-old carried a sign that read, “My daddy strikes for us little tykes.” Reflecting on the Women’s Emergency Brigade after the strike, Dollinger wrote, “It’s a measure of the strength of those women of the Red Berets that they could perform so courageously in an atmosphere that was often hostile to them. We organized on our own without the benefit of professional leadership, and yet, we played a role, second to none, in the birth of a union and in changing working families’ lives forever.” The sit-down strike at Flint lasted 44 days and forced General Motors to recognize the United Auto Workers (UAW), which was a CIO union. The strike scored a clear victory for the workers and boosted the CIO’s stature as a national union of industrial workers. Membership in the UAW quadrupled in the next year. Bowing to the formidable power of the national union in the wake of the UAW success, U.S. Steel surrendered to the CIO even without a strike, ending its policy of hiring nonunion workers and signing an agreement with the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee. The CIO brought together PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 764 ${bmicon} workers from all over the country. Most of its member unions were open to racial and ethnic minorities and women. FDR’s support of labor unions brought workers solidly into the Democratic fold. They joined a coalition that included voters who had never before belonged to the same party, particularly Northern blacks and Southern whites. Although African Americans in the South were disenfranchised, blacks in the North had voted Republican for 60 years, loyal to the party of Lincoln. In a dramatic shift, black voters in Northern cities overwhelmingly backed FDR in 1936 and remained in the Democratic party for the rest of the century. FDR continued to cater to powerful Southern congressmen and Southern white voters. Nevertheless, he made some gestures on behalf of African Americans and put civil rights measures on the liberal agenda for the first time since Reconstruction. In May 1935 FDR issued Executive Order 7046, banning discrimination in WPA projects. By the late 1930s, 15 to 20 percent of those with WPA jobs were black. Although the pay was meager—$12 a week—it was double what many blacks had been able to earn previously. In spite of FDR’s lukewarm support for civil rights, African Americans in the North benefited from New Deal programs. As one black preacher exhorted his congregation prior to the 1936 election, “Let Jesus lead you and Roosevelt feed you.” Other racial and ethnic minorities also joined the New Deal coalition. In 1939, Latinos organized their first national civil rights assembly, El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española—the Spanish-Speaking People’s Congress, which opened with a congratulatory telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt. Immigrants from Europe and their children also became loyal Democratic voters. In spite of this diverse coalition, many Americans remained bitterly opposed to FDR. Socialists and communists criticized the New Deal for patching up capitalism rather than transforming the economic system. Conservative business leaders despised Roosevelt for the constraints he placed on business and the intrusion of the government into the economy. Critics from the political right considered the New Deal to be akin to communism. In 1938, Congress created the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by Martin Dies of Texas. Formed ostensibly to investigate American fascists and Nazis in the United States, the Committee instead pursued liberal and leftist groups throughout World War II and the Cold War. The New Deal coalition reflected not only Roosevelt’s popularity but also a new and more inclusive American identity. An expanding mass culture fostered this sensibility, spread largely through the national media. It is no accident that Franklin Roosevelt found his way into the homes and hearts of Americans through his “fireside chats” over the radio; his mastery of that technology made him the first media-savvy president. During the 1930s, 70 percent of all households owned a radio—more than owned a telephone. The motion-picture industry also expanded into small towns across the country. Many of the ostentatious movie palaces of the 1920s disappeared, replaced by smaller theaters designed in the sleek modern style of the times, often decorated with murals painted by WPA artists that depicted local scenes and histories. Talking films brought vernacular speech and a variety of accents to diverse audiences who gathered in neighborhood theaters. Movie plots portrayed the triumph of common people over the rich and powerful and celebrated love across class and ethnic lines. Although racial stereotypes persisted in motion pictures throughout the decade, notable exceptions, such as Will Rogers’s films, featured strong minority characters. Popular movies also challenged traditional gender and class hierarchies. Female stars, such as Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Bette Davis, and Mae West, portrayed feisty, independent women. Even gangsters appeared as sympathetic characters whose illegal activities seemed somehow justified by the corrupt system they tried to thwart. CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 765 ${bmicon} New sports celebrities also embodied the nation’s diversity. Baseball star Joe DiMaggio, son of an Italian immigrant fisherman, became a national hero. African American boxer Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber” who was born into a sharecropper family in Alabama, became heavyweight champion of the world at age 23. In 1938, when Louis fought German boxer Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium, the fight attracted 70,000 fans and grossed more than $1 million. When the black fighter knocked out Schmeling in the first round, he seemed to strike a blow for America against Hitler’s Nazi Germany. A number of women also became heroes in the 1930s for their daring exploits, personal courage, and physical prowess. Unlike earlier national heroines, these female celebrities transcended the expected gender role for women. Athletes like tennis champion Helen Wills and Olympic track star and brilliant golfer Babe Didrikson greatly expanded the popularity of women’s sports. Renowned aviator Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, devoted her life to advancing both feminism and commercial aviation. When her plane disappeared during an attempted ’round-the-world flight in 1937, many of her admirers were so convinced of her invincibility that they refused to believe she had died. Even today, people still speculate about her fate. The New Deal set in place a welfare state that established the principle of government responsibility for the well-being of vulnerable citizens. Before the New Deal, people suffered the fluctuations of the market economy with no recourse beyond the assistance of kin, communities, and charities. Older Americans who could no longer work had no government-guaranteed pensions and often faced poverty in old age. Bank failures could wipe away life savings. Unemployment could mean starvation for a worker’s family. The New Deal provided Social Security for the elderly, unemployment compensation for workers who had lost their jobs, minimum hours and wages, and economic aid to women and children who had no means of support. It also established national economic regulations, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), as well as the right of workers to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. These government protections offered many Americans an unprecedented level of economic security. The Roosevelt administration addressed many of the nation’s problems and used the federal government in innovative ways to intervene in the economy and to mitigate some of the misfortunes caused by the Depression. Most New Deal policies protected factory workers in large companies. The safety net did not extend to many of the neediest Americans, including Mexican American migrant workers, African American and white sharecroppers, seasonal agricultural laborers, or domestic workers. Although the national government extended its reach considerably, at the local level, many persistent problems remained entrenched. FDR was PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 766 ${bmicon} reluctant to press for anti-lynching legislation for fear of alienating Southern congressmen who still retained enormous power. Efforts to rescue the economy did little to rein in huge corporations like Ford and Standard Oil. Although FDR’s conservative opponents accused him of socialist leanings, the New Deal actually rescued and shored up capitalism. The New Deal was the Roosevelt administration’s response to a global economic crisis. With the exception of the communist Soviet Union, which had already abandoned capitalism, almost every industrialized nation responded to the Depression by increasing the role of the state in the economy. Italy, Germany, and Japan moved to fascism and the nearly total state direction of the economy, while Britain and France established welfare states that would become more fully developed after World War II. The United States’ system of social welfare was not as extensive and inclusive as those that emerged in some western European democracies. But it was part of a larger trend toward government intervention in the economy and greater protections for citizens. Within the United States, the New Deal neither reached nor satisfied everyone. Some groups thought that it went too far; others believed it did not go far enough. But it eased some of the harshest effects of the Depression and established a national safety net that endured for more than half a century. African American Odyssey: The Depression, New Deal, and World War II lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart8.html This Library of Congress site covers the history of African Americans during the years of the Depression and World War II. Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html This site from the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, provides audio, text, and photos of the Lomax collection of America folk songs collected and recorded across the South. The 1930s Project xroads.virginia.edu/∼1930s/front.html This site from the University of Virginia’s American Studies program contains materials about the culture and history of the 1930s. Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html This Library of Congress site includes Farm Security Administration studies of migrant work camps in California in 1940 and 1941, with audio, images, manuscripts, and publications. The New Deal Network newdeal.feri.org This site includes images, documents, texts, artifacts, and other materials from the New Deal era. Franklin Delano Roosevelt www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/fdroosevelt.html This Internet Public Library site contains biographical information about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his election to the presidency and links to Internet biographies and resources about him. The Crash of 1929 www.btinternet.com/∼dreklind/thecrash.htm This site includes a discussion of the causes of the 1929 stock market crash, along with audio clips of songs relating to the crash. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Digital Archives www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/ This site includes documents, images, audio, and other primary source materials from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. A New Deal for the Arts www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/new_deal_for_the_arts/ This site of the National Archives includes artwork, documents, photographs, and information from the New Deal programs that funded artists in the 1930s. American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1940 memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html This site from the Library of Congress includes manuscripts written by Federal Writers Project authors who interviewed Americans all over the country and wrote about them. CHAPTER 22 ###8226; HARDSHIP AND HOPE IN THE 1930s 767 ${bmicon} Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (1989). Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (1937). Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941 (1984, 1993). James R. McGovern, And a Time for Hope: Americans in the Great Depression (2000). Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1986). Glen Elder, Jr., Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience (1974). Robert S. McElvaine, ed., Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man (1983). Vicki L. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (1998). Judith Smith, Family Connections: A History of Italian and Jewish Immigrant Lives in Providence, Rhode Island, 1900–1940 (1985). Edward D. Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan (1991). Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt. (1999) Frank Friedel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (1990). William E. Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963). Lawrence W. Levine and Cornelia R. Levine, The People and the President: America’s Conversation with FDR (2002). Richard Polenberg, ed., The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933–1945: A Brief History with Documents (2000). Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, 3 vols. (1957–1960). Anthony Badger, The New Deal (1988). Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (1982). Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–37 (1969). Steven Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1991). Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (1994). Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990). Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (1992). Michael Denning, Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (1998). Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914–1960 (1989). Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter22 To Chapter 22 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 768 ${bmicon}         Mobilizing for War       Pearl Harbor: The United States Enters the War       The Home Front       Race and War       Total War       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 769 ${bmicon} ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, KEITH LITTLE WAS OUT HUNTING RABBITS WITH FRIENDS AT their boarding school on the Navajo reservation of Ganado, Arizona. When they heard the news that the Japanese had attacked the U.S. naval base in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor, the teenage boys pledged to fight for their country. The next morning, Little and his friends showed up with their hunting rifles at the office of the reservation superintendent, ready to enlist. The previous year, the Tribal Council had voted unanimously to defend the United States against invasion. “There exists no purer concentration of Americanism than among the First Americans,” the council declared. The council vote was no idle gesture, especially given the complex status of Indian tribes within the United States. In some respects the tribes were semiautonomous nations within a nation. Several states, including Arizona, denied Indians the basic rights and obligations of citizenship, such as voting. Moreover, the Navajos were still embroiled in disputes with Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier and the Roosevelt administration over Collier’s request that they destroy their sheep to reduce soil erosion and overgrazing. So it was by no means obvious that the Navajos would, or even should, fight for a nation they had bitterly fought against only 80 years earlier. Although large numbers of Native American soldiers had fought in earlier wars, especially World War I, the boarding-school boys could not have known that they would soon become part of a Navajo unit of “Code Talkers” that helped win the war. Little and about 400 other Navajos became part of a special unit that developed an intricate code, based on the Navajo language, to transmit top-secret information without risk of detection. The Navajo language was particularly well suited to code because very few people besides Navajos knew it. In a process code named “Magic,” the all-Navajo 382nd Platoon of the U.S. Marine Corps outperformed the most sophisticated communication technology by encoding and decoding sensitive military information almost instantly and flawlessly. In two days on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, six “Code Talkers” transmitted more than 800 messages, working around the clock, without a single error. Signal Officer Major Howard Conner recalled, “Without the Navajos the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” full view Navaho Indians Aiding The U.S. War Effort The Navaho and members of other American Indian tribes were especially useful as “code talkers” as their unwritten languages were indecipherable to the Axis enemies. (Library of Congress) The experiences of the Navajo “Code Talkers” echo many larger themes of America’s involvement in World War II. Along with numerous other ethnic and racial minorities, the Navajos willingly fought—and many died—for a country that had treated them as second-class citizens. African Americans also joined the war effort, though in segregated units, to fight for the “double V”—victory against fascism abroad and racial discrimination at home. Young Japanese Americans left internment camps where their families had been forcibly detained to join a war against the land from which their parents came. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 770 ${bmicon} World War II was a global war, affecting countries and peoples all over the world. The conflict demanded human and technological resources on an unprecedented scale and left massive destruction in its wake. The huge scale of destruction was unlike that of any previous war. At least 55 million people died, including 25 million in the Soviet Union, 10 million in China, and 6 million in Poland. In the Holocaust, Nazi Germany’s campaign of genocide, 6 million European Jews perished along with thousands of Romani (Gypsies), Poles, mentally and physically disabled people, homosexuals, and others deemed “racially inferior.” The war also had a tremendous impact on countries under colonial rule. France, Holland, Belgium, and Great Britain were major colonial powers, but the war loosened their hold over their colonies. Germany’s bombardment of England and occupation of France, Holland, and Belgium weakened all of these countries. Japan’s defeat of the American, British, Dutch, and French forces in Southeast Asia from 1940 to 1942 shocked the Western powers and ended white rule in the region, setting in motion a wave of decolonization in Asia and Africa after the war. The United States was the only major combatant that did not suffer massive destruction on its home territory. It had two powerful advantages: a 3000-mile ocean barrier on its East and West Coasts, plus tremendous natural resources that could provide the materials needed for modern warfare, such as steel and oil. In order to minimize American casualties, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) pursued a strategy to make the United States the “arsenal of democracy,” providing armaments and supplies to the other Allied powers so that their armies would do most of the fighting. Although the Soviet Union carried the largest burden of fighting the war and suffered the highest losses, millions of Americans also fought, and many died in the conflict. Military service had a leveling effect on social relations, as soldiers came together from all classes and ethnic groups. The vast majority of the troops—more than 85 percent—were white men from a wide variety of backgrounds. Soldiers of color generally fought in segregated units, but their battlefield successes and sacrifices gave them a sense of belonging to the nation and fueled postwar movements for equality and civil rights. The United States was the only major combatant that did not suffer massive destruction on its home territory. No bombs dropped on the American mainland, yet the war reached into every aspect of national and personal life. Although wartime brought prosperity, the rationing of essential goods and the scarcity of consumer products brought nearly all Americans into the war effort. As soldiers and war industry workers moved around the country, local and regional sensibilities gave way to a stronger national identity. Factories stopped making consumer items and instead turned out war machines. Scientists developed new weapons of mass destruction. Cities burgeoned as workers flooded into the lucrative war industries. The U.S. military and defense establishment expanded to the formidable scale it would maintain during and after the war, making the United States the most powerful nation in the world. Most Americans supported the war effort and did their part to stop German and Japanese aggression. Early in 1941, well before the United States entered the war, Roosevelt stressed the need to protect the “Four Freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear of armed aggression. For many American GIs, the Four Freedoms translated into intensely personal terms. They fought to stay alive and to return to their sweethearts and families. They fought in hopes of reaping the “good life” that had become the symbol of America. Others, especially soldiers of color, fought not simply to preserve the American way of life, but also to gain access to it. CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 771 ${bmicon} During the 1930s, the rise of fascism and militarism in Italy, Germany, and Japan created a terrible dilemma for Americans. Disillusioned by World War I and preoccupied with the hardships of the Depression, they disagreed strongly with each other about how to respond to overt aggression in Africa, Europe, and Asia. The ensuing “Great Debate” became a turning point in the nation’s relationship with the outside world. Mobilizing for the enormous crusade of World War II gave rise to a unity of purpose that lasted throughout the war and into the postwar era. In the 1930s, Depression-era Americans grappled with their problems at home and avoided entanglements abroad. But they found it difficult to ignore events in Europe and Asia. In Italy, Spain, and Germany, where a weak economy and high unemployment created political unrest, fascist leaders rose to power with strong popular support. These new leaders promised economic recovery through strengthening the military and national expansion. They also encouraged intense nationalist sentiments, urging people to identify strongly with the state. Fascist party leader Benito Mussolini had held power in Italy since 1921, suppressing dissident voices and imposing one-party rule. According to Mussolini, “The fascist conception of the state is all-embracing, and outside of the state no human or spiritual values can exist, let alone be desirable.” By the early 1930s fascism had gained strength in Germany and Spain. The term fascist has since been applied to the various right-wing dictatorships that arose during the period between the two world wars. Fascist governments were antidemocratic, antiparliamentary, and frequently anti-Semitic. Appealing to nationalistic and often racist sentiments, these governments generally ruled by coercion, terrorism, and police surveillance. Germany emerged as the most powerful fascist state in Europe. After Germany’s defeat in World War I and the severe economic depression that Germany experienced in the 1920s, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) party won broad support in the weakened country. On January 30, 1933, five weeks before FDR took the oath as president of the United States, Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Extolling fanatical nationalism and the racial superiority of “Aryan” or “pure” Anglo-Saxon Germans, Hitler blamed Jews for Germany’s problems. He began a campaign of terror against Jews, homosexuals, suspected communists, and anyone else he saw as promoting “un-German” ideas. Hitler vowed to unite all German-speaking peoples into a new empire, the “Third Reich.” The fascist governments forged alliances to increase their power and launched campaigns of aggression and expansion. As conflict increased in Europe, hostilities spread into Africa as well. In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia, the sole independent African nation. The following year, Nazi troops seized the Rhineland, in the western region of Germany, in violation of the Versailles agreement. Hitler and Mussolini signed the Axis Pact, and Japan forged an alliance with Germany. Soon after that, civil war erupted in Spain. Hitler and Mussolini extended aid to the fascist General Francisco Franco, who was trying to overthrow Spain’s republican government. Although Spanish republicans appealed to antifascist governments for help in the fight against Franco, only the Soviet Union came to their assistance. The United States maintained an official policy of neutrality. Some conservatives believed that the anticommunist Franco would promote social stability. But many on the left, including large numbers of writers and intellectuals, championed the beleaguered Spanish government and denounced the fascists. Cadres of Americans sympathetic to the republican cause, including the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” joined Soviet-organized international forces to fight against Franco. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 772 ${bmicon} In Germany anti-Semitic fervor reached a frenzy on the evening of November 7, 1938. In a spasm of violence known as Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”), Hitler launched a massive assault against Jews throughout Germany. For three days German mobs attacked synagogues, smashed windows, and vandalized Jewish homes and businesses. Thirty-five Jews were killed, and thousands arrested. The rioters destroyed 7500 shops and 119 synagogues. The Nazi reign of terror against the Jews continued throughout the war, culminating in death camps and genocide. In the spring and summer of 1938 Hitler annexed Austria to the Third Reich and then invaded the Sudetenland. In the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I, this German-speaking area became part of the newly formed Czechoslovakia. The Sudetenland was key to Hitler’s goal of uniting all German-speaking Europe into the Third Reich. Josef Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union, offered to join France and Britain to roust Hitler from the Sudetenland and halt his aggression. But the leaders of France and Britain rebuffed Stalin’s suggestion. In September they met with Hitler in Munich and agreed to let him keep the Sudetenland in return for his promise that he would seek no more territory. Stalin feared that the anticommunist leaders of France and Britain would try to turn Hitler’s aggression toward the Soviet Union. To prevent that possibility, Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. Eventually, Hitler broke all his promises. Throughout the war and after, the Munich meeting became the symbol of “appeasement,” a warning that compromise with the enemy leads only to disaster. The Nazi reign of terror against the Jews continued throughout the war, culminating in death camps and genocide. In the next few years the fascist states expanded their power and territory. In 1939, with the help of the Soviet Union and in violation of the Munich agreement, Germany invaded Poland, which fell quickly, unable to withstand the German blitzkrieg, or “lightning war” of land and air strikes. At that point Britain and France declared war on Germany. That same year Madrid finally fell to Franco’s forces. Britain, France, and the United States recognized Franco as victor of the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union next sent troops into Finland, gaining Finnish territory in 1940. By 1940 Hitler was sweeping through Europe, invading Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and then France. In just six weeks the Nazis had seized most of western Europe. Hitler then turned his forces on Great Britain. In the summer and fall of 1940, German raids on British air bases nearly destroyed the British Royal Air Force (RAF). Hitler then ordered the bombing of London and other English cities, attacking civilians day and night in what came to be called the Battle of Britain. In the Far East events had taken an equally alarming turn. Nationalistic militarists gained control of the Japanese government in Tokyo and began a course of expansion. In 1931–1932, Japanese troops occupied the large Chinese province of Manchuria, installed a puppet government, and gave the province a Japanese name: Manchukuo. Five years later, the Japanese launched a full-scale war against China. The United States extended aid to China and discontinued trade with Japan. In 1940 Japan joined Germany and Italy in the Axis alliance and invaded the French colony of Indochina. Kazuko Kuramoto remembered the nationalist propaganda she learned as a Japanese child raised in Manchuria: I was born into a society of Japanese supremacy and grew up believing in Japan’s “divine” mission to save Asia from the “evil” hands of Western imperialism…. “You are Japan’s only future, a glorious future,” adults around us used to say. We believed it with passion…. I joined the Red Cross Nurse Corps to help my country win the war…. “Asia for the Asians!” Japan’s efforts to rid Asia of white Western imperialism inspired some other Asians who saw Japan as a model of strength. But it was also a cynical ploy of the Japanese leaders, who sought CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 773 ${bmicon} to conquer all of Asia and considered other Asian peoples to be racially inferior to the Japanese. The Japanese treated the people in the countries they occupied with extreme brutality. In the mid–1930s the overwhelming majority of Americans still opposed intervention in foreign conflicts. Congress passed the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937, outlawing arms sales or loans to nations at war and forbidding Americans from traveling on the ships of belligerent powers. In 1937 a Gallup poll indicated that 70 percent of Americans believed that the United States should have stayed out of World War I. A peace movement spread across university and college campuses. Students marched with banners bearing such slogans as “Scholarships, not Battleships.” In a “peace strike” in the spring of 1936, half a million students boycotted classes and attended antiwar events. Nevertheless, President Roosevelt and others believed that the United States would be unable to hold itself aloof from the mounting international crises. When Japan invaded China in 1937, FDR refused to comply with the provisions of the latest Neutrality Act, on the technicality that neither combatant had officially declared war. By creatively interpreting the law, he was able to offer loans to the embattled Chinese. Roosevelt felt strongly that the United States should actively help to resist the Axis powers. In 1940 he told the nation, “Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead—danger against which we must prepare. But we well know that we cannot escape danger, or the fear of danger, by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads.” full view Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom from Want,” Saturday Evening Post The government enlisted artists during the war to help inspire Americans to support the war effort. Norman Rockwell created some of the most well-known, including his series on the Four Freedoms, including “Freedom from Want,” commissioned by the Saturday Evening Post. (National Archives) U.S. citizens still remained bitterly divided over the question of whether to get involved in the conflict. Those who agreed with Roosevelt believed that the nation should take any action “short of war” to help defeat the aggressors in Europe. By sending supplies, for example, the United States could become the “arsenal of democracy” to fight fascism without sending troops and risking American lives. But opponents to this idea spanned the political spectrum. They included moral or religious pacifists, peace activists of the Communist and Labor parties, and anti-Semites who supported Hitler. The pro-Nazi German American Bund, an organization that supported Germany, complained about Roosevelt’s “Jew Deal”—a reference to Jews among FDR’s advisors. The largest organization to resist Roosevelt’s effort was the America First Committee. With 450 chapters, the group claimed several hundred thousand members. Centered largely in the Midwest, the America Firsters included some active Nazi supporters. But conservative businesspeople also took part. Committee chair General Robert E. Wood, head of retailer Sears, Roebuck, believed that war would impede American prosperity. Other members had long opposed Roosevelt and the New Deal. They feared that war would give additional power to the already strong federal government. The group’s most visible spokesperson was famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, whose anti-Semitism fueled his staunch opposition to any involvement in the conflict. Although Lindbergh’s position antagonized many who once admired him, he also attracted followers. Despite intense nonintervention sentiments, public opinion began to shift. Many Americans were shocked when Hitler swiftly PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 774 ${bmicon} conquered much of Europe. Vivid news reports of the German occupation of France, and the intense bombardment of England in the Battle of Britain bolstered FDR’s efforts to take action. When Roosevelt made his “Four Freedoms” speech in his annual message to Congress in January 1941, the United States was not yet officially at war. But the president pledged his support for England against the Nazis. A few months later, Congress approved the Lend-Lease agreement to lend rather than sell munitions to the Allied countries. When Hitler broke his promise to Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, FDR extended Lend-Lease to the Soviets. During the summer, FDR and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met on a ship off the coast of Newfoundland to develop a joint declaration known as the Atlantic Charter. The two leaders announced that the United States and Britain sought no new territories. Furthermore, they recognized the right of all peoples to choose their own form of government and to approve any territorial changes that might affect them. The charter called for international free trade and navigation as well. The charter articulated the Allies’ war aims, but it also had profound implications for colonial rule around the world. Realizing the possible cost of losing colonies, Churchill retreated from the global implications of the charter. The declaration, he claimed, applied primarily to European nations under Nazi rule. Roosevelt walked a fine line between contradicting Churchill and supporting the idea of empire. However, the words of the charter—along with the Allies’ condemnation of racism and territorial expansion by Germany and Japan—emboldened anticolonial activists around the world. Within 15 years after the end of World War II, 800 million previously colonized people won their independence, and 40 new nations would form. TABLE 23-1 The Election of 1940 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 27,244,160 449 Wendell L. Willkie Republican 22,305,198 82 As the United States inched closer to entry into the conflict, FDR still faced political and economic troubles at home. Although Allied munitions orders had already stimulated the economy, as late as 1939, 9.4 million Americans—17.2 percent of the labor force—remained jobless. In the 1940 presidential election Roosevelt defeated Republican challenger Wendell Willkie. FDR began his third term as war loomed and economic hardship at home persisted. But Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 ended both the neutrality debate and the Depression. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation and catapulted the United States immediately into World War II. President Roosevelt somberly told millions of Americans gathered around their radios that the day of the attack would “live in infamy.” Most former doubters now joined the war effort. The entire nation shifted into high gear to defeat brutal, aggressive regimes intent on conquering much of the world. For some, wartime mobilization offered new opportunities; for others, it brought sacrifice. For nearly a decade, tensions had been mounting between the United States and Japan as American leaders tried to contain Japan’s expansion in Asia. Roosevelt assumed that a strong U.S. military presence in the Pacific would persuade Japan’s premier, General Hideki Tojo, CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 775 ${bmicon} to avoid a confrontation with the United States. When Japan continued its aggression in Asia, FDR froze Japanese assets in the United States, putting trade with Japan under presidential control. This move, he hoped, would bring Japan to the bargaining table. Instead, on November 25, the Japanese dispatched aircraft carriers toward Hawaii and sent troops to the border of Malaya in the South Pacific. full view Attack on Pearl Harbor Attack on Pearl Harbor (Library of Congress) full view Destruction at Pearl Harbor The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came unexpectedly on a Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. It destroyed the U.S. Pacific fleet and killed more than 2400 Americans, but it united the nation. In one hour, the debate between isolationists and interventionists ended. (U.S. Navy, News Photo Division, Navy Office of Information) Although U.S. intelligence sources had broken the codes with which the Japanese encrypted messages about their war plans, they did not realize that the Japanese intended to strike Hawaii. One memo indicating that the Japanese were heading toward Pearl Harbor lay buried under a pile of intelligence reports. As a result, American military officials failed to warn the U.S. forces stationed in Pearl Harbor. At 7:55 A.M. on December 7, Japanese planes swooped over Pearl Harbor and bombed the naval base. The assault caught the American forces completely off guard and destroyed most of the U.S. Pacific fleet. Only a few aircraft carriers that were out at sea survived. Two hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese also struck the main U.S. base at Clark Field in the Philippines, destroying half of the U.S. Far East Air Force. At roughly the same time that Keith Little heard the news about Pearl Harbor at his Navajo reservation boarding school, another 16-year-old, John Garcia, watched flames rising at Pearl Harbor from his house four miles away. The young Hawaiian reached the scene in time to witness the second round of bombings. “I spent the rest of the day swimming inside the harbor, along with some other Hawaiians. I brought out I don’t know how many bodies, and how many were alive and how many dead…. We worked around the clock for three days.” PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 776 ${bmicon} In less than two hours the Japanese had wrecked 188 planes—most of the American aircraft on the island—and sunk 19 ships, including eight battleships, three destroyers, and three cruisers. When the smoke cleared, 2323 American service personnel were dead. Congress immediately declared war against Japan. Representative Jeannette Rankin from Montana cast the only dissenting vote. (The first woman elected to Congress and a lifelong pacifist, Rankin had also voted against the U.S. entry into World War I.) Three days later Germany and Italy declared war against the United States. full view “Loose Talk Can Cost Lives” Poster Posters such as this warned Americans not to divulge anything they might know about the war effort from their jobs or loved ones, as the information could fall in to enemy hands. (Library of Congress) full view “Buy Victory Bonds” Poster Efforts to raise revenue for the war included tax increases, but citizens were asked to buy victory bonds as a way to help the government, to save money for the future, and to “hasten the Homecoming” of loved ones in the armed services. (National Archives) The assault on Pearl Harbor sparked widespread rumors along the U.S. West Coast that Japanese and Japanese Americans living there planned to sabotage the war effort. Although no charges of criminal activity or treason were ever brought against any Japanese Americans, powerful farming interests eager to eradicate Japanese competition pushed for an evacuation. General John L. DeWitt, chief of the Western Defense Command, argued, “The Japanese race is an enemy race, and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted…. It therefore follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today.” People of Japanese descent were the only residents of the United States who were relocated during the war. Although the United States was at war with Germany and Italy, those of German or Italian ancestry were spared internment. Because they were white, nobody claimed that the Germans or Italians belonged to an “enemy race.” Not everyone supported the internment idea. U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle protested that there was “no reason” for a mass relocation. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 777 ${bmicon} full view MAP 23.1 THE INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS DURING WORLD WAR II After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an order authorizing the removal of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast. These Japanese Americans were relocated to internment camps built in arid and isolated areas in the West, as well as in two locations in Arkansas. FBI, also opposed the plan, arguing that DeWitt’s suggestion reflected “hysteria and lack of judgment.” Nevertheless, the Roosevelt administration gave in to the pressure, with the support of California Attorney General Earl Warren. In February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which suspended the civil rights of American citizens of Japanese descent. The order authorized the removal of 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Of those, 70,000 were Nisei, native-born American citizens. Families received one week’s notice to evacuate their homes and move to prisonlike camps surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed soldiers. There were 10 such camps in seven states, all of them located in arid, desolate spots in the West. At the camps internees lived in makeshift wooden barracks, where entire families crowded into one room. Not all Japanese Americans were evacuated. General Delos Emmons, the military governor of Hawaii, insisted that removing the Japanese from those islands would cripple the economy, as well as the defense of Oahu. In Hawaii, Japanese and Japanese Americans made up more than 90 percent of the skilled workers and agricultural laborers needed to rebuild and sustain the island. In their defense, Emmons proclaimed, “There have been no known acts of sabotage committed in Hawaii.” Business leaders concurred. But the Japanese living on the West Coast lacked the broad support that those in Hawaii enjoyed. full view African-American Fighter Pilots The pilot in this photo is studying the route of his bombing mission out of Italy. The Armed Forces remained segregated throughout World War II. (Library of Congress) full view Women Riveters in a Navy Shipyard Women Riveters in a Navy Shipyard The experience of internment proved so devastating that, after the war, 5766 Nisei renounced their American citizenship. One of those was World War I veteran Joseph Y. Kurihara, who recalled, “It was really cruel and harsh. To pack and evacuate in 48 hours was an impossibility. Seeing mothers completely bewildered with children crying from want and peddlers taking advantage and offering prices next to robbery made me feel like murdering those responsible.” Kurihara emigrated to Japan—a country he had never seen. While the internment experience alienated some Japanese Americans, fully 33,000 joined the armed services—including 1200 who enlisted from the internment camps—and proved their patriotism on the battlefield. In the Pacific, their knowledge of the Japanese language Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 778 ${bmicon} proved critical in translating intercepted Japanese military documents. General Charles Willoughby, chief of intelligence in the Pacific, estimated that the Japanese American military contributions shortened the war by two years. The Japanese also served ably in Europe, suffering huge casualties. The Japanese Americans of the 442nd Regiment lost one-fourth of their soldiers in battles in North Africa and Italy. They suffered another 800 casualties rescuing the Texan “Lost Battalion,” 211 men surrounded by German troops in the Vosges Mountains of France. As one Texan recalled, “We were never so glad to see anyone as those fighting Japanese Americans.” The 442nd Regiment won 18,143 individual decorations for distinguished service. Welcoming them home in 1946, President Harry Truman declared, “You fought not only the enemy, you fought prejudice—and you won.” Nevertheless, the U.S. government would take its time acknowledging that the internment had been a grave injustice. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the policy, and Roosevelt would not rescind the evacuation order until after his reelection in 1944. The camps finally closed in 1945. All told, Japanese Americans lost property valued at $500 million. Not until 1968 would the government reimburse former internees for some of their losses. And not until 1983 would a Special Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concede that because of “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership,” the U.S. government had committed “a grave injustice” to more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry. In 1988 Congress would enact legislation awarding restitution payments of $20,000 each to 60,000 surviving internees—a small gesture for Americans whose only “crime” was their Japanese ancestry. Even before the United States officially entered World War II, the conflict had begun to change the face of the nation. The sleepy town of Richmond, California, perched near the north end of San Francisco Bay, underwent a profound transformation when the nation stepped up war . CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 779 ${bmicon} production. The town’s mostly white population of 23,000 ballooned to 120,000 after industrialist Henry Kaiser constructed four shipyards there. The yards employed over 150,000 workers, more than one-fourth of them African American. Most were young, married migrants from the South, and there were slightly more women than men. They came to Richmond attracted by the better pay and benefits, along with the opportunity for greater freedom than they had known in the the Jim Crow South. Margaret Starks, daughter of southern tenant farmers, moved to Richmond. She established a blues club, edited a black newspaper, and played an active role in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her club became a center for African American cultural and political life. Thus, black migrants not only established their own community institutions but also transformed the life of the city. This same process unfolded all over the country, bringing black culture into cities and creating a diverse urban landscape. Many cities, however, were ill equipped to handle the influx of migrants. An estimated 60,000 African Americans moved into Chicago, for example, causing an enormous housing crisis. Many newcomers lacked even a modicum of privacy as they crowded into basements and rooms rented from total strangers. Huge numbers of whites also came north, many leaving hardscrabble farms hoping to prosper in booming war industries. Wartime also saw new migration from abroad and a reversal of earlier immigration policies. Because of the alliance with China in the war against Japan, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, and migrants from China became eligible for citizenship for the first time. Few Chinese actually arrived, however, and most immigration restrictions remained in force. The most significant wartime migration from abroad came from Mexico. In 1942, Mexico joined the Allies and provided an air force squadron trained in the United States that fought in the Pacific. An executive agreement between the United States and Mexico created the bracero program, which stipulated that the migrants were to be hired on short-term contracts and treated fairly. Under the bracero program, 300,000 Mexican laborers, mostly agricultural workers, came to the United States to labor in rural areas like California’s San Joaquin Valley, taking the place of “Okies” who migrated to cities for defense work. By the mid–1960s, nearly 5 million Mexicans had migrated north under the program. The war also prompted large numbers of émigrés to become American citizens. From 1941 to 1945, more immigrants became naturalized citizens than in any previous five-year period. More than 112,000 were naturalized during their service in the armed forces. But the vast majority of those naturalized—1,539,000—were civilians. For the first time, the majority were women. The largest numbers came from countries that were embroiled in the war: the British Empire, Italy, Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Naturalization was a concrete way for newcomers to clarify their status and their loyalty, especially in the wake of the Smith Act of 1940. This law required all foreign-born residents to be registered and fingerprinted, and broadened the grounds for deportation. Wartime mobilization brought Americans from all regions and backgrounds together in shared service and sacrifice. Industries as well as citizens dedicated themselves to the war effort. Automobile manufacturers stopped making cars and instead turned out tanks, jeeps, and other military vehicles. Citizens made do with government-rationed basic staples, from food to gasoline. As able-bodied men left their jobs to fight the war, new work opportunities opened up for women as well as for disabled Americans. Cities and centers of war production brought together young women and men who found new opportunities for sexual experimentation, while gay men and lesbians discovered newly visible communities in full view Ration Stamps - WWII Ration stamps became necessary during World War II when gasoline, tires, selected foodstuffs and other products became scarce. Stamps with patriotic symbolism suggest that rationing was a patriotic sacrifice, not a hardship. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 780 ${bmicon} both military and civilian life. Although class, gender, and racial injustices persisted, the war offered new sources of pride and patriotism for women and minorities and raised expectations that they would achieve full inclusion in the American promise. Many Americans hoped that the liberal spirit of the New Deal would endure during the war; others were eager for an end to what they perceived as Depression-era class conflict and hostility to business interests. To some extent both sides got their wish. Full employment, the increasing strength of unions, and high taxes on the wealthy pleased New Deal liberals. Profit guarantees, freedom from antitrust actions, no-strike pledges, and cheap imported labor gratified pro-business conservatives. Congress dismantled some of the New Deal’s most successful agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Projects Administration (WPA), and the National Youth Administration. Republicans opposed continued support for those programs, but full employment during the wartime economy made job programs unnecessary. The United States, like all other major powers involved in the conflict, mounted a propaganda drive to promote support for the war effort. Roosevelt created the Office of War Information (OWI) in 1942 to coordinate morale-boosting and censorship initiatives. Working in partnership with the motion picture industry and other media outlets, the OWI sponsored CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 781 ${bmicon} movies, radio programs, publications, and posters. These productions portrayed the war as a crusade to preserve the “American way of life” and encouraged American women and men to work in war industries, enlist in the armed forces, and purchase war bonds. Eric Johnston, head of the Motion Picture Producers’ Association and FDR’s business advisor, insisted that Hollywood remove class conflict from its films: “We’ll have no more Grapes of Wrath, we’ll have no more Tobacco Roads, we’ll have no more films that deal with the seamy side of American life. We’ll have no more films that treat the banker as a villain.” John Ford and Greg Toland heard the message. In the 1930s, they had made movies that carried themes of political dissent. Now they helped to build consensus. In one of their first wartime films, December 7, produced for the Navy in 1942, the protagonist is Uncle Sam himself. Visiting Hawaii before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he tolerates labor strikes and lets Japanese Americans speak their own language and practice their Shinto religion. But he learns his lesson when fictional Japanese Americans pass military secrets to the Japanese Imperial Navy, which attacks Pearl Harbor. Uncle Sam then insists that the Japanese shed their distinct traditions, forbids class conflict, and brings all groups together to win the war. Although there was never any evidence of Japanese American sabotage, the film suggested otherwise and warned that ethnic minorities must assimilate into the American mainstream to demonstrate their patriotism. Maintaining morale of the fighting men was critical to sustaining the war effort. Officials tried to ease the hardships of combat by providing cigarettes and beer, entertainment by and for the troops, and live performances by Hollywood celebrities like Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. Promises of the good life waiting at home—especially images of cozy houses, warm hearths, and sexual fulfillment—reminded the men overseas why they were fighting. “Pin-ups”—photos of sexy but wholesome-looking women—adorned the walls of barracks, representing the joys that would follow victory. full view “It’s A Woman’s War, Too” Poster As this poster indicates, women played many roles in World War I. (National Archives) Under government sponsorship, all the major radio networks aired a series of programs in 1942 to mobilize support for the war. One highly acclaimed segment, “To the Young,” included this conversation: YOUNG MALE VOICE: “That’s one of the things this war’s about.” YOUNG FEMALE VOICE: “About us?” YOUNG MALE VOICE: “About all young people like us. About love and gettin’ hitched, and havin’ a home and some kids, and breathin’ fresh air out in the suburbs … about livin’ an’ workin’ decent, like free people.” The enemy drew on the same images in their efforts to persuade American fighting service personnel to surrender. One lurid piece of propaganda that the Japanese scattered among the American troops in the Pacific pictured a young Caucasian man and woman locked in a passionate kiss under the moonlight. The leaflet read: That unforgettable embrace under the beautiful moon with the warmth of HER shapely body nestled against yours; that blood-tingling kiss; that over-powering sense of passion that sweeps over you—these and many other pleasant memories you’ll be able to relive again if you’ll throw down your arms, surrender and prepare to get out of this hell-hole. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 782 ${bmicon} Inside the card was the grim alternative: the same young man’s bloody body with the warning: “BUT if you continue to resist—Then, under the beautiful tropical moon, only DEATH awaits you. Bullet-holes in your guts—agonizing death! You have the two alternatives. Take your choice.” FDR on Winning the War FDR on Winning the War Within the United States, government censors made sure that no photographs showing badly wounded soldiers or mutilated bodies reached the public. The censors also removed any images that might elicit sympathy for the enemy, such as pictures of injured or frightened enemy soldiers suffering at the hands of American soldiers. Photographs that appeared in the American media generally sanitized the horror of war, depicting noble American soldiers and a shadowy, faceless enemy. Rarely, if ever, did those on the home front see the true extent of the war’s destructiveness and brutality. When men returned home severely traumatized by what they had seen, even their trauma was censored. As just one example, for more than three decades, the army suppressed John Huston’s Let There Be Light, a film documentary of World War II veterans in a psychiatric hospital suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Wartime opened up new possibilities for jobs, income, and labor organizing, for women as well as for men, and for new groups of workers. Disabled workers entered jobs previously considered beyond their abilities, fulfilling their tasks with skill and competence. Norma Krajczar, a visually impaired teenager from North Carolina, served as a volunteer aircraft warden where her sensitive hearing gave her an advantage over sighted wardens in listening for approaching enemy planes. Deaf people streamed into Akron, Ohio, to work in the tire factories that became defense plants, making more money than they ever made before. full view “Rosie the Riveter” “Rosie the Riveter” became perhaps the most familiar symbol of women’s contribution to the war effort during WWII. After the war ended, the government urged women to return to the traditional roles of wife and mother to make room for returning servicemen. (Library of Congress) Along with new employment opportunities, workers’ earnings rose nearly 70 percent. Income doubled for farmers and then doubled again. Labor union membership grew 50 percent, reaching an all-time high by the end of the war. In spite of no-strike pledges, strikes pressured the aircraft industry in Detroit and elsewhere. A major strike of the United Mine Workers Union erupted in 1943. Congress responded with the Smith-Connally Act of 1943, which gave the president power to seize plants or mines wherever strikes interrupted war production. Women and minorities joined unions in unprecedented numbers. Some organized unions of their own. Energetic labor organizers like Luisa Moreno and Dorothy Ray Healy organized Mexican women working at the California Sanitary Canning Company into a powerful union that achieved wage increases and union recognition. Unions with white male leadership, however, admitted women and minorities reluctantly and tolerated them only during the war emergency. Some unions required women to quit their jobs after the war. Nevertheless, World War II ushered in dramatic changes for American women. Wartime scarcities led to increased domestic labor as homemakers made do with rationed goods, mended clothing, collected and saved scraps and metals, and planted “victory gardens” to help feed their families. Employment opportunities for women also increased. As a result of the combined incentives of patriotism and good wages, women streamed into the paid labor force. Many of them took “men’s jobs” while the men went off to fight. “Rosie the Riveter” became the heroic symbol of the woman war worker. Pictures of attractive “Rosies” building planes or constructing ships graced magazine covers and posters. Future Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe first gained attention when her photograph appeared in Yank, CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 783 ${bmicon} a magazine for soldiers. The magazine pictured her not as the sex goddess she later became, but as a typical “Rosie the Riveter” clad in overalls, working at her job in a defense plant. Until 1943, black women were barred from work in defense industries. Poet Maya Angelou recalled that African Americans had to fight for the jobs they wanted. She became the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco during the war, but not without a struggle. She made herself a promise that “made my veins stand out, and my mouth tighten into a prune: I WOULD HAVE THE JOB. I WOULD BE A CONDUCTORETTE AND SLING A FULL MONEY CHANGER FROM MY BELT. I WOULD.” And she did. full view Women Driving Rivets in an Airplane Part Women Driving Rivets in an Airplane Part For the first time, married women joined the paid labor force in droves and public opinion supported them. During the Depression, 80 percent of Americans had objected to the idea of wives working outside the home; by 1942, only 13 percent still objected. However, mothers of young children found very little help. In 1943 the federal government finally responded to the needs of working mothers by funding day-care centers. More than 3000 centers enrolled 130,000 children. Still, the program served only a small proportion of working mothers. Most women relied on family members to care for their children. A Women’s Bureau survey in 1944 found that 16 percent of mothers working in war industries had no child-care arrangements at all. Meager to begin with and conceived as an emergency measure, government funding for child care would end after the war. For the first time, married women joined the paid labor force in droves, and public opinion supported them. Before the war, most jobs for women were low-paying, nonunion positions that paid them an average of $24.50 a week. Wartime manufacturing jobs paid almost twice that much—$40.35 a week. During the conflict, 300,000 women worked in the aircraft industry alone. Almira Bondelid recalled that when her husband went overseas, “I decided to stay in San Diego and went to work in a dime store. That was a terrible place to work, and as soon as I could I got a job at Convair [an aircraft manufacturer]…. I worked in the tool department as a draftsman, and by the time I left there two years later I was designing long drill jigs for parts of the wing and hull of B–24s.” New opportunities for women also opened up in the armed services. All sectors of the armed forces had dwindled in the years between the two wars and needed to gain size and strength. Along with the 10 million men aged 21 to 35 drafted into the armed services and the 6 million who enlisted, 140,000 women volunteered for the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) and 100,000 for the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service). full view “Women In War” Poster This government poster celebrates the role of women in World War II defense plants, where they played a pivotal role in producing the necessary supplies for war. (National Archives) Most female enlistees and war workers enjoyed their work and wanted to continue after the war. The extra pay, independence, camaraderie, and satisfaction that their jobs provided had opened their eyes to new possibilities. Edith Speert, like many others, was never again content as a full-time housewife and mother. Edith’s husband, Victor, was sent overseas in 1944. During the 18 months of their separation, they penned 1300 letters to each other, sometimes two or three times a day. The letters revealed the love and affection they felt for one another, but Edith did not hesitate to tell Victor how she had changed. In a letter from Cleveland, dated November 9, 1945, she wrote: Sweetie, I want to make sure I make myself clear about how I’ve changed. I want you to know now that you are not married to a girl that’s interested solely in a home—I shall definitely have to work all my life—I get emotional satisfaction out of working; and I don’t doubt that many a night you will cook the supper while I’m at a meeting. Also, dearest—I shall never wash and iron—there are laundries for that! Do you think you’ll be able to bear living with me?… I love you, Edith Despite the shifting priorities of women, the war reversed the declining marriage and fertility rates of the 1930s. Between 1941 and 1945 the birthrate climbed from 19.4 to 24.5 per 1000 population. The reversal stemmed, in part, from economic prosperity, as well as the possibility of draft deferments for married men in the early war years. However, the desire to solidify relationships and establish connections to PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 784 ${bmicon} the future during a time of great uncertainty perhaps served as the most powerful motivation. Thus, a curious paradox marked the war years: a widespread disruption of domestic life accompanied by a rush into marriage and parenthood. full view Women in an Airplane Factory Here women are shown at work at an airplane factory during World War II. Before the war was over, the United States produced 86,000 airplanes. (National Archives) At the same time that the war prompted a rush into marriage and parenthood, wartime upheaval sent the sexual order topsy-turvy. For many young women, moving to a new city or taking a wartime job opened up new possibilities for independence, excitement, and sexual adventure. One young worker recalled: Chicago was just humming, no matter where I went. The bars were jammed … you could pick up anyone you wanted to…. There were servicemen of all varieties roaming the streets all the time. There was never, never a shortage of young, healthy bucks…. We never thought of getting tired. Two, three hours of sleep was normal…. I’d go down to the office every morning half dead, but with a smile on my face, and report for work. Some young women, known as “victory girls,” believed that it was an act of patriotism to have a fling with a man in uniform before he went overseas. The independence of these women raised fears of female sexuality as a dangerous, ungoverned force. The worry extended beyond the traditional concern about prostitutes and “loose women” to include “good girls” whose sexual standards might relax during wartime. Public health campaigns warned enlisted men that “victory girls” would have their fun with a soldier and then leave him with a venereal disease, incapable of fighting for his country. Wartime also intensified concerns about homosexuality. Urban centers and the military provided new opportunities for gay men and lesbians to form relationships and build communities. Although the military officially banned homosexuals from the forces, many served by keeping their orientation secret. If discovered, gay men faced severe punishment, including confinement in cages called “queer stockades” or in psychiatric wards. Lesbians faced similar sanctions, although the women’s corps, in an effort to assure the civilian world of their recruits’ femininity, often looked the other way. Antigay crusades and policies sometimes backfired. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 1943 wartime propaganda film This Is the Army, starring future U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Sponsored by the Office of War Information and produced by Warner Brothers, the film centers on the romance between a soldier and an army nurse. The two wed just before the hero leaves to fight on foreign shores. The film uses humor to diffuse uneasiness and discomfort with the disrupted gender roles and sexual identities brought about by war. Soldier-comedians joke about their female superior officers. A group of hemen in drag do a clumsy chorus-line routine showing their hairy legs and bulging muscles beneath their skirts. In an ironic twist, This Is the Army became a popular wartime cult film among gays and lesbians. The Holocaust, Nazi Germany’s campaign to exterminate European Jews, demonstrated the horrors of racial hatred taken to its ultimate extreme. The U.S. government did little to help Jewish refugees or to stem the slaughter of Jews in Europe. Official indifference and widespread anti-Semitism prevailed throughout the war. Nevertheless, Nazi policies against the Jews discredited racial and ethnic prejudice, forcing Americans to confront the reality of racism in their own country. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict, in her 1943 book The Races of Mankind, urged the United States to “clean its own house” and “stand unashamed before Nazis and condemn, without confusion, their doctrines of a Master Race.” Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy called on the nation to live up to its democratic promise: “The great reason for hope is that this country has a national experience of uniting racial and cultural diversities and a national theory, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 785 ${bmicon} full view MAP 23.2 NAZI CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMPS Under Hitler, the Nazis established dozens of concentration camps where Jews and others whom the Nazis deemed “undesirable” were imprisoned. In addition to these sites, there were hundreds of slave labor camps attached to factories across Germany where Jews were forced to work for Nazi enterprises. After Hitler began his genocidal “final solution,” six camps became sites of systematic mass murder, with efficient killing operations, including gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. if not a consistent practice, of freedom and equality for all.” Americans of color responded to the call for unity and demonstrated their patriotism; in return, they expected full inclusion in the democracy. There would be no return to the old racial order. As black leader W. E. B. DuBois noted, World War II was a “War for Racial Equality” and a struggle for “democracy not only for white folks but for yellow, brown, and black.” Hitler’s war aims included conquering all of Europe and destroying European Jewry. Throughout the war, Nazi anti-Jewish policies escalated from persecution and officially sanctioned violence to imprisonment in concentration camps, slave labor, and ultimately Hitler’s “Final Solution,” genocide. Nazis developed increasingly efficient means of killing Jews. Some Jewish men, women, and children perished by firing squads in mass executions. Others died of disease and malnutrition in concentration camps or at the hands of Nazi doctors in gruesome medical experiments. In the infamous Nazi death camps, guards herded prisoners into “shower rooms” that were actually gas chambers. Out of a prewar European Jewish population of PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 786 ${bmicon} 10 million, the Holocaust claimed the lives of 6 million Jews, along with homosexuals, the disabled, and Romani (also known as Gypsies). American officials knew of the Nazi persecution of the Jews but did little about it. Throughout the 1930s, American Jewish groups pressured the Roosevelt administration to ease immigration laws to allow Jewish refugees to enter the country. But the United States raised the legal quota of Jewish immigrants only slightly. In 1938, Roosevelt organized an international conference on the refugee crisis in Evian, Switzerland, with 32 nations attending. But no nation agreed to accept large numbers of refugees, so the conference had little practical impact. In 1939, a pro-Nazi rally in New York City drew 20,000. That same year, congressional leaders defeated the Wagner–Rogers bill, which would have amended immigration quotas to allow the entry of 20,000 Jewish children. When the Nazis began their policy of extermination in 1941, they tried to keep it a secret. But Dr. Gerhard Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, Switzerland, learned about the Holocaust from a German source and informed American diplomats. U.S. State Department officials decided not to pass along the information to Washington. Despite official silence, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a prominent American Jewish leader, heard the news and held a press conference in November 1942. But the American press, preoccupied with military events and reluctant to publish stories of atrocities without official verification, gave the Holocaust little coverage. Meanwhile, despite news of Nazi genocide, the U.S. government turned away boatloads of Jewish refugees, sending them back to Germany to their deaths. The U.S. government turned away boatloads of Jewish refugees, sending them back to Germany to their deaths. Nazi persecution of the Jews raised American sensitivity to the issue of racism but did little to diminish anti-Semitism within the United States. In fact, American hostility toward Jews reached new heights during World War II and exceeded the level of prejudice against any other group. In a 1942 survey of American voters, 51 percent agreed that Jews “have too much power in the United States.” At the height of Nazi genocide against the Jews in 1944, when asked to identify the greatest “menace” to the nation, 24 percent of Americans polled listed Jews—more than those who listed Germans, Japanese, radicals, Negroes, and foreigners. In Europe, American military strategists knew of the existence and location of Nazi death camps, but they refused to destroy them or to bomb the railroad lines leading to the camps. Many Europeans under Nazi domination, however, risked their lives to rescue and shelter Jews. While the United States stood by, smaller nations took action. For example, Denmark defied the Nazis even though occupied by them—taking a far greater risk than anything the United States might have done—and managed to save nearly all Danish Jews. And the tiny Dominican Republic took in more Jewish refugees than any other country in the Western Hemisphere. The United States fought a war against the Nazis but did very little to help their victims. Throughout the war years, racial tensions within the United States persisted. Black workers, who were excluded from the best-paying jobs in the defense industry, mobilized against discrimination on the job. Their most powerful advocate was African American Civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, who had organized the overwhelmingly black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and won the union a contract with the railroads in 1937. At the beginning of American involvement in the war in 1941, Randolph pressured FDR to ban discrimination in defense industries. He threatened to organize a massive march on Washington if Roosevelt did not respond. Roosevelt got the message and issued Executive Order 8802, which created the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to ensure that blacks and women received the same pay as white men for doing the same job. The FEPC narrowed pay gaps somewhat, but it did not solve the problem. The American Federation of Labor, which included the highest-paid workers, still refused to accept blacks as members and fought with the FEPC over the equal-pay policy. full view Japanese-Americans At Santa Anita Race Track in 1942 Before being sent to relocation centers, Japanese Americans in California, Oregon, and Washington had to sell all of their belongings and take only what they could carry with them to assembly centers such as this one in Los Angeles. (National Archives) full view A Young Nisei and Her Family’s Belongings Even young Japanese Americans (Nisei, as the second generation were known) born to U.S. citizenship were forced to give up their liberties due to the perceived wartime emergency. At the relocation camps, they would be taught such civics lessons as the importance of freedom in America. (National Archives) CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 787 ${bmicon} Sometimes the presence of racial minorities in previously all-white work settings led to hostilities. White men who labored on the home front resented the women and minorities who were filling “men’s jobs,” as well as the soldiers who earned praise for their heroic manhood. Many worried about losing their jobs to returning veterans. For example, Montana’s copper workers, concerned about their job security and their masculinity, asked the federal government to issue them special certificates equating their wartime contribution with that of soldiers. The government denied their request and in 1942 sent a regiment of black miners from the South to help fill the labor shortage in Montana’s copper mines. White miners—many of whom had immigrant parents and had only just begun to enjoy full inclusion in white America—were now being told that black men were their equals. The white miners refused to work next to black men and walked out of the mines en masse. full view Japanese-American Children Awaiting Relocation Japanese-American children on their way to a “relocation center,” an experience that would haunt many Japanese Americans for the rest of their lives. (Library of Congress) full view Japanese-American Family Awaiting Relocation - Lange Photo Japanese-American family tagged and waiting to go to detention camp, photographed by Dorothea Lange in 1942. (National Archives) full view Japanese-American Family in Internment Camp A mother and son, interned at a temporary relocation camp, pose with a picture of her older son wearing his US Army uniform. Japanese Americans living on the West Coast faced grim conditions in remote internment camps. (National Archives, Still Pictures Branch) In 1943 Detroit, white workers at the Packard auto plant also walked off the job when three black employees were promoted. With increasing numbers of white and black Southerners arriving to work in the city’s war industries, overcrowding strained the boundaries of traditionally segregated neighborhoods. Clashes at a new housing complex escalated into several days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths and 1800 arrests. In Los Angeles, the death of a Mexican American youth, Jose Diaz, at a gravel pit called Sleepy Lagoon sparked sensational news coverage and whipped up anti-Mexican fervor. Although police never determined the cause of Diaz’s injuries, they filed first-degree murder charges against 22 Mexican American boys from the neighborhood. The jury found the young men guilty, but an appeals court overturned the convictions. Nevertheless, hostility continued to mount against Mexican American youths, particularly “pachucos” who sported “zoot suits,” distinctive attire with flared pants, long coats, and wide-brimmed hats. Pachucos wore the zoot suit as an expression of ethnic pride and rebelliousness, as well as incipient political consciousness. Both boys and girls flaunted their distinctive clothing and enjoyed the sense of unity it inspired. Some zoot-suiters would later become active in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s—including the future leader of the United Farm Workers, Cesar Chávez. Chávez later remembered that it took “a lot of guts to wear those pants, and we had to be rebellious to do it, because the police and a few of the older people would harass us.” Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 788 ${bmicon} For eight days in June 1943 scores of soldiers hunted zoot-suiters in Los Angeles bars, theaters, dance halls, and even in their homes, pulling off their clothes and beating them. Soon the attacks expanded to all Mexican Americans, and then to African Americans as well, some of whom also wore the zoot-suit style. The Los Angeles police sided with the rioters. They stood by during the beatings and then arrested the naked and bleeding youths and charged them with disturbing the peace. The rioting raged until the War Department made the entire city of Los Angeles off limits to military personnel. Only a handful of soldiers, but more than 600 Mexican Americans, were arrested. President Roosevelt worried that the zoot-suit violence might strain relations with Mexico. He therefore allocated federal funds for job training, educational improvements, and greater access to higher education for Spanish-speaking Americans. In spite of discrimination at home, members of minority groups responded enthusiastically to the war effort. The numbers of blacks in the Army soared from 5000 in 1940 to 700,000 by 1944, with an additional 187,000 in the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps. Four thousand black women joined the WACs. Almost all soldiers fought in segregated units, despite protests by the NAACP that “a Jim Crow army cannot fight for a free world.” Nearly 1 million blacks also joined the industrial labor force during the war. African Americans fought for the “Double V”—victory over fascism abroad and racial discrimination at home. Wartime experiences and sacrifices would inspire African Americans, along with Mexican Americans and other minority citizens, to mobilize for civil rights after the war. Like Keith Little and his boarding-school buddies who became Navajo “Code Talkers,” American Indians all over the country declared their willingness to fight for the cause. The Iroquois League announced: It is the unanimous sentiment among the Indian people that the atrocities of the Axis nations are violently repulsive to all sense of righteousness of our people. This merciless slaughter of mankind upon the part of those enemies of free peoples can no longer be tolerated. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 789 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Zelda Webb Anderson, “You Just Met One Who Does Not Know How to Cook” Zelda Webb Anderson became one of the first black women to enter military service during World War II. She served as an officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACS), renamed the Women’s Army Corps (WACS) in 1942. After the war she earned a doctorate in education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her 42-year career in education included a stint teaching at the University of East Africa in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. She related her wartime experiences to the University of Nevada Oral History Program in 1995. I reported for duty in January 1942…. This was so exciting to me. We had black officers, and our basic training was the same as for men. They would simply tell us, “You wanted to be in a man’s army, so now you got to do what the men do.” We learned military courtesy, history, how to shoot an M–1, go on bivouac, bathe in a teacup of water, eat hardtack rations…. Every evening troops of male soldiers would march by our barracks en route to the mess hall. I told the commanding officer that we would like to have some shades at the windows. “Oh, no. You wanted to be in the man’s army. Fine—you have to do what the men do.” I told all the girls, “Listen, they won’t give us any shades. So I want you to get right in front of the windows buck naked.” The next day we had shades at all the windows…. They pulled me out of basic training the third week and sent me to officer training in Des Moines. All of the instructors were white, but white and black officers were being trained in the same facility, in the same classes, and we slept in the same barracks. After OCS I was assigned to a laundry unit. A black enlisted WAAC could either be in the laundry unit or she could be in the hospital unit. In the laundry unit, if she had a college degree, she could work at the front counter…. If she had less than that, then she did the laundry—very demeaning. And in the hospital unit they let her wash walls, empty basins, wash windows—all that menial work…. I was assigned to duty at Fort Breckenridge, Kentucky. The post commander’s name was Colonel Throckmorton. In a pronounced southern accent he told me, “You’re going over to that colored WAC company, and you’re going to be the mess officer.” I said, “Sir, I have not had any mess training.” “All you nigras know how to cook.” I said, “You just met one who does not know how to cook; but if you send me to Fort Eustis, Virginia, for training I will come back and be the best mess officer you have on this post.” “I ain’t sending you to no school, and you’re going over there to be a mess officer.” When I about-faced, I kept on going. I didn’t even salute him…. [Much later, after developing a more cordial relationship with Colonel Throckmorton,] I told him that segregation has not allowed white people to know black people: “We know you very intimately, but you don’t know how we think, how we react, and so you just try to push your stuff on us, not giving a damn about how we feel about this. And then when we rebel, or you meet somebody like me, who decides that you can’t do this to me, then you think I’m cantankerous; you think I’m an agitator. I’m just trying to give you an education….” I lived out the rest of my days very happy in the Army. If I had succumbed to the treatment that they had given other blacks before, and not spoken up for myself, my morale would have been down…. In this life, you’ve got to speak up for yourself. You can’t go around shuffling your feet with your head hung down acting apologetic. If you see something you want, you must go after it. One day somebody will recognize it, and it’s a victory for you, especially when it’s somebody who has denigrated you because of your race…. Our country has not solved all of its problems. You have to live democracy before you can preach democracy. I’ve got four grand-daughters, and I don’t want them put in a position where they don’t have equal opportunities, equal chances, and then they have to fight the same old battles that I fought again. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 790 ${bmicon} The Cheyenne agreed, vowing to defeat an “unholy triangle” determined to “conquer and enslave the bodies, minds and souls of all free people.” Fully 25,000 Native Americans, including 800 women, served in the military during the war. By 1945, nearly one-third of all able-bodied Native American men between 18 and 50 had served. Five percent of them were killed or wounded in action. Native Americans enlisted at a higher rate than the general population, prompting the Saturday Evening Post to editorialize, “We would not need the Selective Service if all volunteered like the Indians.” In addition to those who enlisted, half of all able-bodied Native American men not in the service and one-fifth of women left reservations for war industry jobs. At the beginning of the war, men on reservations earned a median annual income of $500, less than one-fourth the national average. One-third of all Native American men living off reservations were unemployed. Worse, the average life expectancy for Native Americans in 1940 was just 35 years, compared with 64 years for the population at large. Like others who found new opportunities during the conflict, Native Americans hoped that the economic progress they had made would be permanent. But the boom would end for them when the war ended. Fewer than 10 percent of Native Americans who relocated to cities found long-term employment after the war. World War II consisted of two wars, one centered in Europe and the other in the Pacific. Combatants in both conflicts engaged in total war—the bombing of civilian as well as military targets. The advantageous geographic position of the United States enabled it to wage total war without attacks on its own cities. The war transformed much of the world. By the time it ended, Hitler had killed 6 million Jews and destroyed the Jewish communtities in Europe. Large parts of the Soviet Union, Europe, and Asia lay in ruins. The United States had deployed the most powerful weapon ever used in warfare. Of all the combatants, only the United States escaped physical destruction on its own national soil. Coming out of the war physically unscathed, economically sound, and politically strong, the United States became the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world. The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States immediately into the war in both Europe and the Pacific. The leaders of the Allied Powers, including the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, had to develop a strategy to defeat the Nazis. But the Allies did not always agree on how to conduct the war, and relations between the United States and the Soviet Union remained strained. Unable to fully overcome the hostility and suspicion that had marked their earlier encounters, leaders of both countries fought the war with postwar power considerations in mind. full view German Painting Idealizing Hitler Millions of Germans idolized Adolph Hitler. He is portrayed in this captured German painting as a white knight. After the painting came into American hands, a GI slashed Hitler’s face to indicate his displeasure with the mystique of the Fuhrer. (U.S. Army) Like the United States at Pearl Harbor, the Soviet Union suffered a shocking blow when the Nazis launched a surprise invasion in June 1941 in violation of the nonaggression pact Hitler had signed with Stalin in 1938. The Soviets suffered huge losses as 200 German divisions advanced across Eastern Europe and into the Soviet Union toward Moscow. With the full might of the Nazi forces concentrated on the front lines against the Russians in Eastern Europe, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin wanted the United States to open a second front in Western Europe to divert the Nazis toward the west and relieve pressure on the Soviet Union. In May 1942 Roosevelt assured Stalin that the United States would support an Allied invasion across the English Channel into France. But the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, persuaded FDR to delay that dangerous maneuver and instead to launch an invasion of French north Africa, which was controlled by the Nazi occupation forces in Vichy, France. full view World War II in Europe Prior to 1943, the German military dominated Europe and North Africa. But the tide of the battle shifted in this theater during the winter of 1942-1943. The massive German assault on the eastern front was turned back by the Russians at Stalingrad, and the Allied forces recaptured North Africa. CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 791 ${bmicon} While the Allies turned their attention to north Africa, the Soviets managed single-handedly to force the German army into retreat at Stalingrad, where fierce fighting lasted from August 1942 to January 1943. The Battle of Stalingrad was a major turning point in the war and stopped Nazi aggression on the eastern front. The north Africa campaign, code-named TORCH, also concluded successfully for the Allies. Axis soldiers in north Africa surrendered in May 1943. The following summer the Allied forces overran the island of Sicily and moved into southern Italy. A fascist Grand Council led by Field Marshall Pietro Badoglio had overthrown Mussolini and opened communication with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces in Europe. By 1944 the Allied forces reached Rome and backed the new Italian regime. Roosevelt and Churchill continued to delay the opening of the second front as the Soviets waited for relief. The long-awaited Allied invasion across the English Channel, Operation OVERLORD, finally began on June 6, 1944, code named D-Day. On D-Day, the force assembled in England crossed the English Channel to France. At dawn, in the largest amphibious landing in history, more than 4000 Allied ships descended on the beaches at Normandy. As the troops splashed onto shore, they met a barrage of German fire. Many thousands died on the beach that day. Over full view MAP 23.3 WORLD WAR II IN EUROPE Along the eastern front of the war in Europe, Soviet troops did the bulk of the fighting and sustained the highest casualties. The Battle of Stalingrad, in which Soviet troops finally drove back the Nazis after months of brutal fighting, was a major turning point in the war. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 792 ${bmicon} the next 10 days, more than 1 million soldiers landed at Normandy, along with 50,000 vehicles and more than 100,000 tons of supplies, opening the way for an advance into Nazi-occupied France. As the war continued to rage, Roosevelt prepared for the November election. Much of the 1944 campaign swirled around Roosevelt’s suitability for reelection: whether he should serve an unprecedented fourth term, and whether his health would hold up—the 62-year-old president suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure. Party regulars persuaded FDR to drop Vice President Henry A. Wallace from the ticket and replace him with Senator Harry S. Truman from Missouri. The Republicans chose Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York, to run against FDR. Democrats campaigned on the slogan “Don’t change horses in midstream,” and the electorate apparently agreed. Roosevelt won the election and continued his wartime leadership. In the months after D-Day, the Allies liberated Paris and went on to defeat the Germans in Belgium at the Battle of the Bulge, sending the Nazis into full retreat. The Allied armies then crossed the Rhine and headed for Berlin. Eisenhower stopped his troops at the Elbe River to let Soviet troops take Berlin. Eisenhower hoped that giving the Soviets the final triumph would ease postwar relations with the Soviet Union—but he also wanted to save American lives. Huge numbers of Soviet troops died in the siege of Berlin, but the war in Europe was nearly over. With the Soviets approaching his bunker in April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Berlin fell on May 2, and Germany surrendered at Reims, France, on May 7, 1945—V-E (Victory in Europe) Day. full view Operation Overlord, Normandy, 1944 Supplies for the Allied forces pour ashore at the beachheads of Normandy during Operation Overlord in 1944. The invasion began the opening of the second front that Stalin had been urging on the Allies since the German armies thrust into Russia in 1941. (United States Coast Guard) FDR did not live to see the Nazis defeated. On April 12, 1945, he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. As a stunned nation mourned, Vice President Harry S. Truman took the oath of office as the nation’s thirty-third president. TABLE 23-2 The Election of 1944 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 25,602,504 432 Thomas E. Dewey Republican 22,006,285 99 As the conflict in Europe came to an end, the war in the Pacific continued to rage. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan continued its conquests in the Pacific. In April 1942 General Douglas MacArthur, driven from the Philippines to Australia, left 12,000 American and 64,000 Filipino soldiers to surrender on the Bataan peninsula and the island of Corregidor. On the infamous “Bataan Death March” to the prison at Camp O’Donnell, the Japanese beat, tortured, and shot the sick and starving troops. As many as 10,000 men died on the march. full view Eisenhower and Paratroopers in World War II Eisenhower and Paratoopers in World War II (Library of Congress) full view World War II in the Pacific The tide of battle turned in the Pacific the same year as in Europe. The balance of sea power shifted back to the United States from Japan after the naval victories of 1942. Now in control of Indochina, Thailand, the Philippines, and the chain of islands from Sumatra to Guadalcanal, Japan’s military leaders planned to destroy what remained of the U.S. fleet. But MacArthur marshaled his forces and achieved a major victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942. U.S. intelligence sources discovered that the Japanese were planning a massive assault on Midway Island, a naval base key to Hawaii’s defense. Under the command of CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 793 ${bmicon} Admiral Chester Nimitz, the United States launched a surprise air strike on June 4, 1942, sinking four Japanese carriers, destroying 322 planes, preserving the American presence at Midway, and virtually destroying Japanese offensive capabilities. Two months later, Nimitz’s forces landed at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, subduing the Japanese in five months of brutal fighting. Having seized the offensive, U.S. troops continued toward Japan. MacArthur’s forces took New Guinea, and, by February 1944, Nimitz secured the Marshall Islands and the Marianas. At about the same time that Allied forces in Europe were landing in Normandy, the United States invaded Saipan, the main island bastion that protected Japan’s mainland. In a savage air battle on June 19, the Americans shot down 346 Japanese planes and lost 50 of their own. The attack killed 22,000 Japanese civilians—two-thirds of the island’s population. The United States suffered 14,000 casualties. But the grueling battle secured for the United States a strategic base for launching bombing raids on Tokyo. The bloody war in the Pacific continued, with critical Allied victories on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Crucial to these victories were the sensitive radio communications achieved by the special Marine unit of Navajo “Code Talkers.” full view Dedication of Iwo Jima Memorial, 1954 Dedication of the Iwo Jima Memorial Monument in Washington, D.C., November 10, 1954. (National Archives) In China the struggle against Japanese aggression grew complicated because China was also engaged in a civil war. Initially, the Chinese Nationalists appeared to have the largest military forces to resist the Japanese, so Roosevelt declared support for Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), the corrupt and unpopular Nationalist leader. Jiang continued to demand Allied support as a growing communist movement, led by Mao Zedong (Mao Tsetung), challenged the Japanese and gained support among Chinese peasants. Although the Nationalists failed to stop the Japanese, Roosevelt continued to back Jiang’s ineffective leadership, setting the stage for political tensions that persisted after the war. The war in the Pacific was particularly vicious. Racism on both sides fueled acts of extreme brutality. Japan’s leaders believed that their racial superiority gave them a divine mission to conquer Asia. The Japanese tortured prisoners of war and civilians in their conquered lands. They tested biological weapons and conducted medical experiments on live subjects. Japanese troops forced Chinese and Korean women into sexual slavery, euphemistically calling them “comfort women.” Racial hostility also promoted American battlefield savagery. U.S. troops in the Pacific often killed the enemy instead of taking prisoners and desecrated the enemy dead with disrespect equal to that meted out by the Japanese on the bodies of their foes. On the home front, American cultural images and popular sentiments vilified the Japanese not only as a hated enemy but also as a monstrous race. War correspondent Ernie Pyle explained that “in Europe we felt that our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still people. But … the Japanese were looked upon as something subhuman and repulsive, the way some people feel about cockroaches or mice.” Respectable magazines such as Science Digest ran articles titled “Why Americans Hate Japs More Than Nazis.” As American troops closed in on Japan, Roosevelt approved a plan to firebomb Japanese cities. The Allies had already bombed German cities, destroying much of Hamburg and Dresden and killing thousands of civilians. To persuade Americans to accept the bombing strategy with its inevitable civilian casualties, government censors lifted the ban on stories of Japanese treatment Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 794 ${bmicon} full view MAP 23.4 WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC During World War II, the Japanese occupied vast territories in Asia and the Pacific. The Battle of Midway in 1942 was the first major victory for the United States in the Pacific and helped turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. of American war prisoners. Reports of atrocities, as well as virulently racist images of the Japanese, flooded the media. On March 9 and 10, 1945, bombing raids led by General Curtis LeMay leveled 16 square miles of Tokyo—one-fourth of the city—and left 185,000 dead or wounded. LeMay’s bombers then turned to other cities. Firebombs reportedly killed a higher number of civilians than Japanese soldiers who died in battle. Allied leaders met several times to plan for the postwar era. Roosevelt hoped to ensure American dominance and to limit Soviet power. At a conference in Teheran, Iran, in 1943 Roosevelt full view The Big Three at Yalta Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin – The Big Three – at the Yalta Conference. Stalin invoked the Yalta agreements to justify the Soviet Union’s control over eastern Europe after the war. CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 795 ${bmicon} insisted that the Eastern European states of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia should be independent after the war. As the war wound down, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt met again at Yalta, in Ukraine, in February 1945. They agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender and to divide the conquered nation into four zones to be occupied by Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. It became obvious at Yalta that separate spheres of influence would prevail after the war. Poland was a source of contention. Although Stalin nominally agreed to allow free elections in Eastern Europe, he intended to make sure that the countries bordering the Soviet Union would be under his control. He also pledged to enter the war against Japan and received assurances that the Soviet Union would regain the lands lost to Japan in the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. full view Truman, Atlee and Stalin at the Berlin Conference Truman, Atlee and Stalin at the Berlin Conference (Library of Congress) In July 1945 the newly sworn-in American president, Harry Truman, joined Stalin and Churchill (replaced by Clement Attlee after Churchill’s election loss) at Potsdam, near Berlin. The three leaders issued a statement demanding “unconditional surrender” from Japan while privately agreeing to let Japan retain its emperor. The rest of the conference focused on postwar Europe. At Potsdam Truman learned of the successful test of the atomic bomb. With the new weapon in his hands, he now knew that Soviet assistance would not be needed to end the war in the Pacific. full view Emaciated Woman at Bergen-Belsen Photos from the death camps, such as this one of an emaciated woman in a bunk at Bergen-Belsen, made the almost unimaginable atrocities of Hitler’s regime real to Americans at home. (World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations) As the war ended in Europe, Allied troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps. At that moment, the world finally learned the extent of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Among the soldiers who first entered the camps were a number of Japanese Americans. Ichiro Imamura described the sight at Dachau: “When the gates swung open, we got our first good look at the prisoners…. They were like skeletons—all skin and bones…. They were sick, starving and dying.” Some of the survivors saw the Japanese American soldiers and feared that they were Japanese allies of the Germans. A Nisei soldier reassured them, “I am an American soldier, and you are free.” As the victors carved up Hitler’s Third Reich, the war in the Pacific continued. The United States persisted in demanding “unconditional surrender” and vowed to continue to blockade Japan’s ports, firebomb its cities, and possibly launch an invasion if the Japanese refused to surrender. Later, critics of this strategy argued that the demand for unconditional surrender strengthened the Japanese will to resist. They noted that the United States did nothing to assure the Japanese that the victorious Americans would not execute the emperor, nor did American leaders respond to Japanese peace overtures. The atomic bomb offered Truman a new means to end the war. The secret project to develop the bomb had been under way for several years, initially for possible use against Germany. In 1939 scientists in Berlin had achieved atomic fission by splitting the uranium atom, making it possible to release the tremendous energy stored in the atom. Albert Einstein, the German Jewish physicist who came to the United States after Hitler came to power in 1933, had warned Roosevelt that the Germans might be developing an atomic weapon. Einstein urged the United States to establish a small research program to keep pace. In 1942 American scientists reported that with adequate resources, they could develop an atomic bomb in time to affect the course of the war. Impressed, Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan Project, the Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 796 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY The Atomic Bomb: Political and Cultural Fallout Since the dawn of the atomic age, the United States has been the only nation that has actually waged nuclear war. The dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki unleashed not only massive death and destruction but also ongoing controversies over the development and use of nuclear weapons and the nature of modern warfare. The level of destruction inflicted on the Japanese civilian population shocked the nation and the world. But well before the nuclear attacks on Japan, hundreds of thousands of civilians had already perished in the war. During World War II, bombing of civilian targets became commonplace. The Japanese bombed civilians in Nanjing, China; the Germans did the same in Guernica, Spain. Allied bombing raids nearly demolished the German cities of Berlin and Dresden and the Japanese capitol of Tokyo. One night of conventional bombing in Tokyo in March 1945 killed as many civilians as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. With its huge Air Force, the United States became the greatest bombing power during the war. But the atomic bombs took civilian casualties to a new level, not only because of the enormous death toll wrought by a single bomb but also because of the deadly radioactive fallout that lingered. Conventional bombing raids did not create fallout to harm survivors, their descendants, or the environment. With the successful 1952 test of the hydrogen (fusion) bomb—1000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan—scientists warned that the use of such weapons in warfare could create a “nuclear winter” that would destroy life on Earth. Horror at the impact of the bombs discouraged their use throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. Civilian casualties, however, remained a fact of warfare. Guerrilla warfare increased the likelihood of civilian casualties in Vietnam, where American troops found it nearly impossible to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. American forces made widespread use of napalm, the antipersonnel weapon that set fire to anyone in its path, civilian or military. Massacres of villagers, such as the infamous killings at My Lai, turned many Americans against the war. Although the United States and the Soviet Union refrained from using atomic weapons during the many hot wars that erupted during the Cold War, the two superpowers developed tens of thousands of nuclear weapons with sophisticated delivery systems to launch attacks from land, sea, and air. Proponents argued that the nuclear deterrent prevented the outbreak of World War III. But detractors claimed that the arms race increased international tensions and strained the economies of both nations. In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly led to nuclear war. Fifty years after the end of World War II, the controversy over the use of the weapons remained heated. The Smithsonian Institution planned an exhibit to display the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, with an explanation of the arguments on both sides on the issue. Fierce opposition to the proposed exhibit forced the Smithsonian to abandon the plan, prompting the institute’s director to resign in protest. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the arms race continued to generate policy debates. President George W. Bush revived the “Star Wars” plan of President Ronald Reagan to build a satellite shield against incoming missiles. Advocates of the plan claimed that it would protect the United States from nuclear attack. Critics charged that the system would not work and that it would probably generate a new arms race. As the debate continued, around the world—in missile silos, submarines, and bomber planes—nuclear warheads remained poised to strike. research program to develop nuclear weapons, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The project got under way at a top-secret laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The building of the bomb was the work of 125,000 people and cost nearly $2 billion. The first test of the device took place on July 16, 1945, at Alamagordo, New Mexico. When Truman learned of the successful test, he wanted to use the bomb immediately. He hoped to avoid an invasion of Japan that would have cost the lives of many American soldiers, and he wanted to send a message to the Soviet Union that the United States would be the dominant power in the postwar world. But Truman’s advisors did not all agree about whether or how the new weapon should be deployed. Some of the scientists who had developed the bomb urged a “demonstration” in a remote, unpopulated area that would impress the Japanese but would not cause loss of life. General George C. Marshall and other military leaders argued in favor of dropping the bomb on military or industrial targets, with ample warning ahead of time to enable civilians to leave target areas. But others agreed with Truman that dropping the bomb on a major city, without warning, would be the only way to persuade the Japanese to surrender unconditionally. Given the death and destruction already inflicted on Japanese cities by firebombing, the atomic bomb seemed to some like an escalation of current strategy. Truman on the End of WWII Truman on the End of WWII But when the first bomb exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the second on Nagasaki two days later, the horrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons became apparent. Even though the American public saw few images of the carnage on the ground, the huge mushroom cloud and the descriptions of cities leveled and people instantly incinerated shocked Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 797 ${bmicon} Atomic Bomb at Hiroshima Atomic Bomb at Hiroshima full view Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Attack, August 1945 Nagasaki under atomic bomb attack on August 9, 1945, marking the beginning of the atomic age. (U.S. Air Force) the nation and the world. In addition to the immediate devastation wreaked by the bomb, deadly radioactive fallout remained in the atmosphere, causing illness and death for months and even years after the attack. The Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945, V-J (Victory in Japan) Day. Many people breathed a sigh of relief that the war was finally over. But doubts and controversies over the use of the weapon, and the nuclear arms race that it sparked, have continued to this day. World War II left massive devastation in its wake all across the globe. The United States was the only country involved in the war that emerged from it stronger than before the conflict began. With the exception of Pearl Harbor, no fighting took place on American soil. Although thousands of Americans died in the conflict, American casualties were far below those suffered by other countries. The wartime economy provided full employment and brought the nation out of the Depression. At the end of the war, the United States was the most powerful nation in the world. The war changed life for Americans in profound ways. Although wartime forged a sense of unity as the nation came together to fight against fascism, it also highlighted fissures within American society. Members of minority groups fought in segregated units, but racial tensions Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 798 ${bmicon} and conflicts erupted at home, even as the country fought against a racist foe. Women joined the paid labor force and the armed services in unprecedented numbers, while at the same time being bombarded by official and cultural messages reminding them that their ultimate service to the nation was as wives and mothers. At the end of the war, veterans of color returned to fight for the still unfulfilled side of the Double V: victory against racism at home. Women joined returning veterans to form families and have babies in the most dramatic rush into parenthood in the nation’s history, but they did not retreat from the paid labor force. World War II marked the beginning of a steady increase in employment for women that continued for the rest of the century. While life at home changed dramatically, so did the place of the United States in the world. The war’s conclusion did not usher in the era of peace Americans expected. European empires staggered on the brink of collapse. Only the United States and the Soviet Union remained as military forces, shifting the international balance of power from a multipolar to a bipolar system. The victors carved up countries in Europe and Asia according to geopolitical considerations, with little regard for national affinities. Soon American troops would fight again in the artificially divided lands of Korea and Vietnam. For the next half century, the fallout from World War II, as well as the power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, would shape political relationships across the globe. Powers of Persuasion—Poster Art of World War II www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/powers_of_persuasion/powers_of_persuasion_home.html This Library of Congress site includes posters created during World War II to encourage support for the war and to build morale. A-Bomb WWW Museum www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/ This site includes information about the impact of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II as well as materials and images about the development of nuclear weapons. A People at War www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/a_people_at_war/a_people_at_war.html This National Archives site includes materials and images about the contributions millions of Americans made to the war effort. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum www.ushmm.org/index.html This official website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., covers the history and documents of the Holocaust. Tuskegee Airmen www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/prewwii/ta.htm This site of the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base includes information and photographs of the African American pilots of World War II. Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives www.alba-valb.org/aboutalb.htm This site has information and articles about the Spanish Civil War and the unit of American volunteers who fought in it. The Zoot Suit Riots www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot/ This website from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary series The American Experience covers the World War II Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles. William P. Gottlieb Photographs of the Golden Age of Jazz memory.loc.gov/ammem/wghtml/wghome.html This Library of Congress site includes images, audio, and articles from Down Beat magazine in the 1940s. America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, c. 1935–1945 memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html This site from the Library of Congress includes photographs in the Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Collection taken during the Depression and World War II years. CHAPTER 23 ###8226; GLOBAL CONFLICT 799 ${bmicon} Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (1989). John Keegan, The Second World War (1990). Richard Polenburg, War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945 (1972). Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II (1984). Michael E. Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers: The Warner Brothers Campaign Against Nazism (1999). Justus D. Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939–1941 (2000). Thomas J. Fleming, The New Dealers’ War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within World War II (2001). Cecelia Lynch, Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics (1999). Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (1990). Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States (1987). Akira Iriye, Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (1999). Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (1987). John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (1976). Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch, The War in American Culture (1996). Susan Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (1982). Elaine Tyler May, Pushing the Limits: American Women, 1940–1961 (1994). Beth Bailey and David Farber, The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii (1992). Aaron Berman, Nazism, the Jews and American Zionism, 1933–1948 (1990). John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1987). Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948 (1999). Davis S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (1984). Ronald Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present (1987). George H. Roeder, Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience During World War Two (1993). Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s (1995). Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race (1987). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter23 To Chapter 23 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 800 ${bmicon}         The Uncertainties of Victory       The Quest for Security       A Cold War Society       The United States and Asia       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 801 ${bmicon} AT 11:30 A.M. ON APRIL 25, 1945, U.S. ARMY PRIVATE JOSEPH POLOWSKY GLIMPSED what looked like the future. The young Chicago native was riding in the lead jeep of an American force along the Elbe River in central Germany when he spotted Russian soldiers on the far side, their medals glistening in the morning sun. Elated, he and five of his comrades found a small boat and paddled across to the eastern bank. Using Polowsky’s knowledge of German to communicate, the American soldiers embraced their Soviet allies with laughs and tears. The Russians produced bottles of vodka, and toasts, pledges, singing, and dancing followed. After years of pressing Germany from east and west, the Allies had finally linked up in the heart of Hitler’s empire. A reporter wrote of the scene, “You get the feeling of exuberance, a great new world opening up.” Despite his conservative Republican background, Polowsky spent much of his life advocating American–Russian friendship. He could not forget the transforming experience of that April day along the Elbe and the hopes it engendered for a peaceful future. However, what followed the Allied victory turned out not to be a “great new world” of international peace and brotherhood but the Cold War of U.S.–Soviet hostility that lasted for more than four decades. The opposing ideologies—communism and capitalist democracy—joined with conflicting national interests to produce this armed standoff. The American effort to contain the expansion of communist influence entailed a radical reorientation of American involvement abroad in peacetime, including the nation’s first peacetime military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). At times the Cold War turned into a hot war of actual shooting, most importantly in the Korean War of 1950–1953. Soon after the end of World War II, Jim Forman enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. In 1948, he shipped out with his battalion to the huge U.S. base on the island of Okinawa in Japan. There some of the social changes unleashed by World War II caught up with him. President Harry Truman ordered the racial desegregation of the armed forces, and officers chose him to be the first African American to join the 625th Aircraft and Warning Company. Forman reported to his new assignment across the island, expecting trouble from white soldiers: harassment, assaults, and worse. Fearful, he slept only a few hours his first night. When he went to the mess hall for breakfast the next morning, he was stunned. “Fresh eggs. I saw them crack fresh eggs. I did not believe what I saw: fresh eggs. I had been on the Rock [Okinawa] some six months and I had never tasted a fresh egg unless I bought it at the restaurant in town.” The white cook asked him how he wanted his eggs cooked and how many. “How many?” Forman asked in amazement. “Do you mean I can have more than two?” It was the same with milk: he could have a whole quart of fresh milk and then come back for more. In his former all-black battalion, he had been served only powdered eggs and powdered milk and PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 802 ${bmicon} only in carefully limited quantities. “I cursed the Air Force for its segregation, but I ate my fresh milk and eggs.” Jim Forman was trying to make sense of the changes and uncertainties that pervaded American society in the late 1940s. Popular support at home was needed for expansive new military commitments abroad, yet Americans had just fought in the largest war in their history, and most were eager to get back to something close to normal peacetime life. For some citizens the war years had provided new opportunities for better work and more independence. Women, workers, and African Americans, for example, did not want to retreat from the advances they had made. Struggles over the place of these groups of citizens helped shape the contours of the immediate postwar years, both in family lives and in the public sphere. In some ways, the Cold War encouraged efforts at social reform. America’s new leading role in world affairs brought its domestic life into the spotlight of world attention. Racial discrimination and violence at home embarrassed American leaders as they spoke of leading the anticommunist “free world” abroad. But in other ways, the Cold War constrained efforts to bring American life more fully into line with its democratic and egalitarian promise. Rising tensions with communist movements and governments overseas stimulated great anxieties about possible subversion within the nation’s own borders. Anticommunist fervor put unions on the defensive and encouraged women to shun the workplace in favor of family life and parenting, particularly in the nation’s growing suburbs. This second Red Scare—the first had followed World War I in 1919—reached flood tide by 1950 with the rise to prominence of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The young Republican from Wisconsin made a career of blaming supposedly disloyal Americans at home for setbacks to U.S. goals abroad in places such as China and Korea. He left a bitter legacy that long outlasted his political demise in 1954. It was five in the afternoon when the Senate recessed on April 12, 1945. The Vice President walked through the Capitol building to the private office of his old friend and mentor, Sam Rayburn of Texas, the House majority leader. He had just mixed himself a cocktail when an aide told him that he was to call the White House immediately. Picking up the phone, he was instructed to come to the White House right away. “Jesus Christ and General Jackson,” he said as he put down the receiver, his face suddenly pale. Within 15 minutes, Harry Truman was being ushered into the private quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Eleanor Roosevelt greeted him with the somber news: “Harry, the president is dead.” Stunned, he finally said, “Is there anything I can do for you?” She replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.” Franklin Roosevelt was dead; it was almost unimaginable. Elected four times to the presidency, he had dominated American politics like no figure before or since. Just as the unprecedented destruction of World War II was finally ending, the leadership of the nation passed into new and less tested hands. Peace brought an array of uncertainties and immediate needs. The victors had to reconstruct a world that had been damaged, physically and psychologically, almost beyond recognition. Spared the destruction visited elsewhere, the United States faced the different challenge of demobilizing its military forces and reconverting to a peacetime economy. Intense conflicts along the color line and in the workplace revealed real differences between Americans about the shape of the democracy they had fought to defend. CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 803 ${bmicon} World War II wrought death on a scale that defies comprehension: 60 million human beings lost their lives. From England in the west to the islands of New Guinea in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to the Sahara Desert in the south, much of Europe and Asia was left in ruins. Soviet and American power had finally crushed the Axis, with Berlin now a “city of the dead” and Japan’s urban landscape devastated by firebombing and nuclear attacks. Most of the victors were only marginally better off. China lost 10 million of its citizens to Japanese guns and starvation, and the Soviet victory over Germany came at the cost of more than 20 million Russian lives. Poland, the battleground for the Germans and the Soviets, was a wasteland. And the Nazis had murdered 6 million European Jews, primarily Poles and Germans. Only one of the major combatants emerged from the war in better shape than at the beginning. With no fighting on their soil after the initial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American civilians spent the war years in safety. Orders for war materials ended the Great Depression in the United States and created full employment as factories worked overtime to supply the Allied armies. The American people, one official remarked in 1945, “are in the pleasant predicament of having to learn to live 50 percent better than they have ever lived before.” Many Americans suffered terribly in the war, of course; 400,000 died, leaving behind desolate families, and millions of veterans returned with traumas that colored the remainder of their lives. But such casualties paled in comparison to those of other belligerent nations. With just 6 percent of the world’s population and 50 percent of its wealth, the United States enjoyed a position of staggering economic advantage in comparison with the rest of the world. Americans’ overriding fear was that the end of the fighting might return the country to the state it had faced when the war began: economic depression. The nation’s awesome industrial productivity depended on government spending, which was now to be cut back sharply. International trade might pick up much of the slack, but the war had destroyed most of the purchasing power of U.S. trading partners in Europe and Asia. Rising tensions between the two primary victors—the United States and the Soviet Union—hampered the process of postwar reconstruction. President Truman showed his frustration with the Soviet military occupation of eastern PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 804 ${bmicon} Europe by lecturing Soviet diplomats and abruptly cutting off Lend–Lease aid to the USSR. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin feared America’s new global military might, manifest in its monopoly of the atomic bomb, and was determined to secure his European border against future invasion from the West. World War II altered the world’s ideological and physical landscape. Japan and Germany, the centers of prewar power in Asia and continental Europe, were vacuums waiting to be filled and reshaped by their conquerors. In addition to defeating two nations, the Allies had also discredited the ideas on which those governments had been built: fascism and militarism. These were the ideas of the extreme Right: the glorification of the racially defined state and its aggressive military expansion. Fascism’s murderous character tarred those who had collaborated with the Axis during the war, primarily conservatives in countries such as France who preferred fascism to socialism. White supremacy and colonialism, two underpinnings of the United States and its western European allies, also lost much of their legitimacy in the war to defend democracy against Hitler’s racially genocidal Third Reich. Into many of the postwar vacuums of power flowed a newly prominent worldwide Left. Socialists, communists, and other radicals espoused communal rather than individualistic values. The Red Army’s primary role in defeating the German troops who had overrun Europe evoked admiration for the Soviet Union among antifascists everywhere. The occupying Soviet forces installed communist governments in eastern Europe by force (sometimes called “Red Army socialism”), and Socialist and Communist parties rose sharply in popularity in France, Italy, Belgium, and Scandinavia. The nominally socialist Labor party took power in Great Britain, defeating war leader Winston Churchill and his Conservative party at the polls. Europeans across the continent established welfare states to provide a minimum standard of living for all their citizens. This turn to the left encompassed most of the globe. Africans began organizing for eventual independence from European rule, and Asians launched the final phase of their anticolonial struggle for liberation. Indonesia fought its way free from the Dutch, and India gained its freedom from Britain. “The sun never sets on the British Empire” had long been a proud colonial refrain, but it was no longer true. In French Indochina, Ho Chi Minh quoted from Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence as he announced the creation of an independent Vietnam. (Truman ignored Vietnam’s appeal for American recognition, just as Wilson had done 26 years earlier at the Versailles peace conference after World War I; see Chapter 20). Masters of much of the world a few years earlier, the European colonial powers fought desperately to hold onto the last pieces of their escaping empires. The Allies created the new United Nations (UN) in San Francisco in April 1945, just days after Truman succeeded FDR. Eventually housed in New York, it embodied hopes for a more peaceful and democratic world. Its General Assembly gave all nations an equal voice and vote in deliberations, and its small Security Council—responsible CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 805 ${bmicon} for guiding any UN military actions—gave a permanent seat and veto power to five nations: the United States, the USSR, Britain, France, and China. The 1948 UN Human Rights Charter helped put practitioners of colonialism and racial discrimination on the defensive by declaring worldwide support for the principles of national self-determination and equal treatment for all peoples. The fundamental task for Americans at home was to reconvert from a wartime society back to a peacetime one. They were especially eager to “bring the boys home.” The 12 million men in uniform represented nearly two-thirds of all men between 18 and 34 years old. Despite the worries of U.S. commanders and strategists that rapid demobilization would exacerbate vacuums of power abroad, 9 million American troops came home by mid-1946. Eager to return to civilian life, they walked off ships’ gangplanks into a country in transition. Factories were trying to convert from producing war materials to making consumer products. Wartime rationing was lifted on goods such as sugar and gasoline, and the 35-mph speed limit was withdrawn, but unemployment and inflation threatened. Orders for war materials dried up, taking jobs with them, but wartime inflation (“too many dollars chasing too few goods”) persisted. Housing remained especially scarce. In the richest country in the world, one-third of the citizens still lived in poverty, with neither running water nor flush toilets. To ease the transition home, Congress had passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (the GI Bill) to provide crucial financial aid to veterans. It gave low-cost mortgages that helped create an explosion in home ownership. It created Veterans Administration hospitals to provide lifetime medical care. And it paid tuition and stipends for colleges and vocational training, making higher education broadly available for the first time. The 2 percent of veterans who were women also made use of these benefits. In the postwar era, when American politics generally became more conservative—shifting away from the New Deal reform spirit and toward an anticommunist emphasis—the GI Bill was the one area in which the United States expanded its own welfare state. The $14.5 billion spent on veterans over the next decade marked a public investment that helped propel millions of families into an expanding middle class. The postwar transition presented particular challenges to American women. Millions of them had gone to work outside the home during the war and found economic independence in doing so. Now they faced powerful pressures to leave the workforce and return to a domestic life of old and new families. Employers fired women, and male veterans expecting jobs did not welcome female competition. The federal government abruptly halted funding for wartime daycare facilities, forcing mothers to quit their jobs. Many women accepted this return to the domestic sphere, content to focus on marriage and family life. But millions felt varying degrees of resentment over their loss of hard-earned compensation and self-esteem. “War jobs have uncovered unsuspected abilities in American women,” one argued. “Why lose all these abilities?” African Americans faced a similar problem. After finding new opportunities in industrial employment during the war, they were laid off afterward in favor of returning white veterans. Like women, blacks were expected by others to retreat into deference. Black veterans spearheaded PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 806 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 24.1 OPPORTUNITIES FOR VETERANS The number of Americans attending college increased sharply after World War II. In the early postwar years, federal government spending through the 1944 GI Bill gave veterans unprecedented opportunities for access to education and other job training programs. CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 807 ${bmicon} the resistance to this notion. They had fought in disproportionate numbers for their country and for the cause of defeating the world’s most murderous racists, the Nazis. They then returned to a nation still deeply segregated, by law in the South and by practice elsewhere. Like Native American, Latino American, and Asian American veterans, they were determined to be full citizens in the country for which they had spilled their blood. “I went into the Army a nigger,” one black soldier said about typical white views of him, but “I’m coming out a man.” African American efforts to overcome discrimination met fierce white resistance in 1946 and 1947. In the South, where most black Americans still lived, a wave of beatings and lynchings greeted black veterans in uniform and their attempts to register to vote. White Northerners also used violence to preserve the segregated character of neighborhoods in Chicago, Detroit, and other cities. They destroyed the property and threatened the lives of blacks who dared to move to previously all-white blocks, effectively confining African Americans to impoverished areas. Sometimes local authorities encouraged such extralegal use of force. The police chief of Cicero, Illinois, was indicted for conspiracy to incite a riot in 1951 after several thousand white residents destroyed an all-white apartment building to prevent African American veteran Harvey E. Clark and his family from moving in. The retreat of European colonialism and American competition with the Soviet Union nonetheless encouraged many white Americans to acknowledge the contradiction between leading the “free world” and limiting the freedoms of Americans of color. A series of Supreme Court decisions validated the long-term strategy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for contesting segregation in the courts. Court rulings outlawed segregation in voting primaries (Smith v. Allwright, 1944), interstate transportation (Morgan v. Virginia, 1946), contracts for house sales (Shelley v. Kraemer, 1948), and graduate schools (Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma, 1950). The California Supreme Court in 1948 overturned a state law banning interracial marriage, pointing the way toward the elimination two decades later of similar laws in other states in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision (1967). Popular culture moved in the same direction of breaking down racial barriers. Billboard magazine in 1949 changed the category of “race music” to “rhythm and blues” as white record producers and radio disc jockeys such as Alan Freed began to bring the early rock ‘n’ roll of African American musicians to mainstream white audiences. By 1955 young white musicians such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley joined black stars such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard in creating a wildly popular sound that transcended racial categories. Professional baseball erased its color line when Jackie Robinson, a former four-sport star at the University of California–Los Angeles and lieutenant in the U.S. Army, joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. In a pretelevision era when professional basketball and football had only minor followings, baseball ruled as the great national pastime. Despite vicious verbal taunting and threats of bodily harm by some fans and players, Robinson refused to lose his temper and remained a model of dignity and excellence as he won the National League’s Rookie of the Year honors. Two years later he won the Most Valuable Player award. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 808 ${bmicon} In his ten years with the team, the Dodgers won six National League titles. Millions of white Americans found themselves cheering for their first black hero, and Robinson came in second only to singer Bing Crosby in a national popularity poll. Native Americans and Mexican Americans faced similar discrimination in the Southwest and elsewhere. With war veterans in the fore, they also organized to contest unfair education and election practices. “If we are good enough to fight, why aren’t we good enough to vote?” asked returning Navajo soldiers in New Mexico and Arizona, where the state constitutions prohibited Indian residents from voting until successfully challenged in 1948. When the family of Private Felix Longoria, who died in combat in the Philippines, was denied the right to bury him in the all-white cemetery in Three Rivers, Texas, a new Latino veterans’ organization called American GI Forum publicized the injustice. A young Texas senator named Lyndon Johnson, destined for the White House, stepped in and arranged a burial with full military honors in prestigious Arlington National Cemetery instead. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) followed a strategy similar to that of the NAACP regarding educational discrimination, leading to the Supreme Court’s decision in Mendez v. Westminster (1946) outlawing segregated schools for Mexican Americans in California. In parallel fashion, indigenous Alaskans organized in the Alaska Native Brotherhood successfully lobbied the territorial legislature in Juneau to pass an antidiscrimination law in 1945. In many ways 1946 seemed like 1919. A world war had just ended, in which corporations had made handsome profits. American workers had enjoyed nearly full employment and improving wages and had joined unions in large numbers. In 1946 one-third of the workforce held a union card, the largest portion ever. But the end of war-related orders led to job cuts and the loss of overtime wages. As inflation kicked in, workers felt their marginal economic security slipping away, and by the spring of 1946, 1.8 million of them were out on strike. Mirroring World War I, the conclusion of hostilities in 1945 revealed rising tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The spread of leftist revolutions abroad amplified fears of communist influence in American unions, especially because a few of the most effective Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organizers were Communist party members or at least sympathetic to an emphasis on class conflict between owners and workers. As in 1919, a Red Scare began to develop, egged on by a business community that used the supposed threat of the tiny U.S. Communist party to weaken the much larger and less radical union movement. In contrast to the end of World War I, however, federal law guaranteed the right of workers to bargain collectively, and the strikes of 1946 resulted in some negotiated wage increases. Organized labor after World War II functioned increasingly as a narrow special interest group rather than as part a broader democratic movement. The tide turned against unions as anticommunism intensified. President Truman, long considered a friend to organized labor, helped crush major strikes by railroad workers and coal miners in 1946 when he saw them as threatening the nation’s economy. The CIO’s Operation Dixie to organize southern workers of all colors failed, defeated by the skillful appeals of local businesses to white supremacist sentiment in the working class. The Republican party claimed a sweeping victory in the 1946 congressional elections, taking control of both the House and the Senate in a stark rejection of Truman’s leadership. Republicans and conservative Democrats then passed the Taft–Hartley Act in 1947 over the president’s veto, weakening unions by prohibiting secondary boycotts (against the products of a company whose workers were on strike) and requiring union officials to swear anticommunist oaths. Two years later the increasingly conservative CIO expelled 11 unions that still had leftist and communist leadership. At the same time, the expanding U.S. economy after 1947 pulled many skilled workers up into the middle class and gave them a larger stake in the status quo. CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 809 ${bmicon} On February 21, 1947, a British official in Washington drove to the State Department to inform the U.S. government that Britain could no longer provide financial assistance to the anticommunist governments of Greece and Turkey. This marked a watershed in modern world history. Long the greatest imperial power and the dominant outside force in the Middle East, Britain was beginning a long, slow retreat. Left in its wake were vacuums of power, particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. President Truman and his advisers believed that either Soviet or American influence would flow into those regions. In the face of the Soviet Union’s eagerness to expand its influence by promoting communist revolutions abroad, American leaders believed they must seize the opportunity for world leadership. The Truman administration formulated a policy to contain communism in the eastern Mediterranean that it quickly expanded to encompass the entire noncommunist world. U.S. policymakers had ended World War II with one primary goal. They were determined to revive the global capitalist economy that had nearly dissolved in the Great Depression of the 1930s and had then been battered by the war. American prosperity and freedom, they believed, depended on a world system of free trade because Americans simply could not consume all the products of their efficient farms and factories. If they could not sell the surplus abroad, the United States would slide back into a depression. The 1930s had shown that closed economic doors led to despair, poverty, and aggression, as in Germany and Japan. “We can’t go through the thirties again,” President Truman emphasized to his aides. He and other political leaders hoped for a world with greater liberty and more democracy. But Dean Acheson, the powerful undersecretary (1945–1947) and then secretary of state (1949–1953), emphasized that U.S. foreign policy was not primarily concerned with “a lot of abstract notions.” Instead, the emphasis with each country was on “what you do—these business transactions.” “National security” was expanding to mean something very different from simply defending the nation’s territory against invasion. For the disproportionately powerful United States, national security after 1945 came to be identified with the creation and preservation of a free-trading capitalist world order. American national security was seen to be at stake almost everywhere around the globe—a recipe for riches but also for trouble. The primary threat to that security came from the Soviet Union. The Red Army’s occupation of eastern Europe was part of the problem, as it symbolized the Soviets’ military prowess. Even more troubling to the Truman administration was the political influence of the USSR in a world turning leftward. The real danger lay in Soviet encouragement, by example and assistance, of revolutions that rejected market economies and individualist ethics. Demoralized by the war’s destruction and by grim postwar economic conditions, western Europeans and others seemed to be considering the paths of socialism and communism. “Hopeless and hungry people,” Acheson warned, “often resort to desperate measures.” “Hopeless and hungry people,” Acheson warned, “often resort to desperate measures.” The antifascist alliance of the Soviet Union and the United States dissolved rapidly as their conflicting interests reemerged after the war. Long skeptical of the capitalist world it wanted to replace, the Soviet government viewed expansive U.S. interests as evidence of “striving for world supremacy.” Yet Moscow was just as clearly expanding its own sphere of national security, with Soviet troops remaining in areas they had occupied during the war: Manchuria, northern Korea, Iran, and especially eastern and central Europe. These forward military positions, PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 810 ${bmicon} combined with Moscow’s rhetoric of encouraging revolution abroad, increased American anxieties about rising communist movements in Asia and Europe. Each side spoke of the other’s goal as “world domination.” Contrasting experiences in World War II amplified historical and ideological differences. America and Russia had each entered the war after being attacked by surprise in 1941. But whereas the war brought the United States out of the global capitalist depression (which the Soviets had avoided), it brought the USSR into a depression caused by the invading Germans’ destruction of the western portion of the country. With a decimated population, a battered economy, and minimal air and naval forces, the postwar Soviet Union remained a regional power based on its army. The United States was the only truly global power, with a vast naval armada and air force projecting military might on to every continent, undergirded by the most productive economy in world history. The two nations’ visions of the postwar world order reflected these relative positions. Americans sought an open world for the free flow of goods and most ideas and proved willing to tolerate and even embrace dictatorial governments as long as they were anticommunist and open to foreign trade and investment. Meanwhile, the Soviets called for a more traditional division into separate spheres of influence for the great powers. The horrific experience of near national extinction at the hands of the Nazis ensured that Stalin would not budge on issues of fundamental Soviet security. At the same time, the exhilarating experience of low-cost victory and unparalleled wealth and might emboldened Truman. The United States “could not, of course, expect to get 100 percent” of what it wanted, he told his advisers, but on important matters “we should be able to get 85 percent.” “The reins of world leadership are fast slipping from Britain’s … hands. These reins will be picked up either by the United States or by Russia.” Conflicts over specific areas liberated from the Nazis hastened the onset of the Cold War in the first 18 months after the end of World War II. Whereas the Soviets wanted reparations and a deindustrialized Germany that could never threaten it again, the United States considered a rebuilt industrial German state crucial for a healthy, integrated western European economy. Britain and France had gone to war in defense of an independent Poland, and Truman told Stalin bluntly that a free election there, as promised in the Yalta accords, was crucial for 6 million Polish Americans; for Stalin, however, control of Poland was not negotiable because it had been “the corridor for attack on Russia.” Moscow and Washington clashed over Iran, on Russia’s southern border, where the Soviets briefly encouraged a leftist uprising in the northern part of the oil-rich country to counteract British and American influence in the capital city of Teheran. U.S. policymakers worried about Soviet requests to Turkey for greater control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles, the straits leading out of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. When the British announced in February 1947 their imminent withdrawal from Greece, where leftists and monarchists were fighting a fierce civil war, the Truman administration believed it was time to respond decisively. Diplomat George Kennan best articulated the idea of containing Soviet power in an influential telegram sent from his post at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in February 1946. Kennan explained Soviet hostility as a function of traditional Russian insecurity overlaid with newer Marxist justifications. He called for “the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce” against all Soviet efforts at expanding their influence. One month later, on March 5, 1946, former British prime minister Winston Churchill gave a prominent speech in Fulton, Missouri, in which he warned that a Russian “iron curtain” had descended across Europe from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Adriatic Sea in the south, imprisoning all those to the east of it. Kennan and other U.S. policymakers viewed communism as a monolithic movement, directed by Moscow. The metaphor of disease was commonly used, as in references to the Soviets injecting “a hypodermic needle full of Moscow virus” into a vulnerable country. The prominence CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 811 ${bmicon} of local communists, the carriers of that “disease,” in the Greek civil war might give Stalin a foothold on the Mediterranean. “The reins of world leadership are fast slipping from Britain’s competent but now very weak hands,” the State Department argued. “These reins will be picked up either by the United States or by Russia.” Picking up those reins meant a fundamental reorientation for the United States. No longer just the dominant force in the Western Hemisphere, it would have to maintain its wartime projection of military forces around the globe—permanently. To do so would take huge expenditures that Congress had to approve and public support for an unprecedented international role. Critics questioned the virtue of supporting a monarchy in Greece and a dictatorship in Turkey. So Truman and his advisers chose to “scare hell out of the American people,” as Senator Arthur Vandenberg put it, to gain their support. In an address to Congress on March 12, 1947, asking for $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey, the president simplified the world system into two “ways of life,” those of “free peoples” and those of “terror and oppression” under communist rule. All nations must choose between them, he declared, and the United States must support “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.” full view MAP 24.1 OCCUPATION OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA, 1946–1949 By the end of World War II, U.S. and British forces had liberated western Europe and Soviet forces controlled eastern Europe. In central Europe, the Allies jointly occupied Germany and Austria. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 812 ${bmicon} The Truman Doctrine, as it became known, exaggerated a real problem to win public support for a new international role for the United States. It funded the governments of Turkey and Greece but it framed the new policy broadly, opening the path to supporting anticommunist regimes and opposing revolutions around the world for decades to come. The most important immediate step was the reconstruction of a vibrant, reintegrated western European economy. The United States provided $13 billion between 1948 and 1952 to fund the European Recovery Program, commonly known as the Marshall Plan for its chief architect, Secretary of State George Marshall (1947–1949). His assistant, Dean Acheson, reminded Americans doubtful about such expenditures that western Europe’s recovery was “chiefly a matter of national self-interest” for the United States, for European markets were crucial for American economic health. Ensuring western European security against the Red Army also entailed the first U.S. military alliance in peacetime. The victors of World War II divided a defeated Germany into separate zones of occupation, based on wartime agreements that reflected their respective military positions. The Allies also shared occupation of the capital city of Berlin, although it was deep in the Soviet-controlled eastern sector of the country, in the expectation that a reunified, de-Nazified Germany would be governed from there someday. The British, French, and American decision in March 1948 to create a unified state out of the western sectors of Germany led a few months later to a year-long Soviet blockade of western access to Berlin and fears of a general war. The joint U.S.–British “Operation Vittles” airlifted tons of food to the isolated residents of West Berlin, preserving that city as a capitalist island in a communist country. The creation of NATO in 1949 made the American military commitment to Europe permanent, a firm rejection of George Washington’s warning against “entangling alliances.” The United States banded together with Britain, France, and the other western European countries to provide for each other’s mutual defense against an attack on any member of the alliance, presumably by the Soviets. Head-quartered first in Paris and later in Brussels, Belgium, NATO was the first U.S. military alliance in peacetime. The point of NATO for western Europe, its British first secretary general said, was to “keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” For the world’s nonwhite majority, national independence and racial equality was the great issue of the late 1940s and 1950s. The onset of the Cold War determined the fate of the defeated powers of World War II. The Truman administration was determined to “push ahead with the reconstruction of those two great workshops of Europe and Asia—Germany and Japan.” This agenda replaced initial concerns about rooting out Nazism and punishing war criminals, as at the Nuremberg trials of surviving Nazi leaders in 1945–1946. While the Soviets extracted what reparations they could from their sector of Germany, the Americans and British rebuilt the new nation of West Germany. A similar story unfolded in Japan, where the use of atomic weapons left U.S. forces the sole occupiers. The American occupation under General Douglas MacArthur initially (1945–1947) emphasized democratization of Japanese society, including building labor unions, weakening corporate monopolies, ensuring women’s political rights, and punishing war criminals. But rising U.S. tensions with the Soviets and the imminent victory of the Communist forces in China’s civil war prompted American officials to shift course by 1948. Henceforth, they focused on rebuilding as quickly as possible Japan’s industrial economy as the hub of capitalist Asia and reduced efforts at social reforms that might slow that process. The world’s nonwhite majority still lived under European colonial control, and for them the struggle for national independence and racial equality was the great issue of the late 1940s and 1950s. In this North–South conflict, as opposed to the East–West conflict of the Cold War, the United States held an awkward position. Its primary NATO partners included the Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 813 ${bmicon} full view MAP 24.2 EUROPE DIVIDED BY THE COLD WAR For centuries Europe had controlled much of the rest of the world. After 1945, Russians occupied the eastern half of the continent and Americans wielded dominant influence in the western half. This division of Europe into Communist and non-Communist blocs lasted until the end of the Cold War in 1989. greatest colonial powers: Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, and Portugal. Racial segregation in the United States further undercut American leadership of the “free world,” as did U.S. support for the anticommunist apartheid (white supremacist) regime that took power in South Africa in 1948. Anticolonial radicals who pointed out these contradictions found their voices drowned out by the rising din of anticommunism. With European rule in Asia and Africa on the way out, the Truman administration sought a gradual transfer of colonial rule into the hands of local pro-West elites. Violent revolutions— Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 814 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY The Origins of the Cold War The earliest American accounts of how the Cold War began were written by officials who had participated in the decisions that cemented U.S.–Russian hostility for two generations (1946–1989). Officials such as the State Department’s Herbert Feis and academic historians through the 1950s and early 1960s accepted the U.S. government view that Soviet aggression and subversion made the Cold War unavoidable. They pointed to the absence of political and religious freedom and the severe restrictions on the ownership of private property in communist nations, combined with the expansion of communist control into eastern Europe and China. Stalin and his successors in the Kremlin, they believed, were at fault for trying to take over the world. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., summarized this view in 1967 when he called early U.S. Cold War policies “the brave and essential response of free men” to totalitarian provocations. America’s deepening involvement in the Vietnam War destroyed the Cold War consensus among historians. Schlesinger’s “orthodox” interpretation of the events of the late 1940s seemed increasingly suspect to a group of mostly younger historians who saw their own government as the aggressor in southeast Asia in the mid-1960s. They took their lead in part from the iconoclastic William Appleman Williams of the University of Wisconsin, who in 1959 declared U.S. expansionism to be “the tragedy of American diplomacy.” Casting a skeptical eye back a generation, these “revisionists” found evidence indicating a greater American than Soviet responsibility in bringing on the Cold War. Gar Alperovitz identified the use of atomic bombs on Japan as unnecessary for the military defeat of Tokyo but useful as “atomic diplomacy” to intimidate Moscow in regard to the postwar world order. Gabriel Kolko emphasized the structural need of U.S. capitalism to expand abroad in search of new markets and new sources of raw materials. As U.S. actions in Vietnam alienated more and more Americans and as the Watergate scandal (1972–1974) starkly revealed the readiness of top U.S. leaders to deceive the public, the early histories blaming the Soviet Union exclusively for the onset of the Cold War lost much of their credibility. By the 1980s historians had largely exhausted the debate over responsibility for Soviet–American hostilities. Then the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (turning back into Russia and independent neighboring nations such as Ukraine) encouraged rethinking of the early Cold War. Even Washington’s staunchest defenders could admit that the U.S. government had acted in an often imperial fashion. But was it perhaps a matter primarily of the expansion of American popular culture abroad—a kind of “cultural imperialism” that other peoples often welcomed, from Paris to Beijing? Jazz and later rock ‘n’ roll music, along with Hollywood movies, American consumer goods, and the English language, proved more powerful agents for spreading the American way of life than U.S. Marines or even democratic political institutions. Though still concerned with the role of national governments, armies, and diplomats, some historians of the Cold War are exploring issues such as race relations and gender relations, which were also frontiers of freedom after 1945. Improved U.S.–Russian relations and the release of once-secret documents added interest to Cold War studies. in the spirit of 1776—were to be avoided. The U.S. grant of official independence to the Philippines in 1946, though masking significant continued American influence, was offered as a model, as was the British departure from India a year later. However, America’s European priorities included support even for imperialists who did not leave peacefully, such as the French digging in against Communist-led revolutionaries in Vietnam. CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 815 ${bmicon} The British withdrawal from Palestine in 1948 created a peculiar dilemma for the United States. Jewish settlers—primarily from Europe and often survivors of the Holocaust—proclaimed the new state of Israel against the wishes of the Arab majority. Secretary of State Marshall and others urged Truman not to recognize Israel to avoid imperiling U.S. relations with the Arab oil-producing states. The president sympathized with the Jewish desire for a homeland, however, and understood the importance of American Jews as constituents of the Democratic party in the 1940s. His decision to recognize Israel, which most Middle Easterners viewed as a new colonial state, set the United States on a course of enduring friendship with that nation and enduring conflict with Israel’s Arab neighbors and the Palestinians. Scientists in the 1940s dramatically increased Americans’ sense of personal safety by introducing the use of antibiotics. “Miracle drugs” such as penicillin cured common bacterial infections that had previously been debilitating or fatal. Antibiotics suggested a future of personal health and longevity unimaginable to previous generations. What science gave with one hand it threatened to take away with the other, however. The use of atomic weapons on Japan foreshadowed a future of utter insecurity in which instantaneous destruction of entire nations could occur without warning. The ongoing quest for human control over the natural world—over even microorganisms and the insides of the atom—produced mixed results for the American land and people. Even without being fired again in war after 1945, nuclear weapons altered the American environment. Weapon tests with such code names as “Dirty Harry” released vast quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The Atomic Energy Commission assured those near the mushroom clouds, “Fallout does not constitute a serious hazard.” But local cancer rates spiked upward for Bikini Islanders in the Pacific, where the first tests occurred, and then for farmers PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 816 ${bmicon} and ranchers in Utah and Nevada, when tests began 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas in 1953. At St. George, Utah, downwind from the test site, radioactive plutonium dusted the citizens, livestock, and a crew shooting a movie in the desert. Of the 220 people from Hollywood who worked on The Conqueror, 91 had contracted cancer by 1980 and 40 had died, including film star John Wayne. Related dangers stalked other parts of the “nuclear West.” Navajo Indians mining uranium in the Four Corners region (where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet) paid dearly for their intensive exposure to the poisonous material, as did thousands of workers involved in nuclear weapon production. Weapon assembly plants in Hanford, Washington, and Rocky Flats, Colorado, leaked radioactivity into the groundwater. In combination with the nuclear power industry, atomic weapon development resulted in an enormous supply of radioactive waste—deadly for 10,000 more years—that the U.S. government still does not know how to dispose of safely. The quest for security produced a whole new kind of insecurity. The government offered reassurances about the safety of the atom, and the Atomic Energy Commission covered up evidence of radioactivity’s ill effects. But many Americans were deeply anxious about this destructive new power that loomed over their lives, especially as the Soviet–American arms race intensified. Science fiction stories painted frightening pictures of a future devastated by nuclear war. Movies such as The Blob and The Attack of the Crab Monsters portrayed a world haunted by exposure to radiation. Them! featured mutant ants the size of buses crawling out of a New Mexico atomic test site. Concerns about a nuclear world escalated with the successful 1952 test of an American hydrogen bomb, a thousand times more powerful than the device that destroyed Hiroshima. Always suspicious of centralized power, Americans worried that one person in the Oval Office or the Kremlin could almost instantaneously obliterate entire continents. full view US Hydrogen Bomb Test over Uninhabited Pacific Island, 1952 The explosion of a U.S. test bomb over an uninhabited island in the Pacific on November 1, 1952, demonstrated to the world the fearsome power of the hydrogen bomb. This early H-bomb was capable of destroying a city the size of Washington, D.C. (National Archives) Expanding economic opportunities and narrowing political freedoms characterized American society in the first decade of the Cold War. A withering fire of anticommunist repression pushed dissident views to the margins of the nation’s political life. Americans largely accepted this new conformity for two reasons: their desire to support their government during international crises, especially the Korean War (1950–1953), and a consumer cornucopia that surrounded them with attractive material goods. A generation that had survived the Great Depression embraced the culture of consumption and convenience that emerged after World War II. Factories that had produced jeeps, tanks, and weaponry turned to manufacturing cars and appliances; men who had learned to build roads and barracks for the military now began to erect suburban housing with equal speed. Expanding economic opportunities and narrowing political freedoms characterized American society in the first decade of the Cold War. By 1947 the United States was launching into an era of extraordinary economic expansion that continued for 25 years. Senator McMahon of Connecticut suggested “mailing millions of mail-order catalogues to the Iron Curtain countries” to turn their inhabitants green with envy over “the consumers’ wonderland contained within the pages of a Sears–Roebuck or a Montgomery Ward catalogue.” Since Ben Franklin’s time, Americans had been known for thrift in their pursuit of wealth, but after 1945 the long-cherished principle of delaying gratification declined steeply. “Buy now, pay later,” General Motors urged as it offered an installment plan to customers. Diner’s Club introduced the first credit card in 1950. In a formulation breathtaking for its distance from Puritan and immigrant traditions of saving for the future, writer William Whyte observed that “thrift is now un-American.” CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 817 ${bmicon} Many white Americans embraced the opportunity to move to the suburbs after World War II. Seeking larger homes and yards and quieter neighborhoods, they flocked to new developments such as Levittown outside New York City on Long Island. In their first three hours of business in 1949, Levittown’s developers sold 1400 houses. In 1944 construction had begun on just 114,000 new houses; in 1950, the number jumped to 1.7 million. Suburbs were not for everyone, however. Even as federal courts struck down segregation laws in some spheres of American life, other federal agencies were encouraging residential separation by race. The Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration distributed billions of dollars in low-cost mortgage loans for suburban homes to white applicants while screening out most people of color. Private banks did the same, and the contracts that developers such as Alfred and William Levitt signed with homebuyers prohibited resale to nonwhites. Other government policies, including highway construction and tax benefits for homeowners, promoted the growth of suburbs at the cost of cities. A third epoch in American residential history began by 1970 when more Americans resided in suburbs than cities, parallel to the 1920 shift from a rural majority to an urban one. full view Levittown William Levitt capitalized on the post-war need for new housing as well as the new GI Bill mortgage subsidies. The houses in his enormous suburban developments were small by today’s standards, but they were affordable and included many modern conveniences. (Scott Foresman Addison Wesley, Picture Research Dept.) Suburban life encouraged a sharpening of gender roles among the growing middle class. Men commuted to work while women were expected to find fulfillment in marriage and motherhood, including a nearly full-time job of unpaid housework. Most women did so while either feeling isolated in their homes or finding community with other women in their neighborhoods and churches. “We married what we wanted to be,” one female college graduate said. “If we wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor we married one.” An enormous amount depended on a woman’s choice of a husband, including class status and lifelong material well-being. Despite this partial retreat from wartime employment, however, fully one-third of American women continued to work for pay outside the home. The economic circumstances of most black women offered them little choice, and most wound up doing double housework: their own and that of families employing them as domestics. Middle-class women tended to view their paid work as a job rather than a career, a way to increase the family income if they did not have small children at home. Quotas in graduate schools and sex-segregated employment limited the number of female professionals. Children moved even more firmly to the center of American family lives in these years. After a lengthy decline during the 1930s, marriage and birth rates picked up during the war and then accelerated sharply after 1945. After a brief upward spike in 1946, divorce rates declined for the first time in a century. From 1946 to 1964 women giving birth at a younger age to more children created the demographic bulge known as the baby boom. Large families reinforced the domestic focus of most women, putting the work of child-rearing at the center of their lives. Fatherhood became increasingly a badge of masculinity, with Father’s Day emerging as a significant holiday for the first time. Family physician Benjamin Spock published Baby and Child Care (1946), a runaway best-seller that helped shift the emphasis in American parenting from strictness to greater nurturance. Strong feelings about pregnancy hinged on the marital status of the expectant mother. Married mothers were celebrated, but unmarried ones were rebuked. Despite the greater freedom of the war years, the sexual double standard remained in place, with women’s virtue linked directly to virginity in a way that men’s was not. Birth control devices such as the diaphragm were legal only for married women and only in certain states. Women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies had to consider illegal abortions, the only kind available before 1970; millions did so, including one-fifth of all married women and a majority of single women who became pregnant. Two studies of American sexual behavior by Dr. Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University revealed that Americans often did not practice what they preached. The Kinsey reports of 1948 and 1953 shocked the public with their revelation of widespread premarital and extramarital sexual intercourse as well as homosexual liaisons. Rates of sex before marriage PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 818 ${bmicon} actually remained stable from the 1920s to the 1960s, but after World War II rates of teenage sex soared because so many teenagers got married. The average age of couples at the altar dropped as social pressures aimed to contain sex within marriage. Before World War II American cultural, industrial, and financial power had always been centered in the urban North, but federal expenditures during the war began to change this. The U.S. Army built most of its training bases in the South, where land close to the coasts was thinly populated and inexpensive. Military bases and defense industries sprang up along the West Coast to project power into the Pacific against Japan. California alone received 10 percent of all federal dollars spent during the war. The San Francisco Bay area sprawled with shipyards and sailors, and southern California became the center of the nation’s aircraft industry. U.S. troops built the Alcan (Alaska–Canada) Highway, and millions of GIs passed through Hawaii en route to the Pacific battlefront. Fighting against the Japanese to defend Pearl Harbor and the Aleutian Islands brought the once-distant territories of Hawaii and Alaska more into Americans’ consciousness, setting them on the path to statehood in 1959. The Sunbelt of the South, the Southwest, and California grew rapidly after the war, whereas older Rustbelt cities of the Northeast and Midwest such as Buffalo and Detroit began to lose manufacturing jobs and population. Like the 440,000 people who moved to Los Angeles during the war, postwar migrants to California and Arizona appreciated the weather and the eco- CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 819 ${bmicon} nomic opportunities. Military spending underwrote half the jobs in California during the first decade of the Cold War. Migrants from south of the border, meanwhile, found work primarily in California’s booming agricultural sector. The U.S. government continued to use the Bracero program as an exception to immigration laws for Mexicans willing to do arduous labor in the hot fields of the Golden State, thus encouraging the large influx of Mexicans into the U.S. Southwest. Agriculture in the arid Southwest depended on water management and irrigation, especially from dams on the lower Colorado River for Arizona and on several rivers flowing down from the Sierra Nevada range into California’s fertile central valley. Two industries particularly stimulated the growth of the Sunbelt: cars and air conditioning. Automobiles helped shape the economies of western states, where new cities were built out of sprawling suburbs, and governments erected highways rather than railroads, subways, or other forms of public transportation. New car sales shot up from 70,000 in 1945 to 7.9 million in 1955. Inexpensive gasoline, refined from the abundant crude oil of Texas and Oklahoma, powered this fleet. Automobile exhaust pipes replaced industrial smokestacks as the primary source of air pollution, which by the 1960s shrouded Los Angeles—the “city of angels”—in smog. Air conditioning also became widely available after World War II and contributed to the breakdown of the South’s regional distinctiveness. From Miami and Atlanta to Houston and Washington, D.C., the dramatic economic and demographic expansion of the Sunbelt depended on the indoor comfort brought by controlling summertime heat and humidity. The onset of the Cold War narrowed the range of American political discourse. In seeking to consolidate the New Deal legacy, President Truman found himself boxed in by conservative Republican opponents. Allied governments in western Europe had embraced the idea that access to health care was a right of every citizen in a modern democratic state. But when Truman proposed a system of national health care, conservatives quashed his proposal in Congress, pushed by an American Medical Association lobbying campaign that denounced the idea as a “monstrosity of Bolshevik bureaucracy.” Perhaps the most blatant omission of the New Deal was protection against racial discrimination. Now, as the Cold War intensified, the fact that millions of Americans still lacked basic guarantees for their civil rights was a glaring and embarrassing contradiction amid rhetoric about ensuring rights and liberties throughout the “free world.” The President’s Committee on Civil Rights called in 1947 for a strong federal commitment to racial equality. Truman campaigned for reelection in 1948 on a platform of support for civil rights that was unprecedented in the White House, including the first presidential address to the NAACP. That summer he ordered the desegregation of the armed forces and the federal civil service. Truman was not a complete egalitarian and did not address underlying structures of segregation in housing and schools. But blatant racial abuses angered him, and he helped set the Democrats on the path to becoming the party of racial equality. The president’s promotion of civil rights also had a political purpose in 1948. Black voters in Chicago, Cleveland, and other northern cities played a key role in swing states; their solid support lifted Truman to a narrow and surprising victory over the heavily favored Republican candidate, New York governor Thomas Dewey. Truman’s reelection was all the more impressive because of the fracturing of the Democratic party. Alienated by the civil rights plank, white Southerners walked out of the Democratic convention and ran South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as an independent candidate. The “Dixiecrats” won four states in TABLE 24-1 The Election of 1948 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Harry S. Truman Democratic 24,205,695 304 Thomas E. Dewey Republican 21,969,170 189 J. Strom Thurmond State-Rights Democratic 1,169,021 38 Henry A. Wallace Progressive 1,156,103 0 PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 820 ${bmicon} the Deep South, foreshadowing the abandonment by white Southerners of the party of their parents in the 1960s. From the opposite side of the party, many liberals jumped ship for Henry Wallace, Roosevelt’s former vice president, running as the Progressive party candidate. Truman won as a man of the moderately liberal center, fierce against communism, usually supportive of the rights of organized labor, and opposed to discrimination. Anticommunism turned out to be an inadequate shield for liberals and moderates in the partisan warfare pervading American politics in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In a pattern that became known as McCarthyism, mostly Republican conservatives explained communist successes abroad—especially in China and Korea—by “red-baiting” liberal Democrats in the administration, accusing them of sympathizing with and even spying for the Soviet Union. The hunt for domestic subversives to explain international setbacks was grounded in the reality of a handful of actual Soviet spies, most notably Julius Rosenberg (who was executed for treason in 1953 along with his apparently innocent wife, Ethel) and nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs. But this second Red Scare expressed primarily the frustration of being unable to translate vast U.S. power into greater control of world events. And it served, above all, to cast suspicion on the patriotism of liberals at home. “The fact that a person believes in racial equality doesn’t prove he’s a Communist,” argued the head of one government loyalty board, “but it certainly makes you look twice, doesn’t it?” Despite his general support for civil liberties, Truman helped set the tone for pursuing suspected traitors. In an unsuccessful effort to fortify his right flank against Republican attacks, he established a federal employee loyalty program in March 1947 as the domestic equivalent of the Truman Doctrine. Attorney General Tom Clark drew up a list of supposedly subversive organizations that the FBI and state committees on “un-American activities” then hounded. The president red-baited the Progressive party in the 1948 campaign, referring to its ticket as “Henry Wallace and his Communists.” In a case with sobering implications for free speech, federal courts in 1949 convicted the leaders of the U.S. Communist party of promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government. Words alone, the courts ruled, could be treasonable—the same logic as the wartime Sedition Act of 1918 (see Chapter 20). Conservative congressional Democrats pushed through the Internal Security Act of 1950 to require Communist party members to register with the government and allow emergency incarceration of suspected subversives. Calling it “a long step toward totalitarianism,” Truman vetoed the measure, but Congress overrode the veto by a huge margin. Republicans reaped the benefits of the Red Scare. Most Americans who had sympathized in any way with the Soviet Union in the Depression years were by the late 1940s merely liberal Democrats, but the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) zeroed in on their earlier records. Investigating Hollywood, the television industry, and universities as well as the executive branch of the U.S. government, HUAC destroyed the careers of prominent figures and average Americans. California congressman Richard Nixon made his initial reputation as a young HUAC member by investigating charges that State Department official Alger Hiss had spied for the USSR. Hiss’s conviction in 1950 CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 821 ${bmicon} on charges of perjury (lying under oath) frightened Americans by associating a powerful administration figure with communism. The era found its name in the previously obscure junior senator from Wisconsin, Republican Joseph McCarthy. With a single speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, this genial but ambitious politician soared to prominence. “I have here in my hand a list of 205” Communist party members working in the State Department, he declared. Over the next four years, the numbers and names changed as McCarthy stayed one step ahead of the evidence while intimidating witnesses before his Senate subcommittee. In reality, one reporter joked, McCarthy “couldn’t find a Communist in Red Square” in Moscow. He talked about Communists, but his show was about Democrats. As the war in Korea raged, he mercilessly red-baited the Truman administration. But after the Republican electoral victory in 1952, his excesses lost their partisan utility. With the end of the war in Korea and his ill-advised attacks on the U.S. Army itself as supposedly infiltrated by Communists (the Army–McCarthy hearings), he was at last censured by his Senate colleagues in 1954 and died an early, alcohol-related death in 1957. The Cold War politics of inclusion and exclusion established a new profile for loyal Americans. Private familial and material concerns were expected to replace public interest in social reform. “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist,” real estate developer William Levitt declared. “He has too much to do.” He also had a wife, presumably, in an era when anticommunists launched a withering assault on homosexuals as “perverts” and threats to the nation’s security. Church membership climbed in tandem with condemnations of “godless Communism,” and Congress added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Warning that “God is giving us a desperate choice, a choice of either revival or judgment,” revivalist preacher Billy Graham launched his first evangelical crusade in Los Angeles in 1949, en route to becoming the nation’s foremost religious figure. Discrimination against Roman Catholics and Jews, though still evident, declined as Catholics such as McCarthy proved intensely anticommunist and as pictures and stories emerged to reveal the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. More inclusive references to the “Judeo-Christian tradition” became common. McCarthy talked about Communists, but his show was about Democrats. As the war in Korea raged, he mercilessly red-baited the Truman administration. American leadership of the global anticommunist cause strengthened the struggle for racial equality at home, within certain limits. The NAACP and most African Americans took an anticommunist position in accord with Truman, in return for his support of civil rights. They downplayed their concern for colonial independence in Africa and Asia to support NATO. The American GI Forum (Latino veterans) and the Japanese American Citizen League also worked within the confines of Cold War politics to end discrimination. More radical black leaders such as scholar W. E. B. Du Bois and actor and singer Paul Robeson refused to make any such accommodation to anticommunism. Offended by the hypocrisy of segregation in the land of liberty, they insisted on full freedom everywhere in the “free world.” The government responded by restricting their travel and diminishing their livelihoods. In a move right out of the Soviet playbook, Robeson’s name was erased from the list of football All-Americans for 1917 and 1918 (he had starred for Rutgers University), leaving only ten men on those teams. For impoverished Native Americans, the government seemed to give with one hand and take away with the other. In 1946 Truman established the Indian Claims Commission to consider payment for lands taken and treaties broken. But gestures toward compensation led to policies of termination. Developers seeking access to Indian lands joined reformers troubled by reservation poverty in urging Congress—with limited success—to terminate the special status Indian tribes had held with the federal government since its founding. Dillon S. Myer, who had overseen internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, became director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1950. He closed reservation schools, withdrew support for traditional cultural PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 822 ${bmicon} activities, and launched an urban relocation program, all intended to move Native Americans into the mainstream and get the government “out of the Indian business.” Immigrants also received mixed messages. The McCarran–Walter Act (1952) ended the long-standing ban on allowing people of Asian descent not born in the United States to become U.S. citizens. But it preserved the discriminatory 1924 system of “national origins” for allocating numbers of immigrants from different countries. The bill also strengthened the attorney general’s authority to deport aliens who were suspected of subversive intentions. Like Guatemalanborn leftist Luisa Moreno, a successful labor organizer in California deported in 1950, immigrants learned that their welcome depended on their politics. Japan did not conquer independent nations in its sweep southward at the start of World War II. Tokyo’s army defeated imperial powers: the French in Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, the British in Singapore and Malaya, and the Americans in the Philippines. In a single swoop, Japanese soldiers demonstrated the absurdity of white supremacy and cleared the way for the end of colonialism in Asia. Japan’s retreat in 1945 left vacuums of power throughout the region. Into them flowed two contenders: the returning but gravely weakened European imperialists and Asian nationalists such as Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam (part of French Indochina). Americans were not passive observers of this struggle as they sought to establish a new free-trading order in the region. Less than five years after millions of American citizens had served in the war in the Pacific, hundreds of thousands returned to Asia to fight for an anticommunist regime in South Korea. In Asia, as in much of the Third World, the Cold War quickly turned hot. Despite frequent discrimination against Chinese immigrants in the United States, Americans had long felt a special connection to China. Half of the thousands of Christian missionaries CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 823 ${bmicon} sent out by American churches in the early 20th century had been posted there. Entrepreneurs eyed the Chinese market, home to one-fifth of the world’s potential consumers. Selling cigarettes to the Chinese brought tobacco baron James B. Duke much of his wealth, which he then used to endow the university in North Carolina that bears his name. During World War II Chinese resistance to Japan’s invasion occupied millions of Tokyo’s soldiers who would otherwise have been shooting at American GIs. The close U.S. alliance with the government of Jiang Jieshi seemed to confirm American hopes that Asia’s largest nation would follow a pro-American path. Republican senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska declared that the United States would “lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it looks just like Kansas City.” However, many Chinese wanted Shanghai to look just like itself—or perhaps like Moscow. The partisans of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao Zedong’s leadership fought more effectively against the Japanese than Jiang’s soldiers did. Japan’s withdrawal in 1945 initiated four years of warfare between the Communists and Jiang’s anticommunist Nationalists. Younger American diplomats and journalists in China, many of them missionaries’ children who had grown up there, argued that the CCP was more popular than the corrupt Nationalist regime and was independent of the USSR. Rejecting the advice of these “China hands,” the Truman administration provided $3 billion in aid to Jiang. The logic of the Truman Doctrine required containment of communism everywhere. Nevertheless, it failed in China. Americans watched in frustration as the CCP defeated the Nationalists, who retreated to the island of Taiwan. On October 1, 1949, addressing a vast crowd in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Mao announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Americans were appalled. The most populous nation in the world, the key to Asia, was gone—into the communist camp. More ominously, it was the first communist government created without the presence of Soviet troops. Might the rest of Asia also choose communism? Profound suspicions on both sides prevented any Sino-American accommodation. The U.S. government refused to recognize the People’s Republic, just as it had done with the USSR in 1917; instead, Washington for the next 23 years pretended that the Nationalists on the tiny island of Taiwan were the real government of China. The CCP had come to power on its own, with minimal help from the Soviets. But faced with U.S. hostility and sharing a common ideology with the Soviet Union, Mao papered over historic Chinese–Russian tensions (which reemerged in the 1960s) and signed a mutual defense pact with Moscow in February 1950. The so-called loss of China increased the importance for American policymakers of building capitalist societies in the rest of Asia, particularly Japan and—fatefully—South Korea and Vietnam. China’s revolution also became a major issue in American politics. “Who lost China?” Republicans demanded rhetorically and effectively, presuming that it had once been America’s to lose. A week before Mao’s announcement that China had become a communist country, President Truman shared some equally grim news with the American public: the Soviet Union had detonated its first nuclear device. The United States had lost the atomic monopoly that for four Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 824 ${bmicon} full view MAP 24.3 ASIA AFTER WORLD WAR II The weakening of Western colonial powers in the war with Japan paved the way for national independence across Asia after 1945. Some of these newly independent nations chose a capitalist form of society and others a communist form. The new East–West tensions of the Cold War complicated the longer North-South struggle for freedom from colonial control. years had assured Americans of their unique position of military strength. These events in the fall of 1949 shook the confidence of American political leaders. Truman asked his advisers for a full reevaluation of the nation’s foreign policy. The result was the top-secret National Security Council document 68 (NSC-68), which articulated the logic of what became the national security state: a government focused on the imperatives of military power, global involvement, and radically increased defense spending. NSC-68 argued that there was no longer any such thing as peacetime. The United States had Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 825 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY NSC-68 Concerned about the trend of international events in the wake of the Communist revolution in China and the Soviet Union’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, President Truman ordered his National Security Council on January 31, 1950, to conduct “a reexamination of our objectives in peace and war and of the effect of these objectives on our strategic plans.” The resulting study, known as NSC-68, called for a military buildup to counter Soviet expansionism. Some specialists on the USSR, such as George Kennan, questioned NSC-68’s accuracy regarding Soviet intentions and successes. But the subsequent North Korean invasion of South Korea seemed to confirm the idea of “international communism” on the march. From NSC-68: U.S. Objectives and Programs for National Security (April 14, 1950) The Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world…. Any substantial further extension of the area under the domination of the Kremlin would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin with greater strength could be assembled. It is in this context that this Republic and its citizens in the ascendancy of their strength stand in their deepest peril. The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself…. The assault on free institutions is world-wide now, and in the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere…. Our policy and actions must be such as to foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system…. In a shrinking world, which now faces the threat of atomic warfare, it is not an adequate objective merely to seek to check the Kremlin design, for the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable…. The integrity of our system will not be jeopardized by any measures, covert or overt, violent or non-violent, which serve the purposes of frustrating the Kremlin design, nor does the necessity for conducting ourselves so as to affirm our values in actions as well as words forbid such measures…. The total economic strength of the U.S.S.R. compares with that of the U.S. as roughly one to four…. The military budget of the United States represents 6 to 7 percent of its gross national product (as against 13.8 percent for the Soviet Union)…. This difference in emphasis between the two economies means that the readiness of the free world to support a war effort is tending to decline relative to that of the Soviet Union. It is true that the United States armed forces are now stronger than ever before in other times of apparent peace; it is also true that there exists a sharp disparity between our actual military strength and our commitments… . It is clear that our military strength is becoming dangerously inadequate…. In summary, we must … [engage in] a rapid and sustained build-up of the political, economic, and military strength of the free world. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 826 ${bmicon} entered an era of permanent crisis because of the expansion of communism and the hostile intentions of the Soviet Union. America’s worldwide interests meant that it must oppose revolutions or radical change anywhere on the globe. NSC-68 went beyond the containment policy of the Truman Doctrine to call for fostering “a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system.” This armed struggle necessitated secrecy and centralization of power in the hands of the federal government. The National Security Act of 1947 and its 1949 amendments created the institutions of the new national security state. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) organized spying and covert operations, the Department of Defense unified the separate branches of the military and the National Security Council (NSC) coordinated foreign policy information for the president. NSC-68 called for permanent military expenditures at a level of war readiness; it argued that this would stimulate rather than bankrupt the U.S. economy. Scores of communities became dependent on military spending—a kind of military welfare state—and many were devastated by its withdrawal at the end of the Cold War in the 1990s. NSC–68’s call for secrecy encouraged government deception of the public in the interest of “national security,” with a consequent decline in democratic input into the nation’s foreign relations. Two months after NSC-68 arrived on the president’s desk and four months after Senator McCarthy began his attacks on the Democratic administration, troops from Communist North Korea poured across the 38th parallel into South Korea on June 25, 1950. The alarmist recommendations of NSC-68 now seemed fully justified to U.S. policymakers. The origins of the conflict on the Korean peninsula were more complicated than they appeared at first glance, however, and the United States was deeply involved. full view The Korean War, 1950-1953 Almost losing South Korea completely, the bold UN invasion at Inchon forced the North Korean forces back to defend their border. The defiant North ultimately prompted an offensive invasion by the communist Chinese in 1950. In the end, General Douglas MacArthur would be dismissed and President Eisenhower would achieve a truce that managed to maintain the status quo. Korea had been colonized by Japan since 1910. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, Soviet and U.S. forces each occupied half of the peninsula. In the north, the Soviets installed a dictatorial Communist regime under Kim Il-Sung, who had fought with the Chinese Communists in their CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 827 ${bmicon} common struggle against Japan. In the south, the Americans established an authoritarian capitalist regime led by Syngman Rhee, who had taken classes at Princeton University with Woodrow Wilson and had lived in the United States most of the previous four decades. The 38th parallel was an arbitrary dividing line for a nation that had been unified for 1300 years, and both governments sought to reunite Korea under their control. Border skirmishes intensified after the Soviets and Americans withdrew in 1948, and leftist rebellions continued across much of the south. The CIA acknowledged that Rhee was even “unpopular among many—if not a majority—of non-Communist Koreans.” Some 100,000 Koreans lost their lives in the fighting between 1945 and 1950, before “the Korean War” officially began with the north’s invasion. U.S. forces arrived in late June 1950, just in time to prevent the South Korean army from being driven off the peninsula, and then slowly pushed the North Koreans backward toward the 38th parallel in hard fighting. Truman received UN approval for this “police action,” but he bypassed Congress rather than seek a declaration of war; immediate action, not debate, was needed, and he had support from leaders of both political parties. The precedent of presidential war without public debate facilitated U.S. military involvement in Vietnam a few years later. Most importantly, Americans believed the North Korean invasion had been orchestrated by Moscow as part of a plan of worldwide communist aggression. The Truman administration considered defense of South Korea crucial to demonstrate the credibility of U.S. power. “Korea is the Greece of the Far East,” the president told aides. “If we are tough enough now, if we stand up to them like we did in Greece three years ago, they won’t take any next steps.” American leaders adhered to the “domino theory,” in which a successful communist takeover of one country would supposedly lead to its neighbors falling like dominoes into communist rule. Secretary of State Acheson reminded his colleagues that in Korea “we are fighting the second team, whereas the real enemy is the Soviet Union.” The U.S. government took preemptive actions against possible aggression elsewhere. It sent the 7th Fleet to defend Taiwan, which it had previously assumed China would eventually conquer and reabsorb; it increased assistance to anticommunist forces in the Philippines and Vietnam; and it rearmed West Germany as part of NATO. The U.S. annual military budget increased from $13 billion in 1950 before the war to $50 billion in 1953, never to fall again below that level. The United States was fully rearmed. General Douglas MacArthur’s brilliantly executed landing of fresh U.S. troops at the port of Inchon behind North Korean lines on September 15, 1950, created a turning point in the war. North Korean forces abandoned the South’s capital city of Seoul, fleeing northward to avoid being caught between two American armies advancing from different directions. South Korea was retaken; containment had succeeded. Should American commanders now shift to rolling back communism by proceeding north of the 38th parallel? The opportunity was irresistible, despite Truman’s determination to keep this a limited war. MacArthur ignored signals that the Chinese would not allow U.S. soldiers to come all the way to their border at the Yalu River—the equivalent for Americans of having the Soviet Army arrive at the Rio Grande. As UN forces—mostly Americans and South Koreans, with a sprinkling of troops from other nations—closed in on the Yalu, 200,000 Chinese soldiers struck hard on November 27. American soldiers were driven all the way south of the 38th parallel again in the longest retreat in U.S. history, some 300 miles. full view US Marines - 1950 US Marines in November 1950 moving southward harassed by Communist Chinese soldiers in the hills. American bombers blast a way through the Communist defenses to help the Americans escape. (National Archives) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 828 ${bmicon} full view MAP 24.4 THE KOREAN WAR, 1950–1953 The strategic location of the Korean peninsula enhanced the importance of what had originally been a civil conflict among Koreans. Korea’s close proximity to China, the Soviet Union, and U.S.-occupied Japan made the outcome of that conflict very important to all of the great powers. The Americans and Chinese wound up doing the bulk of the fighting against each other in the full-scale war that unfolded in 1950. MacArthur wanted to take this “entirely new war” directly to the Chinese, using conventional or even nuclear bombing campaigns against the People’s Republic. However, Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Omar Bradley called this idea “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” MacArthur’s growing insubordination forced Truman to fire the popular general in April 1951 because the president had no desire to start a larger war CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 829 ${bmicon} that would draw in the USSR. The bloody fighting in Korea stalemated that spring close to the original dividing line, where the front remained as the two sides negotiated for two years before signing a ceasefire in July 1953. All the while, the U.S. Air Force used its supremacy in the skies to rain down extraordinary destruction on the North. “We burned down every town in North Korea,” boasted General Curtis LeMay. American deaths totaled 37,000, and China lost nearly a million soldiers. Three million Koreans on both sides died—10 percent of the population of the peninsula—and another 5 million were made refugees. Containment succeeded at enormous cost. The Korean War shaped subsequent American politics and society in critical ways. The stalemate frustrated Americans, who were never very enthusiastic about fighting in a place they knew little about. Having won all previous wars, they agreed with MacArthur that there was “no substitute for victory.” But the ominous threat of nuclear weapons meant that wars had to be limited. The fighting in Korea enabled McCarthy and the Red Scare to dominate political life in the United States. The results were sometimes absurd, with the Democratic authors of the containment policy and the national security state being red-baited as “soft on communism.” The Republican party rode such charges to electoral victory in November Eisenhower on the Korean Armistice Inheriting the two-year-old Korean War from the Truman administration, a newly elected Dwight D. Eisenhower resolved to boldly end the stalemate as quickly as possible. Stepped-up aerial bombings of the North coupled with heavy Chinese communist casualties, the death of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and the veiled American threat of nuclear warfare forced North Korea to enter negotiations which produced the Armistice on July 26, 1953. PART 8 ###8226; FROM DEPRESSION AND WAR TO WORLD POWER, 1929###8211;1953 830 ${bmicon} 1952. (They also benefitted from evidence of petty corruption among some Truman administration officials, such as the president’s appointment secretary accepting bribes). Republican presidential nominee General Dwight Eisenhower was perhaps the most popular American alive because of his leadership of the Allied victory in Europe in World War II, and he swept into the White House over Democrat Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois. TABLE 24-2 The Election of 1952 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican 33,936,252 442 Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 27,314,992 89 The war in Korea ensured a generation of hostility between the United States and China. It tied the People’s Republic more closely to the USSR, strengthening the common belief that international communism was a unified movement. The United States committed itself to defending Taiwan from recapture by the Beijing government. The firing of the “China hands” deprived the State Department of the bulk of its Asian expertise, smoothing the path to an ill-informed war in Vietnam. The Korean War also jump-started the moribund Japanese economy as American dollars poured into Japan, where the U.S. war effort was based. Japanese conservatives called it “a gift from the gods.” full view Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight D. Eisenhower Frustrations with the course of war in Korea affirmed the inward focus of American society in the 1950s. The American public largely accepted its own diminished role, and even the smaller role of its elected Congress, in decisions made by national security managers. Despite the organizing efforts of political activists such as civil rights workers, most citizens seemed to look increasingly to their personal and familial lives for satisfaction and meaning. From the powerful U.S. economy flowed an unprecedented river of consumer goods, including the new artificial materials—plastic, vinyl, nylon, polyester, styrofoam—that have pervaded and polluted American life ever since. As peace came to Korea and U.S. soldiers returned from across the Pacific, Americans sought the good life at home. The National Security Archive at George Washington University www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/ This extraordinary site includes the most recent declassified documents on the making of U.S. foreign policy. Cold War International History Project cwihp.si.edu/default.htm The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars maintains this excellent site, which offers newly released documents and up-to-date interpretive essays on the American-Soviet struggle. The Ad*Access Project of Duke University Library scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/ This site presents fascinating images from over 7,000 advertisements in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955, offering insights into popular culture and consumer life. Truman Presidential Museum and Library www.trumanlibrary.org/index.html The Harry Truman Presidential Library maintains this site, which contains an especially useful collection of documents regarding crucial foreign policy decisions in the early Cold War. The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm Researchers can find here the texts of a large number of the most important primary documents illuminating U.S. relations with other countries. Korea + 50: No Longer Forgotten www.trumanlibrary.org/korea/ The Truman Library’s site on the Korean War has documents, photos, and interpretative essays by prominent historians. The Bancroft Library Collections bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/ The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley has extensive collections, exhibits, and links revealing the history of California, the nation’s most populous state. CHAPTER 24 ###8226; COLD WAR AND HOT WAR, 1945###8211;1953 831 ${bmicon} William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, 3rd ed. (1995). Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (1995). Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (1976). Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1996, 8th ed. (1997). James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (1996). Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (2001). Melvyn P. Leffler, The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917–1953 (1994). Harvey A. Levenstein, Communism, Anti-Communism, and the CIO (1981). Richard Polenberg, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States Since 1938 (1980). Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996). Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944–1949 (1996). Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (1987). Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy (1986). Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (1992). Thomas G. Paterson, On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War (1992). Stewart L. Udall, The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom (1994). Paul S. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1985). Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (1990). Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1985). Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988). Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998). Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (1991). Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations, 4th ed. (2000). Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 2 vols. (1981, 1990). Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, Korea: The Unknown War (1988). Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (1998). Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.–Japan Relations (1997). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter24 To Chapter 24 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 832 ${bmicon}   1953 CIA engineers coup in Iran, restores Shah to power. 1954 Brown v. Board of Education. Founding of Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). French leave Vietnam, which is divided into South Vietnam and North Vietnam. 1955 Polio vaccine approved for use. Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California. Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott begins. 1956 Interstate Highway Act. 1957 Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, integrated. USSR launches Sputnik. Eisenhower Doctrine. 1958 National Defense Education Act. 1959 Nixon–Khrushchev Kitchen Debate. Cuban Revolution. 1960 Oral contraceptive pill comes on the market. Beginning of lunch counter sit-ins (Greensboro, North Carolina). American U-2 spy plane shot down over USSR. 1961 First American launched into space. Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Berlin Wall constructed. Freedom Rides begin. 1962 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. Cuban missile crisis. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) founded. 1963 Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president after assassination of John F. Kennedy. Equal Pay Act of 1963. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique. 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Civil Rights Act of 1964 (employment). Wilderness Act. 1965 Civil Rights Act of 1965 (voting rights). Griswold v. Connecticut legalizes birth control for married couples. Watts (Los Angeles) riot. 1966 Clean Water Act. National Organization for Women (NOW) founded. 1967 Thurgood Marshall appointed first African American to Supreme Court. Detroit and Newark riots. DURING THE THIRD QUARTER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE COLD War cast a long shadow over the United States and the rest of the world. Tensions mounted at home and abroad as the United States and the Soviet Union vied for power among the world’s nations. In poor Third World countries, insurgents attempted to throw off the yoke of colonialism and play the two superpowers against each other. The United States used a variety of strategies to counter Soviet influence in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, including military force in Korea and Vietnam, white-knuckle diplomacy in Cuba, extensive aid to non-aligned countries and covert operations worldwide. Soviet advances in science and technology spurred the U.S. government to sponsor bold new domestic initiatives in the areas of public education and space exploration. The Cold War even helped to shape a post–World War II domestic ideal: a nuclear family living in a house in the suburbs, with a breadwinner father and a full-time homemaker mother. Many Americans believed that their prosperous, consumer-oriented economy, with its emphasis on individualism and personal choice, was a key weapon in the fight against communism. In a feverish arms race, both the United States and the USSR rushed to stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Constant innovations in the technology of nuclear weaponry (such as intercontinental ballistic missiles) made the bombers used in World War II obsolete. The hydrogen bomb, tested successfully for the first time in 1953, dwarfed the power of the atomic bomb that had leveled Hiroshima. Nevertheless, citizens who criticized the arms buildup risked being branded unpatriotic. More than ever before, domestic policy was intertwined with foreign policy. The rise of multinational corporations meant that large, impersonal institutions, whether government or private, were shaping American life. Middle-level managers—men in “grey flannel suits”—represented the corporate ethos of loyalty to the company above all else. At the same time, many Americans sought to work within their Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 833 ${bmicon}   local communities for social and political change. In the South, African American men and women launched a dramatic assault on the system of legal segregation known as “Jim Crow.” Working at the grassroots level, these activists boycotted buses, marched, sat in at lunch counters, and went to jail. Their efforts provoked the courts and Congress to act, culminating in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. For the first time in American history, the federal government assumed responsibility for eliminating discrimination in the workplace and guaranteeing all its citizens the right to vote. Other groups also organized and entered the political arena. Indians, disabled Americans, California farm workers, and gay men and lesbians all formed organizations to counter discrimination and advance their civil rights. The women’s movement affected all aspects of American society, enabling women to play a fuller role in the political and economic life of the country. A new environmentalist movement secured legislation protecting wilderness areas and endangered species and ensuring that Americans had clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Johnson hoped to revitalize the New Deal legacy by expanding social welfare programs. His program, called the Great Society, sought to address seemingly intractable problems such as poverty, lack of health care for the elderly, and the deterioration of inner-city neighborhoods. But Johnson also expanded the U.S. military presence in Vietnam, an effort that cost an increasing number of American lives. Even constant bombing proved futile to stem the civil war that pitted Americans and anticommunist Vietnamese against the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and their comrades in the north. Johnson’s successor, Richard M. Nixon, also found himself mired in a war that was becoming increasingly unpopular among Americans. Protests against the war in the late 1960s and early 1970s highlighted an emerging youth culture. The baby boom generation, born in the two decades after World War II, embraced sexual freedom and new forms of music (such as rock ‘n’ roll) in an apparent attempt to defy their parents and “the Establishment” in general. Many Americans felt betrayed by both Johnson and Nixon, believing that tens of thousands of American soldiers had died in vain in Vietnam. The Watergate break-in at Democratic headquarters, leading eventually to Nixon’s resignation, contributed to a growing, widespread disenchantment with government authority. By the late 1970s, developments abroad had greatly complicated Cold War politics. Middle Eastern oil-producing nations imposed an oil embargo on the United States, highlighting U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. Islamic fundamentalists were beginning to retaliate violently against the spread of American influence and culture in Muslim countries. And at home, a conservative backlash emerged to counter the expansion of the welfare state, the heightened visibility of the feminist movement, and widening civil rights protests. 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated. Robert Kennedy assassinated. My Lai massacre. Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Tet offensive. 1969 Huge antiwar protests in Washington, D.C. Indians occupy Alcatraz, San Francisco Bay. Stonewall raid, New York City. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon. 1970 U.S. invades Cambodia. National Guardsmen kill four students, Kent State University. 1971 Pentagon Papers published. Nixon administration creates “plumbers” for illegal activities. 1972 Watergate break-in. Nixon visits China. Founding of Ms. magazine. 1973 Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion. American Indian Movement members occupy Wounded Knee. Endangered Species Act. OPEC oil embargo. American troops withdrawn from Vietnam. 1974 Nixon resigns presidency; Gerald R. Ford becomes president. 1975 Mayaguez incident. Vietnam reunified under communist rule. Congressional investigations of CIA covert operations. 1976 Hyde Amendment prohibits use of Medicaid funds for abortions. Nation celebrates bicentennial. 1977 Carter issues general amnesty for draft evaders. Trans-Alaska pipeline system completed. ABC airs miniseries Roots, based on book by Alex Haley. 1978 Bakke Supreme Court decision. California Proposition 13. 1979 Camp David peace accords. Partial meltdown of nuclear core at Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Iranian Revolution. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 834 ${bmicon}         Cold War, Warm Hearth       The Civil Rights Movement       The Eisenhower Years       Outsiders and Opposition       The Kennedy Era       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 835 ${bmicon} IN 1959 VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON TRAVELED TO THE SOVIET UNION TO ENGAGE IN what became one of the most noted verbal sparring matches of the century. In a lengthy and often heated debate with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Nixon extolled the virtues of the American way of life; his opponent promoted the Communist system. The two leaders did not discuss missiles, bombs, or even modes of government. Rather, they argued over the relative merits of American and Soviet washing machines, televisions, and electric ranges in what came to be known as the “Kitchen Debate.” The Kitchen Debate was a major skirmish on the Cold War’s cultural battleground, where the two superpowers struggled for ideological supremacy. For Nixon, American superiority rested on the ability of average Americans to purchase a suburban home, complete with modern appliances. He proclaimed that the home adorned with a wide array of consumer goods represented the essence of American freedom: To us, diversity, the right to choose,… is the most important thing. We don’t have one decision made at the top by one government official…. We have many different manufacturers and many different kinds of washing machines so that the housewives have a choice…. Would it not be better to compete in the relative merits of washing machines than in the strength of rockets? Nixon’s focus on household appliances was not accidental. After all, arguments over the strength of rockets would only point out the vulnerability of the United States in the event of a nuclear war between the superpowers. Debates over consumer goods provided a reassuring vision of the good life available in the atomic age. So Nixon insisted that American superiority in the Cold War rested not on weapons but on prosperous families living in comfortable suburban homes. Freed by modern appliances from the drudgery of household chores, mothers could spend their time nurturing happy, well-adjusted children. Consumerism provided the means for achieving individuality, leisure, domestic bliss, and upward mobility. The American National Exhibition in Moscow was a showcase of American consumer goods and leisure equipment. But the main attraction, which the two leaders toured under international media spotlight, was a full-scale, six-room, ranch-style model house. This model home, filled with labor-saving devices and presumably available to Americans of all classes, offered tangible proof, Nixon claimed, of the superiority of free enterprise over communism. Nixon called attention to a built-in panel-controlled washing machine. “In America,” he said, “these [washing machines] are designed to make things easier for our women.” Khrushchev countered Nixon’s boast of comfortable American housewives by expressing pride in productive Soviet female workers. The Soviets, he claimed, did not share that “capitalist attitude toward women.” PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 836 ${bmicon} According to American journalists, Nixon’s knock-out punch in his verbal bout with the Soviet premier was his articulation of the American postwar domestic dream: successful breadwinners supporting attractive homemakers in well-appointed, comfortable homes. Sharing Nixon’s sentiments about politics, consumerism, and gender, most reporters hailed the vice president’s trip as a major triumph. The American National Exhibition in Moscow seemed to demonstrate the superiority of the American way of life. Science and expertise reigned supreme during the Cold War years. Parents turned to Dr. Benjamin Spock’s best-selling Baby and Child Care, first published in 1946, to guide them in raising their children. Unlike prewar child-rearing experts who encouraged discipline and discouraged coddling, Dr. Spock emphasized nurture and affection. He urged parents to hold and comfort their infants, feed them on demand, and abandon rigid toilet-training routines. Dr. Jonas Salk became a hero for developing a vaccine against polio. Approved for use in 1955 and distributed widely to children in schools and clinics, the Salk vaccine virtually eliminated the dreaded illness within a few years. The oral contraceptive pill, which came on the market in 1960, provided relatively safe and effective birth control. Hailed initially as a boon to family planning, the pill also helped to usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Scientific discoveries in the 1950s also inaugurated the modern era of exploration beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, fueled by the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), established in 1958, sent the first American into space in 1961. But science also brought pesticides, smog, and other pollutants. Americans, at the time, rarely considered the environmental effects of consumer goods, cars, petrochemicals, or nuclear power. full view ENIAC Computer The ENIAC computer, first used in 1946, was a huge machine that took up an entire room, though it was far slower and less powerful than the tiny desktop computers that became popular decades later. (Courtesy, Moore School of Engineering) The decade from 1953 to 1963 was a time of expansive optimism about the future. The civil rights movement challenged the nation to live up to its promise of democracy for all. The baby boom, generated by young parents from all backgrounds, demonstrated widespread faith in the future for American children. It was also a decade of growth for U.S. influence abroad, the domestic economy, consumer culture, and television. Suburbs, highways, and shopping malls expanded to meet the needs of increasing numbers of families with young children. The nation itself expanded with the addition of Hawaii and Alaska as states. It was also a decade of anxiety. Americans worried about the perils of the atomic age as the nuclear arsenals of both superpowers continued to grow. The brainwashing of prisoners of war in Korea raised fears about communist propaganda and psychological warfare. Science fiction films about alien invaders reflected concerns about foreign dangers. The Soviet Union’s 1957 launching of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth, alarmed Americans and forced the nation to confront the possibility of Soviet technological superiority. The United States appeared to be at the height of its strength and power, yet, at the same time, more vulnerable than ever before. The postwar era was a time of deep divisions in American society, yet in certain ways Americans behaved with remarkable conformity. This is nowhere more evident than in the overwhelming embrace of the nuclear family. The GI Bill, with its provisions for home mortgage loans, enabled veterans of modest means to purchase homes. Although residential segregation prevailed throughout the postwar era, limiting most suburban developments to prosperous white middle- and working-class families, many veterans of color were able to buy their CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 837 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 25.1 MARITAL STATUS OF THE U.S. ADULT POPULATION, 1900–1995 Following World War II, Americans married in record numbers. The high rate of marriage corresponded with a relatively low divorce rate. Beginning in the 1970s, the marriage rate plummeted and the divorce rate rose dramatically. first homes. Family fever swept the nation and affected all Americans. The trends that began during and immediately after World War II, including the rising rates of marriage and childbirth and the declining age at marriage, continued during the 1950s. Americans of all racial, ethnic, and religious groups, of all socioeconomic classes and educational levels, brought the marriage rate up and the divorce rate down. Popular television shows such as The Honeymooners, featuring working-class couples, and Leave It to Beaver, depicting middle-class families, placed the consumer-oriented home at the center of attention. So did mainstream Life magazine and the African American glossy, Ebony. The “American way of life” embodied in the suburban nuclear family, as a cultural ideal if not a universal reality, motivated countless postwar Americans to strive for it, to live by its codes, and—for Americans of color—to demand it. The postwar years witnessed a huge increase in spending power. Between 1947 and 1961, the number of families rose 28 percent, national income increased more than 60 percent, and the number of Americans with money to spend beyond basic necessities doubled. Rather than putting this money aside for a rainy day, Americans were inclined to spend it. Investing in one’s home, along with the trappings that would enhance family life, seemed the best way to plan for a secure future. Between 1950 and 1970, the suburban population more than doubled, from 36 million to 74 million. Fully 20 percent of the population remained poor during this prosperous time. But most families of ample as well as modest means exhibited a great deal of conformity in their consumer behavior, reflecting widely shared beliefs about the good life. They poured their money into homes, domestic appliances, televisions, automobiles, and family vacations. As prosperity spread throughout the 1950s, expenditures for food and clothing increased modestly, and PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 838 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 25.2 THE BABY BOOM IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT After a decline of nearly a century and a half, the fertility rate of American women surged during and after World War II, producing the baby boom. The boom resulted from the high marriage rate, the lower marriage age, and the rise in the average number of children per couple. spending on household appliances, recreation, automobiles, and televisions more than doubled. Homeowners moved into more than 1 million new suburban houses each year. Nuclear families who settled in the suburbs provided the foundation for new types of community life and leisure pursuits, sometimes at the expense of older ones grounded in ethnic neighborhoods and kinship networks. Family-oriented amusement parks such as Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which opened in 1955, catered to middle-class tastes, in contrast to older venues such as Coney Island, known for their thrill rides, class and ethnic mixing, and romantic environments. Religious affiliation rose to an all-time high as Americans built and joined suburban churches and synagogues, complete with youth programs and summer camps. Families piled into the car for outings to local drive-in theaters and weekend excursions or shared leisure time gathered around television sets. In 1949, fewer than 1 million American homes had a television. Within the next four years, the number soared to 20 million. The house and commodity boom had tremendous propaganda value during the Cold War, as Nixon demonstrated in the Kitchen Debate. Although they may have been unwitting soldiers, consumers who marched off to the nation’s shopping centers to equip their new homes joined the ranks of Americans taking part in the Cold War. As early as 1947, newscaster and noted cold warrior George Putnam described shopping centers as “concrete expressions of the practical idealism that built America … plenty of free parking for all those cars that we capitalists seem to acquire. Who can help but contrast [them] with what you’d find under communism?” The Cold War made a profound contribution to suburban sprawl. In 1951 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists devoted an issue to “defense through decentralization” that argued in favor of depopulating the urban core to avoid a concentration of residences or industries in a potential target area for a nuclear attack. Joining this effort was the American Road Builders’ Association, a lobbying group second only in power and wealth to the munitions industry. As a result of these pressures, Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act in 1956, which provided $100 billion to cover 90 percent of the cost for 41,000 miles of national highways. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law, he stated one of the major reasons CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 839 ${bmicon} for the new highway system: “[In] case of atomic attack on our key cities, the road net must permit quick evacuation of target areas.” Many people believed that the suburbs also provided protection against labor unrest, which might lead to class warfare. According to the Cold War ethos of the time, class conflict within the United States would weaken the nation and harm its image abroad, bolstering the Soviet Union and making the United States vulnerable to communism. The worst-case scenario was communist takeover and the defeat of the United States in the Cold War. Pentagon strategists and foreign policy experts feared that the Soviet Union might gain the military might to allow its territorial expansion and, eventually, world domination. But observers also worried that the real dangers to America were internal: racial strife, emancipated women, class conflict, and familial disruption. To alleviate these fears, Americans turned to the family as a bastion of safety in an insecure world. Most postwar Americans longed for security after years of depression and war and saw family stability as the best bulwark against the new dangers of the Cold War. Many Americans think of the 1950s as a golden era of economic prosperity and happy families nestled in comfortable suburban homes. But this mythical vision obscures the fact that the government subsidized suburban developments and restricted who could live in them. After World War II, the nation faced a severe housing shortage. The federal government gave developers financial subsidies to build affordable single-family homes and offered Federal Housing Authority (FHA) loans and income tax deductions to homebuyers. These benefits enabled white working-class and middle-class families to purchase houses. Second- and third-generation European immigrants moved out of their neighborhoods in the cities and into the suburbs. Postwar prosperity, government subsidies, and the promise of assimilation made it possible for white-skinned Americans of immigrant background to blend into the suburbs. In many suburbs, contracts for the sale of houses had included restrictions that prevented Jews and racial minorities from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods. Gradually, these restrictions began to lift. But it remained difficult for people of color to move to the suburbs. Despite the expansion of the black and Latino middle class and the increase in home ownership among racial minorities, most suburban developments excluded nonwhites. The FHA and lending banks maintained policies known as “red lining,” which designated certain neighborhoods off limits to racial minorities. They refused mortgage loans to people of color wishing to buy houses in redlined areas, even if the prospective buyers could afford the purchase price. Although Americans of color remained concentrated in urban and rural areas, some did move to the suburbs, usually into segregated communities. For Americans of color, suburban home ownership offered inclusion in the postwar American dream. In her powerful 1959 play A Raisin In the Sun, African American playwright Lorraine Hansberry articulated with great eloquence the importance of a home in the suburbs, not to assimilate into white America but to live as a black family with dignity and pride. Asian Americans also had good reason to celebrate home PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 840 ${bmicon} and family life. With the end of the exclusion of Chinese immigrants during World War II, wives and war brides began to enter the country, helping to build thriving family-oriented communities. After the disruptions and anguish of internment, Japanese Americans were eager to put their families and lives back together. Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, including braceros, established flourishing communities in the Southwest. Puerto Ricans migrated to New York and other eastern cities, where they could earn four times the average on the island. full view Opposition to Integration Opposition to integration was thoroughly documented both in still photos and on the evening news. Racial segregation did not prevail everywhere. For example, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, white residents made a conscious decision, as a community, to integrate their neighborhood. Drawing on postwar liberal ideals of civil rights and racial integration, they welcomed black homeowners. They succeeded in this effort by emphasizing class similarity over racial difference. White residents encouraged other white families to move into Shaker Heights, pointing out that their prosperous black neighbors were “just like us.” The city of Claremont, California, established an interracial housing cooperative of Mexican and African American residents along with white married college students at the edge of the Arbol Verde barrio, a Mexican American neighborhood. Desegregation experiments such as these established harmonious racially integrated communities at a time when residential segregation was the norm across the country. White attitudes toward racial integration began to shift, but only slightly. In the late 1950s, 60 percent of whites outside the South said they would stay in their homes if a black family moved next door, but only 45 percent said they would remain in the neighborhood if large numbers of people of color moved in. In 1964, demonstrating their belief in property rights over civil rights, 89 percent of those polled in the North and 96 percent in the South believed that “an owner of property should not have to sell to a Negro if he doesn’t want to.” Disapproval of racial integration was strongest in the most intimate realm of life: CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 841 ${bmicon} the family. During the 1950s, most white Americans—92 percent in the North and 99 percent in the South—approved of laws banning marriage between whites and nonwhites. As late as the mid-1960s, more than half of northern whites and more than three-fourths of southern whites still opposed interracial marriage. As residents and businesses migrated to the suburbs, slum housing and vacant factories remained in the central cities. With declining tax bases, city governments had few resources to rebuild and revitalize urban neighborhoods. The Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954, promising “a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family,” granted funds to municipalities for urban renewal. However, few of those federal dollars provided low-income housing. Mayors, bankers, and real estate interests used the money to bulldoze slums and build gleaming office towers, civic centers, and apartment complexes for affluent citizens, leaving the poor to fend for themselves in the remaining dilapidated corners of the cities. Although intended to revitalize cities, urban renewal actually accelerated the decay of inner cities and worsened conditions for the urban poor. Federally funded projects often disrupted and destroyed ethnic communities. In St. Paul, Minnesota, the construction of U.S. Highway 94, while enabling suburbanites to commute to the city, obliterated the thriving urban African American neighborhood of Rondo. In Los Angeles, the Dodgers’ stadium built in Chávez Ravine offered baseball fans and their families access to the national pastime, but it destroyed the historically rooted Mexican American neighborhood in its path. The $5-million project displaced 7500 people and demolished 900 homes. Along with the urban poor, rural Americans reaped few benefits of postwar affluence. Many rural residents had no electricity or running water during the 1950s and therefore had no TV sets or washing machines. Much of rural America, especially in the South, remained poor. The 1950s marked the greatest out-migration from the South as the mechanization of farms reduced the number of workers on the land. More than one-fourth of the population left Kentucky and West Virginia, where unemployment in some areas reached 80 percent. For black migrants, the situation was particularly grim. One-tenth of all southern blacks moved north during the decade as the mechanical cotton picker eliminated the need for 80 percent of the sharecroppers. But life in the North did not offer much improvement. Automation in heavy industries reduced the number of available skilled jobs. The nuclear family ideal of the 1950s included a full-time wife and mother and a breadwinner husband. This vision of domesticity marked a giant step backward for women, whose opportunities and experiences had expanded dramatically during World War II. The elevation PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 842 ${bmicon} of the housewife as a major cultural icon contrasted sharply with the reality. The proportion of women who fit the mold of full-time homemaker was rapidly shrinking. Although most American women married, had children, and carried the lion’s share of responsibility for housework and child-rearing, increasing numbers of married women also held jobs outside the home. The employment of married women began to rise during World War II and kept rising after the war, even though most of the well-paying and highly skilled jobs returned to men at the war’s end. For the majority of white working-class and middle-class women, the end of the war closed off a number of possibilities for occupational training, professional education, and career opportunities. Often a woman’s best chance to secure a decent standard of living was to marry a competent breadwinner. But the pressures on blue-collar as well as white-collar men to earn enough money for the trappings of middle-class affluence strained their ability to provide. Married women took jobs to help pay the bills. College-educated women often worked in clerical positions as secretaries or clerks, but these jobs did not make use of their knowledge and skills. Working-class women found work in the “pink collar” service sector of the economy—such jobs as waitress and hairdresser—with low pay and few chances for advancement. But for most Mexican women, pink-collar work was an improvement over migrant labor or factory work. African American women also found these jobs preferable to domestic work in white middle-class homes. Many women worked part-time while their children were at school, but they considered their primary occupation to be homemaker. With few other opportunities for creative work, women embraced their domestic roles and turned homemaking into a profession. Many fulfilled their role with pride and satisfaction and extended their energies and talents into their CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 843 ${bmicon} communities, where they made important contributions as volunteers in local parent–teacher associations (PTAs) and other civic organizations. Most postwar mothers finished childbearing by the time they were 30 and had many years ahead of them when their child-rearing responsibilities ended. Some expanded part-time employment into full-time occupations when their children left the nest. Others felt bored and frustrated and drowned their sorrow with alcohol or tranquilizers. In 1963 author Betty Friedan described the constraints facing women as the “problem that has no name” in her feminist manifesto, The Feminine Mystique. Despite the powerful cultural expectation that women’s primary responsibilities were to care for their homes and families, there were many single and married women who followed alternative paths. Women pursued careers in a wide range of fields, including the arts, business, and politics. Harvard Medical School admitted its first female students in 1945, although the medical profession remained heavily male-dominated. Some women managed to buck the prevailing gender role with ease; others found it difficult. Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Coya Knudson paid a heavy price for her political ideals. While she was in Washington, D.C., working to pass legislation for such causes as college scholarships and school lunches, her husband told Life magazine that his wife had abandoned her domestic responsibilities to dally in the male world of politics. The article, titled “Coya Come Home,” cast aspersions on the congresswoman’s morals and featured a photo of the family having Thanksgiving dinner in a seedy Washington, D.C., cafeteria. Knudson lost her seat in Congress to a Republican challenger who used “Coya Come Home” as a campaign slogan. Education was one avenue available to women, as students as well as teachers. But higher education did not open its doors fully to women. Because few women gained access to graduate and professional schools and most well-paying jobs were reserved for men, college degrees for white women did not necessarily open up career opportunities or greatly improve their job and earning prospects. By 1956, one-fourth of white female students married while still in college. Many of these women dropped out of school to take jobs in order to support their husbands through college. But the situation was quite different for black women. Like their mothers and grandmothers, most black women had to work to help support their families. Even in the prosperous postwar years, few black families could survive on the meager earnings of a single breadwinner. Job prospects for black women generally were limited to menial, low-paying occupations. Young black women knew that a college degree could mean the difference between working as a maid for a white family and working as a secretary, teacher, or nurse. Although few in number, more than 90 percent of black women who entered college completed their degrees. Black women also aspired to the role of homemaker, but for very different reasons than white women. Although poverty still plagued large numbers of black citizens, the black middle class expanded during the 1950s. Postwar prosperity enabled some African Americans, for the first time, to strive for family life in which the earnings of men were adequate to allow women to stay home with their own children rather than tending to the houses and children of white families. Celebrating that possibility in 1947, Ebony magazine proclaimed, “Goodbye Mammy, Hello Mom.” World War II “took Negro mothers out of white kitchens, put them in factories and shipyards. When it was all over, they went back to kitchens—but this time their own…. And so today in thousands of Negro homes, the Negro mother has come home, come PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 844 ${bmicon} home perhaps for the first time since 1619 when the first Negro families landed at Jamestown, Virginia.” For black women, domesticity meant “freedom and independence in her own home.” It is no wonder that in the early 1960s, women of color bristled when white feminists such as Betty Friedan called upon women to break free from the “chains” of domesticity. As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the South, African American activists faced fierce opposition from local white authorities and contempt from national leaders. Persistent racial discrimination proved to be the nation’s worst embarrassment throughout the Cold War. Black leaders and federal officials understood that the national government needed to promote civil rights at home to save face abroad. The Soviet Union and other communist countries pointed to American race relations as an indication of the hypocrisy and failure of the American promise of freedom for all. Yet national leaders paid only lip service to racial justice and failed to provide the strong support necessary to defeat the system of racial segregation in the South known as the “Jim Crow” system. Jim Crow was a legal, or de jure, set of institutions that prevailed throughout the South. Although the nation’s leaders acknowledged the need to address Southern segregation, they did nothing to address the unofficial, or de facto, segregation that prevailed throughout the rest of the country. Nevertheless, at the grassroots level racial minorities continued to work for equal rights. For example, Mexican Americans in the Southwest continued to press for desegregation of schools, residential neighborhoods, and public facilities through organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Asociación Nacional México-Americana (ANMA), a civil rights organization that emerged out of the labor movement. It was not until 1963 that the power of the civil rights movement—and the violence of southern white opposition—finally compelled the federal government to take action. CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 845 ${bmicon} The first major success in the struggle to dismantle the Jim Crow system in the South came in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. Civil rights strategists decided to pursue their cause in the courts rather than through Congress. They knew that Southern Democrats in Congress, who held disproportionate power through their seniority and control of major committees, would block any civil rights legislation that came before the House or Senate. They believed that they had a better chance of success through the courts. Initially, civil rights attorneys worked within the system of segregation. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 justified Jim Crow laws on the principle of providing “separate but equal” facilities. The attorneys argued that southern school systems violated the segregation laws because the separate, racially segregated schools were far from equal. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, for example, public funds provided $179 per white child compared to $43 per black child. Soon the lawyers shifted their strategy to claim that separate was inherently unequal and began the push to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. Leading the charge was Thurgood Marshall, general counsel of the NAACP and a graduate of Howard University Law School. The NAACP lawyers filed suit against the Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education, on behalf of Linda Brown, a black child in a segregated school. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where Marshall argued that separate facilities, by definition, denied African Americans their equal rights as citizens. A key argument in the case was the psychological effect of the stigma of segregation on black children. Psychologist Kenneth Clark, testifying as an expert witness, gave evidence showing that black children educated in segregated schools developed a negative self-image and responded more positively to white dolls than to black dolls. Although this argument was persuasive with the Court and helped to bring about school desegregation, some black leaders at the time objected to the use of that psychological argument. Those critics of the strategy argued that black children did not need to interact with white children in order to gain self-esteem and pointed to the positive influence of black teachers who believed in their students’ capabilities. They claimed that low self-esteem among black children resulted from widespread discrimination against black Americans, not simply black students’ lack of interaction with white students. In 1953, during the three years that the Supreme Court had the Brown case before it, President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as chief justice. Warren had been state attorney general and then governor of California during World War II and had approved the internment of Japanese Americans—a decision he later deeply regretted. He now used his political and legal skills to strike a blow for justice. He knew that such a critical case needed a unanimous decision to win broad political support. One by one, he persuaded his Supreme Court colleagues of the importance of striking down segregation. On May 17, 1954, Warren delivered the historic unanimous ruling: “To separate [black children] from others of similar age and PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 846 ${bmicon} qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone…. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal…. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to these findings is rejected.” Winning the Brown case was a great triumph, but it was only the first step. Desegregation would be meaningful only when it was enforced, and that was another matter entirely. At first, there seemed to be some cause for optimism. Although a few white officials in the South protested vehemently, many others seemed resigned to accept the decision. However, none was willing to take action to implement desegregation. Even the Supreme Court delayed its decision on implementation for a full year and then simply called for the process to begin “with all deliberate speed” but specified no timetable. Political leaders did not come forward to work on the task, leaving sympathetic educators and eager black Americans with no support. The leader who could have done the most but in fact did the least was President Eisenhower. Instead of calling for immediate desegregation, he made it clear that he strongly disagreed with the Court’s decision. Expressing neither “approbation nor disapproval,” Eisenhower said, “I don’t think you can change the hearts of men with laws or decisions.” Just before the Court’s ruling, he told Chief Justice Warren that southern white segregationists simply wanted to make sure “that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in schools alongside some big overgrown Negroes.” After the decision went against his wishes, Eisenhower remarked that his decision to appoint Warren to the court was the “biggest damn fool mistake” he ever made, claiming that “the Supreme Court decisions set back progress in the South at least fifteen years…. The fellow who tries to tell me that you can do these things by force is just plain nuts.” In 1955, the year after the Brown decision, several white Mississippians murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The boy had come from Chicago to Mississippi, where he was visiting relatives. His mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River. Although Till’s killers confessed to the murder, an all-white jury found them not guilty. Eisenhower remained silent about Till’s murder and the travesty of justice, even when E. Frederick Morrow, his one black adviser, beseeched him to condemn the lynching. Eisenhower’s hands-off policy emboldened southern segregationists to resist the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision. When it became clear that the federal government would do nothing to enforce the ruling, white resistance spread across the South. State legislatures passed resolutions vowing to protect segregation, and most southern congressmen signed the “Southern Manifesto” promising to oppose federal desegregation efforts. To avoid suits by the NAACP, southern states transferred authority over schools to local school boards that assigned students to schools according to concern for the “general welfare,” thereby maintaining segregation without specifying race as a criterion. A crisis at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, finally forced Eisenhower to act. Under a federal district court’s order to desegregate, school officials were prepared to comply and had carefully mobilized community support. But Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus, facing reelection, decided to play the race card. Using Central High’s integration plan as his target, he created a crisis by instructing National Guard troops to maintain “order” by blocking the entry of black students into the school. Eisenhower initially refused to intervene in the crisis. Hoping for a compromise, he met with Faubus, who agreed to allow the school to integrate peacefully. But Faubus broke his word, withdrew the National Guard troops, and left Little Rock, leaving the black students unpro- CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 847 ${bmicon} tected. On September 23, 1957, as nine black students attempted to enter Central High, a huge angry crowd of whites surrounded them. With international news cameras broadcasting pictures of the shrieking and menacing mob, Eisenhower took action to stop the embarrassing fracas. Furious at Faubus for his insubordination, Eisenhower denounced the “disgraceful occurrence,” federalized the Arkansas National Guard, and sent 1000 paratroopers to Little Rock. Unwilling to “acquiesce in anarchy and the disillusion of the union,” Eisenhower acted to maintain federal authority rather than to support integration. Although the Little Rock Nine, as the courageous students came to be called, finally gained entry to Central High, Governor Faubus closed the schools in Little Rock for the entire next year. Out of 712 school districts that had desegregated after the Brown decision, only 49 remained desegregated by the end of Eisenhower’s term. Most of the others reverted to segregation. Under Jim Crow laws in the South, black passengers were required to sit in the back section of buses, leaving the front of the bus for whites. If the “white” section at the front of the bus filled up, black passengers were required to give up their seats for white passengers. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks and the black community of Montgomery, Alabama, were ready to take on the system. Parks, who worked as a seamstress, was a widely respected leader in Montgomery’s black community, active in her church, and secretary of the local NAACP. On her way home from work that day, sitting in the first row of the “colored” section of the bus when the front of the bus filled with passengers, she refused to move when a white man demanded her seat. Parks was arrested, and black Montgomery sprang into action. Eisenhower acted to maintain federal authority rather than to support integration. Literally overnight, the Montgomery bus boycott was born. E. D. Dixon, president of the Alabama NAACP and the head of the local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Jo Ann Robinson, the leader of the local Women’s Political Council (a black alternative to the segregated League of Women Voters), mobilized the boycott. They gathered with 50 community representatives that night at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to plan strategy. They mobilized other black churches to spread the word to their congregations on Sunday, and black-owned taxi companies geared up to take the place of buses. By Monday, all of black Montgomery had heard the news of the boycott. The buses that day were empty of black riders. For 381 days, more than 90 percent of Montgomery’s black citizens sacrificed their comfort and convenience for the sake of their rights and dignity. As one elderly black woman replied when a white reporter offered her a ride as she walked to work, “No, my feets is tired but my soul is rested.” Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was a newcomer to Montgomery when the bus boycott began. He embraced the opportunity to become the leader of the boycott and, eventually, the most powerful spokesperson for the civil rights movement. His stirring and impassioned words inspired thousands of black citizens to join the cause. As he told the 5000 listeners who gathered in his church on the first night of the boycott, “If you will protest courageously and yet with dignity and Christian love, in the history books that are written in future generations, historians will have to pause and say, ‘there lived a great people—a black people—who injected a new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’ This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.” The bus boycott ended a year later when the Supreme Court ruled that Montgomery’s buses must integrate, but the momentum generated by the boycott galvanized the civil rights movement. King and other leaders formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which united black ministers across the South in the cause of civil rights. The boycott tactic spread to other southern cities. As boycotts continued, a new strategy emerged: the sit-in. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 848 ${bmicon} full view MAP 25.1 MAJOR EVENTS OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, 1953–1963 Most of the major events of the early stages of the black freedom struggle took place in the South. Black southerners formed the backbone of the movement, but the grass roots protest movement drew participants from all regions of the country, all racial and ethnic groups, cities and rural areas, churches and universities, old and young, lawyers and sharecroppers. On February 1, 1960, four African American students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, inspired by the example of the bus boycott, entered the local Woolworth store and sat down at the lunch counter. When they were told, “We do not serve Negroes,” they refused to leave, forcing the staff at Woolworth’s to physically remove the nonviolent protesters. Undaunted, they returned to the lunch counter the next day with 23 classmates. By the end of the week more than a thousand students joined the protest. By this time, white gangs had gathered, waving Confederate flags and menacing the black undergraduates. But the students responded by waving American flags. An expression of their patriotism as well as their political shrewdness, the flag identified the protesters not as subversives acting against social order but as citizens claiming the values and identity of the nation. Black football players kept the angry whites at bay. Taunted with shouts of “Who do you think you are?” they replied, “We are the union army.” In May 1961 members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized the Freedom Rides, in which black and white civil rights workers attempted to ride two interstate buses from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans in an effort to challenge segregation at facilities used in interstate travel. Their journey began peacefully, but when they reached Rock Hill, South Carolina, a group of whites beat John Lewis, one of the young black riders, for entering a whites-only rest room. In Anniston, Alabama, a mob slashed the tires of one of the buses, threw a fire bomb through a window, and pummeled the riders with fists and pipes. After the brutal beatings, reinforcements from the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) arrived to continue the Freedom Rides. They persevered, facing beatings along the way until they reached Jackson, Mississippi, where they were immediately arrested and jailed. By August, 300 additional protesters had been locked in the jail, all refusing bail. The spirit and strength of the civil rights workers inspired many others to join them in the movement. They came from all over the South as well as the North, white as well as black, giving up comfort and safety, risking—and sacrificing—their lives. CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 849 ${bmicon} Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected president in 1952, squandered his opportunity to provide strong support for the civil rights movement. A respected and widely admired World War II general, Eisenhower could have used his leadership to bolster the cause, but he did just the opposite. Eisenhower’s failure to use his presidential power allowed southern segregationists to block implementation of the Brown decision and opened the way for violent resistance to the civil rights movement. His presidency was notable largely for moderation and maintaining the status quo, with very few major new initiatives and a style of leadership that rested more on his personal stature than his actions. Ike, as he was known, presided over the nation during a time of great prosperity, and his policies encouraged business expansion. However, the former general did try to stem the defense buildup. In his farewell address at the end of his second term as president, Eisenhower warned the nation against the growing power of the “military–industrial complex,” the term he coined to describe the armed forces and the politically powerful defense industries that supplied arms and equipment to them. Born in Texas, raised in Kansas, and educated at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Eisenhower became a career soldier who served as the supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II. Eisenhower planned and carried out the daring Allied invasion at Normandy on D-Day. As early as 1948, both the Democrats and the Republicans courted Eisenhower as a presidential candidate. But he resisted, believing that military leaders should not get involved in politics; indeed, he had never even registered to vote. In 1952, however, when he was president of Columbia University, he changed his mind and accepted the Republican nomination, choosing California Senator Richard M. Nixon—known as a dogged anticommunist crusader—as his running mate. The Democrats nominated Illinois Governor Adlai E. Stevenson. The cerebral Stevenson, dubbed an “egghead” by the press, was no match for the former general whose supporters donned campaign buttons boasting “I Like Ike.” The popular Eisenhower won the election with the largest landslide up to that time and was reelected by an even wider margin in 1956. Ike for President Political Advertisement With Harry Truman’s second term coming to a close, the presidency was up for grabs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, former General of the Army and World War II hero, emerged as the Republican candidate against Democrat Adlai Stevenson. An enormously popular candidate, Eisenhower effectively used the fledgling medium of television to draw campaign support. Repetitious slogans, memorable song lyrics, and bouncy melody combined in a cartoon format to yield a widely appealing message. As president, Eisenhower pursued a path down the middle of the road. His probusiness legislative agenda and appointments pleased conservatives, and he placated liberals by extending many of the policies of the welfare state enacted during the New Deal. He agreed to the expansion of Social Security and unemployment compensation and an increase in the minimum wage. He also made concerted efforts to reduce defense spending, believing that continued massive military expenditures would hinder the nation’s economic growth. In December 1953, with Admiral Arthur Radford, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Eisenhower announced the New Look, a stream-lined military that relied less on expensive conventional ground forces and more on air power and advanced nuclear capabilities. TABLE 25-1 The Election of 1952 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican 33,936,252 442 Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 27,314,992 89 TABLE 25-2 The Election of 1956 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican 35,575,420 457 Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 26,033,066 73 Eisenhower’s plans to reduce defense spending derailed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. Although Sputnik could not be seen with the naked eye—it was only 22 inches in diameter and weighed only 184 pounds—it emitted a beeping noise that was broadcast by commercial radio stations in the United States, PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 850 ${bmicon} making its presence very real and causing near hysteria among the public. The Soviet’s launching of Sputnik II a month later seemed to confirm widespread fears that the United States was behind in the space race and, more significantly, in the arms race. Eisenhower’s popularity in the polls suddenly dropped 22 points. Acquiescing to his critics, the president allotted increased funds for military, scientific, and educational spending. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which developed the program of space exploration, was one result of this increase. But Eisenhower believed that “the most critical problem of all” was the lack of American scientists and engineers. He proposed that the federal government subsidize additional science and math training for both teachers and students. He also called for an improvement in overall education so that the next generation would be “equipped to live in the age of intercontinental ballistic missiles.” On September 2, 1958, Eisenhower signed Public Law 85-864, also known as the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which authorized more than $1 billion in education spending. Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, former head of General Motors Charles Wilson, made the memorable comment that “what’s good for General Motors business is good for America.” But not everyone agreed. Eisenhower’s probusiness policies had a devastating impact on the nation’s environment. He promoted the passage of the Submerged Land Act, which removed from federal jurisdiction more than $40 billion worth of oil-rich offshore lands. Under the control of state governments, oil companies could—and did—gain access to them. The New York Times called the act “one of the greatest and surely the most unjustified give-away program” in the nation’s history. The administration’s willingness to allow businesses to expand with little regulation, and with virtually no concern for the environment, contributed to increasing pollution of the air, water, and land during the 1950s and sparked the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Eisenhower also supported the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, inspired in part by Cold War concerns. An interstate highway system could allow the swift movement of military supplies and, presumably, the evacuation of urban centers in the event of a nuclear attack. The Highway Act had its greatest impact on business and transportation, however. As the largest public works project the nation had ever mounted, this centrally planned transportation system was a boon to the auto, trucking, oil, concrete, and tire industries. In addition, it contributed to the national pastime of family road vacations and tourism. Cheap gas also fueled America’s car culture. Cars gave Americans increased mobility, and enabled suburban dwellers to drive to work in the cities. But reliance on the automobile doomed the nation’s passenger train system and led to the decline of public transportation. Cars also contributed to suburban sprawl, air pollution, and traffic jams. The New Look, while containing military spending, also shifted American military priorities from reliance on conventional weapons to nuclear deterrence and covert operations. During Eisenhower’s presidency, the United States and the Soviet Union both solidified their separate alliances. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 1949, increased American influence in Western Europe. The 12 NATO nations agreed that an attack on any one of them would be considered an attack on all, and they maintained a force to defend the West against a possible Soviet invasion. NATO expanded in 1952 to include Greece and Turkey, and West Germany joined in 1955. The Soviet Union formed a similar alliance, the Warsaw Pact, with the countries of Eastern Europe. Confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union over the fate of Europe gave way to more subtle maneuvers regarding the Third World—a term originally referring to unaligned nations in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 851 ${bmicon} When Joseph Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of the Soviet Union and called for peaceful coexistence with the United States. To limit military expenditures and improve relations, the superpowers arranged high-level summit meetings. In 1955 delegates from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France met in Geneva. Although the meeting achieved little of substance, it set a tone of cooperation. In 1959 Khrushchev came to the United States, met with Eisenhower, and toured the country. But a planned Paris summit in May 1960 was canceled when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane. U.S. officials initially denied that the plane was on a spy mission until the captured American pilot, Gary Powers, confessed. Powers served two years of a ten-year sentence in a Soviet prison before his release in exchange for a suspected Soviet spy incarcerated in the United States. Despite the U-2 incident, the superpowers began to discuss arms limitation. Both countries agreed to limit aboveground testing of nuclear weapons in light of the health and environmental risks such tests posed. Anticommunism became the guiding principle behind nearly all U.S. foreign policy, taking precedence over other American ideals. As the United States and the Soviet Union worked toward greater cooperation, they faced challenges from within their separate “spheres of influence” and vied for the loyalty of newly independent states in the Third World. In 1956 the Soviet Union faced armed uprisings in Poland and Hungary, two “satellite” nations chafing under Soviet domination. In Poland, rebels resisting Moscow’s control took to the streets, demanding that the Soviet Union recognize Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had been an opponent of Stalin, as the leader of Poland. After three days of fighting, the Soviet Union capitulated to the rebels’ demand. In Hungary, maverick communist Imre Nagy took power and pledged to create a multiparty democracy. As revolution spread across Hungary, Soviet troops brutally crushed the rebellion, killing Nagy and thousands of other Hungarians. Eisenhower on the Cold War Eisenhower on the Cold War While the United States and the Soviet Union competed with each other to gain influence in Third World countries, leaders from those countries came together to discuss ways to achieve self-determination. In April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, representatives from 29 nations—primarily from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East—met in what President Sukarno of Indonesia called “the first international conference of colored peoples in the history of mankind.” Nearly all the participants came from countries that had previously been colonized by western European countries. Most were former colonies of Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, or Portugal. Although they shared no specific political ideology, the conference carried an implicit condemnation of western powers and a commitment to eliminating the vestiges of colonialism and racial discrimination worldwide. Suspicious of the motives of the participants and worried about the outcome, Eisenhower sent no greeting to the gathering and tried to ignore or sabotage it. However, Adam Clayton Powell, one of three black members of the U.S. Congress, attended the conference as a “journalist,” providing an unofficial U.S. presence. The Eisenhower administration continued to distrust countries that maintained neutrality in the Cold War, fearing that those not aligned with the United States might turn to communism and become allies of the Soviet Union. In 1956 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared that neutrality “is an immoral and shortsighted conception.” Anticommunism became the guiding principle behind nearly all U.S. foreign policy, taking precedence over other American ideals, such as support for democratically elected governments and national self-determination. Acting on its anticommunist priority, the United States helped overthrow democratically elected leaders and prop up corrupt and often brutal dictatorships. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was a major player in this drama, with 15,000 agents working around the world by the end of the 1950s. Congress established the CIA in 1947 to gather strategic intelligence from foreign countries and to engage in covert political activity. Through covert operations, the CIA helped to overthrow the elected government in Iran and to restore the dictatorship of Shah Reza Pahlavi, whose unpopular western-leaning regime was finally overthrown by Muslim fundamentalists in 1979. In 1954 the CIA, working closely Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 852 ${bmicon} full view MAP 25.2 COLD WAR SPHERES OF INFLUENCE, 1953–1963 During the early years of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union developed formal military alliances, most importantly NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The American and Soviet informal spheres of influence also included trading and cultural ties to several other countries. Many independent nations, especially those just emerging from colonialism, remained neutral in the Cold War. with the United Fruit Company, helped overthrow the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. U.S. and company officials considered Arbenz a communist because he sought to nationalize and redistribute large tracts of land, including some owned by United Fruit. Eisenhower also supported unpopular anticommunist dictators in Peru and Venezuela. In 1958 Latin Americans expressed their displeasure when Vice President Richard M. Nixon, on a goodwill tour of South America, faced angry protesters wherever he went. Nixon was nearly killed in Caracas, Venezuela, when demonstrators attacked his motorcade. In 1959 revolutionary leader Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba’s U.S.-friendly dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro established a regime in Cuba based on principles of socialism. His government took control of foreign-owned companies, including many owned by Americans. Castro’s socialist policies alarmed U.S. officials and investors in Cuba. Eisenhower’s hostility encouraged Cas- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 853 ${bmicon} tro to forge an alliance with the Soviet Union. The CIA then launched a plot to overthrow Castro, which would culminate in an ill-fated invasion in 1961. In 1960–1961, the CIA also helped orchestrate the overthrow and assassination of the charismatic left-leaning Patrice Lumumba, the first minister of the Republic of the Congo, soon after its independence from Belgium. U.S. policymakers, with their anticommunist preoccupations, and people in Third World countries, with their campaigns against colonialism and racism, had little interest in each other’s priorities. A case in point was Egypt, where in 1952 Gamal Abdul Nasser overthrew the corrupt monarchy of King Farouk and established a government based on neutrality. In 1954 Nasser declared himself prime minister of the new government and accepted aid from both the United States and the Soviet Union. When Nasser engaged in trade with Soviet-bloc countries and extended diplomatic recognition to communist China, the United States canceled loans that were to support the building of the huge Aswan Dam, a major development project for the Egyptian economy. In response, Nasser nationalized the British-controlled Suez Canal in 1956, PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 854 ${bmicon} arguing that canal tolls would provide alternative funding for the dam. The British government, with the help of France and Israel, launched an attack against Egypt to regain control of the canal. Although he distrusted Nasser, Eisenhower strongly criticized Britain for its effort to retain its imperial position in the Middle East. To avoid further antagonizing Nasser and other Third World leaders, Eisenhower denounced Britain’s Suez attack and threatened economic sanctions, forcing the British to back down. Although leaders in Africa and Asia applauded Eisenhower’s actions, the episode weakened U.S. relations with Nasser, who forged ties with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower now feared that “Nasserism” might spread throughout the Middle East. In the spring of 1957, Congress approved the Eisenhower Doctrine, a pledge to defend Middle Eastern countries “against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.” However, U.S. policymakers rarely distinguished between nationalist movements and designs by “international communism,” which they defined as Soviet aggression. Because American leaders believed that struggles for national self-determination in Third World countries were inspired and supported by the Soviet Union, they used the Eisenhower Doctrine to provide justification for U.S. military intervention to support pro-Western governments. When leaders in Lebanon and Jordan appeared friendly to Nasser, Eisenhower stepped in, sending 14,000 U.S. marines to Lebanon and setting up an anti-Nasser government there. Britain intervened in Jordan, restoring King Hussein to the throne. The 1950s often are remembered as a time of political and cultural complacency among white Americans, with most of the opposition to the nation’s institutions emanating from people of color. There is a good deal of truth to this picture. But it obscures the many ways in which white Americans also resisted and rebelled against the status quo. Some young whites, in the South as well as North, joined in the struggle for civil rights; their numbers increased in the 1960s. Others were drawn to the music and dance of black America, especially the fusion of rhythm-and-blues with country-and-western, which took the form of early rock ‘n’ roll. Distinct forms of protest also emerged from within the white middle class: the rebellion of the Beats who rejected staid conformity, the stirrings of discontent among women, and the antinuclear and environmental movements. The arts also reflected a rejection of mainstream values, as Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionist painters challenged the artistic conventions of the time and shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Even the sexual revolution of the 1960s had its roots in the widespread defiance of the rigid sexual codes of the 1950s. In many ways, the placid surface of white America hid the smoldering cauldron underneath that would erupt in the years ahead. One clue that all was not tranquil was the widespread panic that the nation’s young were out of control. Adult authorities worried about an epidemic of juvenile delinquency, blaming everything from parents to comic books. New celebrities such as Marlon Brando and James CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 855 ${bmicon} Dean portrayed misunderstood youth in rebellion against a corrupt and uncaring adult world. In the classic youth movie Rebel Without a Cause, Dean played a good-hearted but angry young man who suffers from a domineering mother and a wimpish apron-clad father who refuses to stand up to her. When asked, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” Brando’s tough-guy character in The Wild One answers, “I dunno; what’ve you got?” In these films, and in J. D. Salinger’s now-classic novel Catcher in the Rye, young women and men strain against the authority and expectations of their parents and the adult world, dreaming of freedom and personal fulfillment. Sexual mores were rigid in the 1950s—and were widely violated. Single young women who became pregnant faced disgrace and ostracism unless they married quickly, which many did. Abortion, which had been illegal since the late nineteenth century but tacitly accepted until after World War II, became increasingly difficult to obtain, with hospitals placing new restrictions on legal therapeutic abortions. Illegal abortionists who had long practiced without interference faced increasing harassment, forcing the practice underground, where it became much more dangerous. A double standard encouraged men to pursue sexual conquest as a mark of manhood and virility but tarnished the reputation of women who engaged in sexual intercourse prior to marriage. In many ways, the youth of the 1950s were already undermining the constraints that toppled in the next decade. Nowhere is this development more obvious than in the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll, with its roots in African American rhythm-and-blues, its raw sexuality, and its jubilant rebelliousness. Chuck Berry’s hit “School Days” expressed youthful restlessness, and Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” and “Rip It Up” exulted in sensual pleasure. Bill Haley and his Comets invited youngsters to “Rock Around the Clock.” Rock ‘n’ roll emerged out of the fusion of musical traditions. Artists from many ethnic backgrounds experimented with a variety of forms. Jewish song-writers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote songs such as “Hound Dog” for black artists such as Willie Mae Thornton that were later recorded by white Southerner Elvis Presley. The first Mexican American rock ‘n’ roll star, Ritchie Valens, sang such romantic ballads as “Donna” along with jazzed-up versions of Mexican folk songs such as “La Bamba.” Rosie and the Originals—an all-girl band led by Mexican American Rosie Mendez—sang rock ‘n’ roll hits such as “Angel Baby.” Performances as well as lyrics carried erotic power. Chuck Berry pumped his electric guitar and shimmied across stages, Little Richard danced on piano tops and tore off his shirts, and James Brown begged “Please, please, please,” while collapsing on the floor. Elvis Presley thrust his hips in his trademark style, sending young audiences into a frenzy. Criticism of his sexually charged gyrations persuaded producers to show him only above the waist during his appearance on Ed Sullivan’s TV show. Rock ‘n’ roll music and dancing added powerful elements of sexuality and rebellion to the youth culture of the 1950s. Many of those impulses found political expression in the 1960s. Men, too, were in revolt. According to widely read sociological tracts of the time, such as William Whyte’s The Organization Man, PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 856 ${bmicon} C. Wright Mills’s White Collar, and David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd, middle-class men were forced into boring, routinized jobs, groomed to be “outer-directed” at the expense of their inner lives, and saddled with the overwhelming burden of providing for ever-growing families with insatiable consumer desires. A few highly visible American men provided alternative visions. Hugh Hefner built his Playboy empire by offering men the trappings of the “good life” without its burdensome responsibilities. The Playboy ethic encouraged men to enjoy the sexual pleasures of attractive women without the chains of marriage and to pursue the rewards of consumerism in well-appointed “bachelor flats” rather than appliance-laden homes. Playboy magazine celebrated this lifestyle, epitomized in the airbrushed photographs of nearly nude, young, female “bunnies” who seemed to promise sex without commitment. Beat poets, writers, and artists offered a very different type of escape. In their literary works such as Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl and Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road and in their highly publicized lives, the Beats celebrated freedom from conformity, eccentric artistic expression, playful obscenity, experimentation with drugs, open homosexuality, and male bonding. While eschewing the sort of luxurious consumerism Hefner extolled, the Beats shared with the Playboy ethic a vision of male rebellion against conformity and responsibility. The mainstream men who indulged in these fantasies were more likely to enjoy them vicariously than to bolt from the breadwinner role. The dads who were honored on the new consumer holiday of Father’s Day far outnumbered the freewheeling Beats and bachelors. Some women did not wait for the new feminist movement to make their voices heard. Rachel Carson was one such woman. Born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania, she developed a love of books and nature as a child. She went to college and graduate school during the pre–World War II years before domesticity settled like a fog over women’s education. Deeply attached to the sea, she wrote several books and articles about the marine world, most notably her 1951 bestseller, The Sea Around Us. Carson became increasingly concerned about the impact of manufactured chemicals on the environment, especially the insecticide DDT, which had been poisoning the earth since World War II. Her last book, Silent Spring, published in 1962, brought attention to the worldwide problem of pesticide poisoning. Officially endorsed by President John F. Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee and scorned by the agricultural chemical industry, the book helped launch the environmental movement that has flourished ever since. Women also led the movement to stop the testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons. On November 1, 1961, 50,000 suburban homemakers in more than 60 communities staged a protest, Women Strike for Peace (WSP). Participants lobbied government officials to “End the Arms Race—Not the Human Race.” The strikers were mostly educated, middle-class mothers; 61 percent did not work outside the home. WSP leaders were part of a small group of feminists who had worked on behalf of women’s rights throughout the 1940s and 1950s. According to Newsweek magazine, the strikers “were perfectly ordinary looking women…. They looked like the women you would see driving ranch wagons, or shopping at the village market, or attending PTA meetings…. Many [were] wheeling baby buggies or strollers.” Within a year their numbers grew to several hundred thousand. The FBI kept the group under surveillance, and in 1962 the leaders were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Under questioning, these women spoke as mothers, claiming that saving American children from nuclear extinction was the essence of Americanism. They brought their babies to the hearings and refused to be intimidated by their Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 857 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Rachel Carson, Silent Spring In 1962, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s eloquent exposé of the chemical industry’s deadly impact on the health of the planet, landed on the best-seller list, where it stayed for months. The book, which eventually sold 1.5 million copies and remains in print today, galvanized the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Carson called the chemical industry “a child of the Second World War” and creator of “elixirs of death.” She reported that annual pesticide production increased from 124 million pounds in 1947 to 637 million pounds by 1960. Twenty years later it had reached 2.4 billion pounds. “In the course of developing agents of chemical warfare,” she noted, “some of the chemicals created in the laboratory were found to be lethal to insects. The discovery did not come by chance: insects were widely used to test chemicals as agents of death for man.” It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Certain rocks gave out dangerous radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. Given time—time not in years but in millennia—life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time. The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is no longer merely the background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic rays, the ultraviolet of the sun that have existed before there was any life on earth; radiation is now the unnatural creation of man’s tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in his labo ratories, and having no counterparts in nature. To adjust to these chemicals would require time on the scale that is nature’s; it would require not merely the years of a man’s life but the life of generations. And even this, were it by some miracle possible, would be futile, for the new chemicals come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone. The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped—500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience. Among them are many that are used in man’s war against nature. Since the mid-1940s over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as “pests”; and they are sold under several thousand different brand names. These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes—nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the “good” and the “bad,” to still the song of the birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in the soil—all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called “insecticides” but “biocides.” congressional inquisitors as supporters cheered and threw flowers from the gallery. These women carried the banner of motherhood into political activism, much as their nineteenth-century predecessors had done. Their ability to make a mockery of the dreaded congressional committee that had broken the spirits and ruined the careers of so many innocent citizens indicated that the consensus supporting the nuclear arms race was losing its grip. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 858 ${bmicon} full view MAP 25.3 THE NUCLEAR LANDSCAPE The production and testing of nuclear weapons affected many regions across the country, especially in the West and South. Sites established during World War II remained active during the Cold War, as the nuclear arms race accelerated. The sites included testing grounds, uranium mining areas, laboratories, and plants where weapons were manufactured. Decades later, the antinuclear protesters were vindicated—unfortunately too late for many people exposed to radiation during the early years of the Cold War. At the time, the real dangers of nuclear testing had not yet come to light. But in the 1980s and 1990s, top-secret documents were declassified, confirming that people living in the path of fallout from nuclear test sites, as well as military personnel working at or near the sites during the 1940s and 1950s, suffered disproportionately from cancer and other illnesses caused by radioactivity. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first American president born in the twentieth century and the first Catholic president. In his inaugural address, he claimed that “the torch has been passed to a new generation.” It was a fitting metaphor for a young man who had been reared to compete and to win, whether the contest was athletic, intellectual, or political. But at the time of his election, it was not clear that a new generation had grabbed the torch. The young candidate was largely the creation of his father, Joseph, whose forebears had emigrated from Ireland during the 1840s. Joseph Kennedy rose to power and wealth as a financier, Hollywood exec- full view John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy (Library of Congress) CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 859 ${bmicon} utive, and ambassador to England. Ambitious and demanding, the elder Kennedy was known for his ruthlessness in business and politics and for his blatant philandering. He groomed his oldest son, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., for greatness, specifically for the presidency. But when young Joe was killed in World War II, the father’s ambitions settled on the next in line, John. John (Jack) Kennedy became a hero during World War II, winning military honors for rescuing his crewmates on his patrol boat, PT-109, when it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. The rescue left him with a painful back impairment and exacerbated the symptoms of Addison’s disease, which plagued him all his life and necessitated daily cortisone injections. His father coached him to bear up under the pain, hide his infirmity, and project an image of health and vitality. “Vigor” was a word Kennedy used often and an aura he projected, inspiring a national craze for physical fitness that survives to this day. Young JFK also emulated his father’s brash sexual promiscuity, even after his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953. In 1946 Kennedy won election to the House of Representatives, and in 1952 he defeated the incumbent Republican Henry Cabot Lodge to become the Democratic senator from Massachusetts. JFK’s father financed all of his political campaigns, and in 1960 the elderly Kennedy bankrolled and masterminded JFK’s run for president. Kennedy selected as his running mate the powerful Senate majority leader, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, whom he had battled for the nomination. Concerned that his Catholicism would be a liability in the campaign, Kennedy spoke publicly about his faith, explaining that his religious beliefs would not interfere with his ability to do the job. TABLE 25-3 The Election of 1960 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote John F. Kennedy Democratic 34,227,096 303 Richard M. Nixon Republican 34,108,546 219 Just before the election, with the help of his brother Robert—whom he later appointed as attorney general—Kennedy arranged to have Martin Luther King, Jr., released from prison in Georgia, where hostile authorities had sentenced him to six months in jail for a minor traffic violation. This intervention secured the African American vote for Kennedy and the support of other minorities: Mexican Americans formed “Viva Kennedy” clubs throughout the Southwest. Voters of color helped Kennedy defeat his Republican foe, Eisenhower’s vice president Richard Nixon, by a slim margin. With such a thin margin of victory, Kennedy lacked a popular mandate for change. But he quickly established himself as an eloquent leader. In his inaugural address, the new president inspired the nation with his memorable words, “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Focusing his address on foreign policy, he declared, “Let every nation know … that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” In his first two years, he sought mainly to avoid division at home and to wage the Cold War forcefully abroad. He believed that prosperity was the best way to spread the fruits of affluence, rather than government programs that would promote a redistribution of wealth. Accordingly, he supported corporate tax cuts to stimulate the economy, which grew at a rate of 5 percent each year from 1961 to 1966. Kennedy’s economic policies continued many of the probusiness initiatives of Eisenhower. Although Democrats held strong majorities in both houses, powerful southern conservatives often teamed up with Republicans to form a functional majority in Congress to defeat reform legislation. Kennedy knew that it would be futile to champion the cause of civil rights in the face of that alliance. But he did support issues important to his working-class constituents and proposed a number of legislative initiatives, including increasing the minimum wage, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 860 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Anticommunism Throughout the twentieth century, American leaders have felt uneasy about revolutionary movements. On one hand, the United States was the great model of a successful anticolonial rebellion against a European colonial power. But on the other hand, the United States wanted to preserve order and stability in the world. The Russian Revolution of 1917 raised particular concerns because the victorious new communist regime denied Soviet citizens the essential democratic and economic principles that Americans cherished: free speech and elections, freedom of religious expression, private property, and capitalism. The United States officially refused to recognize the Soviet government from 1917 to 1933, as well as the People’s Republic of China from 1949 until 1978 and Fidel Castro’s Cuba from 1961 until today. With these national principles and policies providing a foundation, anticommunism tapped widespread political and emotional passions within the United States. At times those passions, whipped up in moments of unsettling international or domestic events, led to extensive domestic repression of the very freedoms Americans have long cherished: free speech and political choice. The first major wave of anticommunism in the United States came after World War I, in the wake of the founding of the American Communist party. The success of the Bolshevik Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union energized a segment of socialists to form a Communist party in the United States in support of Soviet communism. The Red Scare of 1919–1920 was a wave of political repression that targeted not only communists but also left-leaning immigrants, radicals, and labor unions. Immigration officials rounded up thousands of foreign-born radicals and deported many, including the anarchist Emma Goldman. Many employers also used the rallying cry of anticommunism to break strikes and suppress unions. The Red Scare effectively silenced the Communist party and much of the left throughout the 1920s. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, as fascism emerged in Europe, the Communist party attracted new members as well as thousands of liberal sympathizers. But enthusiasm for communism diminished in 1939 with the Nazi–Soviet pact and the communist opposition to Roosevelt’s foreign policy. Anticommunist sentiment declined in 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia and the Soviet Union became an ally. The alliance was tense, however, as the United States vied with the Soviet Union over power in the postwar world. The Cold War transformed anticommunism from a right-wing to a mainstream ideology and made it central to American politics and domestic culture. Because the United States vied with the Soviet Union for strategic power and territorial influence, the Communist party, with its links to the USSR, was considered a subversive organization. In 1947, the Truman administration barred from government jobs anyone associated with communists, and in 1949 the Justice Department prosecuted the 11 top leaders of the party for violation of the 1940 Smith Act, which made it illegal “to teach and advocate the overthrow and destruction of the United States government by force and violence.” They were all convicted and sentenced to prison terms. Under the Smith Act, several hundred communists went to jail, while the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated suspected communist subversives. Hollywood became a primary target of anticommunism in the late 1940s and early 1950s, leading to the blacklisting of dozens of filmmakers and actors who refused to “name names” before HUAC. Senator Joseph McCarthy and other zealots used anticommunism to further their own political ambitions at a time when Democrats were on the defensive for being allegedly “soft” on communism. Official anticommunism targeted not only members of left-wing political organizations but also gays, lesbians, and others who allegedly might be vulnerable to black-mail and therefore should not be allowed to work in government offices. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, made anticommunism a high priority. The FBI targeted Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists whom Hoover believed were communist agents seeking to destabilize American society. By the late 1950s the anticommunist hysteria had subsided, but it remained part of the political culture throughout the Cold War. During the 1980s, President Ronald W. Reagan revived anticommunist rhetoric when he called the Soviet Union the “evil empire.” health care for the aged and increased Social Security benefits, and the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). When the steel industry challenged Kennedy’s authority and threatened his economic policy by announcing a major price increase shortly after he had helped to negotiate a new contract with the steel union that would have kept prices stable, he mobilized all the power of his administration to force the steel magnates to back down. Kennedy also demonstrated strong leadership in the space program, presiding over the first manned space flight and declaring that the United States would land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Kennedy was the first U.S. president to understand and recognize the legitimacy of movements for national self-determination in the Third World. In 1957, while still in the Senate, he gave a speech calling on the French to grant independence to Algeria, which was still under French rule. As President, he endeavored to support movements to end colonial rule while at the same time containing the spread of communism. His efforts earned him a great deal of goodwill among Africans and other non-Europeans. But if nationalist movements appeared friendly to the Soviet Union, Kennedy worked against them. Critical of Eisenhower’s defense policies but determined to continue his struggle against the spread of communism, Kennedy sharply increased military spending and nuclear arms build-up as a show of strength and preparedness against possible Soviet aggression. One of Kennedy’s most popular initiatives was the creation of the Peace Corps, a program that sent Americans, especially young people, to nations around the world to work on Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 861 ${bmicon} development projects. In 1961 Kennedy signed the Charter of Punta del Este with several Latin American countries, establishing the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Alliance for Progress, a program designed to prevent the spread of anti-Americanism and communist insurgencies in Latin America. The alliance offered $20 billion in loans to OAS countries for democratic development initiatives. Kennedy continued the strategies of Truman and Eisenhower to fight communism in South Vietnam by supporting the corrupt regime of Ngo Dingh Diem. But the National Liberation Front (NLF), founded in 1960 and supported by Ho Chi Minh’s communist regime in North Vietnam, gained the upper hand in its struggle against Diem. In response, Kennedy increased the number of military advisers there from 800 to 17,000. By 1963 it was obvious that Diem’s brutal regime was about to fall to the NLF, and Kennedy allowed U.S. military advisers and diplomats to encourage Diem’s dissenting generals to depose and assassinate Diem. Kennedy also faced a crisis brewing in Cuba. Fidel Castro’s revolution initially represented the sort of democratic insurgency that Kennedy wanted to support. But Castro’s socialism turned the United States against him, and he established close ties with the Soviet Union. Kennedy now saw the small impoverished island as a major threat where “communist influence … festers some 90 miles off the coast of Florida.” During the Eisenhower administration, the CIA began planning an invasion of Cuba with the help of Cuban exiles in Florida. Kennedy’s national security advisers persuaded Kennedy to allow the invasion to proceed. On April 17, 1961, U.S.-backed and -trained anticommunist forces, most of them Cuban exiles, landed at the Bahia de Cochinas (Bay of Pigs) on the southern coast of Cuba. Castro expected the invasion—his agents in Florida had infiltrated the Cuban exiles—so his well-prepared troops quickly surrounded and captured the invaders. With no domestic uprising PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 862 ${bmicon} against Castro to support the invasion, Kennedy quickly realized that his only chance of success would be to call in the military with large-scale air support. Unwilling to take that step, Kennedy pulled back in humiliating defeat, telling his adviser Clark Clifford, “I have made a tragic mistake.” Nevertheless, Kennedy continued to support covert efforts that tried but failed to destabilize Cuba and assassinate Castro. Another crisis soon erupted in Berlin. Located 200 miles deep in East Germany, with only two highways connecting it to West Germany, West Berlin was a showcase of western material superiority and an espionage center for the western powers. It was also an important symbolic site, reassuring West Berliners along with western Europeans that the United States would not abandon them. At a summit in Vienna between Kennedy and Khrushchev in June 1961, Khrushchev threatened to end the western presence in Berlin and unite the city with the rest of East Germany. His plan was motivated in part to stop the steady stream of East Germans into West Berlin. Kennedy refused to relinquish West Berlin. On August 13, 1961, the East German government constructed a wall to separate East and West Berlin. Guards patrolled the wall with orders to shoot anyone who tried to cross, and many who tried lost their lives. Two years later, Kennedy stood in front of the wall and pledged to defend the West Berliners, making his memorable statement of solidarity, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”). Kennedy put the Strategic Air Command on full alert for possible nuclear war. The most serious foreign policy crisis of Kennedy’s presidency came in 1962, when the Soviet Union, at Castro’s invitation, began to install intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy’s close advisers presented a series of options for actions that could be taken in response. The most dramatic and dangerous would be a full-scale military invasion of the island, which would topple Castro but would surely have prompted military retaliation by the Soviet Union. Another option was a more limited military intervention, an air strike to destroy the missiles before they became operational. Others proposed a blockade of Cuban ports to prevent the missiles from entering. Another possibility was to negotiate secretly with Castro, Soviet leaders, or both. Kennedy decided against behind-the-scenes negotiations as well as the drastic move of military intervention and instead established a “quarantine” around the island to block Soviet ships from reaching Cuba, hoping that the Soviet Union would back down and withdraw the missiles. A quarantine, unlike a blockade, was not considered an act of war; nevertheless, Kennedy put the Strategic Air Command on full alert for possible nuclear war. John F. Kennedy on the Cuban Missile Crisis A gradual buildup of Soviet arms in Cuba throughout the summer and early fall of 1962 was met with little more than heated warnings from Kennedy. On October 14, an American spy plane photographed numerous missile sites under construction on Cuban soil, well within reach of the U.S. mainland. On October 22, the president informed the nation of the Soviet threat, stressing that any attack would invite full retaliation. The ensuing diplomatic showdown would intensify the Cold War and lead to lengthy weapons buildup in the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was a risky move. On national television, Kennedy warned the Soviet Union to remove the missiles or face the military might of the United States: “We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth, but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.” Khrushchev accused Kennedy of bringing the two nations to the brink of nuclear war. For the next five days, tensions mounted as Russian ships hovered in the water beyond the quarantine zone. Finally Khrushchev proposed an agreement, offering to remove the missiles if the United States would agree not to invade Cuba. In secret negotiations, Kennedy also privately promised to remove the Jupiter missiles in Turkey as soon as the crisis was over. The two leaders managed to diffuse the crisis, but they were both sobered by the experience of having come to the brink of nuclear war. They soon established a telephone “hotline” linking the White House and the Kremlin for quicker communication in any future crisis. In 1963 the two leaders signed a nuclear test ban treaty. In 1963 the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, which Kennedy had appointed under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, published a report that documented widespread discrimination against women in jobs, pay, education, and the professions. In response to the findings, Kennedy issued a presidential order requiring the civil service to hire people CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 863 ${bmicon} “without regard to sex” and supported passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The commission’s report, along with the publication the same year of Betty Friedan’s call to arms, The Feminine Mystique, provided fuel for the feminist movement that burst across the nation in the next few years. In the spring of that same year, in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a silent and peaceful march through the city. Chief of Police Bull Connor unleashed the police, who blasted the demonstrators with fire hoses and attacked them with vicious police dogs. Four black children were later killed when segregationists bombed an African American church. The Kennedy administration responded by bringing the full force of its authority to bear on the officials in Birmingham. But the crisis intensified. Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, refused to admit two black students to the University of Alabama, threatening to stand in the doorway to block their entrance. Finally, on June 10, 1963, Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and for the first time went before the American people to declare himself forcefully on the side of the civil rights protesters and to propose a civil rights bill. The violence in the South had raised “a moral issue,” he declared, “as old as Scriptures and … as clear as the Constitution.” A few months later, on August 28, more than 250,000 people gathered at the nation’s capitol in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the culmination of the March on Washington, a huge demonstration for jobs as well as freedom, where Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his inspiring “I Have a Dream” speech, which included these memorable words: I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…. Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” In the fall of 1963, a confident Kennedy began planning his reelection campaign for the next year. To mobilize support he visited Texas. “Here we are in Dallas,” he said on November 22, 1963, “and it looks like everything in Texas is going to be fine for us.” Within an hour of uttering those optimistic words, the president lay dying of an assassin’s bullet. As shock and grief spread across the nation, a bizarre series of events confounded efforts to bring the assassin to justice. Police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, who had previously lived in the Soviet Union and who had loose ties to organized crime and to political groups interested in Cuba. Oswald claimed that he was innocent. But before he could be brought to trial, Oswald himself was murdered. Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner who also had links to organized crime, shot Oswald while he was in the custody of the Dallas police—an event witnessed by millions on live television. Ruby later died in prison. The newly sworn-in president, Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed a commission to investigate the assassination under the leadership of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Commission eventually issued a report concluding that Oswald and Ruby had both acted alone. The commission findings created a heated controversy. Many people at the time and since believed that there was evidence of a conspiracy. In 1978 a panel of the House of Representatives suggested PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 864 ${bmicon} that Kennedy may have been the victim of a plot, possibly involving the Mafia. Conspiracy theories continue to circulate to this day, finding expression in dozens of books, articles, and motion pictures. During the years between the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the nation experienced unprecedented prosperity as increasing numbers of Americans moved into middle-class suburbs and enjoyed the fruits of a rapidly expanding consumer economy. Men and women rushed into marriage and childbearing, creating the baby boom and a powerful domestic ideology resting on distinct gender roles for women and men. At the same time, fears of nuclear war, intense anticommunism, and pressures to conform to mainstream political and cultural values contributed to anxieties and discontent. Beneath the apparently tranquil surface, some Americans began to resist the limitations and exclusions of the widely touted “American way of life.” African Americans in the South demanded their rightful place as full citizens, challenging the Jim Crow system and accelerating the civil rights movement through nonviolent protests, boycotts, and sit-ins. Young people created a vibrant youth culture to the pulsating rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll. Beatniks, peace activists, and environmentalists expressed incipient political and cultural dissent. The rumblings of vast social change had already begun and would explode in the years ahead. We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement www.cr.nps.gov/NR/travel/civilrights/index.htm This site of the National Register of Historic Places provides maps and information about the historic locations of the civil rights movement. Dwight David Eisenhower www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/ddeisenhower.html This site contains basic information about Eisenhower’s election and presidency, and online biography. The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s dept.english.upenn.edu/∼afilreis/50s/home.html This site by University of Pennsylvania Professor Al Filreis contains a large array of 1950s documents, literature, and images. Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb tigger.uic.edu/∼pbhales/Levittown/ Peter Bacon Hales of the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago developed this website, which includes images, articles, and information about the post-World War II Levittown suburb. Hollywood and the Movies during the 1950s lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/50sbib.html This site from the University of California at Berkeley libraries includes information about Hollywood during the 1950s, and links to related sites, such as the Hollywood black-list and film noir. Rock and Roll www.rockhall.com/home/default.asp This website of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum includes information about the history and major artists of rock and roll. Little Rock 1959: Pages from History—The Central High Crisis www.ardemgaz.com/prev/central/ This site documents the events surrounding the effort to desegregate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1959. From Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education: The Supreme Court Rules on School Desegregation www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/3/82.03.06.x.html This site includes information about the landmark Supreme Court decision compiled by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. The Civil Rights Era lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9.html This Library of Congress site includes information about the people, events, and developments of the civil rights movement. John F. Kennedy www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/jfkennedy.html This site contains basic information about Kennedy’s election and presidency, and online biography. CHAPTER 25 ###8226; DOMESTIC DREAMS AND ATOMIC NIGHTMARES, 1953###8211;1963 865 ${bmicon} Taylor Branch , Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (1988). William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (1986). Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (2000). Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (1998). Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (1976). Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992). Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (1984). Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930–1965 (2000). Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1985). George Katona, The Mass Consumption Society (1964). Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1999). Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981). Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Equality as Cold War Policy, 1946–1968 (2000). Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy (1990). Steven F. Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941 (1990). Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954–1992 (1993). Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower (1983–84). Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: Race Relations and American Foreign Policy Since 1945 (2001). Robert F. Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights (1984). Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge (1993). Peter B. Dow, Schoolhouse Politics: Lessons from the Sputnik Era (1991). Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (1965). Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (1994). Winifred Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties (1994). Paul Brooks, The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work (1972). Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1963). Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963). James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (1986). Charlie Gillett, Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (1983). Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (1985). Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters: A Young Woman’s Coming-of-Age in the Beat Orbit of Jack Kerouac (1999). Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (1994). Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and the Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (1997). Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade (1992). Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (1967). Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s (1998). Herbert S. Parmet, J.F.K.: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1983). Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter25 To Chapter 25 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 866 ${bmicon}         Lyndon Johnson and the Apex of Liberalism       Into War in Vietnam       The Movement       The Conservative Response       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 867 ${bmicon} THE SOFT-SPOKEN BLACK MAN WITH THE STRANGE ACCENT FIRST SHOWED UP IN THE small town of McComb, Mississippi, in the summer of 1961. Robert Parris Moses had come on a mission of democracy: he was there to encourage impoverished African Americans to register to vote. He had grown up in Harlem, attended Hamilton College in upstate New York on a scholarship, and was doing graduate work in philosophy at Harvard when his mother’s death brought him back to Manhattan to help care for his father. Moses was teaching math at an elite private school when the student sit-in movement against segregation spread across the upper South in the spring of 1960. Deeply impressed by the courage and leadership of those young black southerners, he went south that summer to work with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The following spring, Moses returned to the South as a full-time organizer for the new Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Encouraging citizens to vote in the leading nation of the “free world” was a subversive act in 1961, at least when the citizens had dark skin and lived in the southeastern states of the former Confederacy. Over the next 4 years in the Deep South, Bob Moses paid a price for his commitments. Local police imprisoned him, white supremacists beat him severely, and they murdered dozens of his fellow activists in the black freedom movement. But Moses remained committed to nonviolence and racial integration. His quiet courage became legendary in the movement. One summer night in 1962, he returned to a deserted SNCC office in Greenwood, Mississippi, that had just been ransacked by a white mob; three other SNCC workers had barely escaped with their lives. Moses looked around, made up a bed in the corner of the devastated main room, and went to sleep. He refused to be intimidated. For all his distinctiveness, Moses did not promote himself as a charismatic leader. Like his comrades in SNCC, he did not believe in traditional, top-down leadership. The women and men in SNCC worked instead to get local black communities to organize themselves and to find their leadership among their own members. When others became too dependent on his guidance, Moses even dropped his biblical surname and became simply “Bob Parris” to reduce his public profile. Such rejection of hierarchy put SNCC at odds with other civil rights organizations and with the national Democratic party, which sought black support. By 1964 Moses and other freedom workers grew disillusioned with white liberal leadership, especially after the Democratic convention that August, where President Lyndon Johnson crushed the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic party’s bid to replace the all-white regular Mississippi delegation. Two trips to Africa expanded Moses’ sense of connection to the Third World, and he became increasingly involved with the growing movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam. The federal government responded PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 868 ${bmicon} by drafting him. Moses moved to Canada to avoid being inducted to fight a war he opposed, and then went to east Africa, where he and his wife taught school and raised a family in Tanzania for almost a decade. He returned to the United States only after President Jimmy Carter’s general amnesty for draft resisters in 1977. The trajectory of Bob Moses’ life across these years suggests much about the 1960s. An extraordinary number of idealistic young people became involved in public life in an effort to make real their nation’s abstract promises of freedom and justice. The civil rights movement inspired the social movements that followed: for ending the war, for preserving the environment, and for liberating women, Latinos, Indians, and gay men and lesbians. But organizing for change inevitably brought activists up against fierce resistance from what they called “the establishment.” Disillusionment and radicalization often followed. Whereas Moses went to Africa, other young African Americans moved toward black nationalism at home, a proud cultural identity at odds with the pursuit of integration. Public life became deeply contentious by 1968 as young radicals challenged more conservative citizens on issues of race, war, and gender. The escalating American war in Southeast Asia loomed over all. Lyndon Johnson brought the nation to its apex of liberal reform with his extensive Great Society legislation. His purpose was to complete and surpass the New Deal promise of his hero, Franklin Roosevelt. However, the high-flying hopes of Democratic liberals crashed to earth with the destructive war that the Johnson administration waged against seasoned communist revolutionaries in far-off Vietnam. Out of the wreckage of 1968 emerged a Republican president, Richard Nixon, and a growing conservative backlash against the social changes advocated by people of color, the counterculture, the antiwar movement, and the rising tide of women’s liberation. By the beginning of the 1970s, American politics turned to the right, even as American culture generally remained more tolerant of different lifestyles and values than it had been before the 1960s. This libertarian combination of distrusting government while accepting greater cultural diversity has predominated in American life ever since. Wealth provided the foundation on which the Great Society was built. American economic expansion since World War II had created history’s richest nation by 1960. From 1961 to 1966, the economy accelerated at an annual growth rate of more than 5 percent with very low inflation, stimulated by large tax cuts and extensive military spending. The 41 percent increase in per capita income during the 1960s was not evenly distributed, however. Economist Paul Samuelson explained in 1970, “If we made an income pyramid out of a child’s blocks, with each layer portraying $1000 of income, the peak would be far higher than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us would be within a yard of the ground.” And the distribution of wealth (stocks and real estate) was far more skewed than that of income. U.S. policymakers believed that economic expansion would continue indefinitely and the nation could therefore afford government policies to improve the welfare of less affluent Americans. Lyndon Baines Johnson was one of the most remarkable American characters of the twentieth century. Journalist David Halberstam called him “a man of stunning force, drive and intelligence, and of equally stunning insecurity”—both a giant among political leaders and a bully with those who worked for him. Johnson grew up in a family struggling to stay out of CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 869 ${bmicon} poverty in the Texas hill country west of Austin. He entered Democratic politics early as an avid supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, aided by the business savvy and loyalty of his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, who grew wealthy through ownership of TV and radio stations. As First Lady, she became widely known for her leadership in highway beautification. Lyndon Johnson rose like a rocket through Congress to become perhaps the most powerful Senate majority leader ever (1954–1960) and then vice president (1961–1963). Kennedy’s assassination catapulted him into the Oval Office as the nation’s first Texan president. Lyndon Johnson on Kennedy’s Death Five days after the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy, a newly sworn President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke to a special joint session of Congress asking for help and support. Acknowledging the nation’s grief, Johnson declared Kennedy’s advisors and cabinet would remain intact and that the late president’s legislative agenda would go forward. Like his home state, Johnson was physically big and at times intimidating. His earthy humor and homely style contrasted sharply with Kennedy’s telegenic sophistication. Eastern elites cringed at the idea of Johnson as Kennedy’s successor in the White House; the fact that Kennedy was killed in Texas did not help. But Johnson retained Kennedy’s cabinet and advisers and used the memory of the fallen young president to rally support for his administration. Johnson turned out to be the more liberal of the two men in part because his early years in Texas had given him a visceral understanding of poverty and discrimination that his predecessor lacked. Johnson’s focus was different, too. He retained Kennedy’s anticommunist commitments abroad, but his heart remained at home. “I don’t want to be the President who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion,” he told the nation. He wanted to perfect American society: to enhance American security by refashioning the central nation of the “free world” into a model for all others. First he had to win reelection because less than a year remained until voters went to the polls in 1964. The Republicans nominated right-wing Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a sign of the party’s sharp swing away from its moderate eastern elements toward its fiercely conservative western and southern constituencies. Conservative organizers such as the Young Americans for Freedom considered such Republican leaders as Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon too much like Democrats. Goldwater instead believed in unrestricted markets and a minimal role for the federal government in every aspect of American life except the TABLE 26-1 The Election of 1964 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic 43,126,506 486 Barry M. Goldwater Republican 27,176,799 52 PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 870 ${bmicon} military. He spoke casually about using nuclear weapons against communists abroad. “In your heart you know he’s right” his campaign slogan promised. “In your guts you know he’s nuts,” retorted the Democrats. Goldwater declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” but Johnson zeroed in on that extremism and swept to the largest electoral majority of any president (61 percent). Voters also chose the most liberal Congress since the Great Depression. Few realized then that Goldwater, not Johnson, was the better indicator of where American politics would soon be heading. In pursuit of what he called the Great Society, Johnson first declared a “War on Poverty.” No citizen in the richest nation on earth should live in squalor, he believed. The president’s sensitivity to this issue, despite his personal rise to wealth, fit with a growing national concern, stimulated in part by political activist Michael Harrington’s widely read book The Other Americans (1962). The poor were everywhere, from decaying inner cities to rural areas such as Appalachia. More than one out of five Americans lived below the conservatively estimated official poverty line ($3022 for a nonfarm family of four in 1960), and 70 percent of them were white. The president and a large congressional majority passed several measures to alleviate poverty. They sharply increased the availability of money and food stamps through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (“welfare”) program, and they raised Social Security payments to older Americans. Several programs focused on improving educational opportunities as an avenue out of poverty: Head Start offered preschool education and meals for youngsters, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act sent federal funds to the least affluent school districts, and an expanded system of student loans facilitated access to college. The Job Corps provided employment training, and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) served as a domestic Peace Corps, funneling people with education and skills into poor communities to serve as teachers and providers of other social services. How well did these programs work? Americans have argued vigorously over this question ever since. Some defended the programs as reducing the number of people living in poverty and giving educational and employment opportunities to many previously deprived of such chances. Critics on the right believed that the programs instead encouraged dependence on government and thus actually worsened the problem. Critics on the left noted that the programs did not go far enough in attacking the root causes of poverty. Three conclusions seem clear about the War on Poverty. First, it did not eliminate poverty. Second, it did help reduce the number of poor people by one-third between 1960 and 1969 (22 percent to 14 percent). Third, the elderly benefited most from the higher payment schedules put into place by the War on Poverty, as the share of Americans over age 65 in the poor population dropped from 40 percent in 1959 to 16 percent by 1974. Johnson Presidential Campaign Advertisement After the tragic assassination of John Kennedy in November 1963, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was constitutionally obligated to complete Kennedy’s remaining term. An influential leader, Johnson’s legislative success convinced him to try to win the presidency outright in the election of 1964. Campaigning against pro-military Senator Barry Goldwater, Johnson’s team created a television ad that spoke to the nuclear fears of millions of Americans. Johnson won by a landslide. No barrier to opportunity in the early 1960s was higher than the color bar. Both opportunist and idealist, Johnson as president shed his segregationist voting record (necessary for election in Texas before 1960) and became the most vocal proponent of racial equality ever to occupy the Oval Office. Two factors facilitated his change in position. Blatant inequalities for American citizens weakened the United States in its competition with the Soviets and Chinese for the loyalty of the nonwhite Third World majority. Moreover, the African American freedom struggle in the South had reached a boiling point. Black frustration was mounting over white brutality and the seeming indifference or even hostility of the national government. “The Negroes are tired of this patient stuff and tired of this piecemeal stuff,” the president acknowledged privately. The persistence of local organizers across the South, such as Bob Moses, forced the U.S. government to move. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 fulfilled the implicit promise of the Brown v. Board of Education decision a decade earlier. The 1964 act made desegregation the law of the land as it Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 871 ${bmicon} full view MAP 26.1 PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION LIVING BELOW THE POVERTY LINE, 1969 (BY STATE) The United States in the 1960s was a nation of unprecedented wealth and comfort. Yet millions of Americans still lived in poverty. Prodded by other reformers, President Johnson sought to reduce the number of impoverished citizens through the Great Society programs. The southeastern and south central states had the highest poverty rates, a legacy of slavery and limited industrialization. outlawed discrimination in employment and in public facilities such as restaurants, theaters, and hotels. When Alabama police beat peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge outside Selma on March 7, 1965, horrifying most national television viewers, Johnson seized the opportunity to push through Congress the Voting Rights Act. This legislation outlawed poll taxes and provided federal voting registrars in states that refused the ballot to African Americans. The single most important legislation of the twentieth century for bringing political democracy to the South, the Voting Rights Act increased the percentage of blacks voting in Mississippi from 7 percent to 60 percent in 2 years. Black electoral power began to bring unprecedented change to Dixie’s political and racial landscape. full view Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Johnson (Library of Congress) Johnson’s vision of the Great Society extended to the broader quality of life in the United States. Health care was perhaps the most fundamental issue for citizens’ sense of personal security. After 1965, the new Medicare system paid for the medical needs of Americans over 65, and Medicaid underwrote health care services for the indigent. Rising concern about the quality of corporate products led to new federal efforts to protect citizens as consumers. In 1964, when more than half of adults smoked tobacco, the surgeon-general issued the first government PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 872 ${bmicon} report linking smoking to cancer. A year later, consumer advocate Ralph Nader used research studies to show that Chevrolet’s sporty new Corvair was “unsafe at any speed.” Despite industry resistance, higher federal standards for automotive safety followed. Public pressures also led to the establishment of new requirements for publishing the nutritional values of packaged food. The federally funded Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was established to provide television programs that were more educational than the fare tied to advertising on the three corporate networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC). In fact, most Great Society measures targeted all Americans rather than just the disadvantaged. Nothing more directly threatened the quality of American life than the degradation of the natural environment. The costs of the unrestrained and much-heralded economic growth since World War II showed up in the nation’s air, water, and land. The leaded gasoline that fueled products of the booming auto industry created smog, industrial effluents polluted lakes and rivers, and petrochemical wastes poisoned the ground. Biologist Garrett Hardin called these developments “the tragedy of the commons,” wherein the pursuit of narrow individual self-interest leads to the despoiling of the common environment. For example, the very low price of gasoline in the United States compared with that of other industrialized nations did not (and still does not) recoup any of the vast environmental costs of its use. Millions of Americans read Rachel Carson’s indictment of chemical pesticides in Silent Spring (1962). The products of science that had contributed so much to the production of wealth were turning out to have hidden costs, and a new wave of citizen action to protect the environment began to build. Growing public awareness prompted the Clean Air Act (1963) and the Clean Waters Act (1966), which set federal guidelines for reducing smog and preserving public drinking sources from bacterial pollution. Even the long dam-building tradition in the American West faced new questions. A quarter century after Hoover Dam blocked the Colorado River, engineers completed the Glen Canyon Dam (1963) upstream at the Arizona–Utah border, drowning one of the nation’s most spectacular canyons under the new Lake Powell. Demands for the dam’s removal began immediately (they continue to this day) and helped spur passage of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968. Meanwhile, Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, setting aside 9 million acres of undeveloped public lands as a place “where man is a visitor who does not remain.” No longer were wild lands (almost all west of the Mississippi River) targeted solely for economic development and settlement. In a nation growing more urban and more crowded, most Americans began to accept the idea that what little wilderness remained should be preserved. By the year 2000, the wilderness system incorporated 95 million acres of roadless areas. Just as the government’s executive branch responded to pressures for reform, so did the judicial branch. Dwight Eisenhower did not expect liberal leadership from Earl Warren when he named him Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953. As California’s secretary of state, Warren had helped implement the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, but he later came to regret that policy. The Warren Court produced the unanimous 1954 school CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 873 ${bmicon} desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education (see Chapter 25), and steadily expanded the constitutional definition of individual rights. This shift in interpreting the law reached even those deemed to have lost many of their rights: prisoners. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) established the right of indigent prisoners to legal counsel, and Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) confirmed the right to counsel during interrogation, a critical hindrance to the use of torture. After Miranda v. Arizona (1966), police were required to inform anyone they arrested of their rights to remain silent and to speak to a lawyer. Reading suspects their “Miranda rights” became a touchstone scene for a whole generation of television police shows. The Warren Court bolstered other rights of individuals against potentially coercive community pressures. Decisions in 1962 and 1963 strictly limited the practice of requiring prayers in public schools. In 1963 the Court narrowed standards for the definition of “obscenity,” allowing freer expression in the arts but also in pornography. Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) established the use of contraceptive devices as a matter of private choice protected by the Constitution. In 1967 the Court heard the case of Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, Virginians who had evaded their state’s ban on interracial marriage by traveling to Washington, D.C., for their wedding and then returned to Caroline County to live. In the aptly titled Loving v. Virginia, the Court declared marriage one of the “basic civil rights of men” and overturned the laws of the last 16 states restricting interracial unions. Also in 1967 President Johnson appointed the esteemed chief National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal counsel, Thurgood Marshall—who had mounted the successful argument in Brown v. Board of Education 13 years earlier—to the bench, making him the first black Supreme Court justice. The Supreme Court’s interpreting of the Constitution to expand individual rights disturbed many conservative Americans. They saw the Court as another arm of an intrusive national government that was extending its control over matters previously left to local communities. For them, the goal of integration did not justify the busing of school children. Rising crime rates troubled them more than police brutality. Many Roman Catholics were disturbed by the legalization of contraceptives. Incensed by the ban on requiring school prayer, Protestant fundamentalists sought redress through political involvement, which they had previously shunned, initiating a grassroots religious conservative movement that helped bring Ronald Reagan to power in 1980. The Warren Court served as a lightning rod for traditionalists’ distress at changes in Americans’ private behavior. In the contest between local and national authorities ongoing since the Articles of Confederation of the 1780s, the 1960s represented a high-water mark of Washington’s influence in the lives of individual citizens. The 1960s also marked the culmination of the U.S. government’s efforts to control revolutionary political and social change abroad. The Truman Doctrine’s logic of containing communism spanned the entire globe, but few imagined that the United States would overreach itself, tragically, in Vietnam. Johnson’s accomplishments at home was forever overshadowed by the war he sent Americans to fight in the quiet rice paddies and beautiful highland forests of Southeast Asia. Putting U.S. combat troops into Vietnam in 1965, where they remained until 1973, drained funds and political will that could have been used to implement the Great Society more fully. The Vietnam War of these years might be better named the “American War”: it reflected the beliefs and commitments of Cold Warriors in Washington more than the realities of life on the ground in Southeast Asia. An aggressive U.S. anticommunist policy abroad collided with leftist revolutionaries throughout the Third World, and it was ill fortune for the Vietnamese that this collision struck them hardest of all. “They were just in the intersection when our convertible rolled up,” former Stanford University student body president and draft resistance organizer David Harris recalled. PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 874 ${bmicon} Americans viewed the conflict in Vietnam as part of a broader struggle between communist and noncommunist nations. It did not start out that way, however. It began as one of many efforts to end European colonialism. Vietnamese nationalists, varying in ideologies but led by Ho Chi Minh and the Indochinese Communist party, sought since the 1930s to liberate their country from French colonial rule. Japanese advances during World War II put the Vietminh (Vietnamese nationalists) on the same side as the Americans, and Ho worked closely with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ho declared the creation of an independent state of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, quoting at length from the American Declaration of Independence with OSS officers looking on. Independent Vietnam did not last. After the defeat of Germany and Japan, the French wanted to regain control of their colonies in Africa and Asia, including Vietnam. Their British friends provided troop transport ships for French soldiers, and the United States provided most of the funds to support France in its war against the Vietminh (1946–1954). Cold War priorities won out: a weakened France had to be bolstered as the linchpin of a reintegrated, anticommunist western Europe, while the Vietminh were led by Communist party members. Unfortunately for Washington, the Vietnamese defeated the much more heavily armed French, capped by the climactic victory at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, which surprised most Western observers. Two months later, the Geneva Accords divided the country temporarily at the seventeenth parallel until national elections could be held within 2 years to reunify Vietnam. Like the thirty-eighth parallel in Korea, the seventeenth parallel was an arbitrary latitude on the map used to divide peoples who did not want to be separated. Ho’s forces solidified their control of the north, the French pulled out entirely, and the Eisenhower administration made a fateful decision to intervene directly to preserve the southern part of Vietnam from communism. The United States created a new government led by the Roman Catholic, anticommunist Ngo Dinh Diem in a new country called “South Vietnam.” “This is our offspring,” Senator John Kennedy observed of the rulers in the capital city of Saigon, but most Americans still knew nothing about South Vietnam. The Vietnamese Revolution was only half over, however. The French colonialists withdrew, but the Saigon regime ignored the Geneva Accords and the promise of elections to reunify the country. In the north, the internal revolution for the creation of a socialist society proceeded with an extensive program of land redistribution. In the south, Diem ruled for 8 years with increasing repression of communists and other dissenters. U.S. funding kept him in power. One reporter noted that “Diem could not have survived a week without foreign aid.” Desperate in the face of Diem’s secret police, southern members of the old Vietminh began a sabotage campaign against the Saigon government and formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) in 1960, with the support of the government of North Vietnam in Hanoi. Diem and his American supporters called them Viet Cong or VC, roughly equivalent to the derogatory American term Commies. As the struggle to overthrow Diem intensified in the early 1960s, President Kennedy increased the number of U.S. military personnel from the 800 under Eisenhower to 16,000. They made little difference, however, as the unpopular Saigon government continued to lose ground to the NLF guerrillas. Just 3 weeks before Kennedy’s murder, several of Diem’s own generals assassinated him with the tacit support of U.S. officials in South Vietnam and Washington. As the struggle to overthrow Diem intensified in the early 1960s, President Kennedy increased the number of U.S. military personnel from the 800 under Eisenhower to 16,000. Lyndon Johnson inherited his predecessors’ commitment to preserving a noncommunist South Vietnam. Bolstered by Kennedy’s hawkish advisers, especially Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1961–1968), he believed that American credibility was at stake. But Johnson faced a swiftly deteriorating military situation. The NLF, which the administration portrayed as Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 875 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Wars and Social Reform in the Twentieth Century Lyndon Johnson knew that in going to war in Vietnam, he risked losing public support and congressional funding for his Great Society programs. Yet he felt he had little choice. Facing the growing success of the communist-led insurgency in South Vietnam, the president believed that he had to escalate U.S. involvement there to continue preserving a noncommunist part of Vietnam. That policy had been a commitment of every American president since late in World War II: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy. Johnson also feared the conservative Republican domestic backlash that he believed would follow a U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the “fall” of another Asian nation to communist rule. “That bitch of a war” in Vietnam, he said, was forcing him to leave “the woman I really loved—the Great Society.” Johnson’s was not the first presidential administration in the twentieth century to find that military conflicts abroad constrained and even derailed domestic efforts at social and political reform. Three other Democratic presidents had encountered similar situations. Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive reform agenda was waylaid by the onset of World War I in 1914 and his decision to lead the nation into that conflict 3 years later. Franklin Roosevelt’s extensive New Deal programs to restart the ailing economy and improve an array of social ills tapered off as the United States entered World War II in 1941, as he acknowledged by announcing that “Dr. Win the War” was replacing “Dr. New Deal.” Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal” reform hopes were more modest than those of Roosevelt, but they included a program of national health care and civil rights legislation. A hostile Congress effectively blocked such initiatives, but Truman’s own efforts to promote them declined after he took the nation into the undeclared war in Korea in 1950. The huge scale of mobilization to fight a major war took a single-mindedness of purpose that left little time for other concerns. Social reformers such as Martin Luther King, Jr., feared military engagements abroad for just this reason (see “Interpreting History” in this chapter). Going to war did sometimes encourage policies that increased social justice if those policies contributed to the war effort. One example was the War Industries Board in World War I that helped mediate labor disputes and improve workplace conditions; another was the desegregation of the armed forces that happened soon after World War II (in part because of that war’s rhetoric about defeating Nazi racism) and was implemented during the Korean War. But having citizens dying in battle abroad more often increased intolerance at home for dissent or diversity. The Alien and Sedition Acts in World War I, the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II, and the anticommunist purges led by Joseph McCarthy during the Korean War all undercut civil liberties and discouraged efforts at social reform. Johnson’s diminished attention to building the Great Society after he escalated the war in Vietnam in 1965 fit in this broader pattern. PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 876 ${bmicon} merely a tool of North Vietnam, was winning the political war for the south, taking control of the countryside from the demoralized Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Faced with the choice of escalating U.S. involvement to prevent an NLF victory or withdrawing entirely from the country, Johnson escalated. How he did so was crucially important. There was neither a national debate nor a congressional vote to declare war. Johnson did not want to distract Congress from his Great Society agenda, nor did he want to provoke the Soviet Union or China. But he believed he had to preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam or else face a debilitating backlash from Republicans, who would skewer him as McCarthy had done to Truman over the “loss” of China 15 years earlier. So the president used deception, describing offensive American actions as defensive and opening up a credibility gap between a committed government and a skeptical public. This gap widened steadily until it finally drove Johnson not to run for reelection in 1968. In 1963–1965, while St. Louis was building its famous arch commemorating the city’s history as the Gateway to the West, where so many U.S.–Indian wars had been fought, Johnson took the nation through the gateway of the Pacific into a new war in the farther west of Asia. In August 1964, North Vietnamese ships in the Gulf of Tonkin fired on the U.S. destroyer Maddox, which was aiding South Vietnamese sabotage operations against the North. The president portrayed the incident as one of unprovoked communist aggression, and Congress expressed almost unanimous support through its Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. With this substitute for a declaration of war, Johnson ordered American planes to begin bombing North Vietnam, and the first American combat troops splashed ashore at Da Nang in South Vietnam on March 8, 1965. In July the administration made the key decision to add 100,000 more soldiers, with more to follow as necessary. The president also offered a piece of the Great Society to his opponents in Vietnam if they would halt their struggle. He promised a vast economic development program for the Mekong River delta “on a scale even to dwarf our” Tennessee Valley Authority. Like most of his compatriots, the president assumed that foreign peoples fundamentally wanted to be like Americans. Johnson and his advisers tended to believe that, in the words of a U.S. officer in the film Full Metal Jacket, “Inside every [Vietcong] there is an American trying to get out.” The carrot of American-style economic development was accompanied by the stick of U.S. military force. American strategy had two goals: to limit the war so as not to draw in neighboring China (to avoid a repeat of the Korean War) and to force the NLF and North Vietnam to give up their struggle to reunify the country under Hanoi’s control. The problem was the political nature of the guerrilla war in the South: a contest for the loyalty of the population, in which NLF operatives mingled easily with the citizenry. This kind of war made the enemy difficult to find, as was often true for the British in fighting the American revolutionaries in the 1770s. Because guerrillas were like fish swimming in the sea of citizens who supported them, in Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s formulation, U.S. commanders decided to drain the sea. The “strategic hamlet” program uprooted rural peasants and concentrated them in fortified towns, creating “free fire zones” in their wake where anything that moved was a target. The U.S. Air Force pounded the south as well as the north, dropping more bombs on this ancient land (smaller than either Germany or Japan) than had been used in all theaters on all sides in World War II. Under Operation Ranch Hand, American planes used defoliants such as Agent Orange to remove ground cover, rendering one-seventh of the south’s land uninhabitable. Their informal slogan was “Only We Can Prevent Forests.” These tactics destabilized and traumatized society in South Vietnam as one-fourth of the population became refugees. The American war urbanized the south by force: from 85 percent rural in 1965, it became 65 percent urban by 1974. The strategy of attrition wielded by General William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, also alienated the citizenry of the South. Lacking a clear military front in a guerrilla conflict, U.S. commanders used body counts of enemy dead as a primary method of demonstrating progress in the war. This strategy created great pressure on officers to produce bodies. In a war where Americans had difficulty distinguishing the enemy from noncombatants, a new rule became increasingly standard: “If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s VC.” CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 877 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 26.1 U.S. TROOP AND CASUALTY LEVELS IN VIETNAM (AS OF DECEMBER 31 OF EACH YEAR) Given America’s wealth, size, and superior weaponry, most U.S. soldiers who went to Vietnam in 1965–1966 had no doubt they would win the war. Their confidence reflected generations of American successes on battlefields across Europe and the Pacific Ocean. As emissaries from a culture that valued material wealth and technological sophistication, they tended to dismiss Vietnamese people as primitive and weak. They typically looked down on Asians. Very few knew anything about Vietnamese history or culture, and almost none spoke the Vietnamese language. This war, unlike World War II of their parents’ generation, had no D-Day on the beaches of France as in 1944, with a staging across the narrow channel in familiar England. Although a small number of Americans worked closely with their South Vietnamese allies, most GIs encountered Vietnamese in subservient roles as laundry workers, prostitutes, waitresses, and bartenders. Blinkered by anticommunism and far removed from their own revolutionary roots, Americans from the top brass to the lowest “grunts” marched into a country they did not understand but assumed they could control. PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 878 ${bmicon} The immense problems of counterinsurgent warfare quickly put an end to this optimism. President Johnson spoke of the conflict in Vietnam as a case of one sovereign nation—the North—invading another one—the South. However, few Vietnamese saw the war in those terms. The United States, dismissing the failure of the French before them, had intervened not so much in an international war as in an ongoing revolution that aimed to reunify the country. Few Vietnamese, whatever their opinions of communism, viewed the corrupt Saigon regime as legitimate or democratic. After all, it was kept in place by foreigners, whereas the North was ruled by people who had expelled the French foreigners. Even the U.S. Embassy admitted privately that “if any elected assembly sits in Saigon, it will be on the phone negotiating with Hanoi within one week.” One U.S. sergeant concluded that “anticommunism is a lousy substitute for democracy.” Initial U.S. optimism reflected a grave underestimation of the NLF and the North Vietnamese. From President Johnson down to soldiers on patrol in the jungle, Americans assumed that communists did not have popular support and that the inferior weaponry of communist forces could not withstand the firepower of the world’s strongest military, which dominated the air and the surrounding sea. These assumptions were fatal miscalculations. Ho Chi Minh was an extremely popular leader, and intervention from the other side of the world only strengthened his position. As the war expanded, NLF recruiting in the south snowballed, and the people of North Vietnam remained loyal to their authoritarian government. Communist forces proved willing to endure fantastic hardship and sacrifices to prevail, some even living underground in the labyrinthine tunnels of Cu Chi to avoid U.S. bombs. Their morale was much higher than that of the ARVN. Superior organization and commitment enabled them to overcome their technological deficit, and small victories hardened their resolve. The NLF in the south had long armed itself with U.S. weapons captured from the ARVN, declaring that “Ngo Dinh Diem will be our supply sergeant.” After Diem’s death, American weapons poured into the country at an increasing rate, but the tenacity of the NLF prompted the Soviets and the Chinese to provide antiaircraft guns and other vital military assistance to the north. Who were the 3 million Americans who went to Vietnam? The initial forces contained experienced soldiers, but as the war escalated this professional army was diluted with hundreds of thousands of young draftees. Student deferments protected more comfortable Americans, so GIs were predominantly those who lacked money and education. Although 70 percent CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 879 ${bmicon} were white men, black, Hispanic, and Native American enlistees shipped out in disproportionate numbers. It became a teenaged army, filled with 18-year-olds whose main aim, one ABC correspondent reported, “was to become 19.” In sharp contrast to the motives of the NLF and the North Vietnamese army, these young men (along with 10,000 women who volunteered as nurses) were not in Vietnam to win the war regardless of the cost or duration. They had only to survive 12 months before returning home to the safety of a peacetime society. There could hardly have been a sharper contrast between this undeclared war and the total mobilization of the United States in a declared war such as World War II. Only a small fraction of the American personnel in Southeast Asia experienced actual combat. Most worked in the extensive support systems on bases in rear areas, where daily life was safer and more comfortable. Those who fought in the jungles and rice paddies lived in extreme peril. North Vietnamese regular army units came south to match the growing number of U.S. forces, and they occasionally engaged the Americans in large set battles, as at Ia Drang valley in the fall of 1965. U.S. troops fought well in such firefights, making devastating use of their superior weapons and air power. However, the bulk of the fighting consisted of smaller engagements with deceptive enemies on their home turf who faded in and out of the civilian population with ease. Ambushes and unexpected death haunted Americans on patrol, and relentless heat and humidity wore them down. American soldiers felt mounting frustration and rage over the nature of the war that they were ordered to fight. Lacking a clear battlefront and an understandable strategy for winning the war, they were commanded simply to kill the often mysterious enemy. Yet distinguishing civilians from combatants in a popular guerrilla war was not always easy, especially when so many civilians evidently supported the NLF and so few Americans spoke Vietnamese. “How can you tell the enemy?” one GI asked. “They all look the same.” The U.S. ally, the ARVN, was riddled with NLF infiltrators and rarely fought effectively. Realizing that few of the people they were supposed to be defending actually wanted them there but under orders to produce enemy bodies, U.S. troops on the ground began to slide toward a racial war against PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 880 ${bmicon} all Vietnamese. “You can’t have a feeling of remorse for these people,” said one Marine. “I mean, like I say, they are an enemy until proven innocent.” Many GIs resisted this logic, sometimes showing real kindness to Vietnamese civilians. But atrocities on both sides inevitably followed from this kind of war. The worst came in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968, where 105 soldiers from Charlie Company—enraged by the recent deaths of several comrades in ambushes—slaughtered, often after torturing or raping, more than 400 Vietnamese women, children, and old men. The Army covered up the massacre for a year and a half, and eventually found only Lieutenant William Calley, the leader of Charlie Company’s First Platoon, guilty of murdering Vietnamese civilians. Public sympathy for him as a scapegoat for the failings of U.S. military strategy encouraged President Nixon to reduce Calley’s sentence of life imprisonment to 3 years. Americans at home were horrified when grim photographs appeared in Life magazine, but those who knew the war up close were not surprised. “The people back in the world don’t understand this war,” one GI in Vietnam bitterly told a reporter. “We are here to kill dinks. How can they convict Calley for killing dinks? That’s our job.” In late 1967 the public face of the war effort remained upbeat, as General Westmoreland declared that he could now see “some light at the end of the tunnel.” But other prominent members of the administration, including Secretary of Defense McNamara, were beginning to express doubts privately to the president. Any remaining hopes of an imminent victory were crushed by the startling Tet Offensive (named for the Vietnamese New Year) that began on January 30, 1968. NLF insurgents and North Vietnamese troops attacked U.S. strongholds throughout South Vietnam, even occupying the courtyard of the U.S. Embassy for 6 hours. This risky tactic paid off for the communists with enormous political gains, despite military losses. U.S. troops killed thousands of their enemy as they ended and then reversed the advances of Tet. But the blow to American public confidence in Johnson and his military commanders proved irreversible. Far from being on the verge of defeat, as the administration had been claiming, the communists had shown that they could mount simultaneous attacks around the country. Revered television newscaster Walter Cronkite announced that “we are mired in stalemate” in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive coincided with two other crises in early 1968 to convince American political and business elites that U.S. international commitments had become larger than the nation could afford. First, a week before Tet began, the North Korean navy seized the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo in the Sea of Japan and temporarily imprisoned its crew. U.S. commanders were left scrambling to find enough forces to respond effectively without weakening American commitments in Europe and elsewhere. Second, a British financial collapse devalued the pound and caused the London government to announce its imminent withdrawal from its historic positions east of the Suez Canal, placing new military burdens on the United States in the Middle East. These events reduced international confidence in the U.S. economy, causing a currency crisis in March 1968 as holders of dollars traded them in for gold. The chairman of the Federal Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 881 ${bmicon} full view MAP 26.2 THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNAM Before U.S. combat troops entered Vietnam in 1965, few Americans knew where this Southeast Asian country was. Vietnam’s geography and place names quickly became familiar in the United States as hundreds of thousands of young Americans served there and some 58,000 died there. Vietnam’s elongated shape, its borders with Cambodia and Laos, and its proximity to China all affected the course of the fighting for Americans between 1965 and 1973. Reserve Board warned Wall Street leaders of “either an uncontrollable recession or an uncontrollable inflation” as fears rose of another 1929. Financial leaders added their powerful voices to those of other dismayed Americans demanding a deescalation of the war. The political career of Lyndon Johnson was a final casualty of these events. His support on the left withered as the antiwar and black power movements expanded. Meanwhile, his more centrist supporters were joining the backlash against civil rights, urban violence, and antiwar protesters, peeling off to the Republican party. On March 12 antiwar challenger Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota nearly defeated the incumbent president in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Johnson’s vulnerability was obvious. Senator Robert Kennedy of New York joined the race 2 weeks later. In a televised speech on March 31 that caught the divided nation by surprise, Johnson announced an end to U.S. escalations in the war, the start of negotiations in Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 882 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam War Most Americans approved of the war in Vietnam until at least 1968. Appreciative of Lyndon Johnson’s commitment to reduce poverty and end racial discrimination at home, African Americans generally supported the president’s policies in Southeast Asia. However, younger, more radical civil rights workers were among those who opposed the first insertion of U.S. combat troops in 1965. Within 2 years, the nation’s most prominent black leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., decided that he could no longer keep quiet about his growing unease with the American war effort. A storm of criticism greeted his public denunciation of the war, most of it suggesting that he should limit himself to domestic civil rights work. But King no longer believed that events at home and abroad could be separated. The following excerpt is from his speech at Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967: Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle [against poverty and discrimination]. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor—both black and white—through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war…. I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such…. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools…. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men [in the ghettos of the North the last three summers] I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my convictions that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But they asked—and rightly so—what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I would never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government…. [Our troops in Vietnam] must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for [such as freedom, justice, and peace] are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor. Source: Bruce J. Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism (Boston: Bedford, 1995), 208–212. Paris with North Vietnam, and an end to his own career: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” While national leaders were defending what they called the “frontiers of freedom” abroad, young Americans in the mid- and late 1960s organized to expand what they considered to be the frontiers of freedom at home. Television for the first time tied Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 883 ${bmicon} full view MAP 26.3 MAJOR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROTESTS, 1962–1971 While not the first decade to witness dramatic public protests, the 1960s did become synonymous with large groups of citizens—especially young ones—demanding changes in public policies that they perceived as unjust. Foremost among these groups were civil rights workers, antiwar activists, women’s rights supporters, and countercultural youth. Students emerged as important agents of change in the 1960s. the country together in a common culture whose shared images were transmitted simultaneously around the nation. Over all of the protest movements of the 1960s loomed the expanding war in Vietnam, which radicalized people who had initially been optimistic about reforming American society. Black power, the New Left, the counterculture, women’s liberation, and other liberation movements often had quite divergent goals. But participants overlapped extensively and activists spoke of “the Movement” as if it were a unified phenomenon. At the heart of the youth movements of the decade lay a common quest for authenticity—a rejection of hypocrisy and a distrust of traditional authorities—that fused cultural and political protest. Few American households remained untouched. The black freedom struggle in the South that broke into the national consciousness so dramatically in the early 1960s inspired other activists. By 1966, however, the civil rights movement fractured as it confronted the limits of its success. It had achieved the goals of ending legal discrimination and putting southern African Americans in the voting booth, but it had not brought about a colorblind society. Racial prejudice among white conservatives remained PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 884 ${bmicon} virulent, and white liberals, such as those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, revealed themselves as not always trustworthy allies. Expecting only hostility from conservatives, civil rights workers were more disillusioned with what they saw as liberal betrayals. The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) did little to restrain the violence of the Ku Klux Klan until the murders of white organizers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman in the summer of 1964—along with black co-worker James Chaney. Two months later, at the national Democratic party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Johnson crushed the effort of the biracial Mississippi Freedom Democratic party to replace the state’s regular, all-white Democratic delegates. The president was determined to avoid further alienating white southern voters as he pursued a huge victory in the November elections. Even the thousand white volunteers from northern and western colleges who courageously came to Mississippi for the 1964 “Freedom Summer” wound up unintentionally alienating many younger black organizers. The confident style and skills of volunteers from Yale, Stanford, and other elite universities highlighted anew the tendency of even well-intentioned whites to try to take over and manage African Americans’ lives. The black freedom struggle for centuries had woven together elements of racial separatism with elements of integration into the larger American culture. For many younger African Americans the pendulum swung toward a need for greater independence from the white majority. They took inspiration from Malcolm X, the fiery and eloquent minister of the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), who until his murder in 1965 captivated listeners with denunciations of white perfidy and demands for black self-respect. The day after he won the heavyweight boxing title in 1964, Cassius Clay announced that he was a Black Muslim and was changing his name to Muhammad Ali. After fielding hostile questions from journalists at the news conference, Ali declared, “I don’t have to be what you want me to be.” In 1966 SNCC members began to speak of the need for “black power” rather than for the integrated “beloved community” they had initially sought in 1960. The day after he won the heavyweight boxing title in 1964, Cassius Clay announced that he was a Black Muslim and was changing his name to Muhammad Ali. The issue of violence loomed large in the shift from civil rights to black power. Militant spokesmen Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown called for African Americans to stop turning the other cheek when confronted with white violence—to “stop singing and start swinging,” as Malcolm X had put it. The Black Panther party formed in Oakland, California, in response to police brutality. The heavily armed Panthers engaged in several shootouts with police and were eventually decimated by an FBI campaign against them. White Americans were shocked by the uprisings and riots that swept through black urban communities during the summers of 1964–1968. Triggered by the actions of white police, the riots expressed the fierce frustrations of impoverished people whose lives remained largely untouched by the achievements of the civil rights struggle. The most destructive outbreaks occurred in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965 and in Detroit and Newark in 1967. The violence in Watts killed 34 people, wounded 1000, and destroyed $45 million of property. Ninety people died, and 4000 were injured across the country in the 1967 riots, most of them African Americans killed by police as fires and looting spread through African American neighborhoods. “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal,” the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders announced in its 1968 report. The greatest significance of black power turned out to be neither its use of mostly rhetorical violence nor its unclear political agenda of black separatism. Rather, black power thrived as a cultural movement that promoted pride in African American and African history and life. The slogan “black is beautiful” captured this spirit: long degraded by their white compatriots as inferior, black Americans in the late 1960s and 1970s reversed this equation to celebrate their cultural heritage. This could be as basic as a hairstyle, the natural Afro replacing hair straightened to look like Caucasian hair. At universities new departments of African CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 885 ${bmicon} American studies fostered the exploration of black history. Unlearning habits of public deference to whites, most African Americans began referring to themselves as “black” rather than “Negro.” Cultural black power mixed with a different kind of political black power by the late 1960s: the election of black officials. Although militant black power advocates garnered the most media attention, most African Americans supported Lyndon Johnson and used the Voting Rights Act to pursue their goals in the realm of electoral politics. In 1966, Carl Stokes of Cleveland was elected the first black mayor of a major American city. African Americans won local offices across the South, and in 1972 Andrew Young of Georgia and Barbara Jordan of Texas became the first black U.S. representatives elected from the South since Reconstruction. African American public life has blended elements of cultural nationalism with the pursuit of political integration ever since, just as a similar combination has helped define the public engagement of other Americans of color: Latinos, Asians, and Indians. full view Impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 The VRA of 1965 finally implemented the protections of the Fifteenth Amendment. It suspended literacy and other voter tests that had denied African-Americans the right to vote for generations and provided federal supervision of voter registration. The percentages shown on the map indicate the increase in African-American voter registration between 1960 and 1966. In the summer of 1962 a group of young liberal college activists met at a labor union summer camp in Michigan. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) wrote a charter that became known as the Port Huron Statement, which called for a rejuvenation of American politics and society to replace the complacency that they saw pervading the country. Racial bigotry and poverty particularly troubled these optimistic young reformers, along with the over-arching threat of nuclear destruction (highlighted anew by the missile crisis in Cuba a few months later). They hoped to become a kind of “white SNCC,” promoting participatory democracy to redeem the promise of Cold War America. SDS served as the central organization of the New Left. In contrast to the Old Left of the 1940s and 1950s, which had been obsessed with distinguishing itself from communism and the Soviet Union, the New Left considered the Cold War a mask for preserving inequalities in the United States. Communism was simply not important to these activists, nor was conservatism, which was then at its nadir. They focused instead on the behavior of the liberals who ran the U.S. government from 1961 to 1968. They developed a critique of “corporate liberalism” as promoting the interests of the wealthy and the business community far more than providing for the needs of the disadvantaged. From this perspective, communism was a red herring and anticommunism a distraction from the real problems of the nation, especially as the war in Vietnam expanded. New Leftists became, above all, anti-anticommunists. After 1965, SDS’s initially broad reform agenda narrowed to stopping the Vietnam War. Protests about other issues also disrupted college campuses, such as the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964–1965; this successful effort to eliminate restrictions on students’ lives set a precedent for campus activists elsewhere. But the escalation of the war moved draft-age opponents to focus on ending it. “Hell no, we won’t go!” became their slogan. SDS members organized the first major antiwar protest outside the White House on April 17, 1965, bringing their organization into alliance with the small group of religious and secular pacifists already working against the war. Most importantly, mainstream Democrats began abandoning Johnson over the war as it grew. The president had alienated the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, with his misleading reports during the brief U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic in April 1965 to defeat a left-leaning but not communist coup attempt. Fulbright then held televised hearings on the American war in Southeast Asia in January 1966, raising grave doubts about its wisdom. Within a year prominent African Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali joined the growing opposition to the war. Draft resistance increased as young men moved to Canada like SNCC’s Bob Moses PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 886 ${bmicon} or went to jail like Ali. “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with the Vietcong,” the boxer explained. Antiwar protesters followed the same trajectory of radicalization as black power advocates. Their dismay turned to rage as the Johnson administration continued to expand a war that was destroying much of Vietnam while killing tens of thousands of American soldiers for no reason its opponents considered legitimate. Protesters refused to be what they called “good Germans”: those who had watched silently as the Nazis killed millions of Jews. Having long admired Castro’s revolution in Cuba, SDS began cheering for Ho Chi Minh and imagining itself as “the NLF behind Lyndon Johnson’s lines.” In combination with or in support of black militants, white radicals took over buildings on university campuses in 1968–1969: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, San Francisco State, and many others. SDS ultimately broke apart in the confusion and exhilaration of its growing demand for revolution against the larger systemic enemies, imperialism and capitalism, not just corporate liberalism. Such fantasies of violence, as well as real bombings by a splinter group called the Weather Underground, alienated most Americans, including most peaceful antiwar protesters. But radical rage could not be understood apart from the ongoing destruction of Vietnam by a government acting in the name of all Americans. While the New Left moved from wanting to reform American society to wanting to overthrow it, the counterculture sought to create an alternative society. Called “hippies” by those who disliked them, these young people were alienated by the materialism, competition, and conformity of American life in the Cold War. Like utopian idealists in previous centuries, they envisioned an America free from hypocrisy and artificiality. They tried to live out alternative values of gentleness, tolerance, and inclusivity. Sporting headbands, long hair, and beads, many identified with traditional Native Americans, who had repeatedly challenged the greed and deceptions of white culture from the time of Metacom and Popé in the seventeenth century. In place of junk foods, they promoted health foods; in place of profit-seeking businesses, they established co-ops. Referring to themselves as “freaks” for not fitting into “straight” society, they pursued what they saw as an authentic life. “Do your own thing” was the common slogan. In reaction against the conformity of mainstream society, members of the counterculture explored the limitations of consciousness to expand their self-knowledge. They went beyond the nicotine and alcohol that were the common stimulants of their parents’ culture to experiment with such mind-altering drugs as marijuana, peyote, hashish, LSD, cocaine, and even heroin. Spirituality was an important path into consciousness for many in the counterculture. Religious traditions associated with Asia, particularly Buddhism, gained numerous adherents, as did spiritual customs and practices of traditional Native Americans. Others rediscovered the “authentic” Jesus obscured by the institutional structures of the formal Christian church (earning themselves the nickname “Jesus freaks”); Campus Crusade for Christ, Inter- CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 887 ${bmicon} Varsity, and other evangelical college groups spread across the country. Music served as the most common coin of the countercultural realm, from the political folk sound of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan to the broadly popular Beatles and the more distinctly countercultural rock ‘n’ roll of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. By its nature the counterculture had no clear membership. Millions of American youth dabbled in it to varying extents, smoking marijuana and listening to rock ‘n’ roll. A much smaller, more committed group pursued the building of communities—communes—that might coexist with the quest for unrestrained individual expression. These young people were centered in the Haight–Asbury neighborhood of San Francisco until the 1967 Summer of Love, they gathered at the Woodstock music festival in upstate New York in August 1969, and they established 3500 rural communes from Vermont to New Mexico by 1970. With the nation at war against communists in Southeast Asia, critics pointed to communes at home as subversive of the nuclear family and of American capitalist values. Older Americans experienced the counterculture largely as spectacle. The mainstream media emphasized the alternative aspects of the hippie lifestyle in its coverage. Viewers were varyingly disgusted by, attracted to, and titillated by the hair, clothing, nudity, and blurred gender distinctions. Celebrating the counterculture and its rock ‘n’ roll sound, the musical show Hair took Broadway by storm in 1968. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs realized that they could market the antimaterialist counterculture profitably. Young Americans eagerly bought up records, clothing, jewelry, and natural foods—a revealing demonstration of how consumer values pervaded American life. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 888 ${bmicon} full view MAP 26.4 THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA In the 1960s California was still a bit exotic for Americans from the East and Mideast. But continuing immigration to the Golden State and the emergence of air travel in this decade as a common means of transportation tied the nation more closely together. San Francisco, or “The City” to locals, became a hub of the counterculture and rock ‘n’ roll music and a place known for its tolerance and celebration of diversity. One of the most visible changes of the 1960s was often called the sexual revolution. It had earlier roots, evident in the Kinsey Reports of 1948 and 1953 and in the emergence of Playboy magazine’s “swinger” style of the 1950s. Changes in Americans’ sexual behavior in the 1960s reflected in part the counterculture’s goal of living an authentic, honest life in which words matched actions. The sexual revolution removed some of the penalties for the premarital and extramarital sex that had previously been fairly common but unacknowledged. The appearance of the birth control pill in 1960 underpinned the shift to more open sexual relationships by freeing women from the fear of pregnancy. Attitudes toward abortion also became more tolerant. New York passed the first state law legalizing some abortions in 1970, and 3 years later the Supreme Court established a woman’s constitutional right to abortion in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. For American women the sexual revolution proved a double-edged sword. It legitimated female sexuality and helped remove the old stereotyping of women as either “madonna” (virginal until married) or “whore” (lustful and degraded). But it also created pressures from men, especially within the counterculture, for women to have sex with many partners lest they be cast as “uptight” and unliberated. CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 889 ${bmicon} The movement for women’s liberation arose in the late 1960s as a way to resist these kinds of limitations and expectations. Women’s liberation built on developments earlier in the decade. In 1963 writer Betty Friedan, a former labor journalist and then homemaker, published The Feminine Mystique, a widely read book that captured the frustrations of many women who had accepted the role of suburban homemaker after World War II. Friedan condemned the middle-class home as a “comfortable concentration camp” for women that limited their growth as individuals with the often monotonous routines of housework and child-rearing. Friedan and other liberal feminists founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 to lobby against sexual discrimination in the public sphere in such areas as employment, wages, education, and jury duty. These challenges had radical implications for women’s and men’s earnings and thus for responsibilities within families, but NOW did not yet focus on issues inside the private sphere of the home. The shift to the view that “the personal is political” came from younger, mostly white women who had been active in the civil rights and antiwar struggles. Inspired by the courage and successes of the protest movements in which they figured prominently, these female activists had also learned that traditional gender roles restricted them even in organizations dedicated to participatory democracy. Ironically, radical men could be as patronizing and disrespectful of women’s abilities as mainstream men. Younger feminists in 1967 and 1968 began to organize themselves to promote their own liberation from the shackles of traditional gender roles. They agreed with NOW’s challenge to discrimination in the public sphere, but they focused even more on the personal politics of women’s daily lives, on critical issues such as parenting, child care, housework, and abortion. Feminism should liberate men as well as women, they believed, for men also had the contours of their lives unnecessarily constrained by gendered expectations. The women’s liberation movement gained visibility at the 1968 Miss America contest in Atlantic City, where feminists denounced the parading of women to be “appraised and judged like animals at a county fair.” The new wave of feminism that washed through American culture at the end of the 1960s triggered fierce debates about the nature of gender. Was there a uniquely feminine way of knowing, seeing, and acting, or were women in essence the same as men, distinguishable ultimately by their individuality? Was womanhood biologically or only culturally constructed? Feminists disagreed sharply in their answers. Other differences inevitably divided a broad movement that addressed the lives of 51 percent of the entire American people. For example, NOW did not support gay rights until 1973, whereas many radical feminists believed lesbianism to be critical for women’s full independence and autonomy. Women of color often found hierarchies of race and class more significant than those of sex; to them, as to many white working-class women, Friedan’s statement that she wanted “something more than my husband and my children and my house” seemed the distant complaint of a woman of the leisure class. One’s sex alone did not define one’s entire identity. PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 890 ${bmicon} However, diversity within the feminist movement did not hide a common commitment to expanding women’s possibilities. One critical aspect was the need to unlearn niceness and passivity, just as black power advocates sought to unlearn deference. White men would no longer be the sole proprietors of assertiveness; grown women would no longer be “girls” nor grown black men “boys.” The women’s movement that emerged out of the 1960s permanently transformed women’s lives and gender relations in American society, in areas ranging from job and educational opportunities, sexual harassment, and gender-neutral language to family roles, sexual relations, reproductive rights, and athletic facilities. Like the women’s movement, the Chicano, pan-Indian, and gay liberation movements of the late 1960s were grounded in older organizing efforts within those communities. The struggles for “brown power,” “red power,” and “gay power” also reflected the newer influence of black power and its determination to take pride in what the dominant American society had denigrated for so long. Activists on college campuses successfully pressured administrations to establish interdisciplinary ethnic studies programs, such as the first Chicano studies program at California State University at Los Angeles in 1968. Ethnic cultural identity went hand in hand with the pursuit of political and economic integration into mainstream American life. The most prominent push to organize Latinos was the effort led by Cesar Chávez to build a farm workers’ union in California and the Southwest. These primarily Mexican American migrant workers harvested most of the hand-picked produce that Americans ate, but their hard work under severe conditions failed to lift them out of poverty. National consumer support for boycotts of table grapes and iceberg lettuce helped win recognition for the United Farm Workers (UFW) union and better pay by 1970, despite efforts by Republicans such as President Richard Nixon and California governor Ronald Reagan to encourage grape consumption in support of large growers. Younger Mexican Americans organized to oppose the discrimination against them that remained common across the Southwest, especially in schools. They looked with pride on their Mexican heritage, even appropriating the formerly pejorative term Chicano. In March 1968, 10,000 youngsters walked out of their East Los Angeles schools to demand curriculum revisions that would include Latino history, recruitment of more Mexican American teachers, and an end to tracking Chicanos into vocational education classes. Two years later 20,000 people attended the Chicano Moratorium in East Los Angeles to protest the U.S. war in Vietnam. Puerto Ricans, the largest Spanish-speaking ethnic group located primarily on the East Coast, experienced a similar growth in militancy and nationalist sentiment during the late 1960s. Since the United States annexed Puerto Rico after the end of the Spanish–American War in 1898, the Caribbean island had the unusual status of being ruled as a commonwealth of the United States while its residents were U.S. citizens who could not vote in national elections. By the 1960s more than a million islanders had moved to the East Coast, most to the New York City area. The majority came after World War II, and 47,000 served in the Vietnam War. Despite being the only Latino immigrants already holding American citizenship when they arrived, Puerto Ricans experienced similar patterns of both discrimination and opportunity as Mexican Americans. Younger Puerto Ricans formed the Young Lords in 1969 as a more militant and nationalist alternative to established Puerto Rican community organizations, one that combined pride in Puerto Rican identity and the Spanish language with leftist politics and opposition to the Vietnam War. The most destitute of Americans, Indians also sought to reinvigorate their communities. On the Northwest coast they staged “fish-ins” in the mid-1960s to assert treaty rights, and in 1968 urban activists in Minneapolis formed the American Indian Movement (AIM). On November 20, 1969, just days after the largest antiwar march in Washington, 78 Native Americans seized the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay “in the name of all American CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 891 ${bmicon} Indians by right of discovery.” For a year and a half they used their occupation of the former federal prison site to publicize grievances about anti-Indian prejudice and to promote a new pan-Indian identity that reached across traditional tribal divisions. In 1973 armed members of AIM occupied buildings for two months at Wounded Knee near Pine Ridge, South Dakota, site of the infamous 1890 U.S. Army massacre of unarmed Sioux. AIM sought to bring down the conservative tribal government of the Oglala reservation, but the failure of that effort led to internal dissent and FBI harassment that eventually dissolved the organization. Tribal governments sought “red power” in their own quieter way. They asserted greater tribal control of reservation schools across the country. They also regained sovereignty over some lands previously lost, such as Blue Lake in northern New Mexico, which the Taos Indians reacquired. full view Sign at a Gay Pride March Sign at a Gay Pride March (Photodisc, Inc.) Although they lacked a unifying ethnic identity, gay men and lesbians also found opportunities to construct coalitions in the more open atmosphere of the late 1960s. Building on the earlier but quieter community organizing of older homosexuals in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, more militant youth began to express openly their anger at the homophobic prejudice and violence prevalent in American society. The demand for tolerance and respect reached the headlines when gay patrons of the Stonewall Bar in New York fought back fiercely PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 892 ${bmicon} against a typically forceful police raid on June 27, 1969. Activists of the new Gay Liberation Front emphasized the importance of “coming out of the closet”: proudly acknowledging one’s sexual orientation as legitimate and decent. Like “black is beautiful,” this tactic represented an effort to recast the terms of one’s identity apart from an ongoing tradition of prejudice. The American Psychiatric Association still listed homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973. The majority of Americans had mixed feelings about the protests that roiled the nation. They were impressed by the courage of many who stood up against discrimination, and by 1968 they wanted to find a way out of the war in Southeast Asia. But they were alienated by the style and values of others who loudly demanded change in American society. Moderate and conservative citizens and generations of recent European immigrants resented what they saw as a lack of appreciation for the nation’s virtues and successes. Powerful backlashes developed against the counterculture, antiwar radicals, and changes in race and gender relations. The political and social upheavals of 1968 opened the door to a Republican return to the White House, and Richard Nixon slipped through. The backlash first developed in response to the increasing assertiveness of people of color. European Americans in every part of the United States had long been accustomed to deference from nonwhites and racial segregation, either by law in the South or by custom elsewhere. Conservatives resented what they considered to be black ingratitude at the civil rights measures enacted by the federal government, including black power’s condemnation of whites as “crackers” and “honkies.” Urban riots and escalating rates of violent crime, along with the Supreme Court’s expansion of the rights of the accused, deepened their anger. They associated crime with urban African Americans, for although whites were still the majority of criminals, blacks (like any other population with less money) were disproportionately represented in prisons. Many in the white working class feared that desegregating schools and neighborhoods would lead to a decline in their property values. While keeping darker-skinned Americans economically and socially subordinated, most whites still expected them to want to emulate mainstream white American society. Leaders such as Cesar Chávez and Martin Luther King, Jr., were devout Christians who emphasized equality and nonviolence, and many whites admired them. But the rise of often angry nonwhite nationalism dismayed most European Americans. They were troubled by the militancy of Chicanos in the Southwest, Puerto Ricans in the Northeast, Indians on reservations and in cities, and African Americans almost everywhere. The backlash was not only about race. It also represented a defense of traditional hierarchies against the cultural rebellions of the 1960s. Proud of their lives and values, conservatives rejected a whole array of challenges to American society. Raised to believe in respecting one’s elders, they resented the disrespect of many youth, who warned, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” A generation that had fought and sacrificed in the “good war” against the Nazis found the absence of patriotism among many protesters unfathomable. The United States remained one of the most religious of industrialized societies, and conservative churchgoers emphasized obedience to authorities. They feared the effects of illegal drugs on their children. They resented being told that their assumptions about the roles and behavior of men and women, on which they had built their daily lives, were wrong. They did not want to argue about the behavior of the U.S. government; “America: Love It Or Leave It” became a favorite bumper sticker. The backlash against the social changes of the 1960s contained elements of class antagonism as well. Working-class whites resented both the often affluent campus rebels and the black CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 893 ${bmicon} and Latino poor targeted by some Great Society programs. They believed that their values of hard work, restraint, and respectability were increasingly unappreciated and even mocked. The counterculture’s disdain for material comfort and economic security offended many older Americans of all colors who had experienced great deprivation in the 1930s. Politicians seized on these feelings of working-class alienation for political gain. Republican leaders from Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan gave voice to these resentments and drew votes away from Democratic blue-collar strongholds. Democratic governor George Wallace of Alabama also became a spokesperson for the anger of many “forgotten” whites on both sides of the Mason–Dixon line. Even television gave voice to the backlash in the likable character of Archie Bunker on All in the Family, a wildly popular program from its first airing in January 1971. The traumas of 1968 brought the conservative backlash to the critical stage. First came the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, creating fears that the war might become an interminable quagmire. Conservatives, like most other Americans, found it incredible that the mighty United States could not vanquish so small an enemy. Then, on April 4, just 5 days after President Johnson announced his retirement plans, a gunman named James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, where he had gone to support a strike by sanitation workers. King had become more openly radical in his final years, opposing the war and working on class-based organizing of poor people. But he remained the nation’s leading apostle of nonviolence, and his murder evoked despair among millions of citizens, especially African Americans. Police battled rioters and arsonists in black neighborhoods of 130 cities across the nation, with 46 people dying in the clashes. National Guard troops ringed the White House as smoke from hundreds of fires rose over Washington, D.C.; large parts of the nation’s capital looked like a war zone. Summer brought more shocking news. Robert Kennedy’s entry into the presidential campaign inspired renewed hopes among Democratic liberals. The charismatic senator turned against the war in Vietnam, and, unlike Eugene McCarthy, he seemed like a candidate who could attract support from a wide array of Americans, white and nonwhite, young and old. On the night of his victory in the June 5 California primary, PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 894 ${bmicon} Kennedy was shot by a deranged gunman and died the next morning. Americans were stunned by this second murder of a Kennedy. Vice President Hubert Humphrey seemed assured of the nomination at the Democratic convention in Chicago in August, despite his association with Johnson’s war policies. Some 10,000 antiwar activists, including hundreds of FBI agents provocateurs (spies seeking to provoke violence), showed up to engage in protests outside the convention. Chicago’s Democratic mayor Richard Daley warned that “as long as I am Mayor, there will be law and order in the streets.” Instead, he unleashed thousands of police on protesters, bystanders, and photographers in an orgy of beatings that subsequent investigations called a police riot. Ninety million Americans watched on television as a deeply divided Democratic party appeared helpless before the violence. Into the vacuum of public anger and alienation that accompanied the liberals’ self-destruction in Chicago stepped two men. George Wallace had long spoken for white Southerners resentful of the federal government and its growing support for racial equality. The spread of the conservative backlash from 1964 to 1968 gave him a wider constituency for his rightwing populist message of hostility to liberals, blacks, and federal officials. With the national Democratic party committed to racial integration, Wallace ran for president as an independent candidate and won 13.5 percent of the popular vote in November. Republican candidate Richard Nixon, fresh from a unified convention in Miami, campaigned as the candidate of “law and order” and promised that he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. His contacts with the South Vietnamese government helped ensure that no last-minute breakthrough in the Paris peace talks would boost Humphrey’s popularity, and the former vice president squeezed past the current one by less than 1 percent of the popular vote. TABLE 26-2 The Election of 1968 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Richard M. Nixon Republican 31,770,237 301 Hubert H. Humphrey Democratic 31,270,533 191 George Wallace American Independent 9,906,141 46 A lonely, aloof man of great tenacity and ambition, Richard Nixon had worked hard to remake his public image for 1968. Widely viewed as a somewhat unscrupulous partisan since his early career in Congress, he had refashioned himself as a statesman with a broad vision for reducing international tensions between the great powers. Foreign policy fascinated him, and, unlike Johnson, he found domestic governance utterly dull—a matter of “building out-houses in Peoria.” He won the Republican presidential nomination primarily because he bridged the gap between the party’s conservative Sunbelt wing and its moderate eastern wing. He sounded like a conservative in the campaign against Humphrey, but once in the White House he governed as the most liberal Republican since Theodore Roosevelt, pressed by a Congress still controlled by Democrats. full view Richard Nixon Richard Nixon (Library of Congress) Nowhere was this clearer than on issues related to natural resources. Much had happened to the environment since the Republican Roosevelt’s conservation efforts, none of it for the better. A powerful movement was building to protect natural resources and human health from the effects of air and water pollution. Biologist Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling The Population Bomb (1968) warned of the dire consequences of the globe’s runaway growth in human population. In 1969, the government banned the carcinogenic pesticide DDT, its original usefulness against mosquito-born malaria in World War II now almost forgotten in light of its broadly toxic effects on wildlife and aquatic ecosystems. That same year a huge oil spill off Santa Barbara fouled 200 miles of pristine California beaches, and the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, its surface coated with waste and oil, caught fire and burned for days. Apollo 8 astro- CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 895 ${bmicon} nauts brought home unprecedented pictures of the earth that seemed to dramatize the vulnerability of the small blue-green planet as it hung alone in space. Environmentalists around the country proclaimed April 22, 1970, as “Earth Day.” Congress responded with legislation that mandated the careful management of the nation’s natural resources. The Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970. Amendments to the Clean Air (1970) and Clean Water (1972) acts tightened restrictions on harmful emissions from cars and factories. The Endangered Species Act (1973) created for the first time the legal right of nonhuman animals to survive, a major step toward viewing the quality of human life as inextricable from the earth’s broader ecology. Nixon did not take the lead in promoting environmental laws, about which he personally cared little, telling business supporters that “in a flat choice between smoke and jobs, we’re for jobs.” But the president recognized the bipartisan popularity of actions to limit ecological damage, and he followed Congress’s lead. What Nixon did care deeply about at home was politics, not policy. Antiwar demonstrations reached their height during Nixon’s first 2 years in the White House (1969–1970). He and Vice President Spiro Agnew loathed the protesters, whom they saw as weakening the nation. The two men pursued what Agnew called “positive polarization”: campaigning to further divide the respectable “silent majority,” as the president labeled his supporters, from voluble liberal Democrats in Congress and radical activists on the streets, whom they associated with permissiveness and lawlessness. In this broad cultural battle for political supremacy, the president appealed to conservative white southern and northern ethnic Democrats. His “Southern strategy” centered on opposing the use of court-ordered busing to desegregate public schools. He nominated two very conservative Southerners to the Supreme Court, only to see the Senate vote both of them down. Antiwar demonstrations reached their height during Nixon’s first 2 years in the White House (1969–1970). Early in his administration Nixon began wielding the power of the federal government to harass his political opponents. Johnson had used the FBI, the CIA, and military intelligence agencies to infiltrate and thin the ranks of antiwar demonstrators and nonwhite nationalists. Nixon continued those illegal operations, agreeing with his predecessor that radical activists constituted a threat to national security. Nixon even suggested that the nation’s worst enemies were at home: “North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” He went beyond other presidents in assembling an “Enemies List” that included prominent elements of the political mainstream, especially liberals, the press, and his Democratic opponents. The president was particularly concerned about controlling secret information. The Pentagon Papers were a classified Defense Department history of U.S. actions in Vietnam revealing that the government had been deceiving the American public about the course of the war. When disillusioned former Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg leaked the study to the New York Times for publication in 1971, Nixon was enraged. The White House created a team of covert operatives nicknamed the Plumbers to “plug leaks” by whatever means necessary, including breaking into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in search of information they might use to discredit him publicly. Nixon recognized that in Vietnam the Truman Doctrine (see Chapter 24) had been stretched to the breaking point. The United States simply could not afford to send its troops everywhere abroad to contain the expansion of communism. The president and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, had ambitious plans for shifting the relationships of the great powers to America’s advantage. To deal with China and the Soviet Union, they first had to reduce the vast U.S. engagement in the small country of Vietnam, which had grown wildly out of proportion to actual U.S. interests there. Their vision became known as the Nixon PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 896 ${bmicon} Doctrine, in which the United States would provide military hardware rather than U.S. soldiers to allied governments, which would have to do their own fighting against leftist insurgencies. In South Vietnam this doctrine required “Vietnamization,” or withdrawing American troops so ARVN could shoulder the bulk of the war. The key to a successful withdrawal from Vietnam for Nixon was to preserve U.S. “credibility.” The perception of power could be as important as its actual exercise, and the president wanted other nations, both friend and foe, to continue to respect and fear American military might. There was no immediate pullout but a gradual process that lasted for 4 years (1969–1973), during which almost half of the total U.S. casualties in Vietnam occurred. To avoid a humiliating collapse of the Saigon regime as soon as Americans left, Nixon did his utmost to weaken the communist forces during the slow withdrawal. The administration escalated in order to deescalate. The president ordered the secret bombing and invasion of neighboring Cambodia and Laos, an intensified aerial assault on North Vietnam, and the mining of Haiphong Harbor near Hanoi. Enormous protests rocked the country after the announcement of the Cambodian invasion on April 30, 1970, including a strike by hundreds of thousands of students that disrupted classes on more than 700 college campuses. National Guard troops killed four students at a demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio and two at Jackson State College in Mississippi, deepening the sense of national division. The hit song “Four Dead in Ohio” by the popular group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young quickly became an antiwar anthem. full view “Buzz” Aldrin on the Moon Astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin on the moon, July 1969, photographed by flight commander Neil Armstrong. (NASA) full view Rocket at NASA Space Center Rocket at the NASA Space Center (Photodisc, Inc.) full view Kent State Demonstrations After President’s Nixon’s 1970 announcement of American incursion into Cambodia, student demonstrations broke out across the country. The demonstrations at Kent State became infamous after National Guardsmen fired upon unarmed students, killing four people and inciting even more demonstrations. (Kent State University) A majority of Americans now opposed the nation’s war effort, a level of dissent unprecedented in U.S. history. Most telling of all was the criticism of some veterans returning from Vietnam. Although most stayed quiet about their traumatic experiences, some organized the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and even held public hearings into atrocities—war crimes—they and others had committed. These dissenters were extremely hard for prowar Americans to discredit. The morale of American soldiers still in Vietnam plummeted as the steady withdrawal of their comrades made clear that they were no longer expected to win the war. Drug abuse and racial conflict increased sharply among GIs. Even “fragging” (killing one’s own officers) escalated before the peace accords were signed in Paris and the U.S. evacuated its last combat troops in 1973. Between 1964 and 1971 changes shook the foundations of society and altered how Americans understood themselves. Many long-standing hierarchies of age, race, and gender began to break up as young, nonwhite, and female Americans laid claim to greater equality. The ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971 reduced the voting age from 21 to 18, in acknowledgment of the sacrifices of young people sent to fight in Vietnam. In large numbers, women challenged and overcame traditional limits on their personal and work lives. Racial discrimination and segregation were outlawed. Immigration law for the first time welcomed new Americans equally regardless of nation of origin or color of skin. CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 897 ${bmicon} full view Project Mercury Astronauts With the founding of NASA in 1958, the United States moved quickly to catch up to the Soviets – the “space race” was under way. Heroes for the new age of space exploration included the astronauts of the United States first manned space program, Project Mercury. (NASA, Media Services Corporation) full view First Manned Space Exploration - Project Mercury The United States first manned space exploration venture was the Mercury project, which began with the launch of Mercury 3 on May 5, 1961, manned by astronaut Alan Shepard. (NASA, Media Services Corporation) These years also witnessed striking disjunctures. The nation accomplished humanity’s age-old dream of walking on the surface of the moon when Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on July 20, 1969, while at home the country sometimes appeared to be coming apart at the seams. Poverty rates dropped to their lowest point ever, yet violence seemed to pervade the land. The slaughter of 43 people (mostly African Americans) by white state police retaking the Attica prison in upstate New York after an inmate insurrection in 1971 was one of the single most deadly confrontations between Americans since the Civil War. full view First Manned Space Exploration - Project Mercury Space Shuttle Lifting Off (Photodisc, Inc.) The Vietnam War ended the Cold War consensus about the nation’s duty to oppose communism abroad. The loss of this cornerstone of public purpose disoriented many citizens. The deceptive manner in which Johnson and Nixon waged the war eroded Americans’ faith in their public officials, a process that the Watergate scandal accelerated between 1972 and 1974. American life also grew more informal as the egalitarian style of the various social movements of the 1960s spread into the broader culture. But the removal of some of the most blatant distinctions of race and gender did not extend to differences of class. In the watershed cases of San Antonio PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 898 ${bmicon} Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) and Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Warren Burger, affirmed the autonomy of local school districts. Wealthier districts did not have to share financing with poorer ones, nor did they have to share students by means of busing. The Court ruled that there was no constitutional right to an education of equal quality. The ladder of social mobility remained slippery in a nation whose neighborhoods were still stratified between the affluent and the poor. The Sixties Project lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/ This University of Virginia site has extensive exhibits, primary documents, and personal narratives from the 1960s. Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/ This presidential library site has images and online exhibits. Vietnam War Internet Project www.vwip.org/vwiphome.html This site offers one of the most extensive collections on the Web of useful information on various aspects of the war. My Lai Court Martial (1970) www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/mylai.htm This site contains images, chronology, and court and official documents maintained by Dr. Doug Linder at the University of Missouri–Kansas City Law School. The Digger Archives www.diggers.org This site provides information about the San Francisco Diggers, a prominent countercultural group in the Haight– Asbury scene of 1966–1968. U.S. Latino History and Culture (Smithsonian Institution) www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmah/latino.htm This site offers exhibits, photos, resources, and links to other useful sites on the lives of Latino Americans. Gay Rights Movement www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/events/sw25/casel.html This site includes articles from the New York City press as well as first-hand accounts of the 1969 Greenwich Village riots that are commemorated throughout the country during Gay Pride celebrations. Chafe, William H. The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II. 3rd ed. 1995. Farber, David. The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s. 1994. Farber, David, ed.The Sixties: From Memory to History. 1994. Isserman, Maurice and Michael Kazin. America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. 2000. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. 1996. Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973. 1998. Matusow, Allen J. The Unravelling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s. 1984. Powe, Lucas A., Jr. The Warren Court and American Politics. 2000. Schulman, Bruce J. Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism. 1995. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1965. Gardner, Lloyd C. Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam. 1995. Herr, Michael. Dispatches. 1977. Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. 3rd ed. 1996. Rotter, Andrew J., ed. Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Vietnam War Anthology. Revised ed. 1999. Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975. 1997. Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990. 1991. CHAPTER 26 ###8226; THE NATION DIVIDES 899 ${bmicon} Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee. 1995. Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975. 1989. Evans, Sara. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. 1979. Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. 1987. Miller, Timothy. The ‘60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond. 1999. Van Deburg, William L. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975. 1992. Wells, Tom. The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam. 1994. Carter, Dan T. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. 2nd ed. 2000. Kimball, Jeffrey. Nixon’s Vietnam War. 1998. McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. 2001. Rothman, Hal K. The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945. 1998. Small, Melvin. The Presidency of Richard Nixon. 1999. Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter26 To Chapter 26 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 900 ${bmicon}         Twin Shocks: Détente and Watergate       Discovering the Limits of the U.S. Economy       Reshuffling Politics       Diffusing the Women’s Movement       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 901 ${bmicon} KAREN SILKWOOD GREW UP IN AN UNASSUMING MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILY IN NEDERLAND, Texas, near the Gulf Coast. She baby-sat at her church nursery, earned straight A’s through high school, and went to Lamar College on a full scholarship to study medical technology. Marriage, three children, and a divorce intervened, and in 1972 she began working as a laboratory analyst at Kerr–McGee’s plutonium processing plant in Crescent, Oklahoma. There the highly poisonous radioactive material was made into fuel rods for nuclear power plants. In the summer of 1974, at age 28, Silkwood was elected a local official of the union that represented many Kerr–McGee workers and began organizing for greater worker safety. She learned of numerous incidents of radioactive contamination at the plant. She also uncovered evidence of significant quantities of missing plutonium and of doctored quality assurance records for defective fuel rods. On November 5, she was mysteriously contaminated with potentially lethal levels of plutonium. On November 13 Silkwood set out for Oklahoma City to meet a national representative of her union and a New York Times reporter, intending to give them documents proving that Kerr–McGee was knowingly manufacturing defective nuclear products. She never made it. Her car was forced off the road and she died instantly when it crashed into a concrete culvert. Karen Silkwood challenged the power of one of the nation’s largest energy corporations and paid with her life. Her brief career as a whistleblower brought together major issues of the 1970s: labor organizing, environmental damage, the safety record of nuclear energy, and the power of corporations over individual citizens. Her dismissive treatment by some fellow workers, her employers, and the media also suggested the lack of respect that women had long endured, especially when they moved out of the traditional homemaker role. ABC television news anchor Howard K. Smith began his coverage of a women’s rights march in New York City in 1970 by quoting with approval the words of Vice President Spiro Agnew: “Three things have been difficult to tame. The ocean, fools, and women. We may soon be able to tame the ocean, but fools and women will take a little longer.” Condescension toward women still pervaded American society, and few men even noticed it. The political upheavals of the 1960s had barely touched the relationships between most women and men by the start of the new decade. But all this changed as the 1970s unfolded. The spread of ideas about women’s liberation in the 1970s transformed the personal lives of almost every American, female and male alike. Feminism challenged the most basic and intimate assumptions about relationships, family, work, and power. It also sharply expanded women’s opportunities. At the end of the decade, Dr. Martha Hurley of Kansas City recalled, “In the middle of an operation today, I looked around the room—to the first assistant, my scrub nurse, and circulating nurse, the anesthesia doctor, nurse anesthetist, and the patient—and suddenly realized that we were performing major surgery and there was not a man in the room!” PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 902 ${bmicon} Who were the feminists? They were mothers and wives, college students, professional women, and working-class women. Their growing awareness of gender discrimination had made them angry but also optimistic about change. And some feminists were men who realized that the movement could liberate them from their own narrowly defined masculine roles. Feminists of all stripes could be both deadly serious and disarmingly funny. Journalist Gloria Steinem, who founded Ms. magazine in 1972, became one of the prominent faces of the movement. Steinem’s appearance enabled her to finagle a job as a cocktail waitress at the New York Playboy Club in 1963. Her goal: to write an exposé of the decidedly unsexy working conditions of the famous Playboy “bunnies.” Steinem later lampooned men’s common sense of entitlement and privilege and their often competitive attitudes toward their bodies in an essay called “If Men Could Menstruate”: “Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, boastworthy, masculine event: Men would brag about how much and how long. Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.” Not all Americans were amused by challenges to long-standing beliefs about men’s and women’s proper roles. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), exemplified the resistance that could catalyze against demands for fair treatment of women. Well known for his dislike of leftists, African Americans, homosexuals, and anyone else who questioned the existing social order—including labor organizers such as Karen Silkwood—Hoover ordered his agents to infiltrate the women’s liberation movement. (Ironically, Hoover was a cross-dresser in private and perhaps also gay, an apparent case of self-loathing.) Feminists, he warned FBI regional directors, “should be viewed as part of the enemy, a challenge to American values.” At one point, the director instructed an FBI field office to “identify the officers and aims and objectives of this organization.” But despite determined digging for information, a paid informant could report only that “this movement has no leaders, dues or organizations.” Women’s liberation was both nowhere and everywhere. No one could trace it to a specific group of conspirators. The feminist wave called traditional values and hierarchies into question as it washed over the United States in the 1970s. In a certain sense, Hoover was right: the feminist wave did call traditional values and hierarchies into question as it washed over the United States in the 1970s. It joined with other developments of the decade to force Americans to reexamine much that they had taken for granted. Elected on the promise to end the war in Southeast Asia “with honor,” President Nixon escalated the fighting before eventually withdrawing U.S. forces from Vietnam. At the same time, he repaired relations with both China and the Soviet Union as those two communist powers drew apart. Americans thus suffered their first clear defeat in war while also seeing the Cold War splinter. Scandal in the White House then forced the first resignation of a U.S. president and deepened public distrust of political authorities. American economic growth—the foundation of the country’s power—stumbled because of spending on the Vietnam War and oil shortages. High-paying manufacturing jobs declined as factories began to move overseas in pursuit of cheaper labor, and skilled blue-collar workers saw their status as middle-class Americans start to slip. Unemployment grew sharply. And a growing environmental movement raised disturbing questions about whether an expanding economy and exploitation of natural resources should continue to top the country’s list of priorities. The nation celebrated its two-hundredth birthday in 1976 amid these uncertainties. That year, one-term Georgia governor Jimmy Carter won election to the White House by promising to restore honesty and trust to the federal government. In his first two years in office, Carter shifted the nation’s foreign policy focus away from fighting communism CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 903 ${bmicon} toward building warmer relations with the Third World. He saw Americans’ dependence on imported oil as a primary national security problem and implored citizens to scale back their lavish consumption of fossil fuels. But his presidency eventually foundered on persistent economic stagnation and inflation at home, upheavals abroad, and Carter’s own limitations as chief executive. Journalist Tom Wolfe dubbed the 1970s the “Me Decade,” a phrase that proved even more appropriate for the 1980s. The label did have some merit: many Americans turned away from the public sphere after the exhilarating but divisive politics of the 1960s and pursued self-exploration and self-fulfillment instead. Crime, divorce, premarital and extramarital sex, and drug use all increased while the nation’s economic health and international status declined. But the 1970s also witnessed a rethinking of long-standing assumptions: about how democracy should work at home, what role the nation should play in international affairs, how people ought to treat the environment, and how men and women should relate to each other. The decade offered a window of opportunity for Americans to reimagine their values and priorities for the future. Richard Nixon had long been the nation’s leading anticommunist. No one had more fiercely opposed leftists at home and communists in China and the Soviet Union. However, the president was more a savvy political opportunist than an ideologue. He and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, saw a chance to use mounting Chinese–Soviet tensions to the advantage of the United States as they withdrew American armed forces from Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger recognized that the United States had entered an era of new limits to its power. They cleverly tapped into the rivalry dividing the communist world to preserve U.S. influence overseas. Their efforts ultimately eased Cold War tensions. At the same time that Nixon manipulated the Cold War abroad, the Republican president initiated a campaign of illegal actions at home to destroy his political opponents in the Democratic party. This strategy backfired in a scandal that drove him from office in 1974. Having undercut the logic of anticommunism abroad by warming relations with communist leaders in Beijing and Moscow, Nixon eroded the bipartisan consensus at home that had long supported the Cold War. Wearied by the deceptions and debates of Vietnam, Americans found themselves questioning anew their political assumptions and the trustworthiness of their leaders. Nixon and Kissinger prided themselves on their “realpolitik” approach to foreign policy: their pragmatic assessment of other powers’ security needs, regardless of ideology, and their collaboration with those powers on issues of common concern. In 1969, China and the USSR gave Nixon and Kissinger an ideal opportunity to exercise their realpolitik skills. That year, tensions that had PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 904 ${bmicon} full view MAP 27.1 NUCLEAR WEAPONS BEFORE DÉTENTE The massive nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union utterly surpassed those of the other nuclear powers. During the 1970s the Soviets achieved rough parity with the Americans in total nuclear warheads. The numbers for both sides were sufficient to destroy the entire populated world many times over. been building between the two communist states erupted in brief skirmishing between Chinese and Soviet troops on their shared border. For two decades, Americans had seen the Communist bloc as impenetrable. Nixon realized he could play China and the USSR against each other, and he seized the chance. That is, he saw a way to make both Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Chinese leader Mao Zedong into another “Tito,” an independent communist with ties to the West, like Premier Josef Tito of Yugoslavia. He thus envisioned a “triangular diplomacy” that he hoped would divide the communist world. The president and Kissinger, a former Harvard professor with an intriguing German accent, also shared a commitment to secrecy. Any fundamental revision of the nation’s for- CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 905 ${bmicon} eign policy, they believed, could happen only if they concentrated all decision-making in the White House. They set out to keep Congress, the press, and even their own State Department in the dark. Diplomatic innovation thus went hand in hand with an unprecedented extension of the secretive national security state. In February 1972, after a secret foray by Kissinger to Beijing, Nixon stunned Americans and the world by announcing that he would be the first U.S. president to visit China. The Soviets and the Vietnamese expressed dismay at the news, and liberal Democrats at home could only gape, speechless, at their opponent’s diplomatic coup: how could Nixon, a dyed-in-the-wool anticommunist, go to China? But that was precisely the point: as Democratic party insider PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 906 ${bmicon} Clark Clifford explained, Nixon was “the first president since the [Second World] War who didn’t have to worry about Richard Nixon” attacking him for being “soft” on communism. As it turned out, Nixon’s visit brought a host of benefits. Live television coverage showed Nixon toasting Mao while a Chinese military band played “America the Beautiful” and “Home on the Range.” Americans’ impression of the People’s Republic as a grim, forbidding land began to give way to a renewed interest in China as an exotic but intriguing place. Cultural exchanges soon proliferated: first ping-pong teams, eventually legions of students. U.S. businesses also cast a covetous eye at the immense China market. Trade between the two nations rose dramatically over the next three decades. Nixon and Kissinger now constructed the other leg of their diplomatic triangle. As they anticipated, the Soviets had taken alarm at the warming of relations between their two greatest rivals. They signaled their concern to Washington and suggested that the United States include them in the new arrangements. Nixon and Kissinger understood that behind Moscow’s veneer of revolutionary dogma stood a powerful nation increasingly committed to the international status quo. Moreover, the Russians and the Americans shared similar concerns. Both wanted to reduce the costliness of maintaining enormous nuclear arsenals, and each side saw lucrative trading possibilities with the other. Nixon flew to Moscow for a summit meeting with Brezhnev in May 1972 that initiated a policy of détente (relaxation of tensions). A trade pact quickly followed. The two superpowers also agreed to limit offensive nuclear weapons (the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty, or SALT I) and to ban antiballistic missile defense systems (the ABM treaty). Like the Soviet leaders, Nixon and Kissinger sought to preserve the existing international balance of power. Deal-making with China and the USSR constituted one step in this process. In another, the two men sought to stifle socialist revolutions in Third World nations by bolstering pro-American allies there. For instance, the duo feared that the democratic election of socialist Salvador Allende in Chile in 1970 would lead to “another Cuba.” A socialist leader might nationalize the investments of U.S. corporations in Chile and perhaps challenge Washington’s capitalist hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Determined to block these possibilities, the CIA secretly funded a right-wing military coup in Chile in September 1973. Allende died in the assault on the presidential palace, and the rebel forces murdered thousands of his supporters and established a brutal military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people,” Kissinger explained privately. There was little danger of such voter “irresponsibility” in South Africa, a nation that would not see democratic elections for another two decades. Still, the Nixon administration backed the white minority regime there, despite worldwide criticism of the government’s policies of total racial segregation, or apartheid. Nixon’s “southern strategy” of appealing to segregationist whites at home during the 1968 election campaign thus had an international parallel. In South Africa, “the whites are here to stay,” a key National Security Council study declared. The study affirmed the president’s goal of preserving a pro-American order in South Africa, the southern tip of a continent rife with political instability. After the bungled Watergate break-in, the president directed the cover-up from the beginning, then lied about it to the public. Nixon and Kissinger reached beyond Latin America and Africa. They also bolstered the autocratic regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran. They sold him unlimited arms in return for Iranian oil shipments and political support in the strategic Middle East, where the United States had few allies. The president could not know it at the time, but preserving the Shah’s oppressive rule carried a high price—one that the United States would pay later. On June 17, 1972, Washington police caught agents of Nixon’s reelection campaign breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate hotel and office com- CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 907 ${bmicon} plex. The burglars’ goal was to put in place secretive listening devices, or “bugs.” Later, the White House tried to cover up its connections to the caper. Ironically, the Republicans hardly needed to resort to illegal actions to hold onto the White House in 1972. The New Deal coalition that had kept the Democrats as the majority party since the 1930s was fast unraveling. White Southerners and many ethnic European Northerners were abandoning the party amid its increasing identification with black civil rights, feminism, and cultural liberalism. Middle- and upper-middle-class liberal activists had helped nominate South Dakota senator George McGovern, a former World War II pilot and college professor, as the Democratic presidential candidate, primarily on the basis of his principled and long-standing opposition to the war in Vietnam. Playing upon voter anxiety about cultural changes, the Republicans tarred McGovern’s supporters with favoring “the 3 A’s”: acid (the drug LSD), abortion, and amnesty for draft evaders. McGovern’s campaign never overcame that image of radicalism, and in November Nixon won 61 percent of the popular vote. He also swept the electoral votes of every state but one. Bumper stickers reading “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts” proliferated as the Watergate scandal deepened. TABLE 27-1 The Election of 1972 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Richard M. Nixon Republican 47,169,911 520 George S. McGovern Democratic 29,170,383 17 But the Watergate break-in was only one step in Nixon’s broader campaign of illegal warfare against his political opponents. An insecure and unhappy loner, Nixon harbored an almost paranoid suspicion when he took office in early 1969. The conflict still raging in Vietnam had polarized Americans more than at any time since the Civil War, and the president compiled a lengthy and secret “enemies list.” “This is a war…. They are asking for it and they are going to get it,” he told aides. The president continued his predecessor’s harassment of antiwar dissidents. He also agreed with Johnson’s advice that “leaks can kill you” and sought tighter control over all executive agencies of the federal government. Nixon Responds to Early Watergate Investigations In early 1973, President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up came to national attention as various members of the president’s advisory staff and cabinet either resigned or publicly agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. In the clip, Nixon gave a nervous televised address welcoming the growing scrutiny of his administration by Congress. The following year-long series of congressional hearings would culminate in Nixon’s own resignation from office in the face of impeachment on August 9, 1979. Nixon and Kissinger took things one step further in May 1969, when they established the first in a long series of wiretaps without court warrants on their own staffs and reporters. They were determined to discover the source of a newspaper story that had mentioned secret American bombing of neutral Cambodia. Several wartime presidents in the past had successfully silenced dissenters, but Nixon overreached still further. The president ultimately poisoned the very heart of American politics by his clandestine use of the government’s powerful executive branch to undermine the mainstream opposition party and others who seemed to challenge his policies. The president and his aides regularly discussed “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies,” in the words of White House counsel John Dean. They persuaded the FBI and the CIA to monitor and harass antiwar activists and pushed the Internal Revenue Service to investigate prominent Democrats. They extorted large contributions to the Republican party from corporate executives by making it clear that federal agencies would otherwise impede the pursuit of their business interests. The New York Times’s publication of the classified Pentagon Papers in 1971 stiffened the resolve of the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) to stop any further leaks. The committee assembled a group of undercover operatives (the “plumbers”) to engineer “dirty tricks” against the Democrats. Their activities included smearing the reputation of one leading presidential candidate, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, and sowing dissent and distrust among Democratic voters. For example, during the New Hampshire primary, Democrats in that nearly all-white state received late-night phone calls from a mysterious “Harlem for Muskie” committee. Callers urged them to vote for the senator because of his supposed support for African Americans’ interests—a devious ploy to arouse potential racism. After the bungled Watergate break-in, the president directed the cover-up from the beginning, then lied about it to the public. He also used the CIA to hinder the FBI’s investigation Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 908 ${bmicon} into the matter. He approved payments of hush money to the burglars to keep them quiet about their ties to the White House. Nixon’s abuse of power escalated as he pressured his subordinates to perjure themselves in court. For most of a year the cover-up held, and Nixon won reelection in 1972. full view Gerald Ford Gerald Ford (Library of Congress) But the persistent investigations by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein kept the heat on. In early 1973, the administration began to crack due to a grand jury probe in the federal court of Judge John Sirica. The president’s men lost confidence that the cover-up would hold and began looking for ways to save their own skins. Convicted Watergate burglar James McCord wrote Judge Sirica that the White House had indeed been involved in the break-in. White House counsel Dean and former Attorney General John Mitchell refused Nixon’s requests to absorb full blame and become scapegoats. Congress initiated its own televised investigations that mesmerized a national audience. The Senate Watergate committee, chaired by eloquent conservative North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin, methodically exposed the criminal actions in the White House with growing bipartisan support. The key issue, as framed by Republican committee member Howard Baker of Tennessee becam, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” On July 16, 1973, White House aide Alexander Butterfield told the Ervin Committee that a built-in recorder taped all conversations in the Oval Office. Almost certainly, these tapes would provide answers to questions about the president’s role. Both Congress and Justice Department special prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed the White House tapes, but Nixon refused to hand them over. Instead, he fired Cox on October 20 in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Outraged, Congress initiated impeachment proceedings against the president. CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 909 ${bmicon} In the spring of 1974, the House of Representatives passed bills of impeachment for his specific abuses of power. Before the Senate could vote on whether to find Nixon guilty of the House charges, the Supreme Court ruled that the White House had to turn over the subpoenaed tapes. The content of the tapes revealed the extent of the president’s involvement in the cover-up and his personal crudeness, vindictiveness, and ethnic and racial prejudices. Facing a certain guilty verdict, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, less than halfway through his second term. full view Nixon Releases Transcripts of Oval Office Tapes In an effort to deflect growing criticism, Richard Nixon released edited transcripts of his oval office tape recordings in April 1974. With suspicious gaps and the frequent invoking of “expletive deleted,” the transcripts failed to win the president public sympathy. (National Archives) Never before had a U.S. president been driven from office. Many citizens celebrated the outcome of the Watergate investigations as evidence of democracy’s resilience and power to uncover criminal activity in the White House and bring down a corrupt president. But the affair also discredited political institutions Americans had long respected. If you can’t trust the president, U.S. citizens lamented, whom can you trust? Indeed, the Nixon administration proved quite corrupt. A whole raft of senior officials, including the president’s closest aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, went to prison. Even Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign amid the Watergate investigations when a Maryland jury found him guilty of tax evasion dating back to his years as governor there. The actions of Nixon and those who served him permanently tarnished the reputation of politicians, and citizens responded by disengaging from the political process. The percentage of eligible voters actually casting ballots sank from 61 percent in 1968 to 53 percent in 1980, diminishing the practice of democracy: rule by the people. Unlike the impeachment of President Bill Clinton 26 years later, which centered on executive lying about a sexual affair in the Oval Office, the Watergate scandal involved larger issues of presidential power in the public realm. It also raised questions about the balance of power throughout the U.S. political system. Since 1945, the executive branch had grown increasingly powerful during the international crises of the Cold War, but Nixon’s fall crippled the “imperial presidency.” After Watergate, Congress began to reclaim its constitutional responsibilities in international affairs. As the bicentennial of American independence approached, citizens’ suspicion of corruption in high places recalled the Whiggish attitudes of the country’s revolutionary leaders two centuries before. Most immediately, Congress swung strongly to the Democrats in the 1974 elections, slowing the Republicans’ rise to the status of majority party. As the bicentennial approached, suspicion of corruption in high places recalled the attitudes of the country’s revolutionary leaders two centuries before. The man who replaced Nixon in the White House faced a daunting situation. Gerald Ford, longtime Republican congressman and House minority leader from Grand Rapids, Michigan, had been tapped by Nixon to replace Agnew as vice president. Well liked by members of both parties, Ford seemed to embody the antidote to the extreme styles of both Nixon and Agnew. To restore decency and trust in the government, Ford saw his role as healing what he called “the wounds of the past.” Within a month, he granted a “full, free, and absolute pardon” to Nixon for any crimes he may have committed as president, precluding any trial and punishment within a court of law. However, most Americans believed that Nixon should have faced justice for his actions, just as the people did who carried out his orders. Ford’s popularity plummeted overnight from 72 percent to 49 percent and never fully recovered. If Ford inherited the fallout from Watergate at home, abroad he inherited the pending defeat in Vietnam. Few Americans wanted to dwell on the meaning of the disastrous U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Military veterans returned to a nation determined to ignore or demean their sacrifices, and they quickly learned to keep their combat-induced traumas to themselves (and sometimes even from their families). When Saigon finally fell to the combined invasion of National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese fighters on April 30, 1975, Americans watched the televised images with both bitterness and relief. Two weeks later, Cambodian communist forces briefly seized the U.S. container ship Mayaguez, provoking Ford to demonstrate Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 910 ${bmicon} that the United States was still ready and willing to flex its military muscle. But 41 U.S. soldiers died in the rescue mission to save 39 sailors whom, it turned out, Cambodia had already released. Ford and Kissinger, serving as the new president’s secretary of state, continued to pursue détente with the Soviets at summit meetings in Vladivostock (1974) and Helsinki (1975). At the same time, they supported anticommunist forces in various Third World conflicts, such as the civil war that erupted in Angola after that country achieved its independence in 1975. If money makes the world go around, the United States began to lose some of its ability to spin the globe in the early 1970s. Generation after generation of Americans had watched their incomes rise, and most children expected to be wealthier than their parents had been. Since World War II had pulled the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression, median family income had doubled. Most Americans saw themselves as citizens of the world’s richest country and prized the status that came with this privilege. But by 1973, the famous American standard of living began to decline. The three pillars of postwar prosperity—cheap energy, rising wages, and low inflation—simultaneously crumbled. The costs of the Vietnam War struck home at the same time that an oil embargo spawned by confict in the Middle East gripped the country. Moreover, a widening environmental movement raised questions about the pursuit of endless economic growth on a planet that more and more people realized had limited natural resources. For the first time since the 1930s, Americans started to doubt what the economic future had in store for them. Stagnation and inflation typically do not strike an economy at the same time. With stagnation, prices and wages stay level or even decline; with inflation, prices rise and jobs grow. During CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 911 ${bmicon} the 1970s, however, a terrible new economic scourge dubbed “stagflation” hit the United States. For the first time, employment and wages stagnated while prices climbed. What explained this phenomenon? Spending on the Vietnam War had pulled prices upward. The government had never raised enough taxes to cover the expense of the war, so it paid the bills by simply printing more dollars—a sure-fire way to create inflation. In 1971, annual inflation stood at 4.5 percent, more than twice the pre-Vietnam rate; two years later it reached 10 percent, and by 1980 it topped out at 18 percent. These figures devastated Americans’ sense of economic security. Average real wages (income adjusted for inflation) dropped by 2 percent a year from 1973 to the 1990s. Unemployment rose to 9 percent in 1975, driven in part by continued automation of the workplace. Only the continued flow of women into the workforce, seen by most families as an economic necessity, kept the majority of U.S. families afloat financially. The number of citizens living in poverty, which had dropped sharply through the 1960s to 11 percent in 1973, rose again, hitting 15 percent by 1982. The gap between rich and poor began widening, a process that persisted into the next millennium. So ended the long boom of economic growth that had buoyed American life since 1945. But perhaps the most important evidence of the weakening economy came with the drop in the growth of productivity: output per worker-hour had risen at an annual average of more than 3 percent during the boom. From 1974 to 1992, it rose at less than half that rate. This decline stemmed in part from competition from abroad, particularly West Germany and Japan. With U.S. assistance (and without the military expenditures that so burdened the United States), those countries had finally rebuilt their economies after World War II and boasted new, more efficient industrial facilities. Imported cars, for example, grew from just 8 percent of the U.S. market in 1970 to 22 percent in 1979 as Hondas, Toyotas, Volkswagens, and Mercedes streamed onto American highways. And the trade surplus that had long symbolized global U.S. economic superiority evaporated in 1971. That year, U.S. imports overtook exports for the first time in the twentieth century. Worried international investors traded in dollars for gold, forcing Nixon to end the 27-year-old Bretton Woods monetary system that had linked all other currencies to the dollar at fixed exchange rates. Freed from the fixed rate of $35 per ounce of gold, the dollar dropped like a stone; by the end of the decade, it took $800 to buy an ounce of gold. Only the continued flow of women into the workforce, seen by most families as an economic necessity, kept the majority of U.S. families afloat financially. In this competitive environment, the Wall Street Journal reported, American companies “seek places where labor, land, electricity, and taxes are cheap.” Corporations found those places in the American South and Southwest, regions characterized by scarce unions, low wage rates, minimal taxes, and negligible local government regulations. Many more such places were in neighboring Mexico. The long-term decline of the Rustbelt—the series of urban industrial centers strung across the Northeast and Midwest—accelerated in the 1970s. As one example, RCA (the Radio Corporation of America) moved its production facilities from Camden, New Jersey, to Bloomington, Indiana, in the 1940s, and eventually to Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, in the 1970s. Workers lost positions on assembly lines and found jobs at lower wages in the expanding and less unionized service sector. There were exceptions. For instance, when the mostly female Mexican workers at the Farah slacks company in El Paso and other Southwestern cities went on strike from 1972 to 1974, they won the sympathy of a national consumer boycott. Eventually they received some concessions from the company. But the logic of what would soon be called globalization kept most workers at a disadvantage as owners of capital moved production lines to wherever costs were lowest. Increasingly, U.S. companies shifted their manufacturing to Mexico, where they established maquiladoras as early as 1965. These assembly plants, often just a few hundred yards across Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 912 ${bmicon} the Mexican–U.S. border, gave corporations an opportunity to hire primarily female workers at low wages and avoid strict U.S. environmental, labor, and safety laws. “The worst draw-back of maquiladora work is all the damage we do to our health” by working with toxic chemicals and solvents, one employee reported. The wages, cheap by U.S. standards, were nonetheless higher than elsewhere in Mexico and drew laborers from central Mexico north to the border region. And few Americans noticed the damage that the factories south of the border were causing to the environment and to the health of workers. High unemployment and shrinking real wages contributed to rising anti-immigrant sentiment. Two white autoworkers in Detroit in 1982 got into an altercation in a bar with Vincent Chin, a Chinese American (and son of a World War II veteran) whom they called a “Jap.” Angered that Japanese auto sales were undercutting jobs in Detroit, they made Chin a scapegoat for their rage, chasing him down the street and beating him to death with a baseball bat. At the same time, Vietnamese refugees who had fled the communist victory in their homeland in 1975 to make a life as shrimp fishers on the Gulf Coast of Texas found their equipment sabotaged by some white competitors. From Texas to California, Latinos also suffered violence at the hands of both officials and private citizens. For example, three members of the Ku Klux Klan abducted a Latino hitch-hiker outside San Diego and delivered him to the U.S. Immigration Service for deportation to Mexico even though he was an American citizen. A wave of police brutality against Latinos alarmed even the White House by 1978, thanks to the lobbying of outraged Latino citizen organizations. Black Americans also faced an increasing backlash against hard-won civil rights gains. While court-ordered busing to integrate schools in segregated neighborhoods proceeded slowly but peacefully in the South, northern urban whites dug in their heels. In Boston, violence erupted in the school hallways and the streets from 1975 to 1978 as economically vulnerable working- CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 913 ${bmicon} class whites harassed African Americans attending schools in white ethnic neighborhoods of South Boston, and blacks defended themselves. Nothing revealed Americans’ newfound economic vulnerability more than the 1973–1974 boycott initiated by the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC). The United States and the Soviet Union, along with Mexico and Venezuela, retained large oil reserves. But the largest producers were the Arab countries around the Persian Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia. These nations had resented the creation of Israel in 1948 and the resulting displacement of the Palestinians. Hostility intensified with the events of 1967. That year, Israel seized control of the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip. Six years later, Egypt and Syria struck back, attacking jointly on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. The Arab armies threatened to overrun Israel until the United States gave the Israeli army a critical resupply of weapons, which helped turn the tide of battle. Henry Kissinger then shuttled between Tel Aviv and Cairo to negotiate a ceasefire. His diplomatic skills won him the Nobel peace prize and laid the groundwork for a warming of U.S. relations with Egypt (the most populous Arab nation but not an oil producer). However, the other Arab states expressed outrage at this demonstration of America’s close links with the full view FIGURE 27.1 IIMPORTED PETROLEUM AS SHARE OF U.S. CONSUMPTION Abundant natural resources, especially coal and oil, encouraged Americans’ long-standing feeling of national strength and autonomy. After World War II, however, the United States switched from exporting oil to importing oil. Conservation measures in the 1970s temporarily reversed America’s growing dependence on oil from abroad. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 914 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Energy Use in the United States Most Americans who lived through the 1970s remember gasoline shortages and price hikes as one of the decade’s most distinctive features. No previous generation had experienced so steep a decline in the availability of a primary source of energy that was the key to its transportation system. In World War II the government had rationed gasoline to conserve it for military use. But never before had international market forces confronted Americans with their growing dependence on imported petroleum. The Arab oil embargo of 1973–1974 and the decline in oil supplies after the Iranian revolution of 1979 battered a U.S. economy already weakened by spending on the Vietnam War. The oil shocks drove inflation sharply upward. They raised fundamental questions—not asked since the Great Depression of the 1930s—about whether the world’s largest economy could continue to grow. And the oil price rise suggested that energy independence might be a crucial component of real national security. Rich natural resources had long satisfied Americans’ needs for energy sources. During the colonial period, wood from abundant forests and coal deposits provided heat. Whale oil powered lamps. Transportation came from the work of domesticated animals as well as sailing vessels that captured the force of the wind. In the era of the American Revolution, manufacturers built the first factories on riverbanks next to falls, where waterwheels produced the power to drive mechanical equipment. In the 1800s, the spread of the Industrial Revolution increased the demand for energy, particularly coal. By the 1830s, coal fired the steam engines that pushed ships across the Atlantic Ocean and the railroads that would one day tie the growing nation together. In 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, drillers near Titusville in northwestern Pennsylvania made a momentous discovery: oil. Refined into kerosene, oil lighted many American homes and city streets for more than a generation. Then Thomas Edison designed the first electricity-generating station in New York City in 1892, beginning the era of coal-fired electric utilities that spread rapidly over the next two decades. Oil’s real significance emerged in the twentieth century. Refined into gasoline, oil powered the new internal combustion engines that revolutionized transportation. Gasoline allowed the Wright brothers’ airplane to leave the ground in 1903 and fueled the automobiles that began to pour off Henry Ford’s assembly line with the first Model T in 1908. Inexpensive gasoline enabled cars to become Americans’ foremost means of transportation. U.S. military forces depended on oil in all their wars of the twentieth century. Indeed, the United States fought in the Persian Gulf War of 1991 primarily to preserve western access to oil from the Gulf region. In the 1970s, the oil shocks and the growing environmental movement encouraged both energy conservation and the development of alternative, renewable sources. Many citizens paid increasing attention to solar, wind, water, and geothermal power. But corporations, encouraged by the federal government, paid far more attention to another alternative: nuclear energy. (The first American nuclear power plant had been built at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957.) Despite creating radioactive waste, nuclear power generated one-fifth of the nation’s electricity by the twenty-first century. In 2001, fossil fuels continued to provide 85 percent of the total energy used in the United States: oil, 40 percent; natural gas, 25 percent; and coal, 20 percent. Coal-burning plants created just over half the nation’s electricity, and the United States had one-fourth of the world’s coal supplies. However, unlike renewable energy sources, fossil fuels are a finite resource that eventually will be used up. Burning them also contributes to air pollution, atmospheric ozone depletion, and global warming. Nonetheless, at the turn of the century fossil fuels remained the cheapest source of power, a temptation too strong to resist. Israelis, and Kissinger’s being Jewish only underlined the point. The U.S. commitment to Israel had never been clearer, and Arabs of all political persuasions were determined to voice their displeasure. In October 1973, the OPEC nations initiated an embargo on selling oil to the United States and to western European nations that had supported Israel in the war. Never before in peacetime had foreign policy affected Americans so directly. Oil supplies dwindled, and prices at gas pumps skyrocketed to four times their previous levels. Even when OPEC lifted the embargo afer five months, it kept prices high by limiting production. Steeper energy costs powerfully accelerated inflation. Decades of easy access to cheap gasoline came to a sudden halt. As American drivers formed long lines at the pump, President Ford urged them to drive at lower speeds to conserve gas. The independence provided by a well-fueled automobile had come to define daily life for many U.S. citizens. But Americans confronted new and sobering limits on their mobility, just when their country encountered other limits in the form of Nixon’s failed presidency and defeat in Vietnam. The oil embargo encouraged many U.S. citizens to rethink the nation’s cavalier use of natural resources. Indeed, environmental consciousness spread rapidly in the 1970s as evidence revealed the impact of industrial growth on the quality of life in the United States. Environ- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 915 ${bmicon} mental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Audubon Society saw their memberships soar. And for the first time, the media began to examine the daunting range of environmental problems plaguing the United States and the rest of the world: acid rain, groundwater contamination, smog, rainforest destruction, oil spills, nuclear waste disposal, species extinction, ozone depletion, and global warming. A growing interest in ecology—human interaction with the wider web of life—expanded the efforts of conservationists to preserve parklands. Residents of an urbanized mass society began to contemplate the wider consequences of small private acts such as watering the lawn, flushing the toilet, or leaving the lights on. full view Wind Mill Generators in California Wind Mill Generators in California (Photodisc, Inc.) Environmentalism had perhaps even more radical implications than women’s liberation or the counterculture had. “Indefinite growth of whatever kind cannot be sustained by finite resources,” a prominent group of ecologists pointed out in 1972. Yet indefinite economic growth had been Americans’ credo since the earliest days of European colonization. “Growth is the ideology of the cancer cell,” writer Edward Abbey declared, helping to inspire the formation of the radical environmental group Earth First! in 1979. Yet even the nation’s fiercest ideological opponents abroad agreed that the creation of wealth entailed the exploitation of natural resources. “Growth of industrial and agricultural production,” Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had announced a decade earlier, “is the battering ram with which we shall smash the capitalist system.” Now environmentalists were questioning an idea that even Communists had taken for granted. PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 916 ${bmicon} A new generation of Americans, unable to remember Depression scarcities and wartime rationing, was wasteful, sometimes extravagantly so. U.S. soldiers had expressed surprise when displaced Vietnamese civilians built shelters out of the aluminum cans the troops threw away so casually. Home to only 6 percent of the global population, the United States consumed as much as a third of the world’s energy from nonrenewable fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Polluted air hung over the largest U.S. cities. The first evidence of global warming began to appear in the 1970s. Scientists also noticed the rapid thinning of the ozone layer in the earth’s atmosphere in 1973. They attributed the problem in part to the widespread use of aerosol spray cans—especially by Americans, the world’s wealthiest people. The production of inexpensive plastics from oil had also soared since World War II. Styrofoam cups and plastic containers littered the roadsides. Disposable diapers and other nonbiodegradable products accumulated in landfills in what became known as the throwaway culture. Environmentalists argued that the idea of unlimited consumption of natural resources was fundamentally irresponsible, both to future human generations and to other species. They urged Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require fuel-efficient engines from carmakers and to promote renewable energy sources such as water, solar, and wind power. Citizen groups such as the Clamshell Alliance in New England and the Abalone Alliance in California protested the construction of new nuclear power plants. These operations, they pointed out, had no reliable method in place for disposing of nuclear waste. What if the public were exposed to radiation? Their warnings had merit: cancer rates began to rise in populations that had close contact with radioactive materials from the early Cold War years forward, such as communities near the Hanford nuclear facility in south central Washington state and towns downwind from the Atomic Test Site in Nevada. One Utah mother who lost a daughter to cancer felt “disappointed and hurt” by the “horrific neglect and indifference” of a government that would permit such contamination and then deny that there was any danger. “We were used. We were conned,” another woman testified to Congress about government secrecy regarding the impact of radiation. “They knew and they didn’t tell us.” A broad critique of the chemical industry’s impact on public health also emerged in the 1970s. As it turned out, pesticides worked their way up the food chain into people’s bodies. Some artificial sweeteners proved carcinogenic, and the lead that manufacturers had added to gasoline and house paint for generations caused brain damage. Long-standing industrial dumping of toxic chemicals made headlines. In 1975, for example, investigations revealed that tons of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from General Electric plants lined the bottom of the Hudson River north of New York City. Four years later, the EPA announced that the nation had 32,000 to 50,000 major sites containing hazardous waste. Environmentalists argued that the idea of unlimited consumption of natural resources was fundamentally irresponsible, both to future human generations and to other species. But it was the crisis at Love Canal in New York that helped bring the issue of toxic waste home to Americans. The Hooker Chemical Company had buried tons of poisonous waste in a dry canal in the town of Niagara Falls between 1947 and 1952 and then covered it over with dirt. The company gave the land to the town, which promptly built a school on it. A middle-class neighborhood soon grew up around the site. But the ground smelled odd and oozed mysterious substances. Sometimes it even caught on fire for no apparent reason. By the 1970s local rates of cancer and other severe illnesses had soared. The chemical and industrial plant workers who lived in the neighborhood began to suspect that their quiet loyalty to their employers was no longer worth the risk to the health of their families. Persistent activism by community members, led by Lois Gibbs and publicized by reporter Michael Brown, finally overcame local, state, and company officials’ efforts to keep the contents of the buried canal secret. In August 1978, New York governor Hugh Carey at last agreed to buy out the entire neighborhood, seal it off, and move residents elsewhere. An early public revelation of the cost of industrial progress, the Love Canal debacle accelerated American workers’ loss of faith in the CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 917 ${bmicon} corporations and governments they had once trusted. “There are ticking time bombs all over,” an EPA official concluded. “We just don’t know how many potential Love Canals there are.” Discovering the limits of the U.S. economy so soon after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal spawned a crisis of confidence throughout the United States. Some Americans resented the idea of limits: on how much gas they could buy, how much the economy could grow, how much influence the United States could have abroad. At the same time, others began to embrace the idea of creating a healthier lifestyle that focused less on material consumption. Cigarette smoking started to decline. Organic food sales picked up. Exercise, especially running, began to become an increasingly common activity for middle-class adults. The wildly successful Nike athletic shoe company was founded in 1972, and entrants in the New York City Marathon ballooned from 126 in 1970 to 10,000 by 1978. Interest in outdoor recreation—hiking, camping, and bicycling—grew exponentially. Recycling also started its climb from a fringe activity to common practice in a few parts of the country. The government began to get the message, too. Federal agencies banned the use of hazardous products such as the pesticide DDT and the artificial sweetener sodium cyclamate in the original Gatorade formula. And in January 1974, Congress reduced the national speed limit to 55 miles per hour to conserve fuel. The skepticism toward authority and tradition spawned by the counterculture, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal spread through American culture in the 1970s. The use of illegal drugs, especially marijuana, was widespread. Casual sexual relationships proliferated in a decade when contraceptive pills had become widely available and the AIDS virus had not yet been identified. Popular and critically acclaimed films featured tales of PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 918 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 27.2 THE DEATH PENALTY: PRACTICES AND OPINIONS The use of the death penalty distinguished the United States from most other industrialized nations, which had banned it. In 1972, The Supreme Court struck down existing capital punishment statutes as “arbitrary and capricious.” Four years later, the Court upheld rewritten state and federal laws that provided clearer guidance for the imposition of the death penalty. malfeasance in high places. All the President’s Men (1976) told the story of the Nixon administration’s Watergate crimes. Apocalypse Now (1975) revealed the madness of the American war in Vietnam. Three Days of the Condor (1975) portrayed the CIA as a rogue agency beyond democratic control. Chinatown (1975) suggested the vast corruption marring the early-twentieth-century growth of Los Angeles. Blazing Saddles (1974) hilariously spoofed the heroic Westerns that had long served as the staple of American moviegoers’ diet. And One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) used novelist Ken Kesey’s story of an insane asylum to imply that those in charge were more dangerous than the inmates. In this atmosphere Congress began to reassert its authority against the “imperial presidency,” and in 1976 voters put an obscure, devout Georgia peanut farmer and former one-term governor in the White House. Before the twentieth century, the U.S. legislative branch had been the most powerful wing of the federal government. This emphasis on the authority of Congress as the closest representatives of the people had a long history. In the 1770s, Americans had fought their way free from a British empire whose powerful sovereign inspired deep and abiding distrust of executive authority. But the U.S. acquisition of its own overseas empire beginning in 1898 and its growing international prominence had slowly assuaged such anxieties. Many Americans came to believe that the country needed a strong president to direct the assertion of U.S. power abroad. World War II and the Cold War had dramatically accelerated this process. The balance of ter- CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 919 ${bmicon} ror that came with the nuclear age seemed to demand secrecy and centralized decision-making. Americans had rejected this leadership style in their own revolution two centuries before. Yet the tide had turned, and the national security state and imperial presidency from Truman to Nixon emerged as the result. The double shock of defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal reawakened a Congress that had grown accustomed to deferring to the White House in foreign affairs. Tellingly, Congress had never formally declared war on North Korea or North Vietnam, although such declaration is its constitutional duty. Angered by the illegalities and deception in both the Johnson and Nixon administrations, Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973 to limit the president’s capacity to wage undeclared wars. The bill required the chief executive to obtain explicit congressional approval for keeping U.S. troops in an overseas conflict longer than 90 days. In 1976 Congress reinforced the message. It passed the Clark Amendment to cut off U.S. aid to anticommunist forces in the civil war in newly independent Angola, on the southwest coast of Africa. The House and Senate had resolved not to get drawn into “another Vietnam.” Congress did not limit its muscle-flexing to keeping Americans out of conflicts with Third World leftists. It also promoted human rights within the Communist bloc, cutting against the grain of Secretary of State Kissinger’s realpolitik approach to Moscow. The Jackson–Vanik Amendment of 1974 sought to make the Soviet Union pay for its repression of Jewish dissidents by linking détente directly to human rights, much to Kissinger’s dismay. To acquire most-favored-nation trading status with the United States, Moscow would have to let Jews emigrate. With encouragement from voters and journalists, Congress also uncovered its eyes and began to investigate the covert side of American foreign policy that had gathered momentum since 1945. After Watergate popped the cork on the bottled-up secret abuses of the executive branch, other troubling news spilled out about the nation’s intelligence agencies. Dissident former CIA agents such as Philip Agee began revealing “dirty tricks” that the agency had long used. And investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, author of the My Lai massacre exposé a few years earlier, uncovered the CIA’s Operation Chaos. This program of illegal domestic espionage against antiwar dissidents paralleled FBI abuses such as the COINTELPRO campaigns to defame Martin Luther King, Jr., and destroy the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement. Congressional committees led by Otis Pike of New York in the House and Frank Church of Idaho in the Senate initiated their own investigations of the national security state’s tactics. Their documentation of CIA involvement in assassination attempts against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo suggested that United States government agencies would secretly go to any lengths to prevail in the Cold War. Defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal reawakened a Congress that had grown accustomed to deferring to the White House in foreign affairs. These revelations stirred fierce controversy among those who took an interest in national and international politics. The United States apparently had been almost as devious in its covert actions abroad as the reviled Soviet Union had been. Many citizens decried what their government had done in their names and without their knowledge. However, officials claimed that the extreme conditions of the Cold War and the duplicity of the Soviets necessitated secrecy. Convinced that information gathered by the Church and Pike committees threatened to undermine public trust in U.S. foreign policy officials, congressional leaders stopped official publication of the Pike report (although the Village Voice published a leaked copy). Nonetheless, in combination with the Freedom of Information Act of 1974—which forced the public release of most federal documents after 25 years—these congressional reports created a paper trail that altered Americans’ perceptions of what their government did abroad. At the core of this controversy were two burning questions. How transparent could a democratic society and its government afford to be when they also had global interests to protect? And when democratic openness and imperial self-interest conflicted, which should win out? Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 920 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY The Church Committee and CIA Covert Operations In 1975–1976 the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities engaged in the first comprehensive review by Congress of the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under the leadership of Frank Church (D-Idaho), the committee investigated both intelligence gathering (“spying”) and covert operations, the secret side of American foreign policy during the Cold War. One of the most controversial issues that the Church Committee examined was evidence of the CIA’s attempted use of assassination as a means of dealing with key figures in Cuba, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, and Chile. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (Interim Report, November 20, 1975) The Committee has received evidence that ranking Government officials discussed, and may have authorized, the establishment with the CIA of a generalized assassination capability…. The evidence establishes that the United States was implicated in several assassination plots…. Our inquiry also reveals serious problems with respect to United States involvement in coups directed against foreign governments…. Once methods of coercion and violence are chosen, the probability of loss of life is always present. There is, however, a significant difference between a coldblooded, targeted, intentional killing of an individual foreign leader and other forms of intervening in the affairs of foreign nations…. Non-attribution to the United States for covert operations was the original and principal purpose of the so-called doctrine of “plausible denial.” Evidence before the Committee clearly demonstrates that this concept, designed to protect the United States and its operatives from the consequences of disclosures, has been expanded to mask decisions of the President and his senior staff members…. “Plausible denial” can also lead to the use of euphemism and circumlocution, which are designed to allow the President and other senior officials to deny knowledge of an operation should it be disclosed…. It is possible that there was a failure of communication between policymakers and the agency personnel who were experienced in secret, and often violent, action. Although policymakers testified that assassination was not intended by such words as “get rid of Castro,” some of their subordinates in the Agency testified that they perceived that assassination was desired and that they should proceed without troubling their superiors…. Running throughout the cases considered in this report was the expectation of American officials that they could control the actions of dissident groups which they were supporting in foreign countries. Events demonstrated that the United States had no such power. This point is graphically demonstrated by cables exchanged shortly before the coup in Vietnam. Ambassador Lodge cabled Washington on October 30, 1963, that he was unable to halt a coup; a cable from William Bundy in response stated that “we cannot accept conclusion that we have no power to delay or discourage a coup.” The coup took place three days later…. Officials of the CIA made use of persons associated with the criminal underworld in attempting to achieve the assassination of Fidel Castro. These underworld figures were relied upon because it was believed that they had expertise and contacts that were not available to law-abiding citizens…. It may well be ourselves that we injure most if we adopt tactics “more ruthless than the enemy.” CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 921 ${bmicon} These same questions underlay the presidential election in the bicentennial year of 1976. As the nation celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, some commentators could not help noting that the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in some ways echoed the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. In each case, a determined nationalist army seeking freedom from foreign control had forced the world’s strongest military power to withdraw in defeat. In the backwash of Watergate, two presidential candidates—both outsiders to national politics—became advocates for opposing sides in the power and openness debate. Former California governor Ronald Reagan made a strong run at the Republican nomination, falling just short at the Kansas City convention as incumbent Gerald Ford held on to head the GOP ticket. Reagan articulated conservative Americans’ anger at seeing U.S. autonomy and power abroad hemmed in. He opposed détente with the Soviets, supported anticommunists everywhere, and warned against a treaty that would return control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. Ford found himself burdened by the faltering economy, weakened by Reagan’s criticisms from the right, and hampered by widespread resentment of his pardon for Nixon. He struggled back from a 33-point deficit in opinion polls to fall just short with 49 percent of the votes in the general election. The hopes of moderate Republicans faded as the party moved to the right after 1976. TABLE 27-2 The Election of 1976 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Jimmy Carter Democratic 40,828,587 297 Gerald R. Ford Republican 39,147,613 241 Jimmy Carter was the winner. The former Georgia governor had worked relentlessly to gain the Democratic nomination after starting out as the choice of just 4 percent of primary voters. He based his candidacy on moral uplift. Contrasting himself to the Nixon administration, he told audiences, “I will never lie to you.” Instead, Carter promised openness, accountability, and a government “as good and decent as the American people.” He pledged to heal a nation exhausted by conflict. The emphasis on morality came naturally to the born-again Christian who taught Sunday school. His campaign manager admitted wryly that Carter’s religious bent was a “weirdo factor” in national politics. The Georgian was also the first president to hail from the Deep South in more than a century. His open faith and cultural conservatism won him support from less liberal Democrats whom the McGovern campaign had alienated in 1972. Jimmy Carter, Crisis of Confidence Speech Confronted in 1979 by poll results showing a dropping faith in the presidency, Carter delivered a speech in which he appeared to blame his administrative failures on the American people. Termed the “national malaise” speech by critics, Carter soon moved against his own staff with cabinet firings and public finger pointing. These tactics failed, and Carter never recovered in the polls or won reelection. Carter was also a Naval Academy graduate, a former nuclear engineer, and a successful peanut farmer and businessperson. Yet the unusual green color of his campaign buttons and posters conveyed a subtle conservationist message, and liberals appreciated his attention to issues of poverty. Moreover, his support for civil rights during his governorship in Georgia had made him a symbol for a pragmatic new generation of white and black southerners. Americans were not sure who their new president really was. Carter kept his diminutive first name: Jimmy, not James or even Jim. He wore denim, and he carried his own bags. At his inaugural parade, he and his wife Rosalynn chose to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue rather than ride in a limousine. The new president entered the White House at a time of unusual resistance to executive authority. He encountered an assertive and suspicious Congress. He served an alienated and isolationist public that had given him a slim victory with no clear mandate. He had to grapple with an alert and skeptical media that had dropped most vestiges of its traditional deference to the Oval Office. And he faced an economy still mired in stagflation as unemployment and prices kept rising and interest rates reached 21 percent. Politics and ideology also hamstrung the new president, limiting his ability to lead his own party in governing the nation. The New Deal coalition of the working class, PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 922 ${bmicon} people of color, and liberals had been unraveling for more than a decade. Carter had campaigned almost as an independent and developed few ties to the main Democratic constituencies. Thus he enjoyed little loyalty from his own party. The Georgian was also the first Democratic president since the 1930s who did not fully subscribe to the New Deal principle of government regulation of the economy. As a social moderate but an economic conservative, Carter had a strong desire to balance the federal budget. This vision placed him closer to the Republicans than to many in his own party. A businessperson, he also considered fiscal responsibility a primary virtue. Powerful liberal Democrats in Congress, by contrast, remained committed to government spending on programs such as Social Security and welfare, which Carter supported with less enthusiasm. Carter’s tendency to take moralistic stands did not mesh well with the horse-trading style of compromise that characterized Congress. In this sense, he was the opposite of Lyndon Johnson. Carter relied on a small circle of advisers from his days as governor in Atlanta. The northeastern-based media dubbed them the “Georgia Mafia.” The president and his aides tried to govern as outsiders to the federal government. They viewed insiders as selfish and narrowminded. They failed to cultivate relationships with Democratic leaders in Congress such as powerful House Speaker Thomas (“Tip”) O’Neill of Massachusetts. Meanwhile, seasoned legislators of both parties looked down on the new administration as inexperienced and naive. With suspicion and condescension flowing in both directions between the White House and Capitol Hill, one senior Democratic congressman complained that Carter’s popularity with the legislature was so low that he “couldn’t get the Pledge of Allegiance through Congress” if he needed to. Carter’s idealism proved more effective, at least during his first two years, in refashioning U.S. foreign policy. The president started the national healing process with his first official act in office: he granted a “full, complete, and unconditional pardon” to those who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War. He also tried to replace indiscriminate anticommunism with the promotion of human rights as the main theme in international affairs. “We are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear,” he told an audience at Notre Dame University. All presidents since 1945 had loudly supported human rights in the Soviet bloc. Carter defended dissidents in authoritarian countries friendly to the United States as well. His commitment to ending racial discrimination at home and his promotion of human rights abroad led to his administration’s strong support for an end to white minority rule in southern Africa, including the establishment of Zimbabwe out of the old white-ruled Rhodesia in 1980. In a highly symbolic move, Carter appointed black civil rights leader and fellow Georgian Andrew Young as UN ambassador and point man on Africa policy. Upon taking office, Carter fired the director of the CIA, George H. W. Bush. In the wake of the congressional investigations of the CIA, he reined in the agency’s covert operations. Carter wanted to shift Americans’ attention away from East–West Cold War tensions. Instead, he encouraged the public to acknowledge the burgeoning problems between industrialized nations of the North and mostly poor countries of the Southern Hemisphere. The president made control over the Panama Canal a test case for this reorientation. The huge canal sym- Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 923 ${bmicon} full view MAP 27.2 THE GRADUAL LIBERATION OF SOUTHERN AFRICA FROM WHITE MINORITY RULE The Carter administration supported the ending of white minority rule in Southern Africa. The last redoubts of “white supremacy” included Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe in 1980, and South Africa, which granted independence to Namibia in 1990 and ended apartheid in 1994. bolized U.S. dominance of the hemisphere and served as a focus of resentment among many Latin Americans. Since 1903, the United States had ruled the 10-mile-wide Canal Zone as its own colony. Acknowledging this colonialist past, Carter signed treaties on September 7, 1977, to return sovereignty of the canal to Panama. full view Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter (Library of Congress) Defenders of U.S. control of the canal, led by prominent Republican Ronald Reagan, fought the treaties fiercely. They saw them as irresponsibly giving away an American asset. “We built it, we paid for it, and we’re going to keep it,” Reagan insisted. But other prominent conservatives, including Henry Kissinger and movie star John Wayne, acknowledged the symbolic importance of the canal for strengthening U.S. relations with Latin America. They supported the president. Carter threw all his political weight into the campaign, and the Senate approved the treaties by a thin margin in the spring of 1978. The Carter administration’s other great diplomatic achievement came with the Camp David accord, an agreement between Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat and Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin. The Arab–Israeli conflict had remained one of the most intractable problems in modern diplomacy, yet Carter had unusual credibility in tackling the issue. His concern as a Christian for the “Holy Land” claimed by both Jewish Israelis and mostly Muslim Palestinians gave him sympathy for both sides. Sadat himself created an opening for diplomacy in 1977 by becoming the first Arab leader to visit Israel. But as the leading outside power in the region and Israel’s closest ally, only the United States could move the peace process further along. PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 924 ${bmicon} Carter took action. He invited Sadat and Begin to Camp David, the presidential retreat in rural western Maryland. There his persistence, plus promises of American aid to all parties, kept the marathon negotiations on track. In March 1979, the Egyptian and Israeli leaders signed two accords: Egypt became the first Arab state to grant official recognition to Israel. In turn, Israel agreed to withdraw its troops from the Sinai peninsula and apparently to stop building additional settlements on the Palestinian West Bank of the Jordan River. The framework for peace implied eventual autonomy for the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Though promising, the Camp David accords failed to bring peace to the Middle East. Israeli settlements in the West Bank continued to proliferate, and anti-Israeli terrorism by Palestinians persisted. But Carter had persuaded two major players in the region to take a big step back from open hostility. The world rightly proclaimed him a peacemaker. Within three months of taking office, Carter called for the “moral equivalent of war” to meet the deepening national energy crisis. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and his own thought- CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 925 ${bmicon} fulness allowed the president to understand better than his immediate predecessors that the country’s addiction to imported oil put Americans at the mercy of other oil-producing nations. He exhorted his fellow citizens to stop being “the most wasteful nation on Earth.” Conserve energy, he implored them. Switch off lights and turn down thermostats. The administration created the Department of Energy and granted tax incentives to promote development of alternative sources such as solar energy. The EPA required U.S. automakers to meet stricter fuel efficiency standards for their engines. High prices encouraged a renewed search for domestic sources of oil. In 1977 workers completed the 800-mile-long, 48-inch-wide Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The system linked the state’s northern oil fields at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean with a tanker terminal in Valdez, on Alaska’s southern coast on the Pacific Ocean. With new oil now flowing freely, Carter worked with Congress to pass the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. This legislation created the single largest addition ever to the nation’s wilderness system, 47 million acres, and the new Wrangell–St. Elias National Park. The most controversial power alternative came in the form of nuclear energy. Obtained by harnessing the force of splitting atoms, nuclear energy seemed to promise unlimited pollution-free power. But it entailed the use of a deadly radioactive fuel, uranium. Was it the clean solution to the nation’s energy needs or a lethal nightmare waiting to overtake an unsuspecting public? The China Syndrome, a popular 1978 film, suggested the latter. A few months later, life imitated art. In March 1979, a partial meltdown of the nuclear core of the Three Mile Island reactor near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, leaked radiation and forced a major evacuation. Government officials tried to reassure a panicked public. However, in July, a dam burst near Church Rock, New Mexico, flooding the Rio Puerco valley with radioactive wastewater. full view Nuclear Cooling Towers Nuclear Cooling Towers (Photodisc, Inc.) Despite these obstacles, existing nuclear power plants continued to generate 11 percent of the nation’s electricity in 1979, a figure that climbed to 22 percent by 1992 as other plants under construction came on line. Nonetheless, because of negative public opinion and the high cost per unit of nuclear power, no new plants ordered by utility companies after 1974 were ever completed. In 1979, a revolution in Iran cut off the United States from the world’s second-largest oil producer. The event initiated a new round of energy price increases, escalated inflation, and further intensified public anxieties. In an unusual display of frankness for a country’s leader, President Carter acknowledged that the nation seemed adrift. He gathered an array of advisers at Camp David for extended reflection on how the nation might set a new direction for itself. He emerged to give a major speech on July 15, 1979. In it, he linked America’s energy problems to a broader national “crisis of confidence.” “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close knit communities and our faith in God,” he explained, “too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.” PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 926 ${bmicon} full view MAP 27.3 BUILDING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS Between 1969 and 1980, all of the nation’s 103 commercial nuclear power reactors either came on line (56) or were in the process of being planned or built (47). The United States has roughly one-quarter of the 434 commercial nuclear power reactors in the world. Despite nuclear energy’s important role in U.S. electricity production, there is still no system in place for the permanent disposal of radioactive waste. But Carter proved more effective at identifying the problem of America’s insatiable appetite for energy than he was at offering a remedy. His call for sacrifice and unity made for courageous but ultimately self-defeating politics in a society accustomed to unrestrained consumption. Other politicians, such as Ronald Reagan, moved swiftly to smooth Americans’ ruffled feathers with a cheerful message: U.S. citizens were fine just as they were. As one supporter of the oil and gas industry claimed, “This country did not conserve its way to greatness. It produced its way to greatness.” “Good morning, boys and girls!” This standard classroom greeting reveals the central place of gender in how Americans identify people from a young age. Few people consider the phrase offensive, even though they probably would protest if a teacher addressed class members as “blacks and whites” or “tall people and short people.” Should one’s sex (a biological characteristic) or gender (the social assumptions associated with sex) constitute the fundamental dividing line among human beings? The spread of feminism through U.S. society from the 1970s onward raised this question. In a decade marked by hard rethinking of major issues, feminists provided one of the most profound challenges of all. Few American households avoided at least some reconsideration of the CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 927 ${bmicon} roles of men and women. Just as the nation reimagined its foreign policy in less assertive terms and with greater concern for human rights, feminists called for equality between the sexes while honoring their differences. This call resonated with a growing number of Americans. The women’s movement cast a spotlight on the need for justice in both the private sphere of personal relationships and the public sphere of the workplace and the law. Between 1968 and 1973 some 500 new feminist publications cropped up in the United States. Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine became the most prominent, selling out the 250,000 copies of its first issue in January 1972 within eight days. Its then-revolutionary name symbolized women’s desire not to have their marital status revealed through the title of “Miss” or “Mrs.” After all, the title “Mr.” said nothing about a man’s marital status, so why should not a woman’s title be similarly neutral? Thousands of consciousness-raising meetings also made women aware that their own experiences with discrimination were part of a broader pattern of injustice toward women. The millions of American women who found their lives changing in the 1970s did not agree on all issues. African American and Latino American women balanced identities as women with identities as people of color, which aligned them closely with men of their communities. Like Karen Silkwood, working-class women of all colors often focused on issues common to all workers, including wages, workplace conditions, and union representation. Community organizers such as Lois Gibbs of Love Canal zeroed in on neighborhoods and families. The educated white women who tended to form the most visible part of the movement for equality differed among themselves on such issues as pornography: some found it inherently exploitive of women, while others considered it primarily a matter of free expression. However, all women shared certain concerns. Even as many female Americans remained wary of the label feminist—fearing associations with anger, militancy, and dislike of men—they PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 928 ${bmicon} nonetheless tended to side with feminist positions on issues from equal pay for equal work, to abortion rights, to more egalitarian distribution of household chores within families. Even women who still chose to wear makeup and dress in traditionally feminine fashion shared a desire for men to take women more seriously for their ideas and beliefs than for their appearance. The women’s movement also sought to unmask the violence constraining all women’s lives: sexual harassment, domestic abuse, and rape. Whereas some men joked about rape, women called it what it was: a form of torture that kept many reluctant to venture out of their homes alone. And even a woman’s home was not safe at times. Until the mid-1970s, a husband could force himself sexually on his wife and not be considered a rapist by the law. In the 1970s, educated women gained access to a host of new opportunities in the workplace. Young women in college, unlike their mothers, expected to choose and develop a career after graduation even more than they anticipated getting married. The number of women entering graduate and professional schools soared. The percentage of female students in law school shot up from 5 percent to 40 percent between 1970 and 1980. In addition, most single-sex private colleges and universities, such as Yale and Vassar, went coeducational. Many dormitories housed both men and women, allowing young people from the middle and upper classes to live in close physical proximity for the first time. A similar process unfolded in the workplace. Employment in the United States, formerly divided into “men’s” and “women’s” work, saw a blurring of those lines. Help-wanted advertisements stopped categorizing jobs as male and female, and women joined the ranks of police officers and construction workers. The post-1950 pattern of women flocking into the paid workforce passed a milestone in 1980. That year, more than half of women with children under six years old had paying jobs outside the home. However, most of these jobs were lower-wage service positions that offered neither union support nor much upward mobility. Women fared better in the professions; the percentage of female lawyers and Ph.D.s tripled in the 1970s, and that of female physicians doubled. Despite these gains, professional women still averaged only 73 percent of the pay of their male colleagues. They also encountered stubborn traditional gender expectations. Late in the decade, one New York City judge ordered a female attorney—dressed in a tailored designer pantsuit and silk blouse—to leave his courtroom and not return unless she showed up in a skirted suit that demonstrated “proper respect” for the court. Not surprisingly, family life also changed shape in these years. In the 1950s more than 70 percent of American families with children had had a father who worked outside the home and a mother who stayed at home. In 1980, only 15 percent of families were configured that way. Yet society’s growing acceptance of mothers in the workforce did not necessarily mean that these women enjoyed a lighter domestic load. Most working mothers still had primary responsibility for parenting. For example, President Nixon vetoed a 1970 bill to establish a federally funded daycare system. Such a program, he declared, “would lead to the Sovietization of American children.” Although many fathers accommodated their wives’ work lives, working mothers continued to bear the brunt of the “second shift”: child-rearing and housework in addition to a full-time paid job. CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 929 ${bmicon} Changing roles brought new marital stresses, and divorce rates climbed in this decade. In 1970, one-third as many divorces as marriages occurred annually; in 1980, the figure was one-half. No-fault divorce laws, beginning with California’s in 1970, eased the process and the stigma attached to divorce, although its emotional impact on adults and children remained hard to measure. Men benefited financially when marriages split up. Their average living standard rose sharply, whereas that of women and their children plummeted. Children living with both parents had a 1-in-19 chance of growing up poor. The likelihood rose to 1 in 10 for kids living with just a father; for those living with just a mother, the odds reached 1 in 3. Paralleling the logic of the black civil rights movement, the modern women’s movement pressured lawmakers to eliminate the legal underpinnings of sex-based discrimination. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 required schools to spend comparable amounts on women’s and men’s sports programs. This critical step symbolized women’s shift away from spectatorship and cheerleading to the female athleticism that helped define American popular culture by the end of the twentieth century. Mia Hamm and her teammates—members of the wildly popular U.S. women’s soccer team that won the world championship in 1999—represented the first generation of women to grow up with strong institutional support for girls’ sports. After languishing for decades among failed proposals in Congress, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution finally rode to an overwhelming victory among senators and representatives in 1972. The legislature then sent it to the states for possible ratification by 1980. Simple in its language, the ERA declared, “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” On January 22, 1973, in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled (by a 7–2 vote) that constitutional privacy rights were “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” in its first six months. This decision established women’s constitutional right to determine the course of their own pregnancies. Feminists had pointed out that the question was never whether women would have abortions but how: they would have them at the hands of illegal and often dangerous practitioners or in the offices of skilled physicians. Finally, women’s battle for equality under the law raised questions about military service. The Selective Service Act of 1980 still required only men to register for the draft on their eighteenth birthdays. But women’s exemption from one of the highest duties of national citizenship was slipping fast. Within ten years, some 35,000 American women in the volunteer armed forces served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, mostly in rear support positions but also as pilots flying reconnaissance and search-and-rescue missions. Fifteen died, and enemy forces captured two others. Even though many of these female service personnel in the war had small children, their assignments close to the line of fire generated little public outcry. American women could now be warriors. Even as the majority of Americans accepted the fundamental tenets of feminism, some fiercely defended existing gender roles. The mainstream media often painted women’s rights activists as angry man-haters. Indeed, the media seized the opportunity to associate feminism with “bra-burning,” a titillating way to blend women’s rights with the sexual revolution and thus avoid the serious issues that women were raising. One Chicana worker involved in the strike against the Farah slacks company in Texas responded, “I don’t believe in burning your bra, but I do believe in having our rights.” PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 930 ${bmicon} The women’s movement posed a daunting challenge to traditional ideas about masculinity. “We have new men as well as a new society to build,” feminist Kathie Amatniek (who later changed her surname to Sarachild) wrote in 1968. Men wondered what equality for women really meant and how it might change their intimate and professional relationships with them. Should men still open doors for women? Should they begin to do half (or more) of housework and parenting? Should they not comment on a female colleague’s appearance? To be sure, women’s growing economic independence and educational opportunities often altered the dynamics of power in male–female relationships. Many men from all classes and ethnicities, feeling defensive about assumptions and behaviors that were increasingly labeled sexist, resisted these changes. One Latino graduate student at Stanford University resolved never to date “college girls.” “When I want a real woman, I go to the barrio in East San Jose and pick up a high school girl.” Many men also found the increasingly open acknowledgment of lesbianism threatening because it implied their potential irrelevance to women. The challenge to machismo took the form of public spectacle in 1973. That year, women’s tennis champion Billie Jean King agreed to play 55-year-old former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs in a nationally televised “Battle of the Sexes” in the Houston Astrodome. More than 45 million Americans watched King crush her self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig” opponent in straight sets. Should men still open doors for women? Should they begin to do half (or more) of housework and parenting? That men would have mixed feelings about women’s liberation surprised no one. But some of the stiffest resistance came from certain women. Those who had built their identities on motherhood and homemaking fiercely defended that tradition. Led by Illinois lawyer Phyllis Schlafly, antifeminists sought to uphold an established family structure that they believed divorce, gay rights, abortion, and daycare would destroy. In their view, femininity meant service to one’s family. “Feminists praise self-centeredness,” Schlafly declared, “and call it liberation.” In addition to defending their own choices, female antifeminists also worried about the impact of dual-career families on children. Opponents of women’s liberation made two major legislative gains in the late 1970s. First, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment in 1976, which forbade the use of Medicaid funds for abortions. In practice, the amendment limited access to abortion to those women who could afford to pay for it themselves. Second, Schlafly’s Stop-ERA campaign helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment by limiting its ratification to only 35 of the required 38 states. Schlafly claimed that the amendment would “destroy the family, foster homosexuality, and hurt women.” ERA opponents condemned “unisex toilets” and the drafting of women into combat that they believed the amendment would bring. In these women’s views, the ERA would also draw out the worst in men, letting husbands opt out of supporting their wives and freeing divorced men from paying alimony. Antifeminists resented the disrespect for motherhood that they felt from some feminists. Still, they agreed with feminists that tens of millions of American women were just one man removed from welfare. At the heart of the controversy, the two sides differed on the best way to protect women’s interests. Should their economic independence be enhanced, or should men be tied more tightly to their families? Though discouraging for some, the narrow defeat of the ERA could not mask feminism’s growing influence throughout American culture. The “first woman” stories that began showing up in the media during the 1970s marked the entrance of women into previously all-male roles. Like physicians, lawyers, and other figures of cultural authority, religious leaders now increasingly consisted of women, including the first Lutheran pastor (1970), the first Jewish rabbi (1972), and the first Episcopal priest (1974). In 1981 Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice. And mainstream organizations such as churches and municipalities ran feminist-created community institutions, including rape crisis centers, women’s health clinics, and battered women’s shelters. In 1978 the National Weather Service CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 931 ${bmicon} began using male as well as female names for hurricanes. By the 1980s, the movement had made major inroads into gender discrimination, although subtle forms of it remained. Younger women, confident that their fair treatment under the law was secure, began shying away from the term feminism and its lingering associations with rejection of men. In 1978 a divided U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling on the contentious policy of affirmative action. The justices decided by a 5–4 vote in the Bakke case that strict racial quotas were unconstitutional but that universities could consider race as one of several factors in determining a candidate’s qualifications for admission. The Court, like the American public, was wrestling with the broader 1970s problem of how to reform American society in ways that would preserve its historic strengths while removing the ills that the previous decade’s political activism had laid bare. Traditional hierarchies of gender, race, and even presidential privilege were fraying badly, even as differences in wealth and income between citizens remained dramatic. A central problem was the tension between the ideal of colorblind integration and new expressions of pride in distinctive racial and ethnic identities. In 1973 the armed American Indian Movement activists who for two months occupied buildings in Wounded Knee, South Dakota—site of the infamous 1890 U.S. Army massacre of defenseless Sioux—promoted a pan-Indian nationalist consciousness. In 1977 ABC’s enormously popular eight-part television miniseries, Roots, dramatized the human pathos contained in the long saga of African American slavery. Many white ethnic Americans in these years leavened their long-standing cultural assimilation with renewed attention to their own roots in particular European countries, especially Ireland and Italy. The debates over the roles of women and men likewise reflected reconsideration of some fundamental matters of identity in the United States. Americans’ self-confidence and pride as a nation had been deeply shaken by the combination of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the economic downturn after 1973. Disillusioned by the corruptions of public life, many citizens turned inward and heeded the advice of Robert J. Ringer in his 1977 bestseller, Looking Out for Number One. But others found motivation in the decade’s events—especially the revelation that presidents, corporate executives, and other authorities had lied to them. They learned what earlier Americans had discovered in the 1760s about imperious British officials and the corrupting effects of managing a global empire. Like the revolutionaries of George Washington’s generation, they sought to strengthen democracy. They pressed Congress to investigate the executive branch, and they elected an unusual outsider as president in 1976. Historians in this decade began to write more skeptically about those in power and more sympathetically about average Americans whom the history books had long ignored. The resurgence of conservatism in the 1980s recast many public policies, but it could not erase the vision of gender equality, environmental responsibility, and egalitarian governance that had taken hold among many citizens. PART 9 ###8226; THE COLD WAR AT FULL TIDE, 1953###8211;1979 932 ${bmicon} Divining America: Religion and the National Culture www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/divam.htm This site has essays by prominent historians on diverse aspects of the religious history of the United States. Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/ Provocative and fascinating articles from feminists of the late 1960s and 1970s make this site worthy of a visit. The National Security Archive at George Washington University www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/ This extraordinary site includes the most recent declassified documents on the making of U.S. foreign policy. The Natural Resources Defense Council www.nrdc.org/ This site contains considerable information and links about environmental issues, particularly those that emerged into public consciousness in the 1970s. The Oyez Project of Northwestern University oyez.nwu.edu/ Arguments from important Supreme Court cases plus information about Supreme Court justices make this a most useful site for legal history. Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum www.ford.utexas.edu/ The Ford presidential library maintains this site, with documents and photographs from the mid-1970s. Watergate 25 www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/front.htm The Washington Post created this informative site about the Watergate scandal 25 years after the events took place. William C. Berman, America’s Right Turn: From Nixon to Bush (1994). Peter N. Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s (1990). William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, 3rd ed. (1995). E. J. Dionne, Jr., Why Americans Hate Politics (1991). Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (2001). Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon, 3 vols. (1987, 1989, 1991). Walter Isaacson, Kissinger (1992). Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (1998). Stanley I. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1992). Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard M. Nixon (1999). J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (1985). Allen J. Matusow, Nixon’s Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes (1998). Thomas J. McCormick, America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After, 2nd ed. (1995). Hal K. Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945 (1998). CHAPTER 27 ###8226; RECONSIDERING NATIONAL PRIORITIES, 1972###8211;1979 933 ${bmicon} Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (1991). Susan Zakin, Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (1993). Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (1987). Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. (1993). John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (1986). Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986). U.S. Congress, Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: Interim Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1976). Susan J. Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (1994). Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–75 (1989). Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (1997). Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (2000). Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983). Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (1991). Susan Zakin, Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (1993). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter27 To Chapter 27 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 934 ${bmicon}   1979 Iranian Revolution; militants take American hostages. Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. Sandinista rebels seize control of Nicaragua. 1980 Failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran. Ronald Reagan elected president. 1981 President Anwar Sadat of Egypt assassinated. Iran releases American hostages. U.S. funds “Contras” to try to overthrow Nicaraguan government. 1982 Recession hits U.S. Nuclear freeze movement holds large protests in the U.S. and western Europe. 1983 HIV identified as virus that causes AIDS. First compact discs (CDs) marketed. 241 Marines killed in bombing of Beirut barracks. Strategic Defense Initiative proposed. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday designated a national holiday. 1984 Russia boycotts summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. 1985 First Reagan–Gorbachev summit in Geneva. 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster (Ukraine). Iran–Contra scandal revealed. Fall of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Congress passes sanctions against South African apartheid government. 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty. Stock market crash. 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Libyan terrorist bomb downs Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. U.S. invades Panama to seize Manuel Noriega. 1989 Grounding of oil tanker Exxon Valdez off Alaska coast. Last Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan. Berlin Wall falls. 1990 Radiation Exposure Act. Nelson Mandela freed from prison in South Africa. Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait. SOON AFTER THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, AMERICANS confronted a frightening paradox: the defeat of old enemies gave rise to new ones. The Cold War had ended with the demise of the Soviet Union. And yet the post–Cold War world continued to be a violent, and in certain respects even more terrifying, place. As colonial and totalitarian political systems collapsed around the globe, local ethnic and religious conflicts rose to the surface. To some extent, those conflicts remained confined within regions: the Balkans, Indonesia, the former Soviet Union, and parts of Africa. However, the spread of worldwide terrorist networks threatened all parts of the globe. Instances of mass murder on American soil, especially the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, proved that the United States was vulnerable to horrific acts of violence initiated from home and abroad. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan left his imprint on both domestic and foreign affairs. Reagan gave voice to conservatives, including those who favored a federal retreat from social welfare programs. Bolstered by the Moral Majority and other fundamentalist Christian groups, conservatives engaged in the so-called culture wars with liberals. Conservatives disapproved of feminists, black power advocates, gay rights activists, and environmentalists. Reagan and Congress implemented policies that shrank the federal government’s commitment to social welfare programs. Reagan also reinvigorated Cold War rhetoric—he denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”—and pushed military spending to unprecedented levels. Yet Reagan welcomed the initiatives of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who sought to ease tensions with the West. Unable to meet the basic needs of its own people and bogged down in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. Simultaneously, the United States embarked on a remarkable period of economic growth and expansion. President Bill Clinton favored free Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 935 ${bmicon}   trade policies, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he and others hoped would knit the world’s nations together in pursuit of political and economic progress. Nevertheless, domestic and foreign conflicts thwarted much of this hopeful vision. At home, the AIDS epidemic and drug addiction claimed many lives. Clashes among African Americans, Latinos, and Koreans in Los Angeles in 1992; the bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building by domestic antigovernment terrorists in 1995; attacks on abortion clinics; and a series of shootings by high school students revealed persistent faultlines in American society. Backed by the Supreme Court, a number of state and local governments passed anti-immigrant and anti–affirmative action laws. The culture wars were hot and, in some cases, deadly. The most violent assault on the United States came from forces outside as well as within it. The Middle East had become a tinderbox of fears and resentments. In Iran, Islamic militants overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah in 1979. Throughout the region, many Islamic fundamentalists expressed their resentment over the military and political presence of the United States in Israel and Saudi Arabia. During the 1991 Gulf War, the United States successfully reversed Iraq’s seizure of oil fields in Kuwait. Yet U.S. attempts to protect its economic and political interests in the Middle East continued to outrage Islamic militants. By the end of the 1990s, some Americans were able to focus inward and enjoy prosperity. The stock market was booming. Cheap gas prices encouraged affluent Americans to purchase huge sport utility vehicles with little regard for their environmental impact. However, ten years of high employment masked the hidden effects of a transformed economy, one characterized by a decline in labor union membership and the rise of an ill-paid service sector. A substantial proportion of Americans lived from paycheck to paycheck. On September 11, 2001, Americans were forced to confront their own vulnerabilities. Anti-U.S. terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and flew them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. Some 3000 people were killed. Within a month, anthrax-laced letters caused death and havoc in the offices where they were delivered and the postal centers that processed them, heightening pervasive fear and insecurity among Americans. The events of September 11 highlighted a grim reality: certain foreign groups despised such cherished American values as democracy, liberalism, and consumerism. Moreover, U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East fanned the fires of anti-western extremism. Terrorists were becoming more successful in enlisting people who were willing to die in attacks on the United States and more resourceful in using modern technology in those attacks. These terrorists were stateless, freed from the political tasks of protecting their own citizens, monitoring national borders, or dealing with internal dissidents. In contrast to the cold warriors, fighters against terrorism faced an elusive, dispersed, and, in some cases, suicidal enemy. 1991 Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill congressional hearings. Persian Gulf War against Iraq. Los Angeles police beat, arrest Rodney King. Soviet Union dissolves into Russia and other component states. 1992 South Central Los Angeles riots follow acquittal of police in King case. FBI shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. 1993 FBI storms compound of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. Congress approves North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Arab–Israeli peace talks. 18 American soldiers die in Somalia; U.S. withdraws. 1994 House leadership announces “Contract with America.” Republicans win majority in House of Representatives. O. J. Simpson murder trial. Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. 1995 Truck bomb destroys federal building in Oklahoma City. Congress revokes 55-mph speed limit. U.S. intervenes against Serbs in war in Bosnia. Dayton peace accords signed. 1996 Welfare Reform Act. 1997 Dow Jones average passes 8000. 1998 Lewinsky–Clinton affair revealed. Clinton impeached by House of Representatives. 1999 Senate acquits Clinton. Dow Jones passes 10,000. U.S. bombing campaign frees province of Kosovo from Serbian rule. Preparations for “Y2K.” Elian Gonzales affair. 2000 Supreme Court decides contested election; George W. Bush (R) becomes president. Scientists map human genome. 2001 Democrats regain control of Senate after Sen. James Jeffords leaves Republican party. Terrorists attack World Trade Center and Pentagon. Anthrax in letters causes illness and death in Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 936 ${bmicon}         Anticommunism Revived       Republican Rule at Home       Cultural Conflict       The End of the Cold War       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 937 ${bmicon} ON JULY 16, 1979, JUST WEST OF ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, A DAM HOLDING wastewater and residue from a uranium mine broke. Some 94 million gallons of radioactive water flooded into the Rio Puerco, giving it what one resident called “a terrible odor and a dark chocolatey color” as it flowed toward the Rio Grande. One of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history, the flooding proved far graver than the well-publicized meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania a few months earlier. Yet few Americans heard about it for it affected mostly Navajo and Laguna Indians. Nearby, the Anaconda Copper Company operated the nation’s largest uranium mine, which closed in the early 1980s. At public hearings in 1986 concerning the future of the mine and its small mountain of poisonous tailings, Anaconda’s scientists argued that the mine did not threaten human health in the area. Thus, they said, the tailing piles and the polluted ponds did not need to be cleaned up. Herman Garcia, a Laguna Indian who lived in the adjoining village of Paguate, listened carefully but remained unconvinced. “We lost five people from cancer” last year in tiny Paguate alone, he explained. “I’m no expert,” he concluded, but “I’d like for some of these experts to go out there and swim in those ponds. Then when I see them swim, then maybe I feel more secure.” Uranium fuels nuclear power. The largest deposits of the element in the United States lie underground in the Four Corners region, where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah meet. Known on American Automobile Association maps as “Indian Country,” this region is also home to the vast Navajo, Hopi, Laguna, and other Native American reservations. The Native American West and the nuclear West have overlapped to a remarkable extent ever since participants in the Manhattan Project began building the first atomic bomb in 1942. Repeatedly, the U.S. government constructed major nuclear sites in the West on lands surrounded by Indian settlements. These included the laboratories of Los Alamos, New Mexico; bomb factories and nuclear waste dumps of Hanford, Washington; the Nevada Test Site for atomic weapons north of Las Vegas; and uranium mines in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Some of this overlap resulted from geological coincidence: almost 90 percent of the nation’s uranium lay on or adjacent to Indian lands. Some of it stemmed from politics. The sparse populations of Pueblos, Western Shoshones, and Yakimas lacked the political clout to prevent their lands from becoming what the National Academy of Science called “national sacrifice areas.” Raymond Yowell, chief of the Western Shoshones living immediately downwind from the Nevada Test Site, observed, “We are now the most bombed nation in the world.” In the 1980s, nuclear weapons and waste once again sparked controversy in the United States. President Ronald Reagan expanded the nation’s nuclear arsenal, and his administration publicly discussed fighting and winning a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. An accident in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant outside the Soviet city of Kiev only heightened public concerns. The disaster killed more than 100 people and irradiated hundreds of thousands more. Frightened by rising U.S.–Soviet tensions, citizens in western Europe and the United States organized an international movement to freeze further development of nuclear weapons. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 938 ${bmicon} In these same years, non-Indians grew more aware of Native Americans, in part because of economic growth in the southwestern Sunbelt. Indians made up a larger percentage of the population there than in the rest of the country. White emigration from urban California to the Rocky Mountain states also contributed to this process. So did the growing popularity of “New Age” spiritualism, with its appropriation of many Indian religious symbols. And writer Tony Hillerman achieved great commercial success with his crime novels set on the Navajo reservation in Arizona and New Mexico and populated by interesting Indian characters. Native Americans themselves responded to the renewed focus on nuclear weaponry with a combination of resistance and accommodation. Along with their non-Indian supporters, some protested at the Nevada Test Site. At the same time, former Navajo uranium miners—many of them now stricken with cancer—sued the government for failing to inform them of the risks in handling radioactive materials. Other Indians, such as the Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico and the Goshutes in Utah, allowed nuclear waste storage facilities on their land. In their view, this move would gain them both money and control over radioactive materials that were within their borders anyway. In 1990, the U.S. Congress finally passed the Radiation Exposure Act. The law designated funds to provide some compensation for those damaged by the nation’s quest for nuclear supremacy during the Cold War. At its root, what did the Iranian challenge mean for American power? Khomeini and his followers despised the values they associated with modern U.S. culture. The controversies over nuclear power, weapons, and radioactive waste revealed several key themes characterizing the 1980s, especially U.S. military standing, government deregulation, and renewed anticommunism. In 1979, two international incidents raised questions about U.S. military effectiveness. That year, a revolution in Iran led to the taking of American hostages and a dramatic rejection of American cultural values, and the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan to prop up a Soviet-allied but weakening government. Humiliated, Americans put tough-talking Republicans in the White House for 12 years. These leaders’ emphasis on military might challenged the Soviet leadership, while changes in eastern Europe and the USSR brought an end to the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration also avidly promoted free markets. Its policies produced astounding wealth at the top of the socioeconomic ladder, increasing the distance between the daily experiences of the rich and the poor. And these policies catalyzed bitter struggles over natural resources, particularly those on western public lands. Finally, the newly organized religious right clashed with liberal opponents over such issues as abortion and homosexuality. In these years, Christian fundamentalists and their allies sought to reverse cultural liberties that had emerged since the late 1960s. This conservatism paralleled a political shift to the right. After nearly half a century, the New Deal order that had relied on Washington to get things done gave way to a diminished faith in government. The turning tide renewed the hopes of some Americans—disillusioned by the persistence of poverty and crime—that a self-governed marketplace might solve the nation’s most pressing social problems. “We’re going down!” cried U.S. political officer Elizabeth Swift on the phone to the State Department. These were her last words as a crowd of young Iranians poured into the U.S. embassy in Teheran on the morning of November 4, 1979, and cut telephone lines. In a move that shocked Americans, Islamic militants next seized 52 embassy personnel. They held the hostages for over a year. CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 939 ${bmicon} In the late 1970s, revolutionaries of a different political bent—that of socialism and the left—took the offensive against authoritarian regimes in Central America. Indeed, the Third World seemed to be turning away from U.S. leadership in the wake of the American defeat in Vietnam. To make matters worse, the Soviet Union stepped up its support for leftists abroad. In December 1979, the Red Army invaded Afghanistan. Fed up with these humiliating events overseas and with relentless inflation at home, American voters elected Ronald Reagan as president—the most conservative chief executive since Calvin Coolidge. Reagan promised to resurrect the Cold War, and he delivered. In January 1979, the Iranian people overthrew the longtime authoritarian government of Shah Reza Pahlavi. Under the Shah’s rule, the nation’s enormous oil wealth had flowed into the hands of a small elite. Meanwhile, the impoverished majority of devout Shi’ite Muslims grew increasingly resentful of the Shah’s closeness with his American allies. His secret police had detained 50,000 political prisoners; in the Shah’s time, his critics said, “only the cemeteries prospered.” The revolution found its leader in the austere religious figure Ruhollah Khomeini, who shouldered aside more moderate oppostion groups. Returning from exile in Iraq and then Paris, Ayatollah Khomeini created a popular theocratic state grounded in a strict interpretation of Islamic law. For the United States, connections with both Iran and Saudi Arabia since the 1940s had formed the two pillars of American policy toward the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Indeed, the CIA had engineered the 1953 coup that overthrew the short-lived Iranian nationalist government of Muhammad Mussadiq and restored the young Shah to power. American officials maintained close ties with the Shah thereafter. The drop in Iran’s oil production that accompanied the 1979 revolution unleashed the United States’ second oil shock of the 1970s. By that time, the nation depended on imports for as much as 42 percent of its oil. American gas prices soared by 60 percent amid shortages, sending another wave of inflation rolling through the U.S. economy. Hunted by the rebels, the Shah took his money and fled Iran. Several months later, the Carter administration let him fly to New York to seek treatment for cancer. Enraged that the United States harbored their nation’s most wanted criminal, Iranians demanded the Shah’s extradition to Teheran to stand trial. Washington refused. Within a month, militants stormed the U.S. Embassy—“that nest of spies,” Khomeini called it, referring to the CIA’s presence in Iran. The hostages’ captors paraded them before television cameras to force Washington to return the Shah. Carter refused to give in, but he focused the rest of his presidency on engineering the hostages’ release. He thus had little energy and few resources to devote to his campaign for reelection. ABC television created the news show Nightline to provide daily reports on the crisis. In April 1980, Carter finally approved a military rescue effort. But mechanical failures forced the mission to abort, and the collision of two helicopters during the attempt killed several U.S. soldiers. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned in protest against the attempted use of force. He was the first State Department head to quit over a matter of principle since William Jennings Bryan resigned in 1915 to express his desire to stay out of World War I. Americans’ frustration deepened, and their resentment of anti-American radicals in the Third World intensified. Not until after the Shah’s death in 1980 did the two governments finally negotiate the hostages’ release. Even then, the Iranian leaders delayed the Americans’ departure until moments after Carter left office in January 1981. At its root, what did the Iranian challenge mean for American power? Khomeini and his followers despised the values they associated with modern U.S. culture: secularism, Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 940 ${bmicon} full view MAP 28.1 TROUBLE SPOTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1979–1993 Oil production around the Persian Gulf and the close American relationship with Israel made political instability in the Middle East a central concern of the U.S. government. American leaders particularly feared the spread of either Soviet influence or Islamic revolution, both of which opposed American cultural values and U.S. strategic interests. materialism, gender equality, alcohol consumption, and sexual titillation. Back in the 1630s, John Winthrop and other members of the new Massachusetts Bay colony might well have understood this perspective. But the modern Iranian radicals sought to export the cleansing power of a puritanical Islamic faith throughout the Middle East and beyond. Indeed, the revolutionaries condemned the atheistic Soviets just as fiercely as they did the materialistic Americans. Khomeini applauded all movements that sought “to gain liberation from the superpowers of the left and the right.” U.S. policymakers had feared that instability in Iran might lead to a communist takeover of that country. Instead, the creation of the world’s first revolutionary Islamic state in 1979 presented an entirely different challenge to American interests overseas. Just seven weeks after the outbreak of the hostage crisis in Teheran, the first of 110,000 Russian troops rolled south across the USSR’s border into neighboring Afghanistan. Their goal: To stabilize the pro-Soviet government there against anticommunist Islamic guerrilla fighters. Moscow had resolved to prevent the spread of Islamic revolution into the heavily Muslim southern regions of the USSR. But few Americans saw this invasion as a defensive operation. Rather, they feared a push toward vulnerable Iran as Red Army troops marched beyond eastern Europe for the first time in more than 30 years. The Carter administration halted most trade with the Soviets and withdrew the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) nuclear arms control treaty from Senate consideration. In addition, the president organized a western boycott of the 1980 Olympics CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 941 ${bmicon} in Moscow and increased military spending. The “Carter Doctrine” proclaimed the U.S. commitment to preserve the status quo in the Persian Gulf region, even if it meant the use of military force. And the CIA began funding the Afghan guerrillas. Détente was dead; containment was back. Next came efforts to roll back the Soviets. By mid–1980, Carter’s public approval rating had dropped to the lowest level of any modern president. Interest rates surpassed 20 percent, and inflation reached 17 percent. Even the president acknowledged a “crisis stage.” With their dollars no longer buying what they used to, Americans wondered what the future would bring. For many voters, Carter’s inability to free the hostages in Teheran or reverse the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan symbolized the limitations of his presidency. Even his own party threatened to abandon him, as the vigorous challenge in the Democratic primaries by liberal Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts revealed. Many moderate Democrats and unaffiliated voters backed the independent candidacy of John Anderson. The moderate Republican congressman from Illinois managed to win 7 percent of the popular vote that November. Onto this stage strode Ronald Reagan. Long considered too conservative to win the presidency, the former California governor projected the confidence and strength that many Americans wanted, even if they did not share all of his views. The 69-year-old one-time actor sailed through the Republican primaries. For his main tactic, he appealed to nostalgia, particularly among white men, for a rosier past—a time of rising wages and U.S. military might. While Carter spoke of learning to live within limits, Reagan insisted that “we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams.” He painted a compelling picture of military pride and power abroad, of unlimited consumption of energy, and of infinite economic growth. Reagan located Carter’s “crisis of confidence” in the U.S. government, not in the American people. The “truth is,” he contended, “there are simple answers—just not easy ones.” Still, his answers looked both simpler and easier than Carter’s, and Reagan crushed the incumbent in the November election. full view Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan (Library of Congress) TABLE 28-1 The Election of 1980 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Ronald Reagan Republican 43,901,812 489 Jimmy Carter Democratic 35,483,820 49 John B. Anderson Independent 5,719,722 0 Reagan’s victory symbolized the meshing of politics and entertainment. An actor on the ultimate stage, he understood the presidency as a matter of public performance more than substantive policies. With little interest in the actual process of governing, he gave his advisers minimal guidance. He focused his own efforts on selling an idealized version of America to the public. He deeply believed in this version, even when his stories about it derived from film plots. For example, he claimed to have filmed the liberation of Nazi death camps in Europe in World War II, when in fact he did not leave the United States during the war. Nevertheless, with his sunny disposition and ease before the camera, Reagan projected the image of an attractive, competent leader. Reagan Presidential Campaign Advertisement President Reagan’s reelection campaign of 1984 occurred during great changes in the leadership of the Soviet Union. A succession of Soviet presidents fell to illness and death creating an American atmosphere of suspicion and anxiety. Using the metaphor of the “Russian bear,” Reagan’s television ad spoke to the fears of the American people, reassuring them that the president shared their suspicions and knew what to do. The media loved Reagan. Indeed, his presidency fit with the new emphasis on constant entertainment, as cable television, VCRs (1976), MTV (1981), and CDs (1983) swept the culture. Daily newspaper readership plummeted from 73 percent to 50 percent during the 1980s. Equally telling, the average length of an uninterrupted “sound bite” on the evening news dropped from 42 seconds in 1968 to fewer than 10 seconds in 1988. Anything longer, the networks believed, would bore viewers. And no one projected simplicity with greater warmth or sincerity than Reagan. Even his fiercest opponents admired his irrepressible humor when, after being shot by would-be assassin John Hinkley in 1981, the president surveyed the surgeons standing around his operating table and announced, “I hope you’re all Republicans.” PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 942 ${bmicon} Yet the 1980 election was about more than just Reagan’s likable personality. It revealed the nation’s renewed infatuation with conservative ideas. Republicans won control of the Senate for the first time since 1952. They managed to defeat several of the chamber’s most respected liberal Democratic members, such as Frank Church of Idaho, who had led the investigation of CIA spying practices. The Grand Old Party had repositioned itself to be more ideologically consistent. It now had fewer traditionally moderate northeastern members and millions of new conservative white southern members. Several basic values united the party: an unhindered private sector and entrepreneurial initiative to create affluence plus free markets and individual responsibility to solve the nation’s social problems. Republicans, like most Democrats, also believed that the United States had a moral obligation to preserve world order and halt further expansion of communist influence. Reagan proclaimed that “government was the problem, not the solution.” For conservatives, government had two specific roles: to prevent disorder—crime at home, revolution abroad—and to support the business community. The United States’ key European allies also moved to the right in the 1980s, especially Great Britain under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. “Sometimes in our administration,” Reagan once joked, “the right hand doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.” But all hands in the White House agreed on the importance of restoring confidence in the nation’s engagements abroad, particularly in the Third World. In the 1970s, leftist insurgencies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—especially Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola, Ethiopia, El Salvador, and Nicaragua—had suggested the retreat of U.S. power. Equally troubling to many, when the U.S. government did assert its power, it often seemed to support anti-democratic or racist governments—as long as they were anticommunist and open to foreign investment. Never much concerned with foreign affairs in the best of times, most Americans now felt disillusioned. Reagan set out to heal the public’s bruised pride, using the logic of his new UN ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick. A former Georgetown University professor, Kirkpatrick distinguished between nondemocratic nations on the right (“authoritarian”) and the left (“totalitarian”). They were not morally equivalent, she argued. In her view, “authoritarian” regimes were friendly to the United States and could be reformed, but “totalitarian” communist governments had close ties to the Soviet Union and could be changed only by force. The peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 disproved her theory. Reagan blamed the Soviet Union for “all the unrest that is going on.” He rejected the 1970s policy of détente that had emerged during the Nixon administration and had taken further shape under Ford and Carter. Often, Reagan spoke as though the Chinese–Soviet split had never happened. His was “a kind of 1952 world,” one aide recalled. “He sees the world in black and white terms.” Pointing to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and its 1983 shoot-down of a Korean Air Lines civilian jet that had strayed into Soviet airspace, the president denounced the USSR as “an evil empire.” His pronouncement echoed the language of the wildly popular film Star Wars (1977) and its two sequels. The three movies cast the plucky heroes—like Americans and their allies—as righteous rebels against a malignant imperial power. The Vietnam War, Reagan insisted, was not a destructive imperial cause but a “noble effort” on the part of dedicated American patriots. Indeed, as governor of California in the late 1960s, Reagan had declared that the United States should “level Vietnam, pave it, paint stripes on it, and make a parking lot of it.” Americans, Reagan vowed, must overcome their post–1973 “Vietnam syndrome” and stand ready once again to use force abroad. The Reagan administration backed up the president’s words by launching the largest peacetime military build-up in American history. The Pentagon’s budget ballooned 40 percent between 1980 and 1984. The new president also revived covert operations. He gave CIA CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 943 ${bmicon} director William Casey the green light to provide secret assistance to anticommunist governments and insurgencies throughout the Third World, despite their often gruesome human rights records. However, the administration’s aggressive rhetoric about rolling back communism masked an unwillingness to put U.S. soldiers in harm’s way abroad. The one exception came during the civil war in Lebanon in 1983. U.S. forces initially deployed as peacekeepers there began siding with the Israeli-backed Christian government troops against Syrian-supported Muslim rebels. Within weeks, a Muslim suicide bomber—one of the first of many to come in the Middle East—drove a truck full of explosives into the American barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 marines. The administration quietly backed off from mediating further Middle East conflicts. It covered its retreat with an invasion two days later of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada. There, thousands of U.S. troops quickly overthrew a Marxist government and a small contingent of Cuban supporters. Reagan was the only Cold War president to take almost no interest in the details of foreign policy. International issues “weren’t terribly important to the president,” national security adviser Robert McFarlane explained. Reagan delegated most foreign policy planning to his advisers—except for the rising tide of leftist revolution in Central America. In that region, extreme inequalities between landowning elites and vast peasant majorities had fueled insurgencies against the authoritarian governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Moreover, some small assistance from Cuba and the Soviet Union had found its way to the rebels. Reagan passionately opposed these insurgents. He authorized the CIA to work hand in hand with the regimes, even though they used death squads to torture and murder dissidents and slaughtered whole villages and towns to wipe out possible resistance. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista rebels had managed to overthrow the pro-American dictatorship of Antonio Somoza in 1979. Their name reflected loyalty to a long-standing left-leaning effort in Nicaragua to eliminate U.S. dominance of the country; in the 1920s and early 1930s, General Augusto Sandino had led rebel troops against the U.S.-supported dictatorial regime of Somoza’s father. Forty years later, the Sandinistas set about building a more egalitarian and socialistic state while still preserving 60 percent of the nation’s wealth in private hands. Carter had adopted a wait-and-see attitude. But after Reagan took office in 1981, the CIA created the counterrevolutionary “Contras,” recruited primarily from Somoza’s murderous former National Guard. The Contras waged an undeclared war on the new government in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. By 1987, 40,000 Nicaraguans had died in the fighting, most of them civilians. Reagan called the Contras “freedom fighters” and declared them “the moral equal of our Founding Fathers.” Nevertheless, several European and Latin American allies considered the Contras an illegitimate force of terrorists. A large coalition of church and university groups in the United States agreed. They organized fact-finding visits to Nicaragua and lobbying trips to Washington. Christian activists formed the “Sanctuary” movement to aid refugees from the right-wing dictatorships in Central America that sympathized with the Contras. The Pentagon, for its part, had no interest in sending troops to fight a popular government abroad. The opposition finally prevailed; Congress passed the Boland Amendments of 1982 and 1984 to restrict U.S. assistance to the Contras. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 944 ${bmicon} The plight of refugees fleeing the civil wars in Central America exposed the politicized thinking that had influenced U.S. immigration policies for decades. Officials distinguished between “political” refugees and “economic” refugees. The former, they felt, had a well-founded fear of persecution. The latter were supposedly looking only for better economic opportunities. The Reagan administration used this distinction to justify supporting certain foreign governments while opposing others. For example, the U.S. government had warmly welcomed and financially assisted people fleeing communist regimes, such as Hungary in the 1950s and Cuba since the 1960s. Likewise, Nicaraguan immigrants were treated well because their choice to leave Nicaragua provided ammunition in the propaganda war against the Sandinistas. However, Salvadorans and Guatemalans, deemed “economic” refugees, were turned away. In 1984, U.S. officials admitted only 328 Salvadorans into the country while refusing 13,045—a ratio opposite that for Nicaraguans. These policies encouraged the emergence of militantly anticommunist expatriate communities in the United States. These groups then lobbied to sustain U.S. hostility toward leftist regimes in their homelands. The anti-Castro Cuban community in Miami offered the most dramatic example. Immigrants who left Vietnam and Cambodia after the communist victories there in 1975 brought a similar perspective. Lori was what the president called a “welfare cheat.” Writer Barbara Ehrenreich told the story of a young neighbor in New York City representative of welfare recipients: a single white mother with one child. Lori had been married for two years to a man who beat her and once chased her around the house with a gun. Welfare had made it possible for her to leave him, a move she described as like being born again, “as a human being this time.” Lori sometimes earned close to $100 a week from cleaning houses and waiting tables—not enough to support herself and her daughter, but a useful supplement to the small government payments. She chose not to report this to the welfare office, spending it instead on little things deemed inessential by welfare regulations: deodorant, hand lotion, and an occasional commercial haircut. Lori’s story helps illuminate some of the major trends of the 1980s. Just as its commitment to expanding U.S. economic opportunities abroad helped renew the Cold War early in the decade, the Reagan administration’s beliefs in free markets and scant government regulation of the private sector shaped politics at home during this decade. In some ways, the economy’s behavior seemed to affirm the wisdom of these beliefs: inflation finally eased and the stock market perked up. Congress and the White House slashed taxes. However, annual budget deficits and the national debt (the accumulation of previous deficits) soon soared as tax revenues decreased and military spending increased. The administration shrank government programs for the poor and portrayed welfare recipients like Lori as lazy and irresponsible. Washington turned a cold shoulder to concerns over the environment and opened public lands in the West to new commercial uses. By the 1990s, the gap between rich and poor widened so much that the vaunted American middle class threatened to shrink beyond recognition. Taxes played a crucial role in the Reagan administration’s efforts to reduce government involvement in the economy. Compared with America’s closest allies in Europe, U.S. tax rates were already low because of the country’s smaller welfare provisions. But a tax revolt had begun brewing in the 1970s, exemplified by California’s Proposition 13 (1978), which cut property taxes CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 945 ${bmicon} by more than half. In 1981, Reagan proposed a new tax law to lower federal income tax rates by 25 percent over three years. Congress passed the legislation, and the top individual rate—paid only by the wealthiest Americans—dropped from 70 percent to 28 percent. Congress also slashed taxes on corporations, capital gains, and inheritances, further benefiting the most affluent Americans. As taxes shrank, federal spending on the military soared. The Pentagon bolstered its conventional and nuclear arsenals and gave service personnel a morale-boosting salary increase. After 1983, billions of dollars poured from the U.S. Treasury into the president’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). An immense project, SDI sought to create a national missile defense system involving lasers that could shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. Most scientists considered the concept technically unfeasible, and critics dubbed it “Star Wars” for its resemblance to some of the fantasy weapons in the popular science fiction film of the same name. Still, the jump in military spending created new jobs, just as earlier boosts had done under Truman and Kennedy. Reagan on the Wisdom of Tax Cuts Early in Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, he used a televised address to the American people to sell his new economic plan and release the country from a decade-long stagnation. Later dubbed “Reaganomics” or “voodoo economics,” the plan proposed releasing a torrent of entrepreneurial energy by cutting taxes and domestic federal spending. These cuts, he claimed, would produce more government revenues to help stabilize the burgeoning deficit. With less money coming in from taxes but more money flowing out to the military, the government did not seem to be on the path to fiscal responsibility touted by the Republican party. The funds for the weapons build-up could come from only one source: social programs at home. However, most domestic spending went to popular programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, which primarily benefited the middle class. Leaving those in place, Reagan instead reduced funding for welfare programs, including food stamps, school lunches, job training, and low-income housing. His administration derided impoverished single mothers as “welfare queens.” The welfare state, the administration contended, was only encouraging dependence and stifling individual responsibility. Frustrated by the persistence of poverty, many well-off Americans found this view persuasive. Numerous people, such as conservative writer George Gilder, found it much easier to assume that the poor “are refusing to work hard” than to examine the more complicated roots of poverty. Congress slashed taxes on corporations, capital gains, and inheritances, further benefiting the most affluent Americans. The assault on welfare had links to racial issues as well. Reagan portrayed welfare recipients—most of whom were white and lived in rural areas—as primarily urban and African American. The president had made a blunt appeal to white southern voters in 1980. He had campaigned in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a tiny town but a national symbol of antiblack violence since three civil rights workers had been murdered nearby in 1964. There, Reagan spoke of his support for “states’ rights”—the same language that those who supported the killers had used. The Republican desire to transfer the responsibility for citizens’ well-being from the national government to the states resonated with opponents of the civil rights movement. In 1978, the Supreme Court’s Bakke decision had supported this goal by banning the use of actual racial quotas in college admissions, although the Court did allow the affirmative action principle of considering race as merely one of many factors in admission decisions. The Reagan administration opposed any form of affirmative action, calling instead for the “colorblind” application of law. The president and his supporters argued that prejudice no longer had any effect on the decisions that employers and others made. Ironically, Reagan’s own Justice Department demonstrated the opposite: it sought unsuccessfully to win tax-free status for Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, and other schools and colleges that discriminated against people of color. Reducing welfare spending did not close the budgetary gaps that lower taxes and higher military outlays had opened. “Supply-side” economists had promised that tax cuts would encourage investment and thereby generate wealth and eventually more tax revenues, even with lowered rates. But Reagan’s own vice president and former challenger in the Republican primaries, George H.W. Bush, had dismissed these assumptions as “voodoo economics.” Bush’s perspective had merit. To close the budget gaps, the government resorted to borrowing money. Formerly the world’s largest creditor nation, the United States became its largest debtor nation. Between 1981 PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 946 ${bmicon} and 1989, the national debt ballooned to almost $3 trillion. Moreover, during 12 years of Republican rule, annual budget deficits jumped from $59 billion to $300 billion. Paying the interest on the new debt pushed interest rates higher and siphoned off funds that could have been used for any number of productive purposes. Despite these problems, “Reaganomics” helped the national economy recover somewhat from the traumas of the 1970s. The tight money policies of the Federal Reserve Board after 1979 eventually tamed inflation, which dropped from 14 percent in 1980 to less than 2 percent in 1983. The Fed’s high interest rates also choked off the nation’s cash flow and provoked a severe recession in 1981–1982, with unemployment reaching above 10 percent. However, the economy revived again in 1983 and was growing at a robust annual rate of 6.8 percent by 1984. In that year, rising confidence in the economy helped Reagan crush his opponent, Carter’s former Vice President Walter Mondale. Even the novelty of placing a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, on a major ticket as the vice presidential candidate could not bolster the Democratic challenge. Reagan, now 73 and limiting his campaign appearances to well-orchestrated photo oportunities, won re-election handily and continued his economic course. After several years of excellent returns on Wall Street, the stock market crash of October 1987 caught investors by surprise. Nevertheless, it did not provoke a broader economic downturn, as the 1929 crash had done. TABLE 28-2 The Election of 1984 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Ronald Reagan Republican 54,455,075 525 Walter Mondale Democratic 37,577,185 13 The 1980 election marked the sharpest turn ever in American environmental politics. The new administration reversed two decades of growing bipartisan consensus on the need for greater protection of the environment. Reagan instead supported corporations’ demands for fewer environmental regulations and easier access to natural resources on public lands. The president ridiculed the idea of preserving wilderness for its own sake. Noting that plants emit carbon dioxide, he even claimed that “trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” A CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 947 ${bmicon} full view MAP 28.2 FEDERALLY OWNED LANDS IN THE WEST (AS PERCENTAGE OF A STATE’S TOTAL LANDS) The vast majority of public lands lie in the states west of the Mississippi River, managed by agencies of the U.S. government. In the 1980s those lands were at the center of a dispute between citizens who saw them as national treasures and others, mostly local businessmen and ranchers, who wanted the lands sold to individuals or transferred to states that would open them to easier exploitation. coalition of powerful western land users and politicians known as the “Sagebrush Rebellion” had an ally in the White House. Emboldened, they launched a quest to turn federal lands over to the states and open them to commercial use. These lands, most of them in the West, were administered by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). They had ended up in federal hands primarily because successive waves of settlers had deemed them undesirable. They included snowy mountains in the Rockies and Sierras and vast deserts in the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah. By the 1980s, different groups desired them for two mutually exclusive purposes: corporations and ranchers wanted to harvest timber and minerals from them and use them for grazing, and environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts sought to designate them for recreational and scenic use. The officials Reagan appointed to oversee these lands and assume responsibility for protecting them had little respect for the agencies they ran. Critics described the situation as “foxes guarding the chicken house.” The officials openly disdained environmentalists, including those in the moderate wing of the Republican party. Anne Gorsuch at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Robert Burford at the BLM, and John Crowell in charge of the Forest Service explicitly rewrote regulations to favor private enterprise. They sold grazing, logging, and mining rights on public lands at prices far below market value, despite their stated commitment to market economics. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 948 ${bmicon} Gorsuch, Burford, and Crowell were moderates in comparison to James Watt, the new Secretary of the Interior who controlled national parks and wildlife refuges. A native of Wheatland, Wyoming, Watt had worked as a lawyer in Denver for a private foundation dedicated to businesses seeking access to public lands. An ideologue, he declared that only two kinds of people lived in the United States: “liberals and Americans.” Watt was also a Christian fundamentalist who believed that the end of time was very near. In his Senate confirmation hearings, he suggested that the nation had little need for long-term public land management because Christ would soon be returning and the known world would pass away—an interpretation of stewardship that not even all fundamentalists shared, much less the broader American public. Watt’s abrasive personal style eventually alienated even the White House, and he resigned in 1983. The administration’s reversal of federal environmental policies alarmed a wide range of citizens and stimulated a powerful backlash. In particular, Watt’s smug extremism made him a lighting rod for criticism. Membership in environmental organizations soared, in such traditional groups as the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, as well as in more radical ones, such as Greenpeace. Most Americans wanted to breathe cleaner air, drink safe water, and make recreational use of national forests, national parks, and BLM lands. Even Americans sympathetic to extractive industries such as timbering lamented the scars that clearcutting and strip mining left. In much of the rural West, jobs in the recreation industry outnumbered those in the logging, mining, and ranching businesses. The public also took alarm at the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the USSR. Three years later, concerns intensified when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska, coating 1000 miles of pristine coastline with crude oil. Reagan’s Republican successor in the White House, George Bush, caught on and tried to portray himself as an environmentalist. CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 949 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 28.1 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND INCOME The 1980s were excellent years for wealthy Americans. The “trickle-down” effect touted by some Reagan administration officials—predicting that greater wealth accumulation among the rich would trickle down to the less affluent—had little impact. As the Reagan administration eased corporate access to the nation’s natural resources, the disparity between rich and poor expanded further. This gap was already more prominent than that of other industrialized democracies, including Japan and West Germany. But the distribution of income became even more skewed, and wealth flowed increasingly to already affluent Americans. Whereas most Americans’ real wages (wages after inflation is factored in) declined, the professional classes fared well, and the wealthiest citizens gained enormously. For example, the salary of an average corporate chief executive officer was 40 times greater than that of a typical factory worker in 1980; by 1989, it was 93 times greater. The net worth of the 400 richest Americans tripled. The wealthiest 1 percent of citizens received 60 percent of the after-tax income gain during the decade. By 1989, the top 1 percent of American families possessed more assets than the bottom 90 percent—a ratio typical of Third World nations. A series of corporate mergers and consolidations further enriched well-off Americans, as did financial speculation and manipulation on Wall Street. Business Week wrote of a “Casino Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 950 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Is Material Success Corrupting? “Will you tell me,” former president John Adams asked former president Thomas Jefferson in 1819, “how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of temperance and industry? Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?” Adams had his finger on one of the enduring dilemmas in American life. Discipline and hard work—”temperance and industry”—tended to lead to material success. But acquiring riches tended to change people. It made them more self-indulgent and less virtuous as citizens of a republic, Adams feared. Adams’s concerns mirrored those of his Puritan ancestors who had arrived in Massachusetts almost two centuries earlier. So strongly had the Puritans rejected what they saw as the spiritual and material corruptions of life in England that they left to start anew across the Atlantic Ocean, a profoundly dangerous enterprise. Once they had survived the terrible first winters and established secure colonies in what they called New England, they began to face a new problem. Building a godly society meant “doing good”: following the model of Jesus. But their disciplined lives led many Puritans also to “do well”: make money. Were these two compatible? After all, Jesus himself had warned, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Puritans and their descendants wrestled with this problem for generations. Waves of immigration since the 1600s replenished American society with people seeking opportunity. The hardships that attend moving to a new country ensured that new Americans tended to be strivers and risk-takers. Some came for religious and political freedom, but many others were drawn by the possibility of “doing well” economically. With effort, most fared much better than they had previously. The United States remained, in the old words of nineteenth-century Chinese immigrants, “the Golden Mountain.” Despite their enthusiasm for pursuing private material success, Americans in the twentieth century at times indicated public ambivalence about great wealth. During the trauma of the Great Depression and the national unity of World War II, displays of extravagance drew scorn, and government policies became somewhat more redistributive of the national wealth. The communes of the 1960s, like earlier utopian communities, sought to create a life free from what their members saw as the corruptions of materialism. In the Cold War competition for influence abroad, U.S. officials sent diplomats and aid workers to Africa but worried that Soviet and especially Chinese personnel, accustomed to fewer material comforts at home than Americans, were fitting much better into poor African societies and making more positive impressions on their hosts. In other periods of modern American history, however, public life celebrated the success of the nation’s richest citizens. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and the Jazz Age of the 1920s, political and cultural leaders admired and shared the affluence associated with names such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford. The 1980s became another era for ostentatious displays of wealth. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” became a familiar expression. The proliferation of stretch limousines epitomized a decade marked by “conspicuous consumption.” Economy” in which insider trading and leveraged buyouts (business takeovers financed by debt) created paper wealth rather than actual products. Defenders of the aggressive new tactics on Wall Street argued that those taking great risks deserved great rewards and that new wealth trickled down to the broader American citizenry. “Greed is all right,” fabulously wealthy financier and corporate takeover specialist Ivan Boesky assured the 1986 graduating class of the business school of the University of California at Berkeley. “I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” Six months later, however, Boesky began a three-year prison term for illegal insider trading. The explosion of wealth at the top fueled an emerging culture of extravagance, reminiscent of similar trends in the late nineteenth century and the 1920s. Newly identified “yuppies” (young urban professionals) embodied the drive for material acquisition, in contrast to the anticonsumerist inclinations of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jerry Rubin had made a reputation as a member of the anarchist “yippies” in the 1960s. He and comrade Abbie Hoffman once dropped dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange—which traders Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 951 ${bmicon} scurried madly to grab—to dramatize the stock market’s pursuit of profit. By the 1980s, however, Rubin was working as an investment banker. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were older but shared similar values. They relished lavish amenities like those made popular on the television shows Dynasty, Dallas, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The contrast to the austere Jimmy Carter could hardly have been more stark. As the affluence gap widened, the broad middle class watched its job security slip. Early in the decade, the recession had prompted factory shutdowns and mass layoffs. More than a million industrial jobs disappeared in 1982 alone. Manufacturers’ decisions to keep moving plants abroad for cheaper labor only worsened the situation. Although the 1980s saw the creation of 20 million new jobs, most of these were in the nonunionized service sector. Thus they offered low pay and few benefits. By 1990, 8 million Americans had tried the unskilled work available at McDonald’s fast-food restaurants. “To work at McDonald’s you don’t need a face, you don’t need a brain,” one of them recalled. “You need to have two hands and two legs and move ’em as fast as you can. That’s the whole system. I wouldn’t go back there for anything.” PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 952 ${bmicon} Organized labor suffered during these years as well, losing 3 million members as the manufacturing sector of the economy shrank and the government encouraged corporate opposition to unions. In his first year in office, Reagan broke a strike by the nation’s 12,000 air traffic controllers by firing the protesting public employees and hiring permanent replacements. Worried about the disappearance of high-wage industrial jobs, American families tried to preserve their living standards by putting more of their members in the workforce, especially women and teenagers. They also put off paying for their lifestyles by charging more purchases to credit cards, taking out larger home mortgages, and signing on for longer car loans. As their government carried more debt, so did private citizens. The poorest Americans fared badly in the 1980s. The bottom tenth saw their already meager incomes decline by another 10 percent. In 1986, a full-time worker at minimum wage earned $6700 per year—almost $4000 short of the poverty level for a family of four. Homelessness worsened in the cities as the government cut funding for welfare and institutional care for the mentally ill while housing costs rose. More than 1 million people lived on the streets, one-fifth of them still employed. One out of eight children went hungry, and 20 percent lived in poverty, including 50 percent of black children. These Americans received minimal sympathy from the nation’s political leaders. By contrast, Congress and the White House provided huge federal subsidies to “needy” businesses such as the Chrysler Corporation. The collapse of the savings and loan (S&L) industry provides the most striking example. Deregulation in the late 1970s had reduced oversight of the formerly sedate financial practices of S&Ls by federal regulators. But S&Ls remained insured by the U.S. government. As a result, some S&L executives, such as Charles Keating, engaged in rampant speculation and fraud. A decline in real estate prices bankrupted 600 shaky S&Ls by 1991, leaving taxpayers with a bill for nearly $500 billion. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chairman William Seidman described the U.S. government as “a full partner in a nationwide casino.” Despite Reagan’s record, many working-class and middle-class Americans voted for him twice. Forty percent of union household members and 50 percent of all blue-collar workers cast their ballots for this staunch opponent of unions. Why? Part of the explanation lies in the decline of working-class voting during the 1970s. Disillusioned with a political process they saw as corrupt, numerous workers neglected to go to the polls on voting day. Many of those who did vote decided that the Democratic party had become increasingly co-opted by cultural liberalism and no longer spoke for the working class. They cast their ballots for the Republicans for the first time. Reagan had great personal charisma, and his staff brilliantly managed his image in the media. The former actor’s effective appeal to patriotism also attracted many citizens who might once have voted for their economic interests instead. Finally, white Americans increasingly defined their political loyalties on the basis of social and cultural issues—such as opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and affirmative action—rather than economic interests. Conservative Christians, in particular, strongly supported the Republican cause. One of the nation’s foremost religious figures, Reverend Pat Robertson controlled the Christian Broadcasting Network and ran unsuccessfully for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. Like other social conservatives of this era, he promoted “family values” and traditional gender roles. Robertson went so far as to declare that feminism “encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children [and] practice witchcraft.” In contrast, author Susan Faludi wrote the 1991 best-seller Backlash about opposition to the women’s movement. She became an important critic of gender roles in American society and how they CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 953 ${bmicon} limit people’s life experiences and possibilities. In completely opposite fashion from Robertson, Faludi concluded, “All women are feminists. It’s just a matter of time and encouragement.” Throughout the 1980s, Americans embroiled themselves in a contentious debate about values. Their society had changed in the previous generation in ways that some citizens disdained but others applauded. Americans argued primarily about issues that had come to the fore during the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s: sexuality, gender roles, the place of religion in public life, and multiculturalism. These often bitter “culture wars” dominated talk shows and newspaper editorial pages throughout much of the last two decades of the twentieth century. Some of the Americans most troubled by the state of American society were conservative white Protestants. Disproportionately from the South, they had long avoided political involvement and sought to keep church and state separate. They had particularly distrusted Roman Catholicism and state aid for religious education that would include parochial schools. But anti-Catholicism declined sharply among these conservative Christians after the Supreme Court banned organized school prayer in 1962 and legalized abortion in 1973. Increasingly, conservative white Protestants saw secularism as their real enemy and conservative Catholics as allies. Together these groups bemoaned the post–1960s shift in mainstream values away from respect for traditional authorities—the church, political leaders, and the military—and toward freer sexual expression and general self-indulgence. What the nation needed, they believed, was a return to reverence for God. The growth of this Christian fundamentalism also paralleled rising religious fundamentalism around the globe, whether among Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, or Muslims in Iran and the Arab Middle East. For all their differences, religious people in these cultures shared a common quest: preserving spiritual purity and cultural traditions in an increasingly secular, integrated world. Americans argued primarily about issues that had come to the fore during the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Conservative Protestants were not a fringe group. As many as 45 million Americans—20 percent of the population—considered themselves fundamentalist Christians in 1980. In combination with a similar number of Catholics, they represented a vast potential force in American politics. And their ranks were growing. While membership in the more liberal mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, declined steadily after the 1960s, the fundamentalist Assemblies of God grew 37 percent and the Southern Baptists 18 percent between 1965 and 1975. Rather than emphasizing theological doctrine, these groups focused on individuals’ emotional connection with a forgiving God. They built church schools, Bible colleges, and publishing houses to reinforce their message. Evangelism on secular college campuses expanded through such organizations as Intervarsity and Campus Crusade for Christ. Hal Lindsey’s apocalyptic story about the second coming of Christ, The Late Great Planet Earth, sold more than 10 million copies in the 1970s. Conservative Christians mobilized in the 1980 campaign to support Reagan’s candidacy. Critics noted that Reagan himself attended church only occasionally and seemed an indifferent father. They contrasted the divorced candidate with his born-again, Sunday-school–teaching opponent, Jimmy Carter. But Reagan’s conservative views on abortion and gay rights and his support for school prayer resonated with fundamentalists. They flocked to the Republican party and to new right-wing religious organizations, such as the Moral Majority, founded in 1979 in Lynchburg, Virginia, by Reverend Jerry Falwell. More than 60 million people each week watched—and many sent money to—“televangelists,” including Falwell, Robertson, and Jim Bakker. Suffusing the GOP with a distinctly southern, grassroots flavor, the religious right also highlighted a major faultline in the modern Republican party: the tension between social conservatives, who emphasized community and tradition, and free marketeers, who promoted Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 954 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Religion and Politics in the 1980s In 1979, Baptist minister Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in Lynchburg, Virginia. The organization represented the growing engagement of conservative evangelical Christians in American politics, and Falwell emerged as the most prominent figure of the new religious right. However, not all Christians were conservative. Robert McAfee Brown, a Presbyterian minister and theologian, represented more liberal elements of the church that understood both the Bible and the problems of American society differently than Falwell. The Goals of the Moral Majority (1980) by Jerry Falwell We must reverse the trend America finds herself in today. Young people … have learned to disrespect the family as God established it. They have been educated in a public-school system that is permeated with secular humanism. They have been taught that the Bible is just another book of literature. They have been taught that there are no absolutes in our world today…. These same young people have been reared under the influence of a government that has taught them socialism and welfarism…. I personally feel that the home and the family are still held in reverence by the vast majority of the American public. I believe there is still a vast number of Americans who love their country, are patriotic, and are willing to sacrifice for her. I remember that time when it was positive to be patriotic…. I remember as a boy … when the band struck up “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” we stood and goose pimples would run all over me…. It is now time to take a stand on certain moral issues…. We must stand against the Equal Rights Amendment, the feminist revolution, and the homosexual revolution…. Americans have been silent much too long. We have stood by and watched as American power and influence have been systematically weakened in every sphere of the world…. The hope of reversing the trends of decay in our republic now lies with the Christian public in America. We cannot expect help from the liberals. They certainly are not going to call our nation back to righteousness and neither are the pornographers, the smut peddlers, and those who are corrupting our youth. The Politics of the Bible (1982) by Robert McAfee Brown In Christian terms, and I think in terms with which all Jews could also agree, my real complaint about the Moral Majority’s intrusion of the Bible into American politics, is that they are not biblical enough…. The Moral Majority’s biblically inspired political agenda involves a very selective, very partial, and therefore very distorted use of the Bible. They have isolated a set of concerns that they say get to the heart of what is wrong with America—homosexuality, abortion, and pornography…. Take the issue of homosexuality. If one turns to the scriptures as a whole, to try to come up with their central concerns, homosexuality is going to be very low on such a list even if indeed it makes the list at all. There are perhaps seven very ambiguous verses in the whole biblical canon that even allude to it…. [But there are] hundreds and hundreds of places where the scriptures are dealing over and over again with question of social justice, the tendency of the rich to exploit the poor, the need for all of us to have a commitment to the hungry,… [and] the dangers of national idolatry, that is to say, making the nation into God, accepting uncritically whatever we have to do as a nation against other nations…. When one looks over the agenda of the Moral Majority there is absolutely no mention of such things…. We seem to be living in two different worlds, reading two different books. Source: Irwin Unger and Robert R. Tomes, American Issues, 2nd edition (Prentice-Hall, 1999), vol. 2, pp. 362–364, 375–377. entrepreneurial capitalism. In its quest for profits, unrestrained capitalism had no inherent respect for tradition. Indeed, it could bring unwelcome changes, as Rustbelt industrial workers had discovered when their employers moved south and overseas. Marrying Jesus to the market proved difficult: should the state play a minimal role in the economy and society, as free-market libertarians believed, or should it monitor personal behavior, as social conservatives implied? Reagan managed to keep the two wings of the party together, often referring to his “11th Commandment” to “speak no ill of another Republican.” But tensions persisted. When Falwell called on “all good Christians” to oppose the 1981 Supreme Court nomination of Arizona’s conservative Sandra Day O’Connor on the grounds that she was insufficiently hostile to abortion, Arizona senator and party elder Barry Goldwater—a staunch proponent of small government and personal privacy—retorted that “every good Christian ought to kick Jerry Falwell right in the ass.” Gender and sexuality issues particularly aroused the ire of religious conservatives. They blamed feminism for weakening male authority in the family and for increasing divorce rates. A growing anti-abortion movement gained national visibility by 1980; “Operation Rescue” even borrowed the tactics of civil disobedience from the civil rights movement. During the 1970s, 22 states repealed their sodomy laws, reflecting a slowly increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians. But the religious right, which viewed homosexuality as an abomination, fiercely resisted this trend. Dismayed by the prevalence of casual sexual relationships in the 1970s, church conservatives urged abstinence on young Americans. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 955 ${bmicon} The heyday of the sexual revolution ended in 1983, when researchers identified the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The deadly epidemic spread swiftly through the gay male communities of San Francisco and New York as a result of unprotected sex. Many fundamentalists viewed AIDS as a divine punishment for homosexual activity. “The poor homosexuals,” Reagan aide Pat Buchanan wrote. “They have declared war on nature and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.” The Reagan administration refused to help mobilize a campaign against the new plague. AIDS continued to spread during the 1990s and beyond, among gays and heterosexuals, both in the United States and abroad—especially in such places as China, southern Africa, and Russia. New drugs slowed the onset of actual AIDS in many HIV-infected Americans while scientists continued the frustrating quest for a cure for the disease. Yet another epidemic swept through the United States during the 1980s, striking impoverished urban neighborhoods especially hard. The culprit was crack cocaine. Powerfully addictive, it contributed to gang violence and record homicide rates in several cities. Drug-related convictions skyrocketed, stimulating a boom in prison building and a doubling of the nation’s inmate population. Conservatives strongly supported the “war on drugs” touted by the White House, and police departments created special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams to deal with heavily armed drug operators. This effort tended to ignore the real forces behind drug dealing, which included persistent poverty and a consumer culture obsessed with immediate gratification. Dealing crack PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 956 ${bmicon} offered a rare avenue to wealth to the poorest communities. On the wall of one Detroit crack house, a dealer posted this notice for employees: “[With] hard work and dedication we will all be rich within 12 months.” Yet for all the mayhem they caused, crack and other illicit drugs killed less than 1 percent as many Americans per year as the 500,000 felled by tobacco and alcohol. Clearly, addiction to legal as well as illegal substances remained a pervasive problem. The liberal and radical reform energies that had percolated in the late 1960s and early 1970s did not evaporate entirely in the conservative 1980s. To be sure, some former activists converted to Republican orthodoxies, investing on Wall Street and enjoying the material comforts of affluence. However, many activists continued to work for social justice in their communities. Numerous activists focused on environmental issues. In combination with younger organizers, many from college campuses, they kept alive a national resistance to conservative politics. Some coined the term “politically correct” or “PC” as an inside joke about fellow leftists who were overly concerned with ideological purity in an era of pervasive conservatism. Right-wingers soon turned “PC” into a derogatory term for those deemed too supportive of multiculturalism or egalitarian causes. Nuclear threats engaged activists from both the peace and environmental movements. The accidents at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) intensified public anxieties about the dangers of nuclear energy. Nuclear weapons were even deadlier: after all, their very purpose was to wreak destruction on a scale that would create what scientists called “nuclear winter,” a depopulated planet shrouded in radioactivity. The sharp increases in both Soviet and U.S. nuclear arsenals alarmed residents in those countries and across Europe, where many of the missiles were located. Americans and others who remembered Hiroshima expressed shock when Reagan administration officials spoke of winning a nuclear war and the president wrongly claimed that commanders could recall submarine-based missiles after firing them. The broad-based nuclear freeze movement that emerged in the United States and western Europe in the early 1980s instead encouraged arms control negotiations that would bear fruit a few years later. Gays and lesbians remained the only Americans against whom tens of millions of their fellow citizens openly believed it acceptable to discriminate Racial justice remained a primary concern for Americans of color and liberal and leftist activists, particularly in light of the Republican administration’s opposition to affirmative action. Determined to honor the foremost leader of the civil rights movement, antiracists convinced Congress in 1983 to designate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. By 1985, a robust antia-partheid movement—inspired by South African church leader and Nobel peace prize winner Desmond Tutu—successfully campaigned to reduce U.S. investments in racially segregated South Africa. A year later, Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over the president’s veto, enacting economic sanctions against South Africa—despite opposition from conservatives, such as Congressman Dick Cheney of Wyoming and Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Such international pressure played a central role in the South African government’s decision four years later to end apartheid and release African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela from jail. The long era of explicit white supremacy, embodied in international colonialism and American segregation as well as South African apartheid, finally ended. Perhaps the most prominent face of left-leaning politics in the decade was that of Reverend Jesse Jackson, a former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackson sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and 1988, winning a handful of primaries in 1988 with his multiracial Rainbow Coalition. Jackson’s candidacy encouraged several million African Americans to register to vote for the first time. They, in turn, helped pressure southern Democratic senators to provide the crucial votes in 1987 to reject Robert Bork, a right-wing ideologue (and former Solicitor General in the Nixon administration) nominated by Reagan for a seat on the Supreme Court. CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 957 ${bmicon} Gay rights advocates also raised their voices in the 1980s. Faced with the twin scourge of AIDS and homophobic violence, homosexuals and their heterosexual supporters lobbied for the inclusion of sexual orientation as a category of discrimination in civil rights laws. Others took to the streets, organized by the militant organization AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP). In October 1987, nearly half a million Americans marched in Washington in support of gay rights. A few widely admired figures, such as tennis champion Martina Navratilova, publicly acknowledged their homosexuality, helping others to view this sexual orientation as acceptable rather than deviant. By the end of the 1980s, the record was mixed. Gays and lesbians remained the only Americans against whom tens of millions of their fellow citizens openly believed it acceptable to discriminate, but the rights of homosexuals, nonetheless, had much wider support than ever before. For two decades after the restrictive immigration law of 1924, the flow of newcomers from abroad had slowed to a trickle. The trickle became a stream again after World War II, and then legislation in 1965 opened the gates even wider. As a result, a wave of new immigrants, 3.5 million in the 1960s and 4.5 million in the 1970s, hit the United States. The 1980s set the record as 6 million people entered the country legally, along with a similar number without documentation. These newcomers brought an unprecedented cultural and ethnic diversity. Communist rule in eastern Europe and prosperity in western Europe had reduced the emigration from that continent; only 10 percent of the most recent arrivals in the United States were Europeans. Forty percent came instead from Asia—particularly China, the Philippines, and South Korea—and 50 percent from Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly Mexico. From 1965 to 1995, 7 million Latinos and 5 million Asians moved to the United States. Mexicans had been journeying north in smaller numbers since that country’s 1910 revolution. But between 1970 and 1990, the Mexican American population of the southwestern states tripled, and the Asian American population of the western states increased sixfold. The new immigrants came for the same reasons their predecessors had. Many were fleeing political and religious persecution in their home countries, but most sought new economic opportunity. A small number, primarily from South Korea and Hong Kong, arrived with some assets that helped them get started in business. However, most came with few resources and took what work they could find. Although Canada and Australia attracted them as well, no country matched the United States in its reputation for the sheer creation of wealth. The immense difficulties facing new immigrants often induced homesickness. Maria Salas told of crossing the U.S.–Mexican border with her children to join her husband, who was working as a migrant farm laborer in North Carolina: “We walked six days. We suffered a lot. And there were so many snakes…. Now that we are here, I ask the girls if they want to go back to Mexico. They say they wish to return, but not if they have to walk back.” Like other new arrivals of earlier eras, the most recent immigrants were more willing than U.S. residents to work for low wages in poor conditions. An employer’s dream, they quickly PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 958 ${bmicon} found work in garment sweatshops, on farms, as domestic servants and janitors, and as gardeners. Hailing from countries with dramatically lower standards of living than in the United States, they willingly endured profound hardship to build better lives for their families. They also rekindled the nation’s long-standing cultural diversity, especially in Sunbelt cities from Miami, Florida, to San Diego, California. The historic Mexican majority in El Paso, Texas, grew larger. In 1981, citizens of San Antonio elected Henry Cisneros as the first Mexican American mayor of a major city. In Los Angeles, one-third of residents were foreign born by 1990, and the city had more Spanish speakers than anywhere else in North America besides Mexico City. Most Americans had foreign-born ancestors who had come to the United States with the same dreams that motivated the newest arrivals. Still, the non-European origins of the latest immigrants troubled some white citizens. Conservatives, in particular, worried about the growing diversity of American society and feared a decline of the Eurocentric culture they had grown up with. They were also anxious that poor immigrants might drain taxpayers’ dollars by winding up on welfare. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) stepped up patrols of the 2000-mile U.S. border with Mexico to limit the rising number of undocumented Mexican workers heading north. By the early 1990s, the INS was apprehending and expelling 1.7 million undocumented workers every year. The desperate efforts of migrants to elude Border Patrol officers and cross into the United States led to deaths from thirst and exposure in the deserts that stretched across much of the region. A sign on one California freeway near the border showed the silhouette of a fleeing family as a warning to drivers to watch for pedestrians. Despite the distaste that some Americans of European heritage felt for the new immigrants, the Latin American and especially Asian origins of the recent arrivals mirrored the rising economic significance of the Pacific Rim countries to the United States. In 1979, U.S. trade across the Pacific surpassed trade across the Atlantic for the first time. By 1996, the value of American trade with Asia was more than twice that with Europe. And Latin Americans, particularly Mexicans, provided a convenient supply of workers for the U.S. economy. They were available when companies needed them, and they could be shut out when that need evaporated. CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 959 ${bmicon} “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Ronald Reagan, in 1984, thought he was telling a joke at a microphone that was not turned on. He was wrong. Indeed, after three years of the president’s military build-up and confrontational rhetoric toward the Soviet Union (“the focus of evil in the world”)—including talk of fighting and winning a nuclear war—many Americans found his attempted humor appalling. However, by the end of his presidency four years later, a stunning reversal had occurred. Reagan had traveled to Moscow, embraced Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in front of Lenin’s tomb, and announced that the Soviets had changed. For Americans, the greatest surprise of the 1980s came with this warming of U.S.–Soviet relations after 1985. Few had imagined such a scenario during Reagan’s first two years in office. During that period, his administration became the first in four decades not to collaborate on nuclear arms control with the USSR. In the Soviet Union, the rise to power of Communist Party reformer Gorbachev permanently changed the face of international politics. The American president finally agreed to work toward the common goal of reducing tensions between the two superpowers. At the same time, the Reagan administration stumbled badly at home when a scandal involving Iran and the Nicaraguan Contras came to light in 1986. The disaster revealed a secret foreign policy apparatus and a president out of touch with the daily governance process. Dramatic events in Europe then unfolded with little input from the administrations of either Reagan or George H.W. Bush, his successor in the White House. In 1989, Eastern Europeans tore down the Berlin Wall and ended Soviet rule in their countries. Two years later, the Soviet Union itself unraveled into its separate components, Russia being the largest. The end of the Cold War enabled Bush to focus on the Middle East, where an international force drove Iraq out of occupied Kuwait and reestablished the status quo in that oil-rich region. In the 1980s, internal Soviet politics finally ended the Cold War. Gorbachev was the key figure. He and other reformers had grown up during the post–1956 campaign to reinterpret the leadership of former General Secretary Josef Stalin. Like Americans in the 1960s, Gorbachev’s generation boldly questioned orthodox thinking. They could see that the vast military expenditures of the 1960s and 1970s, along with efforts after 1980 to keep up with skyrocketing U.S. military spending, had devastated the Soviet economy. By the 1980s, the USSR’s state-run economy was creaking to a halt. It simply could not provide the consumer products that Soviet citizens had learned about from the world outside their borders. Gorbachev warned of the danger of Russia becoming merely “an Upper Volta with missiles”—an impoverished nation that had sqaundered its wealth to build a nuclear arsenal. As the 1980s unfolded, events further weakened the authority of the Soviet government. The USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan became a quagmire resembling the United States’ disastrous involvement in Vietnam. The brutality and illegitimacy of the occupation disillusioned Red Army soldiers on the front lines and their families at home. Moreover, the Afghan resistance proved tougher than the USSR expected. The last Soviet troops finally withdrew in 1989. Initial government efforts to cover up the nuclear accident at Chernobyl only worsened matters, revealing the costs of corrupt communist rule. And nationalist movements for independence in the Baltic states, the Caucasus region, and central Asia gathered momentum. In his six years in power (1985–1991), Gorbachev tried to preserve the Soviet system by reforming it through glasnost (greater political liberty) and perestroika (economic restructuring Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 960 ${bmicon} allowing some private enterprise). However, his government proved unable to control the forces for change that it had helped unleash. Reagan’s primary role in ending the Cold War was to support Gorbachev’s quest for change within the Soviet Union. To that end, Reagan moved from confrontational rhetoric to pursuing a policy of détente. His trajectory contrasted directly with that of Jimmy Carter, who had shifted from an initial period of détente to helping renew U.S.–Soviet tensions. Reagan’s timing was now crucial. Gorbachev became head of the Soviet Communist party in 1985, at the start of Reagan’s second term. The American president had already built up the U.S. military and was now thinking about his place in history. He wanted to leave office having earned a reputation as a peacemaker. His influential wife, Nancy, helped promote this idea, and the two received additional support from the less hawkish members of the administration, particularly Secretary of State George Schultz. Beneath Reagan’s strident rhetoric about national military strength ran a streak of radical idealism, including a desire to eliminate the threat of nuclear warfare. This desire prompted him to launch the Strategic Defense Initiative. He expected the United States to eventually share the technology with the Soviets. Despite his Cold War posturing during his first term, the U.S. president had been troubled by the 1983 television drama The Day After. The movie conveyed sobering images of the aftermath of a nuclear war on American soil. The Soviet downing of a CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 961 ${bmicon} Korean Air Lines civilian jet that fall reminded him and others of the tragic costs of making mistakes with weapons. Once he felt convinced of Gorbachev’s seriousness about internal reform and rapprochement with the United States, Reagan took action. At a summit conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986, the two leaders came within a whisker of agreeing to eliminate nearly all of their nations’ nuclear arsenals. The next year, they signed the more limited but still symbolically important Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) treaty. The agreement removed short-range and intermediate-range missiles from Europe and enabled each side to conduct on-site verification of the other side’s compliance. INF marked the first actual reduction in the total number of nuclear weapons stored in the two nations’ arsenals. Failures elsewhere offset Reagan’s success with the Russians. His administration suffered its worst damage when it tried through illegal means to solve two foreign policy challenges with one stroke. Its main strategy consisted of linking a problem in the Middle East with one in Central America. Since the 1940s, the U.S. government had struggled to balance three often conflicting goals in the Middle East: maintaining access to the region’s oil, preserving a strong Israel, and excluding communist influence. But a new problem emerged when the pro-Iranian, anti-American, and anti-Israeli Islamic revolution began to spread after the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. As revolutionary fervor intensified in the region, hostage taking and terrorism—the “poor man’s nuclear bomb”—proliferated. In 1981, U.S. warplanes shot down two Libyan fighter jets when the jets tried to restrict American pilots’ movements over the Mediterranean Sea. In 1986, Americans bombed the Libyan capital of Tripoli in retaliation for apparent Libyan involvement in the killing of two U.S. soldiers in Germany. In 1988, things took an even nastier turn when an American warship in the Persian Gulf killed 290 civilians by shooting down an Iranian airliner, apparently by mistake. In revenge, pro-Iranian agents exploded a bomb on Pan Am Flight 109 over Lockerbie, Scotland, before the end of the year, killing 11 on the ground and 259 aboard the plane, including 35 students from Syracuse University. Islamic revolutionaries also threatened moderate Arab leaders and assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Lebanon became the center of a radical anti-Israeli campaign to seize Americans as hostages, especially after the United States’ 1983 engagement against Muslim forces in the civil war there. Despite his 1980 campaign promise never to negotiate with terrorists, Reagan approved the illegal sale of U.S. arms to Iran in return for the freeing of a handful of hostages held by pro-Iranian radicals in Lebanon. Events were heating up in Central America as well. The CIA-created Contras failed to overturn the new Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Even though the Contras lacked public support in Nicaragua and the United States, the president and his advisers were determined to keep them afloat. But they had a problem: how to fund the effort. Most Americans did not share Reagan’s enthusiasm for the Contras and feared greater U.S. military involvement in Central America. Beginning in 1982, Congress passed the Boland Amendments, restricting aid to the PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 962 ${bmicon} Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries. These restrictions culminated in a 1984 ban on helping them “directly or indirectly” beyond a token dose of humanitarian assistance. Faced with their chief ’s expressed desire to shore up the Contra cause, the president’s men found an alternative solution. The National Security Council (NSC) established a secret operation run by staff member Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Free from public or congressional oversight, North worked closely with CIA director William Casey. North and his colleagues solicited funds for the Contras from wealthy, conservative Americans and from sympathetic foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. Then North hit on what he called the “neat idea” of “using the Ayatollah Khomeini’s money to support the Nicaraguan freedom fighters.” Iran desperately needed weapons for its war against neighboring Iraq (1980–1988), so North and his colleagues started diverting profits to the Contras from new sales of U.S. Army property to Teheran. One operative joked about the “Contra-bution,” although some of the funds wound up in the private accounts of North and others involved in the diversion. The NSC’s action was illegal: it sold U.S. government property without authorization from the Pentagon, and it broke U.S. laws banning aid to the Contras. When news of the operation finally leaked out in November 1986, it shocked the nation. Details emerged from separate investigations by a presidential commission, a Justice Department independent prosecutor, and a congressional committee. North’s televised testimony before Congress made him a hero to some. He indicted Congress for its failure to support the president’s policies in Central America, and he painted his own actions as patriotic. Others thought him a scoundrel. After all, he had run a private foreign policy that subverted the legislature’s constitutional responsibilities and then had shredded documents that detailed his role. He later admitted, “I tried to avoid telling outright lies [before Congress], but I certainly wasn’t telling the truth.” His celebrity status among conservatives almost won him a victory as the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia in 1992. What did the president know, and when did he know it? The old Watergate question about Richard Nixon came to the fore again. Reagan called North a “national hero” but claimed ignorance of any illegal activities, including the diversion of funds from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan rebels. When some of Reagan’s aides testified that he had approved negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, the president denied it. Questioned by investigators, the president said he could not remember details about his decisions and policies. This possibility gained credence a few years later when the public learned of his affliction with Alzheimer’s disease. But in early 1987, 90 percent of Americans did not believe Reagan was telling all he knew. His reputation for candor suffered permanent damage. People could not decide which scenario was worse: that Reagan knew about the Iran–Contra deal and approved it or that he did not know what his own administration was doing in his name. It was hard even to imagine the latter situation occurring under any other president. Reagan’s job approval ratings dropped from 67 percent to 46 percent within a month as the Iran–Contra revelations came on the heels of the failed Reykjavik summit and the Democrats’ victory in the 1986 congressional elections. The first round of memoirs by former aides also appeared in the final years of his administration. These books revealed an isolated president out of touch CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 963 ${bmicon} with the government he nominally headed. For example, the former actor breezily admitted that he was happiest when “each morning I get a piece of paper that tells me what I do all day long.” The leaking of news that an astrologer—hired by First Lady Nancy Reagan—had helped set the president’s schedule for years did not help either. Nonetheless, Reagan held onto much of his personal popularity to the end of his term. In the phrase of Representative Pat Schroeder of Colorado, he was the “Teflon president” to whom no bad news could stick. Although George H. W. Bush had made his career in the Texas oil business and then in that state’s Republican party, his roots lay in the party’s moderate northeastern elite. His father, Prescott Bush, had been a U.S. senator from Connecticut, and he himself ran the CIA in 1975–1976. After losing in the 1980 party primaries, Bush agreed to run as Reagan’s vice-presidential candidate. He then moved to the political right throughout the 1980s. full view George Bush George Bush (Library of Congress) When Bush’s turn at the presidency finally came in 1988, he ran a bruising campaign that made a caricature of his Democratic opponent, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Even more than previous presidential campaigns, this one turned on symbols rather than issues. Three proved particularly important. First, Bush repeatedly led audiences in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in response to a wave of flag-burning demonstrations. (A year later, the Supreme Court affirmed the act as a form of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution.) Second, Bush skewered his opponent as a liberal and a “card-carrying member” of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization dedicated to defending the Bill of Rights. Senator Joseph McCarthy had used precisely this phrase to describe members of the American Communist party four decades earlier. Thus, Bush implied that liberals were subversives. Third, Bush accused Dukakis of coddling criminals. His campaign ads focused on Willie Horton, a black man convicted of murder. While on parole from a Massachusetts prison during Dukakis’s governorship, Horton raped a white woman and killed her husband. Republicans appealed to whites’ anxieties about race, sex, and safety. “If I can make Willie Horton a household name,” Bush’s campaign strategist Lee Atwater promised, “we’ll win the election.” He succeeded on both fronts. TABLE 28-3 The Election of 1988 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote George H. W. Bush Republican 48,886,000 426 Michael S. Dukakis Democratic 41,809,000 111 As president, however, Bush proved cautious. Hemmed in by a Democrat-controlled Congress, he had what his chief of staff called a “limited agenda” at home. His most enduring domestic action came with his 1991 appointment of archconservative Clarence Thomas, an African American lawyer from Georgia, to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Only 43 years old and with little experience as a judge, Thomas was chosen because of his conservative views and his race. The Senate narrowly confirmed him, 52–48, after contentious hearings in which a former aide, Anita Hill, accused Thomas of sexual harassment. “I much prefer foreign affairs,” the president once confided in his diary. Yet he proceeded just as carefully in this realm as he did with domestic policy. Some of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century unfolded during his presidency. Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians—encouraged by Gorbachev’s promise not to intervene militarily in other Warsaw Pact nations—peacefully overthrew their communist rulers in 1989. East Germans did the same. The Berlin Wall—the 28-year-old symbol of Cold War tensions—finally toppled on November 8. Three months later, Nelson Mandela walked out of the South African prison where he had been held for 27 years. The white supremacist government there agreed to hold the first elections in which all South Africans could vote. The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 964 ${bmicon} and Estonia also seceded from the USSR in 1990 and 1991. Rather than rejoicing at the shrinking of Soviet power, Bush urged Soviet citizens to move cautiously. The president feared that too much change too fast might create unrest across Russia and eastern Europe. But after a failed coup attempt by Communist hard-liners in August 1991, the Soviet Union broke into its 16 constituent states. Russian president Boris Yeltsin replaced Gorbachev as the major figure in Moscow. The Bush administration acted more boldly in its own hemisphere. In Panama, under the brutal leadership of Manuel Noriega, tensions grew between the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) and U.S. soldiers based in the Canal Zone. Bush and Noriega had known each other since the mid–1970s, when each had headed his country’s intelligence agency. They had worked together in the early 1980s when Noriega provided logistical support for the Contras’ war in nearby Nicaragua. But the Panamanian strongman had since parted ways with the Americans and had deepened his lucrative role as an intermediary in smuggling Colombian cocaine into the United States. Meanwhile, the crack cocaine epidemic tightened its grip in full view MAP 28.3 THE SOVIET BLOC DISSOLVES No change in world politics since World War II was greater than the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in eastern Europe. Eastern European countries soon sought membership in NATO and post-Communist Russia built closer relations with the United States and western Europe. The transition from socialist to capitalist economies was difficult, however, and many poorer citizens found daily life little easier than it had been before. CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 965 ${bmicon} poor American neighborhoods. Rising popular concern about crack-related violence increased Americans’ willingness to take action against Noriega. When the dictator overturned Panamanian election results that went against him and further confrontations erupted between American and Panamanian soldiers, Bush decided to step in. In December 1989, 24,000 U.S. troops invaded the small Central American nation. They crushed the PDF, and thousands of civilians died in the crossfire. Noriega took refuge in the home of the Vatican emissary in Panama City. U.S. commanders applied psychological pressure. Knowing Noriega’s distaste for rock ‘n’ roll music, they set up enormous speakers and floodlights outside the residence. At a deafening volume, they blared such songs as Linda Ronstadt’s “You’re No Good” and Sonny Curtis’s “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).” Noriega eventually surrendered and was brought to Miami, where he was convicted of drug trafficking and imprisoned. Developments in the Middle East provoked the most important move of the Bush administration: the initiation of the Gulf War of 1991. After the Iranian revolution, Iraq and Iran had clashed over disputed border territories. The Reagan administration had provided weapons to both sides at different points. The president wanted neither combatant to win a decisive victory that would destabilize the area. With two-thirds of the world’s known oil reserves in the states surrounding the Persian Gulf, the U.S. government especially dreaded seeing control of the region’s oil prices and supplies shift from Saudi Arabia to revolutionary Iran. Iraq ended the war in a strong position in 1988, and two years later, it invaded tiny, neighboring oil-rich Kuwait, annexing it as Iraq’s “19th province.” With Americans and their Japanese and European allies dependent on Middle Eastern oil, Bush declared the invasion unacceptable. He rushed more than 200,000 troops to Saudi Arabia in “Operation Desert Shield” to discourage further aggression by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. At the same time, the United Nations slapped economic sanctions on Iraq. Three months later, Bush shifted his attention to liberating Kuwait. He doubled the number of U.S. troops in the region to 430,000. He also gained the support of the UN, which demanded Iraqi withdrawal by January 15, 1991. The U.S. Congress backed him as well, voting to support any actions necessary to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Bush went on the offensive because he faced a shrinking window of opportunity. He had wide international support, including troops from several Arab nations, but growing clashes in Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians threatened to break up this alliance by rekindling Arab anger at Israel. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein loudly supported the Palestinians and denounced the Americans as Israeli allies. Bush believed that the brief war helped Americans to finally “kick the Vietnam syndrome”: no longer would they hesitate to use force abroad. On January 16, 1991, Allied planes began five and a half weeks of bombing against Iraq. Then, on February 25, Allied forces poured across the border from Saudi Arabia in “Operation Desert Storm.” The offensive freed Kuwait and sent Iraqi troops in headlong retreat toward Baghdad. The Iraqis burned oil wells as they fell back, blanketing the battlefield in smoke. Four days later, Bush halted the U.S. advance, having restored Kuwaiti sovereignty. Saddam Hussein remained in power and later crushed uprisings by Iraqi dissidents. The politics of coalition warfare helped prohibit further U.S. action, for no Arabs wanted Americans ruling Iraq. What did the Gulf War reveal? It showed Bush at his most successful, managing an international coalition few would have thought possible a few years earlier. The withdrawal of Soviet power from the region had played a crucial role, after decades of Moscow’s support for Iraq. In its first major post–Cold War engagement, the United States demonstrated its military supremacy. Still, the opposition had proven surprisingly weak. One U.S. soldier later described himself as participating in “the biggest firing squad in history.” Bush nonetheless believed that the brief war helped Americans to finally “kick the Vietnam syndrome”: no longer would they hesitate to use force abroad. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 966 ${bmicon} full view MAP 28.4 THE GULF WAR, 1990–1991 Rarely had U.S. strategic and economic interests been so openly the motivation for war. Oil brought American soldiers to defend Saudi Arabia and drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. But many Arab states supported the U.S.-led coalition because they opposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. The war’s outcome seemed to validate two strategic lessons that U.S. commanders had learned during the Vietnam War. The first was the importance of preserving absolute control of the media. During the Persian Gulf conflict, the Pentagon kept journalists away from most of the action to control the images that Americans saw of the fighting. The public viewed endless videos of “smart” bombs hitting their targets in Baghdad but none of the tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers being slaughtered during their retreat from Kuwait. Second, General Colin Powell, the African American chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who emerged from the war as a national hero, insisted on marshaling overwhelmingly superior forces before going into battle, thus ensuring the success of the operation. The Gulf War raised the question of whether the U.S. military had become a mercenary force, with allies chipping in more than seven times what Washington spent to fund U.S. soldiers. “Why should I fight?” one wealthy Kuwaiti sitting out the war in comfort in Cairo asked. “We can pay other countries to fight for us.” The conflict seemed to demonstrate a CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 967 ${bmicon} U.S. willingness to act as a global police force in the post–Cold War era. But the war also stimulated the further growth of anti-Americanism among Islamic revolutionaries, including Saudi-born Osama bin Laden; they considered it sacrilege for non-Muslim American soldiers to operate bases in Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca, Islam’s holiest site. Finally, the war foreshadowed Bush’s defiant claim at a 1992 international environmental conference that, when it came to oil, “the American lifestyle is not negotiable.” The Republican era of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush reshaped American relations with the rest of the world, as well as politics and economics in the United States. Both sets of changes hinged on the elevation of individualism and market forces above communal values and government planning. At home, the Republican ascendancy successfully challenged five decades of New Deal assumptions about government’s role in economic regulation and its responsibilities toward the poor. A booming stock market underwrote a culture increasingly focused on the individual acquisition of wealth. Popular television shows of the PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 968 ${bmicon} 1980s, such as Dynasty and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, reflected a widespread admiration for affluence and conspicuous consumption. The collective dreams represented by the Soviet experiment evaporated into history in these years, leaving capitalism unchallenged as a system of economic organization across most of the globe. U.S. military power stepped into the vacuum left by the Soviet demise, most visibly in the Gulf War. But that military revival came at the cost of vast deficit spending and a sharp recession in 1991–1992, which paved the way for Bill Clinton’s victory over Bush in the 1992 presidential campaign. The assertion of military strength also demonstrated anew America’s overriding Middle Eastern priorities of preserving access to the region’s oil and defending Israel. This combination helped motivate the eventual attack on the United States by Islamic extremists on September 11, 2001. Digital Atlas of the United States, 1990 130.166.124.2/USpage1.html This site offers an overview of the geography and demography of the U.S. population in 1990. Immigrant Fact Sheet, 1996 www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/110.htm The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service posted this site with historical statistics about immigration into the United States, especially from 1981 to 1996. Divining America: Religion and the National Culture www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/divam.htm This site has essays by prominent historians on diverse aspects of the religious history of the United States. Ronald Wilson Reagan www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/rwreagan.html The Internet Public Library maintains this site, which has essential information about Reagan and his presidential administrations as well as his most important speeches. The National Security Archive at George Washington University www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/ This extraordinary site includes the most recent declassified documents on the making of U.S. foreign policy. Cold War International History Project cwihp.si.edu/default.htm The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars maintains this excellent site, which offers newly released documents and up-to-date interpretive essays on the American-Soviet struggle. The Gulf War www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/ The Public Broadcasting System’s “Frontline” series created this site with information about the Persian Gulf War, including oral histories of U.S. commanders and of Americans taken as prisoners of war. CHAPTER 28 ###8226; THE COLD WAR RETURNS###8212;AND ENDS, 1979###8211;1991 969 ${bmicon} E. J. Dionne, Jr. Why Americans Hate Politics (1991). Frances FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (2000). Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). Michael Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan: America and Its President in the 1980s (1992). James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American–Iranian Relations (1988). Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, eds., The Hidden Election: Politics and Economics in the 1980 Presidential Campaign (1981). Michael T. Klare and Peter Kornbluh, Low-Intensity Warfare: Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency, and Antiterrorism in the Eighties (1988). Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2nd ed. (1993). William E. Pemberton, Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan (1998). Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics (1991). Barbara Ehrenreich, The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (1990). J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000). Kevin Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (1990). Mark Robert Rank, Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America (1994). Susan J. Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (1994). Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars (1995). Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World (1992). Nicolaus Mills, ed., Culture in an Age of Money: The Legacy of the 1980s in America (1990). David M. Reimers, Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America, 2nd ed. (1992). Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic (1987). Theodore Draper, A Very Thin Line: The Iran–Contra Affairs (1991). John Robert Greene, The Presidency of George Bush (2000). Dilip Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm: The Second Gulf War (1992). Michael J. Hogan, ed., The End of the Cold War: Its Meanings and Implications (1992). Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984–1988 (1989). David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (1993). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter28 To Chapter 28 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 970 ${bmicon}         The Economy: Global and Domestic       Tolerance and Its Limits       Violence and Danger       The Clinton Presidency       The Nation and the World       The Contested Election of 2000       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 971 ${bmicon} ON A COLD DECEMBER NIGHT IN 1997, 23-YEAR-OLD JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL CLIMBED onto a small platform that had been constructed 180 feet above ground in a giant redwood tree in a forest in Humboldt County, California. She remained there for two years, trespassing in an act of civil disobedience on the property of the Pacific Lumber Company, which was threatening to cut down the 1000-year-old tree as part of its logging operations. Julia Hill had not planned to become an internationally famous environmental activist. She grew up in Arkansas, the daughter of an itinerant preacher. When friends invited the restless young woman to join them on a drive to California, she eagerly went along. “I had been on a journey, searching for my purpose in life,” she recalled, “I ended up finding it in the redwoods.” When she first saw the giant redwoods, “Gripped by the spirit of the forest, I dropped to my knees and began to sob…. I could feel my whole being bursting forth into new life in this majestic cathedral.” Hill’s spiritual connection to the forest drew her to political activism, and she joined Earth First!, an environmental group that was working to save the redwoods from the logging industry. She discovered that 97 percent of the old-growth redwoods had already been destroyed and that the rest were threatened by clearcutting, toxins, and diesel fuel. Tree sitting was a strategy the Earth First! activists developed to protest the destruction of the trees. They had named this particular tree Luna, after the goddess of the moon, because they had built the small platform in it by moonlight. Julia Hill took a forest name—Butterfly—and settled in for her turn at tree sitting. Although the strategy usually involved tree-sitting for a week at a time, Butterfly Hill decided that to have an impact the protest needed to be taken to “a different level.” “I realized I had to give more. I needed to give my word that my feet would not touch the ground” until the tree was safe from destruction. Those two years were rough. The young woman survived rain and hail storms, 90-mile-per-hour winds that tossed the tiny platform into the air, and bone-chilling cold that turned her feet black. Friends and supporters provided her with food and other supplies using a rope pulley. She ate mostly raw fruits and vegetables, slept in a hammock, took sponge baths, and used a bucket for a toilet. She faced harassment from the logging company and derision from some skeptics. But she also had a powerful network of supporters and celebrities who raised money, brought her food, and publicized her protest. Hill’s effort to save an ancient tree as old as the last millennium was conducted using the global technology of the new millennium. Critical to the success of her protest was her ability to communicate with the entire world from her treetop perch. She set up a Web site on the Internet visited by people from all across the globe. Schoolchildren in Germany sent her pictures of themselves in front of their favorite trees. People responded to her from as far away as Turkey and Australia. She used a solar-powered cell phone to speak with radio stations, schools, rallies, religious groups, reporters, and talk show hosts. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 972 ${bmicon} The lumber company also used state-of-the-art technology in its efforts to stymie her protest, cutting down trees to make them fall in her direction, flying helicopters to hover noisily over her head, and using air horns to keep her awake at night. The president of Pacific Lumber, John Campbell, eventually came to the tree to negotiate with Hill, and they made a deal. The company agreed never to cut down the tree or other trees in a 2.9-acre buffer zone. Hill agreed to come down. For her civil disobedience, she paid a $50,000 fine, contributed by supporters, which the court designated to Humboldt State University for forestry research. Although her success was modest in terms of saving endangered forests, her actions raised environmental awareness across the globe. Activists such as Julia Butterfly Hill addressed political concerns through personal beliefs and direct action as part of social movements that evolved out of a century of such protests. But the issues had reached a global scale. Internationally, Cold War power struggles gave way to other issues: regional and civil wars, ethnic strife, the environment and global warming, trade and labor relations, and terrorism. Domestically, concerns of environmentalists ranged from the protection of a single tree to climate change affecting the entire planet. The labor movement turned much of its attention to service workers and the global economy, with problems ranging from the export of jobs to the existence of sweatshops at home and abroad. Throughout most of the 1990s, one party controlled the White House while the other controlled the Congress. In the United States the economy expanded throughout the 1990s. Increasing numbers of Americans invested in the soaring stock market, many for the first time. The crime rate declined. Yet the strong economy also emboldened consumers to buy and use products and resources, such as huge gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, with little concern for the environmental impact. Moreover, as the economy grew, so did the gap between the wealthy and the poor. As the new millennium dawned, the economy began to falter. The stock market fell, and there were signs of an impending recession. The 2000 U.S. Census revealed a number of striking changes in the nation’s population during the 1990s. Among the most dramatic was the 60 percent growth in the Latino population, from 22.4 million to 35.3 million, making the number of Latinos—most of them Mexican American—nearly equal to that of African Americans. In certain states the increase was even larger. The Latino population in California grew 35 percent during the decade and became a powerful economic and political force in the state. In Nevada the Latino population doubled, to become 20 percent of the state’s residents. Immigrants from Asia and Latin America also added increasing linguistic diversity, fueling controversies over bilingual education and “English-only” political initiatives. In national politics the rifts between liberals and conservatives that had opened up in the 1960s persisted. Struggles over cultural issues such as abortion and gay rights polarized the political climate. Throughout most of the 1990s, one party controlled the White House while the other controlled the Congress. A Democratic Congress during the Republican administration of George H. W. Bush passed the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, requiring reasonable accommodation for disabled persons in employment and access to public places. The Clean Air Act, passed in the same year, reduced smokestack and auto emissions. New legislation also increased funding for Head Start and boosted the minimum wage. After a number of scandals in Congress over misuse of congressional bank accounts and votes to raise their own pay, the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1992, prohibited midterm congressional pay raises. In 1992 Democrats took back the White House, but in 1994 Republicans swept into control of Congress with a conservative agenda, hemming in President Bill Clinton, a Democrat of liberal social inclinations who, nonethe- CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 973 ${bmicon} less, presided over the final destruction of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which had been the central feature of the national welfare system since the New Deal of the 1930s. Throughout the decade, racial hostilities flared, intensified by such events as the beating of motorist Rodney King and the murder trial of media celebrity O. J. Simpson. Anti-immigrant sentiments increased in response to recent immigration from Asia, Latin America, and especially Mexico. Nevertheless, studies showed that Americans had become more accepting of people whose racial or national backgrounds were different from their own. Americans’ faith in political leadership, at a low ebb since Watergate, sank even farther as Republicans doggedly pursued Clinton’s unseemly sexual behavior, leading to his impeachment by the House of Representatives, although he remained in office. Money continued to pour into politics, even as voters called for campaign finance reform. New third-party candidates tapped widespread eagerness for a new type of politics. A Supreme Court dominated by conservatives nevertheless upheld liberal decisions, including abortion rights in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), gender equality in U.S. v. Virginia (1996) stating that the Virginia Military Institute could not exclude women, and the rights of gays and lesbians in Romer v. Evans (1996), which declared unconstitutional a Colorado amendment that nullified civil rights protections for homosexuals. In 2000, however, the Supreme Court decided one of the closest and most divisive elections in the nation’s history, handing the White House to the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, son of the former president. With the end of the Cold War, American foreign and domestic politics no longer revolved around the old, familiar enemies. Global power relations shifted with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, reviving long-dormant ethnic conflicts. Violence erupted in the Balkan countries of central Europe. In the Middle East, conflict between Israelis and Palestinians escalated, even as efforts at a peace process continued. Military confrontations flared elsewhere in the region as well. The post–Cold War era raised new questions about the role of the United States in the world. Americans no longer looked to Russia as a threat but to new international foes, especially terrorist networks operating outside the authority of particular countries. Within the nation, episodes of domestic terrorism, such as the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City and a series of school shootings by children made Americans feel that dangers lurked within their previously safe havens. After the sharp recession of 1991–1992, by nearly all measures, the economy expanded in the 1990s. The stock market boomed, unemployment declined, and most Americans appeared to be better off financially at the end of the decade than at the beginning. But the overall growth of the economy did not benefit everyone, and many actually lost ground—especially those who lost jobs to mechanization, nonunionized workers who toiled for low wages under grim working conditions, and the nation’s most vulnerable workers: poor single mothers, new immigrants, and unskilled people of color. The end of the Cold War had a profound effect on the nation’s economy. The demise of the Soviet Union put a final end to the arms race against a superpower foe and made cutting the defense budget politically acceptable. But the closing of defense-related plants in southern PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 974 ${bmicon} California, once the center of the nation’s Cold War defense contracts that absorbed nearly a fifth of all federal defense dollars, devastated the regional economy. By the mid-1990s, half the workers in the southern California aerospace industry had been laid off, part of a national trend that resulted in the loss of more than half a million jobs, half of them in the manufacturing sector. Many workers lost not only their jobs but also their homes, their economic security, and their sense of community. Louis Rodriguez, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 174, explained how he felt when his Long Beach, California, shipyard closed: “The shipyard has been a second family to me. When I get out of here, I’m really going to be lost as a whole. I will have lost my family.” While defense industries shrank, the technology sector of the economy expanded, opening up new opportunities for young computer experts and entrepreneurs and generating fortunes for corporate executives. At the same time, mergers of giant multinational companies concentrated wealth and power in an ever-smaller number of ever-larger corporations. In the last three years of the decade, mergers totaled $5 trillion. Media giants America Online and Time–Warner merged in 2000. In 2001 Nestlé bought Ralston–Purina for $10 billion. Many of the largest mergers crossed national boundaries, such as German automobile maker Daimler–Benz and U.S. Chrysler. American companies were the largest target of global buyouts. In 1999 alone, foreigners paid $233 billion to buy American companies. While corporations expanded, so did efforts to control their power. Microsoft initially lost an antitrust suit that ordered the computer software giant to be split into two companies. Microsoft appealed the ruling in 2001, and ultimately the Justice Department settled the suit with minor sanctions against the company. The controversial settlement generated opposition. Nine states that participated in the original suit refused to endorse the agreement, and calls for tougher penalties continued. In several states, civil suits against huge tobacco companies limited cigarette advertising and marketing and levied fines on tobacco companies totaling in the billions. Although the publicity surrounding these cases exposed the tobacco companies’ efforts to deceive the public about the health risks of cigarettes, the lawsuits did not lead to a decline in cigarette smoking, and tobacco companies continued to advertise and market their product at home as well as abroad. The nation’s elite were not the only ones to capitalize on new entrepreneurial opportunities. The 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act enabled Native Americans to build lucrative Las Vegas–style casinos on tribal lands, bringing new jobs and an estimated $4 billion a year to formerly impoverished communities. The Mashantucket Pequots east of Hartford, Connecticut, opened Foxwoods in 1992, and it quickly became the largest casino in the Western Hemisphere. The Oneidas followed suit a few years later with the Turning Stone casino near Utica, New York. In Arizona casinos brought in $830 million a year. Some Indian casinos failed, however, and gambling always took a largely hidden toll in the losses of already poor local residents. Native Americans remained divided about the wisdom of trying to profit from America’s growing inclination to take risks in hopes of winning big. Jose Lucero of New Mexico’s Santa Clara tribe near Santa Fe feared that rebuilding Indian life around gambling was “like a leisure virus—we’re trading our souls for money (when) we are supposed to be stewards of this land.” However, the advantages for the tribes were substantial. The Oneida tribe of Wisconsin, for example, used the profits from its 2000-slot-machine complex outside Green Bay for an electronic component factory, an industrial park, a printing firm, a bank, a hotel, and four convenience stores. Tribal CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 975 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 29.1 CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH, 1990s During the final decades of the twentieth century, the gap between the wealthy and the poor increased as the nation’s wealth became concentrated in the hands of a small number of very wealthy people. By the end of the century, the richest 1 percent of Americans owned 38 percent of all the nation’s wealth while the poorest 40 percent shared a mere 0.2 percent of the nation’s wealth. The figure also demonstrates that more than 70 percent of the nation’s total wealth was in the hands of the most affluent 10 percent of the population, while the majority of Americans—60 percent—was left sharing a mere 5 percent of the nation’s wealth. government outlays increased from $40 million to $250 million over the decade, providing subsidized housing, health care, student counseling, a new daycare center, and a new elementary school built in the shape of a turtle, a sacred creature in Oneida mythology. The money also helped to revive the Oneida language, with a new written form and a CD of ancestral tales told by tribal elders. The tribe also spent $11 million in 1995 recovering property it once owned, bringing it into the tax-free zone of the reservation. In addition to this communal spending, the tribe paid out $225 a year to all its members. By comparison, the tiny band of Minnesota Shakopees, just south of Minneapolis and St. Paul, used much of the profits from its bustling casino to provide annual bonuses of $400,000 to each of its members. Commenting on the state of the economy in the mid–1990s, two economists noted, “The tide of economic growth no longer lifts all boats. We see the recent period as one in which the large yachts, moored in the safe harbors, rose with the tide, while the small boats ran aground. The notion that we can ‘grow our way out’ of the economic problems facing so many families is now obsolete.” In the last decade of the century, the bottom 60 percent of the population saw their income decline, even as the economy boomed. Accumulated wealth—property and investments—was an even better measure of security and influence, and the top 1 percent of Americans owned more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Microsoft chair Bill Gates alone Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 976 ${bmicon} full view MAP 29.1 STATES WITH LARGE NUMBERS OF UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS, 1995 Fully 77 percent of all undocumented immigrants entered the country legally, with visas in hand. During the 1990s, the total proportion of the foreign born in the United States, including those with and without legal status, was about half what it had been in 1900 (8 percent compared to 15 percent). Immigrants payed $133 billion dollars annually in local, state, and federal taxes, and generated an annual contribution to the American economy in the range of $25 to $30 billion. was wealthier than the bottom 45 percent of all U.S. households together. Famed capitalist J. P. Morgan maintained a century earlier that no corporate chieftain should earn more than 20 times what his workers were paid, but by 1980 a typical chief executive of a large U.S. company took home 40 times the earnings of an average factory worker; by 1990 the ratio had grown to 85 times, and by 1998 it reached 419 times. Although one-third of the nation’s African Americans were part of the middle class, black families had fewer assets and resources, making their hold on middle-class status more precarious than that of their white peers. The poorest African Americans were concentrated in low-paying jobs, lacking the quality health care and education that would make social and economic mobility possible. Full-time employment did not necessarily mean an escape from poverty. Among fully employed black heads of households without a high school education, 40 percent of the women and 25 percent of the men did not earn enough to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Almost 50 percent of all black children lived in households below the poverty line, compared to 16 percent of white children. The rate of unemployment was more than twice as high for blacks as for whites. Recent immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America joined African Americans in jobs at the bottom of the economy. Despite the controversy over illegal immigration, a quarter of a million undocumented workers toiled in the fields of agribusiness. At the same time, 2 percent of able-bodied citizens were in jail, nearly half of them black, because of the arrest and incarceration policies of the “war on drugs” that hit minority communities particularly hard. Prisoners were often required to work while incarcerated. Convicts provided data entry, packed Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 977 ${bmicon} golf balls, and filled a wide array of jobs for less than minimum wage, and most of their earnings went back to the government. These and other workers at the bottom of the labor force gained little or nothing from the economic boom of the 1990s. Low-wage workers in the service industries had one advantage over laborers working for multinational corporations: their jobs could not be exported. Many service workers organized successfully for better wages and working conditions. In April 2000, for example, striking janitors of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877 in Los Angeles marched 8 miles past cheering crowds to the upscale business center of Century City. A few weeks later, the janitors had achieved a wage increase of 26 percent, raising their hourly pay from less than $8 to more than $10. This was a tremendous triumph for a union whose membership was 98 percent immigrant: 80 percent Central Americans, more than half women, and all of them poor. Other service workers also won improved contracts. Unionized hotel workers in San Francisco negotiated a five-year contract that increased pay for the lowest-paid workers, room cleaners and dishwashers, by 25 percent, from $12 to $15 an hour. In Las Vegas, African American hotel worker Hattie Canty, who helped organized 40,000 employees of large casino hotels, said of her efforts, “It has not been a picnic for me, but I don’t think I’d like to go on a picnic every day. I have enjoyed the struggle. I’m not the only Hattie. There’s lots of Hatties out there.” Yatta Staples went out on the picket line in front of the Minneapolis hotel where she worked as a waitress, telling reporters, “I’ll stay here as long as it takes.” In the summer of 1997, 185,000 Teamsters went on strike against the United Parcel Service and won an improved contract with higher wages and benefits for part-time as well as full-time workers. Strikes did little to benefit nonunionized workers, especially undocumented immigrants, and sweatshop laborers both inside and outside the United States. There were some attempts to improve working conditions for those most exploited by the global economy. In April 1997 representatives from clothing manufacturers, human rights groups, and labor organizations drafted an agreement that tried to improve conditions for garment workers around the world. Companies that agreed to the voluntary pact would limit work weeks to 60 hours, with a maximum of 12 hours of overtime. The companies had to pay “at least the minimum wage required by local law or the prevailing industry wage, whichever is higher.” The pact forbade children under 15 to work and contained policies protecting workers from harassment and unsafe working environments. Even full compliance with such minimal standards would leave workers in the global garment industry subject to much longer hours, lower wages, and worse working conditions than legally permitted in the United States. Critics also raised questions about how enforceable such voluntary standards would be. Nevertheless, the pact was a small step in the right direction that at least called attention to widespread exploitation in the global economy. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 978 ${bmicon} Racial discrimination had eased over the course of the twentieth century, but persistent inequalities of power and economic opportunity continued to disadvantage Americans of color, who remained disproportionately poor, in prison, and on welfare. The economic downturn of the early 1990s widened the chasm between affluent white and poor nonwhite Americans. Highly publicized incidents of police brutality directed against Americans of color generated protests and, occasionally, violence. Nevertheless, there were signs that Americans were becoming more tolerant of one another and more willing to accept and even appreciate their diversity. Shortly after midnight on March 3, 1991, police pulled over Rodney King, an African American motorist, after a high-speed chase on a Los Angeles freeway. The four officers dragged the unarmed black man from his car and kicked and beat him with their batons for 15 minutes. The beating left King with a fractured cheekbone, broken bones at the base of his skull, and a broken leg. A bystander recorded the beating on videotape, which was broadcast repeatedly on national television, sparking outrage among Americans of all races. A year later, in April 1992, the four police officers went on trial for use of excessive force. At the highly publicized trial, defense lawyers for the police officers argued that King, who was clearly cowering on the videotape, was resisting arrest and that the police responded appropriately. The jury of ten whites, one Asian, and one Latino acquitted the officers. The acquittal ignited five days of rioting in the African American community of South Central Los Angeles, leaving 58 people dead and $1 billion in property destroyed. Community leaders called for calm; even Rodney King spoke publicly: “I mean, please, we can get along here,” he implored, “We can all get along. We’ve just got to.” Months later, a federal court in Los Angeles convicted two of the officers involved in the beating of violating King’s civil rights–too late to avert the violence that erupted after the initial verdict. Of the 58 people who died in the violence, 18 were Latino, 26 were black, 10 were white, and 2 were Asian. Of the 4000 businesses that were destroyed, most belonged to Latinos and Koreans. Perpetrators of the violence, as well as the victims, came from all racial groups. Antonia Hernandez, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, noted, “The hardest part is rebuilding the spirit of the city—what holds us together as Angelinos. It’s the rebuilding of trust…. It’s connecting communities that have never been connected.” Several community groups came together in an effort to ease tensions. The Japanese American Citizens League, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and the Asian Pacific Legal Center released statements denouncing the verdict and calling for a federal investigation. “I think that much of the cause of the race relations problem comes down to economics—who has jobs, who has businesses, where is the money going,” said Los Angeles City Council member Michael Woo. Jimmy Franco, director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, concurred: “These areas are the poorest areas of the city. If it weren’t Rodney King, it would have been something else. It just took something like this to set off the anger.” CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 979 ${bmicon} In 1991 former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney formed the Promise Keepers, a fundamentalist Christian group dedicated to restoring the traditional privileges and responsibilities of husbands and fathers in the home. The Promise Keepers held evangelical revivals that drew tens of thousands of mostly working-class white and some black men to rallies across the country. They believed that men should be good providers for their families, strong role models for their children, and committed spouses. The Promise Keepers were not alone in their concern for what they perceived to be the declining status of fathers. New groups and initiatives appeared that appealed to men across the political spectrum: the National Fatherhood Initiative, Father to Father (launched by Vice President Al Gore in 1995), the Fatherhood Project, the Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization, and Fathers’ Education Network. Although white men continued to control nearly all the major economic and political institutions in the nation, a 1993 poll found that a majority of white men believed that their advantage in terms of jobs and income, along with their influence over American culture, was declining. African American men also felt the need to bolster manhood and fatherhood. Efforts geared specifically toward African American men included M.A.D. D.A.D.S. (Men Against Destruction—Defending Against Drugs and Social Disorder) and the 1995 Million Man March, organized by Nation of Islam Reverend Louis Farrakhan, which drew hundreds of thousands of black men to demonstrate their solidarity at a rally in Washington, D.C. At the same time, gay men and lesbians mobilized to gain acceptance and legitimacy for the families that they formed. Many gay and lesbian activists pushed for legalization of same-sex marriage. Although a 1994 poll showed that 52 percent of respondents “claimed to consider gay lifestyle acceptable,” 64 percent were opposed to legalizing gay marriage or allowing gay couples to adopt children. Vermont became the first state to grant legal status to civil unions between same-sex couples, although a fierce backlash threatened to overturn the legislation. Values also collided around the rights and traditions of Native Americans as tribal communities came into conflict with non-Native environmentalists, sports enthusiasts, and Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 980 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY Vermont Civil Union Law On April 26, 2000, Vermont became the first state to grant legal recognition to same-sex couples, affording them all the legal protections, privileges, and responsibilities of married couples. The law unleashed a storm of controversy and raised questions about the legal status in other states of civil unions contracted in Vermont. Nevertheless, in the first year after its enactment, 2479 same-sex couples forged civil unions in Vermont, 478 of them among Vermonters, and the rest from other states. Two-thirds were lesbian unions. Several states began to consider similar bills, but others moved to prohibit such unions. Nebraska amended its state constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage and civil unions. On the national level, conservative lawmakers endeavored to introduce a constitutional amendment that would ban civil unions and restrict marriage to heterosexual couples. Among other provisions, the Vermont Civil Union Law stipulated that (1) Civil marriage under Vermont’s marriage statutes consists of a union between a man and a woman…. (2) Vermont’s history as an independent republic and as a state is one of equal treatment and respect for all Vermonters…. (3) The state’s interest in civil marriage is to encourage close and caring families, and to protect all family members from the economic and social consequences of abandonment and divorce, focusing on those who have been especially at risk. (4) Legal recognition of civil marriage by the state is the primary and, in a number of instances, the exclusive source of numerous benefits, responsibilities and protections under the laws of the state for married persons and their children. (5) Based on the state’s tradition of equality under the law and strong families, for at least 25 years, Vermont Probate Courts have qualified gay and lesbian individuals as adoptive parents. (6) Vermont was one of the first states to adopt comprehensive legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation…. (7) The state has a strong interest in promoting stable and lasting families, including families based upon a same-sex couple. (8) Without the legal protections, benefits and responsibilities associated with civil marriage, same-sex couples suffer numerous obstacles and hardships. (9) Despite longstanding social and economic discrimination, many gay and lesbian Vermonters have formed lasting, committed, caring and faithful relationships with persons of their same sex. These couples live together, participate in their communities together, and some raise children and care for family members together, just as do couples who are married under Vermont law. (10) While a system of civil unions does not bestow the status of civil marriage, it does satisfy the requirements of the Common Benefits Clause. Changes in the way significant legal relationships are established under the constitution should be approached carefully, combining respect for the community and cultural institutions most affected with a commitment to the constitutional rights involved. Granting benefits and protections to same-sex couples through a system of civil unions will provide due respect for tradition and long-standing social institutions, and will permit adjustment as unanticipated consequences or unmet needs arise. (11) The constitutional principle of equality embodied in the Common Benefits Clause is compatible with the freedom of religious belief and worship guaranteed in Chapter I, Article 3rd of the state constitution. Extending the benefits and protections of marriage to same-sex couples through a system of civil unions preserves the fundamental constitutional right of each of the multitude of religious faiths in Vermont to choose freely and without state interference to whom to grant the religious status, sacrament or blessing of marriage under the rules, practices or traditions of such faith. CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 981 ${bmicon} scientists. In the upper Midwest, treaties with the government in 1837 and 1842 granted the Chippewa hunting, fishing, and gathering rights in the territories ceded to the United States. Federal courts have consistently upheld these treaties, which include rights to take up to half of the fish and game allowed by state conservation requirements and to use methods such as spear fishing that are illegal for non-Indians. In the 1980s and 1990s, non-Indians challenged these policies and accosted Native Americans in fishing boats with rocks and insults. Native American cultural practices also clashed with environmentalist sensibilities over religious practices involving the gathering and sacrificing of golden eaglets. The Department of the Interior, weighing laws protecting Indian religious freedoms against those protecting national parks and wildlife, allowed the Hopis to gather up to 40 young eagles a year. The Hopi usually took about 15 birds for a ceremony that culminated in their sacrifice. The Interior Department’s policy is consistent with long-standing treaties as well as recent law, including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. But many environmentalists agreed with the news columnist who wrote, “When native peoples, no matter how badly abused by us in the past, seek to perpetrate equally senseless barbarities on helpless creatures, we should stand on principle and use our awesome power to stop, not to enable them.” Animal rights activists raised similar arguments against mainstream institutions, including scientific laboratories that used animals for research, and the meat industry, which engaged in inhumane practices. Two of the most controversial legal spectacles of the decade centered on accusations against successful black men and exposed deep chasms along class and gender as well as racial lines. The first of these episodes was the Senate hearing of October 1991 to confirm the appointment of Judge Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. President George H. W. Bush nominated the conservative Clarence Thomas to replace retiring liberal Justice Thurgood Marshall. Both jurists were black but otherwise had little in common; they occupied opposite ends of the political and judicial spectrum. Although Bush claimed that Thomas was the “best man for the job,” the American Bar Association gave him the lowest rating of any justice confirmed in the previous three decades. Many people became skeptical during the confirmation hearings when Thomas claimed that he had not formed any opinion on the highly charged issue of abortion. Support for Thomas among the Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee fell largely along party lines. But when University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment when she worked for him at the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in the early 1980s, the question of Thomas’s professional qualifications faded to the background and the hearings focused exclusively on Hill’s accusations. In live televised hearings, the African American law professor testified that Thomas had made crude and lurid remarks to her as well as unwanted sexual overtures. Several of the all-white-male panel of senators questioned Hill’s credibility, wondering why she continued to work for Thomas after the alleged harassment. Thomas drew on the long history of black men being falsely accused of sexual aggression to counter the charge of sexual harassment, accusing his Democratic opponents of conducting a “high-tech lynching.” In the end Thomas was confirmed. But Hill’s testimony, and what appeared to her supporters as the insensitive behavior of the senators, brought the issue of sexual harassment to a high level of national consciousness. The hearings also highlighted the fact that Congress was overwhelmingly white and male, motivating female candidates and their supporters to alter that reality the following year. As a result of the 1992 elections, the number of female senators tripled from two to six, including the first black female senator, Carol Moseley Braun, Democrat from Illinois. The number of congresswomen rose from 28 to 47. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 982 ${bmicon} In 1994 television viewers were again riveted by a media spectacle, this time a sensational murder case. On the night of June 12, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death outside Simpson’s West Los Angeles apartment. The murdered white woman was the ex-wife of black celebrity O. J. Simpson, former football star and film actor. O. J. Simpson’s blood was found at the scene, hair and other forensic and DNA evidence linked him to the crime, he had no reliable alibi, and a motive was evident in his pattern of jealous rage and brutality against the murdered woman. No other suspects in the case were ever identified. But Simpson’s team of lawyers unearthed evidence that before the Simpson case, white police detective Mark Fuhrman had boasted of planting evidence and had made racist comments. The mostly black and female jury was sympathetic to the possibility that Fuhrman had framed Simpson. In Los Angeles, in the wake of the Rodney King beatings, African Americans had good reason to distrust the police. Finally, in early October 1996, after a trial that lasted nearly a year, it took the jury only two hours to acquit Simpson of all charges. Pundits focused on the racial divide: blacks were more inclined to believe Simpson was innocent, and whites more likely to consider him guilty. The families of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson filed a wrongful death civil suit, in which the standards for conviction require merely a preponderance of evidence rather than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Simpson was convicted in the civil suit, which found him responsible for the deaths, and ordered to pay damages. These highly charged events illuminated racial tensions, but there was also evidence that Americans were starting to accept the nation’s diversity and adopt a more inclusive vision. The number of immigrants living in the United States tripled in three decades, to nearly 27 million, representing 10 percent of the population—the highest proportion of foreign-born residents since the 1930s. The numbers of Asians and Pacific Islanders increased by 45.9 percent, with those of Chinese ancestry comprising the largest group, followed by those with origins in the Philippines. The Latino population grew by 39.7 percent. Among the nation’s Latinos, nearly two-thirds were of Mexican ancestry. Not everyone celebrated these developments. In California, with one-third of the nation’s Latino population, voters responded with Proposition 187 to deny public education and most other public social services to undocumented immigrants, and Proposition 227 to end bilingual education. Large numbers of Latino voters opposed these measures. In subsequent elections many young Latinos and new citizens marshaled their political power and voted for the first time. Evidence of the growing political power of Latinos was the mounting support in California for a bill that would require the U.S. government to return back pay that was taken from the wages of Mexican agricultural workers who came to the United States during World War II under the Bracero program. In Los Angeles during the 1990s, Latinos became the largest single ethnic group. By 2000 whites no longer constituted a majority of California’s multiethnic population, dropping from 57 percent in 1990 to 47 percent in 2000. At the same time, politics and ideas based on distinct and rigid racial lines gave way to a growing recognition of intermixing. Artists actively explored this hybridity. Dramatist Anna Deveare Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 983 ${bmicon} full view MAP 29.2 POPULATION OF MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS, 1990 By 1990 the nation’s population was concentrated in large metropolitan areas, most of them along the East and West coasts, the Sun Belt, and the Upper Midwest. One hundred and twenty million Americans, about half of the population, lived in suburbs. Smith, for example, wrote and performed a theatrical production in which she interviewed and studied many people involved in the uprising in South Central Los Angeles, from the white chief of police to a Korean woman whose family business was destroyed in the riots. In her widely acclaimed one-woman play Twilight, Los Angeles, the mixed-race Smith took on the many identities of the white, black, Asian, Latino, male, female, young, and old people she represented. By transforming herself on stage into each of those people, she suggested that we, as a society, were all of those people as well. In his 1996 film Lone Star, John Sayles examined a Texas border town where white, black, Latino, and Indian peoples were all interwoven and connected in their lives, communities, and families. From cross-racial love to debates over the local school’s history curriculum, the film explored in microcosm the challenges and rewards of an inclusive American identity. Racial intermixing was evident in other areas as well. In the world of sports, young golfer Tiger Woods, son of a black Vietnam veteran father and a Thai mother, became the reigning superstar of the sport most closely identified with the world of the white elite. Pop star Prince was one of many artists who crafted a persona that highlighted both racial and gender ambiguity. On job and college application forms, a growing number of mixed-race Americans refused to be identified as belonging to one particular racial group. Reflecting this development, the U.S. Census of 2000 allowed people to check more than one box to indicate their racial identity. In California, where nearly 5 percent of the population checked more than one box, nearly all of those who checked white and another box were Latinos. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 984 ${bmicon} Violence was nothing new in American society, but new types of mayhem in the 1990s—including domestic terrorism and school shootings–sparked national soul-searching and wide-ranging debate over the causes of violence and what to do about them. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans inflicted various harms on themselves, often in class-distinct ways. Eating disorders and obesity reached epidemic proportions, and Americans continued to turn to drugs, most of them legal, to make them feel better. On the morning of April 19, 1995, a 2-ton homemade bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The huge building crumbled, killing 168 people, including 19 children. The attack was the worst act of terrorism in the nation’s history to that date. Initial news reports speculated that the terrorists were Arabs, but it turned out that the attack was carried out by American citizens with a hatred for the government. Timothy McVeigh, a Persian Gulf War veteran turned antigovernment terrorist, and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, were found guilty of the bombing. Antigovernment individuals and groups had long operated within the United States, and during the 1990s, their activities—as well as FBI efforts to curtail them—intensified. Investigations throughout the decade uncovered networks of antigovernment militias, tax resisters, and white supremacist groups, many of them heavily armed and isolated in remote rural areas. Some antigovernment extremists acted alone, like former mathematics professor Theodore Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” who for two decades sent bombs through the mail, killing 3 people and injuring 29. His demand to have his antigovernment manifesto published in major national newspapers led to his identification and arrest. The FBI tried to prevent these extremists from causing harm, but some of their efforts went awry. In 1992 an FBI agent shot and killed the wife and son of Randall Weaver, a former Green Beret and antigovernment militia supporter who had failed to appear for trial on weapons charges, in a shootout at their Idaho home. The following year in Waco, Texas, the FBI stormed the heavily armed compound of an antigovernment religious sect known as the Branch Davidians. The leader of the group, David Koresh, had barricaded the compound. The FBI, acting on reports of abuse of members, particularly women and children, tried to force Koresh and his group out of the building. But a fire broke out, killing 80 men, women, and children inside. The FBI came under intense criticism for its aggressive tactics in these cases. For antigovernment extremists, these actions prompted revenge. The Oklahoma City bombing, apparently, was intended in part as retaliation for the FBI assault against the Branch Davidians precisely two years earlier. Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing. But shortly before the scheduled execution in May 2001, more than 4000 pages of FBI documents relating to the case that had not been seen by McVeigh’s attorneys suddenly surfaced. The discovery raised new questions about the competence of the FBI and delayed McVeigh’s execution for a month. The execution by lethal injection took place on June 11. The case revived a debate about the death penalty, particularly in light of recent evidence of many botched legal defenses in capital cases. Opponents pointed to the preponderance of convicts of color on death row, representation by incompetent attorneys, and the execution of mentally retarded offenders to argue that the death penalty should be abolished. The governor of Illinois declared a moratorium on executions when a study revealed that many death row inmates were cleared of charges as a result of new DNA evidence. Public opinion began to shift, but the majority—including the U.S. presidents from both parties throughout the decade—continued to support the death penalty. The Oklahoma City bombing was the worst but not the only example of domestic terrorist attacks. After the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, antiabor- CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 985 ${bmicon} tion activists worked to have the decision reversed. Most antiabortion protesters were peaceful and law-abiding. But a small militant fringe of antiabortion crusaders switched their targets of protest from elected officials to abortion providers and turned to violence. In 1993 half of all abortion clinics reported hostile actions, including death threats, fires, bombs, invasions, blockades, and shootings. In 1993 and 1994 vigilantes shot and killed one abortion provider, tried to kill another, and shot employees at two clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts. The violence spurred Congress to pass the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 1994, making it a federal crime to block access to clinics. But ultimately, the intimidation and violence were effective. Although abortion remained legal, the procedure became increasing difficult to obtain. Few medical residency programs in obstetrics and gynecology routinely taught the procedure, and considering the dangers posed by antiabortion terrorists, few physicians were willing to perform abortions. By the end of the decade, there were no abortion providers in 86 percent of largely rural counties in the country. Abortions continued to be available in cities, mostly in specialized abortion clinics. Between 1990 and 1997, the number of abortions declined by 17.4 percent. But the political battles continued. After years of controversy and debate, the French abortion pill RU–486 received FDA approval for use in the United States, making it possible for individual doctors to prescribe the pill and for women to avoid surgery. Although violent crime declined throughout the decade, especially crimes committed by youths, a spate of school shootings in which children murdered other children sparked national soul searching and finger pointing as Americans wondered whom and what to blame. The murderers were mostly white middle-class boys who appeared to be “normal kids.” The worst of these shootings occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, where two boys opened fire and killed 12 of their schoolmates and a teacher before killing themselves. These shootings happened in middle-class suburbs where families believed they were safe from the perceived dangers of the inner cities. But such havens could not keep dangerous elements out if the dangers came from within. Some commentators blamed inattentive parents; others pointed to the violence-saturated popular culture. A few noted that when youth of color were victims or perpetrators of violence, the media devoted little attention to the tragedies, suggesting that such crimes were shocking only if committed by white middle-class youths. The common factors in all of these killings were that the children used guns and that they got the weapons easily, often from their own homes. Gun control advocates noted that the easy access to firearms in the United States was unique among western industrial nations. In 1992, 367 people were killed by handguns in Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, and Canada combined. The total population of those countries equaled that of the United States, where in that same year, handguns killed 13,220 people. Public opinion polls showed that most Americans favored gun control, but the powerful gun lobby and the National Rifle Association argued that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed individuals PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 986 ${bmicon} the right to bear arms. Congress enacted the Brady Bill, a gun control measure named for James Brady, the White House press secretary who was gravely wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald W. Reagan. The bill required a waiting period for handgun purchases and banned assault rifles. Nevertheless, access to firearms remained easy. In the 2000 election, only two states, Oregon and Colorado—where two of the worst school shootings occurred—voted to establish some controls on the purchase of guns. Despite the nation’s near obsession with fitness, both the wealthy and the poor suffered from a number of afflictions. Eating disorders plagued millions of Americans. Among the affluent, anorexia nervosa (self-starvation) and bulimia (frequent binging and purging) affected an estimated 5 million Americans, especially young women, fed in part by a fashion fad that glamorized emaciated bodies. Men also strove for the fashionable body, sometimes with the aid of drugs to enhance athletic performance or muscle build-up. In 2000 the Mayo Clinic reported a 30 percent increase in eating disorders per year, mostly among young women, but in a growing number of men as well. The opposite problem plagued the lower end of the class ladder, where obesity increased dramatically, especially among children. Fast-food chains targeted low-income areas with franchises and promotions offering “supersized” high-fat meals. Childhood obesity jumped from 5 percent in 1964 to 20 percent in 2000. Illegal drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, remained popular in spite of official efforts to curb the trade. However, illegal drugs represented only one dimension of Americans’ desire to solve their problems through the use of substances. Some mind-altering drugs were legal and available by prescription, such as Prozac and other antide-pressants. These psychopharmaceuticals saturated the prescription drug market. Some mental health experts worried that these drugs were being overprescribed, especially for children, as life’s normal ups and downs were increasingly diagnosed as maladies such as depression and attention deficit disorder. Aging baby boomers also boosted the profits of pharmaceutical companies. Women turned to hormone replacement therapies to offset the effects of menopause. Skyrocketing sales of Viagra, a drug for treating male impotence, reflected middle-aged men’s concerns about waning sexual potency. CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 987 ${bmicon} Medical developments brought new worries in the wake of new cures. Antibiotics were so widely prescribed that forms of drug-resistant bacteria began to proliferate. Tuberculosis appeared in new deadly forms that did not respond to treatment with available antibiotics. In 1997 researchers in Scotland cloned a sheep, raising hopes that cloning could lead to new medical breakthroughs and fears that human cloning might be next. In 2000 scientists charted the entire human genome, or genetic code, offering the hope of finding causes and cures for genetically linked diseases. Advances in reproductive medicine provoked controversies over the benefits and dangers of such procedures as embryo selection, in vitro fertilization for postmenopausal women, and the long-term implications of egg and sperm donation. In one 1999 case that sparked a debate among medical ethicists, a couple advertised for an egg donor in the student newspapers of prestigious colleges, offering $50,000 to a donor who was athletic and tall, had no major family medical problems, and had scored at least 1400 on the Scholastic Achievement Test. Like the eugenic campaigns of earlier decades, these sorts of cases raised concerns about efforts to create “superior” children. full view FIGURE 29.2 CHILDHOOD OBESITY RATES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS AGED 6–17, 1960s AND 1990S During the last half century, obesity rates among children rose dramatically, especially in the 1990s. Childhood obesity is associated with a wide range of medical problems that can affect the health of overweight children throughout their lives. In the 1960s, boys and girls were equally likely to be overweight. But by the 1990s, obesity had become more prevalent among boys. William Jefferson Clinton was the first American president born after World War II. Raised in Arkansas in a working-class family, Clinton attended Georgetown University and studied at Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar. Like many college students of his generation, he opposed the Vietnam War and avoided the draft. He attended Yale Law School, where he met Hillary Rodham from Illinois, whom he married in 1975. In 1978, at the young age of 33, he was elected governor of Arkansas. After one term he was defeated in his bid for reelection. He made a comeback by defining himself as a New Democrat with centrist political inclinations and reclaimed his job as governor. When he ran for president in 1992, Clinton received the support of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of New Democrats who shifted the national party to the right of its previous New Deal liberal position. full view Bill Clinton Bill Clinton (Library of Congress) Bill Clinton First Inauguration In 1992 an American electorate, seemingly tired of twelve years under Republican administrations, swept Democrat Bill Clinton into the White House. His first inaugural speech emphasized the shift from an old order to new horizons with the special challenges of global communications and economy. Clinton was a brilliant campaigner and a charismatic leader with a disarming personal style that contributed to his victory over the incumbent George H. W. Bush. The sluggish economy also helped Clinton win the election. Throughout his presidency, despite political failures and scandals, Clinton achieved consistently high presidential job performance ratings in national polls. He also benefited from the recovery of the economy during his administration. But accusations of corruption and sexual impropriety plagued him throughout his two terms. Ultimately, during his second term as president, an affair with a young White House intern led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives. Although he was not removed from office, the incident cast a cloud over his presidency. In 1992 the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush, faced an uphill battle. The recession of 1991–1992 hit white-collar as well as blue-collar workers as unemployment climbed above PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 988 ${bmicon} 8 percent. During the 12 years of Republican rule, the national debt had more than quadrupled to $4.4 trillion. The Republican party platform, reflecting pressures from the right wing of the party, attacked permissiveness in American society, opposed abortion and gay rights, and called for a smaller government. The Democrats nominated 46-year-old Bill Clinton, who selected as his running mate Al Gore, senator from Tennessee, known as a strong environmentalist and author of Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. A wildcard in the election was the Reform party candidacy of H. Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire who financed his own campaign and used the national media to tap into voter discontent with the two major parties. Much of the campaign reflected the culture wars, pitting what many saw as the socially permissive legacy of the 1960s against conservative efforts to restore traditional “family values” to American public life. Many Americans worried that the prevalence of single-parent families, the high rate of divorce, and the pervasiveness of sex and violence in the popular culture all reflected a decline in moral standards and an erosion of American society. In May 1992 Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a speech criticizing the popular television show Murphy Brow n, whose unmarried title character had given birth to a child. Quayle’s attack on Murphy Brow n may have backfired; a poll taken after the Republican national convention showed that 57 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of him. But Republicans were not the only critics of popular culture. Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, for example, had long been an advocate of parental advisories and ratings of popular music. Despite their criticisms, all the candidates made full use of the media in their campaigns. Clinton won the election by a comfortable margin, but Perot garnered 19 percent of the popular vote, the largest showing for a third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Progressive party ticket in 1912. Clinton began his term with a solid Democratic House and Senate, which included a new infusion of women, along with the nation’s first senator of American Indian descent, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado. Saying that he wanted his cabinet to “look like America,” Clinton appointed two Latinos, three blacks, and three women to the 14-member cabinet. Among his first executive orders were lifting Bush’s restrictions on abortion counseling, allowing fetal tissue research, and permitting a review of the prohibited French abortion pill RU-486, which finally gained FDA approval in 2000. TABLE 29-1 The Election of 1992 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote William J. Clinton Democratic 43,728,375 370 George H. W. Bush Republican 38,167,416 168 H. Ross Perot Independent 19,237,247 0 Clinton ran into trouble early in his administration when he tried to fulfill his campaign promise to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, reversing a policy that dated back half a century. Top military officials, already unhappy with having a new commander-in-chief who had avoided military service during the Vietnam War, vehemently opposed lifting the ban against gays. Ultimately, Clinton compromised and established a new policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which allowed homosexuals to serve as long as they did not make their sexual orientation known. The compromise proved to be unworkable and left many gays and lesbians feeling betrayed. Clinton’s effort to reform the health care system was equally unsuccessful. With rising health care costs and millions of uninsured citizens, Clinton’s campaign promises to provide national health insurance and reduce the cost of health care had wide public support but fierce opposition from the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry. Clinton appointed CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 989 ${bmicon} his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, an attorney and longtime advocate on behalf of children and families, to head a task force to develop a plan. But the task force, deliberating behind closed doors, failed to come up with a workable strategy acceptable to all sides. After a year of hearings and no action in Congress on the complicated task force proposal, the Clintons abandoned the effort. full view First Ladies in 1994 First Ladies (left to right) Nancy Reagan, Ladybird Johnson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rosalyn Carter, Betty Ford, and Barbara Bush gathered at a tribute to First Ladies in 1994. Women’s participation in politics has greatly increased since the Nineteenth Amendment, but Democrat Geraldine Ferraro remains the only woman nominated for vice president (in 1984). (Clinton Presidential Materials Project) Clinton achieved a major success when he pushed through Congress a budget that raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans, cut spending to reduce the deficit, and expanded tax credits for low-income families. Vice President Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, with no Republican voting in favor. In the next three years the economy markedly improved. Other legislative successes included passage of the “motor voter” act, which allowed eligible voters to register when applying for drivers’ licenses, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, which required employers to grant unpaid medical leave for up to 12 weeks. Clinton appointed two new Supreme Court Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 and Stephen Breyer in 1994, whose liberal perspectives contrasted with the largely conservative bent of the court. The 1994 congressional elections dealt a devastating blow to Clinton’s legislative agenda. In the midst of the campaign, about 300 Republican congressional candidates, under the leadership of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, stood on the Capitol steps and endorsed a “Contract with America,” calling for welfare reform, a balanced budget, more prisons and longer sentences, increased defense spending, an end to legal abortion, and other conservative measures. Only 39 percent of the electorate voted, and a whisker-thin majority of those voted Republican. Nevertheless, the Republicans declared a “Republican Revolution” as they took control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years and pushed Congress to the right of center. The new Congress passed a large tax cut and a tough anticrime bill, increased military spending, and reduced federal regulatory power over the environment. Clinton used his veto power to limit the Republican agenda, but he also undercut the conservative momentum by taking on some of their issues as his own, such as free trade and welfare reform. The “Republican PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 990 ${bmicon} Revolution” did not last long. In 1995 and again in 1996, Congress forced a shutdown of the federal government rather than agreeing to Clinton’s proposed budget, leading to widespread frustration and anger as Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for the stalemate. Support for the “Contract with America” wore thin, and the public was quickly disenchanted with the gridlock in Washington. In his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton announced that the “era of big government is over.” In August of that year, after vetoing two earlier versions, Clinton finally agreed to a compromise measure and signed the Welfare Reform Act, abolishing the 60-year-old program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). TABLE 29-2 The Election of 1996 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote William J. Clinton Democratic 45,590,703 379 Robert Dole Republican 37,816,307 159 H. Ross Perot Reform 7,866,284 0 Clinton won reelection easily in 1996, defeating the 73-year-old Senate Majority Leader, Republican Bob Dole of Kansas. Republicans lost some seats but stayed in control of both houses of Congress. The 1996 campaign was the most expensive in history, with Democrats spending $250 million and Republicans $400 million. Billionaire H. Ross Perot ran again, although his showing at the polls was much weaker than in 1992. Public opinion polls showed a growing concern over the vast amounts of money poured into elections, but campaign finance reform remained a difficult issue for lawmakers, whose own success at the polls depended on large financial contributions. Clinton’s personal behavior left him vulnerable to political enemies, who took full advantage of every opportunity to discredit him. In 1993 the Clintons were investigated for possible complicity in a failed Arkansas investment scheme known as Whitewater. Although a few of the Clintons’ close associates were found guilty of conspiracy, tax evasion, and mail fraud in the deal, four years of persistent investigation cleared the Clintons of any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the Whitewater scandal activated the Office of the Independent Counsel, an independent investigative unit put into place during the Nixon administration to investigate the Watergate break-in. The independent counsel, former judge Kenneth Starr, with the help of the congressional Republicans, pursued Clinton throughout his two terms and nearly brought down his presidency. In the end, however, it was not Clinton’s financial dealings but rather his sexual behavior that led to his impeachment. Clinton’s sexual behavior became an issue well before he entered the White House. During the 1992 campaign, Gennifer Flowers, a former nightclub singer, told a tabloid that she and Clinton had an affair when he was governor. Early in his presidency, Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, filed a sexual harassment suit against Clinton, claiming that he had propositioned her when he was governor of Arkansas. Eventually, the case was dismissed, but it came back to haunt him later. In 1998, Kenneth Starr reported to the House Judiciary Committee that he had evidence that Clinton had an extramarital affair with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Starr claimed that Clinton had broken the law in an effort to cover up the affair. Lewinsky and Clinton had both been called to testify in the Paula Jones case, and both denied having had a sexual relationship. Starr claimed that Clinton had lied under oath and had instructed his close advisor and friend, Vernon Jordan, to find Lewinsky a job to keep her quiet. Starr charged Clinton with perjury, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice. As proof of the affair, Starr produced 20 hours of taped phone conversations recorded by Lewinsky’s co-worker and confidante, Linda Tripp. Clinton vehemently denied the charges, but Lewinsky had saved a dress with a stain containing the president’s DNA, providing the investigation with the “smoking gun” it needed. CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 991 ${bmicon} As Starr and congressional Republicans pressed the investigation with relentless determination, the media saturated the nation and the world with sordid and graphic details of the president’s sexual encounters with the young intern. Polls showed that Americans disapproved of Clinton’s personal behavior, but they did not want him removed from office. With the economy booming and the country running smoothly, Clinton garnered high job performance ratings, rising to 79 percent at the height of the scandal. Negative sentiment against Kenneth Starr and congressional Republicans mounted as the investigation dragged on for four years at a cost to taxpayers of $40 million. Public opinion notwithstanding, the House of Representatives impeached Clinton on December 19, 1998, charging him with perjury and obstruction of justice, based on Clinton’s false testimony in the Paula Jones case. Removal from office requires two steps: the House of Representatives brings formal charges known as “articles of impeachment,” and the Senate tries the impeached official on these articles. A two-thirds vote of the Senate is required for conviction. The vote in the House of Representatives fell strictly along party lines. The Bill of Impeachment was then sent to the Senate, where the majority of senators determined that Clinton’s misdeeds did not meet the standard for “high crimes and misdemeanors” required to remove a president from office. Clinton tried to prevent the scandals that plagued him at home from interfering with his foreign policy. He hoped to maintain a focus on peacekeeping and peacemaking while expanding trade and diplomatic relations, especially to countries that had been considered unfriendly during the Cold War. Clinton took on the role of peace broker by facilitating negotiations in long-standing conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. But hostilities in those areas proved too deep to be fully resolved. Military interventions in Somalia, Haiti, and Kosovo yielded mixed results, and trade agreements generated heated controversy. Episodes of international terrorism against U.S. embassies and military personnel killed hundreds of people and highlighted the strength of extremist groups whose members were deeply hostile to the United States and its interventions around the world. In 1993, with President Clinton’s strong encouragement, Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), eliminating tariffs and trade barriers among the United States, Mexico, and Canada and thus creating the largest free trade zone in the world. In 1994 Congress approved the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which reduced tariffs on thousands of goods and phased out import quotas imposed by the United States and other industrialized nations. Supporters argued that these measures would increase global competition and improve the U.S. economy. Businesses would benefit from the easing of trade barriers, and consumers would have access to lower-priced goods. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 992 ${bmicon} But NAFTA and GATT barely passed Congress. Clinton faced strong opposition from liberal Democrats in industrial areas and from labor unions, who feared that these measures would result in jobs going abroad, declining American wages, and a relaxation of environmental controls over companies moving outside the U.S. borders. In the first few years of NAFTA and GATT, these fears seemed justified. Some jobs went abroad, and threats of moving gave employers a negotiating edge over workers. In Mexico the impact of NAFTA was even worse. The peso collapsed as money and goods flowed across the border, and the average wages for workers fell from $1.45 to $.78 per hour. Equally controversial were Clinton’s efforts to grant China most-favored-nation status, which would designate China as a full trading partner with the United States. Human rights activists argued that China’s dismal record of violent suppression and imprisonment of political dissenters should preclude such favorable trading terms. But with an eye to China’s huge potential market for American goods and favorable site for U.S.-owned factories, Congress approved Clinton’s proposal. Despite this new alliance with a former foe, Cold War politics did not entirely disappear from foreign policy. The tiny communist nation of Cuba, suffering severe economic hardship since the collapse of its benefactor, the Soviet Union, remained off limits to U.S. trade and tourism. Cuban Americans in southern Florida, who had fled Cuba after Fidel Castro’s successful revolution, blocked any efforts to ease relations between the two countries. Democrats as well as Republicans were reluctant to alienate these voters; their numbers and political clout in the most populous part of the nation’s fourth largest state gave them power. Cuban–American relations were strained anew in November 1999 when a small boat carrying a group of Cubans trying to escape to Florida capsized, drowning everyone aboard except a six-year-old boy, Elian Gonzales, who was found floating on an inner tube off the coast of Florida. Elian’s relatives in Miami argued that Elian should stay in the United States, where he could grow up in a democratic society—a goal his mother died trying to achieve. However, his father wanted him back in Cuba, and the Clinton administration determined that the boy should be returned to his remaining parent. After months of intense media coverage in both countries and futile efforts at negotiation, in April 2000 U.S. government agents stormed the small house where Elian was staying and seized the boy, who eventually returned to Cuba with his father. Less controversial than relations with China and Cuba were Clinton’s peacemaking efforts. Northern Ireland had been fraught with violent conflict for 30 years. Irish Catholic nationalists wanted to break ties with England and join the Republic of Ireland; Protestants loyal to Great Britain wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom. The United States, with political and diplomatic connections to London as well as strong ties to the Irish, wanted to help resolve the crisis. Clinton made several trips to Ireland to promote peace. He appointed former Senator George Mitchell of Maine as negotiator, who spent months working on a settlement. Despite dissent and violence by extremists on both sides, by the time Clinton left office, an agreement had been reached that established a shared coalition government. CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 993 ${bmicon} In the Middle East, Clinton brought Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and Yitzak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister, to Washington for talks that led to a historic 1993 handshake and pledges to pursue a peace agreement. As in Northern Ireland, those efforts were hampered by violent extremists on both sides. Rabin was assassinated by a fanatical right-wing Israeli, leading to the election of a hawkish new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The peace process fell apart for several years until negotiations finally resumed in the late 1990s. But just when an agreement seemed to be within reach, large-scale violence between Palestinians and Israelis erupted again in the summer of 2000. Clinton left office with no agreement in sight. In the final weeks of Clinton’s presidency in 2000, he made a historic visit to Vietnam—the first by an American president since the war. Because Clinton had protested against the war decades earlier, his visit held great symbolic power. Although the United States lost the war, westernization had taken hold in Vietnam, with investment beginning to flow in from Europe, the United States, and Japan, as well as American popular culture and technology. Cheering crowds welcomed the president of the superpower that had been vanquished 25 years earlier. The end of the Cold War raised new questions about how and when to use American military force. Most of the overseas crises stemmed from problems of national disintegration, ethnic conflict, and humanitarian disasters resulting from political chaos and civil wars. These sorts of problems would have challenged even the most internationally focused president, but Clinton was concerned mainly with domestic matters. Aside from his interest in expanding U.S. trade, he had few guiding principles in foreign policy other than his desire to broker peace agreements in tenacious hot spots. full view The Middle East in the 1980s and the 1990s US relations with the Middle East have never been simple, but they became more complex in the 1980s and 1990s. Islamic revolution in Iran, civil war in Afghanistan, anarchy in Beirut, continued hostilities in Israel, the Persian Gulf War, and the Iran-Contra affair all increased American concern for and awareness of the region. On the Caribbean island of Haiti, a military coup in 1991 had ousted the democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide. In a striking departure from former Cold War policies, Clinton backed the black populist Aristide against the coup leaders, who had strong ties to the CIA. In 1994, the United States received UN support for an invasion to restore Aristide to power. To avert a large-scale military conflict, Clinton sent former President Jimmy Carter to Haiti to negotiate a settlement. The resulting agreement allowed the coup members to leave the country, and Aristide returned. Six years later, however, the United States criticized Aristide for corruption and fraud in his 2000 reelection. In 1992 President Bush had sent U.S. marines to Somalia in east Africa as part of a UN effort to provide famine relief and to restore peace in the war-torn nation. After Clinton took office, Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid killed 50 Pakistani UN peacekeepers. The UN forces then mobilized against Aidid, shifting the peacekeeping mission to military engagement. As part of the effort to hunt down Aidid, U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of Somali citizens, creating intense anti-American sentiment among the population. Amid that hostile atmosphere, in September 1993, Aidid’s forces killed 18 American soldiers under the UN command in a firefight and dragged one of their bodies through the streets. The outraged American public viewed the grim spectacle on TV, and the experience left Clinton with no clear guidelines on humanitarian intervention abroad. Largely as a result of the disaster in Somalia, when ethnic conflict led to genocide in Rwanda in central Africa in 1994, the United States and other western nations refused to intervene. Ethnic conflict was also the cause of trouble in the Balkans. From 1945 to 1980 Marshal Josip Broz Tito ruled over a unified communist Yugoslavia, maintaining stability by suppressing ethnic rivalries. But after Tito’s death in 1980, ethnic nationalism pulled Yugoslavia apart, with Slovenia and Croatia breaking away, and then Bosnia and Serbia. The region erupted in bloody conflicts, escalating into full-scale war after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. After sustained PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 994 ${bmicon} Serbian attacks on Muslims in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, Clinton reluctantly agreed to air strikes against the Serbs, leading to the 1995 Dayton Accords, which brought an end to the war. But Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic continued to foment anti-Muslim and anti-Croat fervor. Soon the Serbs embarked on a murderous campaign to drive the Muslim ethnic Albanians out of Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo. The United States was reluctant to intervene despite the brutality, but the situation reached such drastic proportions that Clinton finally decided to send troops to Kosovo in 1999. The action had the unintended effect of weakening the Serbian opposition against Milosevic as Serbs closed ranks against the foreign troops. Eventually, a tenuous peace was restored, and Milosevic was voted out of office in 2000. The following year, Serbian authorities arrested Milosevic and turned him over to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, which had indicted Milosevic for crimes against humanity. U.S. interventions around the world failed to quell ethnic tensions or eradicate poverty. Although some military actions achieved their immediate goals, the presence of the United States abroad also fueled anti-American sentiment. In some regions of the world, resentment against the United States found expression in violence and terrorism. In June 1996 a truck bomb killed 19 U.S. airmen in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Two years later, bombs exploded at two U.S. embassies in east Africa, killing 224 people in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. full view MAP 29.3 THE BREAKUP OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA Created in 1919 as a multiethnic nation, Yugoslavia split apart in 1991–1992. After Slovenia and Croatia gained their independence swiftly, Bosnia deteriorated into fierce ethnic fighting dominated by Serb atrocities and encouraged by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic. A brief U.S. bombing campaign in 1995 finally brought the Serbs to peace negotiations. Similar ethnic fighting in the province of Kosovo in 1999 led to another U.S. bombing campaign and Kosovo’s current quasi-independence under NATO guidance. CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 995 ${bmicon} Four men were convicted of conspiracy in the terrorist attacks. They were identified as followers of Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, who was also indicted in connection with the embassy bombings. Bin Laden, originally from Saudi Arabia, was living in Afghanistan under the protection of the fundamentalist Taliban regime and remained a fugitive. He was known to be the leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network operating in several countries throughout the Middle East. On October 12, 2000, a small boat pulled up next to the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen’s port of Aden. A bomb exploded and ripped a hole in the destroyer, killing 17 Americans and wounding 39 others. Two suicide bombers carried out the attack. U.S. officials believed that they, too, were associated with Osama bin Laden. On February 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the parking garage underneath the World Trade Center, the skyscrapers dominating the New York skyline in Lower Manhattan. Five people were killed and more than a thousand were injured. The New York Times reported that the explosion “destroyed a multistoried parking garage under the trade center, knocked out power to the center and touched off fires that sent smoke billowing up through its 110-story twin towers and forced 50,000 people into a nightmarish evacuation that took all day and half the night.” President Clinton tried to quell the fears of the nation in the face of what appeared to be an act of international terrorism. “Working together, we’ll find out who was involved and why this happened,” the president declared. “Americans should know we’ll do everything in our power to keep them safe in their streets, their offices and their homes.” However, international terrorists proved difficult to identify and bring to justice. Eight years later the same twin towers were attacked again, with far more devastating consequences. The first presidential election of the new millennium was the most bitterly contested in more than a century. The Democratic candidate won the national popular vote, but with ballot counts incomplete in the key state of Florida, the Supreme Court ultimately declared the Republican candidate the victor. The election exposed defects in the election process, from faulty ballots and voting machines to the role of the media, and raised serious questions about the value of the Electoral College. The election also revealed that flaws in the system disfranchised large numbers of poor and minority voters. But in the end, the transfer of power took place smoothly, and the nation accepted the outcome. The 2000 campaign was fairly lackluster. The Democrats nominated Vice President Al Gore, who hoped to benefit from Clinton’s high approval rating and the healthy economy. The Republicans nominated George W. Bush, governor of Texas and son of the former president. Bush chose as his running mate Dick Cheney, who had been the elder Bush’s secretary of state. Gore chose Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut as his running mate, the first Jew to run on a presidential ticket. Gore’s popularity peaked after the Democratic National Convention, where he delivered a rousing speech filled with populist themes and gave a passionate kiss to his wife, Tipper, which garnered more media attention than the speech itself. But he distanced himself from the popular master campaigner Clinton. Bush gained the upper hand during the televised debates, where he portrayed himself as a “compassionate conservative” and promised to restore “dignity to the White House.” As the election neared, Gore’s lead in the polls narrowed. Only half of the nation’s eligible voters turned out to vote. But African Americans went to the polls in unusually high numbers and voted overwhelmingly for Gore, largely out of loyalty to Clinton. Even before all the polls had closed, the national media began to report PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 996 ${bmicon} full view MAP 29.4 THE CONTESTED ELECTION OF 2000 The 2000 election was so close, and so fraught with problems, that it was ultimately decided by a 5–4 vote of the Supreme Court. As this map shows, Democratic votes were concentrated in the densely populated urban areas and Republican votes in the sparsely populated rural areas. the results. Early in the evening, they declared that Florida, a key state with 25 electoral votes, had gone to Gore. But soon after that announcement, they changed their projection and put Florida back into the “undecided” group of states. As the hours dragged on, it became clear that whoever took Florida, where Bush’s brother Jeb Bush was governor, would win the election. By the next day, Gore had won the national popular vote by half a million votes, but Bush was ahead in Florida. Bush’s lead was so narrow that it triggered an automatic recount. With all eyes on Florida, a number of serious irregularities surfaced. Voters in Palm Beach County were given a confusing “butterfly” ballot, resulting in more than 20,000 mismarked ballots. In other counties, registered voters were turned away at the polls because of inaccurate and incomplete voter registration lists. Some voter lists inaccurately listed eligible voters as felons. Most of these disfranchised voters were African American. In several largely minority counties, old voting machines that used a punched-ballot system failed to count thousands of ballots. For weeks after the election, the outcome was still unknown. Democrats insisted that because Bush’s lead had narrowed to a few hundred votes, tallied by inaccurate voting machines, ballots in four Florida counties should be recounted by hand. Republicans pointed out that it would be unfair to recount votes in only four heavily Democratic counties, especially with no standard way of determining voter intent on punch-card ballots with ambiguous marks on them. Florida’s secretary of state, Katherine Harris, a Republican who headed Florida’s campaign for George W. Bush, refused to extend the deadline to allow the recounts to take place and declared Bush the winner by 537 votes out of 6 million cast statewide. TABLE 29-3 The Election of 2000 Candidate Political Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote George W. Bush Republican 50,456,167 271 Al Gore Democratic 50,996,064 266* Ralph Nader Green 2,864,810 0 *One District of Columbia Gore elector abstained. CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 997 ${bmicon} Gore contested the results, and the Florida Supreme Court ordered that the recount proceed. Bush then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision of the Florida Supreme Court. After 36 days of partial vote counting and court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Bush the winner in a sharply divided 5–4 decision. The four dissenting judges issued a stinging rebuke of their five colleagues responsible for the decision. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that the majority ruling “can only lend confidence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.” After the election, reporters continued the hand-counting process in Florida in an effort to discover who would have won if all the votes had been counted. The results can never be absolutely conclusive, given the many irregularities in the process. What did become clear in the months after the election were the widespread flaws in the election system in Florida and elsewhere. Across the country outdated voting machines yielded inaccurate vote counts, and long lines at polling places prevented voters from casting ballots. Low-income and minority voters were more likely to be disfranchised because they lived in precincts with faulty voting machines or overcrowded polling places. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission estimated that in Florida black voters were nine times more likely than white voters to have had their votes rejected. In addition to those whose votes did not count, many others were prevented from voting altogether. In Florida, “suspected felons” were removed from voter registration lists without being informed and without the opportunity to demonstrate that they were law-abiding citizens eligible to vote. An estimated 15 percent of the list was inaccurate, and more than half of those voters were African American. According to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, “Perhaps the most dramatic undercount in Florida’s election was the nonexistent ballots of countless unknown eligible voters, who were turned away, or wrongfully purged from the voter registration rolls … and were prevented from exercising the franchise.” As a result, hundreds of African American citizens with no criminal record arrived at the polls, only to discover that they had been disfranchised. An investigation by scholars of constitutional law concluded that the disfranchisement of African American voters in Florida constituted a violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They determined that if those African American voters had been able to cast ballots, they would have provided more than the 537 votes Gore needed to win. The election also renewed a national debate over the value of the Electoral College. Opponents argued that Gore was the rightful winner because he won a majority of the popular vote. Advocates claimed that the Electoral College protected the interests of less populous states and that Bush was fairly elected because he won the majority of states. Congress and state legislatures began discussions of various forms of electoral reform, but abolishing the Electoral College was not among them. Representatives of small states probably would block any such measures. Policymakers and media moguls also debated the role of the media in reporting election returns. Some argued for a blackout on early returns until all polls across the country were closed to avoid the possibility that early results might influence voters who had not yet voted. Others proposed that only official results be announced to avoid the problem of erroneous reporting that occurred on election night 2000. But media representatives countered that a free press should be able to report the news as it happens, although they agreed on the need to ensure accuracy. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 998 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY Voting One of the most troubling revelations to surface in the wake of the 2000 election was the news that millions of citizens, in Florida and elsewhere, were thwarted in their effort to vote or to have their votes count. Studies conducted after the election showed that 4 to 6 million Americans were disfranchised as a result of faulty equipment, confusing ballots, erroneous voter registration lists, long lines at polling places, and problems with absentee ballots. Voters in low-income precincts with a large percentage of citizens of color were much more likely to have their votes discarded, or to be turned away at the polls, than voters in more affluent and whiter districts. These revelations sparked outrage among Americans who believe that voting is one of the fundamental rights of democratic citizenship. But the disfranchisement of potential voters has a long history in the United States, beginning with the founding of the nation. The Constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to vote. After the American Revolution, the majority of Americans—including women, slaves, most free black men, propertyless white men, apprentices, indentured laborers, felons, and those considered mentally incompetent—were denied the right to vote. New Jersey was the only state to allow women the vote. Debates over who should vote, and efforts both to expand and to restrict suffrage, continued for most of the nation’s history. During the first half of the nineteenth century, Democrats viewed the vote as a right of all white men, whereas Whigs argued that voting was a privilege to be reserved for the elite. Although the United States was the first western nation to expand the electorate by lowering economic barriers to voting, for a long time after that, the laws governing the right to vote actually limited rather than broadened access to the polls. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, race and gender replaced property as the primary criteria for voting. Nearly every state disfranchised free blacks while dropping the property requirements for white men. States in the West tended toward more inclusive voting rolls. Several gave the vote to aliens who had established permanent residence and to Native Americans who had relinquished tribal citizenship. Some politicians were eager to expand suffrage to portray themselves as champions of the common people and win the votes of the newly enfranchised. But several states restricted voting well into the twentieth century. Rhode Island required foreign-born citizens to meet a property requirement to vote, and California prevented Asians from voting. In 1921 New York adopted English literacy tests to prevent immigrants from voting, disfranchising hundreds of thousands of citizens as late as the 1960s. As a result of these restrictions, voter turnout began to decline in the late nineteenth century. This shrinking of the electorate was not accidental. In 1907 the voter registration board of Pittsburgh boasted that in only two years the Pennsylvania registration law had cut the number of registered voters in half. Women achieved the right to vote in 1920, but most women of color and many immigrant women remained disfranchised for decades. African Americans officially gained the right to vote in 1870 with the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. But by 1900, almost all blacks as well as poor whites in the South had been disfranchised through poll taxes and literacy and property requirements. Not until passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act were African Americans in the South able to vote. Suffrage expanded again in 1971 when the Twenty-Sixth Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The Vietnam War revived claims made since the Revolution that citizens old enough to fight and die for their country were old enough to vote. By the time of the 2000 election, universal suffrage was the law of the land. Although only half of all eligible voters went to the polls that year, the number of voters had increased tenfold since 1888. Still, questions remained about the fairness of the process, whether intentional or not. When the winner of the popular vote lost the election to a candidate without a clear victory in the Electoral College, critics of the system called for direct election of the president. In the end, however, it was neither the voters nor the Electoral College, but the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, who elected the president by a vote of 5–4. CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 999 ${bmicon} In addition to the unprecedented Supreme Court decision, the 2000 election was remarkable in other ways. For the first time, a First Lady was elected to public office: Hillary Rodham Clinton became a Democratic senator from New York. In another Senate race, a deceased candidate was elected. Mel Carnahan, Democratic governor of Missouri, had run against Republican incumbent John Ashcroft. But Carnahan died in a plane crash a few weeks before the election, too late to have his name removed from the ballot. The acting governor pledged to appoint Carnahan’s widow if he won the election, and she picked up the campaign. Carnahan was elected and his widow went to the Senate. (The defeated candidate, John Ashcroft, became George W. Bush’s attorney general.) Third-party politics also influenced the outcome of the election. Several third-party candidates had achieved national visibility during the 1990s and won elections at the state and local levels, including professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, elected governor of Minnesota in 1998 on the Reform party ticket. In 2000 Ralph Nader wreaked havoc for the Democrats with his Green party candidacy for president. Although Nader gained fewer than 3 percent of the votes, his candidacy drew off some of the left-leaning elements of the Democratic party—enough votes to cost Al Gore the election. The election results left the Congress almost evenly divided, with a thin Republican majority in the House and a 50–50 split in the Senate. But within a year, Senator James M. Jeffords from Vermont bolted the Republican party and became an Independent, giving the Democrats a majority in the Senate. The closely divided Congress began to take up issues raised by the contested election, including various measures to improve the voting process, and campaign finance reform. President George W. Bush immediately began to reverse several Clinton-era policies, including a number of environmental protections. His first major legislative success was the passage of a major tax cut. During his first year in office, the economy went from boom to bust and headed into a recession. The robust stock market of the 1990s wilted in early 2001. Nevertheless, as the new millennium dawned, the United States remained the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. Bush retreated from international treaties on issues ranging from global warming to nuclear test ban agreements, and revived the Reagan-era proposal for a nuclear missile shield. But the place of the nation in the global community was yet to be defined. Soon, monumental events shattered the nation’s sense of security and forced Bush to abandon his retreat from international alliances and to engage in the world in unprecedented ways. In the 1990s the role of the nation in the world shifted and a half-century of political certainties evaporated. The end of the Cold War meant that the United States had to develop a new international mission. The struggle against the Soviet Union and the communist foe had come to an end. Russia was our friend; China was our trading partner. Conflicts around the globe, many of them grounded in ancient ethnic hostilities, posed challenges for the world’s most powerful nation. The United States had new international concerns, including desires for markets and trade, the nation’s supply of oil, the need for political order to maintain international stability, and the danger of “rogue nations” developing nuclear arms. President Clinton tried to be a peacemaker in hot spots around the world while attempting to respond to violent episodes of international terrorism. At home, Americans demonstrated increasing tolerance for people who looked and acted differently from themselves. Polls showed declining levels of racial, ethnic, and religious hostility and greater acceptance of homosexuality, single parenthood, and family arrangements PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1000 ${bmicon} that deviated from the nuclear family model. But episodes of racial discrimination—by police, courts, and voting officials—continued. Politics remained an arena in which culture wars flared over abortion, gun control, and welfare reform. A Democratic president faced impeachment by his Republican foes in Congress while maintaining high approval ratings from the public. At the dawn of the new century, several crises challenged Americans’ sense of security. A deeply flawed presidential election revealed profound problems in the nation’s voting system. A sharp and sudden downturn in the economy shattered the optimism many middle-class people felt during the booming Clinton years and forced many of the working poor into desperate circumstances. Already reeling from these disturbing developments, the nation was soon shaken to its core by a terrorist attack that forced a new reckoning at home and abroad. William Jefferson Clinton www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/wjclinton.html This site contains basic information about Clinton’s election and presidency and an online biography. Distribution of Wealth and Income www.inequality.org/factsfr.html This site provides facts and figures about the distribution of wealth and income in the 1990s. American Identities xroads.virginia.edu/∼YP/ethnic.html This site of the American Studies program at the University of Virginia includes information and resources for studying America’s multiple ethnic identities. The O.J. Simpson Trial www.cnn.com/US/OJ/index.html This CNN site provides basic facts and interpretive essays, plus additional links about the O. J. Simpson trial. Investigating the President: The Trial www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/resources/1998/lewinsky/ This CNN site provides information and documents about the scandals surrounding President Clinton’s impeachment. Focus on Kosovo www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/10/kosovo/ This in-depth CNN interactive site looks at the development and current resolution to the turmoil in Kosovo. Oklahoma City Bombing www.cnn.com/US/9703/okc.trial/ This CNN interactive site has information about the domestic terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City and the trial that followed. Why Do Campaign Polls Zigzag So Much? www.psych.purdue.edu/%7Ecodelab/Invalid.Polls.html This site, created by Gerald S. Wasserman of the Psychological Sciences Department at Purdue University, examines polling data from the 1996 presidential campaign. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America’s Changing Families (1997). Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (2000). Clara E. Rodriguez, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census and the History of Ethnicity in the United States (2000). Leland T. Saito and Roger Daniels, Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb (1998). Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk, America Unequal (1995). Julia Butterfly Hill, The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, A Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods (2000). Jacqueline Jones, American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor (1998). William A. Orme, Understanding NAFTA: Mexico, Free Trade, and the New North America (1996). CHAPTER 29 ###8226; POST-COLD WAR AMERICA, 1991###8211;2000 1001 ${bmicon} Jeffrey Abramson, ed., Postmortem: The O. J. Simpson Case: Justice Confronts Race, Domestic Violence, Lawyers, Money, and the Media (1996). Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1998). Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (1994). Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (1994). Alan Wolfe, One Nation, After All: What Americans Really Think About God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left and Each Other (1998). Joan Jacobs Brumberg, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (2000). Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (2000). Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (1999). Peter D. Kramer, Listening to Prozac (1997). Rickie Solinger, ed., Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950–2000 (1998). Judith Stacey, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (1996). Steven Wisotsky and Thomas Szasz, Beyond the War on Drugs: Over-coming a Failed Public Policy (1999). William C. Berman, From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency (2001). James MacGregor Burns and Georgia J. Sorenson, Dead Center: Clinton–Gore Leadership and the Perils of Moderation (1999). Steven E. Schier, ed., The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton’s Legacy in U.S. Politics (2000). John Dumbrell and David M. Barrett, The Making of U.S. Foreign Policy (1998). Thomas H. Henriksen, Clinton’s Foreign Policy in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and North Korea (1996). Richard A. Melanson, American Foreign Policy Since the Vietnam War: The Search for Consensus from Nixon to Clinton (2001). Alan M. Dershowitz, Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (2001). E. J. Dionne and William Kristol, eds., Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary (2001). Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, and Richard H. Pildes, When Elections Go Bad: The Law of Democracy and the Presidential Election of 2000 (2001). Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2000). Charles Lewis, The Buying of the President 2000 (2001). Richard A. Posner, Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Election, the Constitution, and the Courts (2001). Bill Sammon, At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election (2001). Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election (2001). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter29 To Chapter 29 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1002 ${bmicon}         The American Place in a Global Economy       The Stewardship of Natural Resources       The Expansion of American Popular Culture Abroad       Identity in Contemporary America       Conclusion       Sites to Visit       For Further Reading   Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1003 ${bmicon} “THOSE MEXICAN GUYS WORK, THEY REALLY WORK,” THE FORMER OWNER OF A carpet-cleaning business in Las Vegas observed in a sentiment widely shared among employers in southern Nevada’s booming desert city. Mostly young Latinos, along with a smattering of whites and blacks, workers lined up on D Street in North Las Vegas every morning waiting for employers to drive up. “Drive past the white guys; they’re all derelicts,” explained a young white tree-cutter just out of drug rehabilitation and looking for help at the day labor market. He bluntly stereotyped native-born workers of any color in comparison to immigrants. “Drive past the black guys, too. Get the Mexicans. They work.” For $8 an hour, he hired a man to work with him trimming palm trees, hard, nasty work made tougher by desert temperatures of more than 100 degrees. At the end of the day, $64 changed hands, and the Latino went his own way, leaving the tree-cutter satisfied. In Las Vegas and across the country, immigrant labor is prized: undocumented immigrants work hard for low wages and cause few problems for those who hire them. Latinos were not always easily distinguished from other workers in southern Nevada. In 1991, the Frontier Hotel and Casino on the famous Las Vegas Strip slashed employees’ wages and benefits, prompting hundreds of unionized workers to walk out and begin the longest strike of the decade in the United States. For more than six years, union members of different races and ethnicities walked the picket line together outside the Frontier. Twelve of them even walked the 300 miles across the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles to promote public awareness of their cause. Gloria Hernandez was a Mexican-born mother of two, a restaurant hostess, and a union activist who stayed out on strike until the Frontier was sold in 1998, and the new owner reinstated wages and benefits similar to those at the other large casinos. In the final year of the strike, Hernandez qualified for naturalization and became an American citizen, just in time to return to her old job. This was an old story in America, of determined newcomers often making great sacrifices to create a life of better opportunities and greater freedoms for themselves and their families. But like most old stories, it was also more complicated than it first appeared. Latino or Hispanic Americans did not form a single, coherent community, despite the prominence of people of Mexican extraction. Their roots ranged from the southern tip of Chile in South America to the Rio Grande, from the Caribbean islands to the Pacific coast. They were not all in the working class: the first Spanish-speaking people drawn to modern Las Vegas for its economic opportunities were middle-class Cuban refugees from Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, which eliminated Havana’s gambling palaces and put skilled casino operators out of work. Nor were they all immigrants. The area that is now southern Nevada was part of Mexico for more than two centuries after the Pilgrims sailed into Massachusetts Bay in 1620, and many of its current PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1004 ${bmicon} Latino residents were born in the United States. Latinos represented a large part of the future of Las Vegas, where their numbers more than doubled in the 1990s to constitute 18 percent of the population, and they made up the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. Las Vegas was on track to join Miami and Los Angeles as major American cities where Spanish was spoken as commonly as English. For most of the twentieth century, Nevada seemed to outsiders a distant desert state where the rules that governed most American lives could be bent. Prostitution was legal, as was gambling—“gaming,” as industry spokespeople called it—and divorce could be easily obtained. A reputation as a mecca for pleasure tourism drew visitors to Las Vegas, especially with the advent of jet airline service in the 1960s and an expansion of the city’s McCarran Airport. With its population more than quadrupling since 1970, the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the nation had one and a half million residents in 2000. Even as the city drew migrants to it, its values seemed to spread outward: a nation that had long condemned gambling as a vice now embraced the gaming business as a partial replacement for declining industrial employment. By 2000, most states had lotteries or some other form of legalized betting, and casinos spread from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to riverboats on the Mississippi River and Indian reservations across the country. The early nickname for Las Vegas—“Sin City”—no longer fit a place that had become a model of the new service economy and the American demographic shift to the Sunbelt of the West and South. Las Vegas resident and historian Hal Rothman has called his city “the last Detroit.” Like the famous hub of the auto industry for earlier generations, Las Vegas offered unskilled but industrious workers an opportunity for real upward mobility. Inexpensive housing and a low cost of living were important, and a mostly unionized work force provided the linchpin, just as it had in Detroit’s auto plants. The organized housekeepers and other service employees in the city’s vast hotels and casinos, whose large Culinary Workers Union was led in 2000 by an African American woman, Hattie Canty, earned decent wages and crucial benefits, such as health insurance and pension plans that could pull them into the middle class. The traditional American dream of improving one’s socioeconomic status through sheer hard work was a more viable option here than in most places in the United States, after three decades of declining real wages for those without a college education and two generations of shrinking union membership. These economic dreams and successes were built on a slim and imperiled natural resource base, however. Unplanned and largely unregulated urban sprawl spread like an environmental cancer across Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County as roads, housing developments, and shopping malls swallowed thousands of acres of fragile desert landscape, bringing congestion, smog, and other pollutants to a harsh but once pristine climate. Like its spectacular casinos built to resemble New York City or the Egyptian pyramids, Las Vegas was in many ways an artificial city. Everything was imported from elsewhere: people, food, capital, grass, and especially water. Annual rainfall was less than 5 inches, yet vast fountains and swimming pools graced the grounds of the large casinos. Limited in the share of water it could divert from the nearby Colorado River, the city pumped groundwater to quench its growing thirst—the same process that was drying up underground CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1005 ${bmicon} aquifers across much of the arid West. “There is no lack of water here,” essayist Edward Abbey warned about the parched Great Basin country of Nevada and Utah, “unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.” In southern Nevada, the four primary themes of this story of the American past come into focus in the present. It remains a story about the distribution of wealth and power, the identities Americans construct for themselves in a multicultural society, the international ties that help shape American life, and the natural environment in which the United States builds its future. Mollie Brown grew up in the small Virginia town of Cartersville, 45 miles west of Richmond. In 1950, at age 19, she moved to Paterson, New Jersey, joining the broad river of black Southerners who sought better economic opportunities and greater personal freedom in the North. There she married Sam James, another migrant from Virginia who worked at a foundry in Paterson, and together they raised four children. An employed mother like most African American women, Mollie James took a job in 1955 with the Universal Manufacturing Company in Paterson with wages and decent treatment unlike what had been available to her in Virginia. She stayed with Universal for 34 years, becoming its first female union steward and one of its first black union stewards. With union-negotiated wages, overtime work, and company-paid health insurance, she helped pull her family into the middle-class world of owning their own home and car and saving for retirement. But the peace of mind that came from a secure job vanished in 1989 when Universal closed the Paterson plant and moved its manufacturing operations to Matamoros, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas. James’s job did not disappear. It moved and was inherited by 20-year-old Balbina Duque Granados. She, too, had grown up in a small town located in an agricultural area, in the Mexican province of San Luis Potosí, and she, too, had moved 400 miles north to find better-paying work in a booming manufacturing city. She was thrilled to land the difficult, repetitive job—her “answered prayer”—at a maquiladora, one of the foreign-owned assembly plants along Mexico’s border with the United States that wed First World engineering with Third World working conditions. Her employer was also satisfied, paying her $.65/hour to do what James had been paid $7.91/hour for. But Granados’s job was no more secure than James’s had been. The beginnings of successful worker organizing in Matamoros encouraged the company to shift many of its operations 60 miles upriver to Reynosa, where the union movement was weaker. A journalist asked whether she would move there if her job did. “And what if they were to move again?” she replied. “Maybe to Juarez or Tijuana? What then? Do I have to chase my job all over the world?” Like many other workers in the United States and abroad, Mollie James and Balbina Duque Granados learned first-hand the relentlessly international logic of the economic system known as capitalism. Those who had capital—extra money—invested it in corporations, whose purpose Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1006 ${bmicon} CONNECTING HISTORY The Internet and the World Wide Web For students entering college after the mid-1990s, the Internet and the World Wide Web were an integral part of daily life. Electronic mail (e-mail) made communicating with friends and relatives easy and nearly instantaneous, whether they were on the same college campus or on the other side of the world. The Web transformed the availability of information about nearly all subjects. The foremost symbol of the process of globalization, it linked people everywhere who had access to computers, reducing the importance of a person’s geographic location. The Web had limitations: Internet access remained disproportionately available to people with higher incomes, and there were no controls on the accuracy or usefulness of the information it carried. Risks accompanied the Web as well, including the dissemination of pornography to children, the emergence of sexual predators via e-mail, and the rise in the theft of personal information. But the Web did connect students and other researchers to vast resources for knowledge that seemed destined to grow indefinitely. For a society and an economy increasingly centered on the management of information, the establishment of the Internet and the Web appeared to mark the beginning of a new era. Yet the Internet and the Web were only the most recent in a long line of developments in telecommunications linking distant parts of the globe more closely together. In the 1830s, the telegraph first enabled instantaneous communication on the same continent. The first undersea cable laid across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean in 1866 enabled Americans to get news directly from Europe. Ten years later, Alexander Graham Bell added the human voice to the technology of the telegraph by creating the telephone. In 1895, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi freed long-distance communications from the earthly constraints of copper wires by sending the first radio (“wireless”) transmission; in 1901, he established the first radio link from North America to Europe. By 1940 the ability to transmit images enabled television broadcasts in the United States and England, and in the 1950s TV became widely popular and available. The ENIAC computer, built at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, and its successors were vast machines that filled entire rooms. Altair offered the first microcomputer, or personal computer (PC), as a kit in 1975. Apple followed with the fully assembled Apple I in 1977 and the Macintosh in 1984, the latter initiating the use of a mouse to point and click at items on a screen. The entry of powerful International Business Machines (IBM) into the PC market in 1981 marked the movement of computers into the mainstream of American society. The search by the U.S. Department of Defense for a communication network invulnerable to nuclear attack led to the creation of ARPANET in 1969, a forerunner of the Internet, which began to function in 1983. These systems transmitted only text—words—between computers that were connected to each other by telephone links. In 1990, software researchers created the World Wide Web, which used the Internet to send graphic and multimedia information as well as text. Audio and visual capacity now joined words on the growing web of connected networks. In 1993, the White House joined the rush of users establishing sites on the Web, and by 1995, public access to the World Wide Web was widely available in the United States. was to produce a profit for their shareholders. A corporation’s profitability depended on keeping costs—labor and materials—down and expanding into new markets. Those markets were not limited by nationality; a manufacturer tried to sell not just to Americans but to customers wherever they might be found. The technological innovations facilitating the integration of the U.S. economy into the world economy in the late 1900s were not so much a new force as an acceleration of an older trend. Just as the telegraph and telephone had helped create a nation unified by rapid communication, the spread of personal computers and the Internet linked Americans even more closely to other nations. In the 1920s, the head of General Electric, Owen Young, spoke of his ambition to “obliterate the eastern, western, northern and southern boundaries of the United States,” for “the sphere of our activities is the world.” Capitalists were rarely nationalists but rather internationalists. At the close of the twentieth century, engineering breakthroughs sped up the process of globalization. Bill Gates of Seattle became the world’s wealthiest person in the 1990s, with assets at one point worth $100 billion as the company he headed, Microsoft, provided the software for operating most personal computers. At just 34 years old, Michael Dell of Austin leapt to fifth place on the list of wealthiest Americans in 1999 by selling computers through a mail-order business, Dell Computers. The integration of computers into every aspect of commerce and private life increased the efficiency with which businesses could operate. Retailers, for example, could monitor their inventory much more closely and eliminate unnecessary expenses. The dependence of the entire infrastructure of modern American life on computers generated fears Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1007 ${bmicon} that aging software might be unable to handle the “Y2K” (year 2000) problem of changing more than two digits from 1999 to 2000, but the first hours of the new year came and went without incident. Computers boosted American productivity (the amount of work performed by a person in a given time period), which had declined between 1973 and 1996, and the U.S. economy enjoyed its longest-ever expansion during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Americans were plugged in: since the 1980s the spread of cable television and videocassette recorders (VCRs) provided constant entertainment, and Cable News Network (CNN) offered a standardized package of world news available 24 hours a day around the globe. Atlanta-based CNN was so international in its aims that its founder, Ted Turner, banned the word foreign from its broadcasts. Americans were also speeding up their daily routines as the new millennium approached. The desire for immediate gratification and efficiency that had nurtured fast food and microwave ovens encouraged the spread of cell phones, beepers, fax machines, overnight package delivery, and constant news headlines scrolling across TV screens. Computers processed more information faster on ever-smaller silicon chips. Cell phones proliferated among businesspeople, students, and drivers. As prices dropped, they even reached into poorer areas, such as the vast Navajo nation on the Arizona–New Mexico border, where traditional phones were scarce. International air travel for business and pleasure quadrupled between 1980 and 1998, and international tourism vied with oil as the world’s largest industry. The spread of the Internet and the use of electronic mail (e-mail) after the early 1990s best represented the shift toward PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1008 ${bmicon} instant global communication. Though still in its infancy, the Internet was already shaping patterns of personal and commercial interactions, even as access to the Internet remained disproportionately available to those with greater wealth and education. Just as the Berlin Wall had long symbolized the divided world of the Cold War, the Internet became the emblem of the post–Cold War era of an increasingly unified global economy. The ideology of free trade underpinned the tighter meshing of Americans’ lives with the world economy. Free trade meant the reduction of tariffs, or taxes on imported and exported goods. Nations that supported free trade had industries that were eager to expand and were strong enough to compete successfully in a global market; nations with less competitive industries used tariffs to protect those industries from less expensive and higher-quality imports. As a new nation in the late 1700s and 1800s, the United States had enacted high tariffs to protect its domestic producers, but England, the world’s leading economic power at the time, had sought to reduce tariffs and increase trade with America. When the United States emerged after World War II as the new leading economic nation and U.S. manufacturers and farmers looked increasingly to foreign markets, U.S. tariff rates plummeted. From averages of 30–50 percent before 1945, they dropped to 5 percent by 1990. The minimal tariffs associated with most-favored-nation status became standard for almost all U.S. trading partners. In 1965, the sum of all exports and imports amounted to 10 percent of the U.S. gross national product (GNP); by 1990, it had surpassed 25 percent and continued to climb. Advocates of free trade argued that global markets unhindered by national tariffs benefited consumers everywhere by giving them access to the best goods at the lowest prices. America’s NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico reflected this belief (see Chapter 29), as did the European Union with its newly unified currency, the Euro. In the United States, by the start of the new millennium most leaders of both major political parties, corporate executives, bankers, and most other elites supported free trade. But others objected to this internationalist economic ideology. Post-1945 British leaders, sensitive to their country’s decline relative to American power, called the U.S. promotion of free trade “freedom of American trade” to emphasize that greater international exchanges of goods disproportionately benefit the more powerful of the trading partners. Larger, more efficient manufacturers could undersell smaller, more labor-intensive local producers. By 2000, environmentalists and labor unions led the forces opposing unregulated globalization of the U.S. economy. Environmentalists warned of the pollution costs to the world’s environment of U.S. factories relocating to poorer and less regulated nations, such as Mexico and China. Labor organizers decried the flight of American jobs as manufacturers sought less expensive and more compliant—often desperate—workers abroad. Human rights activists spotlighted the grim working conditions in many overseas plants, including the prevalence of child labor. In 1999, in Seattle, and in 2001, in Genoa, Italy, thousands of antiglobalization protesters disrupted meetings of the World Trade Organization and the leaders of the largest industrialized nations. A “race to the bottom” for labor and environmental standards resulted from the development of a global assembly line. With capital able to move swiftly around the world and take CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1009 ${bmicon} its factories with it, nations and localities felt that they had little choice but to compete in offering multinational corporations the most advantageous terms possible. Such terms meant minimal government regulation, little protection for workers, nonexistent pollution standards, and even local subsidies in place of corporate taxes. Just as in the 1890s, industries had formed national trusts to evade state regulations on commerce, a century later, multinational corporations escaped the reach of national governments. This trend also represented an extension of the same logic that created the American Sunbelt over the previous half-century: businesses from the Northeast and Midwest relocating to states (that happened to be warmer) with lower wage rates, fewer unions, weaker environmental standards, and minimal taxes. Corporate income taxes, which had been dropping since the 1950s, shrank by another third between 1986 and 2000. The maquiladoras on the Mexican border were part of a broader pattern of the corporate search for efficiency and profit, as companies, like Mollie James’s Universal Manufacturing Company and RCA, took their production lines first to the American South and then abroad. As a result, corporations and their products became less identifiable by nationality. Boeing Aircraft had long been the largest employer in the Seattle area, but was its new Boeing 777, manufactured piece by piece in 12 different countries, an “American” airplane? Japanese companies also moved many manufacturing plants overseas, including to the United States, to be closer to important markets. Was a Toyota made by American workers in Georgetown, Kentucky, a “foreign” car? A worker sewing the “American” company label on a trendy piece of clothing might be in Malaysia or Taiwan. Or she might be a Mexican American working in a southern California garment factory—and have a sister across the border in Mexico sewing for the same company at still lower wages. In an age of globalization and international commerce, insistence on purity of product lineage—“Buy American” campaigns—seemed to make little more sense than discredited notions of “racial purity.” Was a Toyota made by American workers in Georgetown, Kentucky, a “foreign” car? The increasing globalization of the U.S. economy at the end of the twentieth century created enormous wealth while sharpening class inequalities. The stock market skyrocketed. The Dow Jones average of the value of 30 top companies’ stocks rose steadily from 500 in 1956, to 1000 in 1972, and to 3000 in 1991. Then it more than tripled in value in just eight years, surpassing 10,000 in 1999. Wealthy Americans who owned the bulk of corporate stock reaped the most gain, but middle- and even working-class Americans with retirement funds invested in the market also benefited handsomely. However, the process of globalization and the steady expansion of the U.S. economy after 1992 also encouraged a growing belief among Americans, especially affluent ones, that markets alone offered the best solution to social problems. For example, more Americans believed that welfare recipients should be forced to find work in the job market to regain independence and pride. Only the unfettered laws of supply and demand could sustain prosperity, many believed, and government regulation—already gravely weakened by capital’s ability to move across national borders—should be kept to a bare minimum. But markets and their strict dependence on the profit motive proved unable to preserve the quality of the environment, to pull the 36 million officially poor Americans above the poverty line ($17,000 for a family of four in 1999), or to preserve the security of the vast middle class that had stabilized American politics since World War II. Inequalities within the United States reflected growing global inequality as 20 percent of the world’s people (mostly in Europe and North America) consumed 86 percent of its goods and services. The $8 billion Americans spent annually on cosmetics, for example, could instead provide running water and sanitation for almost all of the 2 billion people worldwide who lack these basic amenities. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1010 ${bmicon} full view MAP 30.1 TOP TEN U.S. TRADING PARTNERS (RANKED, WITH TOTAL VALUE OF IMPORTS AND EXPORTS COMBINED FOR JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2001) Americans do the most business with Canada and Mexico, followed by east Asia and then western Europe. U.S. economic vitality has always depended to some extent on foreign trade, but that dependence grew steadily in the past generation. American consumers enjoyed many of the fruits of the more integrated world economy. At least in industries not dominated by monopolies, the corporate quest for lower production costs, along with fierce international competition and technological innovation, reduced prices of many goods and services. Computers, airline travel, and gasoline were all significantly less expensive in real dollars (adjusted for inflation) than they had been a generation earlier. Competition abounded in the robust retail sector of the U.S. economy, including catalog and Internet shopping. Wal-Mart represented the epitome of how the globalized economy could benefit consumers. By 2000, the discount store that Sam Walton had opened in Arkansas in 1962 surpassed General Motors as the largest American company, responsible for 6 percent of all U.S. retail sales. It sold 20,000 pairs of shoes an hour. Wal-Mart’s success resulted from relentlessly cutting costs through sharp management, using cheaper imported goods and employing a nonunion workforce, and passing its savings along to customers in the form of lower prices. In towns across the United States, Wal-Mart put smaller local competitors out of business, and its efficiency became the standard to which other retailers aspired. The benefits that the working-class majority of Americans experienced as consumers in the global economy were offset by their declining status as workers. As manufacturers moved to the Sunbelt and then overseas, high-wage, unionized jobs providing health insurance and pension benefits disappeared. Average real wages declined steadily after 1973, and union membership slid from one-third of the workforce in the early 1950s to one-tenth in 2000. Family incomes were maintained only by the addition of second and third wage earners, especially women. Americans spent more than they earned. The average household had 11 credit cards and carried $7000 in debt on them, in addition to owing car and home mortgage payments. In a nation of debtors, more than 1 million citizens filed for bankruptcy each year. A growing divide separated the experiences of well-educated Americans, who were able to seize CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1011 ${bmicon} opportunities in the new economy involving high technology and information management, and their fellow citizens with at most a high school education. Already wider in the United States than in any other industrialized nation, the distance between rich and poor continued to grow, whittling away at Americans’ self-image as a mid-dle-class society. The share of the national income going to the richest 1 percent nearly doubled in the last quarter of the twentieth century, while the share going to the bottom 80 percent shrank. Three million Americans lived in gated communities in extremely affluent suburbs, but one of five American children grew up in poverty and 21 million citizens sought emergency food assistance each year. One of the nation’s leading newspapers unknowingly captured this disparity with two articles a few pages apart, headlined “As Closets Bulge, Americans’ Taste in Gifts Often Turns Toward the Taste Buds” and “Food Drives Find Cupboard Is Nearly Bare.” The political system, which helps determine how wealth and opportunity are distributed in a society, seemed to offer little respite from the widening gap between haves and PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1012 ${bmicon} have-nots. The fraction of eligible citizens who make the effort to vote in presidential elections declined to just half in 2000 and in off-year congressional elections to a mere third, with the likelihood of voting closely correlated to a person’s affluence. The hardships of daily survival deterred some potential voters, especially among the poor. The fierce partisanship, personal attacks, and culture of scandal that came to dominate American politics in the past two decades alienated others. Some saw little difference between the two major parties during the Clinton presidency, as many Democrats moved closer to Republicans on such issues as welfare, crime, and the budget. Many citizens were also disillusioned by the blatant manner in which money came to dominate the political process. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton regularly invited large contributors to the Democratic party to spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Able to raise millions of dollars, George W. Bush declined federal funding for his 2000 presidential campaign to avoid the spending limits that accompanied such aid. With the average cost of a successful Senate campaign at $5 million and a House campaign approaching $1 million, few but the wealthy could campaign for Congress, and elected members spent inordinate amounts of time raising money from wealthy donors. Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois admitted that the system of fund-raising is corrupting: “It forces you into compromising yourself.” Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona called campaign financing “an elaborate influence-peddling scheme in which both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder.” For average Americans, exclusive fundraising dinners that sometimes reaped more than $30 million signaled a kind of political access they could not hope to match. The ability of business to outspend labor 15 to 1 in contributing to campaigns helped ensure minimal publicity to any discussions of the gulf between rich and poor. No issue was more global than the environment. Winds and waters did not respect political boundaries, nor did the materials borne on them. The condition of the natural environment affected all living creatures, yet the prevailing calculus of the market and private ownership did not apportion responsibility for its care. The free market system had no mechanism for offsetting, or even measuring, the costs of depleted natural resources. A generation ago, biologist Garrett Hardin had warned of the tragedy of the commons: that individuals’ incentives to preserve the quality of their own property did not carry over to resources held in common. The pursuit of narrow self-interest too often resulted in the spoiling of common grounds, such as parks and national forests. Litter was an obvious example, and air, water, and ground pollution were the more serious cases. American culture had long celebrated human domination of the natural world and the benefits it brought, especially the growth in productivity that permitted living standards to rise dramatically across decades and centuries. At the same time, the rise of environmentalism and ecological understanding since 1960 offered CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1013 ${bmicon} a different way of imagining people’s place on the earth. A tension existed between exploiting finite natural resources to create wealth and managing them for long-term sustainability. This dilema reached an acute stage by the turn of the new millennium. Ecosystems are always dynamic, and changes in weather and Native American land use had reshaped the North American environment long before the followers of Christopher Columbus arrived on the continent. But European settlement and industrialization altered the face of the land in ways that would dumbfound a time traveler from the 1500s. Even a visitor from 1900 would be astonished by the intensity of human development of the land: vast cities with their sprawling suburbs and roads and highways everywhere. The key factor was population growth. Just as the number of people in the world quadrupled from 1.5 billion to 6 billion during the twentieth century, the population of the United States almost quadrupled from 75 million to 281 million, with the largest increase for a single decade (33 million) coming in the 1990s. Immigration and natural reproduction accounted for much of this, but so did the much-longer average lifespan ushered in by antibiotics and antiviral vaccines, which sharply diminished the often fatal impact of infectious diseases and allowed noncommunicable maladies, such as cancer and heart disease, to become leading causes of death instead. The various drug-resistant bacteria that began to develop by the 1970s and the emergence of HIV infection and AIDS in the United States by 1980 brought an end to the brief post-1945 golden age of disease containment, locking researchers into a seemingly permanent arms race against virulent microbes. HIV’s apparent origins in central Africa suggested the problems of easy introduction of exotic species in an age of frequent international travel. The most dramatic changes in the land in the twentieth century resulted from the exploitation of wood, minerals, and water, particularly in the majority of the country lying west of the Mississippi River. Commercial logging destroyed all but 3 percent of the old-growth forests of the 50 states, both on private lands and on lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which as part of the Department of Agriculture traditionally emphasized the harvesting of wood products. The clearcuts scarring the mountainsides and hillsides of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska told the tale, as did the erosion caused by the overgrazing by cattle of public lands managed by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management in Utah, New Mexico, and other western states. The Mining Act of 1872 still granted to private corporations the rights to such valuable minerals as gold and copper on public land for the remarkable nineteenth-century price of $2.50 per acre. Mining companies took full advantage of the opportunity, and resulting rock and chemical wastes piled in vast slagheaps and dumped in toxic holding ponds from Arizona to Montana. In the arid but increasingly populated western states, water was the most critical resource for population growth. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation built huge dams from the 1930s to the 1980s, providing irrigation, flood control, and hydropower but also destroying wild rivers and causing silt to begin filling up the reservoirs. Increasing diversions of the Rio Grande left that now misnamed river so dry that, by 2001, it failed to reach the Gulf of Mexico, trickling to a halt 50 feet short. Ground-water pumping for agricultural irrigation in the plains Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1014 ${bmicon} states and on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains was draining the vast underground Ogallala Aquifer at a rate that will empty it within a few more decades. American prosperity came at a price. The prodigious growth of the U.S. economy in the twentieth century depended on the consumption of ever-increasing amounts of energy. Some came from renewable sources, such as hydropower and nuclear power and smaller amounts from solar and wind power, but the bulk of the nation’s energy was derived from coal, oil, and natural gas. Though making up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, Americans accounted for a quarter of the globe’s energy consumption. They depended on other countries to provide much of it for them: the United States imported 22 percent of its total energy needs and 69 percent of its oil, primarily from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Canada, and Mexico. Fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, could not be renewed; once burned, they were gone, and the world had a finite supply of such fuels. Americans’ unquenchable thirst for gasoline and electricity helped them build history’s largest and richest industrial economy, but they did so by constructing a lifestyle that was unsustainable in the long run. The energy crisis that began in California in early 2001 after the state ended its regulation of electricity production, and the rolling blackouts it caused, suggested that the long run might come sooner than expected. The world’s growing population was consuming five times as much fossil fuel in 2000 as in 1950, helping to stimulate a steady rise in the earth’s average temperatures. Americans caused 36 percent of such carbon-based emissions, the largest contribution to the foremost environmental problem, global warming. The release of large amounts of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil, and other fossil fuels helped trap extra heat within the earth’s atmosphere—the greenhouse effect—and melt ice in high-altitude and polar regions. In the summer of 2000, startled scientists found open water at the North Pole, a sight humans had never before seen. Greenhouse gases also contributed to a thinning of the ozone layer of the atmosphere, which Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1015 ${bmicon} full view MAP 30.2 WATER SOURCES IN THE AMERICAN WEST Rapid population growth has put great pressure on the limited water sources of the arid interior West. The water in the region’s major rivers is fully allocated and pumping is fast depleting underground reserves like the Ogallala Aquifer below the plains states. Access to water will help determine the course of future growth in the western half of the country. enabled more of the sun’s ultraviolet rays to reach the earth’s surface. As a result, skin cancer rates soared, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, where the ozone hole was largest. Industrial manufacturing still figured importantly in the human assault on the air and the atmosphere, but the internal combustion engine had long since surpassed coal burning as the leading cause of pollution. The United States produced and used more cars and trucks than any other nation. The automobile and its symbolism of convenience and personal freedom defined much of American culture, and citizens who could not drive or did not have access to a car were at a real disadvantage in a nation of freeways, shopping malls, and suburban housing. With minimal public transportation outside a handful of major cities, Americans were deeply committed to a car-dependent lifestyle. As a price, they quietly accepted an annual death toll of more than 40,000 people from accidents on the road, two-thirds the number each year of all U.S. deaths in the Vietnam War. The highway infrastructure strained under the pressure of a 60 percent rise in the number of licensed drivers from 1970 to 2000 but only a 6 percent growth in total miles of roads. Negotiating traffic jams became a standard part of the daily lives of the majority of Americans who lived in the suburbs created by urban sprawl, especially around such cities as Los Angeles and Atlanta. Citizens spent three times as many hours stalled in traffic in 1999 as they did in 1982. Smog increasingly obscured the once-sublime vistas of Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, a spectacular natural wonder drawing millions of visitors each year in the nation’s most populous state, embodied the problems of an automotive society. Thousands of cars jammed Yosemite Valley every day, making it an almost urban setting with air quality on the verge of violating federal standards. Yet park managers’ efforts to limit car access to the valley were repeatedly defeated by popular opposition. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1016 ${bmicon} Daily life in the United States came to depend in countless ways on the use of synthetic chemicals, production of which was 350 times greater in 1982 than in 1940. Only 3 percent of the 75,000 new chemicals had been tested for safety, but 40 of those examined proved to be human carcinogens. More than 50,000 known toxic waste dumps in the United States leached poisonous chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and water, such as the polychlorinated biphenyls that lined the bottom of the Hudson River north of Albany and the arsenic and cadmium that clogged the Milltown Dam on Montana’s scenic Clark Fork River 6 miles upstream from Missoula. Cancer rates among Americans grew sharply in the twentieth century, partly because people lived significantly longer lives (giving more time for cancers to appear) and partly because they were exposed to a much larger array of carcinogenic materials in the environment. No one knew yet how to dispose safely of millions of tons of materials impregnated with plutonium and other human-made radioactive elements. No synthetic product was more pervasive in the United States than plastic, a post-1945 product made from petroleum. Its prevalence and extraordinary durability helped it become a major factor in loading up the nation’s landfills. But the most deadly and durable pollutants remained the radioactive wastes created by five decades of nuclear development. No one knew yet how to dispose safely of millions of tons of materials impregnated with plutonium and other human-made radioactive elements, 30 percent of it casually poured into dirt or stored in flimsy containers prone to leakage. The chain of nuclear poison arched across the American West—from the bomb factory at Hanford in south central Washington through the weapon testing site in southwestern Nevada—then eastward to the uranium-processing plants in Paducah, Kentucky, and Barnwell, South Carolina. The U.S. nuclear weapon complex of some 3000 sites put its often fatal touch on the lives of millions of Americans: uranium miners, military workers, soldiers used to observe test explosions at close range, and citizens living downwind from the Nevada Test Site in Nevada and Utah. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 2000 that many of these sites would be permanent national sacrifice zones, toxic to humans for at least tens of thousands of years. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 relaxed some of the secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons on both sides. In 1993, the U.S. Department of Energy admitted that it had conducted radiation experiments for years on largely unsuspecting populations, both in the United States and on remote Pacific islands where some early nuclear bombs were tested. Russian sources revealed that Soviet leaders had been even more cavalier in their handling of nuclear wastes, simply dumping many of them in the Arctic Ocean. The environmental costs to Americans and others of the Cold War are yet to be fully calculated. The ideas of most Americans about how to manage natural resources changed in the twentieth century. Environmental consciousness blossomed since the 1960s, rediscovering a tradition that linked eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram with nineteenth-century transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau and twentieth-century conservationists of both major political parties. Awareness of humans’ connections with their broader ecological context led to significant reforms, such as the banning of carcinogenic pesticides and leaded gasoline, the cleaning up of polluted water in the Great Lakes, and the introduction of catalytic converters to reduce harmful emissions from automobile exhaust pipes and factory smokestacks. Recycling became common, and some dams were destroyed, freeing long-constricted rivers, such as the Penobscot in Maine. Yet issues of public land management and pollution control remained among the most controversial problems in American public life. Since 1980, the Republican party has supported the exploitation of natural resources to produce wealth and raise standards of living, departing at least in tone from the party’s earlier conservationist bent. CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1017 ${bmicon} Meanwhile, the Democratic party became associated with environmental protection. This contrast was dramatically displayed in January 2001 when President Clinton rushed to provide new protections to a swath of federal lands in the West before his term ended, while president-elect George W. Bush was appointing as secretary of the interior Colorado attorney Gale Norton, who strongly opposed such protections. Both Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, had personal ties to the energy idustry, and their administration promoted new oil and gas drilling in wilderness locations that included Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Beyond partisan differences and the broad tendency of even the most well-known corporate polluters to pose as friendly to the environment, the relationship of Americans to their natural environment continued to be paradoxical. By large majorities in public opinion polls, they supported strong antipollution laws and the preservation of public lands from economic development. They flocked to such films as Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action, in which average citizens and lawyers won court cases against large corporate polluters. And they no longer agreed with the slogan common in Houston in the 1960s about the odoriferous smog created by the booming city’s petrochemical industries and cars: “Smell that—that’s prosperity.” But in their daily lives, Americans consumed natural resources, especially gasoline, electricity, and water, at a rate unmatched by other societies. Measures that had reduced some of the nation’s energy consumption since the 1970s were reversed by 2000: Congress revoked the national 55-mph speed limit in 1995, and ever-larger cars, trucks, and especially sport utility vehicles steadily reduced the average gas mileage of passenger vehicles. While scientists and some utilities urged a reduction in the nation’s expanding use of fossil fuels, Vice President Cheney dismissed conservation as merely “a sign of personal virtue” rather than a basis for a sound energy policy. Many residents across the arid Southwest, most of them newcomers, remained determined to recreate the green lawns they had left behind in the East and Midwest. When an investigator for the Las Vegas city water district confronted one resident about his wasteful sprinkler, the man responded, “Man, with all these new rules, you people are trying to turn this place into a desert.” Just as the U.S. economy and American environmental problems could not be separated from the outside world, the nation’s cultural life grew more closely tied to that of other nations at the dawn of the new millennium. During the Cold War, from the 1940s through the 1980s, American foreign relations hinged on problems of national security and the projection of military might abroad. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the retreat of communism ended the bipolar division of the world and left the United States the sole remaining superpower. But by 2000, American popular culture rather than armed strength had emerged as the leading edge of U.S. influence around the world. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1018 ${bmicon} Over the first half of the twentieth century, the United States slowly replaced Great Britain as the dominant force in international affairs. The economic and military aspects of this shift of influence were clear by the end of World War II, and its cultural elements soon followed. American power extended the preeminence of English as the global language of commerce and diplomacy, and ambitious and privileged youth from beyond Europe aimed no longer for an education at England’s Oxford and Cambridge but rather at prestigious U.S. universities. American culture had become less regionally distinctive and more nationally homogeneous in the twentieth century because of improvements in transportation and communication. By the end of the century, this same process of homogenization of popular consumer culture was at work on a worldwide scale. American themes and products stood out in an increasingly global popular culture, although they were resisted by some abroad who preferred more local identities and traditions, often rooted in ethnicity or religious conviction. Known for its informality and diversity, American culture proved powerfully attractive to peoples all over the world, partly because racial and ethnic diversity was more pronounced in the United States than in any other major power. African Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans all figured prominently in the popular realms of sports, music, and films. Television was the leading medium for this culture of entertainment, beaming CNN, MTV, and “reality” shows, such as Survivor, around the world. From jazz to rock ‘n’ roll to rap, American popular music spread across the globe, as did such clothing of American youth as jeans and sneakers, symbols of informality and comfort. Hollywood’s movies dominated cinemas and VCRs everywhere, providing 85 percent of films screened in Europe and projecting the alluring entertainment values of sexuality, violence, and wealth. Overseas markets grew so large that producers edited different versions of popular films for specific cultures, just as American magazines tailored separate editions to expand sales in diverse countries. The idea of individual choice pervaded American culture, backed by constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression. Freedom to choose included matters of religion, politics, and other weighty areas, which had long made the United States a beacon of liberty to people oppressed for their beliefs. But freedom of choice came increasingly by the end of the twentieth century to refer to options for consumption in the marketplace. The United States was the largest market in the world, and its affluent citizens had unparalleled choices of what to buy. In 1960, Americans already had 3000 shopping centers and 4 square feet of retail space per person. By 2000, those numbers had soared to 40,000 and 19, respectively, for their children and grandchildren. The premium placed on acquiring material goods seemed to many foreign observers the primary American value, visible anew in the rapid rise of legalized gambling in the last generation and the nation’s declining savings rate. Indeed, saving had been largely redefined to mean buying at a discount rather than putting money away for the future. From jazz to rock ‘n’ roll to rap, American popular music spread across the globe, as did such clothing of American youth as jeans and sneakers. Advertising grew in prominence as the central link between popular culture and the selling of products, and sports became steadily more commercialized. Postseason college football games began in 1985 to include the names of their corporate sponsors, creating such events as the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl and the Weed Eater Independence Bowl. By 2000, newspapers ranked bowl games—once hallowed for their own traditions—by the simple criterion of how much money sponsors paid to participating teams. In the 1990s “hoops” joined baseball as a popular U.S. export. Led by such talented and flashy stars as Michael Jordan, an American “Dream Team” won the Olympic basketball competition in Spain amid worldwide fanfare. CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1019 ${bmicon} Swiftly, the National Basketball Association (NBA) made the leap from an American league to a global phenomenon, its games telecast to more than 190 countries in 41 languages. Sports also brought foreigners to the United States as professional baseball and basketball teams began recruiting Latin American, European, African, and Asian athletes. Cultural influences flowed both ways for Americans, with immigrants in particular bringing with them traditions and perspectives that refreshed the cultural mix of life in the United States. Japanese Pokémon trading cards, Thai cuisine, and Cuban salsa music pervaded daily routines for many Americans. The rapidly growing popularity of American-style pizza outside the United States suggested the complexity of cultural exchange, as fast-food chains Domino’s and Pizza Hut sold from Hong Kong to the Congo a food originally brought to New York by Italian immigrants. But increased trade and communication since the end of the Cold War above all enabled the further spread of American popular culture. American-accented English straddled the globe, the language of international commerce and of 80 percent of listings on the World Wide Web. The informality and individualism of the Internet made it feel quintessentially American in style. The U.S. dollar remained the world’s primary trading currency and became the de facto and even the de jure currency of many other nations. Mickey Mouse’s empire expanded to EuroDisney outside Paris and Tokyo Disneyland; Kodak even sold film in Antarctica. American studies became a major field of scholarship at universities around the world. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1020 ${bmicon} America’s most popular eatery served 20 million customers a day at its 23,000 franchises across the globe. McDonald’s Golden Arches appeared everywhere, from Japan and France to Russia and China. Even Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam and the destination of millions of Muslim pilgrims, had a McDonald’s. The company generated half of its revenues from non-U.S. operations. Nor did only U.S. material interests spread abroad swiftly in recent years. American religious missionaries worked in poor countries around the world, combining their spiritual mission with a commitment to improving daily life in concrete ways involving health care, education, and agriculture. Pentecostalists gained millions of converts in Latin America since the 1970s, and mainstream denominations, such as the Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics, saw their numbers rise sharply in Africa. The most fully home-grown American religion was especially active in proselytizing abroad. As a result, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), headquartered in Salt Lake City, had 5 million members in the United States and another 5 million worldwide. Such international growth and Utah’s hosting of the 2002 Winter Olympics symbolized how fully integrated into the outside world even America’s most remote parts and once-reclusive peoples had become. (Salt Lake City’s rapid growth made its population half non-Mormon by 2000.) The United States retained its military superiority, with a defense budget larger than that of the next ten biggest military powers combined. The country’s size, technological sophistication, and bipartisan commitment to a vast armed force ensured that its power on the battlefield was unlikely to diminish any time soon. But the difficulties of unconventional warfare, from Vietnam in the 1960s to Somalia in 1993, combined with the apparent disappearance of a major threat to the nation’s security after the demise of the Soviet Union, made U.S. policymakers and citizens reluctant to put American troops in harm’s way abroad, at least until after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Instead, the expansion of American culture abroad seemed a safer and more effective way to influence other nations. A generation earlier, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had threatened to “bury the West,” but in 1999 his son Sergei became an American citizen. His decision epitomized the continued allure of life in the United States. In the 1920s, Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, railed against “the wave of atheism and lewdness” engulfing Egypt, a wave that “started the devastation of religion and morality on the pretext of individual and intellectual freedom.” Freer western and especially American standards of behavior offended the sensibilities of traditionalists across the Muslim world throughout the twentieth century, especially in matters of gender roles. Referring to tourists and their swimsuits, al-Banna blamed Westerners for importing “their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors” and other vices. The Iranian revolution of 1979 gave such complaints a new force by producing a theocratic government in one of the largest Muslim nations. CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1021 ${bmicon} Like Christian, Jewish, and Hindu fundamentalists, all of whom grew prominent in the final decades of the twentieth century, Muslim fundamentalists rejected the radical egalitarianism and the unbridled pursuit of pleasure—especially the sexual titillation—so prevalent in American popular culture. The relative equality of women and the lack of respect for traditional social and religious hierarchies seemed to them emblems of American decadence, as the Islamic rulers of Afghanistan (known as the Taliban) demonstrated in the 1990s in their brutal repression of women’s rights. Osama bin Laden and his followers resented U.S. policies of supporting Israel and certain oil-producing Arab nations, but they also fiercely condemned the secular, egalitarian character of American society, which they considered anti-Islamic. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saudi Arabian officials tried to isolate U.S. troops from Saudi citizens, fearing the effects of contact with such diverse forces as female soldiers, bawdiness, Christianity, and American music and television. An Indian official reflected his government’s anxiety about the new availability of MTV in India: “Our own social ethos, our cultural values—we would not like them to be subverted.” The demise of Communist regimes in Russia and eastern Europe opened the gates to a flood of western influences and brought the opportunities and inequalities of a suddenly privatized economy. State-provided safety nets disappeared, class differences widened, women’s economic status declined, and the old Communist parties regained some popularity among voters scared by the instabilities of American-style capitalism. Western Europeans also remained ambivalent about the spread of American values and lifestyles. Although many of them, especially among the young, found American culture attractive and learned English in record numbers, traditionalists who were proud of their own national culture took a dim view of such innovations as fast food. A “slow food” movement emerged in France, celebrating traditional home and café meals, and protesters against McDonald’s became national celebrities. Other nations sometimes found the U.S. government overbearing and resented its unparalleled military power. Bin Laden and many other Middle Easterners blamed American arms for bolstering the governments of Israel and the Arab states whose moderate stance toward the West they abhorred. Rapidly modernizing China, the world’s most populous country, seemed a growing rival to the United States in Asia, even as the two nations became major trading partners. In April 2001, a U.S. surveillance plane collided over the South China Sea with a Chinese fighter jet that had been following it. The Chinese pilot died, but the American plane managed to crash-land safely at a Chinese military airport on Hainan Island. China detained the crew of 24 men and women for ten days. Public and congressional anger in the United States paralleled the outrage in China, but the two governments, mindful of their growing economic interdependence, resolved the crisis after a brief standoff. Americans who had assumed that China’s greater political openness of recent years, including widening access to the Internet, would reveal a people eager to be like Americans were surprised by the intensity of anti-American nationalism within Chinese society. Two opposing trends characterized world affairs. One consisted of the unifying forces of economic internationalism and globalization, carrying with them a tide of American-dominated Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1022 ${bmicon} INTERPRETING HISTORY The Slow Food Movement For many people in countries other than the United States, as for many Americans, McDonald’s and other U.S.-based fast food restaurants offered an attractive dining experience. Customers everywhere appreciated the efficient and friendly service, clean surroundings, and the consistent quality of the food. Their enthusiasm explained the extraordinary international growth and profitability of such chains as Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken at the end of the twentieth century. For other people, the rapid spread of fast-food franchises around the globe threatened cherished values and lifestyles. The Slow Food Movement emerged in western Europe in the late 1980s as a loose-knit organization, headquartered in the northern Italian town of Bra. The movement sought to preserve and celebrate traditional cuisines and methods of food production in Europe and around the world. Slow Food’s 60,000 members objected not only to the specific taste of fast food, but also to broader cultural changes symbolized by McDonald’s and its competitors: the speeding up of daily life, including the loss of sociability around more leisurely meals; the gradual replacement of family farming and food production by corporate agriculture; and the erosion of distinctive local cooking and dining traditions. The Slow Food Manifesto (November 9, 1989) Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model. We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods. To be worthy of the name, Homo sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction. A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life. May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency. Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food. Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food. In the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer. That is what real culture is all about: developing taste rather than demeaning it. And what better way to set about this than an international exchange of experiences, knowledge, projects? Slow Food guarantees a better future. Slow Food is an idea that needs plenty of qualified supporters who can help turn this (slow) motion into an international movement, with the little snail as its symbol. Slow Food operates to protect the right to pleasure, the respect of the rhythms of life and a harmonious relationship with nature. It also seeks to explore, describe and improve the culture of food, to develop a proper education of taste and smell from childhood and to safeguard and defend the agroindustrial heritage while respecting the cuisines of each single country. The Slow food Manifesto was ratified in Paris at the Founding Congress of the International Slow Food Movement on December 9, 1989. Source: http://www.slowfood.com. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1023 ${bmicon} full view MAP 30.3 ASIA AS A FOCUS OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY Early in 2001, President Bush faced his first diplomatic crisis when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. spy plane near Hainan Island. Tensions rose between the United States and China, suggesting that their renewed rivalry might dominate international politics in the new millenium. But the September 11 terrorist attacks from the Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda network shifted diplomatic attention to a different part of Asia. The United States and China, along with Russia, worked to oppose radical Islamic revolutionaries and to prevent a nuclear war between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir. cultural styles. The other was made up of the resisting forces of political and ethnic nationalism. A world more tightly integrated in economic ways was at the same time divided by ethnic conflicts, revealed in wars in the Balkans in southeastern Europe, the Caucasus region on Russia’s southern border, and central Africa. As people around the world felt themselves increasingly sucked into the vortex of a powerful global economy that they could not control, many of them responded by renewing their allegiances to older, more local traditions. Ethnic, religious, and national identities often offered more meaningful alternatives to a purely economic identity as consumers. “I don’t find foreign countries foreign,” Gillette Corporation chair Alfred M. Zeien said, and many people in other nations felt the same way about the United States. But for others, as the terrorist attacks of 2001 made all too clear, American life seemed fundamentally alien and increasingly threatening. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1024 ${bmicon} The 2000 U.S. census revealed a society in the midst of change. Americans have long been known as a particularly restless and mobile people, and one out of five changed residences every year. The post-1965 wave of immigrants continued to rise (and foreign adoptions rose dramatically), bringing in millions of new Americans of Asian heritage. Latino Americans came to equal African Americans as the nation’s two largest minorities with 35 million people each. This latest surge in immigration boosted the number of Roman Catholics and Buddhists as American society remained the most openly religious—still primarily Protestant—of the industrialized nations. Geographically, Americans lived farther south and west than earlier generations. Of the ten largest cities 100 years ago, only New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia remained on the list, while cities such as Atlanta, Houston, and San Diego replaced Boston, Cleveland, and St. Louis. None of the 20 fastest-growing states were in the Northeast or Midwest. The West Coast housed the country’s two largest philanthropic foundations: the Gates Foundation of Seattle and the Packard Foundation of Los Altos, California. Rooted in the new money of the computer and high-technology sectors, these institutions surpassed the older foundations in the Northeast built on the wealth of heavy industries, such as Rockefeller (oil), Carnegie (steel), and Ford (automobiles). Americans were older than they used to be: life expectancy rose to 77 from 45 years in 1900. More than half lived in suburbs. Average household size dropped by 50 percent over the twentieth century, as only one in four consisted of a married couple with children. Whereas in 1900, just 6 percent of married women worked outside the home, 61 percent did so by 2000, including 64 percent of those with children under age 6. The “family wage” that so many men earned in the mid-twentieth century was disappearing, helping bring in its wake changes in gender roles as women became crucial breadwinners, as well as homemakers and child-raisers. Americans derived their sense of identity from myriad sources, including nationality, work, socioeconomic status, religion, race, ethnicity, family, gender, region, and sexual orientation. Since the struggles for equality that emerged dramatically in the 1960s, individual identities and group identities have often been in tension. The black civil rights movement, along with the struggles of women, Latinos, Native Americans, and homosexuals, sought an end to unequal treatment and full inclusion in American life for all individual citizens, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, or disability. However, the achievement of legal equality and the outlawing of CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1025 ${bmicon} full view FIGURE 30.1 SELF-DESCRIBED RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 2000 The most noticeable change of the last 30 years in American religious life has been the growth of evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant congregations (shown here as Pentacostals and “Other Protestants”) and the shrinking of mainline Protestant denominations. explicit discrimination did not immediately change deeply embedded patterns of exclusionary behavior. The policy of affirmative action had developed as a preference in hiring or admission for members of an underrepresented group who were roughly comparable to others in qualifications. It aimed to balance some of the effects of existing but little-noticed habits of “affirmative action” for white Americans and men, as when colleges used lower admission standards for children of alumni or powerful white men tended to hire other white men. Opponents of affirmative action called it “reverse discrimination” and argued that race and sex should no longer be criteria for success in a colorblind society that promoted individual achievement. By 2000, these opponents had succeeded in eliminating affirmative action from the admission process of the large state university systems of Texas and California. Supporters of the policy, including President Bill Clinton, observed that employers and others were certainly not colorblind yet, so that a group remedy, such as affirmative action, remained essential for the advancement of more than a token few from groups that had faced discrimination in the past. Ideas about racial identity remained at the heart of controversy over affirmative action. Those who used the term race to group people according to skin color and other visible features, such as eye shape, commonly assumed that race had an important biological meaning as a way of distinguishing one human population from another. However, biologists noted that the genetic differences between races are miniscule compared with differences between individuals of the same race; they suggested that categorizing people by skin color made as much sense as organizing library books by the size and color of their covers rather than their internal contents. The mapping of the entire human genome by 2001 further clarified the biological insignificance of race. Indeed, the racial category “white” had changed over time to encompass such formerly excluded groups as Irish Americans and Jewish Americans. Despite its lack of scientific basis, the use of race as a primary marker of identity long served to preserve a higher status for Americans of European heritage. One could be mostly white yet still be “black,” thanks to the one-drop tradition regarding African heritage (that any observable percentage of African “blood” defined a person as black). Thus, a white woman could have a black child in the United States, for example, but a black woman could not have a white child. The U.S. government’s decision in the 2000 census to allow citizens to identify themselves as belonging to more than one racial group reflected the complications and occasional absurdities of racial categorization. PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1026 ${bmicon} One of the most striking changes in American society over the past five decades has been the desegregation of public life. Latinos and Asians became much more numerous in the United States, and African Americans emerged from the enforced separation of Jim Crow into greater prominence. Roughly one-third of blacks were middle-class and thousands won election to local, state, and national political offices, and black Americans became central in the nation’s cultural life in music, literature, theater, and sports. By 2001, even a new president from the Republican party—known since 1964 for its lack of support from black voters—appointed two African Americans to run the nation’s foreign relations: Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Workplaces were racially integrated to an extent that would have been hard to imagine in 1950, and interacial marriages rose steeply in the final decades of the twentieth century. In the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush received sharp criticism for giving a speech at Christian fundamentalist Bob Jones University in South Carolina, which retained a campus ban on interracial dating. One of the most revealing aspects of the controversy was the response of conservative and even reactionary religious and political leaders: none supported the ban. “The fact is you have an indefensible policy,” declared U.S. Representative and Bob Jones alumnus Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas. The sexual fears that had so long underpinned white racial violence in the past had dramatically receded in the nation’s public life. The lives of women in the United States also changed dramatically during the last half of the twentieth century. Most worked outside the home, from jobs in the service and manufacturing sectors to careers in the professions and politics. In 2000, women made up a third of the students in the nation’s medical schools and a half in law schools. Their presence in leading political positions ranged from local officials to more than a dozen U.S. senators, two U.S. Supreme Court justices, a U.S. attorney general, and a U.S. secretary of state. The passage of Title IX in 1972, prohibiting gender discrimination in school programs that received federal money, created a tidal wave of social change for American girls. In 1971, 1 in 27 girls played high school sports; by 1998, the ratio was 1 in 3. Sports programs and teams for girls comparable to those for boys nourished a new generation of American women for whom athletic competition and achievement were the norm rather than the exception. The U.S. national women’s soccer team won the World Cup in 1999 and became a popular sensation, with players like Mia Hamm emerging as household names. Anti-homosexual attitudes persisted as one of the nation’s fiercest prejudices but nonetheless declined in mainstream American society during the 1980s and 1990s. Gay men and lesbians became more open and prominent in such public venues as television and politics, helping millions of other Americans to shed some of the homophobia they had unknowingly learned during childhood. These improvements for the majority of Americans who were not heterosexual white men jostled against abiding forms of discrimination and inequality. Violence and the threat of violence against homosexuals, people of color, and particularly women (primarily domestic violence at the hands of husbands and lovers) remained very real, but most prejudices found more subtle avenues of expression. Working women continued to average less than three-quarters the wages of working men. Many employers, police officers, store owners, bank loan CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1027 ${bmicon} officers, and others in positions of authority treated African Americans and Latino Americans with greater suspicion than they did other citizens, a practice that became known as racial profiling. Poverty and unemployment disproportionately affected black communities and families. Given the powerful legacy of the past, white individuals on average possessed ten times more real wealth (much of it inherited) than their African American counterparts. Residential neighborhoods and public schools remained largely segregated by race, and the deeply symbolic Confederate flag still occupied a place of public honor in several southern states. Popular black comedian Chris Rock reminded mostly white audiences of the enduring but unstated advantage of being white in the United States: “Ain’t no white man here willing to trade places with me—and I’m rich!” Native Americans shared this combination of improving status and continuing discrimination. Their numbers were reviving, from a mere 250,000 in 1900 to 2 million in 2000, and a new National Museum of the American Indian arose on the mall in the nation’s capital. A series of federal court decisions in the 1970s and 1980s strengthened Indians’ “unique and limited” sovereignty over the tribal reservations, which constituted 2 percent of U.S. land. Starting with the Iroquois of upstate New York in 1970, several eastern Indian nations sued state and federal governments for the return of parts of lands that had been illegally seized from them in the past. From Florida to Maine, these nations won a combination of small portions of public land and millions of dollars in compensation in cases from the 1970s through the 1990s. Casino revenues in the 1990s brought much-needed resources to a number of Indian nations. At the same time, the process of assimilation continued as a majority of Indians lived in urban areas and were married to non-Indians. Reservations suffered from severe unemployment rates and remained some of the poorest communities in the country, dependent on federal assistance for food and other basic necessities. Anti-Indian sentiments occasionally surfaced in states as diverse as Montana, Wisconsin, Arizona, and New York. Chris Rock reminded mostly white audiences of the enduring but unstated advantage of being white in the United States. Economic opportunity and individual liberty continued to lure millions of people from other nations to the United States at the start of the new millennium. From its peak in the first decade of the twentieth century, the annual number of immigrants declined steadily after the restrictive immigration laws of the early 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and World War II in the 1940s. After the war, the number began to rise slowly again until the 1965 reforms encouraged a new period of immigration as large, by the 1990s, as that of a century earlier. Some 800,000 now came legally each year, and another 300,000 entered without official papers. For the first time since the 1930s, 1 in 10 Americans had been born abroad; in New York City the ratio was 1 in 4. Fifteen percent came from Europe, 26 percent arrived from Asia, and 51 percent moved north from Latin America and the Caribbean. Like Italy in 1900, Mexico in 2000 became the most important single source of new Americans, highlighting the importance of the nation’s 2000-mile southern border as a conduit. The cultural exchange from Europe to the American East and Midwest 100 years earlier was replaced by a new exchange from Asia and Latin America centered in the Sunbelt states from Florida to California. The demographic transition of California in 2000 from a white majority to a more diverse ethnic and racial mix like that of Hawaii symbolized the nation’s turn to the South and West, even as the motives and work habits of the newcomers remained very much the same as those of their European predecessors. Only the hardiest and most motivated people made the difficult, emotionally wrenching, and often dangerous move to the United States. Many fled political persecution in countries like Guatemala, Haiti, Vietnam, and Cuba. In contrast to the left-leaning and often socialist Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1028 ${bmicon} full view MAP 30.4 STATE POPULATION GROWTH, 1990–2000 The population of the United States continued to shift slowly out of the long-urbanized Northeast to the Sunbelt of the South and West. Los Angeles replaced Chicago as the nation’s second largest city, after New York. Retirees and workers alike seemed to prefer sunnier, warmer climates. attitudes of immigrants in 1900, political refugees in 2000 were sometimes fierce anticommunists who helped pressure the U.S. government to take an even harder line toward regimes in Havana and Hanoi. Most newcomers sought greater economic security, like the 80 percent of young men of the village of Ting Jiang in China’s Fujian province who made the perilous voyage by sea to find work in American restaurants or construction. “Sure, work is hard” in the United States, one of their wives at home in China explained, “but with tips you can make more than $2000 a month,” compared with $40 a month at home in Ting Jiang. “So now no one in the village works before they go to America. There’s no point.” Most immigrants came to stay, but some worked to save money and return home to their families, carrying with them not only money, but also bits of American culture. Other people flowed outward too, as American students and tourists traveled all over the globe. Some Americans worked abroad, usually for U.S.-based multinationals such as oil companies, to earn better wages and then return home. Others served in the military, worked for aid agencies and church groups, or joined in the resurgence of the Peace Corps. full view America’s Move to the Sunbelt, 1970-1981 During WWII, the military located defense plants and military bases in the Sunbelt, a line roughly south of the 37th parallel. The Cold War continued to feed the booming industry in this area, where labor was relatively cheap and plentiful. By 1980, over half of all Americans lived in the Sunbelt. The movement leveled off in the 1990s as real estate prices soared and defense spending dropped, but Americans still continue to migrate into southern cities, especially in Florida. Despite increasing contacts overseas, Americans responded to the wave of newcomers with an ambivalence common in previous periods of high immigration. For a society made up of CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1029 ${bmicon} people from elsewhere and their descendants, there was no obvious answer to the question of when to close the door to new arrivals. Many in the working class feared competition from highly motivated laborers accustomed to much lower wages. Many elites worried whether cultural diversity might weaken national unity. Conservative political leaders promoted new restrictions and stronger border patrols. One Arizona resident wrote to The Arizona Republic to defend controversial police harassment of Latinos in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler in 1997: “If your skin is brown, this is a probable cause [for arrest as an illegal alien] and a police officer may assume you are breaking the law until proved differently.” Some U.S. Congressmen ridiculed the idea of there being value in traveling abroad by boasting that they did not even have passports. In 1998, Republican House majority leader Dick Armey of Texas announced, “I’ve been to Europe once; I don’t have to go again.” Such disdain for other cultures among some American political leaders dismayed U.S. allies overseas. Most Americans got used to having more immigrants around. Americans cheered for the one in four major league baseball players who were born in Latin America or had parents from there, and they became accustomed to the high number of Asian Americans in college classrooms. Many churches worked to help new arrivals adjust to life in the United States. Above all, American employers depended on immigrant workers to keep the nation’s powerful economy afloat—to pick its fruits and vegetables, tend its young children, and work in its factories. Nearly all-white Iowa even began an immigrant recruitment drive to sustain a vibrant state economy that lacked sufficient workers. If the estimated 6 million mostly Latino undocumented workers in the United States were expelled, thousands of hotels, restaurants, meatpacking plants, landscaping companies, and garment manufacturers would be forced to close. What held Americans together as they set off into the twenty-first century was a common loyalty to a set of ideas about economic opportunities and individual liberties. Unlike such nations as Germany and Israel, where citizenship was extended automatically to people of a certain ethnicity, the United States awarded citizenship to those who were born within its borders, regardless of ethnicity or race. Those born elsewhere became citizens on the basis not of their past lineage but of their future commitments—of their newly sworn loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, with its guarantees of freedom and its responsibilities of citizenship. In a vast society of multiple political and cultural beliefs, the scope of specific freedoms and the nature of individual responsibilities inevitably remained matters of ongoing tension and conflict. Nonetheless, the United States continued to address most of its problems through an orderly legal system, in contrast to the ethnic and religious strife marking so many of the world’s nations. That strife from abroad impinged on Americans in a shocking new way on September 11, 2001. On a sunny Tuesday morning, 19 hijackers—four of them trained as pilots—seized control simultaneously of four large commercial jets and turned them into suicidal missiles. At 8:48 A.M., one flew into the 110-story north tower of New York City’s World Trade Center, igniting an enormous fireball. Fifteen minutes later, the second plane flew into the south tower. In less than two hours, both towers collapsed, trapping hundreds of firefighters, police officers, and other rescue workers who had raced into the building to evacuate the thousands of occupants. The third plane flew into the Pentagon. The fourth was also being directed towards Washington, apparently to destroy the White House or the Capital Building, when the passengers rushed the hijackers in the cockpit. In the ensuing struggle, the plane crashed in a field 75 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The carefully coordinated assaults killed some 3000 people, destroyed the two tallest buildings in the country’s largest city, and left a gaping hole in the headquarters of the nation’s PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1030 ${bmicon} military command. Not since the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier had the United States experienced such a devastating attack on its soil. During the intervening half-century of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and other Communist forces had never attempted direct aggression against the American homeland. Who was responsible for the most horrific act of terrorism against civilians in U.S. history? The 19 perpetrators were self-styled holy warriors of a secretive, extremist Islamic organization known as Al Qaeda, organized by wealthy, charismatic Saudi Arabian expatriate Osama bin Laden. The rage of bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists against the United States had been building throughout the 1990s, fueled by the presence of “infidel” American troops in Saudi Arabia since the Gulf War, by American support for Israel, and by the rapid spread of secular American popular culture around the globe. At odds with moderate Islamic mainstream thought throughout the world, bin Laden announced in 1998, “To kill Americans and their allies, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able.” Al Qaeda worked out of Afghanistan. It was hosted by the most repressive Islamic government on Earth, the Taliban, which came to power in 1996 out of the chaos that followed the withdrawal of the Soviet army in 1989. U.S. aid had helped in the anti-Soviet struggle, but the American government had ignored Afghanistan after the Soviets left. Four weeks after the attacks on New York City and Washington in 2001, U.S. planes began bombing Taliban and Al Qaeda positions in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, U.S. special operations forces worked on the ground with anti-Taliban Afghan forces. By December, the Taliban had been driven from power throughout the country, and U.S. forces had captured hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. President Bush warned of a long struggle still ahead against remaining forces of anti-American terrorism, regardless of bin Laden’s fate. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 tested—and often strengthened—ties across religious and ethnic lines as Americans shared a renewed sense of national unity and pride. Anti-government sentiments dropped sharply and flag sales soared. Traditional social divisions ebbed at least temporarily as citizens contemplated the assault on their nation. New Yorker Louis Johnson, the son of immigrants from Trinidad, said that previously, “I just thought of myself as black. But now I feel like I’m an American, more than ever.” The Bush administration’s subsequent restrictions on the civil liberties of young Arab men, part of an effort to prevent further attacks while the United States was at war in Afghanistan, riled defenders of American constitutional freedoms on both the left and the right, as well as such influential mainstream leaders as Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy from Vermont. But the president and his attorney general, John Ashcroft, maintained broad public support for their actions a year after 9-11. Following September 11, national unity was threatened by sporadic hostility and vengeful assaults against Muslims and others of Middle Eastern appearance. A handful of deaths and hundreds of incidents of harassment and vandalism revealed the difficulty some citizens had in distinguishing between a few Islamic terrorists and several million Muslim Americans. But Muslims also encountered a powerful trend of support for them and curiosity about their faith. President Bush set the tone in highly publicized meetings with Muslim leaders in which he emphasized that “this is not a war against Islam” but only against terrorists, a point underlined by the close U.S. cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and with Muslim anti-Taliban fighters in the war in Afghanistan. Within a few hours of the September 11 attacks, the leadership of the Ford Motor Company reached out to Detroit’s large Arab American community (including several hundred of its own workers) and began a series of interfaith meetings to promote dialogue and tolerance. And the Coca-Cola Company hired Muhammad Ali, one of most famous figures on the planet, to do publicity work. “I am a Muslim,” declared the former Olympic and world boxing champion from Louisville, Kentucky. “I am an American.” Average Americans also sought to improve communication and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. Fearful of possible vandalism, the handful of Muslims in Laramie, CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1031 ${bmicon} Wyoming, stayed home after September 11. “And then our neighbors called up,” homemaker Zubaida Husain said, and promised to help protect homes and property. “That made me feel very good.” The unfortunately named “Osama’s Place,” a restaurant owned by a Jordanian American right near the entrance to Fort Bragg in Spring Lake, North Carolina, did not change its name and experienced little loss of business. Indeed, several thousand Muslims served in the U.S. armed forces, where the number of Islamic chaplains was increasing rapidly. In Cary, North Carolina, conservative Christian Yvonne Young-Capece and Muslim immigrant Mona el-Ramly were neighbors who had become so close that Young-Capece traveled to Egypt for the wedding of Ramly’s son. After the terrorist attacks, Young-Capece hosted a get-together for 16 of her friends along with Ramly and a few other Muslim friends to combat prejudice. At the heart of American society remained a common assumption that this was a democratic country. The events on United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four doomed planes on September 11, 2001, revealed the tenacity of the belief in majority rule. After the hijackers seized control and herded the passengers into the rear of the cabin, a few passengers were able to communicate by cell phone with loved ones on the ground. They learned that two other planes had already crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, and they realized that PART 10 ###8226; A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, A GLOBAL ECONOMY, 1979###8211;2001 1032 ${bmicon} these hijackers—unlike previous ones who sought concrete gains and an escape—planned only destruction for them all. Face-to-face with imminent death and the certainty that many others would perish if they failed to act, the passengers discussed what to do. They made a plan to rush the hijackers, led by several large, athletic passengers, including Mark Bingham, a prominent gay businessperson and rugby player from San Francisco. Should they proceed? Quintessential Americans, they took a vote. GTE Airfone operator Lisa Jefferson heard the rest: “Are you guys ready?” asked Todd Beamer, a tall father of two from Cranbury, New Jersey. Pause. “Let’s roll.” Screams and a scuffle followed before the line went dead. The plane, headed for the heart of Washington, crashed minutes later in an unpopulated part of western Pennsylvania with no casualties on the ground. Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives latino.si.edu/ This site offers an array of links to information on Latino culture and history. How Race Is Lived in America www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/most-recent.html This is a collection of revealing articles from the New York Times in 2000 on race relations and racial identities in contemporary America. Islam in the United States usinfo.state.gov/usa/islam/ Here, researchers can find information on Muslims in modern America and links to other sources for research. History Link: The History of Seattle and King County www.historylink.org/welcome.htm This site provides an array of historical information about one of the fastest growing areas in the country. The September 11 Digital Archive 911digitalarchive.org/stories/ Created by the Center for History and New Media and George Mason University and the American Social History Project at City University of New York Graduate Center, this site offers a large collection of stories and images from September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked New York City and Washington, D.C. Native Americans www.americanwest.com/pages/indians.htm This site contains information about American Indian history and culture, along with links to the home pages of many Indian nations. The National Security Archive at George Washington University www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/ This extraordinary site includes the most recent declassified documents on the making of U.S. foreign policy. The Natural Resources Defense Council www.nrdc.org/ This site contains considerable information and links about an array of current environmental issues. CHAPTER 30 ###8226; A GLOBAL NATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM 1033 ${bmicon} Harvard Sitkoff, ed., Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century (2001). William M. Adler, Mollie’s Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line (2000). Richard J. Barnet and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order (1994). Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (1999). Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999). William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997). Robert Kuttner, Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets (1996). Lester R. Brown, Michael Renner, and Brian Halweil, Vital Signs 2000: The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future (2000). J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000). David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction (1996). Hal K. Rothman, Saving the Planet: The American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century (2000). Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How the Planet Is Both Falling Apart and Coming Together and What This Means for Democracy (1995). Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000). Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (1993). Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (1997). Ronald Steel, Temptations of a Superpower (1995). Reinhold Wagnleitner and Elaine Tyler May, eds., “Here, There and Everywhere”: The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture (2000). Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (2001). Charles Hirshman and Philip Kasinitz, eds., The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience (1999). David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, rev. ed. (2000). Gary Y. Okihiro, Common Ground: Reimagining American History (2001). Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000). Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (2000). Alan Wolfe, One Nation After All: What Americans Really Think AboutGod, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left and Each Other (1998). Online Practice Test Test your understanding of this chapter with interactive review quizzes at www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/chapter30 To Chapter 30 of the Study Guide Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition 1034 ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-1 ${bmicon}         The Declaration of Independence       The Articles of Confederation       The Constitution of the United States of America       Amendments to the Constitution       Presidential Elections   For additional reference material, go to www.ablongman.com/jonescreatedequal/appendix The online appendix includes the following: The Declaration of Independence The Articles of Confederation The Constitution of the United States of America Amendments to the Constitution Presidential Elections Vice Presidents and Cabinet Members by Administration Supreme Court Justices Presidents, Congresses, and Chief Justices, 1789–2001 Territorial Expansion of the United States (map) Admission of States of the Union U.S. Population, 1790–2000 Ten Largest Cities by Population, 1700–1900 Birthrate, 1820–2000 (chart) Death Rate, 1900–2000 (chart) Life Expectancy, 1900–2000 (chart) Urban/Rural Population, 1750–1900 (chart) Women in the Labor Force, 1890–1990 (chart) United States Physical Features (map) United States Native Vegetation (map) Ancient Native American Communities (map) Native American Peoples, c. 1500 (map) Present Day United States (map) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-2 ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-3 ${bmicon} In Congress, July 4, 1776 The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murder which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; For imposing taxes on us without our consent; For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury; For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses; For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies; For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. APPENDIX A-4 ${bmicon} He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. JOHN HANCOCK New Hampshire Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Matthew Thornton Massachusetts John Adams Samuel Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry New York William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris Rhode Island Stephen Hopkins William Ellery New Jersey Richard StocktonJohn WitherspoonFrancis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark Pennsylvania Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George Ross Delaware Caeser Rodney George Read Thomas McKean Maryland Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton North Carolina William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn Virginia George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton South Carolina Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton Connecticut Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott Georgia Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-5 ${bmicon} Between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia Article 1 The stile of this confederacy shall be “The United States of America.” Article 2 Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. Article 3 The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever. Article 4 The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different states in this union, the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions, as the inhabitants thereof respectively; provided, that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property, imported into any State, to any other State of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also, that no imposition, duties, or restriction, shall be laid by any State on the property of the United States, or either of them. If any person guilty of, or charged with treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall flee from justice and be found in any of the United States, he shall, upon demand of the governor or executive power of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his offence. Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these states to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State. Article 5 For the more convenient management of the general interests of the United States, delegates shall be annually appointed, in such manner as the legislature of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress, on the 1st Monday in November in every year, with a power reserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead for the remainder of the year. No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which he, or any other for his benefit, receives any salary, fees, or emolument of any kind. Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the states, and while they act as members of the committee of the states. In determining questions in the United States, in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote. Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress: and the members of Congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests and imprisonments, during the time of their going to and from, and attendance on Congress, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace. Article 6 No State, without the consent of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance, or treaty with any king, prince, or state; nor shall any person, holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept of any present, emolument, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state; nor shall the United States, in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility. No two or more states shall enter into any treaty, confederation, or alliance, whatever, between them, without the consent of the United States, in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue. No State shall lay any imposts or duties which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties entered into by the United States, in Congress assembled, with any king, prince, or state, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress to the courts of France and Spain. No vessels of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only as shall be deemed necessary by the United States, in Congress assembled, for the defence of such State or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State, in time of peace, except such number only as, in the judgment of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defence of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutred, and shall provide, and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, APPENDIX A-6 ${bmicon} a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage. No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States, in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States, in Congress assembled, can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United States, in Congress assembled, and then only against the kingdom or state, and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States, in Congress assembled, unless such States be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States, in Congress assembled, shall determine otherwise. Article 7 When land forces are raised by any State for the common defence, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct; and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made the appointment. Article 8 All charges of war and all other expences, that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states, in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted to or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States, in Congress assembled, shall, from time to time, direct and appoint. The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states, within the time agreed upon by the United States, in Congress assembled. Article 9 The United States, in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the 6th article; of sending and receiving ambassadors; entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made, whereby the legislative power of the respective states shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoever; of establishing rules for deciding, in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what manner prizes, taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States, shall be divided or appropriated; of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace; appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and establishing courts for receiving and determining, finally, appeals in all cases of captures; provided, that no member of Congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts. The United States, in Congress assembled, shall also be the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting, or that hereafter may arise between two or more states concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other cause whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following: whenever the legislative or executive authority, or lawful agent of any State, in controversy with another, shall present a petition to Congress, stating the matter in question, and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given, by order of Congress, to the legislative or executive authority of the other State in controversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint, by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing and determining the matter in question; but, if they cannot agree, Congress shall name three persons out of each of the United States, and from the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, in the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names, as Congress shall direct, shall, in the presence of Congress, be drawn out by lot; and the persons whose names shall be drawn, or any five of them, shall be commissioners or judges to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination; and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without shewing reasons which Congress shall judge sufficient, or, being present, shall refuse to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of each State, and the secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing; and the judgment and sentence of the court to be appointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive; and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence or judgment, which shall, in like manner, be final and decisive, the judgment or sentence and other proceedings being, in either case, transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress for the security of the parties concerned: provided, that every commissioner, before he sits in judgment, shall take an oath, to be administered by one of the judges of the supreme or superior court of the State where the cause shall be tried, “well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to the best of his judgment, without favour, affection, or hope of reward”: provided, also, that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States. All controversies concerning the private right of soil, claimed under different grants of two or more states, whose jurisdictions, as they may respect such lands and the states which passed such grants, are adjusted, the said grants, or either of them, being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall, on the petition of either party to the Congress of the United States, be finally determined, as near as may be, in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different states. The United States, in Congress assembled, shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION A-7 ${bmicon} and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states; fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States; regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians not members of any of the states; provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated; establishing and regulating post offices from one State to another throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expences of the said office; appointing all officers of the land forces in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers; appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States; making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations. The United States, in Congress assembled, shall have authority to appoint a committee to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated “a Committee of the States,” and to consist of one delegate from each State, and to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States, under their direction; to appoint one of their number to preside; provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expences; to borrow money or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting, every half year, to the respective states, an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted; to build and equip a navy; to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisitions shall be binding; and, thereupon, the legislature of each State shall appoint the regimental officers, raise the men, and cloathe, arm, and equip them in a soldier-like manner, at the expence of the United States; and the officers and men so cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed and within the time agreed on by the United States, in Congress assembled; but if the United States, in Congress assembled, shall, on consideration of circumstances, judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number than its quota, and that any other State should raise a greater number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, officered, cloathed, armed, and equipped in the same manner as the quota of such State, unless the legislature of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spared out of the same, in which case they shall raise, officer, cloathe, arm, and equip as many of such extra number as they judge can be safely spared. And the officers and men so cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed and within the time agreed on by the United States, in Congress assembled. The United States, in Congress assembled, shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expences necessary for the defence and welfare of the United States, or any of them: nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine states assent to the same; nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day, be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the United States, in Congress assembled. The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof, relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as, in their judgment, require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on any question shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegate; and the delegates of a State, or any of them, at his, or their request, shall be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several states. Article 10 The committee of the states, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United States, in Congress assembled, by the consent of nine states, shall, from time to time, think expedient to vest them with; provided, that no power be delegated to the said committee for the exercise of which, by the articles of confederation, the voice of nine states, in the Congress of the United States assembled, is requisite. Article 11 Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into and entitled to all the advantages of this union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states. Article 12 All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged. Article 13 Every State shall abide by the determinations of the United States, in Congress assembled, on all questions which, by this confederation, are submitted to them. And the articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State. These articles shall be proposed to the legislatures of all the United States, to be considered, and if approved of by them, they are advised to authorize their delegates to ratify the same in the Congress of the United States; which being done, the same shall become conclusive. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-8 ${bmicon} Preamble We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Article I Section 1 All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. Section 2 The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen. Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.* The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three. When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies. The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. Section 3 The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote. Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any state, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies. No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen. The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided. The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States. The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. Section 4 The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day. Section 5 Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide. *Passages no longer in effect are printed in italic type. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A-9 ${bmicon} Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member. Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal. Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting. Section 6 The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place. No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time, and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office. Section 7 All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to the House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law. Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill. Section 8 The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; To establish Post Offices and post Roads; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations; To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department of Officer thereof. Section 9 The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and APPENDIX A-10 ${bmicon} eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person. The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another. No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time. No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. Section 10 No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress. No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Article II Section 1 The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President. The Congress may determine the time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States. No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them. Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Section 2 The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A-11 ${bmicon} Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments. The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session. Section 3 He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the officers of the United States. Section 4 The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Article III Section 1 The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office. Section 2 The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed, but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed. Section 3 Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. Article IV Section 1 Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. Section 2 The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime. No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. Section 3 New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular States. Section 4 The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of APPENDIX A-12 ${bmicon} them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence. Article V The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. Article VI All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. This Constitution, and Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and Judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office of public Trust under the United States. Article VII The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same. Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth* IN WITNESS whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, George Washington President and Deputy from Virginia Delaware George Read Gunning Bedford, Jr. John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jacob Broom Maryland James McHenry Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer Daniel Carroll Virginia John Blair James Madison, Jr. North Carolina William Blount Richard Dobbs Spraight Hugh Williamson South Carolina John Rutledge Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Charles Pinckney Pierce Butler Georgia William Few Abraham Baldwin New Hampshire John Langdon Nicholas Gilman Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham Rufus King Connecticut William Samuel Johnson Roger Sherman New York Alexander Hamilton New Jerse y William Livingston David Brearley William Paterson Jonathan Dayton Pennsylvania Benjamin Franklin Thomas Mifflin Robert Morris George Clymer Thomas FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouverneur Morris *The Constitution was submitted on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention, was ratified by conventions of the several states at various dates up to May 29, 1790, and became effective on March 4, 1789. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-13 ${bmicon} Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Amendment II A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Amendment III No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Amendment V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Amendment VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-exam-ined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Amendment X* The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Amendment XI [Adopted 1798] The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. Amendment XII [Adopted 1804] The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;—The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;—The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a *The first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) were ratified and their adoption was certified on December 15, 1791. APPENDIX A-14 ${bmicon} member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.—The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice President, shall be the Vice President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States. Amendment XIII [Adopted 1865] Section 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Amendment XIV [Adopted 1868] Section 1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5 The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Amendment XV [Adopted 1870] Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Amendment XVI [Adopted 1913] The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. Amendment XVII [Adopted 1913] The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct. AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION A-15 ${bmicon} This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution. Amendment XVIII [Adopted 1919, repealed 1933] Section 1 After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2 The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. Amendment XIX [Adopted 1920] The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Amendment XX [Adopted 1933] Section 1 The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified and the terms of their successors shall then begin. Section 2 The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. Section 3 If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. Section 4 The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them. Section 5 Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article. Section 6 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission. Amendment XXI [Adopted 1933] Section 1 The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2 The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. Amendment XXII [Adopted 1951] Section 1 No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. Section 2 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress. APPENDIX A-16 ${bmicon} Amendment XXIII [Adopted 1961] Section 1 The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress shall direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment. Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Amendment XXIV [Adopted 1964] Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. Section 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Amendment XXV [Adopted 1967] Section 1 In case of the removal of the President from office or his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. Section 2 Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take the office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both houses of Congress. Section 3 Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Section 4 Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within 48 hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within 21 days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within 21 days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office. Amendment XXVI [Adopted 1971] Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age. Section 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Amendment XXVII [Adopted 1992] No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-17 ${bmicon} Year Candidates Parties Popular Vote Electoral Vote Voter Participation 1789 George Washington   * 69     John Adams     34     Others     35   1792 George Washington   * 132     John Adams     77     George Clinton     50     Others     5   1796 John Adams Federalist * 71     Thomas Jefferson Democratic-Republican   68     Thomas Pinckney Federalist   59     Aaron Burr Dem.-Rep.   30     Others     48   1800 Thomas Jefferson Dem.-Rep. * 73   Aaron Burr Dem.-Rep.   73   John Adams Federalist   65   C. C. Pinckney Federalist   64   John Jay Federalist   1   1804 Thomas Jefferson Dem.-Rep. * 162   C. C. Pinckney Federalist   14   1808 James Madison Dem.-Rep. * 122   C. C. Pinckney Federalist   47   George Clinton Dem.-Rep.   6   1812 James Madison Dem.-Rep. * 128   De Witt Clinton Federalist   89   1816 James Monroe Dem.-Rep. * 183   Rufus King Federalist   34   1820 James Monroe Dem.-Rep. * 231   John Quincy Adams Dem.-Rep.   1   1824 John Quincy Adams Dem.-Rep. 108,740 (30.5%) 84 26.9% Andrew Jackson Dem.-Rep. 153,544 (43.1%) 99   William H. Crawford Dem.-Rep. 46,618 (13.1%) 41   Henry Clay Dem.-Rep. 47,136 (13.2%) 37   1828 Andrew Jackson Democratic 647,286 (56.0%) 178 57.6% John Quincy Adams National Republican 508,064 (44.0%) 83   1832 Andrew Jackson Democratic 687,502 (55.0%) 219 55.4% Henry Clay National Republican 530,189 (42.4%) 49   John Floyd Independent   11   William Wirt Anti-Mason 33,108 (2.6%) 7   1836 Martin Van Buren Democratic 765,483 (50.9%) 170 57.8% William Henry Harrison Whig   73   Hugh L. White Whig 739,795 (49.1%) 26   Daniel Webster Whig   14   W. P. Magnum Independent   11   1840 William Henry Harrison Whig 1,274,624 (53.1%) 234 80.2% Martin Van Buren Democratic 1,127,781 (46.9%) 60   J. G. Birney Liberty 7069 —   *Electors selected by state legislatures. APPENDIX A-18 ${bmicon} Year Candidates Parties Popular Vote Electoral Vote Voter Participation 1844 James K. Polk Democratic 1,338,464 (49.6%) 170 78.9% Henry Clay Whig 1,300,097 (48.1%) 105   J. G. Birney Liberty 62,300 (2.3%) —   1848 Zachary Taylor Whig 1,360,967 (47.4%) 163 72.7% Lewis Cass Democratic 1,222,342 (42.5%) 127   Martin Van Buren Free-Soil 291,263 (10.1%) —   1852 Franklin Pierce Democratic 1,601,117 (50.9%) 254 69.6% Winfield Scott Whig 1,385,453 (44.1%) 42   John P. Hale Free-Soil 155,825 (5.0%) —   1856 James Buchanan Democratic 1,832,955 (45.3%) 174 78.9% John C. Frémont Republican 1,339,932 (33.1%) 114   Millard Fillmore American 871,731 (21.6%) 8   1860 Abraham Lincoln Republican 1,865,593 (39.8%) 180 81.2% Stephen A. Douglas Democratic 1,382,713 (29.5%) 12   John C. Breckinridge Democratic 848,356 (18.1%) 72   John Bell Union 592,906 (12.6%) 39   1864 Abraham Lincoln Republican 2,213,655 (55.0%) 212* 73.8% George B. McClellan Democratic 1,805,237 (45.0%) 21   1868 Ulysses S. Grant Republican 3,012,833 (52.7%) 214 78.1% Horatio Seymour Democratic 2,703,249 (47.3%) 80   1872 Ulysses S. Grant Republican 3,597,132 (55.6%) 286 71.3% Horace Greeley Dem.; Liberal Republican 2,834,125 (43.9%) 66†   1876 Rutherford B. Hayes ‡ Republican 4,036,298 (48.0%) 185 81.8% Samuel J. Tilden Democratic 4,300,590 (51.0%) 184   1880 James A. Garfield Republican 4,454,416 (48.5%) 214 79.4% Winfield S. Hancock Democratic 4,444,952 (48.1%) 155   1884 Grover Cleveland Democratic 4,874,986 (48.5%) 219 77.5% James G. Blaine Republican 4,851,981 (48.2%) 182   1888 Benjamin Harrison Republican 5,439,853 (47.9%) 233 79.3% Grover Cleveland Democratic 5,540,309 (48.6%) 168   1892 Grover Cleveland Democratic 5,556,918 (46.1%) 277 74.7% Benjamin Harrison Republican 5,176,108 (43.0%) 145   James B. Weaver People’s 1,041,028 (8.5%) 22   1896 William McKinley Republican 7,104,779 (51.1%) 271 79.3% William Jennings Bryan Democratic People’s 6,502,925 (47.7%) 176   1900 William McKinley Republican 7,207,923 (51.7%) 292 73.2% William Jennings Bryan Dem.-Populist 6,358,133 (45.5%) 155   1904 Theodore Roosevelt Republican 7,623,486 (57.9%) 336 65.2% Alton B. Parker Democratic 5,077,911 (37.6%) 140   Eugene V. Debs Socialist 402,283 (3.0%) —   1908 William H. Taft Republican 7,678,908 (51.6%) 321 65.4% William Jennings Bryan Democratic 6,409,104 (43.1%) 162   Eugene V. Debs Socialist 420,793 (2.8%) —   1912 Woodrow Wilson Democratic 6,293,454 (41.9%) 435 58.8% Theodore Roosevelt Progressive 4,119,538 (27.4%) 88   William H. Taft Republican 3,484,980 (23.2%) 8   Eugene V. Debs Socialist 900,672 (6.0%) —   1916 Woodrow Wilson Democratic 9,129,606 (49.4%) 277 61.6% Charles E. Hughes Republican 8,538,221 (46.2%) 254   A. L. Benson Socialist 585,113 (3.2%) —   1920 Warren G. Harding Republican 16,152,200 (60.4%) 404 49.2% James M. Cox Democratic 9,147,353 (34.2%) 127   Eugene V. Debs Socialist 919,799 (3.4%) —   *Eleven secessionist states did not participate. †Greeley died before the electoral college met. His electoral votes were divided among the four minor candidates. ‡Contested result settled by special election. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS A-19 ${bmicon} Year Candidates Parties Popular Vote Electoral Vote Voter Participation 1924 Calvin Coolidge Republican 15,725,016 (54.0%) 382 48.9% John W. Davis Democratic 8,386,503 (28.8%) 136   Robert M. La Follette Progressive 4,822,856 (16.6%) 13   1928 Herbert Hoover Republican 21,391,381 (58.2%) 444 56.9% Alfred E. Smith Democratic 15,016,443 (40.9%) 87   Norman Thomas Socialist 267,835 (0.7%) —   1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 22,821,857 (57.4%) 472 56.9% Herbert Hoover Republican 15,761,841 (39.7%) 59   Norman Thomas Socialist 881,951 (2.2%) —   1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 27,751,597 (60.8%) 523 61.0% Alfred M. Landon Republican 16,679,583 (36.5%) 8   William Lemke Union 882,479 (1.9%) —   1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 27,244,160 (54.8%) 449 62.5% Wendell L. Willkie Republican 22,305,198 (44.8%) 82   1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 25,602,504 (53.5%) 432 55.9% Thomas E. Dewey Republican 22,006,285 (46.0%) 99   1948 Harry S Truman Democratic 24,105,695 (49.5%) 304 53.0% Thomas E. Dewey Republican 21,969,170 (45.1%) 189   J. Strom Thurmond State-Rights Democratic 1,169,021 (2.4%) 38   Henry A. Wallace Progressive 1,156,103 (2.4%) —   1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican 33,936,252 (55.1%) 442 63.3% Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 27,314,992 (44.4%) 89   1956 Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican 35,575,420 (57.6%) 457 60.6% Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 26,033,066 (42.1%) 73   Other — — 1   1960 John F. Kennedy Democratic 34,227,096 (49.9%) 303 62.8% Richard M. Nixon Republican 34,108,546 (49.6%) 219   Other — — 15   1964 Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic 43,126,506 (61.1%) 486 61.7% Barry M. Goldwater Republican 27,176,799 (38.5%) 52   1968 Richard M. Nixon Republican 31,770,237 (43.4%) 301 60.6% Hubert H. Humphrey Democratic 31,270,533 (42.7%) 191   George Wallace American Indep. 9,906,141 (13.5%) 46   1972 Richard M. Nixon Republican 47,169,911 (60.7%) 520 55.2% George S. McGovern Democratic 29,170,383 (37.5%) 17   Other — — 1   1976 Jimmy Carter Democratic 40,828,587 (50.0%) 297 53.5% Gerald R. Ford Republican 39,147,613 (47.9%) 241   Other — 1,575,459 (2.1%) —   1980 Ronald Reagan Republican 43,901,812 (50.7%) 489 52.6% Jimmy Carter Democratic 35,483,820 (41.0%) 49   John B. Anderson Independent 5,719,722 (6.6%) —   Ed Clark Libertarian 921,188 (1.1%) —   1984 Ronald Reagan Republican 54,455,075 (59.0%) 525 53.3% Walter Mondale Democratic 37,577,185 (41.0%) 13   1988 George H. W. Bush Republican 48,886,000 (53.4%) 426 57.4% Michael S. Dukakis Democratic 41,809,000 (45.6%) 111   1992 William J. Clinton Democratic 43,728,375 (43%) 370 55.0% George H. W. Bush Republican 38,167,416 (38%) 168   H. Ross Perot Independent 19,237,247 (19%) —   1996 William J. Clinton Democratic 45,590,703 (50%) 379 48.8% Robert Dole Republican 37,816,307 (41%) 159   H. Ross Perot Reform 7,866,284     2000 George W. Bush Republican 50,456,167 (47.88%) 271 51.2% Al Gore Democratic 50,996,064 (48.39%) 266*   Ralph Nader Green 2,864,810 (2.72%) —   Other   834,774 (< 1%) —   *One District of Columbia Gore elector abstained. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition A-20 ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition C-1 ${bmicon} Part One Timeline Page 1: (Top) Lee Boltin Picture Library; (middle) The Ohio Historical Society; (bottom) Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK/Bridgeman Art Library. Page 2: (Top) Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin; (bottom) The Granger Collection, New York. Chapter 1 Page 22 (Map 1.3): From Columbus by Bjorn Landstrom. Copyright © 1966 by Bjorn Landstrom. Copyright © 1967 by Bokforlaget Forum AB. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Page 31: From Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History by Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998. Chapter 2 Page 69: From “Verses upon the Burning of Our House,” July 18th, 1666 by Anne Bradstreet. Part Two Timeline Page 112: (Top) Chicago Historical Society, ICHi-x.1354; (middle) The Historical Society of Pennsylvania; (bottom) Courtesy, Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania (44-132-1). Page 113: (Top) Peabody Essex Museum. Photograph by Mark Sexton. (Bottom) Library of Congress. Chapter 4 Page 139: From “Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg: An Appeal from Virginia in 1723.” Chapter 5 Page 158 (Figure 5.1): Adapted from “Gender and Age Structure of Population: British Mainland Colonies, 1760s” and “Gender and Age Structure of Population: United States, 1980s” in Mapping America’s Past: A Historical Reference Book by Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty with Patrick Williams, © 1996 by Arcadia Editions Limited. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Chapter 6 Page 204: From a petition signed by thirty North Carolina Regulators, October 4, 1768. Part Three Timeline Page 216: (Top) The Bostonian Society; (bottom) Courtesy, Janice L and David Frent Page 217: (Top) Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, VA; (bottom) The National Archives Chapter 7 Pages 224–225: From a declaration signed by 15 grand jury members in South Carolina, May 1776. Page 236 (Figure 7.1): From British Historical Statistics, Mitchell, 579. Chapter 8 Page 259: From narratives by Joseph Plumb Martin, 1830. Chapter 9 Page 312 (Figure 9.3): From Robert J. Dinkin, Voting in Revolutionary America: A Study of Elections in the Original Thirteen States, 1776–1789 (1982), 36–39. Pages 314–315: From Means for the Preservation of Public Liberty by Georges James Warner (New York, 1797). Page 321 (Figure 9.4): From Distribution of Wealth and Income in the United States, 1798 by Lee Soltow (1989). Part Four Timeline Page 326: (Top) Courtesy, Missouri Historical Society; (bottom) The American Numismatic Society, New York. Page 327: (Top) Massachusetts Historical Society, MHS image #0031; (bottom) Samuel J. Miller, Frederick Douglass, 1847–52. Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment, 1996.433. ©The Art Institute of Chicago. All Rights Reserved Chapter 10 Page 343: From Cherokee Women to Cherokee Council, May 2, 1817, series 1, Andrew Jackson Presidential Papers, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C. Page 348 (Figure 10.1): From Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s by David J. Jeremy. Copyright © 1981 by The MIT Press. Reprinted by permission of MIT Press. Chapter 11 Pages 366 (Map 11.4) and 373 (Map 11.5): Adapted from The Mexican Frontier 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico by David J. Weber. Page 372 (Figure 11.1): Table “Cherokee Nation Intercensus Changes, 1809–24” from Cherokee Removal Before and After edited by William L. Anderson. Reprinted by permission of The University of Georgia Press. Page 375: From “Jose Agustin de Escudero Describes New Mexico as a Land of Opportunity, 1827” in H. Bailey Carroll and J. Villasana Haggard, trans. and ed., Three New Mexico Chronicles (Albuquerque, 1942) Chapter 12 Page 395 (Map 12.2): Adapted from Mapping America’s Past: A Historical Reference Book by Mark C. Carnes and John A. CREDITS C-2 ${bmicon} Garraty with Patrick Williams, © 1996 by Arcadia Editions Limited. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Page 397 (Map 12.3): “The Grand Migration” from The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas by Gerard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau. New York: Viking Press, 1995. Page 399 (Map 12.4): Adapted from “Expansion of the Cotton Belt” in Mapping America’s Past: A Historical Reference Book by Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty with Patrick Williams, © 1996 by Arcadia Editions Limited. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Page 402 (Map 12.5): Adapted from “Indian Removal from the Old Southeast” in Mapping America’s Past: A Historical Reference Book by Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty with Patrick Williams, © 1996 by Arcadia Editions Limited. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Page 403 (Table 12-1): From Women and Men on the Overland Trail by John Mack Faragher. Copyright 1979 by Yale University Press. Reprinted by permission. Pages 424–425: From a speech by Senator John C. Calhoun, January 1848. Part Five Timeline Page 428: (Top) Michael Freeman/CORBIS; (middle) Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, CT; (bottom) The Ohio Historical Society Page 429: (Top) Antique Textile Resource, Bethesda MD; (bottom) William T. Garrell Foundry, San Francisco, The Golden Spike. The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University (1998.115). Gift of David Hewes Chapter 13 Pages 442–443: From The Endowments, Position and Education of Woman. An Address Delivered Before the Hemans and Sigourney Societies of the Female High School at Limestone Springs, July 23, 1850 (Columbia, SC: I.C. Morgan, 1850.) Chapter 14 Page 468 (Figure 14.1): From “Alabama Secession Convention Occupations” and “Alabama Convention Property Holding” in Ralph Wooster, The Secession Conventions of the South. Copyright © 1962 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. Pages 472–473: From a letter by John B. Spiece to the Confederate Attorney General, December 4, 1861. Pages 475 (Figure 14.2) and 492 (Figure 14.3): From Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. Oxford University Press, 1988. Page 480 (Map 14.3): Adapted from Confederates Battle Southwestern Indians, Central New Mexico, 1861 by Jerry Thompson from New Mexico Historical Review, April 1998. Page 489 (Map 14.4): From Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. Oxford University Press, 1988. Page 493 (Map 14.5): Adapted from Major African American Battle Sites in The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times by Arwin D. Smallwood with Jeffrey M. Elliot. McGraw Hill, 1998. Page 496 (Map 14.6): Adapted from The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times by Arwin D. Smallwood with Jeffrey M. Elliot. McGraw-Hill, 1998. Chapter 15 Page 510: From “Post-Bellum Southern Rental Contracts” by Rosser H. Taylor from Agricultural History, Volume 17, Number 2, April 1943. Published by The Agricultural History Society. Page 523 (Table 15-3): From Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Review by Michael Williams. Copyright © 1989 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press. Page 530 (Table 15-4): From Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 by David Montgomery. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967. Part Six Timeline Page 536: (Top) Michael Freeman Photography; (bottom) Courtesy, Janice L. and David Frent Page 537: (Top) From the HUC Skirball Cultural Center, Museum Collection, Los Angeles, CA. Gift of Brenda Grossman Spivack in memory of Godina Eisenstein Schwartz. Clothes and Textiles: Gift of Harold Brill and Regina Starr Brill. HUCSM 31.194. Photography by Susan Einstein; (bottom) Fair Street Pictures Chapter 16 Page 545 (Table 16-1): From Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Review by Michael Williams. Copyright © 1989 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press. Page 547 (Table 16-2): From “How Indians Used the Buffalo” adapted from The Native American Almanac by Arlene B. Hirschfelder and Martha Kreipe de Montano. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission of Hungry Minds. Page 549 (Map 16.2): Adapted from “Population of Foreign Birth by Region, 1880” in Historical Atlas of the United States by Clifford L. Lord & Elizabeth H. Lord. New York: Holt, 1953. Page 551 (Map 16.3): From Chinese in the Post–Civil War South by Lucy Cohen. Copyright © 1984 by Louisiana State University Press. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press. Page 568: From “The Gospel of Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie from North American Review, No. CCCXCL (June 1889). Chapter 17 Page 579 (Map 17.1): From “Farm Tenancy, by Counties, 1880” in Historical Atlas of the United States by Clifford L. Lord & Elizabeth H. Lord. New York: Holt, 1953. Page 582 (Map 17.2): From The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times by Arwin D. Smallwood with Jeffrey M. Elliot. McGraw-Hill, 1998. Page 585 (Map 17.3): From American History Atlas, revised edition by Martin Gilbert. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969. Chapter 18 Page 609 (Map 18.1): From Atlas of American History by Kenneth T. Jackson and James T. Adams. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1985. Page 610 (Map 18.2): From “Population Density, 1890” in Historical Atlas of the United States by Clifford L. Lord & Elizabeth H. Lord. New York: Holt, 1953. CREDITS C-3 ${bmicon} Page 613 (Map 18.3): From Paullin and Wright, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, 1932. Page 616 (Map 18.4): From “Compulsory School Attendance, 1890” and Compulsory School Attendance, 1900” in Historical Atlas of the United States by Clifford L. Lord & Elizabeth H. Lord. New York: Holt, 1953. Pages 632–633 (Map 18.6): Adapted from Spanish-American War in the Pacific and Spanish-American War in the Caribbean in Kenneth T. Jackson and James T. Adams, Atlas of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1985. Pages 634–635: From Proceedings of the Congressional Committee on the Philippines—Testimony of Robert P. Hughes and Charles S. Riley, 1902. Part Seven Timeline Page 638: (Top) From the Collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village; (middle) Courtesy, The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; (bottom) Courtesy, Military Antiques & Museum, Petaluma, CA Page 639: (Top) Fair Street Pictures; (middle) Courtesy, Janice L. and David Frent; (bottom) From the Collections of Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Chapter 19 Page 645 (Map 19.1): From Historical Atlas of the United States by Clifford L. Lord & Elizabeth H. Lord. New York: Holt, 1953. Page 646 (Figure 19.1): “Immigration by Decade, 1821–1990 from Immigration and Naturalization Service. Page 648 (Map 19.2): Adapted from “Areas Restricted by Chinese Exclusion Acts” in Atlas of American Migration by Stephen A. Flanders. New York: Facts on File, 1998. Page 651 (Map 19.3): Adapted from “Italian and Russian Immigrants in the United States, 1910” in Atlas of American Migration by Stephen A. Flanders. New York: Facts on File, 1998. Chapter 20 Page 693: From Addie W. Hunton & Kathryn M. Johnson, Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Eagle Press, 1920. Chapter 21 Page 706 (Figure 21.1): From Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750–1950 by Judith Walzer Leavitt, copyright © 1986 by Judith Walzer Leavitt. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Page 708 (Figure 21.2): From U.S. Immigration, 1891–1940. Page 712 (Figure 21.4): “Changes in Farm and Nonfarm Populations: 1880–1980” from America’s Northern Heartland: An Economic and Historical Geography of the Upper Midwest by John R. Borchert. Copyright © 1987, published by the University of Minnesota Press. Used by permission. Page 730: From The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo. New York: Antheneum, 1965. Part Eight Timeline Page 734: (Top) Courtesy, Janice L. and David Frent; (middle) Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen/The Bridgeman Art Library International Ltd.; (bottom) Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jim Kawaminami, Japanese American National Museum. Photo by Norman Sugimoto Page 735: (Top) Fair Street Pictures; (middle) Courtesy, The United Nations; (bottom) Joseph Sohm; ChromoSohm Inc./CORBIS Chapter 23 Page 789: Interview with Zelda Anderson in R. T. King, ed., from War Stories: Veterans Remember World War II. Published by the University of Nevada Oral History Program, 1995. Used by permission of Zelda Anderson and the University of Nevada Oral History Program.) Chapter 24 Page 825: From NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (April 14, 1950). Part Nine Timeline Page 832: (Top) Library of Congress; (bottom) Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS Page 833: (Top) Library of Congress; (middle) Tamiment/Wagner Poster and Broadside Collection, Tamiment Library, New York University; (bottom) TimePix Chapter 25 Page 857: From Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Page 863: Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream” (speech delivered August 28, 1963, Washington, D.C.) Reprinted by arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House, Inc as agent for the proprietor. Copyright 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr., copyright renewed 1991 by Coretta Scott King. Chapter 26 Page 882: “A Time to Break Silence” by Martin Luther King, Jr. Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House as agent of the proprietor. Copyright 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr., copyright renewed 1991 by Coretta Scott King. Chapter 27 Page 920: Interim Report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations (November 20, 1975). Part Ten Timeline Page 934: (Top) Courtesy, Janice L and David Frent; (bottom) W. Cody/CORBIS Page 935: (Top) Justin Sullivan/AP/Wide World; (bottom) Amy E. Conn/AP/Wide World Chapter 28 Pages 954–955: From Listen America by Jerry Falwell, copyright © 1980 by Jerry Falwell. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House. Page 955: “The Need for a Moral Minority” by Robert McAfee Brown. Reprinted by permission of the estate of Robert McAfee Brown. Chapter 29 Pages 976 (Map 29.1) and 983 (Map 29.2): From Atlas of American Migration by Stephen A. Flanders. New York: Facts on File, 1998. Page 980: From the Vermont Civil Union Law (April 26, 2000.) Chapter 30 Page 1022: The Slow Food Manifesto (Nov. 9, 1989) of The Slow Food Movement (http://www.slowfood.com) Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition C-4 ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition cover ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition I-1 ${bmicon} Entries followed by f, t, m, and i refer to figures, tables, maps, and illustrations, respectively A Abalone Alliance, 916 Abbey, Edward, 915, 1005 Abenaki Indians, 84, 107 Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, 562 ABM treaty, 906 Abolitionist movement late 18th century, 263 mid-19th century: activities of, 451–454; factions in, 420–421; suppression of, 408–410, 409i; women’s rights movement and, 417, 443–444, 444i Amistad case and, 410, 411i and Lincoln, criticism of, 477 Underground Railroad, 451, 459m women and, 408, 421; black, 444, 444i, 452 Abortion early 20th century, 678 in 1940s, 817 in 1950s, 855 in 1960s, 888 in 1970s, Medicaid funds and, 930 in 1980s, debate over, 953, 954 in 1990s: anti-abortion violence, 984–985; Clinton policies on, 988; debate over, 984–985, 985i Bolsheviks and, 697 Abstract expressionism, 854, 854i Acadia, 54 Acadians, 162 Acheson, Dean, 809, 812, 827 Acoma, 49–50, 49i Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. See AIDS Act of Settlement (1701), 105 “Act to Secure Homesteads to Actual Settlers on the Public Domain” (1862), 478 ACT-UP. See AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power Adams, Abigail, 184i, 317, 336 Adams, Ansel, 872i Adams, Henry, 582 Adams, John, 238i American Revolution and, 222 Boston Massacre and, 208 Boston Tea Party and, 210 constitutional model of, 237–238, 277–278 Declaration of Independence and, 227 election of 1792 and, 292 election of 1796 and, 292, 298, 298t election of 1800 and, 319, 319t on Paine, 238 on political system in United States, 264 as president, 320–321 on public unrest in Revolutionary era, 203 on Stamp Act protests, 202 Treaty of Paris and, 250–251, 250i as vice president, 298–299 on wealth, 950 Adams, John Quincy Amistad case and, 410 election of 1820 and, 367, 367t election of 1824 and, 368–369, 369t election of 1828 and, 370t Monroe Doctrine and, 367 as president, 363 slavery and, 362–363 War of 1812 and, 340 Adams, Samuel, 206i attempt to arrest, 213 on public support of Revolution, 206 tactics of, 210 tax resistance and, 206 Adams, Will, 47 Adamson Act (1916), 683 Addams, Jane, 598, 657, 660, 662, 685 Administration of Justice Act (1774), 210 Advertising late 19th century: mass merchandising, 560–563; minorities and, 541, 562–563 in 1920s, 725, 725i late 20th century, 1018 history of, 561, 562–563, 563i The Advocate, 433 AEF. See American Expeditionary Force Affirmative action debate over, 1025 Reagan administration and, 956 Supreme Court on, 931 Afghanistan Soviet invasion of, 938, 939–940, 959, 1030 Taliban regime in, 995, 1021, 1030 U.S. intervention in (2001), 1030 AFL. See American Federation of Labor Africa African American return to, early 20th century, 709 Carter policy in, 922, 923m culture of, 114i diaspora, 396 English colonization in, 94 European imperialism in, late 19th century, 628 origin of life in, 2, 6 slave trade: Atlantic (See Atlantic slave trade); domestic, 20 African American women 19th century, 318; reform movements and, 526–527, 624–625 early 20th century, suffrage movement and, 661 in World War I, 693, 693i in 1920s, 714i in 1930s: employment, 744; New Deal and, 761 in World War II, 783, 788, 789 post-World War II: employment, 817; role and status of, 843–844 in 1990s, first in Congress, 981 African Americans. See also Race; Slaves 17th century, legal status of, 118 18th century: employment, 313i; population, 290, 302, 302f; status of, 140, 300–303, 303i and American Revolution: British offers of freedom to, 219–220, 223–224; British Southern strategy and, 242; in Continental Army, 241, 302; disillusionment with, 217, 219–220, 222, 222i; as model for freedom, 257, 291; suppression during, 223–224 pre-Civil War: in California, 431–433; culture of, 350, 442; INDEX I-2 ${bmicon} diversity of, 437; education and, 415, 484i; efforts to control, 380–381; employment, 331–332, 348–349, 400, 400i, 409, 438, 449, 454–455; festivals and celebrations, 303, 303i, 304i; integration-separation debate, 380; leadership, 380; migrations, 400; population, 379, 457t; in Republic of Texas, 419; resistance to slavery, 451–452; restrictions on, 405; rights of, 310; slaveholders’ myths about, 354–355; and War of 1812, 336i, 339–340; in West, 310; worker resentment of, 400, 400i, 409, 438, 449, 454–455 and Civil War: anti-black violence, 491; Confederate brutality toward, 493, 493m; encounters with Union soldiers, 486–487; Union employment of, 463i, 485–486, 486, 486i, 493, 493m post-Civil War (See also Reconstruction); aspirations of, 501, 503–504, 508; challenges facing, 503–504; citizenship of, 506; class divisions among, 511; as cowboys, 523; education and, 500i, 501, 502i, 504; employment and, 553; marriage and family, 508, 512–513, 512t; political organization, 511–513, 515; rights of, 511, 516, 526–527, 532; sharecropping system, 510–511, 510i, 579m, 580t; unions and, 529, 530; voting rights, 280, 380, 504, 506–507, 511, 513m, 514–517, 526–527; white efforts to control, 501, 506, 507, 532 late 19th century: aspirations of, 615; education, 599, 612–614; efforts to control, 580, 611; military service, 581–582, 582m; religion, 582–584, 583i; resistance to discrimination, 575, 610, 614; social class among, 580; Social Darwinism and, 568; in Spanish-American War, 632; temperance movement and, 599; unions and, 529, 530, 592–593; voting rights, 526–527, 601, 611 20th century: as cowboys, 523; U.S. culture and, 1018 early 20th century: businesses, 561; citizenship and, 654; culture of, 656, 658; first White House meeting, 664; Great Migration of, 638, 683–685, 684m, 690; migrations north, 728; mortality rate for, 652; Progressivism and, 683; role and status of, 671, 676–677; unions and, 662, 698; in West, 5, 5i in World War I: migration to cities in, 638; as soldiers, 690, 692i, 693; support for, 690 in 1920s: Harlem Renaissance, 713–715; music of, 704, 715 in 1930s: Communist Party and, 756; employment, 742–744; party affiliation, 738, 764; Roosevelt policies and, 759; Scottsboro Boys, 743–744, 744i; as sports celebrities, 765; welfare state and, 760 mid-20th century: entrepreneurs, 844i; middle class status, 843–844; service organizations and, 840i; violence against, 698 in World War II: in armed forces, 788i; civil rights and, 788–790; employment, 779, 786–788; racial tension and, 786–788 post-World War II: in armed forces, 801–802; part affiliation, 819 in 1950s: first major league baseball player, 807–808, 807i; home ownership, 839; Red Scare and, 821 in 1960s: political office, 885; riots, 884, 893; Vietnam War and, 882; voting rights, 867, 871 in 1990s: civil unrest, 978; crime and, 976–977; status of, 976 late 20th century: crime and, 892; employment, 1005; racial profiling and, 1027; role and status of, 1026 and 2000 election, 995, 996, 997 back-to-Africa movement, 220, 456i African Methodist Episcopal Church, 379–380 African National Congress, 674 Agee, Philip, 919 Agent Orange, 876 Agnew, Spiro, 895, 901, 909 Agribusiness, late 19th century, 547 Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933), 752t, 753 Agriculture 17th century, in Southwest, 51 18th century, Northeast, 106 19th century: agribusiness, 547; drought, 586i, 587; economics of, 587, 619, 619t; in Midwest, 436; in New England, 438; regions, 544m; technological advances in, 543, 543i, 544; transient labor in, 543i early 20th century, in Southwest, 676 in 1930s: drought, 745–747, 745m, 746i; economics of, 753 in 2000s, water and, 1013–1014 Native American: Archaic period, 9–11; 500-1500, 15; 17th century, 90 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 632 Ah Quin, 577i Ah Sue, 577i Aid to Families with Dependent Children ending of, 973, 990 under Johnson, 870 Aidid, Mohammed Farah, 993 AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP), 957 AIDS epidemic, 935, 955, 1013 AIM. See American Indian Movement Air traffic controllers strike, 952 Ais people, 28 Al Qaeda, 1023m, 1030 internment in Cuba, 368–369, 369i Alabama readmission to Union, 516 secession convention in, 465, 468f Alabama (ship), 483 Alamance, Battle of, 205 Alamo, 91, 419 Alaska European contact, 186 natural resources in, 525, 667, 1014i, 1017 Russia in, 112, 188–190, 189m, 216, 257 statehood, 269, 818 U.S. purchase of, 525 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980), 924i, 925 Alaska Native Brotherhood, 808 Albany, New York, 94, 163i Albany Congress, 177 Albany Plan, 177 Albuquerque, New Mexico, late 19th century, 556i Alcan (Alaska-Canada) Highway, 818 Alcatraz, Indian seizure of (1969), 890–891 Alcohol. See also Temperance movement Georgia colony and, 142 Native Americans and: ill effects of, 307, 309, 378; Indian resistance movement and, 334; white INDEX I-3 ${bmicon} manipulation and, 98, 334 slaves and, 437 Aldrin, Edwin “Buzz,” 896i Aleutian Islanders, Russian fur trade and, 189–190 Alexander, Mary Spratt Provoost, 162i Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. See Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing Algonquins. See also Ohio Confederacy 17th century: alliances with Europeans, 54; trade, 57 Ohio Confederacy and, 289 relocation to Great Lakes region, 305 Ali, Muhammad, 884, 885, 1030 Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), 299–300 Alien Land Act (California, 1913), 674 All in the Family (TV show), 893 Allen, Ethan, 222 Allende, Salvador, 906 Alperovitz, Gar, 814 Alton Observer, 409 Alvord, John W., 502i Amador, Martin, 562i Amador, Refugio, 562i Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 762 Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, 618–619 Amatniek, Kathie, 930 America First Committee, 773 American and European Labor Association, 575 American Anti-Slavery Society, 408, 420–421 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 721, 963 American Communist party, history of, 860–861 “The American Crisis” (Paine), 230 American Department, 206 An American Dictionary of the English Language (Webster), 262 American Dilemma (Myrdal), 784–785 American Duties Act (1764), 195 American exceptionalism, 607 American Expeditionary Force (AEF), 690 American Federation of Labor (AFL) late 19th century: affiliated unions, 618; emergence of, 594; rise of, 624 early 20th century: activism of, 697; anticapitalism of, 678; and election of 1912, 679; membership restrictions, 662 in 1930s, membership restrictions, 762 in World War II, blacks and, 786 The American Geography (Morse), 262 American GI Forum, 808, 821 American identity, in 1930s, 764 American Independent party, 894t American Indian Movement (AIM), 890–891, 919 American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), 981 American Institute of Mining Engineers, 542 American League, 558 American Legion, 698 American Medical Association, 819 American Mercury, 303i American Museum of Natural History, 628–629 American National Exhibition (1959), 835–836, 835i American party, 448, 451 American Railway Union (ARU), 594, 620 American Republican party, 412 American Revolution African Americans and: British offers of freedom to, 219–220, 223–224; British Southern strategy and, 242; in Continental Army, 241, 302; disillusionment with, 217, 219–220, 222, 222i; as model for freedom, 257, 291; suppression during, 223–224 casualties, 497 civil disorder in, 490 Declaration of Independence, 221, 227–228; local versions of, 224–225 disillusionment with, 217, 219–220 economic consequences of, 216 events leading to: Boston Massacre, 207–208, 207i; Boston Tea Party, 209–210; Gaspee Affair, 208; oppressive measures, 194–196, 196–199, 205–207, 210–211; rural unrest, 202–205 France and, 231, 234–236, 241, 246, 246i, 249; peace negotiations, 250–251 ideological foundations of, 199–202, 205 minorities and, 197–199, 197i, 202, 213–214, 217 North-South politics in, 222 peace negotiations, 250–251, 250i social class and, 186, 197–199, 197i, 205, 213–214 start of, 112 tactics of, 200–202, 206–207, 208, 210, 211 vs. Vietnam War, 234–235, 921 American Road Builders’ Association, 838 “American Sailor Boy” (poem), 332i American Spelling Book (Webster), 262 American System, 406, 407i, 543 American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), 716 American Tract Society, 502i American Victorianism, 387, 526 home decoration and, 626i, 627 American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), 527–528, 624 Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), 972 Americas. See also North America; South America European exploration and conquest of: 15th century, 18–25; 16th century, 26–41 prehistory, 6–17; Paleo-Indian era, 8; Archaic era, 8–11; 500-1500, 11–17; European view of, 5–6; peopling of, 2–3, 6–8, 7m; population in, 17 Amherst, Jeffery, 179, 192, 194 Amistad case, 410, 411i Amusement parks late 19th century, 558 mid-20th century, 838 Anaconda Copper Co., 937 Anaconda Plan, 471 Analectic Magazine, 317i Anarchists late 19th century, 593–594, 598, 626 post-World War I, 698 Anasazi, 13–15, 13i, 14m Anderson, John B., 941, 941t Anderson, Marian, 759, 759i Anderson, Zelda Webb, 789, 789i Andersonville Prison, 495 André, John, 248 Andros, Sir Edmond, 102–103 Angel Island, 645m, 649 Angelo, Giavanni, Marchese D’Ossoli, 418 Angelou, Maya, 783 Anglican Church. See Church of England Anglo-Dutch Wars, 94 ANMA. See Associación Nacional México-Americana Annapolis Chesapeake trade summit (1786), 276 establishment of, 80 Anne, Queen of England, 103, 105 INDEX I-4 ${bmicon} Anthony, Susan B., 417, 526, 527, 527i, 528, 530 Anti-Federalists, 283–284, 291 Anti-Imperialist League, 634 Anti-Masonic party, 376, 376t Anti-Saloon League, 706–707 Antibiotics development of, 815 late 20th century, 1013 in 1990s, 987 Anticolonialism, post-World War I, 694 Anticommunism in 1970s, 905–906 backlash against, 885 history of, 860–861 Reagan and, 861, 921, 942–944 Antietam, Battle of, 481–482, 481i, 484 Antinomian Crisis, 71 Antinomians, 70 Antisemitism early 20th century, 655; Russia and Eastern Europe, 650–651 Holocaust and, 821 U.S., in World War II, 773, 784, 786 Antiwar protests Vietnam War, 833, 885–886, 895, 896, 907 World War II, 773 Antrobus, John, 353 Anza, Juan Bautista de, 191–192, 191m Apaches alliances with whites, 153, 154 in Civil War, 480m, 495 Comanche raids on, 153–154 horses and, 152, 153m nuclear contamination and, 938 raids on neighboring Indians by, 87, 91 reservation status, 481, 519 resistance to whites, 190, 465, 518, 519 in Southwest, 679m treaties, 149–150 war with whites, 518, 519, 581 Apalachee, 52 Apartheid in South Africa activism against, 956 ending of, 923m, 956, 963 U.S. support for, 813, 906 Apex Mining Act (1872), 524 Apollo 8, 894–895 Apollo 11, 896i, 897 Appeasement, in World War II, 772 Appomattox Courthouse, 497 Arab Americans, civil liberties of, post-9/11 attacks, 1030 Arab oil embargo (1973-1974), 833, 913–914, 924–925 Arabic pledge, 686 Arafat, Yasser, 993 Arapahos in Civil War, 493 culture, 433 land loss by, 448, 609m removal of, 402m war with whites, 494, 494i, 518 Arbella (ship), 67 Arbenz, Jacobo, 852 Archaeology in Chile, 8 at Fort Mose, Florida, 137i Mississippi Valley, 15 in New Mexico, 5, 6 in South, 8, 9i, 11 Archaic era, 8–11 Architecture late 19th century, 554 early 20th century, 657 Greek Revival style, 377i Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1017 Arikaras horses and, 152, 153m Lewis and Clark and, 329 trade, 520 Aristide, Jean Bertrand, 993 Aristotle, 199–200 Arizona Native Americans rights in, 769 racial prejudice in, 646–647 settlement of, 91 statehood, 673 U.S. acquisition of, 424, 434, 447 Arizona Copper Co., 647, 647i Ark (ship), 73 Arkansas Little Rock school desegregation, 846–847 readmission to Union, 516 secession of, 466m, 468 Armed forces. See also Military budget 19th century, segregation in, 581 desegregation of, 801–802, 819 Armenia, immigration from, 19th century, 548, 550t Armey, Dick, 1029 Arms race in Cold War, 796–797, 832, 836 under Kennedy, 860 nuclear arms stockpiles, 904m–905m nuclear deterrence and, 850 Arms reduction treaties early 20th century, 722–723 in 1960s, 851 ABM treaty, 906 Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) treaty, 961 nuclear test ban treat of 1963, 862 Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties (SALT I and II), 906, 940 Armstrong, Neil, 896i, 897i Army Corps of Engineers, 1013 Army-McCarthy hearings, 821 Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), 876, 879 Arnold, Benedict in Revolutionary War, 222, 226, 233, 243m treason of, 220, 248 ARPANET, 1007 Arteaga, Ignacio de, 189m, 191 Arthur, Chester A., 564–565, 565 Articles of Confederation. See also Confederation government structure under, 236–237 passage of, 236–237 supplanting of, 281–282 Artificial sweetener, 916, 917 Artisans Early Republic, 312 industrialization and, 349i in politics, 312–315 ARU. See American Railway Union ARVN. See Army of the Republic of Vietnam Ashcan School, 657 Ashcroft, John, 999, 1030 Asher, Gad, 301–302 Ashley-Cooper, Anthony, Earl of Shaftsbury, 96, 107 Asia 19th century: immigration from, 548, 550t; trade, 629 20th century: anticolonialism in, 804, 822; immigration from, 648–650, 648m, 709, 728, 839–840, 957, 982, 1027; political change in, 824m Asian Americans, 20th century citizenship and, 822 family life, 839–840 in U.S. culture, 1018 Assiniboine Indians, 155 Associación Nacional México-Americana (ANMA), 844 Association(s) 18th century, 263, 310–311 as American characteristic, 291 professional, rise of, 542 women’s clubs, late 19th century, 624–625 Aswan Dam, 853–854 Atahualpa, 30 Atlanta, late 19th century, 612i INDEX I-5 ${bmicon} Atlanta, Sherman’s march to, 495, 496m Atlanta Compromise, 614 Atlantic Charter, 774 Atlantic slave trade, 118 16th century, 27, 28i, 40 17th century, 59, 81, 94, 118 African diaspora and, 396 African source regions, 127–129, 127, 128i, 130m–131m British colonies in, 130m–131m England and, 40, 94, 112–113, 126–127, 129, 130m–131m France and, 81, 118i, 129, 130m–131m Holland and, 59, 130m–131m importing regions, 130m–131m loading and unloading, 118i, 126i, 129, 132 Middle Passage, 126, 129–132, 219, 396 origins of, 20 Portugal in, 129, 130m–131m Revolutionary War and, 217, 272 size of, 125–126, 128, 145–146, 159 slave experiences in, 128i, 129–133, 219 Spain and, 27, 28i trade items used in, 125f, 128 Atlatl, 8 Atomic bomb. See also Nuclear arms bombing of Japan, 796–797, 797i development of, 795–796 Atomic Energy Commission, 815, 816 AT&T. See American Telephone and Telegraph The Attack of the Crab Monsters (film), 816 Attica prison riots (1971), 896i, 897 Attlee, Clement, 795 Attucks, Crispus, 207–208 Atwater, Lee, 963 Atwood, John, 384i Aucilla River, archaeological sites, 8 Audubon Society, 915, 948 Augusta Purveying Association, 488 Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, 785m Austerlitz, Battle of, 331 Austin, Moses, 363, 366m Austin, Stephen, 363–364, 366m Australia European contact with, 53 peopling of, 7, 8 Austria, post-World War II, occupation of, 811m Austria-Hungary late 19th century, immigration from, 612 and World War I: casualties in, 681f; causes of, 673; impact of, 694 Authority, challenges to, 17th century, 80 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Stein), 727 Automobiles in 1920s, 716 federal safety standards for, 872 fuel efficiency standards for, 925 number of, 717f; in 2000, 347 pollution and, 1015 sport utility vehicles, 1017, 1017i and Western growth, 819 The Awakening (Chopin), 617 Axis Pact, 771, 772 Ayllón, Lucas Vásquez, 30, 38m Aztecs, 11–12, 31 Spanish conquest of, 28–30, 36 B Babbitt (Lewis), 726 Babcock, Orville E., 532 Baby and Child Care (Spock), 817, 836 Baby boom, 817, 833, 843i as expression of optimism, 836 in historical context, 838f Backlash (Faludi), 952 Bacon, Nathaniel, 100–101, 122 Bacon’s Rebellion, 100–101 black involvement in, 122–123 Bad Axe River massacre, 379 Badoglio, Pietro, 791 Baez, Joan, 887 Baker, Howard, 908 Baker, Josephine, 714 Bakke case (1978), 931, 945 Bakker, Jim, 953 Balboa, Vasco Núñez de, 28 Baldwin, F. L., 463i Baldwin-Felts, 698 Balkans, in 1990s, ethnic violence in, 973, 993–994, 994m Ballinger, Richard A., 667 Baltimore, Lord, 73–74 Baltimore, Maryland mid-18th century, 163, 164i early 19th century, black population, 304 Baltimore Patriot, 338 Bambara, Samba, 137 Bandung Conference (1956), 851 Bank(s), Great Depression and, 729–731, 749–750, 749i Bank of United States first, 293–294, 336 second, 327, 364–365, 371; Jackson and, 374–376 Banks, Nathaniel, 504 Bannock Indians, 525 white encroachment on, late 19th century, 525 Baptist Church, in Early Republic, 311 Baranov, Alexander, 190 Barbary wars, 321, 322m Barceló, Gertrudis, 405 Barlow, Joel, 262 Barracoons, 128 Barré, Isaac, 196 Barry, Leonora, 590–591 Barton, Bruce, 725 Barton, Mary, 138 Bartram, John, 262–263 Bartram, William, 262–263, 262i, 263i Baseball late 19th century, 538i, 558 20th century: Black Sox, 698; immigration and, 1029; integration of, 807–808, 807i Baseball cards, 559i Basketball as American popular culture, 957i invention of, 617 Bass, Morris, 651 Bataan Death March, 792 Bates, Edward, 467 Bathtub gin, 707 Batista, Fulgencio, 852–853 Bauer, Sybil, 703 Baum, L. Frank, 562 Baumfree, Isabella. See Truth, Sojourner Baum’s Bazaar, 562 Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), 861–862 Bayard, Judith de Vos, 58i Baylor, John R., 480m Beamer, Todd, 1032 Beats, 854, 856 Beauregard, P. G. T., 471 Beecher, Catherine, 383, 415, 442–443 Beecher, Eunice, 526 Beecher, Henry Ward, 452–454, 526, 567 Begin, Menachem, 923 The Beginner’s American History, 5 Beissel, Conrad, 170 Belcher, Andrew, 107 Belgium Communist Party rise in, 804 immigration from, 435 loss of colonies, 770 Bell, Alexander Graham, 542, 1006 Bell, John, 457, 457t Bell Telephone, establishment of, 547 Bellamy, Edward, 592 Belle (ship), 84i Belleau Wood, Battle of, 690 Benedict, Ruth, 784 INDEX I-6 ${bmicon} Benezet, Anthony, 141 Benson, A. L., 685t Berger, Victor, 689 Bering, Vitus, 188–189, 188i, 189m Bering Land Bridge, 7, 7m Bering Straits, 7 Beringia, 7, 7m Berkeley, Lord John, 95 Berkeley, Sir William, 100–101, 100i Berle, Adolfe, 752 Berlin siege of (World War II), 792 post-World War II: Allied occupation of , 812; Soviet blockade of, 812 Berlin Wall construction of, 862 fall of, 942, 959, 963 Bernstein, Carl, 908 Berry, Chuck, 807, 855 Bessemer process, 543 Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 303 Bible and European view of Indians, 5, 71 Indian translation of, 71, 71i King James version, 66 Philadelphia Bible riots, 412, 413i Protestant Reformation and, 34 Bicycle, modern, introduction of, 543 Biddle, Francis, 776 Biddle, Grace, 319 Bidwell, John, and election of 1892, 619, 619t Bienville, 79, 86 Big Three, Versailles Treaty and, 694 Bight of Biafra, 127m, 129, 130m–131m Bigler, Henry William, 431 Bikini Islands, 815, 815i Bill Haley and the Comets, 855 Bill of Rights (England, 1689), 102 Bill of Rights (U.S.) debate over, 281 passage of, 284–285, 291–292 rights protected by, 285 Billboard, 807 Bin Laden, Osama, 967, 995, 1021, 1030 Bingham, George Caleb, 441i, 450i Bingham, Mark, 1032 Biosphere 2, 970i Bird, John, 400 Birmingham, Alabama civil rights march (1963), 863 Great Depression in, 756 Birney, James G., 410, 410t, 419t, 420 The Birth of a Nation (film by Griffith), 677, 710 Bison jumps, 8 Black Belt, 436 Black Codes, 506 Black Death plague (1350), 18 Black Elk, 546 Black Hawk, 378–379, 384–385, 439–440 Black Hawk War, 378–379, 392 Black Hills, 519–520 Black Kettle, 493–494, 494i, 518 Black Muslims, 867i, 884, 979 Black Panther party, 884, 919 Black Pioneers, 219 Black Power movement, 884–885 Black Scare, post-World War I, 698 Black Sox, 698 Black Star Line, 711 Black Tuesday, 729 Blackbeard, 106, 106i Blackfeet, 358i horses and, 152, 153m white encroachment on, 525 Blackstone Canal, 364m Blackwell, Henry, 527 Bladensburg, Battle of, 338 Blaine, James G., 565, 565t, 629 Blair, Montgomery, 467 Blair Mountain, Battle of, 698 Bleeding Kansas, 454 Blitzkrieg, 772 BLM. See Bureau of Land Management The Blob (film), 816 Bloody Marsh, Battle of, 144, 144m Bloomers, 466 Blue Water raid, 448 Blunt, Maria, 482 Board of National Popular Education, 415 Boardman, Elijah, 294i Boas, Franz, 676 Bob Jones University, 1026 Body and Soul (film), 715 Boesky, Ivan, 950 Boland Amendments (1982, 1984), 943, 961 Bolden, Charles “Buddy,” 658 Boll weevil, 608 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, 697 U.S. fear of, 697–698 World War I and, 690–692 Bonanza farms, 543i, 547 Bondelid, Almira, 783 Bonhomme Richard (ship), 242 Bonnin, Gertrude, 612–613 Bonsack, James, 579 Bontemps, Arna, 713–714 Bonus March, 748 Book of Mormon, 386 Boone, Daniel, 244, 244m, 266 Boot and Shoemakers’ White Labor League, 612 Booth, John Wilkes, 497 Border Ruffians, 452 Bork, Robert, 956 Bosnia, ethnic conflict in, 994, 994m Bosque Redondo internment camp, 495 Boston establishment of, 67 18th century: British siege of, 225–226; growth of, 163; social class in, 185–186; Stamp Act protest in, 197, 199; trade, 106 19th century: budget of, 557; ethnic diversity in, 439t; Irish in, 395 in 1970s, racial violence in, 912–913, 913i Boston City Guards, 396 Boston Duck and Sail Cloth Manufactory, 295 Boston Fruit Co., 547 Boston Indian Citizenship Committee, 596 Boston Marathon, 112 Boston marriages, 657 Boston Massacre, 207–208, 207i Boston Port Act (1774), 210 Boston Tea Party, 209–210 Boudinot, Elias, 401, 401i, 475 Bougainville, Louis Antoine de, 188 Bourke-White, Margaret, 741i Bourne, Randolph, 685 Bow, Clara, 712 Bowdoin, Governor, 275 Bowne, Eliza Southgate, 317 Boxer Rebellion, 665 Boxer Uprising, 633 Boxing 1930s celebrities in, 765 professionalization of, 558, 559 Boycotts 20th century, Taft-Hartley Act and, 808 in American Revolution, 200, 206–207, 211 Boyd, Belle, 488 Bozeman Trail, 393m Bracero program, 779, 819, 982 Braddock, Edward, 178 Bradford, William, 63 Bradley, Aaron, 501 Bradley, Omar, 828 Bradstreet, Anne, 69 Bradstreet, Simon, 69 Brady, James, 986 Brady Bill, 986 Brain Trust, 752 Branch Davidian compound, FBI assault on, 984 INDEX I-7 ${bmicon} Brandeis, Louis, 676, 762 Brando, Marlon, 854–855, 855i Brandywine Creek, Battle of, 232 Brandywine Springs Amusement Park, 558 Brant, Chief Joseph, 178–179, 245, 289, 289i, 290, 306 Brant, Molly, 178–179 Braun, Carol Moseley, 981 Bray, Thomas, 140–141 Brazil, European control of, 53, 59 Breckinridge, John C., 450, 457, 457t, 465 Breed’s Hill, 226 Brest-Litovsk Treaty (1918), 692 Bretton Woods monetary system, 911 Brewster, William, 63 Breyer, Stephen, 989, 997 Brezhnev, Leonid, 904, 906 Briand, Aristide, 724 Bright Eyes, 596 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 417 Brock, Isaac, 336 Brook Farm, 418 Brooklyn Bridge, 555i Brooks, Preston S., 454 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 786 Browere, Albertis, 414i Brown, Ed, 727–728 Brown, H. Rap, 884 Brown, Jacob, 337 Brown, James, 855 Brown, Jere A., 593 Brown, John (of Ohio), 454, 456–458, 456i, 466 Brown, John (of Rhode Island), 208 Brown, Joseph, 474 Brown, Michael, 916 Brown, Moses, 294, 380 Brown, William, 698 Brown, William Henry, 365m Brown, Willie Mae, 728 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 845–846, 845i, 872–873 implementation of, 846–847 Bruce, Blanche K., 515 Bryan, Charles W., 723 Bryan, William Jennings and election of 1896, 621–622, 622t and election of 1900, 635, 663, 663t and election of 1908, 666, 666t Scopes trial and, 720–722, 721i World War I and, 686 Bryan-Chamorro Treaty (1916), 675 Bryant, William Cullen, 386–387 Bubonic plague, 17th century, 52–53 Buchanan, James and election of 1856, 450, 451t Lecompton Constitution and, 454 Buchanan, Pat, 955 Buchenwald camp, 785m, 795i Buck, Carrie, 720 Buck, Doris, 720 Buffalo extermination of, 518i, 546, 546i Indian uses for, 547t Buffalo soldiers, 581–582, 581i, 582m Buffon, Comte de, 263 Buford (ship), 698 Bulge, Battle of, 792 Bull Moose party, 667 Bull Run, First Battle of, 471 Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 838 Bully pulpit, 663 Bunker, Archie, 893 Bunker Hill, Battle of, 225–226 Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 683m, 947 Bureau of Reclamation, 1013 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 501 Burford, Robert, 947 Burger, Warren, 898 Burgoyne, John, 229i, 232–233, 240 surrender of, 233, 233i Burke, Aedanus, 260–261 Burlingame, Anson, 521 Burlingame Treaty (1868), 521 Burned-Over District, 385 Burnside, Ambrose E., 488 Burnside’s Slaughter Pen, 488 Burr, Aaron duel with Hamilton, 333 and election of 1796, 298, 298t and election of 1800, 319, 319t Burroughs, George, 105 Bush, George H. W. background of, 963 as CIA director, 922 and election of 1992, 987, 988, 988t environmental policies, 948 foreign policy, 967 Panama intervention and, 369, 964–965 Persian Gulf War and, 965 and Soviet Union collapse, 964 on supply-side economics, 945 Supreme Court appointments, 963, 981 in World War II, 780i Bush, George W., 797 Al Qaeda detention and, 368 campaign financing and, 1012 and election of 2000, 973, 995–997, 996, 1026 environmental policy, 347 policies of, 999, 1017 on terrorism, 1030 Bush, Jeb, 996 Business. See also Corporations; Industry 18th century, enthusiasm for, 294–295 late 19th century: development of national markets, 547; innovations in, 546–548; mass merchandising, 560–563; mergers and integrations, 547–548; size of firms, 553 20th century: flight overseas, 911–912, 951, 977, 977i, 1005; globalization and, 1006–1009; regulation of, 681; World War I earnings, 688–689 in 1920s, 740 in 1930s, 740, 756, 764 in 1980s, 949–950, 952 Busing, court-ordered, 873, 895, 898 backlash against, 912–913, 913i Butler, Benjamin, 478 Butler, John, 245 Butler, Pierce, 278 Butler Act (Tennessee, 1925), 720–721 Butterfield, Alexander, 908 Butterfly ballot, 996, 997i Byrd, William, 80, 124 C Cabarets, 656 Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez, 30, 33, 38m Cabinet, first woman in, 752 Cable News Network (CNN), 1007 Cabot, John, 24, 38 Cactus Hill, Virginia, 8, 9i Caddoan cultures, 152, 153m Cadillac, Monsieur, 86, 91 Cahokia, 15–16 Cajuns, origins of, 162 Calendar(s) in Mesoamerica, 12 in Mississippi Valley culture, 15 Calhoun, John C., 424i on Mexican conquest, 423–424 nullification and, 374 slavery and, 362–363, 446 on tariffs, 349 as vice president, 363, 368 California. See also Los Angeles; San Francisco exploration and colonization of: by England, 40, 75m; by Europeans, 90–91; by Spain, 47–49, 48m, 190–192, 190i, 191m, 255, 307i, 378 INDEX I-8 ${bmicon} 18th century, smallpox epidemic, 255 19th century: African Americans in, 431–433; China Exclusion Act and, 565; discrimination against Chinese, 565, 575–578; gold rush in, 431, 431i, 454–455; immigration to, 552, 649, 650; migration to, 431–432; mining in, 545; Native Americans in, 432–433, 522; slavery and, 446–447; statehood, 432, 433; U.S. acquisition of, 368, 422, 424, 431 20th century: anti-Asian legislation, 674; defense spending and, 973–974; energy crisis in, 1014; ethnicity in, 982, 1027; federal lands in, 947m; immigration to, 685, 709; Latino population, 972; military spending and, 818–819, 825i; politics in, 758–759; Proposition 13, 944–945; Proposition 187, 982; Proposition 227, 982; voting rights, 661 California Trail, 393 Californios, rights of, 434 Calley, William, 880 Calumet and Hecla Mining Co., 547 Calusas, 28 Calvert, George, 73 Calvin, John, 35 Calvinists, 65 Calyo, Nicolino, 412i Cambodia USS Mayaguez incident, 909–910 Vietnam War and, 896, 907 Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 17th century, 69i Camden, Battle of, 247, 247m Cameron, Lucille, 660 Cameron, Simon, 467 Camp, William, 558–559 Camp Cedar Grove, 626 Camp David Accords, 923–924 Camp meetings, 385i Camp Weld, 494i Campaign financing, in 2000s, 1012 Campbell, Ben Nighthorse, 988 Campbell, John, 972 Campbell, Tunis G., 515 Campus Crusade for Christ, 886–887, 887i, 953 Canada 17th century: British colonization in, 95; French migration from, 86; French policy in, 81–82 18th century: African Americans in, 219–220; American Revolution and, 221, 222, 226, 228–229, 232–233, 251; English in, 267, 290, 293, 297, 306 19th century: border and, 341; English in, 335; Underground Railroad and, 459m; War of 1812 and, 336 20th century: immigration from, 685; trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m Canals construction of, 313, 363, 364m technology of, 296i, 346 Canned food, introduction of, 543 Cannibals All! (Fitzhugh), 452 Canoes, European adoption of, 82 Canty, Hattie, 977, 1004 Cape Coast Castle, 129, 132i Capece, Yvonne Young, 1031 Capital gains taxes, in 1980s, 945 Capitalism 19th century, opposition to, 573–575, 586, 588, 591–592 20th century: characteristics of, 1005–1006; environmental impact of, 1009; opposition to, 678, 756, 757; public opinion of, 1009; U.S. commitment to, 809 cyclical nature of, 739 Capone, Al, 707 Caravels, 19 Carey, Hugh, 916 Carey, Mathew, 261 Caribbean British trade restrictions in, post-Revolution, 271–272, 274 European arrival in, 21, 23 French colonies in, 235 immigration from, 1027 slavery and, 116–117, 127–128, 130m–131m, 145 Spanish-American War in, 632, 633m U.S. interests in, 674–675, 675m Caribs, 21, 22, 26 Carleton, James H., 481 Carlisle, Lord, 235 Carlisle Commission, 235 Carlisle Indian boarding school, 597, 605, 605i, 612–613 Carlos II, King of Spain, 84–85 Carlos III, King of Spain, 190 Carmichael, Stokely, 884 Carnahan, Mel, 999 Carnegie, Andrew, 540, 547, 568, 568i, 618, 634 Carnegie Steel Co., 618 Carolina colonies. See also North Carolina; South Carolina establishment of, 96 growth of, 107–109 settlement of, 95 slavery in, 96 trade and, 92 unrest in, 18th century, 107–109, 203–205 Carpetbaggers, 507 Carranza, Venustiano, 676 Carrington, Morris, 622 Carson, Rachel, 856, 857, 857i, 872 Carter, Jimmy, 922i Arab oil embargo and, 924–926 domestic policies, 921–922 and election of 1976, 921, 921t and election of 1980, 941, 941t as emissary, 993 energy policy, 925–926 foreign policy, 922–924, 939–940 political style of, 921–922, 922i in World War II, 780i Carter, Robert, 304 Carter, Rosalynn, 921 Carter Doctrine, 941 Carteret, Sir George, 95 Cartier, Jacques, 30–32, 34m, 38m Cary’s Rebellion, 107 Casey, William, 943, 962 Casinos in Las Vegas, 1004 Native Americans and, 974–975, 974i, 1027 Cass, Lewis, 401, 446, 446t Cassettari, Rosa, 551–552 Cassettari, Santino, 551–552 Castle Garden, 551 Castro, Fidel, 369 and Bay of Pigs invasion, 861–862 Cold War and, 852–853 U.S. assassination attempts, 919, 920, 920i Catawba Indians, 242 Catcher in the Rye (Salinger), 855 Cathay, 18 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, 257 Catholicism 17th century: English monarchy and, 66, 67; in Maryland colonies, 73–74; missions, 51–53, 53m, 80; in New France, 82; Protestant fear of, 80, 84, 101–102, 103; Pueblo Revolt and, 87–90, 87i; slavery and, 117 18th century: in Africa, 129; in INDEX I-9 ${bmicon} Canada, British toleration of, 210; missions, 83m, 86, 90–91, 92, 191, 191m, 255, 307i, 308–309; Protestant fear of, 138, 162, 180i 19th century: immigration and, 395, 411–412; Protestant fear of, 411–412, 448; religious instruction in, 614 20th century: eugenics and, 720; first presidential candidate, 724; Protestant fear of, 724, 821, 953 Cato, 201 Cato’s Letters: Essays on Liberty (Trenchard and Gordon), 201–202 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 677–678 Cattle, introduction to new world, 51 Cattle drives, 523–524 Cattle ranching in colonial Florida, 92 railroads and, 523 social conflict and, 573–574 Cavaliers, 120 Cayuga Indians, 245. See also Iroquois Confederacy Cayuse Indians, 404–405 CCC. See Civilian Conservation Corps Celebrities in 1920s, 704 in 1930s, 765, 765i Cell phones, impact of, 1007 Census of 1790, 290 of 2000: demographic data, 1024; ethnic identity in, 983, 1025 reapportionment and, 280 representation and, 279 Central America, 20th century U.S. foreign policy in, 943, 943i U.S. intervention in, 368–369 Central Europe, post-World War II, Soviet domination of, 809 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) abuses of power by, 907–908, 919, 920, 920i under Carter, 922 Cold War operations, 851–852, 853 creation of, 826 in Iran, 939, 939i Iran-Contra scandal and, 962 under Nixon, 907–908 under Reagan, 942–943 Central Pacific Railroad, 517, 517i, 522i Century Magazine, 563i A Century of Dishonor (Jackson), 565–566 Chaco Canyon, 13–14 Chain gangs, 453 Champlain, Samuel de, 46i, 54, 55i Chan Young, 576 Chancellorsville, Battle of, 488 Chaney, James, 884 Chaplin, Charlie, 763 Chapman, John Gadsby, 359i Character, American in 2000s, 1024–1029 origins of, 607 Charbonneau, Toussaint, 329–330 Charity, in Great Depression, 747 Charity girls, 657 Charles I, King of England beheading of, 70, 92 Catholicism of, 66, 67 colonies and, 60, 64, 73 Charles II, King of England African trade and, 126 and Cavaliers, 120–121 colonial policy of, 94, 95 death of, 101 restoration of, 92–93 Charles V, King of Spain, 32 Charleston, South Carolina, post-Civil War, 501, 501i Charleston (dance), 703 Charter of Liberties (1683), 95 Charter of Privileges (Pennsylvania, 1701), 96 Charter of Punta del Este (1961), 861 Chase, Salmon P., 467 Chase, Samuel, 241, 283 Chastain, Brandi, 1026i Château-Thierry, Battle of, 690 Chávez, Cesar, 787, 890, 892, 897i Chemical industry, late 20th century, environmental impact of, 1016 Cheney, Dick, 956, 995, 1017 Cheraw District, 224–225 Chernobyl nuclear accident, 948, 956, 959 Cherokee Female Seminary, 415, 612 Cherokee language, written form of, 378, 378i Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), 372–373 Cherokee Outlet, opening to settlers, 608, 609m Cherokee Phoenix, 378, 401, 401i Cherokees. See also Five Civilized Tribes 18th century: American Revolution and, 217, 220; assimilation of, 307–308; British chastening of, 192; homeland, 265m; resistance, 266; Revolutionary War and, 246; slavery practiced by, 310; trade, 166; treaties, 194; white encroachment and, 244; Yamasee War and, 109 19th century: assimilation of, 371, 377, 378; census data, 371, 372f; in Civil War, 474–475; culture of, 318, 343, 433; land sales by, 343; leadership of, 344; removal of, 371–373, 373m, 401–402, 402m; and War of 1812, 338 Cherry Valley slayings, 245 Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 364m Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, 364m Chesapeake Bay region. See also Maryland; Virginia colonization of, 36–37, 45–46, 60–62, 71–74 economy of: 18th century, 163–164, 165m, 166–167; 19th century, 350, 351i overfishing in, 19th century, 545 planter elite in, rise of, 123–124 slavery in, 118, 120–121, 123–124, 124–125, 133 Chesapeake (ship), 332–333 Chesnut, Mary Boykin, 467, 484 Cheyenne Indians assimilation of, 584 culture of, 151i land loss by, 448, 609m removal of, 402m reservation status, 518 resistance by, 465 and Sand Creek massacre, 493–494, 494i war with whites, 494, 518, 581 wardship status, 521i in World War II, 790 Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), 793, 823 Chicago late 19th century: design and architecture of, 557; economy of, 554–555; Haymarket bombing, 593–594; immigration to, 552; World’s Fair (Columbian Exposition; 1893), 606, 607, 629 20th century: migration to, 684; organized crime, 707; segregation in, 662; World War II and, 779, 784 Hull House in, 598, 625, 660 Chicago Defender, 684 Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, 557 Chicamaugas, 265m, 266–267 Chicano, as term, 890 Chicano Moratorium, 890 INDEX I-10 ${bmicon} Chickasaws. See also Five Civilized Tribes assimilation of, 307–308, 378 in Civil War, 475 homeland of, 265m removal of, 401 resistance by, 266 and War of 1812, 338 Child, Lydia Maria, 413 Child labor laws, 659, 659i, 683 Childhood late 18th century, 316i mid-19th century, 414i early 20th century, 659i mid-20th century, 817, 836 in 1990s: obesity and, 986, 986i, 987f; violence and, 985–986 Children’s Bureau, 678 Chile, in 1970s, U.S. intervention in, 906 Chin, Vincent, 912 China pre-1800: European contact with, 18, 25; ocean exploration by, 17, 24m–25m; trade, 18 18th century, trade, 188–189, 257, 272 19th century: Boxer Uprising, 633, 665; immigration from, 396, 431, 432, 517i, 520–522, 522i, 530–531, 548, 549, 550t, 551m, 564–565; Open Door policy and, 633; trade, 633 20th century: Cold War and, 826i; communist revolution in, 812, 822–823; immigration from, 648–649, 648m, 674, 709, 779, 982, 1028; Korean War and, 827–830; Nationalist revolution in, 674, 793; nuclear arms stockpiles, 904m–905m; trade, 992; U.S. relations, 822–823, 903–906, 903i, 1021, 1023m; Vietnam War and, 878; war with Japan, 772, 773; World War II and, 770, 793, 803 in 2000s, trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m The China Syndrome (film), 925, 925i Chinatown, San Francisco, 554, 644, 648 Chinese-Americans, late 19th century discrimination against, 521, 575–578 mission homes and, 625 prostitution and, 599 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 823 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 565, 575–576, 648–649, 648m, 779 Chinese Exclusion Act (1902), 648m, 649 Chinese Nationalists, 823 Chippewa, Battle of, 337, 337m Chippewa Indians, 244m, 245, 981 Chisholm Trail, 523–524 Chivington, John M., 493–494, 494i Chocktaws. See also Five Civilized Tribes alliances with whites, 137 assimilation of, 307–308, 378 in Civil War, 475 in French and Indian War, 178 homeland of, 265m removal of, 401 resistance by, 266 trade, 18th century, 86 and War of 1812, 338 Cholera, late 19th century, 557 Chopin, Kate, 617 Chrichlow, Ernest, 834i Christian Broadcasting Network, 952 Christian Science, 617 Christianity. See also Catholicism; Fundamentalist Christians; Protestantism in 15th century, Islamic conflicts, 18, 19, 20 in 16th century: Native Americans and, 26–27, 31, 37, 49–51, 50i; Protestant Reformation, 34–36, 60 in 17th century, Native Americans and, 87, 87i, 97–98 20th century: in 1960s, 886–887, 887i; missionaries, 822–823 “African” churches, 303, 311, 379–380 slavery and, 117, 121, 139, 140–141, 385–386 Chumash, 308–309, 378 Chunkey, 15 Church, Frank, 919, 920, 942 Church, Frederic Edwin, 629 Church of Christ, Scientist, 617 Church of England in colonies, 171, 203 dissenters from, 64–66 establishment of, 35 slavery and, 139 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. See Mormons Church Rock, New Mexico, nuclear contamination, 925, 937 Churchill, Winston Atlantic Charter and, 774 on iron curtain, 810 loss of office, 804 World War II and: peace settlement, 795; strategy, 790 Churubusco, Battle of, 423 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency Cibola, 33, 34m Cigar Makers’ International Union, 594 Cincinnati, 19th century, 409 Cincinnati Daily Commercial, 454. See also Society of the Cincinnati Cinqué, 410 CIO. See Congress of Industrial Organizations Cipangu, 21 Circular Letter (1768), 206 Cisneros, Henry, 419, 958 Cities 18th century: growth of, 163–164, 168; poor in, 169 19th century: black migration to, 400, 579; culture of, 554, 618; design and architecture in, 554, 556; financial problems in, 557; growth of, 554–555, 555–557, 569; poverty in, 594–595, 595i; rural opinions on, 588 20th century: first black mayor, 885; growth of, 642, 711–712, 711i, 712f; immigration and, 645; migration to, 638, 747f; population, 983m; suburban growth and, 841 Citizen 13660 (Okubo), 99 Citizenship 18th century: qualifications for, 292i; race and, 300, 302; in Spanish colonies, 308 19th century: freed slaves and, 506; Native Americans and, 596; requirements for, 327 20th century, 1029; Asians and, 674, 822; for Native Americans, 280; race and, 654–655 City government, late 19th century, 557 “Civil Disobedience” (Thoreau), 200, 422 Civil disorders, in war, 490–491 Civil liberties for Arab-Americans, post-9/11, 1030 in Cold War, 300–301 under Warren Court, 873 in World Wars I and II, 300, 689 Civil Rights Act (1875), 532, 565, 576 Civil Rights Acts (1964, 1965), 833, 870–871 Civil Rights Bill (1866), 506 Civil Rights Cases, 565 Civil rights movement early 20th century, 638 in 1940s, World War II and, 788–790 in 1950s, 847–848, 848m in 1960s, 848m, 883–885; backlash against, 892–893 INDEX I-11 ${bmicon} in 1970s, 912–913 Johnson and, 870–871 Kennedy and, 859, 863 Nixon and, 895 Reagan and, 945 Roosevelt (F.D.) and, 764 Truman and, 819 voting rights and, 280 Civil Service desegregation of, 819 reform, late 19th century, 565 Civil Service Commission, establishment of, 565 Civil War as agrarian revolt, 591 battles and skirmishes: 1861-1862, 467, 471, 471i, 475; 1862-1864, 478, 479, 481–482, 481i, 488–490, 489m, 492; 1864-1865, 495–497, 496m; Black soldiers in, 493, 493m blockade of South, 468, 471, 472; resistance to, 482–483 casualties, 497; at Antietam, 481i; causes of, 482; at Fredericksburg, 488; at Gettysburg, 489 civil disorders in, 488, 490 and disease, 479, 482 and emancipation, 478 events leading to, 444–458 impact on South, 502, 503 prisoners of war in, 495 profiteers in, 477 railroads and, 346 veterans’ pensions, 618 Civil Works Administration (CWA), 752t, 753–754 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 752t, 754 Clamshell Alliance, 916 The Clansman (Dixon), 710 Clark, George Rogers, 244m, 246 Clark, Harvey E., 807 Clark, Kenneth, 845 Clark, Tom, 820 Clark, William, 329, 331i Clark Amendment (1976), 919 Clark Field, 775 Clarke, John, 148i Class struggle late 19th century, 618–622; consumer culture and, 586; contempt for poor and, 595; ethnicity and, 593; mitigating forces, 622–624; worker-middle class alliances in, 591–592 20th century: Cold War and, 839; protest movements and, 892–893; post-World War II, 808; World War II and, 781 Clay, Cassius. See Ali, Muhammad Clay, Henry and election of 1824, 368–369, 369 and election of 1832, 376, 376t and election of 1836, 406 and election of 1840, 407i and election of 1844, 419t, 420 on Native Americans, 377–378 North-South compromise and, 362, 374, 446 War of 1812 and, 340 Clay, Joseph, 272 Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), 683 Clayton-Bulwer-Treaty (1850), 447 Clean Air Act (1963), 872 Clean Air Act (1990s), 972 Clean Air Act Amendments (1970), 895 Clean Waters Act (1966), 872 Clean Waters Act Amendments (1972), 895 Clear and present danger standard, 689 Clemenceau, Georges, 694 Clemens, Samuel. See Twain, Mark Clermont (ship), 345 Cleveland, Grover and election of 1884, 565, 565t and election of 1888, 566–567, 567t and election of 1892, 619, 619t and election of 1896, 621 Monroe Doctrine and, 630 policies of, 566–567 unions and, 620 Cliff Palace, 13i, 14–15 Clifford, Clark, 862, 905–906 Climate change Ice Age, 7–8, 7m 14th century, 18 Clinton, George, 283, 292, 331, 331t Clinton, Hilary Rodham, 516, 891i, 987, 988–989, 999 Clinton, Sir Henry, 219, 228, 236, 239, 242, 246–247, 247m Clinton, William Jefferson “Bill,” 516, 516i affirmative action and, 1025 background and early career, 987 cabinet of, 988 campaign financing and, 1012 domestic policies, 988–990 and election of 1992, 987, 988, 988t and election of 1996, 990, 990t environmental policy, 1017 foreign policy, 991–995 impeachment of, 516, 909, 987, 990–991 media and, 751, 751i and Republican Revolution, 989–990 scandals, 990–991 Supreme Court appointments, 989 trade policy, 934–935 in Vietnam, 993 Cloning, 987 Cloverleafs, 818i Clovis points, 6 CNN. See Cable News Network Code talkers, 769, 769i, 793 Cody, William “Buffalo Bill,” 537, 559–560, 560i, 605 Coercive Acts (1774), 210–212 Coeur d’Alene, gold rush in, 541 Coffles, 128, 129 Cofitachequi, 33 Cohens v. Virginia (1821), 371 COINTELPRO, 919 Coit Tower (San Francisco), 760i Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 81–82 Cold War in 1980s, 942–944 arms race in, 796–797, 832, 836 in Asia, 824m civil liberties in, 300–301 class conflict in, 839 covert operations in, 919 (See also Central Intelligence Agency) cultural struggle in, 835–836, 835i, 838–839 culture in, 802, 816–822, 832, 836 discrimination and, 844 domino theory and, 827 Eisenhower and, 850–854 end of, 934, 938, 959–961, 963–967 Europe divided by, 811m, 813m McCarthyism in, 820–821 and national security state, establishment of, 823–826 Nixon and, 903–906 origins of, 801, 809–810, 814 Reagan and, 861, 959–961 roots of, in World War I, 692 space exploration and, 832, 836, 850 spheres of influence in, 852m–853m in Third World, 850, 851 United Nations and, 696 U.S. covert operations in, 851 (See also Central Intelligence Agency) USS Cole, 995 Colfax, Schuyler, 531 Coligny, Gaspard de, 36 Collective bargaining rights late 19th century, 590 early 20th century, 679 in 1930s, 756, 759 post-World War II, 808 Collier, John, 755, 755i, 769 INDEX I-12 ${bmicon} Collier’s, 641, 659 Colonialism, post-World War II collapse of, 812–815, 824m, 832 discrediting of, 804 Colonies, British in mid-18th century, 198m advertising in, 561 Bacon’s Rebellion, 100–101 culture of, 106–107 diversity of population in, 157, 161–163, 220 energy needs of, 914 extent of (1775), 216 growth of, 93–96; ethnic diversity and, 157, 161–163, 220; immigration, 113, 159–160; natural increase, 157–158; slave population, 159, 161; urban areas, 163–164, 168 identification with North America, 186 King William and Queen Anne’s wars in, 105–107 and Native Americans, conflict with, 96–100, 192–194 oppressive measures against, 194–196, 205–207, 210–211 Pontiac’s War and, 186, 192–194, 198m population, by age and gender, 158f ports, 163, 165m, 169 printing and publishing in, 170, 199 regional economies, 164–169, 165m religion (See also Puritans); diversity in, 170–171; fears of established Church, 203; Great Awakening, 170, 171–174, 174–175 revolt of (See American Revolution) taxes, 106 trade, 93–94, 106 Colonization. See also Colonies, British; individual nations push and pull factors in, 73f of space, 64 Colorado Indian population, 679m women’s voting rights and, 601 Colorado Cottage Home, 599 Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., 679 Colored Citizens of Norfold, Virginia, 511 Colored Farmers’ Alliance, 588 Colored Masons, 580 Colored National Labor Union, 529 Colored Odd Fellows, 580 Columbia, as term, 261 Columbia (ship), 272–273, 273i Columbia University, 261 Columbian Exchange, 24–25, 26m–27m Florida Indians and, 91–92 Columbian Exposition (1893), 606, 607, 629 Columbian Magazine, 261, 277i Columbine High School shootings, 985 Columbus, Bartolomew, 23 Columbus, Christopher impact of, 2–3 post-Revolution lionizing of, 261 reputation of, 5 voyages of, 21–23, 22m, 24m–25m, 39 Comanchería, 152, 154, 156m Comanches in Civil War, 475 horses and, 90 removal of, 402m resistance by, 190 rise to power of, 152–154 slave trade and, 154 trade, 154–155 war with whites, 518, 581 “Comfort women,” 793 Comintern, 697 Command of the Army Act (1867), 514 Commissioners from Edisto Island, 508–509 Committee of Fifteen, 532 Committee of Public Safety, 211 Committee on Public Information (CPI), 688 Committee on the Philippines, 634–635 Committee to Alleviate the Miseries of the Poor, 169 Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), 907 Committees of Correspondence, 186, 201, 208 Common man. See also Workers post-Revolution, debt and, 257, 270–271, 273–276, 277 19th century: economic plight of, 528; fear of free black competition, 400, 400i, 409, 438, 449, 454–455 and Constitution, design of, 278 Jackson as champion of, 367, 370, 388 Common Sense (Paine), 226–227 Communes, in 1960s, 887 Communication(s) 19th century, 542, 1006 early 20th century, 673 late 20th century, 1006–1008 history of, 1006–1007 Communism. See also Containment policy; Red scare post-World War I, spread of, 694 in 1930s: increased interest in, 739, 756; New Deal and, 764 in 1940s: Chinese revolution, 822–823; increased interest in, 804, 809 in 1950s, Cuban revolution, 852–853 in Cold War: McCarthyism and, 820–821; U.S. fear of, 802 as economic system, 739 in U.S., history of, 860–861 Communist bloc, 824m Communist Party, in 1930s increased interest in, 756 Scottsboro Boys and, 744 strategy of, 756 Communists, civil liberties of, in Cold War, 300–301 Communitarian experiments, mid-19th century, 416–417, 418 Company towns, 556 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (1986), 956 Compromise of 1850, 432–433, 446–447 Compromise of 1877, 532, 533m Comstock, Anthony, 527–528 Comstock, Sarah, 641 Comstock Law (1873), 527–528 Concord, Battle of, 112, 212m, 213, 221 Conestoga Indians, 193 Confederacy black Union soldiers and, 493, 493m capital of, 468 challenges faced by, 463–465, 471–474 conscription in, 472–473 currency of, 472 diplomacy of, 483–484, 492 economy of, 467, 472, 476, 495; industrial base, 472, 488 formation of, 465 hardship in, 487–488 internal opposition in: from blacks, 429, 463–465, 484–485; from whites, 429, 469, 476, 487–488 morale in, 464, 471i secession, 466m; Alabama secession convention, 465, 468f; reasons for, 465–469 in Southwest, 474–476, 480m, 481 and States’ Rights, 471–472, 495 strategy of, 428, 469–470, 497 support for, by region, 464m women in, 464, 471i, 481–482, 482i, 488 Confederate Army desertion from, 488 INDEX I-13 ${bmicon} enlistments in, 472–474 Indians and, 474–476, 480m social class in, 474 soldiers in, 475f strategy of, 471 surgeons in, 469i Confederate flag, in late 20th century, 1027 Confederate Territory of Arizona, 472 Confederation. See also Articles of Confederation culture in, 257, 262–263 economy in, 270–276; debt and, 270–271; trade and, 271–273 Indian policy, 267 place renaming in, 261–262 Southern border of, 265m war debt of, 257, 258, 270; and political unrest, 270–271, 273–276, 277; speculators in, 273, 275f weaknesses of, 257, 271, 275–276, 277 westward territories and, 264–267 The Confessions of Nat Turner (Gray), 381 Confiscation Act, Second (1862), 484 Congo-Angola, slave trade and, 127m, 129, 130m–131m Congo Square, 353–354 Congregationalism, 65 Congress post-Civil War: Black members of, 514i; Confederates in, 506; Reconstruction policies, 506–507, 513–517, 513m 19th century, “Billion-Dollar” (fifty-first), 618 post-Civil War: Black members of, 514i; Confederates in, 506; Reconstruction policies, 506–507, 513–517, 513m 20th century: Committee on the Philippines, 634–635; first black senator, 981; first female member of, 677; first Indian senator, 988; power of, 918–920; scandals in, 972; shutdown of government, 990 early 19th century, political division in, 333–334 and election of 2000, 999 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1930s: activism of, 762–764; establishment of, 762 post-World War II, communist influence in, 808 Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), freedom rides and, 848, 848m Connecticut colonization of, 70 Metacom’s War and, 99 slave population, mid-18th century, 134m voting rights: of African Americans, 380; late 18th century, 312f Western reserve, 267, 271m Connecticut Wits, 262 Conner, Howard, 769 Connor, Bull, 863 The Conqueror (film), 816 Conquistadors, 28, 32–33 Conscription in World War I, 688, 689 in 1960s, resistance to, 885–886, 922 late 20th century, women and, 929 in Confederacy, 472–473 Conservationism. See also Environmentalism late 19th century, 608–609 early 20th century, 667, 683; Roosevelt (F.D.) and, 754; vs. preservationism, 665 Conservatives, late 20th century and election of 1980, 941–942 factions in, 953–954 on immigration, 958 impact of, 967–968 policy goals of, 938 rise of, 892–893, 893i, 934 Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnati (Burke), 260–261 Constitution, U.S. design of, 278–279 implied powers in, 371 ratification of, 281–284, 282i representation in, 279, 280 slavery and, 279–281 and voting rights, 998 Constitution(s), state, creation of, 237–238 Constitution (Atlanta newspaper), 578 Constitutional Convention of 1787, 278–281 origins of, 275–278 political context of, 264 Constitutional Union party, 457, 457t Consumer culture late 19th century, rise of, 536, 541, 558–563 in 1920s, 716, 725–726, 727 mid-20th century, 816, 837–839 in 1960s, 836, 887 in 1970s, 916 in 1980s, 936i in 1990s, 972 late 20th century, global spread of, 1018 and fall of Soviet Union, 959 Consumer protection movement early 20th century, 659 in 1960s, 871–872 Containment policy, 810–812 China and, 823 Korean War and, 825, 827, 829 Nixon and, 895 Truman and, 809 Vietnam War and, 873, 875 Continental Army African Americans in, 241, 302 demobilization of, 258–260 discipline of, 231 formation of, 221 morale of, 230, 240 mutiny in, 248 pay and pensions for, 258–260, 266, 267 tensions in, 238–239 training and provision of, 230, 240, 240i at Valley Forge, 232, 239, 240–241, 240i Continental Congress first, 211–213; call for, 210–211 as misnomer, 186 second: Articles of Confederation and, 236; call for, 213; war preparations, 222, 241 on Western territories, 264 Continental Navy, 241–242 Contraception early 20th century, activism for, 678 in 1960s, 836, 888 post-World War II, 817–818 the Pill, 836, 888 Supreme Court on, 873 Contract with America, 989–990, 989i Contras, Nicaraguan, 943, 961–963 Convention of 1800, 298–299 Convention of 1818, 341 Conventions, party, introduction of, 361 Convict labor, 453 19th century, 579 Conway, Thomas, 239 Conway Cabal, 239 Conyers, John, 120 Coode, John, 103 Cook, James, 187i, 188, 189m, 630 Cooke, Jay, 525 Coolidge, Calvin on business, 722 and election of 1924, 723–724, 723t and election of 1928, 724 as President, 723–724 INDEX I-14 ${bmicon} Coolies, 432 Cooper, James Fenimore, 386 Copley, John Singleton, 205i Copperheads, 482, 490 Copyright law, 18th century, 262 Coral Sea, Battle of, 792 CORE. See Congress on Racial Equality Corey, Giles, 105 Corn. See also Maize work hours per bushel, late 19th century, 619t Corn Laws, 418 Cornstalk, 245 Cornwallis, Charles, 230–231, 246–247, 247m, 248 Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 30, 33, 34m, 38m Coronation Day, 303 Corporations. See also Business late 19th century, rise of, 536, 539–540, 546–548, 553t 20th century: antitrust suits, 974; capitalism and, 1005–1006; executive compensation, 976; flight overseas, 911–912, 951, 977, 977i, 1005; multinational expansion, 832, 974; taxation of, 681, 945, 1009; World War I earnings, 688–689 Corregidor, 792 Correspondence schools, 614 Corruption in Reconstruction, 515 late 19th century, in localgovernment , 531–532, 531i, 557 spoils system and, 370 Cortés, Hernán, 28, 29i, 30 Cortina, Juan, 435, 440 Cortina’s War, 434–435 Cotton, John, 68 Cotton, work hours per bushel, late 19th century, 619t Cotton economy expansion of, 363, 399m impact of, 436 industrialization and, 349 and Northeastern industry, 294 post-Civil War, 578–579, 578i, 579m production and export, 295f, 418 rise of, 331, 350–355 slavery and, 217, 295–296, 310, 350–351, 436 tariffs and, 374 Cotton gin, 294, 350 Cotton plantations, 217, 350–355 19th century: labor on, 548i; labor supply for, 549; sharecropping system, 510–511, 510i black life and labor on, 310, 351–353, 365i post-Civil War, sharecropping system, 510–511, 510i soil depletion and, 444 Coughlin, Charles E., 757–758 Councils for Trade and Plantations, 95 Counter-Reformation, 34, 35–36, 55 Counterblaste to Tobacco (James I), 62 Counting coup, 152 Country Club Plaza, 725 Court of Private Land Claims, 574, 608 Coverture, 95 Cowboys African Americans as, 523 labor unrest by, 592 Cowpens, Battle of, 247m, 248–249 Cox, Archibald, 908 Cox, James M., 723t Coxey, Jacob S., 620 Coxey’s Army, 620 CPI. See Committee on Public Information Craft, Ellen, 408 Craft, William, 408 Crafus, Richard, 336i Crandall, Prudence, 409 Crane, Stephen, 617 Crawford, William H., 369t Crazy Horse, 521i Crazy Mule, John, 584i Credit cards, first, 816 Crédit Mobilier, 531 Cree Indians, 155 Creek Indians, 266i. See also Five Civilized Tribes assimilation of, 307–308, 342i, 378 cession of lands, 339 in Civil War, 475 in French and Indian War, 178 homeland of, 265m resistance, 142, 266, 334 Revolutionary War and, 246 trade, 166 War of 1812 and, 338–339 Creel, George, 688 CREEP. See Committee to Reelect the President Crèvecoeur, Hector St. John de, 263 Crews, Henry, 727 “Crime of ‘73,” 530 The Crisis, 662 Crittenden, John J., 466 Crittenden Compromise, 466 Croatans, 41 Crocker, Charles, 521 Crockett, David, 359i on banks, 366 family history of, 365–366 on Indian land rights, 373 political career of, 359 Texas independence and, 419 on western expansion, 418 Crockett, Elizabeth, 365 Cromwell, Oliver, 92 Cronkite, Walter, 880 Crook, George, 596 Crosby, Bing, 808 Cross of Gold speech, 621 Crow Indians, 520, 525 Crowell, John, 947 Crozat, Antoine, 86 Crusades, 18 Cuba Columbus and, 21 19th century: immigration from, 549m, 552; revolution of 1895, 630; U.S. designs on, 447 early 20th century: constitution of 1901, 633; U.S. intervention in, 675, 675m in 1950s and 1960s: Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), 861–862; communist revolution in, 369, 852–853, 1021i; Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), 797, 862 in 1990s, U.S. relations with, 992 Cuban-American Treaty (1903), 368 Cubism, 658 Culpeper, John, 107 Culpeper’s Rebellion, 107 Cultural imperialism, U.S. post-World War II, 814 late 20th century, 1017–1019 Culture 19th century, 536–537, 541–542; communitarian experiments, 416–417, 418; education reform, 413–416; European view of, 331; instilling in immigrants, 618; literature and art, 386–387, 440–443, 441i, 564, 592, 617; migration and, 405–406; psychology as discipline, 617; sexuality and women, 416–418; shows and entertainments, 558–560; Transcendentalism, 417; Victorianism, 387, 526; violence in, 393; westward migration and, 383–384 20th century, 639; African Americans and, 1026; automobiles and, 1015; characteristics of, 1018–1019; entertainment, 655–656, 837–838; foreign influences on, INDEX I-15 ${bmicon} 1019; global resistance to, 1020–1023; immigration and, 1029; literature and art, 617, 657–658, 659; music, 1018, 1019i; overseas spread of, 1017–1019; sexual mores, 656–657; sexuality, 1021 in World War I, impact of, 690 in 1920s, 703–704; automobiles and, 716; critiques of, 727; entertainment, 703–704, 725; films, 712–713; Harlem Renaissance, 713–715; literature, 719, 726–727, 726i; radio and, 715–716; sexuality, 714, 714i, 716 in 1930s: entertainment, 764–765; literature and art, 746; WPA and, 760i, 761 in World War II: impact of, 735, 802; sexuality, 779–780, 784 post-World War II: entertainment, 807–808; global spread of, 814; sexuality, 817–818 in 1950s, 816, 854–856, 854i, 855i; sexuality, 855, 855i, 856 in 1960s and 1970s: backlash against, 892–893; Cold War and, 836; counterculture, 886–888; films, 917–918; literature, 931, 931i; music, 887, 928i; sexuality, 836, 888, 917 in Cold War, 816–822, 832; as battleground, 835–836; impact of, 802; McCarthyism, 820–821 in 1980s: conflicts in, 952–958; sexuality, 954–955 in 1990s, conflict in, 979–981, 988 Native-American: 19th century, 433–434, 520; Columbian Exchange and, 24–25, 26m–27m, 91–92; counting coup, 152; dogs in, 152; horses and, 112, 151–152, 151i; individualism and, 441–442; sexuality in, 89; women in, 90, 90i, 157, 318, 330, 378, 381, 382, 520 Cumberland and Oxford Canal, 364m Cumberland Gap, 244, 264, 266 Cumberland Road, 345 Cumming, Kate, 482i Cunard shipping lines, 598 Currency, U.S. “In God We Trust” on, 839i as international currency, 1019 Currency Act (1764), 195 Custer, George, 502, 518, 520i, 521i, 581 Customs Act (1767), 206 Customs duties, colonies and, 195, 206, 208 Cut Nose, 434 Cutler, Manasseh, 269 CWA. See Civil Works Administration Czechoslovakia, creation of, 694 D D-Day, 791–792, 791m, 792i Da Gama, Vasco, 20, 24m–25m Dachau camp, 785m, 795 The Daily Telegraph, 527i Dakota Indians, 566i Daley, Richard, 491, 894 Dalton, Mrs. L. L., 601 Dams, 20th century, 1013 DAR. See Daughters of the American Revolution Darrow, Clarence, 721–722 Dartmore Prison, 336i Darwin, Charles, 567, 719–720 Daugherty, Harry, 723 Daughters of Liberty, 206–207, 217 Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), 759, 759i Davis, Jefferson and Confederate civil unrest, 488, 490 as Confederate president, 465, 491 and fall of Richmond, 496 Gadsden Purchase and, 434 Davis, John W., 723, 723t Dawes, Charles G., 723–724 Dawes, William, 213 Dawes General Allotment (Severalty) Act (1881), 566, 596–597, 613m, 646 Day care in World War II, 783 post-World War II, 805 in 1970s, 928 Dayton, William, 451, 451t Dayton Accords (1995), 994 DDT, 856, 894, 917 de Burton, Maria Amparo Ruiz, 523 De Grasse, François, J. P., 247m, 249, 251 de Kalb, Johann, 239 De Soto, Hernando, 30, 32–33, 34m, 38m Dean, James, 854–855 Dean, John, 907, 908 Death penalty debate on, 984, 1024i executions (1930-2000), 918i public opinion on (1940-2000), 918i DeBow’s Review, 445 Debs, Eugene V., 620, 661–662, 685, 722 and election of 1904, 664t and election of 1908, 666t and election of 1912, 667t and election of 1920, 723t Decades of the New World (Martyr), 28 Decatur, Stephen, 322m December 7 (film), 781 Declaration of Independence, 221, 227–228 local versions of, 224–225 Declaration of Independence (Trumbull), 227i Declaration of Rights (Continental Congress), 212 Declaration of Rights (Virginia), 237, 281 “Declaration of Sentiments,” 444, 527 Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 408 Declaration of war, War Powers Act (1973) and, 919 Declaratory Act (1766), 199 Deere, John, 436 Deerskin trade, 18th century, 166 Defoe, Daniel, 159 Del Rio, Dolores, 712 DeLancey, Stephen, 171 Delany, Martin R., 507 DeLarge, Robert G., 514i Delaware 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 283; economy, 168–169; slave population, 134m; voting rights, 312f in Civil War, 466m, 469 Delaware and Hudson Canal, 364m Delaware and Raritan Canal, 364m Delaware Indians. See also Ohio Confederacy Gnadenhutten massacre, 245, 270i Jefferson on, 320 land sales by, 96 Ohio Confederacy and, 289 in Ohio region, 270i relocation to Great Lakes region, 305 Walking Purchase and, 169, 169i Delaware River Valley, settlement of, 95 Dell, Michael, 1006 DeMille, Cecil B., 703–704 Democracy Founding Fathers on, 277, 278, 280 Soviet view of, 692 transparency and, late 20th century, 919 westward migration and, early 19th century, 383 Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 377 Democratic Leadership Council, 987 Democratic National Convention (Chicago, 1968), 491 INDEX I-16 ${bmicon} Democratic party 19th century: constituency of, 384, 407; local political machines, 557; origins of, 370; platform of, 393; post-Civil War policies, 502, 517; tariff and, 563 20th century: alliance with labor, 679; blacks and, 738; constituency, 764, 819; environmental policies, 1017; New Democrats, 987–988 convention of 1964, 867, 884 convention of 1968, 894 and election of 1832, 376, 376t and election of 1836, 406–407, 407t and election of 1840, 410t and election of 1844, 419t, 420, 421 and election of 1848, 446, 446t and election of 1852, 447, 447t and election of 1856, 450, 451t and election of 1860, 456–457, 457t and election of 1862, 482 and election of 1864, 494–495, 495t and election of 1868, 515, 515t and election of 1872, 531–532, 532t and election of 1876, 532, 532t and election of 1880, 564, 564t and election of 1884, 565, 565t and election of 1888, 567, 567t and election of 1892, 619, 619t and election of 1896, 621–622, 622t and election of 1900, 635, 663, 663t and election of 1904, 664, 664t and election of 1912, 667, 667t and election of 1916, 685, 685t and election of 1920, 723t and election of 1924, 723, 723t and election of 1928, 724, 724t and election of 1932, 749, 749t and election of 1936, 761, 761t and election of 1940, 774, 774t and election of 1944, 792, 792t and election of 1948, 819–820, 819t and election of 1952, 829–830, 830t, 849, 849t and election of 1956, 849t and election of 1960, 859, 859t and election of 1964, 869–870, 869t and election of 1968, 894, 894t and election of 1972, 907, 907t and election of 1974, 909 and election of 1976, 921, 921t and election of 1980, 941, 941t and election of 1984, 946, 946t and election of 1996, 990, 990t and election of 2000, 996, 996t Democratic-Republicans Alien and Sedition Acts and, 299 in Congress, early 19th century, 333–334 and election of 1796, 298, 298t and election of 1800, 319, 319t and election of 1804, 331, 331t and election of 1816, 341, 341t and election of 1820, 367, 367t and election of 1824, 368, 369t and election of 1828, 369–370 Jay Treaty and, 298 origins of, 291 policies of, 292 support for France, 291, 293 “Democratic Vistas” (Whitman), 517 Dempsey, Jack, 704 Denmark immigration from, 391–392 and World War II, Jews in, 786 Department of Agriculture discrimination by, 591 establishment of, 544, 608 Department of Defense, 826 Department of Energy, 925, 1016 Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 859 Department of Labor, 679 Department of the Interior, 981 Department stores, rise of, 560–562 Desegregation in 1940s, 807, 808; of armed forces, 801–802, 819 in 1950s and 1960s, 807; backlash against, 892, 912–913, 913i; black debate over, 884; Brown v. Board of Education and, 845–847, 845i, 872–873; of buses, 847; Civil Rights Act (1964), 870–871; and court-ordered busing, 873, 895, 898; impact of, 1026; implementation of, 846–847; Nixon and, 895; white attitudes toward, 840–841 in 1970s, backlash against, 912–913, 913i Desert Land Act (1877), 524 Deslondes, Charles, 354 Détente, 906, 910, 921, 942 Detroit. See also Fort Detroit in War of 1812, 336, 337i 20th century: black riots in, 884; migration to, 684 The Devastation of the Indies (Las Casas), 27, 40 Dewey, George, 631–632 Dewey, John, 662 Dewey, Thomas E. and election of 1944, 792, 792t and election of 1948, 819–820, 819t DeWitt, John L., 776 Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 847 The Dial, 417 Dias, Bartolomeu, 20 Diasporas, 396–397 Diaz, Jose, 787 Díaz, Porfirio, 675 Dickinson, John, 205–206, 236 Didrikson, Babe, 765 Dien Bien Phu, Battle of, 874 Dies, Martin, 764 diMaggio, Joe, 765 Diner’s Club, 816 Diptheria, late 19th century, 557 Disabled persons, activism, early 20th century, 660 Disco music, 928i Discourse for a Discovery for a New Passage to Cathay (Frobisher), 40 Discrimination. See also Prejudice; Racism 19th century, 575, 581–582; against African Americans, 400, 400i, 409, 438, 449, 454–455; black resistance to, 579, 580; against Chinese, 521, 575–578; Civil Rights Cases and, 565; employment and, 623; against immigrants, 611–612; racial categories and, 609–612 20th century, 683–684, 699, 1024–1025, 1026–1027; in Southwest, 646–647; in USDA loan program, 591 in 1930s, 743–744; WPA and, 764 post-World War II: discrediting of, 844; opposition to, 844; resistance to, 805–808, 808, 821 in 1950s and 1960s: in housing, 839; against Latinos, 890; against women, 862–863 Disease Black Death (England, 1350), 18 Great Plague (England, 1665), 94i, 94, 119 in colonies, 72, 79, 86, 158, 177 Revolutionary War era, 226, 231–232, 255–257, 256m, 266 19th century: in Civil War, 479, 482; Hawaiian Islands and, 630; in Spanish-American War, 632; urban water and, 557; in War of 1812, 337; wildlife and, 546 20th century: AIDS epidemic, 935, 955, 1013; drug-resistant bacteria, 987, 1013; flu epidemic (1918), 629; public health measures, 652–653, 653i; INDEX I-17 ${bmicon} radioactive fallout and, 815–816, 815i, 858; Spanish influenza, 697; in World War I, 680; in World War II, 784 Native Americans and: Columbian Exchange and, 3, 25, 26m–27m; 16th century, 25, 26, 29, 30, 116; 17th century, 45, 46, 51–53, 55–56, 86, 92, 99; 18th century, 91, 194; 19th century, 378, 405 Dismal Swamp Canal, 364m Disney Corporation global spread of, 1019, 1020i and middle class values, 838 Diversity. See also Ethnicity in colonies, 157, 161–163, 220 in 19th century: among African Americans, 437; in Boston, 439t; immigration and, 326; in Midwest, 435–436 in 20th century, 957–958, 982–983, 1018–1019 Division of Biological Survey, 608 Division of Road Inquiries, 608 Divorce late 19th century, 626 20th century, 657, 837, 837f in 1920s, 706 post-World War II, 817 in 1970s, 929 Dix, Dorothea, 478 Dixiecrats (State-Rights Democratic party), 819–820, 819t Dixon, E. D., 847 Dixon, Thomas, 710 Dodge, Grenville, 502 “Dog,” 815i Doheny, Edward L., 723 Dole, Robert, 990, 990t Dollar. See Currency Dollar Diplomacy, 666 Dollinger, Genora Johnson, 763 Domestication of plants, in Americas, 9, 10 Dominican Republic U.S. designs on, 19th century, 525 U.S. intervention in, 20th century, 675, 675m, 885 Dominion of New England, 102–103 Domino theory, 827 “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, 988 Doolittle, Amos, 211i “Double V,” 788–790 Douglas, Stephen A., 455i debates with Lincoln, 455–456 and election of 1860, 457, 457t, 458, 465–466 slavery and, 446, 448, 449m Douglas Aircraft Co., 825i Douglass, Frederick, 400i black rights and, 400, 408, 438, 444, 477 Dominican Republic and, 525 unions and, 530 women’s rights and, 526–527, 528 Dove (ship), 73 Dr. Seuss, 787i Draft. See Conscription Dragging Canoe, 244, 266–267 Drake, Bret, 64 Drake, Sir Francis, 38m, 40, 41, 41i, 75m Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), 454–455 Dreiser, Theodore, 657 Drexel, Morgan, and Co., 547 Drinker, Elizabeth, 319 Drought late 19th century, 586i, 587 in 1930s, 745–747, 745m, 746i Drug use in 1960s, 886 in 1970s, 917 in 1980s, 955–956 in 1990s, 986 Du Bois, W. E. B., 615, 662, 690, 821 Duke, David, 710 Duke, James Buchanan, 579 Dulles, John Foster, 851 Duniway, Abigail Scott, 601 Dunmore, Lord, 219, 224, 226, 231–232, 255 Durbin, Richard, 1012 Dust Bowl, 745–747, 745m, 746i Dutch East India Company, 53, 57 Dutch Reformed Church, 35 Dutch West Indian Company, 57–59, 117 Dwight, Timothy, 262 Dylan, Bob, 887 Dysentery, 177 in Civil War, 479 in Spanish-American War, 632 E E-mail, 1006–1007, 1007i Earhart, Amelia, 765, 765i Early Republic citizenship in, 292i cultural tensions in, 290–291 European influences in, 291, 292–293, 298 industry in, 294–296 monetary policy, 293 printing and publishing in, 299 reform movements in, 310–311 slavery in, 300–301 social class in, 310, 312–313 tariffs, 293, 295–296 taxation, 293; resistance to, 296–297, 311 trade, 294i war debt and, 293 women in: education and, 316–317, 317i; elite, 314–317; nonelite, 318–319; rights of, 292i, 317, 318 Earth Day, establishment of, 895 Earth First!, 915, 971 East India Company, 209 Easter Rising (1916), 680 Eastern Europe 19th century, immigration from, 610 early 20th century, immigration from, 650–652, 651m post-World War I, political order in, 694 post-World War II: Soviet domination of, 804, 809; Warsaw Pact and, 850 late 20th century: culture in, 1021; Soviet Union collapse and, 963 Eating disorders, in 1990s, 986 Ebony, 837, 843 Economic theory late 19th century, 563–567 early 20th century, 681 Economy 18th century, regional characteristics, 164–169, 165m 19th century: early, 344–345; depression of 1840s, 398; depression of 1857, 454–455; depression of 1873, 529–530; nationalization of, 439; panic of 1819, 364–367; panic of 1837, 407; post-Civil War, 528, 578–579, 578i, 579m, 580t; regional characteristics, 436–439 late 19th century, 529–530, 536, 541, 586–587; and city growth, 554–555; depression of 1873, 529–530; depression of 1880, 564; depression of 1893, 620, 628; labor supply and, 548–552 20th century: early, 638, 639, 652, 673 (See also Great Depression); energy and, 1014; immigration and, 958; late, 1029; oil and, 914–915; panic of 1907, 666; recession of 1913-1914, 688i; recession of 1981-1982, 946; recession of 1991-1992, 987–988; stock market crash of 1929, 705, 729–731; World War I and, 687–689, 688i, 722; World War II and, 780, 797, 805, 809, 837–838 INDEX I-18 ${bmicon} in 1920s, 704, 705, 725 in 1930s, 740, 774 in 1950s, 808, 816 in 1960s, 859, 868, 872, 880–881 in 1970s, 910–913, 914, 917, 921, 925 in 1980s, 941, 944, 946, 950–952 in 1990s, 935, 972, 973–974, 987–988, 989, 1007 in 2000s, 999 Eddy, Mary Baker Eddy, 617 Edens, Bessie, 729 Edenton Ladies’ Tea Party, 211 Ederle, Gertrude, 702i, 703 Edgar Thomson Steelworks, 547 Edict of Nantes (1598), 54, 82, 161–162 Edison, Thomas A., 542, 655–656 Edmunds Act (1882), 564 Education 18th century: public support for, 267; women and, 316–317, 317i 19th century: African Americans and, 415, 484i, 500i, 501, 502i, 599, 612–614; engineering and, 542; of immigrants, 612, 615, 618; of Indians, 612–613; middle class and, 616; Native Americans and, 596–597, 605, 605i; parochial schools, 615; reform movements in, 413–416; segregated, 578, 580, 611, 613–615, 650; state bureaucracy for, 614; women and, 383 20th century: Cold War and, 832, 850; desegregation of, 808, 845–846, 845i, 846–847, 873, 895, 898; GI Bill and, 805, 806f, 836–837; segregated, 662; standardization in, 615; of women, 843 in 1950s and 1960s: for minorities, 890; prayer in public schools, 873; sex education, 855i in 1970s: racial quotas and, 931, 945; women and, 928 in 1980s and 1990s: bilingual, 982; prayer in schools, 953 compulsory attendance laws, 616m private, right to, 710 in United States, history of, 614–615 Educational Amendments of 1972, Title IX, 929, 1026 Edwards, Jonathan, 174 Efficiency, industrial labor and, 552–553 Efficiency experts, 553 Egalitarianism, early 19th century, 327 Egypt Camp David Accords, 923–924 Islamic fundamentalism in, 1020 under Nasser, 853–854 U.S. relations with, 913–914 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 944 Ehrlich, Paul, 894 Ehrlichman, John, 909 Eight hour day. See Workday Eighteenth Amendment, 639, 689, 706–707 Einstein, Albert, 795 Eisenhower, Dwight D. civil rights movement and, 849 and desegregation of schools, 846–847 domestic policies, 849–850 and election of 1952, 830, 830t, 849, 849t and election of 1956, 849t foreign policy, 850–854 Interstate Highway Act and, 838–839 Sputnik and, 849–850 Supreme Court appointments, 845, 872 on Tennessee Valley Authority, 755 Vietnam War and, 874 in World War II, 780i, 791, 792 Eisenhower Doctrine, 854 El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española, 764 El Niño, 11 el-Ramly, Mona, 1031 Eldrige, Eleanor, 318 Election(s) of 1792, 292 of 1796, 298, 298t of 1800, 319, 319t of 1804, 331, 331t of 1808, 333 of 1816, 341, 341t of 1820, 367, 367t of 1824, 368, 369t of 1828, 360, 369–370, 370t of 1832, 376, 376t of 1836, 406–407, 407t of 1840, 410, 410t of 1844, 419–432, 419 of 1848, 446, 446t of 1852, 447, 447t of 1856, 450–451, 451t of 1860, 456–457, 457t, 465–466 of 1862, 482 of 1864, 494–495, 495t of 1866, 507 of 1868, 515, 515t of 1872, 528, 531–532, 532t of 1876, 532, 532t, 533m of 1880, 564, 564t of 1884, 565, 565t, 600 of 1888, 566–567, 567t of 1892, 619, 619t of 1896, 537, 621–622, 622t of 1900, 635, 663, 663t of 1904, 664, 664t of 1908, 666, 666t of 1912, 662, 667, 667t, 679 of 1916, 685, 685t of 1920, 699, 722, 723t of 1924, 723–724, 723t of 1928, 747 of 1932, 747, 749, 749t of 1936, 761, 761t of 1940, 774, 774t of 1944, 792, 792t of 1948, 819, 819t of 1952, 829–830, 830t, 849, 849t of 1956, 849t of 1964, 869–870, 869t of 1968, 876, 881–882, 892, 893–894, 894t of 1972, 907, 907t, 908 of 1974, 909 of 1976, 921, 921t of 1980, 941, 941t of 1984, 946, 946t, 956 of 1988, 956 of 1992, 981, 987, 988, 988t of 1994, 989–990 of 1996, 990, 990t of 2000, 280, 973, 986, 995–999, 996m, 996t, 1026 campaigns for, early 19th century, 359 winner-take-all system, implications of, 624 Electoral College creation of, 279 debate over, 280 and election of 2000, 997 establishment of, 278–279 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 870 Elevators, introduction of, 556 Eliot, John, 71, 71i Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 35, 40, 59–60 Elkhorn Tavern, Battle of, 475 Elliott, Robert B., 514i Ellis Island, 645m, 650i, 651 Ellsberg, Daniel, 895 Elmina Castle, 20 Emancipation, 478 Northern opinion on, 429 Emancipation Proclamation, 482 impact of, 485 Embargo Act (1807), 333 Embargo of 1807, 331–333 INDEX I-19 ${bmicon} Emergency Banking Act (1933), 750, 752t Emergency Relief Appropriation (1935), 760 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 417, 440 Emmons, Delos, 777 Emothla, Eneah, 401 Emperor (ship), 132i Empire Zinc Mining Co., 822i Employment. See also under specific groups 19th century: categories of, 623t; and competition for jobs, 590, 623; diversity in, 623–624, 623t, 624i late 20th century, 974 Empress of China (ship), 272 Enclosure movement, 39, 59 Encomienda system, 29–30, 51, 88 Encyclopedia Britannica, 610 End Poverty in California (EPIC) plan, 758–759 Endangered Species Act (1973), 895 Energy. See also Nuclear power; Oil 20th century, sources of, 1014 Energy use, U.S. ; 20th century, 915–916, 1013i, 1014, 1017 history of, 913f, 914–915 England/Great Britain. See also Colonies, British 15th century exploration and colonization, 23–24 16th century: anti-Catholicism in, 40; Atlantic slave trade, 40; conquest of Ireland, 40; emergence as nation-state, 35; exploration and colonization, 37–41; population growth in, 38–39 17th century: Atlantic slave trade, 112–113, 126–127, 129; Civil War, 60, 70, 92, 199; Glorious Revolution, 101–102, 199; Great Plague (1665), 94i, 94, 119; King William’s War and, 84; Puritan Revolution, 92–93; Restoration Era, 92–93 17th century exploration and colonization, 80; in Africa, 94; on Atlantic Coast, 46, 59–71, 75m; in Carolinas, 92; in Carribbean, 54; in lower Mississippi, 85 18th century: Atlantic slave trade, 112–113, 129, 130m–131m; emigration to colonies, 219; exploration and colonization in Pacific, 187–188; fur trade and, 155; military spending, 235, 236f; Ohio Confederacy and, 290; seizure of Canada, 176–181, 179m; Spanish cession of Florida, 180, 190; suppression of press in, 194; union with Scotland, 107; war with Spain, 137, 143–144, 144m and Revolutionary War: domestic opposition to, 235–236; as global conflict, 221m–222m, 235–236, 236f, 241–242, 246; Indian allies, 242–246; offers of freedom to slaves, 219–220, 223–224; peace negotiations, 250–251; strategy, 228, 230, 232, 242; surrender at Yorktown, 249–250; troop distributions, 198m, 212m late 18th century : impressment of U.S. sailors, 293; new worldambitions of , 257; in North America, 267, 290, 293, 297–298, 306 19th century: abolition of slavery, 139i, 408; in Americas, 629–630; Confederate diplomacy and, 483–484; immigration from, 548, 550t; impressment of U.S. sailors, 331–332, 332i; in North America, 330–331 20th century: Five-Power Treaty, 722–723; in Middle East, 854, 880; nuclear arms stockpiles, 904m–905m; politics in, 942; Socialist Party rise in, 804; trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m; World War I and, 673, 681f, 694; World War II and, 770, 772, 774, 809, 815 mixed government in, 201–202 English Channel, first woman to swim, 702i, 703 English East India Company, 53 English language 18th century, following independence, 262 19th century, in Western states, 359 20th century, global reach of, 1019 Dutch loan words in, 95 ENIAC computer, 1006 Enlightenment, 169–170, 171 Enola Gay, 797 Entrepreneurial spirit, late 19th century, 542, 569 Entry and Departure Controls Act, 300 Environmental damage. See also Pollution 19th century, 541, 545–546, 545t, 546i 20th century, 1013–1014, 1013i; nuclear weapons development and, 815–816, 815i; uranium mining and, 937 in 1930s, Dust Bowl, 745–747, 745m, 746i in 1960s, 836, 872 in 1970s, 916, 917–918 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 916 establishment of, 895 under Reagan, 947 Environmentalism. See also Conservationism late 19th century, 524–525 early 20th century, 664–665 late 20th century, 1012–1017; activism, 1017i; debate over, 1016–1017; globalization and, 1008–1009 in 1950s, 850 in 1960s, 836, 856, 857, 872, 894–895 in 1970s, 914–917 in 1980s, 946–948 in 1990s, 971–972, 971i, 981 EPA. See Environmental Protection Agency Ephrata Community, 170 Epps, Charles H., 623i Equal Pay Act (1963), 862–863 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 705, 929 Equal Rights Association, 526, 527 Equal Rights party, 528 ERA. See Equal Rights Amendment Era of Good Feelings, 341–349, 367 Erie Canal, 374m Erie Railroad, 546 Erik the Red, 17 Ervin, Sam, 908 Escobar, Carmen Bernal, 745 Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), 873 Escudero, José Agustin, 375 Espionage Act (1917), 689 Estate tax early 20th century, 681–682, 724, 747 in 1980s, 945 in 2000s, 1012 Esteban, 30, 33 Ethnic liberation movements, in 1960s, 890–892 Ethnicity. See also Diversity; specific groups INDEX I-20 ${bmicon} late 18th century, 290 19th century: in Boston, 439t; class struggle and, 593; employment and, 400, 400i, 409, 438, 449, 454–455; in Midwest, 435–436; by region, 457t Ethopian Regiment, 224 Etowah, Georgia, Native American culture at, 4, 15 Eugenics movement, 653 in 1920s, 718–720 in 1990s, 987 Europe. See also Eastern Europe; Southern Europe Protestant Reformation in, 34–36 19th century: imperialism of, 628; Revolutions of 1848, 398 20th century: Communism in, 804; immigration from, 650–652, 651m, 1027 European Recovery Program, 812 Europeans. See also individual nations peopling of America, 2–3 view of Native Americans, 5–6 Everybody’s, 659 Evolution of human species, 6 Exceptionalism, 607 Executive Order 7046, 764 Executive Order 8802, 786 Executive Order 9066, 300, 777 Executive power, Founding Fathers’ fear of, 238 Exxon Valdez oil spill, 948 F Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), 786 Fair Labor Standards Act (1938), 752t Fairbanks, Douglas, 712 Fairmont Waterworks (Philadelphia), 377i Falconbridge, Alexander, 131 Fall, Albert, 723 Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 296, 306i Faludi, Susan, 952 Falwell, Jerry, 953, 954–955, 954i Family in Early Republic, 311 19th century, 442–443; Victorianism and, 387, 526 early 20th century, 653; immigrants, 730 mid-20th century, 817–818; women’s role in, 841–842 in 1970s, 928 in 1990s, 979–981 in 2000s, 1024 in Cold War, 832, 836–837, 838, 839 Family and Medical Leave Act, 989 Fargo, North Dakota, in 1881, 711i Farm Mortgage Act (1933), 752t, 753 Farm Relief Act (1933), 753 Farm Security Administration (FSA), 753i Farmers 18th century: in Democratic-Republican ideology, 292; Jefferson on, 319; unrest, 202–205, 275–276 19th century: government services for, 608; and Panic of 1819, 365; plight of, 619 Colonial period, 163-169 in World War II, 782 Farmers’ Alliance, 587t, 588–589, 619 Farmers’ Holiday Association, 590i, 591 Farming, mechanization of, 345–346 Farouk, King of Egypt, 853 Farragut, David, 478, 494 Farrakhan, Louis, 979 Farrer, John, 75m Fascism mid-20th century, rise of, 771–772 post-World War II, discrediting of, 804 “Fat Man,” 797 Father’s Day, establishment of, 817, 856 Faubus, Orville, 846–847 FBI. See Federal Bureau of Investigation FDIC. See Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Federal Aid Highway Act (1956), 347 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) antisubversive activities, 856, 861 excesses of, 907–908, 919, 984 Ku Klux Klan and, 884 Nixon and, 907–908 Federal courts, establishment of, 292 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 752t creation of, 751 and Savings and Loan crisis, 1980s, 952 Federal Emergency Relief Act (1933), 752t Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 753 Federal government late 19th century, strike breaking by, 539 20th century: growth of, 663, 667, 687–688, 773; in Jacksonian era, 370–376 in 1980s and 1990s: Republican view of, 942; shutdown of, 990 Federal Highways Act (1916), 716 Federal Housing Administration (FHA), 752t, 817 Federal Housing Authority (FHA), 839 Federal lands 20th century, 947m; exploitation of, 850, 947, 1013; management of, 1016 in 1810, 335i Federal One program, 752t, 761 Federal Radio Commission, 716 Federal Reserve, Great Depression and, 729–731 Federal Reserve Act (1913), 682 Federal Theater Project, 761 Federal Trade Commission, 683 The Federalist, 283 Federalists in Congress, early 19th century, 333–334 and election of 1796, 298, 298t and election of 1800, 319, 319t and election of 1804, 331, 331t and election of 1816, 341, 341t ideology of, 283–284, 291 as political party, 292 rural resistance to, 296–297, 299 support for Britain, 291, 293 Feebleminded persons, sterilization of, 720 Feis, Herbert, 814 Female Antislavery Society, 408, 417 The Feminine Mystique (Friedan), 843, 863, 889 Feminism. See also Women’s liberation movement; Women’s rights movement as term, 927–928 FEPC. See Fair Employment Practices Commission FERA. See Federal Emergency Relief Administration Ferdinand and Isabella, 21 Ferguson, Patrick, 247m, 248 Fern, Fanny, 443 Ferraro, Geraldine, 946 Fertility rate, 1800-2000, 838f FHA. See Federal Housing Administration; Federal Housing Authority Fieffer, Jules, 878i, 893i Fifteenth Amendment, 280, 516, 527, 699 “Fifty-four forty or fight,” 420 54th Massachusetts Infantry, 484, 485 Figgins, Jesse, 5 Fillmore, Millard, 447, 450–451, 451t Final Solution, 785–786, 785m, 795 INDEX I-21 ${bmicon} Financing, late 19th century, innovations in, 546–548 Finland 17th century, colonies, 59 20th century, immigration from, 654–655 Finney, Charles Grandison, 385, 385i, 413 Fireside chats, 738, 750–751, 764 First Amendment advertising and, 561 Alien and Sedition Acts and, 299, 300 in Cold War, 820 Supreme Court on, 689, 873 First South Carolina Volunteers, 485, 487 Fiscal policy, late 19th century, 530 Fishing Creek, Battle of, 247, 247m Fishing industry, 18th century, 168 Fisk, Clinton B., 567t Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 719, 726–727, 726i Fitzgerald, Zelda, 726i, 727 Fitzhugh, George, 452 Five Civilized Tribes assimilation of, 307–308, 378 in Civil War, 474–475 culture, mid-19th century, 433 removal of, 320, 327, 365m, 401–402, 402m, 608 Five Nations. See Iroquois Confederacy Five-Power Treaty, 722–723 Flanagan, Hallie, 761 Flappers, 702i, 703, 712 Flathead Indians, 755i Flight 93, 1030, 1031–1032, 1031i Florida 16th century, Europeans contest for, 36–37 17th century: exploration and colonization of, 51–53, 52m, 90–91; Native American exploitation in, 92 18th century: conflict with Georgia, 137, 143–144, 144m; Revolutionary War in, 246, 246i; in Revolutionary War settlement, 251; slave population, 134m; Spanish cession to Britain, 180, 190 19th century: readmission to Union, 516; U.S. acquisition of, 367, 445m in 1920s, land boom in, 725–726 2000 election and, 996–997, 997i, 998 Florida (ship), 483 Flowers, Gennifer, 990 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 662, 662i Follies Bergeres, 656 Folsom points, 5, 6 Food labels, introduction of, 872 Football as college sport, 616 history of, 558–559 professional, late 20th century, 1018–1019 The Football, 961f Forbes, Charles R., 723 Ford, Betty, 908i Ford, Gerald R. Arab oil embargo and, 914 assumption of presidency, 908i, 909 and election of 1976, 921, 921 Nixon pardon, 909 Vietnam and, 909 in World War II, 780i Ford, Henry, 654–655, 716, 762 Ford, John, 781 Ford Motor Co., 654, 1030 Ford’s Theater, 497 Foreign Miners Tax (California, 1852), 432 Foreign policy. See also Containment policy; individual presidents late 19th century, 606 early 20th century, 629 Forest Reserve Act (1891), 608 Forests 19th century: destruction of, 545, 545t, 546i; management of, 608–609; railroad construction and, 523t; Timber Culture Act (1873), 524 20th century: destruction of, 1013, 1014i; management of, 665, 665i, 683m Forman, Jim, 801–802 Forman, Stanley J., 913i Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 493, 507 Forsyth, James, 584 Fort Ancient peoples, 16i Fort Caroline, 36 Fort Christina, 58 Fort Clatsop, 330m Fort Concho, 581 Fort de Chartres, 86 Fort Dearborn, 336 Fort Detroit, 86, 193, 194, 245, 267 Fort Donelson, 478 Fort Duquesne, 177, 178, 179m, 193 Fort Frontenac, 82, 83m, 178, 179m Fort Greenville, 306 Fort Henry, 478 Fort Laramie Treaty (1851), 433–434 Fort Lee, 229–230 Fort Louis, 86 Fort Loyal, 84 Fort Mandan, 329, 330m Fort McHenry, 338, 339i Fort Miami, 306 Fort Michilimackinac, 86, 193, 245, 267 Fort Mims, 338 Fort Mose, 137, 137i, 143, 144m Fort Necessity, 177, 179m Fort Niagara, 179, 179m, 245, 245i, 267, 336, 337, 337m Fort Orange, 57, 58, 94 Fort Oswego, 267 Fort Pillow, Battle of, 493, 493m, 507 Fort Pitt, 178, 194, 246 Fort Rosalie, 176 Fort Ross, 190 Fort Stanwix, 233, 244m Fort Sumter, 467, 471i Fort Ticonderoga, 222, 225, 226, 244m Fort Wagner, Battle of, 484, 493m Fort Washington, 229–230 Fort William Henry, 178 Fort Wilson Riot, 239 The Fortunate Pilgrim (Puzo), 730 Forty-Niners, 431 Fossil fuels 20th century, consumption, 1014 and pollution, 347 supply of, 1014 Foster, William Z., 749 Founding Fathers characteristics of, 216 on democracy, 277, 278, 280 Four Freedoms, 770, 773i, 774 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (film), 713i 14 Points, 691 Fourteenth Amendment, 506, 507, 514 “40 acres and a mule,” 120, 508 Fox Indians home region of, 305 land loss by, 609m resistance by, 378–379 Revolutionary War and, 245 France 16th century exploration and conquest, 30–32, 32m, 36–37 17th century: King William’s War, 84–85; Louis XIV and, 81–82; trade with Native Americans, 54–57, 79, 81 17th century exploration and conquest, 3, 46, 54–55, 80; in Mississippi Valley, 79–80, 82–84, 83m, 85–86, 85f; in New France, 81–82, 84–85; in West and Southwest, 90–91 INDEX I-22 ${bmicon} 18th century: American Revolution and, 231, 234–236, 241, 246, 246i, 249, 250–251; cession of Louisiana, 187, 190, 216, 264; colonies, 112, 137, 155, 176–181, 179m; emigration to colonies, 161–162; foreign policy, 293; French and Indian War, 176–181, 179m; new world ambitions of, 257; Quasi War, 298, 299i; and Revolution of 1789, 291, 292–293; slavery and, 320; trade with Native Americans, 153, 155 18th century exploration and colonization, 175–176; challenges to, 176; in South Pacific, 187–188 19th century: acquisition of Louisiana from, 321; Confederate diplomacy and, 483–484 20th century: Communist Party risein , 804; Five-Power Treaty, 722–723; nuclear arms stockpiles, 904m–905m; in Vietnam, 814, 874; World War I and, 673, 681f, 693, 694; World War II and, 770 in 2000s, trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m Franciscans in Florida, 51 in Southwest, 49, 51, 90, 191 Franco, Francisco, 771, 772 Franco-Prussian War of 1870, 673 Frankfurter, Felix, 752–753 Franklin, Benjamin accomplishments of, 169 Albany Congress and, 177 at Constitutional Convention, 279 and Declaration of Independence, 227 on emigration from Pennsylvania, 166 as Enlightenment figure, 170 family of, 157–158 in France, 234–235 on immigrants, 151 letter from Indian War Woman, 318 newspaper ventures, 561 and Poor Richard’s Almanac, 242, 349i Revolution and, 209, 240 on Revolutionary War, 230 on Six Nations, 289 on Society of the Cincinnati, 260 Stamp Act and, 196 Treaty of Paris and, 250–251, 250i Whitefield and, 172 Franklin, state of, 266 Franklin and Armfield Co., 399 Franklin tree, 263i Franks, Phila, 171 Fredericksburg, Battle of, 488 “Free fire zones,” 876 Free-Soil party, 445–446, 449 and election of 1848, 446, 446t and election of 1852, 447, 447t Kansas-Nebraska Act and, 448 Free speech advertising and, 561 Alien and Sedition Acts and, 299, 300 in Cold War, 820 Supreme Court on, 689, 873 Free Speech, 611 Free Speech Movement, in 1960s, 885 Free State of Jones (County), 487–488 Free trade. See also Tariffs post-World War II, U.S. commitment to, 809 late 20th century: agreements on, 991–992; as conservative principle, 953–954; debate over, 1008–1009 Freed, Alan, 807 Freedman, Rose, 643 Freedman’s Savings and Trust Bank, 504, 532 The Freedman’s Third Reader, 502i Freedmen’s Bureau activities of, 505i, 507–508 Black family life and, 512–513 budget of, 508 establishment of, 504 impact of, 120, 509–511 land redistribution and, 509 Southern opinion of, 506 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (1994), 985 Freedom of Information Act (1974), 919 Freedom rides, 848, 848m Freedom Summer, 884 Freedom to choose, late 20th century, 1018 Freeman, Elizabeth, 281i Freeman, Hannah, 318 Freeman’s Farm, Battles of, 233 Frémont, John Charles, 404, 451, 451t, 478 French and Indian War, 176–181, 179m Freneau, Philip, 262 Freud, Sigmund, 617 Frick, Henry Clay, 618–619 Friedan, Betty, 843, 863, 889 Frobisher, Martin, 40 Frontenac, Comte de, 82, 84 Frontier. See also Settlers; West as America’s defining concept, 607 as cultural battleground, 305 disappearance of, 607, 607i image of, 305 land speculators and, 194, 242–244, 269, 309–310 FSA. See Farm Security Administration Fuchs, Klaus, 820 Fugitive Slave Act (1850), 428, 446–447, 448–449 reaction to, 451–452 Fugitive Slave Law (California, 1852), 432 Fuhrman, Mark, 982 Fulbright, J. William, 885 Fuller, Margaret, 417–418, 417i Fulton, Robert, 345 Fundamental Constitutions (Ashley-Cooper), 96 Fundamentalist Christians, late 20th century agenda of, 948 cultural impact of, 934, 938, 979 rise of, 953–956 sexuality and, 954–955 Fur trade 17th century: Dutch and, 57; French and, 54–57, 79, 81; in Virginia, 100 18th century: England and, 155; French and, 155; Mississippi River and, 264; in Pacific, 188–190, 272; Russians and, 112 19th century: in Rocky Mountains, 406; U.S. desire to capture, 329 firearms spread and, 151 G Gabriel’s rebellion, 291 Gadsden, James, 401, 434 Gadsden Purchase, 434, 445m, 447 Gage, Thomas, 194, 210, 213, 223, 225–226 Galarza, Ernesto, 716 Galleons, 30 Galloway, Joseph, 211–212 Galloway Plan, 211–212 Gálvez, Bernardo de, 246, 246i Gálvez, José de, 190–191 Gang system, 310, 353 Gangsters, in 1920s, 707 Garbo, Greta, 712 Garcés, Father, 191–192, 191m Garcia, Herman, 937 Garcia, John, 775 Garfield, James A., 564, 564t, 565 Garnet, Henry Highland, 408 INDEX I-23 ${bmicon} Garrison, William Lloyd, 408, 409, 420–421 Garvey, Marcus, 709–711, 709i Gasoline, leaded, 872, 1016 Gasoline engines, and transportation, 346 Gaspee Affair, 208 Gates, Bill, 975–976, 1006 Gates, Horatio, 233, 239, 247, 247m, 248, 258 Gates, Merrill, 606 Gates Foundation, 1024 GATT. See General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gay Liberation Front, 892 Gay Liberation movement, 891–892, 891i Gay Pride parade (New York City), 891i Gays. See Homosexuality Gender roles late 19th century, challenges to, 626–628 in 1930s, 765, 765i post-World War II, 817 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 991–992 General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), 624–625 The General Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (Smith), 64 General Motors, 716, 763 General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 312, 315i General Trades Union, 407 General Washington (ship), 272 Generall Historie of 1624 (Smith), 72i Genet, Citizen Edmund, 293 Geneva Accords (1954), 874 Geneva Boys, 138 Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907), 648m, 650 George, Henry, 554, 592 George, Presley, Sr., 511 George II, King of England, 141 George III, King of England on Colonial revolt, 210 in Declaration of Independence, 228 and Grenville administration, 194 Georgia 18th century: conflict with Spanish Florida, 137, 143–144, 144m; Constitutional ratification by, 283; economy, 165m, 166; establishment of, 141–144; Revolutionary War in, 246; slave codes, 145; slave population, 134m; slavery in, 143–145, 144m, 166, 272; voting rights in, 312f; Yazoo claim, 266 19th century: Native Americans in, 371–372; readmission to Union, 516 “Georgia Mafia,” 922 Germain, Lord George, 228, 232, 250 German American Bund, 773 German Americans, 18th century in Middle colonies, 169 in Pennsylvania, 290 religion and, 169–170 German pietists, 172 Germantown, Battle of, 232 Germany 18th century, immigration from, 160–164, 166, 173–174, 219 19th century, immigration from, 391–392, 398, 411, 434, 435, 437, 548, 549, 550t, 594, 612 World War I and, 696; casualties in, 681f; causes of, 673, 686; impact of, 694; peace settlement, 692, 694 post-World War I: fascism in, 771–772; imperialism of, 771, 772; U.S. loans to, 740; Weimar Republic, 700 World War II: Jews in, 771, 772, 785–786, 785m, 795, 795i; nonaggression pact with Soviet Union, 772, 790 post-World War II: occupation of, 811m, 812; reconstruction, 812 in 2000s, trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m Gerry, Elbridge, 277, 280, 281, 298 Gerrymandering, 280 Gettysburg, Battle of, 488–490, 489m Gettysburg Address, 492 GFWC. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs Ghost dance, 582–584, 583i GI Bill. See Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 Gibbs, Lois, 916, 927 Gibson, Edward, 139 Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), 873 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 40 Gilded Age, 564 The Gilded Age (Twain and Warner), 564 Gilder, George, 945 Gilliam, Eliza, 405 Gilliam, Frances, 405 Gilliam, George, 405 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 627 Gingrich, Newt, 989, 989i Ginsberg, Allen, 856 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 989 Giuliani, Rudolph, 891i Glackens, William, 657 Glastnost, 959–960 Glen Canyon Dam, 872 Global positioning system (GPS), 39 Global warming, 916, 1014–1015 Globalization beginnings of, 18–20 late 20th century, 1005–1008; impact of, 1009–1012; opponents of, 1008–1009 Glorious Revolution, 101–102, 199 in America, 102–103 Gnadenhutten massacre, 245, 270i Godey’s Lady’s Book, 386, 387i The Godfather (Puzo), 730 Godwyn, Morgan, 121 Gold Coast, 20, 126i, 127m, 129, 130m–131m, 132i Gold rush, Coeur d’Alene, 541 Gold standard, 620, 621 Goldman, Emma, 594, 626, 661, 698, 860 Goldman, Ronald, 982 Goldwater, Barry M., 869–870, 869t, 893, 954 Gomillion, Charles, 280 Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), 280 Gompers, Samuel, 594, 634, 679 Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 851 Gonzales, Elian, 992, 992i Goodman, Andrew, 884 Gookin, Daniel, 98 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 959–960, 961 Gordon, Thomas, 201–202 Gore, Al, 988, 989 and election of 2000, 995–997, 996t Gore, Tipper, 988, 995 Gorée Island, 127m, 129 Las Gorras Blancas, 573–574 Gorsuch, Anne, 947 Goshute Indians, 938 Gospel of Wealth, 568, 568i Gould, Jay, 546 “Government for the Western Territory” (Jefferson), 268 GPS. See Global positioning system Grady, Henry, 578–579 Graff, Frederick C., 377i Graham, Billy, 821 Graham, Sylvester, 416 Graham crackers, 416 Grahame, James, 120 Granados, Balbina Duque, 1005 Grand Army of the Republic, 563 Grandy, Moses, 398–399 INDEX I-24 ${bmicon} The Grange, 528, 530, 562, 566 Grange, Red, 704 Grant, James, 192 Grant, Madison, 676 Grant, Ulysses S. in Civil War, 476i, 478, 490, 492, 496 and election of 1868, 515–516, 515t and election of 1872, 531–532, 532t as President, 525, 532 Reconstruction and, 514 Grantham, Thomas, 123 The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), 746 Gray, Robert, 272–273, 273i Gray, Thomas, 381 Great American Desert, 433 Great Awakening, 170, 171–174 consequences of, 174–175 second, 385, 385i Great Britain. See England/Great Britain Great Depression. See also New Deal anti-capitalism in, 756 causes of, 729–731, 737–738, 739–740 culture in, 742–743 employment in, 740–742, 746–747 end of, 734, 797, 803 government economic intervention in, 739–740 Hoover policies and, 747–748 minorities in, 742–745 political impact of, 734 poverty in, 740–742, 741i, 753i private charity in, 747 Weimar Republic and, 700 Great Flood of 1927, 717–718, 718i, 719m The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), 719, 727 Great Intrusion, 371 Great Labor Uprising of 1877, 539, 540i, 599 Great Migration, 638, 683–685, 684m, 690 Great Migration of 1843, 404 Great National Pike, 346–347 Great Northern Railroad, 519m Great Plague (1665), 94i, 94, 119 Great Society, 833, 870–872 “Great Swamp Fight,” 99 Great Wagon Road, 164, 165m, 166 Greece 19th century, immigration from, 548, 550t 20th century: immigration from, 709; Truman Doctrine and, 812 Greek Revival style, 377i Greeley, Horace, 531–532, 532t Green Mountain Boys, 222, 591 Green party, late 20th century, 999 Green Spring Faction, 100i Green Spring Plantation, 100i, 101 Greenback Labor Party, 530, 564t Greenbacks, 530 Greene, Nathaniel, 248 Greenhouse gases, 1014–1015 Greenland Peary expedition to, 628–629, 628i Viking settlements in, 18 Greenpeace, 948 Greensted, William, 115 Greenwood riots, 671–672, 698 Grenada, U.S. invasion of (1983), 943 Grenville, Robert, 194–196, 199 Grey, Edward, 680 Griffith, D. W., 677, 710 Grimké sisters, 408 Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), 873 Guadalcanal, Battle of, 793 Guantanamo, U.S. base at, 368–369, 369i, 633, 633m, 675m Guatemala, in 1950s, U.S. in, 852 Guggenheim, David, 667 Guilford Courthouse, Battle of, 249 Guinan, Mary Louise, 707i Guiteau, Charles J., 564, 565 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 876 Gulf War. See Persian Gulf War (1991) Gullah, 354 Guns gun control debate, 985–986 Native Americans and, 151–152, 154–157, 156m, 309 Guthrie, Woody, 742–743, 742i, 746 Guy, Francis, 351i H Haight-Asbury, in 1960s, 887 Haiphong Harbor, mining of, 896 Hair (musical), 887 Haiti, 20th century, U.S. intervention in, 675, 675m, 993 Hakluyt, Richard, 40–41, 60, 65 Halberstam, David, 868 Haldeman, H. R., 909 Hale, John P., 447, 447t Hale, Sarah, 386 Hale, Stephen, 469 Haley, Alex, 931, 931i Haley, Bill, 807 Half Dome, 872i Half Moon (ship), 57 Hamar, Josiah, 305, 306m Hamer, Fanny Lou, 720 Hamilton, Alexander antislavery activities, 263 Bank of United States and, 293 Confederation finances and, 258 Constitutional Convention and, 276, 278 on Continental Army, 240 death of, 333 The Federalist and, 283 Jay Treaty and, 297 support for Britain, 293 as Treasury secretary, 293–294, 295–296 and two-party system, 292 Hamilton, Henry, 244m Hamm, Mia, 929, 1026 Hampshire machine, 296i Hampton Institute, 597, 597i Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, 614 Hancock, John, 186i American Revolution and, 185–186 British attempt to arrest, 213 and Declaration of Independence, 228 as governor, 303i Stamp Act and, 199 Townshend Duties and, 206 Hancock, Winfield S., 564, 564t Handsome Lake, 307 Hanna, Marcus “Mark,” 622, 634 Hannah’s Cowpens, 248–249 Hansberry, Lorraine, 839 Hard money policy, 296 Hardin, Garrett, 872, 1012 Harding, Warren G., 699, 722–723, 723t Harlan, John Marshall, 611 Harlem Renaissance, 713–715 Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins, 580, 599 Harper’s, 562 Harpers Ferry, Brown’s attack on, 456–458, 466 Harper’s Weekly, 437i, 471i Harrington, James, 96 Harrington, Michael, 870 Harris, David, 873 Harris, Katherine, 996 Harrison, Benjamin and election of 1888, 567, 567t and election of 1892, 619, 619t Indian Territory and, 608 policies, 618 of Virginia, 283 Harrison, Henry, 244–245, 246 Harrison, John, 39 Harrison, William Henry and election of 1836, 407, 407t and election of 1840, 410, 410t as governor, 334–335 and War of 1812, 331, 337, 343 Hartford Female Seminary, 383 Harvard College, 69i, 70, 174 INDEX I-25 ${bmicon} Harvard Indian College, 69i, 71, 97–98 Harvard Medical School, first female students, 843 Hawaiian Islands peopling of, 17, 188 European contact, 186, 187i, 188, 216 19th century: annexation of, 632; immigration to, 548, 552, 630; planter revolt in (1893), 630; U.S. in, 629, 630 20th century: Japanese in, 396; statehood, 269; statehood for, 818; World War II and, 734, 769, 774–777, 775i, 776i Hawkins, Benjamin, 342i Hawkins, John, 40 Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930), 731 Hay, John, 632, 633 Hayes, Rutherford B., 532, 532t, 533m, 564 Haymarket bombing, 593–594 Hays, Mary, 240–241 Haywood, William “Big Bill,” 662 Head-Smashed-In, 8 Head Start, 870 Headright system, 124–125 Health in 1970s, 917, 917i in 1990s, 986–987, 987f environmental pollution and, 916 Health care early 20th century, 652–653, 653i in 1940s, 819 Clinton reform efforts, 988–989 in Johnson administration, 871–872 Healy, Dorothy Ray, 782 Hearing, history of, 172–173 Hearst, William R., 631 Hefner, Hugh, 856 Helms, Jesse, 956 Hemings, Sally, 319 Henderson, Richard, 244 Henri, Robert, 657 Henri Quatre (ship), 219 Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, 66, 73 Henrietta Marie (ship), 120, 120i Henry, Edward L., 500 Henry, Patrick Constitutional ratification and, 283 Continental Congress and, 211 Stamp Act and, 196 Henry, Prince of Portugal (“The Navigator”), 19–20, 19i, 24m–25m Henry IV, King of France, 54 Henry Street Settlement, 625 Henry VII, King of England, 24, 35 Henry VIII, King of England, 35, 38 Henson, Keith, 64 Henson, Matthew, 671, 671i Heppenheimer, T. A., 64–65, 65i Hernandez, Antonia, 978 Hernandez, Gloria, 1003i Herndon, Angelo, 756 Heroes of America, 487 Herrera, Juan Jose, 573 Herrera, Nicanor, 573 Herrera, Pablo, 573 Hersh, Seymour, 919 Herzl, Theodor, 674 Hewes, George, 185–186, 185i Hiacoomes, 71 Hickey, Thomas, 229 Hidatsas horses and, 152, 153m Lewis and Clark and, 329 The Hidden Persuaders (Packard), 561 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 485 Highway construction in 1920s, 716, 717f post-World War II, 818i, 819, 838–839 Hill, Anita, 963, 981 Hill, Julia Butterfly, 971–972, 971i Hillerman, Tony, 938 Hillman, Sidney, 762 Hillsborough, Lord, 206, 208 Hindman Settlement School, 626 Hindoo Patalka, 560 Hine, Lewis, 657–658, 659i Hine, Thomas J., 524i Hinkley, John, 941 Hippies, 886 Hirabayashi v. United States, 300 Hirano family, 778i Hiroshima, atomic bombing of, 796–797 Hispanics. See also Latinos; Mexican Americans 19th century: in Civil War, 483; culture of, 537; land rights of, 523, 573–574, 608; Protestant view of, 412, 424–425, 434 20th century: civil rights activism, 844; liberation movement, 890; New Deal coalition and, 764 Hiss, Alger, 820–821, 821i Historical studies, in 19th century, 5 Hitler, Adolf death of, 792 domestic policies, 771, 772 Final Solution of, 785–786, 785m, 795 Ho Chi Minh, 694, 804, 822, 861, 874, 878 Hobos, in 1930s, 743 Hoffman, Abbie, 950–951 Hogarth, William, 142i Hohokams, 13, 14m Holiday associations, 590–591, 590i Holland 16th century exploration and colonization, 47, 57 17th century exploration and colonization, 46, 47, 53, 57–58, 57i, 80, 95, 118 18th century: American Revolution and, 234, 241, 250; immigration from, 169, 290 loss of New Netherlands, 94–95 trade with Native Americans, 151–152 World War II and, loss of colonies, 770 Hollywood early 20th century, 656, 703–704, 712–713 mid-20th century, Red Scare, 861 late 20th century, 1018 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 720 Holocaust, 785–786, 785m, 795, 795i, 821 Home decoration of Tlingit Indians, 627i Victorian, 626i, 627 Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, 752t, 755 Homelessness, in 1980s, 951i, 952 Homer, Winslow, 462i Homosexuality in 18th century, 240 early 20th century, 657, 660, 727 mid-20th century, 821; Nazis and, 771, 786; rights activism, 833; World War II and, 779–780, 784; post-World War II, 817 late 20th century: activism, 891–892, 891i, 957, 979–980; discrimination against, 1026; military service and, 988; religious right and, 954–955; women’s liberation and, 889 The Honeymooners (TV show), 837 Hooker, Joseph, 481, 488 Hooker Chemical Co., 916 Hoover, Herbert background of, 724 as Commerce secretary, 716, 718, 722 economic policies, 747–748 and election of 1928, 724, 724t and election of 1932, 749, 749t and stock market crash of 1929, 729 Hoover, J. Edgar, 300–301, 776–777, 902 INDEX I-26 ${bmicon} Hoover Dam, 872 Hoovervilles, 729 Hope, Bob, 781 Hope, John, 615 Hope, Lugenia Burns, 626 Hope (ship), 628 Hopewell Indians, 14m, 15 Hopkins, Elizabeth, 45, 46, 63 Hopkins, Harry, 753, 761 Hopkins, Stephen, 45, 46, 61, 63 Horizontal integration, 548 Horses and Comanche rise to power, 152–154 introduction and spread of, 23i, 152; cultural impact, 112, 151–152, 151i; in Southwest, 51, 90, 90i, 152, 153m, 156m; trade and, 154–157, 156m prehistoric, 8 Horseshoe Bend, Battle of, 339, 341 Horton, Willie, 963 Hotline, 862 House Un-American ActivitiesCommittee (HUAC) , 764, 820–821, 820i, 861 Women Strike for Peace movement and, 856–857 Housing Acts (1949, 1954), 841 Houston, Sam, 419 How the Other Half Lives (Riis), 594–595, 595i Howard, Oliver O., 502, 509i Howe, George, 442–443 Howe, Richard, 229i Howe, William, 226, 229i, 230–231, 232, 236, 243m Howells, William Dean, 662 Howl (Ginsberg), 856 HUAC. See House Un-American Activities Committee HUD. See Department of Housing and Urban Development Hudson, Henry, 57, 60 Hudson Valley revolt, 203 Hudson’s Bay Company, 95, 155 Huerta, Dolores, 897i Huerta, Victoriano, 676 Hughes, Charles E., 685, 685t, 722 Hughes, Langston, 714, 715i Hughes, Robert P., 634–635 Hughson, John and Sarah, 138 Huguenots Calvinism and, 35 colonization and, 36, 55, 59 and Edict of Nantes, 54, 161–162 settlement in colonies, 162 suppression of, 81, 82 Hull House, 598, 625, 660 Human Genome mapping, 987, 1025 Human rights, 20th century activism for, 1008–1009 in U.S. foreign policy, 922 Humans, early history of, 6–7 Humphrey, Hubert, 894 Hungary 19th century, immigration from, 548, 550t, 551 in 1950s, uprising in, 851 Hunting and gathering societies, 9 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (Roosevelt), 628i Hurley, Martha, 901 Huron Indians 17th century: alliances with Europeans, 54; as guides, 82; King William’s War and, 84 18th century: in French and Indian War, 178; resistance, 193 Hurricanes, naming of, 931 Husain, Zubaida, 1031 Husband, Herman, 205 Hussein, Saddam, 965 Huston, John, 782 Hutchinson, Anne, 68–70 Hutchinson, Asa, 1026 Hutchinson, Thomas, 197, 209, 210 Hyde Amendment (1976), 930 Hydrogen bomb, development of, 796, 816, 832 I “I Have a Dream” speech, 863 Ia Drang valley, 879i Iberville, Pierre le Moyne d’, 79, 83m, 86 Ice Age, 7–8, 7m Ickes, Harold L., 752, 755i Idaho statehood for, 542 women’s voting rights and, 601 ILD. See International Labor Defense ILGWU. See International Ladies Garment Workers Union Illinois French in, 79, 86 migration to, 19th century, 435–436 statehood, 269 Illinois and Michigan Canal, 364m Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, 409 Illinois Indians, 305 Imamura, Ichiro, 795 Immigration. See also individual source nations and regions 18th century: to colonies, 113, 219; culture clash and, 150–151; religion and, 170–171; Revolutionary War command and, 239 19th century, 536, 541; city growth and, 555; and competition for jobs, 590, 623; by country of origin, 550t; cultural impact of, 392–393; discrimination and, 611–612; education and, 612, 615, 618; ethnic diversity and, 326; imperialism and, 635; labor supply and, 548–552; opponents of, 410–412, 448; by region, 549m; to South, 436–437; stereotypes and, 595; volume of, 394, 612, 646f 20th century, 639, 644–652, 645m, 646f, 708–709, 708f, 709f, 1024, 1027–1029, 1028m; backlash against, 708–709, 912; cultural impact of, 655–656, 656, 1019; debate over, 1028–1029; diversity and, 957–958, 982–983; employment and, 977, 977i; illegal, 976m; to Midwest, 645–646, 645m; poverty and, 644, 644i; restrictions on, 654–655, 676, 822; return, 645; to Southwest, 645m, 646–647; U.S. policy on, 749, 944; volume of, 646f; to West Coast, 728; by women, 779 economic opportunity and, 950–951 settlement houses and, 598–599, 625–626 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 958 Immigration Restriction League, 612 Imminent dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States (Morse), 411 Imperialism late 19th century, 628–635; critics of, 634–635; lure of, 628–629; in Pacific, 629–630; Spanish-American War, 630–635, 632m, 633m early 20th century, 665–666, 673; Taft and, 666–667; Third World backlash against, 674 cultural, of U.S., 814, 1017–1019 Implied powers, 371 Impressment, British 18th century, 202, 293 early 19th century, 331–332, 332i “In God We Trust,” on U.S. currency, 839i Incas, 11, 14m Spanish Conquest of, 30 Inchon landing, 827 Income tax INDEX I-27 ${bmicon} early 20th century, 724, 747 in 1980s, 945 introduction of, 681 Supreme Court on, 621 Indentured servants characteristics of, 159 decline of, 313 disadvantages vs. slaves, 119, 122, 123 as railroad workers, 522i Independent Mechanic (periodical), 349 Independent party and election of 1832, 376, 376t and election of 1836, 407t India, post-World War II anticolonialism in, 804 independence, 814 Indian boarding school movement, 596–597 Indian Brigade, 475 Indian Claims Commission, 821 Indian head nickel, 673 Indian Office, 596 Indian Removal Act (1830), 372, 608 Indian Reorganization Act (1934), 752t, 755–756 Indian Rights Association, 596 Indian Territory Cherokee removal to, 372–373, 373m, 394, 401–402, 402m Civil War and, 474–475 opening to settlers, 608, 609m white incursions in, 524 Indiana black law, 310 Indian cession of, 306 migration to, 435–436 statehood, 269 Indigo, as crop, 135, 350 Individualism in 19th century, 439–444, 569; challenges to, 441–444 early 20th century, unions and, 698i Indian culture and, 584 Indonesia, post-World War II, anticolonialism in, 804 Industrial Christian Home Association, 599 Industrial Revolution, energy needs and, 914 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 594, 662, 662i anticapitalism of, 678 World War I and, 689, 689i Industry in Early Republic, 294–296 19th century: and American system of manufacturing, 543; centers of, 621m; company towns, 556; factory system, 407; growth of, 345–349; imperialism and, 628; mass production and, 541; in South, 579; technological innovation and, 542–545, 552–553; urban growth and, 554–555; worker unrest, 585–586, 589–593 20th century: flight overseas, 911–912, 951, 977, 977i, 1005; mass production and, 653–655; worker satisfaction and, 678 INF Treaty. See Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) treaty The Influence of Sea-Power in History, 1660-1763 (Mahan), 629 Influenza 17th century, Native Americans and, 52 early 20th century, 697 in World War I, 680 Ingersoll, Thomas, 139 Inquisition, 35–36 INS. See Immigration and Naturalization Service Installment buying, in 1920s, 725 Integration. See also Desegregation black debate on, early 19th century, 380 Inter Caetera, 23 Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) treaty, 961 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Nixon and, 907 Internal Security Act (1950), 300, 820 International Labor Defense (ILD), 743–744 International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), 641 Internet, 1002i, 1006–1007, 1007–1008, 1008i, 1019 The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud), 617 Interstate Commerce Act (1887), 566, 567 Interstate Commerce Commission, establishment of, 566 Interstate Highway Act (1956), 838–839 Interstate roads, development, 346–347 Intervarsity, 953 Intolerable Acts (1774), 210–211 Colonial response to, 211–212 Iowa Indians, 609m Iran, 20th century Islamic revolution in, 925, 935, 938–940, 961 U.S. involvement in, 810, 851–852, 906 Iraq. See Persian Gulf War Ireland English conquest of, 40, 59 19th century: economy, 395m; immigration from, 391–392, 394–398, 395m, 411, 437, 550t, 551–552; population, 395m Irish-Americans, World War I and, 680 Iron Curtain, 810, 811m Iron range, 646 Iron Teeth, 434 Iroquois Confederacy in prehistory, 14m, 15 17th century: disease and, 55–56; fur trade and, 55; King William’s War and, 84; war with Europeans, 54, 55i 18th century: American Revolution and, 217, 220, 245, 245i, 289; Christianity and, 170; dependent status of, 267; in French and Indian War, 177–178, 179; neutrality of, 84; relocation to Great Lakes region, 305; treaties, 194; Tuscarora in, 109; war with whites, 490 20th century: land reclaimed by, 1027; in World War II, 788–790 IRS. See Internal Revenue Service Irving, Washington, 386 Islam, in Middle Ages, 18, 19, 20 Islamic fundamentalism mid-20th century: Iranian revolution and, 925, 935, 938–940, 939i, 961; rise of, 935 late 20th century: anti-Americanism, 1020–1021; Gulf War and, 967; opposition to, 1023m; September 11th terrorist attacks, 934, 935, 1023, 1029–1032, 1031i; terrorism by, 943, 961, 994–995 Israel Arab conflicts, 913, 973 Camp David Accords, 923–924 creation of, 815 Gulf War and, 965 peace negotiations, 993 U.S. support for, 913–914, 1021, 1030 Italian Americans, in World War II, 798i Italy 19th century, immigration from, 548, 549, 550t, 551–552, 611–612, 612 20th century: Communist Party rise in, 804; fascism in, 771; Five-Power Treaty, 722–723; immigration from, 651m, 652, 709, 730; imperialism of, 771; World War I and, 673, 681f, 694; World War II and, 791 INDEX I-28 ${bmicon} Ivan the Terrible, 40 Ivory Soap 561 Iwo Jima, 769, 793, 793i IWW. See Industrial Workers of the World Izard, Alice, 316–317 J Jackson, Andrew background of, 360–361 as champion of common man, 367, 370, 388 character of, 361 and election of 1824, 368, 369t and election of 1828, 360, 369–370, 370t and election of 1832, 376, 376t and election of 1836, 406 as governor of Florida territory, 367 inauguration of, 370i as Indian fighter, 367 on Native Americans, 338–339, 341; Cherokee removal, 371–373 as president: and Bank of United States, 374–376; federal power and, 370–373; Indian removals, 400; policies of, 327; and Tariff of Abominations, 374 rise to power, 368–370 slave revolts and, 354 and spoils system, 370 and War of 1812, 331, 338–340, 343 Jackson, Graham, 803i Jackson, Helen Hunt, 565–566 Jackson, Jesse, 956 Jackson, Thomas “Stonewall,” 471, 477i, 479, 488 Jackson-Vanik Amendment (1974), 919 James, Duke of York, 94, 95 James, Henry, 598, 617 James, Mollie Brown, 1005 James, Sam, 1005 James, William, 617 James Fort, 127m, 129 James I, King of England, 60, 62, 66, 72 James II, King of England, 101–102, 102 James River and Kanawha Canal, 364m Jamestown colony, 5, 45, 60–62, 71–72 Jansz, Willem, 53 Japan European contact, 21, 25, 47–48, 53 17th century, delegation to Mexico and Europe from, 47–48 18th century, trade, 273 19th century: rise to power of, 633; trade, 447–448 pre World War II: Five-Power Treaty, 722–723; immigration from, 648m, 649–650, 674, 709; imperialism of, 674, 772–773, 774–775; migration from, 396 World War II and: brutality of, 793–794; Kamikaze pilots, 804i; Pearl Harbor attack, 734, 769, 774–776, 775i, 776i; propaganda, 781–782; surrender, 795, 797, 804i; U.S. atomic bombing of, 796–797, 797i; U.S. firebombing of cities, 793–794 post-World War II: economy, 911; reconstruction, 812; U.S. occupation, 812 in 2000s, trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m Japanese American Citizen League, 821 Japanese-American women, post-World War II, employment, 805 Japanese-Americans, World War II and internment of, 99, 99i, 120, 300, 776–778, 778i prejudice against, 787i in U.S. Army, 769, 777–778 Jay, John anti-slavery activities, 263 The Federalist and, 283 Jay Treaty and, 297 Treaty of Paris and, 250–251, 250i Jay Treaty (1795), 297–298 Jazz, origins of, 658 Jazz Age, 715, 726–727, 726i The Jazz Singer (film), 713 Jefferson, Thomas Alien and Sedition Acts and, 299 Bill of Rights and, 284 character of, 319–320 cultural interests of, 263 and Declaration of Independence, 227–228 and election of 1796, 298, 298t and election of 1800, 319, 319t and election of 1804, 331, 331t and election of 1808, 333 Hemings controversy, 319 inaugural address, first, 323 on Intolerable Acts, 210 Lewis and Clark Expedition and, 329 Louisiana Purchase and, 322, 331 on Native Americans, 319, 320, 322 as president, 319, 320–323, 331; economic policies, 294; Embargo of 1807, 333 on slavery, 319–320, 361 Stamp Act and, 196 support for France, 291, 293 and two-party system, 292 as vice president, 298 on Washington, 260 western lands and, 194, 267–268, 268i Jeffords, James M., 999 Jemison, Mary, 311 Jenkins, Frederick, 451–452 Jenney, William LeBaron, 554 Jeremiah, Thomas, 224, 228 Jerome, Chauncey, 345 Jesuits in Chesapeake region, 37 Counter-Reformation and, 35 expulsion from Spanish territory, 190, 191 in French Canada, 55 in Southwest, 90–91 Jesup, Thomas S., 401 Jeter, Mildred, 873 Jews. See also Israel diaspora of, 396 15th century, in Spain, 21 17th-18th century, emigration to colonies, 59, 170–171 19th century: Grand Migration from Europe, 397m; immigration by, 548, 552; religious instruction, 614; in South, 612, 612i early 20th century: film industry and, 656, 704; Grand Migration from Europe, 397m; immigration by, 641, 650–651, 651m, 709; Zionist movement and, 674 in World War II: casualties in, 770, 786, 790, 803; Holocaust, 785–786, 785m, 795, 795i, 821; immigration by, 786; in Nazi Germany, 771, 772; U.S. antisemitism and, 773, 784, 786 post-World War II: Protestant fear of, 821; Soviet repression of, 919 in 1990s, first on presidential ticket, 995 Jezebel caricature, 355 Jiang Jieshi, 793, 823 Jim Crow system, 580. See also Segregation Job Corps, 870 Johnson, Andrew, 516i background of, 516 on black voting rights, 506 and election of 1864, 494 impeachment of, 515, 516 political career of, 505 Reconstruction policy, 429, 501–502, 505–507, 509i Johnson, Boson, 486–487 Johnson, Earvin “Magic,” 957i Johnson, Hiram W., 667 INDEX I-29 ${bmicon} Johnson, Jack, 660 Johnson, Joshua, 288i Johnson, Lady Bird, 869, 869i Johnson, Louis, 1030 Johnson, Lyndon B. assumption of presidency, 863, 869i background, 868–869 civil rights and, 870–871 and Democratic convention of 1964, 867 discrimination and, 808 and election of 1960, 859 and election of 1964, 869–870, 869t and election of 1968, 876, 881–882 environmentalism, 872 Great Society and, 833, 870–872 health care and, 871–872, 875i Supreme Court appointments, 873 Vietnam War and, 833, 868, 873, 874, 881–882, 895 and War on Poverty, 870 in World War II, 780i Johnson, Nancy, 486–487 Johnson, Richard M., 406 Johnson, Sir William, 178–179, 179m Johnson, Thomas, 180i Johnson-Reid Act (1924), 709 Johnston, Joseph, 471 Joliet, Louis, 82, 83m Jolson, Al, 713 Jones, Absalom, 303 Jones, Joe, 736i Jones, John Paul, 242 Jones, Paula, 990 Jordan, mid-20th century, British intervention in, 854 Jordan, Barbara, 885 Jordan, Michael, 957i, 1018 Jordan, Vernon, 990 Joseph, Chief, 502, 584i Joseph James (ship), 219, 252 Journalism, early 20th century, 658–659 Juarez, Benito, 483 Judicial review, establishment of, 321 Judiciary Act (1789), 292 Judiciary Act (1801), 320 Julius Caesar, 236 The Jungle (Sinclair), 659 Justice Department, Ku Klux Klan and, 884 K Kachina dances, 51 Kaczynski, Theodore, 984 Kaiser, Henry, 779 Kamikaze pilots, 804i Kansas in Civil War, 492 and drought of 1886, 587 Lecompton Constitution, 454 settlement of, 517 slavery conflict in, 452–454 Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), 448, 449m Karankawas Indians, 309 Kaskaskia Indians, 305, 378 Kearney, Belle, 661 Kearney, Denis, 575 Kearny, Stephen Watts, 422 Keating, Charles, 952 Keating-Owen Act (1916), 683 Keefe, Tim, 559i Keller, Helen, 660 Kelley, Florence, 625, 660 Kellie, Luna, 619 Kellogg, Frank, 724 Kellogg, Lucy, 344 Kellogg, Noah S., 541 Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), 724 Kelly, Oliver H., 528 Kelly, William, 543 Kendrick, William, 272–273 Kennan, George, 810, 825 Kennedy, Edward, 941 Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 859, 869i Kennedy, John F. assassination of, 863–864 background and early career, 858–859 and Berlin Wall, 862 civil rights movement and, 859, 863 and Cuba, 861–862 and Cuban Missile Crisis, 862 on discrimination against women, 862–863 domestic policy, 859–860 and election of 1960, 859, 859t foreign policy, 859, 860–862 inaugural address, 858 media and, 750–751 Monroe Doctrine and, 369 Vietnam War and, 861, 874 in World War II, 780i Kennedy, Joseph, 858–859 Kennedy, Joseph P., Jr., 859 Kennedy, Robert, 859, 881, 893–894 Kent, Moss, 203 Kent State shootings, 896 Kentucky in Civil War, 466m, 469 voting rights, late 18th century, 312f Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs, 626 Kerouac, Jack, 856 Kerr-McGee, 901 Kesey, Ken, 918 Key, Elizabeth, 115–116, 121 Key, Francis Scott, 338, 339i Key, Thomas, 115 Keynes, John Maynard, 762 Keynesian economics, 762 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 939, 939i Khrushchev, Nikita, 835–836, 835i, 851, 915, 1020 Khrushchev, Sergei, 1020 Kickapoo Indians, 305, 378 Kicking Bear, 521i Kim Il-Sung, 826–827 Kinetoscope, 656 King, Billie Jean, 930 King, Charles Bird, 378i, 424i King, Martin Luther, Jr., 882i assassination of, 893 Birmingham civil rights march (1963), 863 birthday holiday for, 956 FBI and, 861, 919 and March on Washington, 863 and Montgomery bus boycott, 847 release from prison, 859 Vietnam War and, 875, 882, 885 white view of, 892 King, Rodney, 978 King, Rufus, 331, 341, 341t, 362 King George’s War, 176 King Philip’s War. See Metacom’s War King William’s War, 84–85, 86, 103–106, 177 King’s Mountain, Battle of, 247m, 248 Kinji Ushijima, 552 Kino, Eusebio, 88m, 90–91 Kinsey, Alfred, 817 Kinsey Reports (1948,1953), 817, 888 Kiowas in Civil War, 475 culture, 433 removal of, 402m war with whites, 518, 581 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 942 Kissinger, Henry, 895, 903–906, 907, 910, 913–914, 923 Kivas, 13, 13i Knight, Jonathan, 254i Knights of Labor, 530, 536 demise of, 594 labor unrest and, 573 local issues and, 574 minorities and, 575, 592–593 Knights of St. Crispin, 455 Knights of the White Camellia, 513 Know-Nothing party, 448, 457 and election of 1856, 450–451 Knox, Henry, 225, 226, 243m, 258, 260, 276 Knudson, Coya, 843 INDEX I-30 ${bmicon} Kocherthal, Joshua von, 159, 160–161 Kolko, Gabriel, 814 Korea, Japanese annexation of, 674 Korean War, 826–829, 827i, 828m, 829i casualties in, 827i, 829 as Cold War outbreak, 801 containment and, 825, 827, 829 cultural impact of, 816 political impact of, 829 Korematsu v. United States, 300 Koresh, David, 984 Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 239 Kosovo, ethnic conflict in, 994, 994m Krajczar, Norma, 782 Kristallnacht, 772 Krumme, Wilhelm, 398 Ku Klux Klan 19th century: founding of, 507; popularity of, 513; violence by, 517 in 20th century, 677, 698, 710, 884, 912 Ku Klux Klan Act (1871), 517 Kublai Khan, 18 Kuramoto, Kazuko, 772 Kurihara, Joseph Y., 777 Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of, 965 L L-5 Society, 64 La Follette, Phil, 758 La Follette, Robert M. (“Bob”), 667, 723, 723t, 758 La Salle, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de, 82–84, 83m, 84i Labor supply, late 19th century, 548–552 Ladies Aid Society, 488 Ladies Magazine, 361, 386 Lady Washington (ship), 272–273 Lafayette, Marquis de, 231, 234, 249, 249i LaFlesche, Joseph, 596 LaFlesche, Susan, 597, 597i LaFlesche, Susette, 596 LaFollette, Robert M., 758 Laguna Indians, 937 Laissez-faire economics 19th century, 563–567 early 20th century, 681 late 20th century, 938, 944 Lake Michigan, French exploration of, 82 Lake Mohonk conferences, 596 Lake Powell, 872 Lakota Indians, 521i Lancaster Turnpike, 296 Land Act of 1820, 363 Land management 19th century, 608–609 20th century, 665, 665i, 683m Land Ordinance of 1785, 267–268 Land ownership late 18th century, 321f 19th century, as conflict source, 394, 434–435 Land redistribution, post-Civil War, 429, 508–509, 509i, 514 Land speculators, western frontier and, 194, 242–244, 269, 309–310 Land warrants, post-War of 1812, 335i Landon, Alfred, 761t Landsmark, Theodore, 913i Lane, Ralph, 41 Lange, Dorothea, 746, 753i Lansing, John, 277 Lansing, Robert, 686, 687, 694 Laos, Vietnam War and, 896 Las Casas, Bartholomé, 27, 40 Las Vegas, 20th century, 1003i, 1004i infrastructure of, 1004–1005 Latinos in, 1003–1004 water and, 1004–1005, 1017 Lasky, Jesse, 656 Lasselle, Marie-Thérèse, 269 The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper), 178 The Late Great Planet Earth (Lindsey), 953 Lateen sail, 19 Latimer, George, 400 Latin America, 20th century immigration from, 1027 U.S. in, 674–675, 675m, 852 U.S. relations, 923 Latinos. See also Hispanics; Mexican Americans 20th century: discrimination against, 1029; immigration by, 1029; political power of, 982; population, 982, 1024; prejudice against, 912; role and status of, 728; in U.S. culture, 1018; veterans organizations, 808 Laud, William, 66 Laughlin, Harry, 720 Laurens, Henry, 197, 250, 250i Lawrence, Benjamin, 727 Lawrence, Jacob, 670i Lawrence, Kansas, Confederate destruction of, 492 Lawrence, Myrtle Terry, 727 Lawson, John, 108 Lazarus, Emma, 549 Le Sueur, Pierre-Charles, 79 Lea, Tom, 768i League of Nations, 691, 694–695, 696 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 808, 844 League of Women Voters, 705 Leahy, Patrick, 1030 Leave It to Beaver (TV show), 837 Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 441 Lebanon, 20th century, U.S. intervention in, 854, 943 Lecompton Constitution, 454 Ledyard, John, 272 Lee, Charles, 230, 239 Lee, Henry “Light Horse Harry,” 490 Lee, Mother Ann, 311 Lee, Richard Henry, 283 Lee, Robert E., 477i and Brown’s Harpers Ferry attack, 456 in Civil War, 479, 488, 489, 489m, 495, 496, 497 and Cortina’s War, 435 on secession, 467 Lee, Woody, 961f Lee Yow Chun, 625 Legal counsel, right to, 873 Leif Erikson, 17 Leisler, Jacob, 103 Leisler’s Rebellion, 103 LeMay, Curtis, 794, 829 Lemke, William, 761t Lemlich, Clara, 641, 644 Lend-Lease program, 804 Lenin, Vladimir, 690, 692, 697i Lenni-Lanape. See Delaware Indians Let There Be Light (film), 782 “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania” (Dickinson), 205 Letters from the West (Wright), 344 Levellers, 203 Levitt, Alfred, 817 Levitt, William, 817, 821 Levittown, 817 Lewinsky, Monica, 516, 990–991 Lewis, John, 848 Lewis, John L., 762, 763 Lewis, Meriwether, 329, 329i Lewis, Sinclair, 726 Lewis and Clark Expedition, 329–330, 330m, 331i Lexington, Battle of, 211i, 212m, 213, 221 Liberal Party, 445 Liberation movements. See also Civil Rights movement; Ethnic liberation movements; Gay Liberation movement; Women’s liberation movement late 20th century, 889–892; backlash against, 892–893 The Liberator, 408 INDEX I-31 ${bmicon} Liberia, 456i Liberty party, 420i, 449 and election of 1840, 410, 410t and election of 1844, 419t, 420–421 Liberty (ship), 206, 207, 208 Libya, U.S. conflict with (1981), 961 Licensing and certification of professionals, introduction of, 416 Lieberman, Joe, 995 Life, 837, 843, 880 Life expectancy, 20th century, 1024 of Native Americans, 790 Light bulb, invention of, 542 Liliuokalani, Queen, 630 Lincoln, Abraham, 455i assassination of, 497 background of, 450 cabinet of, 467 Douglas debates, 455–456 and election of 1856, 451 and election of 1860, 457, 457t, 458, 465–466 and election of 1864, 494–495, 495t and Emancipation Proclamation, 482 and fall of Richmond, 496–497 on free blacks, fate of, 482 Gettysburg Address of, 492 on immigrant rights, 457–458 Indian policy, 494 oratory skill of, 750 political support for, 466 Reconstruction policy, 504 on reentry of Confederate states, 503, 504, 513m second inaugural address, 496 on slavery, 456 strategic sense of, 495 and Trent affair, 483 and Union Army command, 488 U.S.-Mexico War and, 422 writ of habeas corpus and, 300, 477 Lindbergh, Charles, 704, 773 Lindsey, Hal, 953 Ling Sing v. Washburn (California, 1862), 576 Linganfield, Lorimer and Marsha, 703–704 Little, Keith, 769, 775 Little Big Horn, Battle of, 519m, 520i, 521i, 584 Little Richard, 807, 855 Little Rock, Arkansas, school desegregation in, 846–847 Little Rock Nine, 847 Little Turtle, 289, 296, 305–306, 306–307 Livingston, Robert, 95, 227i Lloyd George, David, 694 Local government, late 19th century corruption in, 531–532, 531i, 557 growth of, 557 Locke, John, 96, 107, 227–228 Lockwood, Belva, 600, 600i Lodge, Henry Cabot, 634–635, 695, 859 Logan, Greenbury, 419 Logging 19th century, 545, 545t, 546i 20th century, 1013, 1014i Lomax, Alan, 742 Lôme, Dupuy de, 631 London, Jack, 642 London fire (1666), 94, 119 Lone Star (film), 983 Lone Star Republic, 419 The Lonely Crowd (Reisman), 855–856 Long, Huey P., 757, 758 Long, Jefferson, 514i Long Island, Battle of, 229 Long Walk, 481 Longoria, Felix, 808 Looking Backward (Bellamy), 592 Looking Out for Number One (Ringer), 931 Lookout Mountain, Battle of, 492 Lord & Taylor stores, establishment of, 560 Lorenzana, Apolonaria, 382 Los Alamos, New Mexico, 796, 937 Los Angeles founding of, 255 in World War II, racial unrest in, 787–788 late 20th century: air pollution in, 819; ethnic diversity in, 958; race rioting in, 935, 978, 978i Los Angeles Aqueduct, 664i, 665 Lost Generation, 727 Louis XIV, King of France, 81i American Revolution and, 234 and Edict of Nantes, 82, 161–162 reign of, 81–82 and War of Spanish Succession, 84–85 Louis XVI, King of France, 261, 292 Louisburg, English assault on, 177, 178, 179m Louisiana. See also New Orleans establishment of, 79–80, 83, 85–86 18th century: slavery in, 137; Spanish acquisition of, 164, 187, 190, 216; trade, 154i–155i, 155 19th century: cotton plantations in, 351, 352, 365i; French acquisition of, 321; immigration to, 551m; readmission to Union, 516, 517; slave revolts, 354 20th century, politics in, 758 Cajuns, origins of, 162 Louisiana Purchase, 216, 322–323, 331, 335i, 445m Louisiana Territory, exploration of, 329 Louisville and Portland Canal, 364m L’ouverture, Toussaint, 379–380 Love Canal, 916–917 Lovejoy, Elijah P., 409 Loving, Richard, 873 Loving v. Virginia (1967), 807, 873 Lowell mill girls, 382–383 Lowell model, 346 Loyal Nine, 197 Loyalists, 185 compensation for seized property, 251 Loyola, Ignatius, 35 Lucero, Jose, 974 Ludlow massacre, 678i, 679, 679i Luks, George, 658i LULAC. See League of United Latin American Citizens Lumpkin, Wilson, 373 Lumumba, Patrice, 853 Luna, Grace, 676 Lunas, 630 Lusitania (ship), 686 Luther, Martin, 34 Lyceums, 415 Lynchings late 19th century, 580, 611 early 20th century, 662, 672, 677, 683, 698, 699i mid-20th century, 743, 759, 807, 846 in 1990s, 981 Lyon, Matthew, 299 M MacArthur, Douglas Bonus March and, 748 in Korea, 827–830 in occupied Japan, 812 in Philippines, 792 Macon’s Bill No. 2 (1810), 334 Macy’s stores, establishment of, 560 M.A.D. D.A.D.S., 979 USS Maddox, 876 Madero, Francisco, 675 Madison, Dolly, 338m Madison, James Alien and Sedition Acts and, 299 Bill of Rights and, 284 and Constitutional Convention, 276, 278, 279 and election of 1808, 333 on factions, 290 The Federalist and, 283 as president, 333; War of 1812, 335–336, 338 as secretary of state, 321 INDEX I-32 ${bmicon} Magellan, Ferdinand, 24m–25m, 25, 28, 30 Magic, 769 Magna Carta, 201 Magnum, W. P., 407t Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 629 Mail order catalogs, 561, 562 Main Street (Lewis), 726 Maine failed English colony at Sagadahoc, 60 frontier warfare in, related to Salem witch hunt, 104 in Revolutinary War, 222, 241, 241i statehood of, 362 Maine (ship), 631, 631i Maize, cultivation of in prehistory, 10–11, 15, 16 in 17th century, 90 Malaria 17th century, Native Americans and, 52 in Civil War, 479 Malcolm X, 867i, 884 Malcontents, 144–145 La Malinche, 29 Mallet, Paul, 175–176 Mallet, Pierre, 175–176 Mallon, Mary, 652 Mammy caricature, 354–355 The Man That Nobody Knows (Barton), 725 Manassas, Second Battle of, 479 Mandans culture, 387, 442 Lewis and Clark and, 329 Mandate system, 694 Mandela, Nelson, 956, 963 Manhattan Island, purchase of, 58 Manhattan Project, 795–796 Manifest destiny, 418, 447 Mankiller, Wilma, 343i Manly, Alex, 611 Mann, Horace, 414, 614 Mann Act (1910), 660 Mao Anying, 823 Mao Zedong, 793, 823, 823i, 826i, 903i, 904, 906 Maquiladoras, 911–912, 1005, 1009 Marbury, William, 321 Marbury v. Madison (1803), 321 March on Washington (1963), 848m, 863 Marconi, Guglielmo, 1006 Marcos, Ferdinand, 396 Margate, David, 224 Marina, Doña, 29 Marine Corps, establishment of, 298 Marion, Francis, 247 Marketing. See Advertising Marquette, Jacques, 82, 83m Marriage 18th century, 163 late 19th century, 626 20th century, 657, 703–704, 706, 741, 817–818, 837, 837f, 929; immigrant picture brides, 649–650, 649i; interracial, 807, 841, 873, 1026; same-sex, 979–980; in World War II, 783–784 Married Women’s Property Law (Mississippi, 1839), 417 Mars Society, 64 Marshall, George C., 796, 812, 815 Marshall, John, 298, 321, 371 Marshall, Thurgood, 845, 873, 981 Marshall Fields, establishment of, 547, 560 Marshall Plan, 812 Marti, José Julian, 630 Martin, James Plumb, 259 Martin, Luther, 277, 283 Martyr, Peter, 28 Maryland 17th century: colonization of, 73–74, 74m; slavery in, 118, 121; unrest in, 103 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 284; slave population, 134m; tobacco economy in, 166–167; voting rights in, 312f in Civil War, 466m, 469 Masculinity, late 20th century, 930–931 Maslov-Bering, Aleksandr, 188i Mason, Biddy, 431 Mason, George, 237, 281, 283 Mason, James, 483 Masons, 376, 376i colored, 580 Mass merchandising, rise of, 560–563 Mass production, development of, 541, 653–655 Massachusetts 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 284; post-Revolution unrest in, 275–276; Provincial Congress, 210–211, 213; slave population, 134m; slave trade and, 272; slavery in, 140; state constitution of, 237–238, 277–278; tax resistance in, 197, 206; voting rights, 312f 19th century, education in, 415 Massachusetts Bay colony chartering of, 64–67 dissenters in, 68–70 establishment of, 67–68, 103 slave trade and, 118 Massachusetts Bay Company, 64–67 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, 615 Massachusetts Government Act (1774), 210 Massachusetts Humane Society, 263 Massachusetts Magazine, 317 Massachusetts Regulation, 275–276 Massacre of St. George’s Field, 202 Massasoit, 45, 63, 98 Matamoros, Battle of, 422 Mather, Cotton, 99, 105, 140 Matzeliger, Jan Ernest, 543 Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 492 USS Mayaguez, 909–910 Mayans, 11–12, 14m Mayflower Compact, 45, 63 Mayflower (ship), 45–46, 63 Mayhew, Jonathan, 171 Mayhew, Thomas, Jr., 71 McAdoo, William G., 723 McCain, John, 1012 McCarran-Walter Act (1952), 822 McCarthy, Eugene, 881 McCarthy, Joseph, 802, 821, 861 McCarthy, Margaret, 394–395 McCarthyism, 820–821 McCartney, Bill, 979 McClellan, George, 479, 488, 494, 495t McClure’s, 659 McCord, James, 908 McCord, Louisa, 443i, 452 McCormick, Cyrus, 436 McCormick reapers, 543 McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), 371 McDonald, Elizabeth, 160 McDonald’s, 1020, 1021, 1022i McDonough, Thomas, 338 McFarlane, Robert, 943 McGovern, George S., 907, 907t McGuffey, William H., 414 McGuffey’s Reader, 414 McIntosh, Ebenezer, 197 McJunkin, George, 5, 5i McKinley, William assassination of, 663 and election of 1896, 621–622, 622t and election of 1900, 635, 663, 663t and Hawaiian Islands, 632 policies, 618, 619, 630 Spanish-American War and, 630–633, 633m McKinley Tariff (1890), 618, 619, 630 McLaurin v. Oklahoma (1950), 807 McNamara, Robert, 874, 880 INDEX I-33 ${bmicon} McNary-Haugen bills (1926,1928), 724 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 721 McVeigh, Timothy, 984, 1024i Me Decade, 903 Meade, George G., 489, 489m Measles as part of Columbian Exchange, 24, 26–27i 17th century, 52 19th century, 405 Meat Inspection Act (1906), 659 Mecca, 18 Media. See also Television Clinton and, 751, 751i and election of 2000, 997 Gulf War and, 966 Kennedy and, 750–751 Reagan and, 751, 941 Roosevelt (F.D.) and, 750–751, 764 Roosevelt (T.) and, 750 late 20th century: characteristics of, 1007; critics of, 988; mergers in, 974 Medicaid abortion and, 930 introduction of, 871 Medicare, 875i introduction of, 871 Medicine 20th century: advances, 815, 836; population growth and, 1013 in 1990s, 986–987 Medicine shows, 560 Mellon, Andrew, 722 Melting pot, 664 Melville, Herman, 440 Mendez v. Westminster (1946), 808 Menéndez de Avilés, Pedro, 36–37 Menominees, home region of, 305 Mercantilism, 81 Mercer, Erminia Pablita Ruiz, 742–744 Mercer, Lucy, 748 Mercury poisoning, hatters and, 54 Meredith, James, 848m Merrimack (ship), 483 Mesa Verde, 13i, 14–15 Mesoamerica agriculture in, 10 cultures of, 10–12 Messier, Jean-Michel, 79 Messier, Marguerite, 79–80 Mestizos in Caribbean, 23 in Southwest, 89 Metacom, 98 Metacom’s War, 97–100, 97m impact of, 103–104 Methodist Church, Early Republic, 311 Métis, 406 Mexican American women, early 20th century, in Southwest, 676 Mexican Americans mid-19th century: rights of, 432–433; white opinion of, 434 20th century: civil rights activism, 844; deportation of, 745, 756, 757i; employment, 744–745; hostility toward, 787–788, 808; unions and, 756–757, 822i, 890 in 2000s, employment, 1003 mid-20th century, violence against, 491 Mexican Cession, 431, 445m Mexicas. See Aztecs Mexico 19th century: American migration to, 363; independence of, 363–364; Maximilian regime in, 492; northern frontier, 366m; Protestant view of Catholics in, 412, 424–425; slavery in, 400; and Texas annexation, 422; and Texas independence, 418–419; U.S. Civil War and, 483; and U.S.-Mexican War, 421i, 422–425, 423m 20th century: immigration from, 647, 676, 685, 709, 779, 819, 957–958, 1027; industry flight to, 911–912; NAFTA and, 992; nationalist revolution in, 674; Revolution of 1911, 647, 675–676; U.S. border with, 1005i; U.S. intervention in, 675–676, 675m; World War I and, 686 in 2000s, trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m Meyer, Tom, 979i Miami and Erie Canal, 364m Miami Indians. See also Ohio Confederacy home region of, 305 Ohio Confederacy and, 289 in Ohio region, 270i resistance by, 305–306 Revolutionary War and, 245 Michigan, statehood, 269 Michigan Carlson Works, 546 Mickikinikwa, 289 Micmacs, 30 Microsoft, 1006 Mid-Atlantic, forest clearing in, 545t Middle class 19th century: alliance with workers, 591–592; culture of, 618, 626i; education and, 616; growth of, 526, 540–541, 551, 567, 569; reformers in, 537; values of, 387, 432i 20th century, 951; blacks and, 843–844, 976 Middle colonies, economy, 18th century, 165m, 168–169 Middle East, 20th century British withdrawal from, 854, 880 instability in, 939 U.S. policy in, 935, 961, 965, 993 Middle Passage, 126, 129–132, 219, 396 Middlesex Canal, 364m Midway Island, Battle of, 792–793 Midwest 18th century, imperial struggle and Pontiac’s War, 188–189 19th century: economy, 436; ethnic groups in, 435–436, 457t; rural unrest in, 587–591, 588i; settlement of, 391–392, 517 early 20th century, migration to, 645–646, 645m, 684, 684i Migration(s). See also Immigration; specific regions and groups 19th century, 392, 394–406; and education standardization, 413–414 1870-1930, 728m 20th century, 1024; in 1930s, 746–747, 753i; to cities, 747f; to Midwest, 645–646, 645m, 684, 684i; in World War II, 778–779 Military budget in 1950s, 827, 849–850 in 1960s, 860, 868 in 1980s, 945 in 1990s, 973–974, 989 late 20th century, 1020 Military districts, post-Civil War, 513m Militias, state blacks and, 302 tensions in, 238–239 Milliken v. Bradley (1974), 897–898 Mills, C. Wright, 855–856 Mineral Act (1866), 524 Mingo Creek Society, 311 Mingo Indians, 270i Minik, 628–629, 628i Mining late 19th century, 523, 524, 547; Chinese and, 576i; environmental impact of, 545; hazards of, 589i; methods of, 541–542; worker unrest in, 591, 619 20th century: environmental damage and, 647i, 1013; labor unrest in, 787 INDEX I-34 ${bmicon} Mining Act (1872), 1013 Minkin, Shadrach, 451–452 Minnesota, statehood, 269, 456 Minnesota Farmer-Labor party, 758 Minorities. See also specific groups American Revolution and, 197–199, 197i, 202, 213–214, 217 19th century: advertising and, 541, 562–563; Populist party and, 622; resistance to white dominance, 573–584; rights of, 434–435, 575–578; role and status of, 431–433; unions and, 575–576, 592–593, 632 early 20th century, women’s suffrage movement and, 661 in 1930s: employment, 742–745; motion picture industry and, 764; New Deal and, 760–761; New Deal coalition and, 764; role and status of, 737–738; as sports celebrities, 765; unions and, 756–757 World War II and, 769; GI Bill, 836–837; unions and, 782 in 1960s and 1970s: education and, 890; resentment against, 912; unions and, 890, 897i Minuit, Peter, 58 Minutemen, 211, 221 Miranda rights, 873 Miranda v. Arizona (1964), 873 Miscegenation, 125 Mission homes, late 19th century, 625 Mission San Carlos Borromeo, 307i Mission San Francisco de la Espada, 150i Missionary Ridge, Battle of, 492 Mississippi 19th century: Black Codes, 506, 611; readmission to Union, 516 post-Civil War: Black Codes, 506; readmission to Union, 516 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 867, 884 Mississippi River 17th century, exploration by French, 82–83, 83m 18th century, navigation rights on, 264, 293, 298 19th century: Great Flood of 1927, 717–718, 718i, 719m; levee construction on, 717 Mississippi River Commission, 717 Mississippi Valley Native American cultures, 500-1500, 14m, 15–17 17th century, French colonization and exploration, 79–80, 82–84, 83m, 85–86, 85f late 18th century, struggle for control of, 264–269 Missouri Lewis and Clark in, 329 in Civil War, 466m, 469 Missouri Compromise (1820), 361–363, 362m, 448 Mitchell, George, 992 Mitchell, John (Attorney General), 300–301, 908 Mitchell, John (UMW president), 663 Mittelberger, Gottlieb, 160 Mobile, colony at, 79–80, 79i Mobility, American experience and, 290 Moche people, 11, 14m Moctezuma, 28–29 Model A Ford, 716 “A Model of Christian Charity” (Winthrop), 67 Model T Ford, 654 Modern Times (film), 763 Mogollons, 13, 14m Mohawks. See also Iroquois Confederacy disease and, 55–56 French and Indian War and, 179 Metacom’s War and, 99 Revolutionary War and, 245 war with whites, 245 Mohegans, Pequot War and, 71 Molano, Elvira, 822i Moley, Raymond, 752 Moll Flanders (Defoe), 159 Mondale, Walter, 946, 946t Monetary policy post-Revolution, 293; in New England, 273–276, 275f late 19th century, 530, 618–620, 620, 621–622 early 20th century, 682 in 1970s, 911 in 1980s, 946 Money Trust, 683 Monmouth, Battle of, 239 Monroe, James and Constitutional Convention, 276 and election of 1816, 341, 341t and election of 1820, 367, 367t Indian policy, 367 Louisiana Purchase and, 322 policies, 341 on territorial government, 269 Monroe, Marilyn, 782–783 Monroe Doctrine, 327, 367, 447 in late 19th century, 629–630 impact of, 368–369 Roosevelt Corollary to, 665 Montana, statehood for, 542 Montcalm, Marquis de, 178, 179m, 180 Monte Verde, Chile, archaeological site, 8 Montgomery, Richard, 222, 226, 243m Montgomery bus boycott, 847, 848m Montgomery Guards, 396 Montgomery Ward, 561, 562, 816 Montreal American seizure of, 226 British seizure of, 180, 192 establishment of, 55 Moon, U.S. landing on, 896i, 897 Moore, James, 92 Moral Majority, 953, 954–955 Moravians, 166 Moreno, Luisa, 782, 822 Morgan, Daniel, 233, 248–249 Morgan, John Pierpont, 547, 568, 620, 667, 683 Morgan v. Virginia (1946), 807 Morill Act (1862), 478 Mormon Corridor, 554 Mormon Tabernacle, 554 Mormon Trail, 393m Mormons, 386, 402–403, 416, 564, 599 late 20th century, 1020 Moroni, 386 Morris, Gouverneur, 283 Morris, Robert, 258, 272, 277, 282 Morrow, E. Frederick, 846 Morse, Jedidiah, 262 Morse, Samuel E. B., 411–412 Mortality rate, 17th century, 158 Morton, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll,” 658 Morton, Jackson, 463 Mosby, John Singleton, 492 Moses, Robert Parris, 867–868, 885–886 Moses, Simon, 612 Mothers 19th-century view of, 387i in 1920s, education for, 705–706 maternal death rates (1900-1950), 706f Mother’s Day, establishment of, 678 Mothers’ Magazine, 405 Motion picture camera, invention of, 655–656 Motion picture industry. See also Hollywood early 20th century, 655–656, 764; African American, 713–715 in 1950s, 816, 854–855, 855i in World War II, 780–781 Motor Voter Act, 989 Mott, Lucretia, 417, 443–444 Mottrom, John, 115 Mound-building societies, 15–17, 16i INDEX I-35 ${bmicon} European view of, 5–6 precursors to, 11 Moundville, 15–16 Mount, Julia Luna, 744–745 Mount Holyoke College, 415 Mount McKinley, 673, 924i Mount St. Helens, 948i Mozambique, and slave trade, 130m–131m Ms. Magazine, 902, 927 Muckraking, 658–659 Mugwumps, 565 Muhammad (prophet), 18 Muir, John, 524–525, 609, 665 Mulattos legal status of, 17th century, 115–116 in Southwest, 89 Muller v. Oregon (1908), 660 Mumbet, 281i Muquelmne Miwoks, 378 Murphy, Frank, 763 Murray, Ellen, 484i Murray, Judith Sargent, 317 Muscovy Company, 40 Muskie, Edmund, 907 Muslim Brotherhood, 1020 Muslims. See also Islam; Islamic fundamentalism in U.S., post-9/11, 1030–1031 Mussadiq, Muhammad, 939, 939i Mussolini, Benito, 771, 791 My Lai massacre, 796, 880 Myer, Dillon S., 821–822 Myers, Isaac, 529 Myrdal, Gunnar, 784–785 N NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NACW. See National Association of Colored Women Nader, Ralph, 872, 996t, 999 NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement Nagasaki, atomic bombing of, 796–797, 797 Nagy, Imre, 851 Namouna (ship), 604i Napalm, 796, 879i Napoleon, 298, 320, 321, 322, 331, 334, 337 Napoleon III, 492 Naranjo, Pedro, 89 Narragansett Indians, 71, 99, 107 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), 408 Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy (Grandy), 399 Narváez, Pánfilo, 30, 38m NASA. See National Aeronautics and Space Administration Nashoba, Tennessee, 416 Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 853–854 Nast, Thomas, 514i, 531, 531i Nat caricature, 355 Natchez Indians, 137 The Nation, 532, 598, 616, 746 Nation of Islam. See Black Muslims Nation state, modern, emergence of, 35 National Academy of Sciences, 1016 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 884 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Cold War and, 836, 850 National-American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), 624, 677–678 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) anti-lynching campaign, 677 anti-segregation activism, 788, 807, 845, 846 establishment of, 662, 674 first presidential address to, 819 Red Scare and, 821 Scottsboro Boys and, 743–744 National Association of Black Scuba Divers, 120 National Association of ColoredWomen (NACW) , 625 National Association of Manufacturers, 698 National Association of Window Trimmers, 562 National Baseball League, 558 National Basketball Association (NBA), 957i, 1018 National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 716 National Child Labor Committee, 659, 659i National Congress of Mothers, 625 National Consumers’ League (NCL), 625, 660 National culture, development of, 882–883 National debt, in 1990s, 988 National Defense Education Act (NDEA) [1958], 850 National Emigration Convention of Colored People (1854), 451 National Equal Rights Party, 600 The National Era, 452 National Farmers’ Alliance, 587t, 588 National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union, 588 National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry. See The Grange National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), 752t, 755 National Labor Relations Act (1935), 752t, 759 National Labor Union (NLU), 503, 528–530 member unions, 530t National Liberation Front (Viet Cong; NLF), 861, 874–876 National Museum of the American Indian, 1027 National Organization for Women (NOW), 889 National Park Service, creation of, 683 National park system early 20th century, 665, 665i development of, 525, 608–609 in West, 683m National Recovery Administration (NRA), 755 National Republican party and election of 1828, 369 and election of 1832, 376, 376t National Rifle Association, 985–986 National Road, 345 National security, post-World War II, redefinition of, 809 National Security Act (1947, 1949), 826 National Security Council (NSC) creation of, 826 document 68 (NCS-68), 824–826 Iran-Contra scandal and, 962, 962i National Security League, 689 National security state, establishment of, 823–826 National Socialist (Nazi) party eugenics program, 720 rise to power, 771 National Trades Union, 392, 407 National Union for Social Justice, 757 National Wildlife Federation, 915 National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), 527–528, 624 National Women’s Party (NWP), 678, 705 Nationalism, late 20th century, 1021–1023 Nationalist movement, 592 Native American Grave and Burial Protection Act, 629 Native American women crafts, 520 first physician, 597, 597i in Navajo culture, 90, 90i role and status of, 90, 90i, 157, 318, 330, 378, 381, 382, 520 INDEX I-36 ${bmicon} Native Americans. See also specific tribes prehistory, 6–17; Paleo-Indian era, 8; Archaic era, 8–11; 500-1500, 13–17, 14m; European view of, 5–6; origins of, 2–3, 6–8, 7m 16th century: Christianity and, 26–27, 31, 37; culture, 24–25, 26m–27m, 41i; disease, 3, 25, 26, 26m–27m, 29, 30; Spanish conquest of, 26–33 17th century: aid to European settlers, 3; alcohol and, 98; assimilation of, 97–98; Christianity and, 49–51, 50i, 51–53, 52m; culture, 89, 91–92; disease, 45, 46, 51–53; displacement of, 70–71, 72, 76; education of, 51; land rights of, 68; and Metacom’s War, 98–99; religion, 51; trade, 51i, 54–58, 79, 81, 92 (See also Fur trade); uprisings, 52, 97–101, 97m; wars with whites, 58, 70–71, 70i, 71, 72; women in, 90, 90i 18th century: alcohol and, 307, 309; American Revolution and, 217, 242–246, 251; assimilation of, 306–309, 307i; and Christianity, 170, 193; culture, 112, 151–152, 151i, 152; disease, 255–257, 256m, 266; displacement of, 194, 217, 242–244, 257, 306; firearms and, 154–157, 156m; Jefferson on, 319, 320; Proclamation Line of 1763, 194, 242–243; removals, 289; resistance, 107–109, 186, 190, 264, 266–267, 296, 305; Seven Years’ War and, 192; trade, 109, 151–157, 156m (See also Fur trade); uprisings, 192–194, 198m; wars with whites, 305–306, 306m; white views of, 193–194; women, 157, 318 19th century: alcohol and, 334, 378; assimilation of, 342i, 378, 595–598, 605–606, 605i, 613m; in California, 432–433, 522; and Christianity, 378; culture, 330, 433–434, 441–442, 520, 547t, 566, 566i, 584, 614; and disease, 378, 405; education, 596–597, 597, 605, 605i, 612–613; land losses, 377, 585m; land rights of, 373, 565–566; railroad and, 518, 519, 537; religion, 520; removals, 320, 327, 393, 394, 401–402, 402m, 608; reservation system, 595–596, 595–598, 606, 613m; resistance by, 327, 330, 334–335, 384–385, 392, 401, 502, 537, 582–584, 583i, 610; rights of, 596; roles and status of, 377–379; Social Darwinism and, 568; subduing of, 583–584; uprisings, 392; U.S. policy on, 565–566, 595–598, 596–597; wars with whites, 518–520, 519m; white views on, 377–378, 559–560; women, 330, 378, 381, 382, 520 in Civil War, 479–481, 479i, 480m; alliances, 474–476; internment of, 495; Lincoln’s policy toward, 494; Union brutality toward, 479–481, 479i, 493–494 20th century: activism, 606; assimilation of, 821–822, 1027; casinos and, 974–975, 974i, 1027; citizenship for, 280; compensation debate, 821; discrimination against, 808; federal policy on, 755–756, 755i, 769, 821–822; life expectancy, 790; militancy of, 890–891; nuclear contamination and, 937–938; population of, 1027; rights of, 979–981; role and status of, 716i, 1027; in Southwest, 679m; subjugation of, 673; voting rights, 280; white awareness of, 938; in World War II, 769, 769i, 788–790, 793 Nativists mid-19th century, 410–412 U.S.-Mexico War and, 422 Natural resources 19th century, exploitation of, 536, 541–542, 545–546, 546i 20th century: energy needs and, 913f, 914; exploitation of, 1017 Naturalists, 262–263 Nauvoo Legion, 402–403 Navajos in Civil War, 465, 480m, 495 culture, 90, 90i Indian Reorganization Act and, 756 pollution and, 937 Pueblo Indians and, 87, 90 reservation, 88m, 481 in Southwest, 88m, 679m technology and, 1007 uranium mining and, 816, 938 World War II and, 769, 769i, 793 Naval Stores Act (1705), 107 Navarro, Jose Antonio, 419 Navarro, Ramon, 712 Navigation Acts (1660; 1663), 93, 102–103 Colonial sidestepping of, 195 Navigation and boatbuilding technology 15th century, 19, 20i 19th century, 418 history of, 39 Navratilova, Martina, 957 Navy, British, in Revolutionary War, 241–242 Navy, U.S. late 19th century, growth of, 629 birth of, 241 establishment of, 298 in Revolutionary War, 241–242 in War of 1812, 336 Navy(ies), state, 241 NAWSA. See National-American Woman Suffrage Association Nazis. See National Socialist (Nazi) party NBA. See National Basketball Association NBC. See National Broadcasting Company NCL. See National Consumers’ League NCS-68, 824–826 NDEA. See National Defense Education Act Nebraska and drought of 1886, 587 settlement of, 517 Negro Acts (South Carolina), 135, 138 The Negro Christianized (Mather), 140 Negro Election Day, 303 The Negro World, 709 Neighborhood Guild of New York City, 598 Neighborhood Union, 626 Nelson, Lord, 331 Neolin, 193 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 993 Neugin, Rebecca, 401 Neutrality Acts (1935, 1936, 1937), 773 Neutrality Proclamation (1793), 292, 293 Nevada culture of, 20th century, 1004 federal lands in, 947m nuclear testing in, 815i, 816, 937, 938 U.S. acquisition of, 434 New Albion, 40, 75m New Amsterdam culture and population of, 58–59 English seizure of, 94–95 establishment of, 57–58, 57i New Archangel, 190 INDEX I-37 ${bmicon} “The New Colossus” (Lazarus), 549 New Deal, 750–762 effects of, 734, 738 Eisenhower and, 849 and election of 1932, 749 goals of, 734 Indian policies, 755–756, 755i legislation, 752t, 753–756 minorities and, 760–761 opposition to, 756–759, 764 second, 751, 759–761 New Deal coalition, 764 in 1970s, 921–922 and election of 1972, 907 New Democracy, 369 New Democrats, 987–988 New England 17th century: colonization of, 62–63, 65f, 67–71, 67i; religion in, 103–105 18th century: culture of, 106–107; economy, 165m, 167–168; Native Americans in, 107; shipbuilding in, 106, 167–168; trade, 294i; unrest in, 273–274 19th century: economy, 438; industry in, 345–348, 348f New England Emigrant Aid Company, 452 New Freedom (Wilson), 667, 676 New Hampshire 17th century, settlement of, 70, 95 18th century: Constitutional ratification, 284; slave population, 134m post-Revolution: economy, 274, 275f; population, 275f; voting rights, 312f New Harmony community, 416 New Haven and Northampton Canal, 364m New Jersey 17th century, settlement of, 95 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 283; economy, 168–169; slave population, 134m; slavery in, 438; voting rights, 312f, 380; women’s rights in, 217, 290 20th century, race riots in, 884 New Jersey Plan, 279 New Left, in 1960s, 885–886 New Lights, 174–175 New Look, 849, 850 New Mexico 17th century, Spanish colonization of, 48m, 49–51, 49i 18th century, slave trade and, 154 19th century: American migration to, 364, 375; Hispanic land rights in, 523; statehood and, 432, 434; U.S. acquisition of, 424, 434, 447 20th century: federal lands in, 947m; Indian population, 679m; statehood, 673 Santa Fe, 573i; colonization of, 50, 50i New Nationalism, 667 New Netherlands, 57–58 English seizure of, 94–95 New Northwest, 601 New Orleans 18th century, 154i–155i, 155; French cession to Spain, 180, 190; rebellion of French inhabitants, 190 19th century: culture of, 351; post-Civil War, 504; slave life in, 353–354 post-Civil War, 504, 578i New Orleans, Battle of, 339–340, 340i New Orleans Times-Picayune, 596 New Republic, 598 New Sweden, 58, 74m A New Voyage to Carolina (Lawson), 108, 108i New York 17th century, unrest in, 103 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 284; economy, 168–169; Hudson Valley revolt, 203; in Revolutionary War, 228–230; slave population, 134m; slavery in, 133; voting rights, 312f 19th century, African American voting rights, 380 New York Charity Organization Society, 652 New York City 17th century, government of, 94–95 18th century: ethnic diversity, 160; growth of, 163, 169; slave uprisings, 135–136, 138 19th century: anti-black riots, 409; Civil War draft riots, 491; corruption in, 531–532, 531i, 557; Irish in, 395; union unrest, 407 late 19th century: architecture of, 554, 555i; culture of, 560–562; immigration, 552; poverty in, 594–595, 595i early 20th century: entertainment in, 656; migration to, 684; Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, 641–642, 641i, 643 late 20th century: Gay Pride parade, 891i; immigration, 1027; Marathon in, 917 New York City Mechanic’s Society, 315i New York Freeman, 593 New York Journal, 631 New York Sun, 531, 561 New York Times on Indian policy, 568 Pentagon Papers and, 895, 907 Rogers (Will) and, 737 Silkwood case and, 901 on slavery, 452 on Tammany Hall, 531 and World Trade Center bombing of 1993, 995 New York World, 631 Newark, New Jersey, in 1960s, black riots in, 884 Newburgh Conspiracy, 258–260 Newland Act (1902), 676 Newspapers in 1980s, readership, 941 advertising and, 561 Newsweek, 856 Nez Perce Indians culture, 520 horses and, 152, 153m removal of, 502 Ngo Dingh Diem, 861, 874 Niagara Movement, 662 Nicaragua 19th century, U.S. intervention in, 447 20th century: U.S. foreign policy in, 943, 961–963; U.S. intervention in, 369, 675, 675m Nichols, Jesse Clyde, 725 Nichols, Terry, 984 Nicolet, Jean, 82 Nimitz, Chester, 792–793 Nineteenth Amendment, 280, 638, 661, 678, 699 El Niño, 11 Nixon, Richard M. abuses of power by, 907–908, 909 in China, 903i, 904–905 civil rights movement and, 895 Cold War and, 903–906 constituency of, 893 domestic policies, 894–895, 928 economic policy, 911 and election of 1960, 859, 859t and election of 1968, 892, 894, 894t and election of 1972, 907, 907t, 908 enemies list of, 895, 907 foreign policy, 895–896, 903–906 INDEX I-38 ${bmicon} House Un-American Activities Committee and, 820–821, 820i impeachment of, 908–909 pardon of, 909 political style of, 907 resignation of, 908i, 909 in Soviet Union, 906 unions and, 890 as vice president, 835–836, 835i, 849 Vietnam War and, 833, 880, 895–896, 907; suppression of dissent, 300–301 Watergate scandal, 833, 897, 906–909; historians’ view of Cold War and, 814; impact of, 909, 919, 921 in World War II, 780i Nixon Doctrine, 895–896 NLF. See National Liberation Front NLU. See National Labor Union Non-Intercourse Act (1809), 333 Nootka Indians, 272 Noriega, Manuel, 369, 964–965 Norris, Clarence, 744 North 18th century: abolition of slavery in, 300–301, 302; free blacks in, 301–303, 303i 19th century: abolition of slavery in, 300–301, 302; agriculture in, 580t; economy, 437–439; slavery in, 438 North, Lord American Revolution and, 230, 250 policies of, 207, 209, 210 North, Oliver, 962, 962i North America. See also Americas prehistory, 6–17; Paleo-Indian era, 8; Archaic era, 8–11; 500-1500, 13–17; European view of, 5–6; peopling of, 2–3, 6–8, 7m European exploration of: 15th century, 18–25, 24m–25m; 16th century, 24m–25m, 25–41, 38m North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 991–992, 1008 North American Review, 539, 568 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 801, 850 North Briton (periodical), 194 North Carolina 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 284; economy, 165m, 166, 167i; establishment of, 107; slave population, 134m; voting rights, 312f; westward expansion, 266 19th century: African American women organizations in, 625; readmission to Union, 516; secession of, 466m, 468, 469 North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College, 614 North Dakota, statehood for, 542 North Korea. See also Korean War history of, 826–827 Pueblo incident, 880 North Pole global warming and, 1014 Peary expedition to, 671 North Vietnam. See also Vietnam War communist bloc aid to, 878 morale of, 878 U.S. bombing of, 876, 896 Northeast ethnic groups in, 457t forest clearing in, 545t migration to, 684, 684i Northern Alliance, 588 Northern Ireland, Clinton in, 992 Northern Pacific Railroad, 519, 519m, 525, 541, 609 Northern Securities Co., 663 Northrup, Solomon, 408 Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 268–269 Indian resistance and, 305, 306m slavery in, 279 Northwest Territory 18th century: culture of, 290; Native Americans in, 289, 305–306, 306m; trade, 272–273, 272i 19th century, migration to, 404–405 Norway, immigration from, 19th century, 391–392, 391i, 529i Notes on the State of Virginia (Jefferson), 263, 319 NOW. See National Organization for Women Noyes, John Humphrey, 417 NRA. See National Recovery Administration NSC. See National Security Council Nuclear arms. See also Arms race atomic bomb: bombing of Japan, 796–797, 797i; development of, 795–796 debate over, 796–797 environmental damage from, 815–816, 815i, 937–938 hydrogen bomb, development of, 796, 816, 832 production and test sites, 858m, 937–938 protests against, 856–858, 856i, 937–938, 956 Soviet acquisition of, 823–824 stockpiles, in 1970s, 904m–905m testing of, environmental damage from, 815–816, 815i Nuclear deterrence, 850 Nuclear freeze movement, 956 Nuclear power controversy over, 925, 925i as percent of total, 926f plant locations, 926m protests against, 916 Nuclear test ban treat of 1963, 862 Nuclear winter, 796, 956 Nugent, Polly, 318 Nullification, 299, 374 Nullification Proclamation (1832), 374 Nuremberg trials, 812 NWP. See National Women’s Party NWSA. See National Woman Suffrage Association O Oakley, Annie, 559–560 OAS. See Organization of American States Oberlin College, 415 Obscenity. See Pornography Occaneechi Indians, 100, 101 Ocean travel. See also Navigation and boatbuilding technology pre-1400, 17–18 15th century, 19, 20–23, 20i late 19th century, 598, 604i circumnavigation of globe, 28 Oceana (Harrington), 96 O’Connor, Basil, 752 O’Connor, Sandra Day, 930, 954 O’Donnell, Edward, 590 Office of War Information (OWI), 780–781 Ogallala aquifer, 1013–1014, 1015m Oglethorpe, James, 141–145, 142i Ohio 18th century: Indian cession of, 306; settlement of, 271m 19th century: migration to, 435–436; statehood, 269 Ohio and Erie Canal, 364m Ohio Company, 269, 271m Ohio Company of Associates, 309 Ohio Company of Virginia, 177 Ohio Confederacy British support for, 290, 293, 306 establishment of, 289 resistance by, 306 Ohio region, Indian groups in, 270i Oil Arab oil embargo (1973-1974), 833, INDEX I-39 ${bmicon} 913–914, 924–925 Iranian revolution and, 939 supply of, 1014 U.S. dependence on, 924–926 U.S. economy and, 914–915 U.S. importation of, 913f Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), 833, 913–914, 924–925 Ojibways fur trade, 17th century, 79 relocation to Great Lakes region, 305 Okies, 747 Oklahoma, 20th century oil boom in, 671 racial violence in, 672 statehood for, 608 Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing (1995), 935, 984, 1024i Oklahoma Territory, establishment of, 608 Okubo, Miné, 99 Old Faithful, 524i Old Lights, 174–175 Old Northwest division of, 267, 269 expansion into, 267–268 veteran’s land grants in, 378 Old Southwest, struggle for control of, late 18th century, 264–265, 265m Old Spanish Trail, 393m Old Tassel, 267 Oliver, Andrew, 197 Oliver, N. T. “Nevada Ned,” 560 Olmecs, 10–11, 12 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 437, 452 Olney, Richard, 368, 620 Olson, Floyd, 758 Olympic Games of 1912, 676 of 1980, 940–941 2000 Winter games, 1020 “On the Equality of the Sexes” (Murray), 317 On the Road (Kerouac), 856 Oñate, Juan de, 48m, 49–50 One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey), 918 Oneida Community, 417 Oneidas, 242, 245. See also Iroquois Confederacy casinos and, 974–975 O’Neill, Thomas “Tip,” 922 Onondagas, 245. See also Iroquois Confederacy Opechancanough, 72, 72i Open Door policy, 633 Operation Chaos, 919 Operation Desert Shield, 965 Operation Desert Storm, 965 Operation Dixie, 808 Operation Ranch Hand, 876 Operation Rescue, 954 Operation Vittles, 812 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 796 Order of Christ, 19 Order of the Eastern Star, 580 Order of the Star-Spangled Banner. See Know-Nothing Party Orders in Council (England, 1806), 331 Oregon Equal Suffrage Association, 601 Oregon Territory settlement of, 404–405 statehood, 456 U.S. designs on, 420, 421 Oregon Trail, 393m, 404 The Organization Man (Whyte), 855–856 Organization of American States (OAS), establishment of, 861 Organized crime, in 1920s, 707 Osceola, 401 Ostend Manifesto, 447 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 863 The Other Americans (Harrington), 870 Ottawas relocation to Great Lakes region, 305 resistance, mid-18th century, 193 Revolutionary War and, 245 Ottoman Empire, World War I and, 673, 681f, 694 Our Country (Strong), 568 Our Gates (film), 715 Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (Wilson), 444 Over-Mountain Men, 248 Overland Trail, cost of traveling, 403t OVERLORD, operation, 791–792, 792i Owen, Robert, 416 OWI. See Office of War Information Ozone layer, hole in, 916 P Paca, William, 283 Pacific Ocean European exploration in, 47, 187–188 18th century, U.S. trade in, 272 19th century: balance of power in, 216; trade, 447–448 late 20th century, trade, 958 Pacific Railroad Act (1862), 478 Packard, Vance, 561 Packard Foundation, 1024 Pahlavi, Reza, 851, 906, 939 Paine, Thomas, 226–227, 230, 238 Paiute Indians, 403 Pale of Settlement, 650 Paleo-Indian era, 8 Palestine, post-World War II, British withdrawal from, 815 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), in 1990s, negotiations, 993 Palestinians, 924, 973, 993 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 698 Palmer, Benjamin F., 341 Palmer raids, 698 Pamunkeys, 72, 100 Pan Am Flight 109, 961 Pan-American Conference (1890), 629 Panama in 1980s, U.S. intervention in, 964–965 U.S. intervention in (1989), 369 Panama Canal Carter’s return of, 922–923 construction of, 665, 673 U.S. management of, 675, 675m Panic of 1819, 364–367 Panic of 1837, 407 Panic of 1907, 666 Paoli, Pasquale, 202–203 Pape, Eric, 629 Parades, Early Republic, 312 Pardo, Juan, 37, 38m Pareja, Francisco de, 51 Park, Robert, 800i Parker, Alton B., 664, 664t Parks, Rosa, 847 Parochial schools, late 19th century, 615 Parris, Samuel, 104 Parrish, Mary E. Jones, 672 Parsons, Albert, 593–594 Parsons, Lucia Gonzalez, 593–594, 662 Partido system, 375 Parties 19th century, 393, 406–407, 428, 445–446, 448, 456–457 in Confederacy, 476 Washington on, 292 Parton, Sarah Willis (Fanny Fern), 443 Party conventions, introduction of, 361 The Passing of the Great Race (Grant), 676 Paterson, William, 279 Patriotism, late 19th century, 612 Patriots, in American Revolution, 185 Patronage system late 19th century, 531–532 British, critiques of, 201–202 reform of, 565 Paul, Alice, 678, 705 INDEX I-40 ${bmicon} Pawnees culture, 442 encroachment on, 448 horses and, 152, 153m reservations, opening of, 608 Paxton Boys, 193–194, 193i, 591 Payne-Aldrich Tariff (1909), 667 PBS. See Public Broadcasting System PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), 916, 1016 Peace Corps, 860–861 Peace of Westminster (1674), 94 Peale, Charles Willson, 262i, 263, 277i Peale, James, 316i Pearl Harbor Japanese attack on, 734, 769, 774–776, 775i, 776i U.S. bases at, 629 Peary, Robert, 628–629, 628i, 629i, 671, 671i Peirce, Sarah, 316 Pelican (ship), 79 Pendleton Act (1883), 565 Penn, Thomas, 169 Penn, William, 95 Pennsylvania 17th century, settlement of, 95–96 18th century: economy, 168–169; religious tolerance in, 171; voting rights, 312f 19th century, African American voting rights, 380 Pennsylvania Dutch, 162–163 Pennsylvania Hospital for the Sick Poor, 169 Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, 364m Pennsylvania Railroad, 539–540 Pension Act (1890), 618 Pentagon, terrorist attack on. See September 11th terrorist attacks Pentagon Papers, 895, 907 Peonage, 453 People’s Cooperative Grocery Store, 611 People’s party. See Populist Party People’s Republic of China (PRC), establishment of, 823 Peorias home region of, 305 land cessions by, 378 Pequot War, 70–71, 70i Pequots, 974 Perestroika, 959–960 Pérez, Eulalia, 382 Perkins, Carter, 432 Perkins, Frances, 752 Perkins, Robert, 432 Perkins, Sandy, 432 Perot, H. Ross, 988, 988t, 990, 990t Perry, Matthew C., 421i, 447 Perry, Oliver H., 337 Perryville, Battle of, 484 Pershing, John J., 676, 690 Persian Gulf War (1991), 696, 935, 965–966, 966m, 1021 causes of, 914–915 Islam and, 1030 women in, 929, 967i Personal computers, impact of, 1006–1007 Peru, precolumbian cultures in, 11 Peters, Thomas, 219, 221m–222m, 252 Petersburg, siege of, 493m, 496–497 Petroleum. See also Oil plastics and, 1016 Philadelphia 17th century, establishment of, 96 18th century: British assault on, 232, 234; growth of, 163, 169; Stamp Act protests in, 199; unrest in, 193–194, 193i 19th century: anti-black riots, 409; Irish in, 395; night life in, 328i; rioting in, 412 early 20th century, migration to, 684 Fairmont Waterworks in, 377i state house in, 277i Philanthropy late 20th century, 1024 Gospel of Wealth and, 568 Philip II, King of Spain, 36, 40, 47 Philip of Anjou, 84–85 Philip V, King of Spain, 91 Philippines 17th century, European contact, 47, 53 19th century: Spanish-American War and, 631–632, 632m; U.S. purchase of, 633; U.S. subjugation of, 633, 634–635, 635i 20th century: immigration from, 982; independence, 814; migration from, 396–397; U.S. subjugation of, 665–666, 666–667, 673; World War II and, 775, 792 Phonograph, invention of, 542 Phyllis Wheatley Settlement, 626 Piankashaw Indians, 305 Pickens, Andrew, 247 Pickett, John T., 483 Picture brides, 649–650, 649i Pierce, Franklin, 447, 447t Pietism, 172 Pike, Albert, 412, 475 Pike, Otis, 919 Pima Indians, 91 Pinchot, Gifford, 608–609, 667 Pinckney, Charles C., 319, 319t, 331, 331t Pinckney, Thomas, 298, 298t Pinckney, William, 362 Pinckney Treaty (1795), 298 Pine Ridge Reservation, 583–584, 583i, 605 Pink collar work, 842, 842i Pinkerton, Albert, 590–591 Pinkerton National Detective Agency, 590–591, 618, 624, 698 Pinkster, 303 Pinochet, Augusto, 906 Pinups, in World War II, 781, 781i Pirates, 18th century, 106, 106i, 166 Pitcher, Molly, 241 Pitt, William, 178, 179, 180, 196, 199 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, late 19th century, 539i Pizarro, Francisco, 30, 32 Place names, post-Revolution, 261–262 Plains Indians culture, 392i, 433–434 Dawes Severalty Act and, 566 Ghost Dance and, 582–584, 583i independence movement, 429 Kansas-Nebraska Act and, 448 resistance by, 502, 537, 575 treaties, 433–434 war with whites, 517–518, 584 Planned obsolescence, invention of, 716 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), 973 Plantation agriculture. See also Cotton plantations; Rice plantations early 20th century, 728 in Chesapeake region, 18th century, 166–167 on Hawaiian Islands, 630 slavery and, 117, 120–125, 310 in South, early 19th century, 331 Plantation Duty Act (1673), 93 Plastics, 1016 Platt Amendment (1901), 368, 633 Plausible denial doctrine, 920 Playboy culture, 856, 888, 902 Pledge of Allegiance, 612, 821, 839i Plenty Kill, 605 Plessy, Homer, 611 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 611, 615, 845 PLO. See Palestinian Liberation Organization Plumbers, 895 Plymouth colony, 45, 46i, 62–63 Pocahontas, 61, 72 Pogroms, 651 INDEX I-41 ${bmicon} Poland late 19th century, immigration from, 548, 550t, 551–552, 615 World War II and, 770, 803, 810 in 1950s, uprising, 851 Police power, international late 20th century, 967 Roosevelt Corollary and, 665 Polio early 20th century, 643 FDR and, 748–749 vaccine development, 836 Politically correct, as term, 956 Politics, late 19th century characteristics of, 623i, 624 corruption in, 370, 531–532, 531i, 537 Polk, James K. and election of 1844, 419t, 420, 421 Monroe doctrine and, 368 as president, 422, 447 Poll taxes, 280 Pollard, Mrs. William, 44i Pollock, Jackson, 854, 854i Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company (1895), 621 Pollution. See also Environmental damage 19th century, urban water supplies, 557 20th century, 1014–1016; air pollution, 819; fossil fuels and, 347; radioactive waste, 816, 916, 925, 925i, 937, 1016; water and, 872 Polo, Marco, 18, 21, 24m–25m Polowsky, Joseph, 801 Polychlorinated biphenyls. See PCBs Polygamy, outlawing of, 564, 599 Ponca Indians, 448 Ponce de León, Juan, 28, 38m Pontiac, 193, 194 Pontiac’s War, 186, 192–194, 198m Poor Richard Illustrated (Franklin), 349i Popé, 87–89 Pope, John, 479 Pope, Roman Catholic and new world exploration, 23 Reformation and, 35 Popular Front, 756 Population of precolumbian Americas, 17 1790, 290 1790-1860, 355f 1790-1970, center of, 360m 18th century: African American, 290, 302, 302f; slave, by region, 133, 134m 19th century, 326, 542; African American, 304, 379, 457t; density of, 610m; by ethic origin, 457t; slave, 304, 351, 379, 457t, 464m; urban vs. rural, 747f 20th century, 1013, 1028m; urban vs. rural, 711–712, 712f, 747f, 983m 1980s, by age and gender, 158f in 2000s, 972, 1024–1029 The Population Bomb (Ehrlich), 894 Populist party constituency of, 591 demise of, 621–622 and election of 1892, 619, 619t and election of 1896, 622 and election of 1900, 663, 663t predecessor of, 530 rise of, 537, 588–589, 606, 619–620 Populist Party, predecessor of, 530 Pornography feminism and, 927 Supreme Court on, 873 Port Huron Statement, 885 Port Royal Sound colony, 36, 37i Portolá, Gaspar de, 191, 191m Portrait of a Lady (James), 598 Ports, major, 18th century, 163, 165m, 169 Portugal 15th century, exploration by, 18–20, 23, 24m–25m, 25 16th-17th century: exploration and colonization, 80; exploration and trade, 47; slavery and, 117–118 19th century, immigration from, 548, 550t Post Dispatch (St. Louis), 631 Potato famine, 394 Potawatomi Indians home region of, 305 land loss, 609m resistance, 193, 378–379 war with whites, 334–335 Potsdam Conference (1945), 795 Pottowatamie Creek massacre, 454 Poverty 18th century, in cities, 169 late 19th century: reform movements and, 598–599; urban, 594–595, 595i 20th century, 644, 644i, 837–838, 1009 in 1920s, 704, 727, 729 in 1930s, 738 in 1950s, 841 in 1960s, 870, 871m in 1970s, 929 in 1980s, 944, 945, 951i, 952; drug dealing and, 955–956 in 1990s, 975–977, 975f in 2000s, 1011–1012 Poverty Point culture, 11 Powderly, Terence V., 592 Powell, Adam Clayton, 851 Powell, Colin, 966, 1026 Powell, William, 108 Powers, Gary, 851 Powhatan, 60, 61, 71–72 Powhatan Confederacy, 61, 72, 74m Powhatans, 611 Pratt, Richard Henry, 605, 612 Prayer in schools, religious right and, 953 Praying towns, 97, 98 PRC. See People’s Republic of China Prejudice. See also Discrimination early 20th century, 676; interracial sex and, 660; resistance to, 662; in suffrage movement, 661 in 1930s, unions and, 757 in 1960s, anti-Asian, 877, 878i in 1970s, 912 worker manipulation and, 531 Prendergast, William, 203 Presbyterian College of the Southwest, 612 Presbyterians, Calvinism and, 35 Preservationism, vs. conservationism, early 20th century, 665 Presidency, late 20th century Nixon resignation and, 909 power of, 918–919 President’s Commission on the Status of Women, 862 Presley, Elvis, 807, 855 Prester John, 19 Priber, Christian, 141, 151 Prince (pop star), 983 Princeton, Battle of, 231, 231i Princeton University, establishment of, 174 Principles of Psychology (James), 617 The Principles of Scientific Management (Taylor), 653–654 Printing and publishing. See also Newspapers 18th century: in colonies, 170, 199; in Early Republic, 299; in England, 194 19th century: by abolitionists, 408, 409, 452; investigative journalism, 531, 531i; by Native Americans, 401, 401i, 433; newspapers, proliferation of, 387; women and, 386 Prisons, in 1990s, 976–977 INDEX I-42 ${bmicon} Privateers, 106, 242, 274 Proclamation Line of 1763, 194, 242–243, 265 Productivity, Early Republic, 294–295 Professional licensing and certification, establishment of, 416 Progress and Poverty (George), 592 Progressive Era, 644 African Americans and, 683 close of, 698 conservationism and, 683 evaluation of, 699–700 Progressive party and election of 1912, 667, 667t and election of 1924, 723, 723t and election of 1948, 819t, 820 formation of, 667 in Wisconsin, 758 Progressivism, 644, 658–661 decline of, 705 environmentalism and, 664–665 Roosevelt and, 663 in Taft administration, 666–667 World War I and, 685, 688 Prohibition, 639, 706–707 and election of 1928, 724 repeal of, 751 Prohibition party and election of 1888, 567t and election of 1892, 619, 619t Promise Keepers, 979 Promyshlenniki, 189 The Prophet. See Tenskwatawa Prophet’s Town, 334–335 Proposition 13 (California), 944–945 Proposition 187 (California), 982 Proposition 227 (California), 982 Protect the Emperor Society, 648 Protest movements. See also Reform movements in 1960s, 882–893, 883m; backlash against, 892–893 antiwar protests: Vietnam War, 833, 885–886, 895, 896, 907; World War II, 773 tactics of, 200–201 Protestant Reformation in England, 60 in Europe, 34–36 Protestantism. See also Fundamentalist Christians; Huguenots; Puritans 17th century: hostility to Catholics, 80, 84, 101–102, 103; missionaries, 80; in New England, 103–104; slavery and, 117 18th century: emigration to America, 162–164; fear of Catholics, 138, 162, 180i 19th century: Catholic immigrants and, 411–412; education and, 612, 615; fear of Catholics, 411–412, 448; Indian assimilation and, 596–597; Irish immigrants and, 395; reform movements and, 599; religious instruction in, 614 20th century, dislike of Catholics, 724, 821, 953 Prozac, 986 Psychology, introduction as discipline, 617 PT-109, 859 Ptolemy, 21, 39 Public Broadcasting System (PBS), 872 Public Law 85-846, 850 Public Works Administration (PWA), 752t Publius, 283 USS Pueblo incident, 880 Pueblo Indians culture of, 387, 435i nuclear contamination and, 937 religion of, 87–90 revolt (1680), 50i, 87–90, 88m in Southwest, 679m Spanish contact with, 33, 49–50 Pueblo Revolt of 1680, 50i, 87–90, 88m Pueblos, Anasazi, 13–14, 13i Puerto Ricans, in 1960s, militancy of, 890 Puerto Rico, early 20th century, U.S. in, 673, 675m Puget, Peter, 257 Pujo, Arsene, 682 Pulaski, Casimir, 239 Pulitzer, Joseph, 631 Pullman, George M., 556 Pullman cars, 525 Pullman Palace Car Co., 620 Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), 659 Puritan Revolution, 92–93 Puritans Calvinism and, 35 Massachusetts Bay colony, 64–71; dissenters in, 68–70 missionaries to Native Americans, 71, 71i Plymouth colony, 62–63 theology of, 65–66, 69 on wealth, 950 Purvis, Robert, 410 Putnam, George, 838 Puzo, Mario, 730, 730i PWA. See Public Works Administration Pyle, Ernie, 793 Pyramid of the Sun, 12 Q Qisuk, 628, 629i Quakers in New Amsterdam, 58 in Pennsylvania and West Jersey, 95–96 services to poor, 169 and slavery, 141, 141i Quantrill, William Clarke, 492f Quartering Act (1765), 195, 206 Quartering Act (1774), 210 Quasi War, 298, 299i Quayle, Dan, 988 Quebec in 18th century, 190i American assault on (1775), 226 British capture of, 179–180 culture in, 55 establishment of, 54 expansion of (1774), 210, 212m King William’s War and, 84 Quebec Act (1774), 210, 251 Queen Anne’s War, 103 close of, 107 impact of, 105–106 Quetzalcoatl, 12, 28–29 Quintero, Juan A., 483 Quivira, 33, 34m R Rabin, Ytizak, 993 RAC. See Royal African Company Race 18th century, as classification, 300 19th century: as classification, 606, 609–610; and employment, 400, 400i, 409, 438, 449, 454–455; as justification for exploitation, 575, 609–612; migration and, 405; and social class, 440; worker conflict and, 618 20th century: as classification, 1025; definition of whiteness, 654–655, 676, 1025; interracial marriage, 807, 841, 873, 1026; mixing of, 982–983 in 2000s, 1024–1025 and wartime suspicions, 98–99, 99i The Races of Mankind (Benedict), 784 Racial profiling, 98–99, 1027 Racial quotas, Supreme Court on, 931, 945 Racism. See also Discrimination; Lynchings; Prejudice 19th century: growth of, 439; imperialism and, 628, 629; Social INDEX I-43 ${bmicon} Darwinism and, 568 20th century: challenges to, 714, 784; eugenics and, 653; race riots, 690; Tulsa race riot (1921), 671–672, 698 Radford, Arthur, 849 Radiation Exposure Act (1990), 938 Radical politics. See also Protest movements; Reform movements early 20th century, 661–662 Radio in 1920s, 715–716 invention of, 1006 Roosevelt (F.D.) and, 764 World War II morale and, 781 Radioactive fallout, 815–816, 815i, 858 Radioactive waste, 816, 916, 925, 925i, 937, 1016 Railroad(s) 19th century: big business and, 539–540, 548; and buffalo, 518i; consolidation of, 546; impact of, 522–524, 540, 544m, 565; Indians and, 518, 519, 537; and national integration, 517; refrigerated cars, 346, 540; regulation of, 566; resource exploitation and, 545–546, 546i; strikes (1877), 589; tourism and, 545–546, 609; transcontinental line, 502, 517, 517i, 712f; trees used in building, 523t; westward migration and, 363; worker unrest, 539, 540i, 594; workers for, 517i, 520–522, 522i 20th century: decline of, 717f; Trans-Siberian line, 673 history of, 346 Railroad Administration, U.S., establishment of, 688 Rainbow Coalition, 956 Rainey, Joseph H., 514i Rainey, Ma, 715 A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry), 839 Raker Act (1913), 665 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 40–41 Ramabai, Pandita, 625 Ramabai Circles, 625 Randolph, A. Philip, 685, 786 Randolph, Edmund, 281 Randolph, John, 367 Rankin, Jeanette, 677 Ranney, William, 259i Ray, Dorothy, 7 5 7 Ray, James Earl, 893 Rayburn, Sam, 802 Reagan, Nancy, 960, 963 Reagan, Ronald W., 937i Alzheimer’s disease and, 962 anticommunism of, 861, 921, 942–944 assassination attempt against, 941 budget deficits and, 944, 945–946 business and, 591 Cold War and, 861, 959–961 constituency of, 893 domestic policies, 944–952, 955, 956 economic policies, 938, 944–946, 949–952, 949f and election of 1976, 921 and election of 1980, 941, 941t and election of 1984, 946, 946t 11th Commandment of, 954 energy policy, 926 environmental policies, 946–948 foreign policy, 942–944, 956 impact of, 934 Iran-Contra scandal and, 943, 959, 961–963 media and, 751, 941 Monroe Doctrine and, 369 nuclear arsenal and, 937 Panama Canal and, 923 personality of, 941, 962–963 Soviet Union and, 942 Strategic Defense Initiative and, 797, 945, 960 support for, 952, 953 Supreme Court nominations, 956 unions and, 890, 952 vision of, 941 World War II and, 780i, 784 Real Whigs, 201–202, 202–203, 205, 207 Realism, in art, 657 Realpolitik, 903, 919 Reason, Charlie, 484 Rebel Without a Cause (film), 855 Reconstruction close of, 532 corruption in, 515 debate over, 429, 501–502, 503–504 under Johnson, 505–507 land redistribution and, 429, 508–509, 509i, 514 radical, 513–517, 513m readmission of states, 516–517 Southern economy and, 507–508 white unrest under, 507, 513, 517 Reconstruction Act (1867), 513m, 514–517 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 747 The Red Badge of Courage (Crane), 617 Red Cloud, 518, 519, 520 Red lining policies, 839 Red Scare civil liberties and, 300 post-World War I, 698, 708, 860 post-World War II, 802, 808, 820–821 Red Sticks, 338–339 Redemption contracts, 159 Reform Darwinism, 598 Reform movements. See also Protest movements Early Republic, 310–311 19th century, 413–418, 594–595; trans-Atlantic networks, 598–599; women and, 599–601, 599i 20th century, 638, 658–662, 833, 956–957; consumer protection, 871–872; World War I and, 685 and war, history of, 875 Reform party, 990, 990t Regulator Movement, 203–205 Reign of Terror, 292–293 Re’is, Piri, 20i Reisman, David, 855–856 Religion. See also specific religions and denominations in colonies: diversity in, 170–171; fears of established Church, 203; Great Awakening, 170, 171–175 19th century: “African” churches, 303, 311, 379–380; Christian Science, 617; instruction in, 614; proliferation of, 384–386 20th century (See also Fundamentalist Christians); in 1960s, 886–887, 887i; business and, 725; characteristics of, 1024, 1025f; global evangelism, 1020; prayer in public schools, 873; in public life, 839i; Scopes trial and, 721–722; in suburbs, 838; women and, 930 Religious right. See Fundamentalist Christians Remington, Frederic, 583i Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (Taylor), 487 Remond, Charles Lenox, 408 Remond, Sarah Parker, 408 Renaissance, European, 25 Rensselaer, Kiliaen van, 58 Report of the Exploring Expeditions to the Rocky Mountains, 404 “Report on the Condition of the South” (Schurz), 506 “Report on the Subject of Manufactures” (Hamilton), 293–294 INDEX I-44 ${bmicon} Representation Colonial dissatisfaction with, 196, 205, 206; in rural areas, 203 gerrymandering and, 280 slave population and, 279 in U.S. Constitution, 279, 280 Republic of Texas, 419 African Americans in, 419 slavery in, 419 Republican Mothers, 314–317 Republican party pre-Civil War: Black support for, 450; emergence of, 428, 445, 448–449; platform, 449–450; Southern fear of, 466 Civil War policies, 478; Native Americans and, 479–481, 479i; opposition to, 477; resistance to, 465, 482 post-Civil War: land policies, 524; policies, 502, 526, 528, 531; Reconstruction policy, 501, 503, 506, 513–517, 513m late 19th century, 533m; tariff and, 563 20th century: affirmative action and, 956; blacks and, 738, 1026; environmental policies, 1016; factions in, 953–954; impact of, 967–968; platform of, 988; Red Scare and, 820; RepublicanRevolution (1994) , 989–990, 989i; Versailles Treaty and, 694–695 and election of 1856, 451, 451t and election of 1860, 457, 457t, 466 and election of 1864, 494–495, 495t and election of 1868, 515, 515t and election of 1872, 531–532, 532t and election of 1876, 532, 532t, 533m and election of 1880, 564, 564t and election of 1884, 565, 565t and election of 1888, 567, 567t and election of 1892, 619, 619t and election of 1896, 621–622, 622t and election of 1900, 635, 663, 663t and election of 1904, 664, 664t and election of 1912, 667, 667t and election of 1916, 685, 685t and election of 1920, 699, 723t and election of 1924, 723, 723t and election of 1928, 724, 724t and election of 1932, 749, 749t and election of 1936, 761, 761t and election of 1940, 774, 774t and election of 1944, 792, 792t and election of 1946, 808 and election of 1948, 819–820, 819t and election of 1952, 829–830, 830t, 849, 849t and election of 1956, 849t and election of 1960, 859, 859t and election of 1964, 869–870, 869t and election of 1968, 894, 894t and election of 1972, 907, 907t and election of 1976, 921, 921t and election of 1980, 941, 941t, 942 and election of 1984, 946, 946t and election of 1994, 989–990 and election of 1996, 990, 990t and election of 2000, 996, 996t Restoration Era, 92–93 Resumption Act (1875), 530 Revels, Hiram, 514i, 515 Revenue Act (1764), 195 Revenue Act (1766), 205 Revenue Act (1767), 205 Revenue Act (1916), 681 Revenue Act (1926), 724 Revere, Paul, 207i, 208 ride of, 213 Revolutionary War, 221–251 battles, 223m; in Northeast, 243m; in South, 247m; in West, 244m Boston, siege of, 225–226 British strategy, 228, 230, 232, 242 British surrender at Yorktown, 249–250 Burgoyne’s Hudson Valley campaign, 233, 233i casualties in, 251 Continental Navy in, 241–242 cost of, 257 debt from, 257, 258, 270; and political unrest, 270–271, 273–276, 277 disease and, 226, 231–232, 255–256 early skirmishes, 221–222 federal assumption of, 293 final campaign of, 248–250 as global conflict, 221m–222m, 235–236, 236f, 241–242, 246 mercenaries in, 228 Native Americans and, 217, 242–246; abandonment by British, 251 New Jersey, Washington’s retreat through, 230–231 New York, British assault on, 228–230 Philadelphia, British assault on, 232 at sea, 241–242 in South, 246–248, 246i uniforms, 218i victory in, causes of, 252 Western frontier and, 242–246 women in, 240–241 Revolutions of 1848 (Europe), 398 Reykjavik summit (1986), 961 Reynolds, E. B., 583 Rhett, Robert Barnwell, Jr., 465 Rhode Island 17th century: establishment of, 68, 70; Metacom’s War, 99; slavery in, 118 18th century: Constitutional Convention and, 277; Constitutional ratification by, 283, 284; post-Revolution unrest in, 274; pre-Revolution tax resistance in, 208; religious tolerance in, 171; slavepopulation , 134m, 140; slave trade and, 272; voting rights, 312f Rhode Island system of production, 346 Rica de Oro, 47–48 Rica de Plata, 47–48 Rice, Condoleezza, 1026 Rice plantations mid-19th century, 436, 437i black life and labor on, 352 in Georgia, 166 and slavery, 121, 122i, 133–135, 310 in South Carolina, 166; early 19th century, 350–351; and slavery, 121, 122i, 133–135 Rich and Brothers Dry Goods, 612i Richards, Ellen Swallow, 542 Richelieu, Cardinal, 55 Richmond, Virginia 17th century, establishment of, 80 18th century, growth of, 163–164 19th century, labor unrest, 592–593 in Civil War, 479, 488; as Confederate capital, 468; Union capture of, 496–497 Rickey, Branch, 807i The Ridge, 343–344 Ridge, John, 401, 401i Ridge, Major, 401, 401i Riegner, Gerhard, 786 Riggs, Bobbie, 930 Rights. See also Civil liberties; Civil rights; Human rights; Voting rights; Women’s rights movement in Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 269 Virginia Declaration of Rights, 237 wartime and, 300–301 Riis, Jacob, 594–595, 595i Ringer, Robert J., 931 Rio Grande river, 1013 INDEX I-45 ${bmicon} Rio Puerco valley, New Mexico, nuclear contamination, 925, 937 The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy (Stoddard), 718–719 Road construction, early 19th century, 345 Roanoke Island colony, 41 Roaring twenties, 704 Roberts, Benjamin, 415 Robertson, Pat, 952, 953 Roberval, 32 Robeson, Paul, 821 Robinson, Archibald, 229i Robinson, Jackie, 807–808, 807i Robinson, Jo Ann, 847 Rock, Chris, 1027 Rock ‘n’ roll, 807, 855 Rock Springs massacre, 576 Rockefeller, John D., 477, 547, 548, 659, 679 Rockford (Illinois) Female Seminary, 598 Rockingham, Lord, 199 Rockwell, Norman, 773i Rodney, George, 251 Rodrigues, Juan, 57 Rodriguez, Louis, 974 Roe v. Wade (1973), 888, 929 Rogers, Ginger, 781 Rogers, Will, 716, 737–738, 737i, 740, 758 Rolfe, John, 61, 72 Roller coasters, 558 Romania, World War I and, 681f Romer v. Evans (1996), 973 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 748i activism of, 759, 764 background of, 748 flying lessons by, 765i letters to, 753 marriage of, 748, 748i and President’s Commission on the Status of Women, 862 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 737i, 748i, 750i background of, 748 blacks and, 759, 764 cabinet of, 752 and Chinese revolution, 793 conservationism and, 754 death of, 792, 802, 803i early career of, 748–749 and election of 1932, 749, 749t and election of 1936, 761, 761t and election of 1940, 774, 774t and election of 1944, 792, 792t fireside chats, 738, 750–751, 764 first hundred days, 751–756 inaugural address, first, 749 Japanese internment and, 99, 300 Manhattan Project and, 795–796 marriage of, 748, 748i media and, 750–751, 764 and New Deal, 750–762; legislation, 752t, 753–756; opposition to, 756–759; second, 751, 759–761 Pearl Harbor attack and, 774 Platt Amendment and, 368 policies of, 734, 875; on banks, 749–750; on immigrants, 749 polio, 748–749 Rogers (Will) and, 737–738, 737i second term, 761–762 Supreme Court packing scheme, 761–762 World War II and: Atlantic Charter and, 774; discrimination in defense industry, 786; Four Freedoms, 770, 773i, 774; Holocaust and, 786; Japanese aggression and, 773, 775; Japanese internment and, 777, 778; peace settlement, 794–795; racial unrest and, 788; strategy for, 770, 790 Roosevelt, Theodore, 658–659 background, 628i death of, 698 domestic policies of, 663–664 early career of, 592, 631 and election of 1900, 635 and election of 1904, 664, 664t and election of 1908, 666 and election of 1912, 667, 667t environmentalism and, 665, 665i eugenics movement and, 653 foreign policy, 665–666 ideology of, 627–628, 628i, 634 on immigration, 663–664 media and, 750 Roosevelt Corollary, 368–369 Rough Riders and, 632 on segregation, 650 World War I and, 685 Roosevelt Corollary, 665 Root, Elihu, 685 Roots (Haley), 931, 931i Rosebud Reservation, 605 Rosenberg, Julius, 820 Rosenthal, Joe, 793i Rosenwald, Julius, 613 Rosewood, Florida, riots in (1923), 698 Rosie the Riveter, 782–783, 782i Ross, John, 372, 401, 475 Rothman, Hal, 1004 Rough Riders, 632 Rowson, Susanna, 316 Royal Adventurers into Africa, 94 Royal African Company (RAC), 94, 95, 126–127, 129–130, 132i RU-486, 985, 988 Rubin, Jerry, 950–951 Ruby, Jack, 863 Ruby (ship), 132i Ruiz, Francisco, 419 Running Water Town, 267 Rupert, Prince, 126 Rural areas 18th century: resistance to Federalists, 296–297, 299; unrest in, 202–205 late 19th century: population, 747f; unrest in, 587–591, 588i; Women’s rights movement, 588 20th century: life in, 841; population, 711–712, 712f, 747f, 983m Rural Free Delivery, 561 Rush-Bagot Treaty (1817), 341 Russell, Osborne, 404 Russia. See also Soviet Union 16th century, European contact with, 40 18th century: in Alaska, 188–191, 189m, 216, 257; fur trade and, 112; U.S. trade with, 271 19th century: in Alaska, 525; immigration from, 548, 550t, 587, 612; in Oregon, 367, 368 20th century: Allied intervention in, 697; anti-Americanism in, 697; Bolshevik revolution in, 690–692, 697–698; culture in, 1019i, 1021; immigration from, 650–651, 651m, 674; nationalist revolution in, 674, 686–687, 690; World War I and, 673, 681f, 690–691, 694 Russian-American Company, 189 Russo-American Treaty (1824), 367 Rustbelt, economic decline in, 20th century, 818, 911 Rusticating, 609 Ruth, Babe, 704 Ryan, Martha, 224i S Sacajawea, 329–330 Sacco, Nicola, 708–709, 708i Sadat, Anwar, 923, 961 Saehle, Jannicke, 391 Sagadahoc settlement, 60 Sagebrush Rebellion, 591, 947 Sagres, Portugal, 19, 19i, 20i Sahagún, Bernardino de, 31 INDEX I-46 ${bmicon} St. Augustine in 17th century, 51–53, 92 British attacks on, 40, 92 establishment of, 36–37 Spanish departure from, 190 St. Clair, Arthur, 305, 306m St. George’s Field, Massacre of, 202 St. Mary’s colony, 73, 74m St. Mihiel, Battle of, 690 Saint-Denis, Louis, 91 Saint-Mémin, C. B. J. Févret de, 329 Saipan, 793 Salas, Maria, 957 Salem witch hunts, 104–105, 104i Sales, Luis, 255 Salinger, J. D., 855 Salk, Dr. Jonas, 836 SALT. See Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties Salt Lake City, 403 late 19th century, 554 Salt of the Earth (film), 822i Saltwater slaves, 132–133 Sambo caricature, 354–355 Samoa, late 19th century, 629 Sampson, Deborah, 240 Samuelson, Paul, 868 San Antonio, 18th century, peace treaty with Apaches, 149–150 San Antonio de Valero, 91 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), 897–898 San Francisco late 18th century, 191 late 19th century, 554 20th century, 888m; Bay-to-Breakers race, 917i; earthquake (1906), 639, 642–644, 642i; Haight-Asbury, 887; immigration to, 645m, 649 San Francisco Chronicle, 648 San Francisco Examiner, 631 San Francisco Presbyterian Chinese Mission Home, 625 San Francisco Workingmen’s Party, 565 San Gabriel mission, 191, 191m, 255 San Jacinto, Battle of, 419 San Juan Hill, 632 San Marcos, Fortress of, 92 San Patricio Battalion, 423–424 Sanchez, Jose Maria, 405 Sand Creek massacre, 493–494 Sandinistas, 369, 943 Sandino, Augusto Cesar, 369, 943 Sanger, Margaret, 678 Sanitation, early 20th century, 652 Santa Ana, Father, 149–150 Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 419 Santa Fe late 19th century, 573i colonization of, 50, 50i Santa Fe Ring, 523 Santa Fe Trail, 393m Saratoga, British surrender at, 233, 233i, 234 Sargent, John Singer, 629 Sassamon, John, 98 Saturday Evening Post, 773i, 790 Saturday Night Fever (film), 928i Saturday Night Massacre, 908 Saudi Arabia, Islam in, 1021 Sauk Indians American Revolution and, 244m home region of, 305 land loss, 609m resistance by, 378–379 Revolutionary War and, 245 Saukamappee, 156–157 Savannah, Georgia, establishment of, 142, 143i Savannah Cotton Exchange, 548i Savannah Education Association (SEA), 501, 502i Savannah River Anti-Slave Traffick Association, 437 Savings and loan crisis (1980s), 952 Sayles, John, 983 Scales, Jesse Sleet, 652 Scandinavia. See also Vikings 19th century, immigration from, 435, 548, 550t, 587 20th century, Communist Party rise in, 804 Scanlon, Emily, 558 Scarification, ornamental, 115i Schaffer, Murray, 173 Schenck v. United States (1919), 689 Schlafly, Phyllis, 930 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 814 Schmeling, Max, 765 Schroeder, Pat, 963 Schultz, George, 960 Schurz, Carl, 506 Schuyler, Philip, 222, 267 Schwerner, Michael, 884 Science. See also Medicine early 20th century: eugenics and, 653; public health and, 652–653, 653i Science Digest, 793 Scientific management, 653–655 Scioto Company, 269, 271m SCLC. See Southern Christian Leadership Conference Scopes trial, 720–722, 721i Scotland 18th century, emigration from, 162 union with England, 107 Scott, Garrett, 622 Scott, Thomas A., 539, 567 Scott, Winfield in Civil War, 471, 477 and election of 1852, 447, 447t Scottsboro Boys, 743–744, 744i Scribner’s, 562 SDI. See Strategic Defense Initiative SDS. See Students for a Democratic Society Sea Adventure (ship), 61 The Sea Around Us (Carson), 856 Sea Islands in Civil War, 504 land redistribution on, 508–509, 509i Sears, Richard, 562 Sears Roebuck, 561, 562, 816 Seasoning of slaves, 132–133 Seattle General Strike Committee, 698i SEC. See Securities and Exchange Commission Secession Confederate, 466m; Alabama secession convention, 465, 468f; reasons for, 465–469 right of, 374 Second Amendment, debate over, 985–986 Second Confiscation Act (1862), 484 Second Party system, 369–370, 393, 406, 428. See also Two party system Second Seminole War, 401 Securities and Exchange Act (1934), 752t Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), creation of, 751 Seddon, James A., 495 Sedition Act (1918), 689 Seekaboo, 334 Segal, George, 900i Segregation 19th century: black resistance to, 614; in education, 578, 580, 611, 613–615, 650; temperance movement and, 599; unions and, 593; in West, 581–582; in women’s movements, 624–625 20th century: Asians and, 650; black protests against, 490; de facto, 1027; in federal government, 676–677; in Great Flood refugee camps, 718; in housing, 817, 839, 840; opposition to, 662, 833; psychological effects of, 845; resistance to, 807; in World War INDEX I-47 ${bmicon} I, 690, 692i, 693 Supreme Court on, 611, 807, 808 Seider, Christopher, 207 Seidman, William, 952 Selective Service Act (1915), 688 Selective Service Act (1980), 929 Self-determination, post-World War I, 694 The Selling of Joseph (Sewell), 140 Selma, Alabama, civil rights march, 871 Seminole War, Second, 401 Seminoles. See also Five Civilized Tribes assimilation of, 307–308, 378 as buffalo soldiers, 581i establishment of, 339 homeland, late 18th century, 265m removal of, 400–401 U.S. war on, 367 Seneca Falls Convention, 443–444, 527 Senecas. See also Iroquois Confederacy resistance, 193 Revolutionary War and, 245 white Indians among, 311 Senegambia, 127m, 129, 130m–131m Separation of powers in British system, 201–202 in state constitutions, 238 in U.S. constitution, 278 Separatists, 65 September 11th terrorist attacks, 934, 935, 1023, 1029–1032, 1031i protests against, 491 and racial profiling, 98 Sequoyah, 378, 378i Serpent Mound, 16i Serra, Junípero, 191 Service organizations, mid-20th century, race and, 840i Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill), 805, 806f minorities and, 836–837 Settlement houses, 598–599, 625–626 Settlers, 19th century anti-elitism of, 360 debt and, 361, 364–367 economic challenges of, 305, 344–345, 344i Indian resistance and, 334–335 Sevara, 572i Seven Years’ War, 112, 176 cost of, 194 impact of, 187–188, 190 Seventeenth Amendment, 681 Seward, William H., 467, 483, 497, 525 Sewell, Arthur, 622 Sewell, Samuel, 140 Sexual harassment, in 1990s, 981 Sexuality mid-19th century, 416–417 early 20th century, 656–657; interracial intimacy, 660 in 1920s, 714, 714i, 716 in World War II, 779–780, 784 post-World War II, 817–818 in 1950s, 855, 855i, 856 in 1960s, 836, 888 in 1970s, 917 in 1980s, 954–955 late 20th century, Islamic fundamentalism and, 1021 Native-American, 89 Seymour, Horatio, 515, 515t Shabonee, 335 Shaftsburg, Earl of. See Ashley-Cooper, Anthony Shakers, 311, 311i Shakopee Indians, 975 Share-Our-Wealth Plan, 758 Sharecroppers’ Union, 591 Sharecropping system 19th century, 510–511, 510i, 579m, 580t 20th century, 580t, 727–728 Shawnee Indians. See also Ohio Confederacy home region of, 305 land loss, 609m Ohio Confederacy and, 289 in Ohio region, 270i resistance, 334–335 Revolutionary War and, 244m, 245 Shays, Daniel, 275 Shays’ Rebellion, 275–276, 591 Shearon, Thomas, 432 Shelburne, Earl of, 250 Shelikov, Grigorii, 189–190 Shelley v. Krae me r (1948), 807 Sheppard-Towner Act (1921), 678, 705–706 Sheridan, Philip, 494, 502 Sherman, Roger, 227 Sherman, William T., 476i, 495–496, 496m, 502, 508–509 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), 567, 663 in early 20th century, 682 in 1990s, 974 Supreme Court on, 620–621 Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890), 618 Shi’ite Muslims, 939 Shima, George, 552 Shinn, Everett, 657 Shipbuilding, in New England, 106, 167–168 Shipping, innovations in, 346–347, 347i Shoe-lasting machine, invention of, 543 Shopping centers first, 725 mid-20th century, 838 Short, Mercy, 105 Shoshones 19th century: culture, 520; white encroachment on, 525 20th century, nuclear contamination and, 937 culture, 520 horses and, 152, 153m, 156–157 white encroachment on, 525 The Show Window, 562 Sidell, John, 422 Sieh King King, 648–649 Sierra Club, 609, 665, 915, 948 Silent Spring (Carson), 856, 857, 857i, 872 Silicon Valley, 888 Silk Road, 18 Silkwood, Karen, 901, 901i Simpson, Nicole Brown, 982 Simpson, O.J., 982 Sinclair, Harry F., 723 Sinclair, Upton, 659, 758–759 Singapore, in 2000s, trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m Singer Sewing Machine Co., 543 Sioux 17th century, fur trade, 79 18th century: culture, 156, 387; migrations, 155; Revolutionary War and, 244m, 245; trade, 155, 156; uprising of 1862, 392 19th century: Black Hills and, 519–520; culture, 433, 439–440; Ghost Dance and, 583i; reservation status for, 479i; resistance, 465, 583i, 584; war with whites, 448, 479–481, 479i, 494, 502, 518, 520i, 521i, 581; in Wild West show, 559–560, 560i Black Hills and, 519–520 Sirica, John, 908 Sister Carrie (Dreiser), 657 Sisters of Mercy, 395 Sit-down strikes, in 1930s, 762–763, 763i Sit-ins, 200 in 1960s, 848 Sitting Bull, 520, 537, 559–560, 560i, 584 Sixteenth Amendment, 681 Sky City, 49i Skyscrapers, introduction of, 554 Slater, Samuel, 294 Slave Coast (Bight of Benin), 127m, 129, 130m–131m INDEX I-48 ${bmicon} Slave Power Conspiracy, 448 Slave trade. See also Atlantic slave trade domestic, 19th century, 398–400, 399m Slavery 17th century: in Carolina colonies, 96; in Virginia, 62, 118, 121–123 18th century: Declaration of Independence and, 228; in Early Republic, 300–301; on frontier, 309–310; Jefferson on, 319–320; manumissions, 257, 303–304; in U.S. Constitution, 279–281; in Virginia, 125, 134m, 272; white commentators on, 140–141, 143–144 19th century: challenges faced by, 444–445; Dred Scott decision, 454–455; emancipation, 478; expansionism of, 444, 447–448; manumissions, 379; as political issue, 410, 420–421, 450–451; white opposition in South, 437; Wilmot Proviso and, 422 abolition of: by England, 139i, 408; in North, 300–301, 302; in Upper South, 300–301 advantages over free labor, 119, 123–124 and Christianity, 117, 121, 139, 140–141, 385–386 headright system and, 124–125 importation of slaves (See also Atlantic slave trade); outlawing of, 350 justifications of, 117, 118, 119, 138–140, 354–355, 470 Middle Passage, 126, 129–132, 219, 396 and miscegenation, 125 of Native Americans: by England, 92, 101; justification for, 119; by Native Americans, 119, 154, 310; by Spain, 87 origins and expansion of, 112–113, 116–121 and plantation agriculture, 117, 120–125; cotton, 217, 295–296, 310, 350–351, 436; rice, 121, 122i, 133–135, 310; tobacco, 120–121 regional variations in, 350–351 reparations for, 120 in western territories: Compromise of 1850, 432–433, 446–447; Crittenden Compromise, 467; Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), 448; Land Ordinance (1785), 268; Missouri Compromise, 361–363, 362m, 448; Northwest Ordinance (1787), 269; spread of, 305, 309–310, 363 Slaves 17th century: legal status of, 121; in New Amsterdam, 59 and American Revolution: British offers of freedom, 219–220, 223–224; manumission following, 257, 303–304; proposals to arm slaves, 241; resistance during, 197–199, 219; suppression during, 223–224 mid-19th century: diversity of, 437; Dred Scott decision, 454–455; population, 457t and Civil War: Confederate employment of, 469i, 470, 470i, 472–473, 495; resistance by, 429, 462–465, 484–485; runaway, 462–464, 478–479, 484–485, 485i, 495; Union employment of, 485 conversion to Christianity, 140–141, 170, 354 culture of, 170 education and, 138, 140–141 emancipation of, 478; Emancipation Proclamation, 482, 485; Northern opinion of, 429 families of: benefits to slaveholder from, 135, 351–352; breakup of, 398–399 house servants, 124i Middle Passage and, 126, 129–132, 219, 396 ornamental scarification, 115i on plantations, life and labor of, 351–355, 353i population: 18th century, 133, 134m; 19th century, 304, 351, 379, 457t, 464m punishment of, 121, 125, 135, 219 religion of, 354 and representation, 279 resistance by, 135–138; in AmericanRevolution , 197–199, 219; 19th century, 353–355, 437, 451–452; in Civil War, 429, 462–465, 484–485 restrictions on, 135 rights of, 121 runaway, 304; 19th century, 400; advertisements for, 136i, 354i; in Civil War, 462–464, 478–479, 484–485, 485i, 495; in Constitution, 281; and Fugitive Slave Act (1850), 428; as resistance technique, 135; Seminoles and, 367, 401 sale of, 132–133, 133i; reasons for, 398–399 saltwater, 132–133 seasoning of, 132–133 theft by, 353, 354 uprisings: 18th century, 135–138, 137–138; 19th century, 354, 379–380, 381; Bacons’ Rebellion and, 122–123; Revolution era, 219; Virginia (1800), 291 white fear of, 123–124, 135, 140, 355, 379, 381, 484 Slavs, 20th century, immigration by, 709 Slidell, John, 483 Sloan, Alfred P., Jr., 716 Sloan, John, 657 Slow-food movement, 1021, 1022 Smallpox, 255i 16th century, 29, 30 17th century, Native Americans and, 52, 53 18th century: epidemic, 255–257, 256m, 266; in Revolutionary War, 226, 231–232; use against Indians, 194 19th century, Native Americans and, 378 Smalls, Robert, 515 Smith, Alfred E., 723, 724, 724t Smith, Anna Deveare, 982–983 Smith, Bessie, 715 Smith, Howard K., 901 Smith, Hyram, 403 Smith, John, 59, 61, 64, 72, 72i Smith, Joseph, Jr., 386, 402–403 Smith, Mary Rozet, 657 Smith Act (1940), 861 Smith-Connally Act (1943), 782 Smith v. Albright (1944), 807 Smithsonian Institute, Enola Gay exhibit, 797 Smog, 818i, 836, 872, 1015 SNCC. See Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh” (song), 742–743 Soapine, 561i Social class. See also Class struggle 18th century: American Revolution and, 186, 197–199, 197i, 205, 213–214, 239; in Early Republic, 310, 312–313; wealth and, 321f 19th century, 361, 440; among African Americans, 511, 580; in Confederate Army, 474; INDEX I-49 ${bmicon} education and, 415; managerial class, 548; Social Darwinism and, 567–569; in South, 436; wide gulf in, 618 20th century: globalization and, 1009; widening gap in, 740, 868, 938, 944, 949–952, 949f, 975–977, 975f; women’s movement and, 638; in World War II, 770 in 2000s, 1011–1012 Social Darwinism, 537, 567–569, 719–720 Social engineering, late 19th century, 564–565 Social Gospel, 598 Social Security Eisenhower and, 849 under Kennedy, 859 Social Security Act (1935), 752t, 757, 759–760 Social Security Administration, establishment of, 759 Social settlement houses, 598–599, 625–626 Socialism late 19th century, 592; limited interest in, 622–623; unions and, 594 early 20th century: advocates of, 659, 660, 661–662; fear of, 678 in 1930s: increased interest in, 739, 756; New Deal and, 764 as economic system, 739 World War I, suppression of, 689 post-World War II, increased interest in, 804, 809 Socialist party early 20th century, 661–662 and election of 1904, 664t and election of 1908, 666t and election of 1912, 667t and election of 1916, 685t and election of 1920, 723t and election of 1928, 724t and election of 1932, 749, 749t Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 140 Society for the Promotion of the Manumission of Slaves, 263 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), 140–141 Society for the Relief of Poor Widows and Small Children, 311 Society of the Cincinnati, 260–261, 277 Somalia, U.S. intervention in, 993 Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negros (Woolman), 141, 141i Somoza, Antonio, 943 Sons of Liberty Boston Massacre and, 208 and Boston Tea Party, 209–210 British view of, 209i and social class, 205 Stamp Act and, 197, 197i, 199 Townshend Duties and, 206 Sooners, 608 Soule, Silas, 494 South. See also Civil War; Confederacy; Slavery 18th century: American Revolution in, 222, 223–224; Indian groups in, 265m; manumissions, 257, 303–304; Revolutionary War in, 246–248, 246i; slave population, 134m pre-Civil War: abolitionist movement in, 408–410, 409i; culture of, 387, 442–443; economy of, 331, 522; education in, 415; election of 1860, 458; ethnic groups in, 457t; free blacks in, 379; industrialization in, 349; manumissions, 379; regional economies, 350–351, 436–437; religious institutions, 385–386; self-image of, 487; social class in, 436; voting rights in, 280 post-Civil War: African Americans in, 578–580; black flight from, 582; economy, 522, 578–579, 578i, 579m, 580t; impact of War, 502, 503; Jews in, 612, 612i; labor issues in, 507–508, 549, 551m, 553; sharecropping system in, 510–511, 579m, 580t; white reassertion of control, 429; white supremacy doctrine in, 611–612, 622 20th century (See also Segregation); anti-Catholic sentiment in, 724; economy, 818–819; New Deal and, 734; rural life in, 841; sharecropping system in, 580t, 727–728; voting rights in, 867; white supremacy doctrine in, 718–720 South Africa, apartheid in activism against, 956 ending of, 923m, 956, 963 U.S. support for, 813, 906 South America. See also Americas agriculture in, prehistory, 10 peoples of, 500-1500, 11, 14m slave trade and, 116–117, 145 South Carolina 16th century, Spanish colonization of, 36, 37i 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 284; economy, 165–166, 165m; Negro Acts, 135, 138; in Revolutionary War, 246–247, 247m; settlement of, 159–161; slave population, 134m, 159; slavery in, 137–138, 272; tax resistance in, 197–198; voting rights, 312f; westward expansion, 266 19th century: Charleston, post-Civil War, 501, 501i; economy, 350, 436; nullification and, 374; readmission to Union, 516; secession of, 465 post-Civil War: Charleston, 501, 501i; readmission to Union, 516 rice plantations in, 166; early 19th century, 350–351; and slavery, 121, 122i, 133–135 South Carolina Association, 380 South Dakota, statehood for, 542 South Korea, in 2000s, trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m South Vietnam. See also Vietnam War Army of, 876, 879 establishment of, 874 fall of, 909, 910i; refugees, 912i morale of, 878 Southern Alliance, 588 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 847, 867–868 Southern Cultivator, 477 Southern Europe, early 20th century, immigration from, 650–652, 651m Southern Homestead Act (1866), 524 Southern Manifesto, 846 Southern Overland Trail, 393m Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), 591, 727, 757 Southwest. See also Old Southwest 16th century, Spanish in, 33 17th century, Spanish in, 48m, 49–51, 49i 19th century: cities in, 556i; cultural conflict in, 573–574; forest clearing in, 545t; labor unrest in, 592; land conflict in, 434–435; Native Americans in, 517–518; property rights in, 523 20th century: immigration to, 645m, 646–647, 676; water in, 1017 Native Americans in: 500-1500, 13–15, 14m; wars with whites, 517–518 INDEX I-50 ${bmicon} Southwest Territory, 308i Soviet Union in 1930s, economy of, 739 World War II and, 774, 790–791, 792; casualties in, 770, 803; nonaggression pact with Germany, 772, 790; U.S. relations, 790, 801, 801i post-World War II: expansionism of, 809–810, 814; policy goals, 809–810; repression of Jews, 919; U.S. relations, 803–804, 808, 809–810 in Cold War: atomic arms acquisition, 823–824; Berlin Blockade and, 812; Berlin Wall construction, 862; Cuban Missile Crisis, 862; foreign policy, 851; mutual defense treaty with China, 826i; nuclear arms stockpiles, 904m–905m; sphere of influence, 852m–853m; spies, 820, 820i; U.S. relations, 903, 906, 910 mid-20th century, Spanish civil war and, 771 late 20th century: in Afghanistan, 938, 939–940, 959, 1030; Chernobyl nuclear accident, 948, 956, 959; collapse of, 934, 959, 963–964, 964m–965m; nuclear waste in, 1016; Vietnam War and, 878 Sozodont dentrifice, 562 Space colonization, 64 Space exploration Apollo 8, 894–895 Cold War and, 832, 836, 850 moon landing, 896i, 897 Space Station, International, 64 Spain. See also Spanish explorations and colonization 16th century: Atlantic slave trade and, 27, 28i; Inquisition, 36; slavery and, 116–117; Spanish Armada, 36, 40 17th century: consolidation with Portugal, 47; culture of, 89; Indians, slave raids on, 87; Pueblo Revolt and, 87–90, 88m; slavery and, 116–117 18th century: American Revolution and, 235, 241, 246, 246i; loss of Florida, 112; Louisiana acquisition, 187, 190, 216, 264; new world ambitions of, 257; in Old Southwest, 264–265, 265m; racial classification and, 300; territorial claims, 308i; Treaty of Paris (1763) and, 180; war with England, 137, 143–144, 144m 19th century: cession of Florida and Oregon, 367; cession of Louisiana, 321; Spanish-American War, 537, 630–633, 632n, 633m; and U.S. migration to Texas, 363; women’s role and status, 381, 382 20th century: civil war in, 771, 772; fascism in, 771 Spanish-American War, 368, 537, 630–633, 632m, 633m Spanish Armada, 36, 40 Spanish explorations and colonization 15th century, 21–23, 24m–25m 16th century, 25–33, 34m, 36–38 17th century, 46, 53–54, 80; in Florida, 51–53, 52m; in Pacific, 47–48; in Southwest, 48m, 49–51, 87–91, 88m; weakening grip on, 87–92; in West, 47–49, 48m 18th century: citizenship, 308i; in Florida, 137; in Southwest, 83m, 90–92, 153, 308–309; tenuous grip on, 187, 190–191; on West coast, 190–192, 190i, 191m, 272, 309i 19th century: on Pacific coast, 216; in Southwest, 366m encomienda system, 29–30, 51, 88 horses and, 23i, 78i Spanish influenza, early 20th century, 697 Speakeasies, 707 Spear, Chloe, 318 Speert, Edith, 783 SPG. See Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Spiece, John B., 472–473 Spirit of St. Louis, 704 Spock, Benjamin, 817, 836 Spoils system, 370 late 19th century, 531–532 reform of, 565 The Spokesman, 711 Sports late 19th century, 557, 558–559 in 1920s and 1930s, 704; celebrities, 765; women and, 704, 765 late 20th century, 1018–1019; women and, 929, 1026, 1026i Spot Resolutions, 422 Spotted Tail, 520 Sputnik, 836, 849–850 Sputnik II, 850 Squanto, 45–46, 46i, 63 Stackpole, Ralph, 760i Stagflation, 910–911 Stalin, Joseph Cold War and, 814 and collapse of Soviet Union, 960i communist bloc and, 826i death of, 851 World War II and, 790, 795, 810 Stalingrad, Battle of, 790–791 Stamp Act (1765), 195–196, 561 repeal of, 199 resistance to, 196–199, 198m, 202 Stamp Act Congress, 197 Standard Oil Trust, 548 busting of, 567 exposé of, 659 Standardization late 19th century, railroads and, 540 in education, 615 Standing armies Colonists’ fear of, 231, 236, 260–261 Glorious Revolution and, 102 in Real Whig ideology, 207 World War I and, 685 Standing Bear, 596 Standing Bear, Luther, 605–606 Standing Bear v. Crook (1879), 596 Standing Rock Reservation, 566i, 584 Stands-in-Timber, John, 151i, 584 Stanton, Edwin, 514, 515 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 383, 417, 443–444, 526, 527, 624 Stanton, Henry B, 383 Staples, Yatta, 977 “Star Spangled Banner,” 338, 339i Star Wars. See Strategic Defense Initiative Star Wars (film), 942 Starks, Margaret, 779 Starr, Kenneth, 990–991 State government, effectiveness of, in Anti-Federalist theory, 283 State legislatures, under Reconstruction, 515 State militias blacks and, 302 tensions in, 238–239 State-Rights Democratic party (Dixiecrats), and election of 1948, 819–820, 819t States’ Rights post-Reconstruction, 532 Reagan and, 945 States’ rights Confederate union and, 471–472 in Jacksonian era, 371–373 nullification principle, 299, 374 post-Reconstruction, 532 INDEX I-51 ${bmicon} Statue of Liberty, 549, 644–645 Steam Cotton Manufacturing Company, 294 Steamboats 19th century, expanded use of, 363 introduction of, 345, 346 Steel production, late 19th century, 543, 547 Steffens, Lincoln, 659 Steichen, Edward, 658 Stein, Gertrude, 727 Steinbeck, John, 746 Steinem, Gloria, 902, 927, 927i Stephens, Alexander H., 465, 470, 506 Stephens, Uriah, 530 Sterilization, compulsory, 653, 720 Stettheimer, Florine, 702i Stevens, Thaddeus, 514 Stevenson, Adlai E., 849 and election of 1952, 830, 830t, 849, 849t and election of 1956, 849t Stewart, Barbery Anna, 452 Stewart, Maria, 380, 408, 442 STFU. See Southern Tenant Farmers Union Stieglitz, Alfred, 658 Stille, Wilhelm, 398 Stille, Wilhelmina, 398 Stock market 1929 collapse of, 705, 729–731 1987 crash of, 946 in 1990s, 972 in 2000s, 999 late 20th century, 1009 Stoddard, Lothrop, 718–719 Stokes, Carl, 885 Stone, Lucy, 526, 527 Stonewall Brigade, 497 Stonewall riots, 891–892 Stono Rebellion, 137–138, 143, 144m Stop-ERA campaign, 930 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 452 Straits of Anian, 49 Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties (SALT I and II), 906, 940 Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars; SDI), 797, 945, 960 Strategic hamlet program, 876 Streetcars, electric, introduction of, 556 Streeter, Anson J., and election of 1888, 567t Strikes, history of, 200 Strong, Josiah, 555, 556, 568 Stuart, Gilbert, 289i, 338m Stuck, Hudson, 673 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 848, 848m, 867 Student radicals, in 1960s, 885–886 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 885–886 Stuyvesant, Judith Bayard, 58, 58i Stuyvesant, Peter, 58–59, 94 Submarine warfare, in World War I, 686 Submerged Land Act, 850 Suburbs late 19th century, 556 20th century: arms race and, 838; blacks and, 839; growth of, 817, 837–839; and urban sprawl, 1015 Sudetenland, 772 Suez Canal, 673, 853–854 Suffolk Resolves, 211–212 Sugar Act (1764), 195 Sugar plantations, in Caribbean, 117 Sugar Trust, 548 Sugimoto, Henry, 99i Sullivan, Ann, 660 Sullivan, John, 245, 245i, 275, 276 Sullivan, John L., 559 Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, 133 A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Jefferson), 210 Summer of Love, 887 Sumner, Charles, 415, 454, 514, 525 Sumner, William Graham, 567–568, 634–635 Sumter, Thomas, 247 Sun Yat-sen, 674 Sunbelt, 20th century growth of, 818–819 immigration to, 1027, 1028m Supply-side economics, 945 Supreme Court on abortion, 888, 929, 953, 973 on advertising, 561 on affirmative action, 931, 945 on African American rights, 428 Alien and Sedition Acts and, 299 on Anti-Trust law, 620–621 on child labor, 683 on Civil Rights Act of 1875, 532, 565 Civil War and, 466 on compulsory sterilization, 653, 720 on desegregation of schools, 845–846, 845i; implementation of, 846–847 Dred Scott decision, 454–455 and election of 2000, 973, 996m, 997 establishment of, 292 on First Amendment, 561 first black Justice, 873 first female Justice, 930 first Jewish Justice, 676 on flag-burning, 963 on free speech, 873; clear and present danger standard, 689 on gay rights, 973 on interracial marriage, 807, 873 on interstate regulation, 566 on Japanese internment, 778 on local school autonomy, 897–898 on minority rights, 577i on Nixon White House tapes, 909 on prayer in public schools, 873 on private education, 710 on racial discrimination, 647 on racial quotas, 931, 945 on redistricting, 280 on right to legal counsel, 873 Roosevelt court-packing scheme, 761–762 on school prayer, 953 Scottsboro Boys and, 744 on segregation, 611, 807, 808 and state power, 371 on teaching of evolution, 722 Warren Court, 872–873 on women’s rights, 973 on worker protection legislation, 660 Survivor (TV show), 1018 Susquehannocks, 100, 101 Sussez pledge, 686 Sutter, John, 431 Svan, John, 654–655 Sweatshops 19th century, activism against, 625 20th century, 977, 977i Sweatt v. Painter (1950), 807 Sweden 17th century, colonies, 46, 58, 59, 74m, 95 19th century, immigration from, 391–392, 549 Swift, Elizabeth, 938 Switzerland immigration from, 19th century, 435 Reformation in, 35 Sylvis, William, 528 Symmes purchase, 271m Syngman Rhee, 827 T Taft, William Howard and election of 1908, 666, 666t and election of 1912, 667, 667t on Filipinos, 633 foreign policy, 666–667 as governor-general of Philippines, 666 as president, 666–667 Taft-Hartley Act (1947), 808 Tainos, 22, 26 INDEX I-52 ${bmicon} Taiwan Chinese Nationalists on, 823 trade with U.S., 1010m–1011m U.S. defense of, 830 Taliban internment in Cuba, 368–369, 369i regime in Afghanistan, 995, 1021, 1030 Talleyrand, Charles, 298 Tallmadge, James, 362 Tamiami Trail, 726 Tammany Hall, 531, 531i, 557 Taney, Roger B., 454 Taos Indians, 891 Taos Trail, 393m Tape, Joseph, 577–578 Tape, Mamie, 577–578 Tape, Mary, 577–578 Tape v. Hurley (1885), 577–578 Tappan, Arthur, 409i Tappan, Lewis, 409i Tarbell, Ida, 659 Tariff Act of 1930, 731 Tariffs 18th century, Early Republic, 293, 295–296 early 19th century, 349, 374 late 19th century, 563, 566–567, 618, 619, 630 early 20th century, 667, 681, 722, 731, 740 Corn Laws (Britain), 418 history and purpose of, 1008 Tarleton, Banastre, 247, 248–249 Task system, 310, 352 Taxation. See also Tariffs pre-Revolution, 195; representation and, 205, 206; resistance to, 203–205, 208 post-Revolution, 293; civil unrest and, 277; resistance to, 296–297, 311; War debt and, 257, 273–274, 275 Jefferson administration, 331 late 19th century, 547; of Chinese workers, 576; city growth and, 557 early 20th century, 666, 681–682, 724, 731 in 1960s, 859, 868 in 1980s, 944–945, 945 in 1990s, 989 in 2000s, 999 Taylor, Edward, 487 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 653–654 Taylor, James, 309 Taylor, Susie King, 487 Taylor, Zachary, 422, 446, 446t, 447 Tea Act (1773), 209 Teapot Dome scandal, 723 Technology 19th century, 326, 433; agriculture, 436; navigation and boatbuilding, 418; transportation, 345 late 19th century: education and training in, 542; and growth of cities, 554, 555–557, 569; innovations, 542–545, 552–553; mining, 541–542, 545; urban design and architecture, 554, 556 early 20th century, 639, 673; World War I and, 687i, 696 mid-20th century, 836 late 20th century, 1002i; employment and, 974; globalization and, 1006–1008 advertising and, 561 canals, 296i, 346 communications: 19th century, 411, 542, 1006; early 20th century, 673; late 20th century, 1006–1008; history of, 1006–1007 Native American: 500-1500, 15; Archaic period, 8, 9i navigation and boatbuilding: 15th century, 19, 20i; 19th century, 418; history of, 39 transportation: 19th century, 345; 20th century, 673; history of, 346–347 Tecumseh, 334–335, 336, 337, 338 Teheran Conference (1943), 794–795 Tejanos, 419 land rights and, 434–435 Telegraph, invention of, 411 Telephone invention of, 542, 1006 service to Europe, 673 Television in 1950s and 1960s, 838, 882–883 introduction of, 1006 and spread of U.S. culture, 1018 Teller Amendment (1898), 631 Temperance movement 18th century, 263 19th century, 413; nativists and, 411; social class and, 349; women’s rights movement, 417 late 19th century, 599–601, 599i; African American women and, 625 20th century, Prohibition, 706–707 Ten Percent Plan, 504, 513m Tenancy system, late 19th century, in South, 579m, 580t Tenement House Commission, 594 Tennent, Gilbert, 174 Tennent, William, 174 Tennessee 18th century, establishment of, 266 19th century: election campaigns in, 359; readmission to Union, 516; secession of, 466m, 468, 469 Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railway Company, 579 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 752t, 754–755, 754m Tenochtitlán, 12, 28, 29 Tenskwatawa (the Prophet), 334–335, 338 Tenure of Office Act (1867), 514, 515, 516 Teotihuacan, 12 Terrell, Mary Church, 625 Territories. See also Frontier; specific territories government of, 269 slavery in: Compromise of 1850, 432–433, 446–447; Crittenden Compromise, 467; Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), 448; Land Ordinance (1785), 268; Missouri Compromise, 361–363, 362m, 448; Northwest Ordinance (1787), 269; spread of, 305, 309–310, 363 Terrorism, late 20th century, 934, 984–985 anti-U.S., 994–995 by Islamic fundamentalists, 943, 961, 994–995 September 11th attacks, 934, 935, 1023, 1029–1032, 1031i Tet Offensive, 880, 881m Texas 19th century: American settlement in, 363–364, 366m; annexation of, 419–420, 422, 445m; independence of, 418–419; migration to, 434; readmission to Union, 516; secession of, 469; slavery in, 399m, 400; Spanish settlements in, 91; U.S. conquest of, 368 20th century, immigration to, 709 Texas Rangers, 419, 434–435, 582, 592 Thames, Battle of, 306i, 337, 337m Thanksgiving, 63 Thatcher, Margaret, 942 Thayendanegea, 289, 289i Them! (film), 816 Third World early 20th century, anticolonialism INDEX I-53 ${bmicon} in, 674, 694 Cold War in, 850, 851, 942 Thirteenth Amendment, 506 This is the Army (film), 784 Thomas, Clarence, 963, 981 Thomas, Gertrude, 488 Thomas, Norman, 724t, 749, 749t Thoreau, Henry David, 200, 417, 422, 440–441 Thorpe, Jim, 676 Thoughts on Government (Adams), 238 Three-fifths rule, 279 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, 925, 925i, 937, 956 Throwaway culture, 916 Thurmond, J. Strom, 819, 819t Tiananmen Square, 823 Tilden, Samuel J., 532, 532t Till, Emmett, 846–847, 848m Timber Culture Act (1873), 524 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 306i, 334–335 “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” 410 Tirsch, Ignacio, 190i Tishcohan, 169i Title IX, Educational Amendments of 1972, 929, 1026 Tito, Josip Broz, 993 Titusville, Pennsylvania, oil fields, 914, 915i Tlingit Indians, 190, 627i Tobacco 19th century: cigarette-rolling machine, 579; marketing of, 629 20th century: advertising, 725; civil suits against, 974; decline in use of, 917; exports to China, 823; surgeon-general’s warnings on, 871–872 Chesapeake Bay economy and: 18th century, 166–167; 19th century, 350, 351i Jamestown colony and, 61–62, 72 slavery and, 120–121, 122 soil depletion and, 309–310, 350 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 377, 380–381 Tojo, Hideki, 774–775 Toklas, Alice B., 727 Tokugawa dynasty, 47–48 Tokyo, World War II firebombing of, 794, 796 Toland, Greg, 781 Toltecs, 12, 14m Tompkins, Sally Louisa, 482i Tongass National Forest, 1014i Tonkawa, reservations, opening of, 608 Topper, South Carolina, 8 TORCH, operation, 791 Tories, in American Revolution, 185 Tourism late 19th century, 518i, 525; railroads and, 545–546, 609 in 1920s, 716 Towne, Laura, 484i Townsend, Francis, 757 Townsend Plan, 757 Townshend, Charles, 205 Townshend Duties, 205–207 repeal of, 207 Toxic waste, 1016 Toynbee Hall, 598 Trade 15th century, 18; search for Indies, 18–23 17th century, Pacific region, 47 19th century, 418 20th century: in 1930s, 740; most-favored nation status, 1008 in 2000s, U.S. trading partners, 1010m–1011m with Native Americans (See also Fur trade); 17th century, 51i, 54–58, 79, 81, 92; 18th century, 109, 151–157, 156m Viking, 17–18 Trafalgar, Battle of, 331 Tragedy of the commons, 872, 1012 Trail of Tears, 401–402, 402m Training Day, 303 Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, 925 Trans-Siberian railroad, 673 Transcendentalism, 417, 422 Transcontinental railroad, 502, 517, 517i, 712f construction of, 502, 517, 517i Transcontinental Treaty (1819), 367 Transparency, democratic society and, late 20th century, 919 Transportation. See also Automobiles 18th century, infrastructure growth, 164 19th century: infrastructure growth, 345; innovations in, 345; westward migration and, 363 20th century: innovations in, 673; urban population and, 712f history of, 346–347 Travolta, John, 928i Treaty(ies) U.S. policy on, 518 as white manipulation, 334 Treaty of Fort Atkinson (1854), 433–434 Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), 519 Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768), 194 Treaty of Ghent (1815), 341 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), 424, 431, 432, 435i Treaty of Hard Labor (1768), 194 Treaty of Horseshoe Bend, 339 Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek, 518 Treaty of New Echota (1835), 401i Treaty of Paris (1763), 176, 180–181 Treaty of Paris (1783), 250–251, 250i, 267–268 Treaty of Payne’s Landing (1832), 400–401 Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795), 298 Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), 23 Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 107 Treaty party, 401 Trenchard, John, 201–202 Trent (ship), 483 Trenton, Battle of, 230–231 Trial by jury, pre-Revolution Gaspee affair and, 208 vice-admiralty courts and, 195 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, 641–642, 641i, 643 Trickle-down economics, 949–952, 949f Triple Alliance, 673 Triple Entente, 673, 690–691 Tripoli, war against, 321, 322m Tripp, Linda, 990 Troy Female Seminary, 383 Truman, Bess Wallace, 690 Truman, Harry assumption of presidency, 792, 802 atomic bomb and, 795, 796 containment and, 809 and election of 1944, 792 and election of 1946, 808 and election of 1948, 819–820, 819t Israel and, 815 on Japanese-Americans in World War II, 778 Korean War and, 827 McCarthyism and, 820 policies of, 819; on Native Americans, 821–822; War and, 875 post-War vision of, 809, 810, 811–812 and Soviet atomic bomb, 823–824 unions and, 808 in World War I, 690 World War II peace and, 795 Truman Doctrine, 811–812 Trumbull, John, 227i, 266i Trump, Donald and Ivana, 950i Trusts late 19th century, rise of, 547–548 regulation of (See Sherman Anti-Trust Act) Truth, Sojourner, 444, 444i, 527 Tryon, William, 203–205 INDEX I-54 ${bmicon} Tryon Palace, 204, 204i Tuberculosis early 20th century, 652 in 1990s, 987 Tubman, Harriet, 459m Tudor dynasty, 35 Tugwell, Rexford, 752 Tulsa race riots (1921), 671–672, 698 Tumulty, Joseph, 698 The Tuning of the World (Schaffer), 173 Tupax, 421i Turkey, post-World War II, 812 Turkey Foot, 306 Turner, Benjamin S., 514i Turner, Frederick Jackson, 607, 607i Turner, Henry M., 515 Turner, Nat, 381, 614 Turner, Ted, 1007 Tuscaluza, 33 Tuscarora Indians American Revolution and, 242, 245 resistance by, 108, 109 Tuscarora War, 108–109 Tuskegee Airmen, 788i Tuskegee Institute, 614 TVA. See Tennessee Valley Authority Twain, Mark, 564, 634 Tweed, William M. “Boss,” 531, 531i, 557 Twelfth Amendment, 368 25th Infantry, 581, 582m Twenty-First Amendment, 751 24th Infantry, 581, 582m Twenty-Negro Law, 464 21 Demands, 674 Twenty-Seventh Amendment, 972 Twenty-Sixth Amendment, 896i Twilight, Los Angeles (Smith), 983 Two party system. See also Second Party system collapse of, 448 effects of, 624 emergence of, 290, 292 Tyler, John and annexation of Texas, 422 and election of 1840, 410, 410t Monroe doctrine and, 368 as president, 410 Typhoid early 20th century, 652 in Spanish-American War, 632 Typhoid Mary, 652, 653i Typhus 17th century, Native Americans and, 52 in War of 1812, 337 U U-2 spy plane incident, 851 U-boats, in World War I, 686 UAW. See United Auto Workers UFW. See United Farm Workers UMW. See United Mine Workers Unabomber, 984 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 452 Underground Railroad, 451, 459m Underhill, John, 70i Underwood-Simmons Tariff (1913), 681 Unemployment Councils, 734 UNIA. See Universal Negro Improvement Association Union anti-black violence in, 491 conscription in, 490, 491, 492f consolidation of power in, 476–478 industrial base, 470–471, 477 strategy of, 470–471, 478, 479, 487, 492–493 surrender terms of, 497 women in, 471, 478; black, 487 Union Army, soldiers in, 462i, 463i, 475f Union Labor party, 567t “Union Maid” (song), 742–743 Union Navy, 483i Union Pacific Railroad, 517, 517i, 519m, 531, 576 Union party, 761t Unionists, 469 Unions. See also Collective bargaining rights 18th century, rise of, 503 early 19th century, 455; African Americans and, 529, 530; growth of, 528–531; and politics, 407; women and, 530 late 19th century: African Americans and, 529, 530, 592–593; efforts to suppress, 593, 618–619, 620, 623, 624; militancy of, 589–594; minorities and, 575–576, 592–593, 623; rise of, 503, 528–531, 536; Social Darwinism and, 567; socialism and, 594; strikes, 539, 540i, 589, 590–591, 593, 618–619, 620, 623; violence by, 586; women and, 530, 590; worker resistance to, 622–624 early 20th century: African Americans and, 698; alliance with Democratic party, 679; collective bargaining rights, 679; fear of, 698; legitimization of, 683; minorities and, 647; resistance to, 698; strikes, 641, 647, 647i, 661, 663, 678, 689, 697–698; suppression of, 655, 663, 678–679, 729; women and, 661, 729 in 1920s and 1930s: activism of, 736i, 756–757, 762–764; legitimization of, 751; minorities and, 756–757; strikes, 756–757, 762–763; women and, 763 World War II and, 782, 786 post-World War II: characteristics and role of, 808; communist influence in, 808; strikes, 808 in 1950s and 1960s, minorities and, 822i, 890, 897i in 1970s and 1980s: strikes, 911, 952; suppression of, 952 late 20th century, 977, 1004; free trade and, 992; globalization and, 1008–1009; strikes, 1003; suppression of, 1005 United Auto Workers (UAW), 763 United Daughters of Ham, 580 United Farm Workers (UFW), 890, 897i United Fruit Co., 852 United Mine Workers (UMW), 594, 623, 663, 697, 762, 782 United Nations establishment of, 696, 804 General Assembly, 804 Human Rights Charter, 805 Security Council, 804–805 United Provinces, 36 United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearance. See Shakers United Society of Chimney Sweeps, 348 United States Cold War sphere of influence, 852m–853m as global policeman, 665, 967 nuclear arms stockpiles, 904m–905m post-World War II: challenges facing, 802, 803; policy goals, 809–810; power of, 790, 803, 811; Soviet relations, 803–804, 808, 809–810 (See also Cold War) United States v. E. C. Knight (1895), 620–621 Unity, national, in 2000s, 1029 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 709, 709i Upper South, abolition of slavery in, 300–301 Uprising of twenty thousand, 641–642 Uranium mining of, 937, 938, 1016 radioactive waste and, 1016 Urban renewal, mid-20th century, 841 INDEX I-55 ${bmicon} Urban sprawl, 1015 Urrutia, Turibio de, 149–150 U.S. Border Patrol, 958, 958i U.S. Forest Service, 947 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), establishment of, 544 U.S.-Mexican War, 421i, 422–425, 423m territory acquired in, 431, 445m U.S. Sanitary Commission, 478 U.S. Steel, 763 U.S. v. Virginia (1996), 973 USDA. See Department of Agriculture Utah 18th century, exploration of, 192 19th century, women’s voting rights and, 601 20th century, nuclear testing in, 816 settlement of, 403–404 statehood and, 432 U.S. acquisition of, 434 Utes, 90, 152, 153m removal of, 572i war with white, late 19th century, 581 Utopias 18th century, 170 19th century, 416–417, 418 V V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, 792 V-J (Victory in Japan) Day, 797, 798i Valasquez, Loreta Janeta, 483 Valens, Ritchie, 855 Valentino, Rudolph, 712, 713i Vallandigham, Clement, 490 Valley Forge, Continental Army at, 232, 239, 240–241, 240i Van Buren, Martin and election of 1836, 406–407, 407t and election of 1840, 410t and election of 1844, 419–420 and election of 1848, 446, 446t as president, 407 Vance, Cyrus, 939 Vance, Zebulon, 474 Vancouver, George, 257 Vandenberg, Arthur, 811 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 708–709, 708i Vaqueros, 440 Vargas, Diego de, 89 Vatican Index of prohibited books, 35 Veblen, Thorstein, 618 Velez, Lupe, 712 Velvet Revolution, 960i Venereal disease, in World War II, 784 Ventura, Jesse, 999 Vera Cruz, U.S. landing at, 422 Vergennes, Comte de, 234, 250–251 Vermont in 1990s, same-sex marriage in, 979–980 statehood, 269 voting rights, late 18th century, 312f Verrazzano, Giovanni da, 30, 38m Versailles, 81 Versailles Treaty (1919), 672, 694–695, 695m, 700 Vertical integration, 547–548 Vesey, Denmark, 379–380 Vespucci, Amerigo, 23–24 Veterans Administration, 805, 817 Viagra, 986 Vice-admiralty courts, 195, 206, 212m Vice crusaders, early 20th century, 660 Vicksburg, siege of, 479, 490 Victorianism, 387, 526 home decoration and, 626i, 627 Victory gardens, 782 Victory girls, 784 Vidaurri, Santiago, 483 Viet Cong. See National Liberation Front Vietminh, 874 Vietnam Clinton visit to, 993 post-World War II: French in, 814, 874; independence of, 804, 874 in 1970s, flight from, 912i Vietnam syndrome, 965–966 Vietnam Veterans Against the War, 896 Vietnam War, 833, 881m African Americans and, 882 antiwar movement, 833, 885–886, 895, 896, 907 atrocities in, 880 bombing of North Vietnam, 876, 896 casualties in, 497, 877f, 879i civil liberties in, 300–301 civil unrest in, 201i, 491i combat in, 879–880 containment and, 873, 875 draft resistance in, 885–886, 922 under Eisenhower, 874 escalation of, 876, 886 events leading to, 874 fall of South Vietnam, 909, 910i Ford and, 909 guerilla warfare in, 796 historians’ view of Cold War and, 814 impact of, 919 Johnson and, 833, 868, 873, 874, 881–882, 895 Kennedy and, 861, 874 Laos and Cambodia in, 896 Nixon and, 833, 880, 895–896, 907 parallels to American Revolution, 234–235, 921 peace negotiations, 881–882, 894 Reagan on, 942 resistance to, 877–868 Tet Offensive, 880, 881m as tragedy, 873 U.S. economy and, 911 U.S. reasons for fighting, 874–876 U.S. strategy in, 876 U.S. troops in: characteristics of, 878–879; frustration of, 878–879; as POWs, 880i U.S. view of, 877–878, 880–881, 880i Vietnamese view of, 878 Vietnamization of, 896 Vietnamese, U.S. view of, 877, 878i Vigilantes late 19th century, in South, 580, 612 post-Civil War, 507, 513, 517 Vikings, new world explorations, 2, 17–18 Villa, Francisco “Pancho,” 676 Vindication of the Rights of Women (Wollstonecraft), 314–317 Vinland Sagas, 17 Virgin Islands, early 20th century, U.S. intervention in, 675, 675m Virginia. See also Richmond, Virginia 17th century: Bacon’s Rebellion, 100–101; colonization of, 45, 60–62, 67i; slavery in, 62, 118, 121–123; tobacco economy in, 61–62, 72 18th century: Constitutional ratification by, 284; Declaration of Rights, 237, 281; economy, 166–167; free blacks in, 140; Gaspee affair and, 208; slave population, 134m; slave trade and, 272; slavery in, 125, 134m, 272; state constitution of, 237; tax resistance in, 196–197; tobacco economy in, 166–167; voting rights, 312f; westward expansion, 266 19th century: free blacks in, 405, 437; military district, 267, 271m; readmission to Union, 516; secession, 466m, 468, 469 20th century, eugenics laws, 720 Virginia Company, 60–63, 72 Virginia Military Institute, forced gender integration of, 973 Virginia Plan, 279 Virginia Resolves, 196–197 Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Council, Inc. (1976), 561 INDEX I-56 ${bmicon} VISTA. See Volunteers in Service to America Vizcaíno, Sebastián, 47–48, 48m Volstead Act (1919), 707 Voluntary associations, 18th century, 263 Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), 870 von Steuben, Friedrich, 239, 240 Voter participation early 19th century, 360 in 2000s, 1012 Voting age, Twenty-Sixth Amendment and, 896 Voting rights. See also Women’s suffrage movement 18th century: of African Americans, 302; in Constitution, 278, 280; by state, 312f; of women, 217, 290 19th century, 327, 361, 377; of African Americans, 280, 380; state efforts to limit, 370; in Western states, 359; of women, 280, 526–528 post-Civil War: of African Americans, 280, 504, 506, 507, 511, 513m, 514–515, 516–517, 526–527; of Confederates, 514 late 19th century: of AfricanAmericans , 526–527, 611; of women, 526–528, 601 20th century: of African Americans, 867, 871, 885; and election of 2000, 998 history of, 998 Voting Rights Act (1965), 280, 871, 885 Voyageurs , 81 W Wabash and Erie Canal, 364m Wabash v. Illinois (1886), 566 WACs. See Women’s Army Corps Wade-Davis Bill (1864), 504 Wage slavery, 439 Wagner Act (1935), 752t, 759 Wal-Mart, 1010 Wald, Lillian, 625 Walden, Dana, 643 Walden (Thoreau), 440–441 Waldo, Samuel, 159 Walker, David, 380, 408 Walker, Madame C. J., 561 Walker, William, 447 Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (Walker), 380 Walking Purchase, 169, 169i Walkowitz, Abraham, 640i Wall Street, origin of, 58 Wall Street Journal, 737, 911 Wallace, George, 744, 863, 893, 894, 894t Wallace, Henry A., 752, 792, 820 Walls, Josiah T., 514i Walpole, Horace, 180 Walsh, Frank, 679 Walton, George, 266 Walton, Sam, 1010 Wampanoags Metacom’s War and, 97 resistance by, late 17th century, 107 Wamsutta, 98 Wanamakers stores, establishment of, 560 Wansey, Henry, 294–295 War civil disorder in, 490–491 social reform and, 875 War Bonds, World War II, 773i War Industries Board, 688, 875 War Labor Board, 688 War of 1812, 335–341 African Americans and, 336i, 339–340 British prisoners in, 336i, 341 casualties, 341 civil disorder in, 490 effects of, 326 events leading to, 331–335 impact of, 330–331, 342–344 Native Americans in, 338–339 northern front, 336–337, 337m peace agreement, 340–341 veteran’s land grants, 342, 378 War of Spanish Succession, 84–85, 86, 103, 107 War of the League of Augsburg, 103 War on Drugs in 1980s, 955 in 1990s, 976 War on Poverty, 870 War Powers Act (1973), 919 War Women, 318 Ward, Nancy, 318, 343 Warner, Charles Dudley, 564 Warner, George James, 314–315 Warren, Adelina Otero, 661, 706 Warren, Earl Japanese internment and, 777 Supreme Court under, 845–846, 872–873 Warren Commission and, 863 Warren Commission, 863 Warsaw Pact, 850 Wartime, and civil liberties, 300–301 Washington British burning of (1814), 338 statehood for, 542 Washington, Augustus, 456i Washington, Booker T., 614, 664 Washington, George, 222i, 338m as commander of Continental Army, 243m, 247m, 248; defense of New York City, 229–230; defense of Philadelphia, 232; and Newburgh Conspiracy, 260; public reaction to, 222, 222i; retreat through New Jersey, 230; Southern command and, 248; troop morale and, 230; at Valley Forge, 239; and women in camp, 240 and Constitutional Convention, 276–277 cultural interests of, 263 and election of 1792, 292 and election of 1796, 292 in French and Indian War, 177–178, 179m masons and, 376i on political parties, 292 as president: farewell address, 298; inauguration of, 292i; Neutrality Proclamation (1793), 292; opposition to, 296; support for, 291; Whiskey Rebellion and, 296, 297i, 298 slavery and, 304 and Society of the Cincinnati, 261 western lands and, 194, 305 Washington Post, 908 Washington Society, 413 Washington State, early 20th century, voting rights, 661 Washington Territory, women’s voting rights and, 601 Water 19th century, and disease, 557 20th century: agriculture and, 1013–1014; and pollution, 872, 895; in West, 1004–1005, 1013–1014, 1015m, 1017 Water cure, 633, 634–635 Watergate scandal, 833, 897, 906–909 historians’ view of Cold War and, 814 impact of, 909, 919, 921 Waters, Ethel, 715 Watie, Stand, 475, 475f Watson, Thomas E., 622 Watt, James, 946i, 948 Watts, in 1960s, black riots in, 884 WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service), 783 Wayne, Anthony, 289, 305–306 INDEX I-57 ${bmicon} Wayne, John, 816, 923 WCTU. See Women’s Christian Temperance Union “We Shall Overcome” (song), 200 “Wealth” (Carnegie), 568 Weas. See also Ohio Confederacy home region of, 305 Ohio Confederacy and, 289 Weather Bureau, establishment of, 608 Weather Underground, 886 Weaver, James B. and election of 1880, 564, 564t and election of 1892, 619, 619t Weaver, Randy, 984 Webster, Daniel and election of 1836, 407, 407t slavery and, 446 on tariffs, 349 Webster, Noah, 262, 414 The Weekly Toiler, 588 Weimar Republic, 700 Welfare capitalism, 739 Welfare Reform Act (1996), 990 Welfare state in 1930s, 750, 759–760, 765; women and, 759–760 in 1940s, 805 in 1950s, 849 in 1980s, 934, 944–946 in 1990s, reform of, 973, 989–990 definition of, 739 Wells, Ida B., 601, 611, 661, 662 Wells-Barnett, Ida B. See Wells, Ida B. Wesley, John, 172 West. See also Settlers; Territories 18th century: under Articles of Confederation, 237; division of, 267–269, 268m; expansion into, 264–270, 290–291; government in, 269; Land Ordinance of 1785, 267–268; Northwest Ordinanceof 1787, 268–269, 279; Revolutionary War in, 244m 19th century: African Americans in, 582; agriculture in, 580t; culture of, 601; economy of, 522, 525; ethnic groups in, 457t; free blacks in, 310; and Frontier image, 305; Indian land losses in, 585m; labor shortage in, 520–522; land management in, 608; migration to, 359–360, 360m, 363–364, 383–384, 393m, 402–406, 403t; mission homes in, 625; Native Americans in, 306–309, 307i; property rights in, 523; railroads and, 523–524; segregation in, 581–582; slavery in, 279, 305, 309–310, 363; women’s rights and, 601 20th century: growth of, 818–819; nuclear sites in, 858m, 937–938; radioactive waste and, 1016; water and, 1004–1005, 1013–1014, 1015m, 1017 West, Benjamin, 250i West Central Africa. See Congo-Angola West Coast. See also Alaska; California 16th century, Spanish exploration of, 33 18th century: British exploration of, 188; Spanish exploration and colonization of, 190–192, 190i, 191m, 272, 309i 20th century: culture in, 1024; immigration to, 728 West Germany, economy, in 1970s, 911 West Indies 16th century, Spanish exploitation of, 26–28, 36 17th century, English colonization of, 67 post-Revolution, British trade restrictions in, 271–272, 274 West Virginia, formation of, 468 Western Federation of Miners, 619 Westmoreland, William, 876, 880 Whaling, 313i 18th century, 168, 271–272 What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (Sumner), 567–568 Wheat, work hours per bushel, late 19th century, 619t Wheeler, Burton K., 723 Wheeler, Harry, 689 Wherry, Kenneth, 823 “Which Side Are You On?” (song), 742–743 Whig party 19th century, 376; constituency of, 384; decline of, 428; platform of, 393; support for, 410 and election of 1836, 406–407, 407t and election of 1840, 407i, 410, 410t and election of 1844, 419t, 420, 421 and election of 1848, 446, 446t and election of 1852, 447, 447t and election of 1856, 450 Whigs, in American Revolution, 185 political theory of, 201–202 Whiskey Rebellion, 296, 297i, 298, 591 Whiskey Ring, 532 White, Hugh, 407, 407t White, John, 40, 41, 41i White Antelope, 494i White Brotherhood, 513 White Cloud, 384–385 White Collar (Mills), 855–856 White Eyes, 245 White House tapes, subpoena of, 908–909 White Indians, 311, 406 White League, 612 White Man’s Union (WMU), 622 White race, definition of, 654–655, 676, 1025 White Sticks, 338 White supremacy doctrine. See also Apartheid late 19th century, impact of, 611–612, 622 early 20th century, 718–720 post-World War II, discrediting of, 804 Whitecaps, 573–574 Whitefield, George, 170, 171i, 172–174, 177 Whitewater scandal, 990 Whitman, Marcus and Narcissa, 404–405, 404i Whitman, Walt, 440, 441, 517 Whitman mission, 404–405, 404i Whitney, Eli, 294 Why Change Your Wife (film), 703–704 Whyte, William, 816, 855–856 Wickett, Susanna, 344 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968), 872 The Wild One (film), 855i Wild West show, 537, 559–560, 560i, 584, 605 Wilderness Act (1964), 872 Wildlife, in Archaic era, 8 Wilhelm II, Kaiser of Germany, 696 Wilkes, John, 194, 202–203, 206 Wilkie, Wendell L., 774, 774t The Will to Believe (James), 617 Willard, Emma, 383 Willard, Frances, 599–601, 599i, 601 William and Mary, 102, 103 William III, King of England, 84, 102, 105 William of Orange, 102, 102i, 103 Williams, John D., 510 Williams, Roger, 68 Williams, William Appleman, 814 Williams, William Sherley, 406 Wills, Helen, 703, 765 Wilmot, David, 422 Wilmot Proviso, 422, 446 Wilson, Charles, 850 Wilson, Edith, 698 Wilson, Harriet, 444 Wilson, Jack, 583 Wilson, James, 239, 258, 278 INDEX I-58 ${bmicon} Wilson, William B., 679 Wilson, Woodrow antitrust activities, 682 background of, 674, 682i conservationism and, 683 domestic policies, 681–682; War and, 875 and election of 1912, 667, 667t and election of 1916, 685, 685t on imperialism, 673 on industrialization, 678 on Latin America, 675 and League of Nations, 691, 694–695, 696 on Mexico, 676 minorities and, 676–677 monetary policy, 682 stroke suffered by, 695, 698 Supreme Court appointments, 676 unions and, 679 on women’s suffrage, 678 World War I and: 14 Points, 691; peace settlement and, 691, 692–694; purpose of fighting, 672, 680; sympathy for allies, 685, 686; U.S. entry into, 686; U.S. neutrality and, 680, 685, 686 Windmills, 586i Windward Coast, Africa, 127m, 129, 130m–131m Winkler, Maria Maytilda, 162i Winnebagos 17th century guides, 82 19th century resistance by, 378–379 home region of, 305 Winner-take-all system, implications of, 624 The Winning of the West (Roosevelt), 628 Winslow, Paul and Rose, 678 Winston, Jonathan A., 474 Winthrop, John, 67, 68, 70 Wirt, William, 376, 376t Wirz, Henry, 495 Wisconsin migration to, 19th century, 435 statehood, 269 Wisconsin Progressive party, 758 Wise, Stephen S., 786 The Wizard of Oz (Baum), 562 WMU. See White Man’s Union Wolfe, James, 179–180, 179m Wolfe, Payson, 495 Wolfe, Tom, 903 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 314–317 Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Fuller), 418 Woman Order, 478 Woman who Strikes Many, 358i Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia, 596 Woman suffrage movement 19th century, 526–528, 601, 624 early 20th century, 638, 660–661, 677–678, 677i Women . See also Mothers 17th century: colonization and, 67i, 76; in New York, 95; and Salem witch hunts, 104–105, 104i 18th century: education and, 316–317, 317i; elite, 314–317; in New England, 168; nonelite, 318–319; property rights, 142–143; Republican Mothers, 314–317; in Revolutionary War, 240–241; rights of, 217, 292i, 317, 318; voting rights, 217, 290 19th century: abolitionism and, 408, 417, 421, 443–444, 444i, 452; education and, 383, 414–415; employment, 381–383, 382i, 386, 414–415, 438–439, 438i; individualism and, 442–443; industrialization and, 346–347; literature and, 417–418, 443; property rights, 417; role and status of, 381–383, 386, 387, 387i, 416–418, 442–443; unions and, 530; voting rights, 280, 526–528 in Civil War: black, 487; Confederate, 464, 471i, 481–482, 482i, 488; Union, 471, 478, 487 late 19th century: clubs and organizations, 624–625; politics and, 623i; reform movements and, 594, 599–601, 599i; unions and, 590; voting rights, 526–528, 601; working conditions of, 589–590 early 20th century: employment, 659–660, 729; reform movements and, 660; social roles of, 678; unions and, 641, 661, 662, 729; voting rights, 661; in World War I, 688i, 690 in 1920s: in office, 706; role and status of, 702i, 703, 712, 716; sports and, 704 in 1930s: employment, 741; as heroes, 765, 765i; motion picture industry and, 764; sports and, 765; unions and, 763; welfare state and, 759–760; Works Progress Administration and, 761 in World War II: in armed forces, 783; child care and, 783; employment, 472i, 782–784; immigration to U.S. by, 779; unions and, 782 post-World War II: child care and, 805; education, 843; employment, 805, 817, 842–843, 842i; gender roles and, 817; GI Bill and, 806f in 1950s and 1960s: activism of, 856–857, 856i; discrimination against, 862–863; role and status of, 841–844 in 1970s: day care and, 928; employment, 911–912, 928; labor activism of, 927; role and status of, 901, 928–929 in 1990s and 2000s: employment, 1024; role and status of, 981 late 20th century: employment, 930, 1026–1027; and military combat, 929, 930, 967i; in political office, 1026; role and status of, 930; sports and, 929, 1026, 1026i first Cabinet official, 752 first in Congress, 677 first trans-Atlantic solo flight, 765, 765i Native American: crafts, 520; first physician, 597, 597i; in Navajo culture, 90, 90i; role and status of, 157, 318, 330, 378, 381, 382 slave: role of, 354; work of, 352 in Soviet Union, 835–836 Women and Economics (Gilman), 627 Women Strike for Peace (WSP), 856–858, 856i Women’s Army Corps (WACs), 783 African Americans in, 788, 789 Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 599–601, 599i, 706–707 African Americans and, 625 Women’s Council, 840i Women’s Emergency Brigade, 763 Women’s Foreign Missionary Society, 599 Women’s liberation movement in 1960s, 889–890, 889i in 1970s, 901–902, 926–928, 929; backlash against, 929–931; resistance to, 902 in 1980s, opposition to, 952–953 Women’s National Indian Association, 596–597 Women’s Political Council, 847 Women’s rights movement 18th century, 317 19th century, 383, 443–444, 503; abolitionist movement and, 417, INDEX I-59 ${bmicon} 443–444, 444i; temperance movement and , 417 late 19th century, 503, 600, 627; in rural areas, 588; segregation in, 624–625 20th century, 677, 705–706, 833; eugenics and, 720; work restrictions and, 660 Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), 641, 661 Women’s U.S. World Cup soccer team (1999), 929, 1026i Wood, Robert E., 773 Wood, T. W., 430i Wood Lake rebellion, 479–481, 479i Wood River, Idaho, 578 Wooden Leg, 584 Woodhenge, 15 Woodhull, Victoria, 527–528 Woods, Tiger, 982i, 983 Woodstock, 887 Woodville, Richard Caton, 390i Woodward, Bob, 908 Woolman, John, 141, 141i Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins, 848 Worcester v. Georgia (1832), 372–373 Work day eight hour: activism for, 663, 683; agitation for, 593–594 ten-hour, introduction of, 660 Workers. See also Common man in Early Republic: plight of, 312–314; supply problems, 295 late 19th century: anarchist movement and, 593–594; dangers faced by, 589–590, 589i; industrial unrest, 585–586, 589–593; mechanization and, 544–545, 552–553; plight of, 528, 592, 618; and rise of corporations, 536; unrest, 536, 587–591, 588i, 618–621 early 20th century: in 1920s, 727–729; in 1930s, 739, 740–742; protective legislation for, 659–660, 683–684; unrest, 678, 689, 697–698 late 20th century: in 1970s, 911; in 1980s, 952; in 1990s, 974; pink-collar, 842, 842i; status of, 1010–1011 Workers’ compensation, introduction of, 683–684 Workers’ Council of Colored People, 761 Workers movements. See also Unions Early Republic, 312, 315i 19th century, 348, 528–531; barriers to, 622–624 20th century, 641–642, 661–662, 762–764 Working Women’s Party, 527 Workingmen’s Parties, mid-19th century, 407 Workingmen’s Party of California, 565, 575 Workplace, early 19th century, transformation of, 345–349 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 752t, 760–761, 760i discrimination and, 764 World Anti-Slavery Convention (1840), 417, 443–444, 444i World Jewish Congress, 786 World Trade Center 2001 attacks on (See September 11th terrorist attacks) bombing of (1993), 995 World Trade Organization (WTO), protests against, 991i, 1008 World War I African Americans in, 690, 692i, 693, 693i casualties in, 497, 680, 681f, 687i, 692, 696 causes of, 673, 696 civil liberties in, 300, 689 class tension in, 680 context of, 672–673 disease in, 680 Europe and Western front, 690–692, 691m horrors of, 680 impact of, 639 peace settlement for, 691–695, 695m repression of dissent in, 689–690 U.S. entry into, 686–687 U.S. neutrality in, 680, 685, 686 U.S. preparation for, 685, 686, 687–689, 690 women in, 690 World War II casualties in, 497, 770, 775i, 782, 803 civil liberties in, 300 civil unrest in, 491 cultural impact of, 735 destructiveness of, 803 in Europe, 790–792, 791m events leading to, 771–774 horrors of, 768i Japanese Americans in: internment of, 776–778, 778i; prejudice against, 787i; in U.S. Army, 769, 777–778 Jews in: casualties, 770, 786, 790, 803; Holocaust, 785–786, 785m, 795, 795i, 821; immigration by, 786; in Nazi Germany, 771, 772; U.S. antisemitism and, 773, 784, 786 minorities and, 769, 782, 836–837 Native Americans in, 769, 769i, 788–790, 793 in North Africa, 790–791, 791m in Pacific, 792–794, 794m peace settlement, 794–797 Pearl Harbor attack, 734, 769, 774–776, 775i, 776i post-War occupations, 811m, 812 segregation in, 788 U.S. censorship in, 782 U.S. domestic impact, 770 U.S. entry into, resistance to, 773–774 U.S. home front, 779–784; morale in, 780–782; racial tension in, 786–788; women workers, 472i, 782–784 U.S. migrations in, 778–779 U.S. power following, 790 U.S. race hostility in Pacific, 793–794 U.S.-Soviet relations in, 790, 801, 801i U.S. strategy in, 770 war crimes trials, 812 women in: in armed forces, 783; as workers, 472i, 782–784 World War II veterans GI Bill and, 805, 806f, 836–837 Latino veterans organizations, 808 World Wide Web, 1006–1007 Wounded Knee, AIM occupation at (1973), 891 Wounded Knee massacre, 583i, 584, 605 Wovoka, 582–583 WPA. See Works Progress Administration Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, 925 Wright, Francis, 416 Wright, John Stillman, 344 Wright, Orville and Wilbur, 346, 673, 914 Writ of habeas corpus, 300, 477 Writs of assistance, 206 WSP. See Women Strike for Peace WTUL. See Women’s Trade Union League Wyandot Indians in Ohio region, 270i relocation to Great Lakes region, 305 Wyoming origins of the Comanches in, 153 statehood for, 542 women’s voting rights and, 601 INDEX I-60 ${bmicon} X XYZ affair, 298, 299i Y Y2K problem, 1007 Yakima Indians, nuclear contamination and, 937 Yale University, late 19th century, 616–617 Yalta Conference (1945), 795 Yamasee Indians, 18th centuryalliances with settlers , 109 resistance, 109, 142 Yancey, William Lowndes, 465 Yank, 782–783 Yankee Strip, 435 Yates, Robert, 277 Yazoo Act (1795), 309 Yazoo claim, 266 Yellow fever , 7 9 in Spanish-American War, 632 Yellow Hand, 559 Yellow journalism, 631 Yellowstone National Park, 525 Yeltsin, Boris, 964, 1019i Yick Wo, 576–577 Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), 577i Yorktown, siege of, 247m, 249–250, 249i Yosemite Indians, 608 Yosemite National Park, 665, 872i, 1015 Young, Andrew, 885, 922 Young, Brigham, 403 Young, Owen, 1006 Young Americans for Freedom, 869 Young Lords, 890 Young Men’s Democratic Club, 513 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) African Americans and, 625 World War I and, 693 Yowell, Raymond, 937 Yucca Flat, 815i Yugoslavia collapse of, 993 creation of, 694 Yuma Indians, 91, 192 Yuma Revolt, 192 YWCA. See Young Women’s Christian Association Z Zapata, Emiliano, 676 Zavala, Lorenzo de, 419 Zeien, Alfred M., 1023 Zheng He, 18, 24m–25m Zimbabwe, establishment of, 922, 923m Zimmerman, Arthur, 686 Zimmerman telegram, 686 Zionist movement, 674 Zitkala-Sa, 612–613 Zoning late 19th century, 557 early 20th century, 660 Zoos, Scopes trial and, 722 Zoot suits, 787–788 Zunis, 33 Zwingli, Ulrich, 35 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition ix ${bmicon} CREATED EQUAL $header$ To view details right-click (windows) or control-click (mac) and select ‘zoom in’ from the menu. The image will center on where you have placed your pointer and zoom in. $header$ To view details right-click (windows) or control-click (mac) and select ‘zoom in’ from the menu. The image will center on where you have placed your pointer and zoom in. $header$ To view details right-click (windows) or control-click (mac) and select ‘zoom in’ from the menu. 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The image will center on where you have placed your pointer and zoom in. $header$ To view details right-click (windows) or control-click (mac) and select ‘zoom in’ from the menu. The image will center on where you have placed your pointer and zoom in. $header$ To view details right-click (windows) or control-click (mac) and select ‘zoom in’ from the menu. The image will center on where you have placed your pointer and zoom in. $header$ To view details right-click (windows) or control-click (mac) and select ‘zoom in’ from the menu. The image will center on where you have placed your pointer and zoom in. $header$ To view details right-click (windows) or control-click (mac) and select ‘zoom in’ from the menu. The image will center on where you have placed your pointer and zoom in. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition x ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xi ${bmicon} CREATED EQUAL A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES Jacqueline Jones Brandeis University Peter H. Wood Duke University Elaine Tyler May University of Minnesota Thomas Borstelmann Cornell University Vicki L. Ruiz University of California, Irvine New York San Francisco Boston London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore Madrid Mexico City Munich Paris Cape Town Hong Kong Montreal Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xii ${bmicon} Vice President and Publisher: Priscilla McGeehon Acquisitions Editor: Ashley Dodge Director of Development: Lisa Pinto Development Manager: Betty Slack Executive Marketing Manager: Sue Westmoreland Media Editor: Patrick McCarthy Supplements Editor: Kristi Olson Director of Market Research: Laura Coaty Production Manager: Ellen MacElree Project Coordination, Electronic Page Makeup, and Cartography: Electronic Publishing Services Inc., NYC Interior Design: Pearson Education Development Cover Designer/Manager: Wendy Ann Fredericks Photo Researcher: Photosearch, Inc. Manufacturing Buyer: Lucy Hebard Printer and Binder: Webcrafters Cover Printer: Phoenix Color Corps. Cover/Frontispiece Photo: Newly landed European immigrants on the dock at Ellis Island, New York City; oil over a photograph, 1900 © The Granger Collection, New York Copyright © 2003 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States. Credits for literary selections, selected maps and figures, and timeline photos appear on pages C-1–C-3. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Created equal : a social and political history of the United States / Jacqueline Jones … [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-321-05296-X 1. United States—History. 2. United States—Social conditions. 3. United States—Politics and government. 4. Pluralism (Social sciences)—United States—History. 5. Minorities—United States—History. 6. Pluralism (Social sciences)—United States—History—Sources. 7. Minorities—United States—History—Sources. I. Jones, Jacqueline, 1948– E178 .C86 2003 973—dc21 2002069476 Please visit our website at www.ablongman.com ISBN: 0-321-05296-X (Complete Edition) ISBN: 0-321-05298-6 (Volume I) ISBN: 0-321-05300-1 (Volume II) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10—WC—05 04 03 02 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xiii ${bmicon} To our own teachers, who helped set us on the historian’s path, and to our students, who help keep us there. You have touched our intellects, our hearts, and our lives. A nuestros propios maestros, quienes nos ayudaron a seguir en el sendero de historiador, y a nuestros estudiantes que ayudan a mantenernos alli. Usted ha tocado nuestros intelectos, nuestros corazones, y nuestras vidas. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xiv ${bmicon} DETAILED CONTENTS xix ${bmicon}       Shifting Social Identities in the Post-Revolutionary Era   310       The Search for Common Ground   311       Artisan–Politicians and the Plight of Post-Revolutionary Workers   312       “Republican Mothers” and Other Well-Off Women   314       A Loss of Political Influence: The Fate of Nonelite Women   318     The Election of 1800: Revolution or Reversal?   319       The Enigmatic Thomas Jefferson   319       Protecting and Expanding the National Interest: Jefferson’s Administration to 1803   320     Conclusion   323     Sites to Visit   324     For Further Reading   324     CONNECTING HISTORY Civil Liberties Under Siege During Wartime and Other National Crises   300     INTERPRETING HISTORY A Sailmaker Discusses “Means for the Preservation of Public Liberty” on the Fourth of July, 1797   314   PART FOUR  Expanding the Boundaries of Freedom and Slavery, 1803–1848 326   CHAPTER 10    Defending and Expanding the New Nation, 1803–1818   328     The British Menace   331       The Embargo of 1807   331       On the Brink of War   333     The War of 1812   335       Pushing North   336       Fighting on Many Fronts   338       An Uncertain Victory   340     The “Era of Good Feelings”?   341       Praise and Respect for Veterans After the War   342       A Thriving Economy   344       Transformations in the Workplace   345     The Rise of the Cotton Plantation Economy   350       Regional Economies of the South   350       Black Family Life and Labor   351       Resistance to Slavery   353     Conclusion   355     Sites to Visit   356     For Further Reading   356     INTERPRETING HISTORY Cherokee Women Petition Against Further Land Sales to Whites in 1817   343     CONNECTING HISTORY Revolutions in Transportation   346 CHAPTER 11    Expanding Westward: Society and Politics in the “Age of the Common Man,” 1819–1832   358     The Politics Behind Western Expansion   361       The Missouri Compromise   361       Ways West   363       The Panic of 1819 and the Plight of Western Debtors   364       The Monroe Doctrine   367       Andrew Jackson’s Rise to Power   368     Federal Authority and Its Opponents   370       Judicial Federalism and the Limits of Law   371       The “Tariff of Abominations”   374       The “Monster Bank”   374     Real People in the “Age of the Common Man”   377       Wards, Workers, and Warriors: Native Americans   377       Slaves and Free People of Color   379       Legal and Economic Dependence: The Plight of Women   381     Ties That Bound a Growing Population   383       New Visions of Religious Faith   384       Literate and Literary America   386     Conclusion   388     Sites to Visit   388     For Further Reading   389     CONNECTING HISTORY The Strange Career of the Monroe Doctrine   368     INTERPRETING HISTORY José Agustin de Escudero Describes New Mexico as a Land of Opportunity, 1827   375 CHAPTER 12    Peoples in Motion, 1832–1848   390     Mass Migrations   394       Newcomers from Western Europe   394       The Slave Trade   398       Trails of Tears   400       Migrants in the West   402       New Places, New Identities   405     A Multitude of Voices in the National Political Arena   406       Whigs, Workers, and the Panic of 1837   406       Suppression of Antislavery Sentiment   408       Nativists as a Political Force   410     Reform Impulses   413       Public Education   413       Alternative Visions of Social Life   416     The United States Extends Its Reach   418       The Lone Star Republic   418       The Election of 1844   419       War with Mexico   421     Conclusion   425     Sites to Visit   426     For Further Reading   426 A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS xl ${bmicon} PETER: The Longman videotape circulated. Eventually, we had a team of people who felt that they could answer, collectively, the challenge presented by those articulate teachers. Obviously, no one could do it alone, but the right combination might be able to pull it off. Having watched the Duke basketball team for two decades, I know what five very different people can do if they pay attention to each other, and if they all have the same goal in mind. An author team is like a basketball team: The players have to complement one another. (Sometimes we compliment each other, too!) And each person gets better and contributes more through practice and hard work. This team works hard. VICKI: I joined the Created Equal team out of the profound respect I have for the scholarship of my colleagues. I had met Elaine and Jackie previously at conferences and knew Peter and Thomas only from their scholarship. The first brainstorming meeting I attended in New York City was intellectual magic, pure and simple. From the first hour onward, we exchanged our separate visions and expectations, debated periodization and conceptual frames, and began the process of intellectual coalescence that marks this truly collaborative enterprise. I left New York exhilarated and exhausted. I joined the Created Equal team out of the profound respect I have for the scholarship of my colleagues. VICKI RUIZ ELAINE: I joined this project because I was excited about the challenge of writing a textbook that would convey the drama and excitement of the nation’s history. It offered an opportunity to work with a team of scholars who I have long admired, and it has been a joy and a privilege to collaborate with them. We have become a close group of friends and colleagues, and our text reflects the lively exchanges, debates, and brainstorming sessions we’ve had over email, phone calls, and gatherings when we have come together to work on the project. JACKIE: The title reflects our commitment to be inclusive in our coverage of different groups and the part they played in shaping American history. Of course, we are invoking the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” That document, and those words, have inspired countless individuals, groups, and nations around the world. PETER: We all recognize the phrase, “Created Equal” from the Declaration of Independence, but we rarely ponder it. For me, it represents an affirmation of humanity, the family of mankind. But it also raises the deepest American theme—the endless struggles over defining whose equality will be recognized. I suppose you could say that there is equality in birth and death, but a great deal of inequality in between. Many of those inequities—and their partial removal—drive the story of American History. Tom Paine understood this in 1776 when he published Common Sense. Months before the Declaration of Independence appeared, Paine put it this way: “Mankind being originally equal in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance.” THOMAS: The themes that we chose to highlight in Created Equal reflect what we see as the current and future state of the field of U.S. history, as well as the needs of future generations of students. A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS xli ${bmicon} The prominence of multiculturalism in recent decades made clear that identity remains a central piece of the American story: how individual Americans understand and identify themselves (by religion, class, region, sex, race, ethnicity, etc.). But too much attention to cultural issues has often led to a discounting of the political and economic structure of American society: Who has material wealth and power, and how they use it, is fundamental for determining the course of the past and present. The increasing globalization of the U.S. economy and American society (e.g., through rising immigration) in recent decades has reminded us of how deeply the United States has always been engaged with the rest of the world—as an immigrant nation and the modern world’s superpower, America’s foreign and domestic affairs have always been intertwined. And the deepening awareness in recent decades of the fragility of the earth’s environment has stimulated a whole subfield of American environmental history, which we try to tap into—in a sense, the environment represents the clearest example of the interconnectedness of American and international history. JACKIE: It was time to integrate recent scholarship related to the many different groups that have been part of the American story, and to open up that story to include all geographical areas (and not just the eastern seaboard). The theme of the environment is key to understanding American history; we explore the ways American cultural, political, and economic developments influence and are shaped by the nation’s natural resources and landscape. The theme of power relations helps students to understand that differences of class, and differences in political and material resources, are significant aspects of the country’s history. We balance this perspective by showing how America emerged as a uniquely open and middle-class nation—one that has attracted immigrants from all over the world throughout its history. ELAINE: Created Equal brings together aspects of the nation’s story that are usually examined separately. It demonstrates that the people who make change are not only those in major positions of power—they are also ordinary Americans from all backgrounds. We illuminate ways that ordinary Americans have seized opportunities to improve their lives and their nation. In Created Equal, the land itself is a major player in the story—the environment, the different regions, and the ways in which people, businesses, public policies, and the forces of nature have shaped it. We also address the ongoing interaction between the United States and the rest of the world, examining the nation in a truly global context. Created Equal brings together aspects of the nation’s story that are usually examined separately. ELAINE TYLER MAY PETER: History is the study of change over time, so chronology becomes extremely important. We wanted to emphasize central themes, but we wanted to explore and explain how they related to one another at any given moment. So we made a conscious decision to be more chronological than many recent texts in our presentation. It makes for less confusion, less jumping back and forth in time, than when broad themes are played out separately. After all, this is the way we lead our own lives—sequentially. JACKIE: Most of the 10 separate parts in the book each cover about a generation. The parts give students a sense of the big picture over a longer period—the way our themes fit together and the impact of major developments on a particular generation of Americans. The chronological organization of the book forces us to understand the “wholeness” of any particular period—to consider links among political, social, economic, and cultural developments. By maintaining a strictly chronological focus, we hope to show students how the events and A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS xlii ${bmicon} developments of any one period are intertwined with each other. For example, for coverage of the period after the end of the Civil War, it is important to show links between the Indian wars in the West and the process of Reconstruction in the South. In most texts, those regional perspectives are separated into different chapters, but, in Created Equal, these connections are presented together in Chapter 15. JACKIE: The “Interpreting History” feature provides students with an opportunity to “do history” on their own. These are brief primary documents related to the issues presented in a particular chapter. We have chosen documents that are particularly rich in terms of providing material for discussion and analysis. By working with this material, students will learn how to balance the close reading of a text with an understanding of the larger historical context of the document. The “Connecting History” feature follows a particular subject backward and forward in time, suggesting ways that a topic discussed in a particular chapter has evolved through American history. These mini-essays encourage students to consider change over long periods of time. JACKIE: The intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to work with a wonderful group of people. PETER: Three things. My teammates and their different energies, for sure. Also, the staff at Longman. I had never worked on a big collective effort like this, and I still marvel at the intricacies and coordination of the whole operation. But most of all, writing this text has reinforced my sense of the intense relevance of history. We were hard at work when the World Trade Center attack occurred, and our editor lived only a few blocks from the destruction. I saw the hole in the Pentagon first-hand. Suddenly, our entire society was on a new footing. A culture oriented to the present and the future had to re-examine the past, both locally and globally, recent and distant. In reconnecting to our history in new ways—examining it openly and fearlessly and critically—we find a story that is more relevant than most of us imagined. It is complex, dramatic, sobering, and uplifting all at once … like life itself. Writing this text has reinforced my sense of the intense relevance of history. PETER WOOD THOMAS: It’s been a pleasure to work as a team. When I first joined the project in its early phases, I was lured by the prospect of working with Peter—and then I got that much more excited as the rest of the team was filled in. I’ve been deeply impressed by how well we communicate, especially the combination of serious intellectual challenges to each other and our great personal support for each other. I simply learn a lot every time we communicate, and I’m grateful for the friendships that have emerged out of our joint endeavor. A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS xliii ${bmicon} PETER: I want readers to connect. As a child, you connect to your family, your neighbors, your schoolmates. As you get older, that circle expands; you begin to relate to people in other places and other times. In a good history class, or a strong history book, that relationship becomes close. You start to care about, argue with, and connect to the persons you are studying. Pretty soon, their tough choices and surprising experiences in life start to resemble our own in ways we never expected, even though their worlds are dramatically different from ours. JACKIE: By presenting an inclusive view of the past, we give students a more accurate account of American history. Many texts only pay lip service to diversity. Non-elite groups are tacked on, marginalized, or segregated from the “real” story of America. In contrast, we believe that the history of all groups constitutes the real story of America. Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xliv ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xlv ${bmicon} As authors, we could not have completed this project without the loving support of our families. We wish to thank Jeffrey Abramson, Lil Fenn, Lynn Borstelmann, Lary May, and Victor Becerra for their interest, forbearance, and encouragement over the course of many drafts. Our children, now ranging in age from 6 to 32, have been a source of inspiration, as have our many students, past and present. We are grateful to scores of colleagues and friends who have helped shape this book, both directly and indirectly, in more ways than they know. Special thanks are due to Pam Gordon for pulling this team together and launching the project, to Dan Usner and Jay O’Callaghan for their useful involvement in the early stages, and to Steve Fraser for his insightful midcourse corrections, which came at a crucial time in the process. Along the way, Matt Basso, Chad Cover, Eben Miller, Andrea Sachs, Mary Strunk, and Melissa Williams provided useful research and administrative assistance; their help was invaluable. Louis Balizet provided careful reading of several chapter drafts. Thanks to Deborah Anderson for a stellar job in locating images, and to Jennifer Mazurkie for all her terrific work in overseeing the layout. Our friends at Longman have shown their belief in this project from the beginning. They supported an invaluable two-day retreat at Truro, on Cape Cod, and they worked hard to smooth out numerous bumps along this long road. We thank all the creative people at Longman (and there are many) who have had a hand in bringing this book to life. We are especially grateful to Priscilla McGeehon, Lisa Pinto, Betty Slack, and Sue Westmoreland for their enthusiastic devotion to this project and their expertise and friendship from start to finish. Ashley Dodge, joining the Longman team recently, has embraced Created Equal and given it her full and timely support. From the beginning, we knew that we wanted a unique and distinctive look for this book. For their comments and feedback on sample design material, we thank the following reviewers: Scott Barton East Central University Constance M. McGovern Frostburg State University Keith Pacholl California State University–Fullerton Robert E. Rook Fort Hays State University Rachel Standish Foothill College Michael M. Topp University of Texas–El Paso Finally, we wish to express our deep gratitude to the following people who read and commented on the manuscript as it went through its several drafts. Collectively, they pushed us hard with their high standards, tough questions, and shrewd advice. The thoughtful criticisms and generous suggestions from these colleagues have helped improve the book. Ken Adderley Upper Iowa University Leslie Alexander Ohio State University John Andrew Franklin and Marshall College Abel Bartley University of Akron Donald Scott Barton Central Carolina Technical College Mia Bay Rutgers University Chris Bierwith Treasure Valley Community College Charles Bolton University of Arkansas at Little Rock Susan Burch Gallaudet University Tommy Bynum Georgia Perimeter College Robert B. Carey Empire State College–SUNY Todd Carney Southern Oregon University Kathleen Carter Highpoint University Jonathan Chu University of Massachusetts ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xlvi ${bmicon} Amy E. Davis University of California–Los Angeles Judy DeMark Northern Michigan University James A. Denton University of Colorado Joseph A. Devine Stephen F. Austin University Margaret Dwight North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University Nancy Gabin Purdue University Lori Ginzberg Pennsylvania State University Gregory Goodwin Bakersfield College Amy S. Greenberg Pennsylvania State University Nadine Isitani Hata El Camino College James Hedtke Cabrini College Fred Hoxie University of Illinois Tera Hunter Carnegie Mellon University David Jaffe City College of New York Jeremy Johnson Northwest College Yvonne Johnson Central Missouri State University Kurt Keichtle University of Wisconsin Anne Klejment University of St. Thomas Dennis Kortheuer California State University–Long Beach Joel Kunze Upper Iowa University Joseph Laythe Edinboro College of Pennsylvania Chana Kai Lee Indiana University Dan Letwin Pennsylvania State University Gaylen Lewis Bakersfield College Kenneth Lipartito Florida International University Kyle Longley Arizona State University Edith L. Macdonald University of Central Florida Lorie Maltby Henderson Community College Sandra Mathews-Lamb Nebraska Wesleyan University Constance M. McGovern Frostburg State University Henry McKiven University of South Alabama James H. Merrell Vassar College Earl Mulderink Southern Utah State University Steven Noll University of Florida Jim Norris North Dakota State University Elsa Nystrom Kennesaw State University Keith Pacholl California State University–Fullerton William Pelz Elgin Community College Melanie Perrault University of Central Arkansas Delores D. Petersen Foothill College Robert Pierce Foothill College Louis Potts University of Missouri–Kansas City Sarah Purcell Central Michigan University Niler Pyeatt Wayland Baptist University Steven Reschly Truman State University Arthur Robinson Santa Rosa Junior College Robert E. Rook Fort Hays State University Steven Ruggles University of Minnesota Christine Sears University of Delaware Rebecca Shoemaker Indiana State University Howard Shore Columbia River High School James Sidbury University of Texas Arwin D. Smallwood Bradley University Margaret Spratt California University of Pennsylvania Rachel Standish Foothill College Jon Stauff St. Ambrose University David Steigerwald Ohio State University–Marion Kay Stockbridge Central Carolina Technical College Daniel Thorp Virginia Tech University Michael M. Topp University of Texas–El Paso Clifford Trafzer University of California–Riverside Deborah Gray White Rutgers University Scott Wong Williams College Bill Woodward Seattle Pacific University Nancy Zens Central Oregon Community College David Zonderman North Carolina State University Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xv ${bmicon}      Detailed Contents   xvi     List of Maps   xxvii     List of Figures and Tables   xxix     List of Features   xxxi    Preface   xxxiii     Meet the Authors   xxxvii     A Conversation with the Authors   xxxix     Acknowledgments   xlv     PART ONE  North American Founders 2   1    First Founders   4 2    European Footholds on the Fringes of North America, 1600–1660   44 3    Controlling the Edges of the Continent, 1660–1715   78   PART TWO  A Century of Colonial Expansion to 1775 112   4    African Enslavement: The Terrible Transformation   114 5    An American Babel, 1713–1763   148 6    The Limits of Imperial Control, 1763–1775   184   PART THREE  The Unfinished Revolution, 1775–1803 216   7    Revolutionaries at War, 1775–1783   218 8    New Beginnings: The 1780s   254 9    Revolutionary Legacies, 1789–1803   288   PART FOUR  Expanding the Boundaries of Freedom and Slavery, 1803–1848 326   10    Defending and Expanding the New Nation, 1803–1818   328 11    Expanding Westward: Society and Politics in the “Age of the Common Man,” 1819–1832   358 12    Peoples in Motion, 1832–1848   390   PART FIVE  Disunion and Reunion 428   13    The Crisis over Slavery, 1848–1860   430 14    “To Fight to Gain a Country”: The Civil War   462 15    In the Wake of War: Consolidating a Triumphant Union, 1865–1877   500   PART SIX  The Emergence of Modern America, 1877–1900 536   16    Standardizing the Nation: Innovations in Technology, Business, and Culture, 1877–1890   538 17    Challenges to Government and Corporate Power: Resistance and Reform, 1877–1890   572 18    Political and Cultural Conflict in a Decade of Depression and War: The 1890s   604   PART SEVEN  Reform at Home, Revolution Abroad, 1900–1929 638   19    The Promise and Perils of Progressive Reform, 1900–1912   640 20    War and Revolution, 1912–1920   670 21    The Promise of Consumer Culture: The 1920s   702   PART EIGHT  From Depression and War to World Power, 1929–1953 734   22    Hardship and Hope in the 1930s: The Great Depression   736 23    Global Conflict: World War II, 1937–1945   768 24    Cold War and Hot War, 1945–1953   800   PART NINE  The Cold War at Full Tide, 1953–1979 832   25    Domestic Dreams and Atomic Nightmares, 1953–1963   834 26    The Nation Divides: The Vietnam War and Social Conflict, 1964–1971   866 27    Reconsidering National Priorities, 1972–1979   900   PART TEN  A Nation of Immigrants, a Global Economy, 1979–2001 934   28    The Cold War Returns—and Ends, 1979–1991   936 29    Post–Cold War America, 1991–2000   970 30    A Global Nation for the New Millennium   1002      Appendix   A-1    Credits   C-1    Index   I-1 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xvi ${bmicon}       List of Maps   xxvii     List of Figures and Tables   xxix     List of Features   xxxi    Preface   xxxiii     Meet the Authors   xxxvii     A Conversation with the Authors   xxxix     Acknowledgments   xlv     PART ONE  North American Founders 2   CHAPTER 1    First Founders   4     Ancient America   6       The Question of Origins   6       The Newest Approaches   8       The Archaic World   8       The Rise of Maize Agriculture   10     A Thousand Years of Change: A.D. 500 to 1500   11       Valleys of the Sun: The Mesoamerican Empires   12       The Anasazi: Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde   13       The Mississippians: Cahokia and Moundville   15     Linking the Continents   17       The Vikings Reach Newfoundland and Beyond   17       Oceanic Travel and the Beginnings of Globalization   18       Looking for the Indies: da Gama and Columbus   20       In the Wake of Columbus: Competition and Exchange   23     Spain Enters the Americas   25       The Devastation of the Indies   26       The Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs   28       Magellan and Cortés Prompt New Searches   30       Three New Views of North America   30     The Protestant Reformation Plays Out in America   34       Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe   35       Competing Powers Lay Claim to Florida   36       The Background of English Expansion   38       Lost Colony: The Roanoke Experience   40     Conclusion   41     Sites to Visit   42     For Further Reading   42     INTERPRETING HISTORY “These Gods That We Worship Give Us Everything We Need”   31     CONNECTING HISTORY Lost at Sea   39 CHAPTER 2    European Footholds on the Fringes of North America, 1600–1660   44     Spain’s Ocean-Spanning Reach   47       Vizcaíno in California and Japan   47       Oñate Creates a Spanish Foothold in the Southwest   49       New Mexico Survives: New Flocks Among Old Pueblos   50       Conversion and Rebellion in Spanish Florida   51     France and Holland: Overseas Competition for Spain   53       The Founding of New France   54       Competing for the Beaver Trade   55       A Dutch Colony on the Hudson River   57       “All Sorts of Nationalities”: Diverse New Amsterdam   58     English Beginnings on the Atlantic Coast   59       The Virginia Company and Jamestown   60       “Starving Time” and the Lure of Tobacco   61       Launching the Plymouth Colony   62     The Puritan Experiment   64       Formation of the Massachusetts Bay Company   64       “We Shall Be As a City upon a Hill”   67       Dissenters: Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson   68       Expansion and Violence: The Pequot War   70     The Chesapeake Bay Colonies   71       The Demise of the Virginia Company   72       Maryland: The Catholic Refuge   73     Conclusion   74     Sites to Visit   76     For Further Reading   77     CONNECTING HISTORY Colonization Then and Now   64     INTERPRETING HISTORY Anne Bradstreet: “The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America”   69 CHAPTER 3    Controlling the Edges of the Continent, 1660–1715   78     France and the American Interior   81       The Rise of the Sun King   81       Exploring the Mississippi Valley   82 DETAILED CONTENTS xvii ${bmicon}         King William’s War in the Northeast   84       Founding the Louisiana Colony   85     The Spanish Empire on the Defensive   87       The Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico   87       Navajos and Spanish on the Southwestern Frontier   90       Borderland Conflict in Texas and Florida   91     England’s American Empire Takes Shape   92       Monarchy Restored and Navigation Controlled   93       Fierce Anglo–Dutch Competition   94       The New Restoration Colonies   95     Bloodshed in the English Colonies: 1670–1690   96       Metacom’s War in New England   97       Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia   100       The “Glorious Revolution” in England   101       The “Glorious Revolution” in America   102     Consequences of War and Growth: 1690–1715   103       Salem’s Wartime Witch Hunt   104       The Uneven Costs of War   105       Storm Clouds in the South   107     Conclusion   110     Sites to Visit   110     For Further Reading   111     CONNECTING HISTORY Homeland Security and Deep Fears of the Enemy Within   98     INTERPRETING HISTORY “They Are Really Better to Us Than We Are to Them”: Tension on North Carolina Coast   108   PART TWO  A Century of Colonial Expansion to 1775 112   CHAPTER 4    African Enslavement: The Terrible Transformation   114     The Descent into Race Slavery   116       The Caribbean Precedent   116       Ominous Beginnings   117       Alternative Sources of Labor   119       The Fateful Transition   120     The Growth of Slave Labor Camps   121       Black Involvement in Bacon’s Rebellion   122       The Rise of a Slaveholding Tidewater Elite   123       Closing the Vicious Circle in the Chesapeake   124     England Enters the Atlantic Slave Trade   125       The Slave Trade on the African Coast   127       The Middle Passage Experience   129       Saltwater Slaves Arrive in America   132     Survival in a Strange New Land   133       African Rice Growers in South Carolina   133       Patterns of Resistance   135       A Wave of Rebellion   137     The Transformation Completed   138       Voices of Dissent   140       Oglethorpe’s Antislavery Experiment   141       The End of Equality in Georgia   144     Conclusion   145     Sites to Visit   146     For Further Reading   147     CONNECTING HISTORY Reparations for Slavery?   120     INTERPRETING HISTORY “Releese Us out of This Cruell Bondegg”   139 CHAPTER 5    An American Babel, 1713–1763   148     New Cultures on the Western Plains   151       The Spread of the Horse   152       The Rise of the Comanches   152       The Expansion of the Sioux   154     Britain’s Mainland Colonies: A New Abundance of People   157       Population Growth on the Home Front   157       “Packed Like Herrings”: Arrivals from Abroad   159       Non-English Newcomers in the British Colonies   161     The Varied Economic Landscape   163       Sources of Gain in the Southeast   165       Chesapeake Bay’s Tobacco Economy   166       New England Takes to the Sea   167       Economic Expansion in the Middle Colonies   168     Matters of Faith: The Great Awakening   169       Seeds of Religious Toleration   170       The Onset of the Great Awakening: Pietism and George Whitefield   171       “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry”   174       The Consequences of the Great Awakening   174     The French Lose a North American Empire   175       Prospects and Problems Facing French Colonists   176       British Settlers Confront the Threat from France   176       An American Fight Becomes a Global Conflict   178       Quebec Taken and North America Refashioned   179     Conclusion   181     Sites to Visit   181     For Further Reading   182     INTERPRETING HISTORY “Pastures Can Be Found Almost Everywhere”: Joshua von Kocherthal Recruits Germans to Carolina   160     CONNECTING HISTORY Sounds Around Us: The Lost World of High Fidelity   172 CHAPTER 6    The Limits of Imperial Control, 1763–1775   184     New Challenges to Spain’s Expanded Empire   187       Pacific Exploration, Hawaiian Contact   187       The Russians Lay Claim to Alaska   188 DETAILED CONTENTS xviii ${bmicon}         Spain Colonizes the California Coast   190     New Challenges to Britain’s Expanded Empire   192       Midwestern Lands and Pontiac’s War for Indian Independence   192       Grenville’s Effort at Reform   194       The Stamp Act Imposed   195       The Stamp Act Resisted   196     “The Unconquerable Rage of the People”   199       Expanding the Framework for Revolution   199       Rural Unrest: Tenant Farmers and Regulators   202     A Conspiracy of Corrupt Ministers?   205       The Townshend Duties   205       The Boston Massacre   207       The Gaspee Affair   208     Launching a Revolution   209       The Tempest over Tea   209       The Intolerable Acts   210       From Words to Action   211     Conclusion   213     Sites to Visit   214     For Further Reading   215     CONNECTING HISTORY Movement Building Against the Odds   200     INTERPRETING HISTORY “Exert Your Selves This Once in Our Favour”: Petition Signed by 30 North Carolina Regulators, October 4, 1768   204   PART THREE  The Unfinished Revolution, 1775–1803 216   CHAPTER 7    Revolutionaries at War, 1775–1783   218     Declaring Independence   221       The Continental Congress Takes Control   222       “Liberty to Slaves”   222       The Struggle to Control Boston and Quebec   225       “Time to Part”   226       The British Attack New York   228     “Victory or Death”: Fighting for Survival   229       A Desperate Gamble Pays Off   230       Breakdown in British Planning   231       Saratoga Tips the Balance   232       Forging an Alliance with France   234     Legitimate States, a Respectable Military   236       The Articles of Confederation   236       Creating State Constitutions   237       Tensions in the Military Ranks   238       Shaping a Diverse Army   240       The War at Sea   241     The Long Road to Yorktown   242       Indian Warfare and Frontier Outposts   242       The Unpredictable War in the South   246       The Final Campaign   248       Winning the Peace   250     Conclusion   251     Sites to Visit   252     For Further Reading   253     INTERPRETING HISTORY “Revoking Those Sacred Trusts Which Are Violated”: A Declaration Signed by 15 Grand Jury Members in South Carolina, May 1776   224     CONNECTING HISTORY Uncanny Similarities: Britain’s Vietnam?   234 CHAPTER 8    New Beginnings: The 1780s   254     Beating Swords into Plowshares   258       Will the Army Seize Control?   258       The Society of the Cincinnati   260       Renaming the Landscape   261       An Independent Culture   262     Competing for Control of the Mississippi Valley   264       Disputed Territory: The Old Southwest   264       American Claims and Indian Resistance   266       “We Are Now Masters”: The Old Northwest   267       The Northwest Ordinance of 1787   268     Creditors and Debtors   270       New Sources of Wealth   271       “Tumults in New England”   273       The Massachusetts Regulation   275     Drafting a New Constitution   276       Philadelphia: A Gathering of Like-Minded Men   276       Compromise and Consensus   278       Questions of Representation   279       Slavery: The Deepest Dilemma   281     Ratification and the Bill of Rights   282       The Campaign for Ratification   283       Dividing and Conquering the Anti-Federalists   283       Adding a Bill of Rights   284     Conclusion   285     Sites to Visit   286     For Further Reading   286     INTERPRETING HISTORY Demobilization: “Turned Adrift Like Old Worn-Out Horses”   259     CONNECTING HISTORY Equal Representation?   280 CHAPTER 9    Revolutionary Legacies, 1789–1803   288     Competing Political Visions in the New Nation   291       Federalism and Democratic-Republicanism in Action   292       Planting the Seeds of Industry   294       Echoes of the American Revolution in the Countryside   296       Securing Peace Abroad, Suppressing Dissent at Home   297     People of Color: New Freedoms, New Struggles   300       Blacks in the North   301       Manumissions in the South   303     Continuity and Change in the West   305       Indian Wars in the Great Lakes Region   305       Indian Acculturation in the West   306       Land Speculation and Slavery   309 DETAILED CONTENTS xx ${bmicon}       CONNECTING HISTORY Diasporas   396     INTERPRETING HISTORY Senator John C. Calhoun Warns Against Incorporating Mexico into the United States   424   PART FIVE  Disunion and Reunion 428   CHAPTER 13    The Crisis over Slavery, 1848–1860   430     Regional Economies and Conflicts   433       Native American Economies Transformed   433       Land Conflicts in the Southwest   434       Ethnic and Economic Diversity in the Midwest   435       Regional Economies of the South   436       A Free Labor Ideology in the North   437     Individualism Vs. Group Identity   439       Putting into Practice Ideas of Social Inferiority   440       “A Teeming Nation”—America in Literature   440       Challenges to Individualism   441     The Paradox of Southern Political Power   444       The Party System in Disarray   445       The Compromise of 1850   446       Expansionism and Political Upheaval   447       The Republican Alliance   448     The Deepening Conflict over Slavery   451       The Rising Tide of Violence   451       The Dred Scott Decision   454       The Lincoln–Douglas Debates   455       Harpers Ferry and the Presidential Election of 1860   456     Conclusion   458     Sites to Visit   460     For Further Reading   460     INTERPRETING HISTORY Professor Howe on the Subordination of Women   442     CONNECTING HISTORY Systems of Unfree Labor   453 CHAPTER 14    “To Fight to Gain a Country”: The Civil War   462     Mobilization for War, 1861–1862   465       The Secession Impulse   465       Preparing to Fight   469       Barriers to Southern Mobilization   471       Indians and Immigrants in the Service of the Confederacy   474     The Course of War, 1862–1864   476       The Republicans’ War   477       The Ravages of War: The Summer of 1862   478       The Emancipation Proclamation   482       Persistent Obstacles to the Confederacy’s Grand Strategy   482     The Other War: African American Struggles for Liberation   484       Enemies Within the Confederacy   484       The Ongoing Fight Against Prejudice in the North and South   485     Battle Fronts and Home Fronts in 1863   487       Disaffection in the Confederacy   487       The Tide Turns Against the South   488       Civil Unrest in the North   490       The Desperate South   491     The Prolonged Defeat of the Confederacy, 1864–1865   492       White Men’s “Hard War” Toward African Americans and Indians   493       “Father Abraham”   494       The Last Days of the Confederacy   495     Conclusion   497     Sites to Visit   498     For Further Reading   498     INTERPRETING HISTORY A Virginia Slaveholder Objects to the Impressment of Slaves   472     CONNECTING HISTORY Civil Disorders During Wartime   490 CHAPTER 15    In the Wake of War: Consolidating a Triumphant Union, 1865–1877   500     The Struggle over the South   503       Wartime Preludes to Postwar Policies   504       Presidential Reconstruction, 1865–1867   505       The Southern Postwar Labor Problem   507       Building Free Communities   511       Congressional Reconstruction: The Radicals’ Plan   513     Claiming Territory for the Union   517       Federal Military Campaigns Against Western Indians   518       The Postwar Western Labor Problem   520       Land Use in an Expanding Nation   522       Buying Territory for the Union   525     The Republican Vision and Its Limits   526       Postbellum Origins of the Woman Suffrage Movement   526       Workers’ Organizations   528       Political Corruption and the Decline of Republican Idealism   531     Conclusion   533     Sites to Visit   534     For Further Reading   534     INTERPRETING HISTORY A Southern Labor Contract   510     CONNECTING HISTORY Two Presidents Impeached   516 DETAILED CONTENTS xxi ${bmicon}     PART SIX  The Emergence of Modern America, 1877–1900 536   CHAPTER 16    Standardizing the Nation: Innovations in Technology, Business, and Culture, 1877–1890   538     The New Shape of Business   541       New Systems and Machines—and Their Price   542       Alterations in the Natural Environment   545       Innovations in Financing and Organizing Business   546       New Labor Supplies for a New Economy   548       Efficient Machines, Efficient People   552     The Birth of a National Urban Culture   554       Economic Sources of Urban Growth   554       Building the Cities   555       Local Government Gets Bigger   557     Thrills, Chills, and Bathtubs: The Emergence of Consumer Culture   558       Shows as Spectacles   558       Mass Merchandising as Spectacle   560     Defending the New Industrial Order   563       The Contradictory Politics of Laissez-Faire   564       Social Darwinism and the “Natural” State of Society   567     Conclusion   569     Sites to Visit   569     For Further Reading   570     CONNECTING HISTORY Persuading People to Buy: Advertising in American History   561     INTERPRETING HISTORY Andrew Carnegie and the “Gospel of Wealth”   568 CHAPTER 17    Challenges to Government and Corporate Power: Resistance and Reform, 1877–1890   572     Resistance to Legal and Military Authority   575       Chinese Lawsuits in California   575       Blacks in the “New South”   578       “Jim Crow” in the West   581       The Ghost Dance on the High Plains   582     Revolt in the Workplace   585       Trouble on the Farm   586       Militancy in the Factories and Mines   589       The Haymarket Bombing   593     Crosscurrents of Reform   594       The Goal of Indian Assimilation   595       Trans-Atlantic Networks of Reform   598       Women Reformers: “Beginning to Burst the Bonds”   599     Conclusion   601     Sites to Visit   602     For Further Reading   602     CONNECTING HISTORY Rural Protests and Rebellions   590     INTERPRETING HISTORY Platform Statement of Presidential Candidate Belva Lockwood, 1884   600 CHAPTER 18    Political and Cultural Conflict in a Decade of Depression and War: The 1890s   604     Frontiers at Home, Lost and Found   607       Claiming and Managing the Land   608       The Tyranny of Racial Categories   609       New Roles for Schools   612       Connections Between Consciousness and Behavior   617     The Search for Alliances   618       Class Conflict   618       Demise of the Populists   621       Barriers to a U.S. Workers’ Political Movement   622       Challenges to Traditional Gender Roles   624     American Imperialism   628       Cultural Encounters with the Exotic   628       Initial Imperialist Ventures   629       The Spanish–American–Cuban–Filipino War of 1898   630       Critics of Imperialism   634     Conclusion   636     Sites to Visit   636     For Further Reading   637     CONNECTING HISTORY Systems of Education   614     INTERPRETING HISTORY Proceedings of the Congressional Committee on the Philippines   634   PART SEVEN  Reform at Home, Revolution Abroad, 1900–1929 638   CHAPTER 19    The Promise and Perils of Progressive Reform, 1900–1912   640     Migration and Immigration: The Changing Face of the Nation   644       The Heartland: Land of Newcomers   645       The Southwest: Mexican Borderlands   646       Asian Immigration and the Impact of Exclusion   648       Newcomers from Southern and Eastern Europe   650     Work, Science, and Leisure   652       The Uses and Abuses of Science   652       Scientific Management and Mass Production   653       New Amusements   655 DETAILED CONTENTS xxii ${bmicon}         “Sex O’Clock in America”   656       Artists Respond to the New Era   657     Reformers and Radicals   658       Muckrakers, Moral Reform, and Vice Crusades   658       Woman Suffrage   660       Radical Politics and the Labor Movement   661       Resistance to Racism   662     Expanding National Power   663       Theodore Roosevelt: The “Rough Rider” as President   663       Protecting and Preserving the Natural World   664       Expanding National Power Abroad   665       William Howard Taft: The One-Term Progressive   666     Conclusion   668     Sites to Visit   668     For Further Reading   669     CONNECTING HISTORY Rose Freedman   643     INTERPRETING HISTORY Defining Whiteness   654 CHAPTER 20    War and Revolution, 1912–1920   670     A World in Upheaval   672       The Apex of European Conquest   673       Confronting Revolutions Abroad   674       Conflicts over Hierarchies at Home   676     The Great War and American Neutrality   680       “The One Great Nation at Peace”   680       Reform Priorities at Home   681       The Great Migration   683       Limits to American Neutrality   685     The United States Goes to War   686       The Logic of Belligerency   686       Mobilizing the Home Front   687       Ensuring Unity   689       The War in Europe   690     The Struggle to Win the Peace   692       Peacemaking and the Versailles Treaty   694       Waging Counterrevolution Abroad   697       The Red and Black Scares at Home   697     Conclusion   699     Sites to Visit   700     For Further Reading   701     INTERPRETING HISTORY African American Women in the Great War   693     CONNECTING HISTORY The League of Nations and International Security   696 CHAPTER 21    The Promise of Consumer Culture: The 1920s   702     The Decline of Reform   705       Women’s Rights in the Aftermath of Suffrage   705       Prohibition: The Experiment That Failed   706       Reactionary Impulses   708       Marcus Garvey and the Persistence of Civil Rights Activism   709     Hollywood and Harlem: National Cultures in Black and White   711       Hollywood Comes of Age   712       The Harlem Renaissance   713       Radios and Autos: Transforming Leisure at Home   715     Science on Trial   717       The Great Flood of 1927   717       The Triumph of Eugenics: Buck v. Bell   718       Science, Religion, and the Scopes Trial   720     The Business of Politics   722       Warren G. Harding: The Politics of Scandal   722       Calvin Coolidge: The Hands-Off President   723       Herbert Hoover: The Self-Made President   724     Consumer Dreams and Nightmares   725       Marketing the Good Life   725       Writers, Critics, and the “Lost Generation”   726       Poverty amid Plenty   727       The Stock Market Crash   729     Conclusion   731     Sites to Visit   732     For Further Reading   732     CONNECTING HISTORY The Persistence of the Ku Klux Klan   710     INTERPRETING HISTORY Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim   730   PART EIGHT  From Depression and War to World Power, 1929–1953 734   CHAPTER 22    Hardship and Hope in the 1930s: The Great Depression   736     The Great Depression   739       Causes of the Crisis   739       “We Are Not Bums”   740       Surviving Hard Times   742       The Dust Bowl   745     Presidential Responses to the Depression   747       Herbert Hoover: Tackling the Crisis   747       Franklin Delano Roosevelt: The Pragmatist   748       “Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself ”   749 DETAILED CONTENTS xxiii ${bmicon}       The New Deal   750       The First Hundred Days   751       Protest and Pressure from the Left and the Right   756       The Second New Deal   759       FDR’s Second Term   761     A New Political Culture   762       The Labor Movement   762       The New Deal Coalition   764       A New Americanism   764     Conclusion   765     Sites to Visit   766     For Further Reading   767     INTERPRETING HISTORY Songs of the Great Depression   742     CONNECTING HISTORY Presidents and the Media   750 CHAPTER 23    Global Conflict: World War II, 1937–1945   768     Mobilizing for War   771       The Rise of Fascism   771       Aggression in Europe and Asia   772       The Great Debate: Americans Contemplate War   773     Pearl Harbor: The United States Enters the War   774       December 7, 1941   774       Japanese American Relocation   776       Wartime Migrations   778     The Home Front   779       Building Morale   780       Home Front Workers, “Rosie the Riveter,” and “Victory Girls”   782     Race and War   784       The Holocaust   785       Racial Tensions at Home   786       Fighting for the “Double V”   788     Total War   790       The War in Europe   790       The War in the Pacific   792       The End of the War   794     Conclusion   797     Sites to Visit   798     For Further Reading   799     INTERPRETING HISTORY Zelda Webb Anderson, “You Just Met One Who Does Not Know How to Cook”   789     CONNECTING HISTORY The Atomic Bomb: Political and Cultural Fallout   796 CHAPTER 24    Cold War and Hot War, 1945–1953   800     The Uncertainties of Victory   802       Global Destruction   803       Vacuums of Power   804       Postwar Reconversion   805       Contesting Racial Hierarchies   805       Class Conflict   808     The Quest for Security   809       Redefining National Security   809       Conflict with the Soviet Union   809       The Policy of Containment   810       Colonialism and the Cold War   812       The Impact of Nuclear Weapons   815     A Cold War Society   816       Family Lives   817       The Growth of the South and the West   818       Harry Truman and the Limits of Liberal Reform   819       The Cold War at Home   820       Who Is a Loyal American?   821     The United States and Asia   822       The Chinese Civil War   822       The Creation of the National Security State   823       At War in Korea   826     Conclusion   829     Sites to Visit   830     For Further Reading   831     CONNECTING HISTORY The Origins of the Cold War   814     INTERPRETING HISTORY NSC-68   825   PART NINE  The Cold War at Full Tide, 1953–1979 832   CHAPTER 25    Domestic Dreams and Atomic Nightmares, 1953–1963   834     Cold War, Warm Hearth   836       Consumer Spending and the Suburban Ideal   837       Race, Class, and Domesticity   839       Women: Back to the Future   841     The Civil Rights Movement   844       Brown v. Board of Education   845       White Resistance, Black Persistence   846       Boycotts and Sit-Ins   847     The Eisenhower Years   849       The Middle of the Road   849       “What’s Good for General Motors ...”   850       Eisenhower’s Foreign Policy   850 DETAILED CONTENTS xxiv ${bmicon}       Outsiders and Opposition   854       Youth, Sex, and Rock ‘n’ Roll   854       Rebellious Men   855       Mobilizing for Peace and the Environment   856     The Kennedy Era   858       Domestic Policy   859       Foreign Policy   860       A Year of Turning Points   862     Conclusion   864     Sites to Visit   864     For Further Reading   865     INTERPRETING HISTORY Rachel Carson, Silent Spring   857     CONNECTING HISTORY Anticommunism   860 CHAPTER 26    The Nation Divides: The Vietnam War and Social Conflict, 1964–1971   866     Lyndon Johnson and the Apex of Liberalism   868       The New President   868       The Great Society: Fighting Poverty and Discrimination   870       The Great Society: Improving the Quality of Life   871       The Liberal Warren Court   872     Into War in Vietnam   873       The Vietnamese Revolution and the United States   874       Johnson’s War   874       Americans in Southeast Asia   877       1968: The Turning Point   880     The Movement   882       From Civil Rights to Black Power   883       The New Left and the Struggle Against the War   885       Cultural Rebellion and the Counterculture   886       Women’s Liberation   889       The Many Fronts of Liberation   890     The Conservative Response   892       Backlashes   892       The Turmoil of 1968 at Home   893       The Nixon Administration   894       Escalating and Deescalating in Vietnam   895     Conclusion   896     Sites to Visit   898     For Further Reading   898     CONNECTING HISTORY Wars and Social Reform in the Twentieth Century   875     INTERPRETING HISTORY Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam War   882 CHAPTER 27    Reconsidering National Priorities, 1972–1979   900     Twin Shocks: Détente and Watergate   903       Triangular Diplomacy   903       Scandal in the White House   906       A President Laid Low   909     Discovering the Limits of the U.S. Economy   910       The End of the Long Boom   910       The Oil Embargo   913       The Environmental Movement   914     Reshuffling Politics   917       Congressional Power Reasserted   918       “I Will Never Lie to You”   921       Rise of a Peacemaker   922       The War on Waste   924     Diffusing the Women’s Movement   926       The Meanings of Women’s Liberation   926       New Opportunities in Education, the Workplace, and Family Life   928       Equality Under the Law   929       Backlash   929     Conclusion   931     Sites to Visit   932     For Further Reading   932     CONNECTING HISTORY Energy Use in the United States   914     INTERPRETING HISTORY The Church Committee and CIA Covert Operations   920   PART TEN  A Nation of Immigrants, a Global Economy, 1979–2001 934   CHAPTER 28    The Cold War Returns—and Ends, 1979–1991   936     Anticommunism Revived   938       Iran and Afghanistan   939       The Conservative Victory of 1980   941       Renewing the Cold War   942     Republican Rule at Home   944       “Reaganomics” and the Assault on Welfare   944       An Embattled Environment   946       A Society Divided   949     Cultural Conflict   952       The Rise of the Religious Right   953       Dissenters Push Back   956       The New Immigration   957     The End of the Cold War   959       From Cold War to Détente   959 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxix ${bmicon}   2.2    The Tough Choice to Start Over   73 4.1    Goods Traded in Africa   125 5.1    Comparison of Overall Population Structure by Gender and Age: British Mainland Colonies, 1760s, and United States, 1980s   158 7.1    British Government Expenses on Armed Forces Throughout the World (in Millions of Pounds), 1775–1782   236 8.1    Concentration of Security Notes in the Hands of a Few: the Example of New Hampshire in 1785   275 9.1    Exports of United States Cotton, 1784–1800   295 9.2    Free Blacks as a Percentage of Total Population in Selected Societies   302 9.3    Percentage of White Men Eligible to Vote in the United States, 1792   312 9.4    Distribution of Wealth in the United States and Europe, 1798   321 10.1    Geographic Locations of British Immigrant Textile Workers, 1770s–1831   348 10.2    Estimated Population of the United States, 1790–1860   355 11.1    Cherokee Nation Intercensus Changes, 1809–1824   372 14.1    Delegates to the Alabama Secession Convention   468 14.2    Occupational Categories of Union and Confederate Soldiers   475 14.3    Ohio Men Drafted for Military Service Who Reported for Duty or Hired Substitutes   492 19.1    Number of Immigrants Entering the United States, 1821–1990   646 20.1    Casualties of the Great War, 1914–1918   681 21.1    Maternal Death Rates from All Childbirth-Related Causes, United States, 1901–1950   706 21.2    Number of Immigrants and Countries of Origin, 1891–1920 and 1921–1940   708 21.3    Percentage of Population Foreign Born, 1850–1990   709 21.4    Transportation Developments and Farm and Nonfarm Population, 1880–1980   712 21.5    Trains and Automobiles, 1900–1980   717 22.1    Urban and Rural Population, 1890–1990   747 24.1    Opportunities for Veterans   806 25.1    Marital Status of the U.S. Adult Population, 1900–1995   837 25.2    The Baby Boom in Historical Context   838 26.1    U.S. Troop and Casualty Levels in Vietnam (As of December 31 of Each Year)   877 27.1    Imported Petroleum as Share of U.S. Consumption   913 27.2    The Death Penalty: Practices and Opinions   918 28.1    Distribution of Wealth and Income   949 29.1    Concentration of Wealth, 1990s   975 29.2    Childhood Obesity Rates for Boys and Girls Aged 6–17, 1960s and 1990s   987 30.1    Self-Described Religious Affiliation in the United States, 2000   1025   9-1    The Election of 1796   298 9-2    The Election of 1800   319 10-1    The Election of 1804   331 10-2    The Election of 1816   341 11-1    The Election of 1820   367 11-2    The Election of 1824   369 11-3    The Election of 1828   370 11-4    The Election of 1832   376 12-1    Outfitting a Party of Four for the Overland Trail   403 12-2    The Election of 1836   407 12-3    The Election of 1840   410 12-4    The Election of 1844   419 13-1    Nativity of Residents of the Boston Area, 1860   439 13-2    The Election of 1848   446 13-3    The Election of 1852   447 13-4    The Election of 1856   451 13-5    The Election of 1860   457 13-6    U.S. Population, by Nativity and Race, for Regions, 1830–1860   457 14-1    The Election of 1864   495 15-1    Comparison of Black and White Household Structure in 27 Cotton-Belt Counties, 1870, 1880, 1900   512 15-2    The Election of 1868   515 15-3    Estimates of Railroad Crossties Used and Acres of Forest Cleared, 1870–1910   523 DETAILED CONTENTS xxv ${bmicon}         The Iran–Contra Scandal   961       A Global Policeman?   963     Conclusion   967     Sites to Visit   968     For Further Reading   969     CONNECTING HISTORY Is Material Success Corrupting?   950     INTERPRETING HISTORY Religion and Politics in the 1980s   954 CHAPTER 29    Post–Cold War America, 1991–2000   970     The Economy: Global and Domestic   973       The Post–Cold War Economy   973       The Widening Gap Between Rich and Poor   975       Labor Unions   977     Tolerance and Its Limits   978       “We Can All Get Along”   978       Values in Conflict   979       Courtroom Dramas   981       The Changing Face of Diversity   982     Violence and Danger   984       Domestic Terrorism   984       Kids Who Kill   985       A Healthy Nation?   986     The Clinton Presidency   987       Clinton: The New Democrat   987       Clinton’s Domestic Agenda and the “Republican Revolution”   988       The Impeachment Crisis   990     The Nation and the World   991       Trade Agreements   991       Efforts at Peacemaking   992       Military Interventions and International Terrorism   993     The Contested Election of 2000   995       The Campaign, the Vote, and the Courts   995       The Aftermath   997       Legacies of Election 2000   999     Conclusion   999     Sites to Visit   1000     For Further Reading   1000     INTERPRETING HISTORY Vermont Civil Union Law   980     CONNECTING HISTORY Voting   998 CHAPTER 30    A Global Nation for the New Millennium   1002     The American Place in a Global Economy   1005       The Logic and Technology of Globalization   1005       Free Trade and the Global Assembly Line   1008       Who Benefits from Globalization?   1009     The Stewardship of Natural Resources   1012       Ecological Transformation in the Twentieth Century   1013       Pollution   1014       Environmentalism and Its Limitations   1016     The Expansion of American Popular Culture Abroad   1017       A Culture of Diversity and Entertainment   1018       U.S. Influence Abroad Since the Cold War   1019       Resistance to American Popular Culture   1020     Identity in Contemporary America   1024       Negotiating Multiple Identities   1024       Social Change and Abiding Discrimination   1026       Still an Immigrant Society   1027     Conclusion   1029     Sites to Visit   1032     For Further Reading   1033     CONNECTING HISTORY The Internet and the World Wide Web   1006     INTERPRETING HISTORY The Slow Food Movement   1022      Appendix   A-1     The Declaration of Independence   A-3     The Articles of Confederation   A-5     The Constitution of the United States of America   A-8     Amendments to the Constitution   A-13     Presidential Elections   A-17    Credits   C-1    Index   I-1 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxvi ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxvii ${bmicon}   1.1    The Earliest Americans   7 1.2    America in the Millennium Before Columbus, A.D. 500–1500   14 1.3    The Expectations of Christopher Columbus   22 1.4    Opening New Ocean Pathways Around the Globe, 1420–1520   24 1.5    North American Exploration in the Sixteenth Century   38 2.1    The Spanish Southwest in the Early Seventeenth Century   48 2.2    Sites of Catholic Missions in Spanish Florida in the Mid-Seventeenth Century   52 2.3    European and Native American Contact in the Northeast, 1600–1660   56 2.4    Cultures Meet on the Chesapeake   74 3.1    France in the American Interior, 1670–1720   83 3.2    Changes in the Southwest   88 3.3    Metacom’s War in New England, 1675–1676   97 3.4    Virginia and the Carolinas, c. 1710   109 4.1    Regions of the African Slave Trade in 1700   127 4.2    One Century in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, (1700–1800): African Origins, European Carriers, American Destinations   130 4.3    Enslaved People Living in North America in 1750: Distribution by Colony, Percentage of Total Population   134 4.4    English–Spanish Competition and the Expansion of Slavery into Georgia   144 5.1    The Rapid Spread of Spanish Horses Across the Western Plains, 1675–1750   153 5.2    The Horse Frontier Meets the Gun Frontier, 1675–1750   156 5.3    Economic Regions of the British Colonies   165 5.4    The British Conquest of New France, 1754–1760   179 6.1    Russian Alaska   189 6.2    Spanish Exploration After 1760 and the Start of the California Missions   191 6.3    British North America, 1763–1766   198 6.4    British North America, April 1775   212 7.1    Britain at War: The Global Context, 1778–1783   221 7.2    Overview of the Revolutionary War   223 7.3    The Revolutionary War in the North   243 7.4    The Revolutionary War in the West   244 7.5    The Revolutionary War in the South   247 8.1    The Spread of Smallpox Across North America, 1775–1782   256 8.2    Southern Land Debates After 1783   265 8.3    Native American Ohio Before 1785   270 8.4    Settlers’ Ohio, After 1785   271 9.1    The Northwest Territory   306 9.2    Western Land Claims of the States   308 9.3    The Barbary States   322 10.1    Lewis and Clark   330 10.2    The Public Domain in 1810   335 10.3    The Northern Front, War of 1812   337 11.1    The Center of Population Moves West, 1790–1970   360 11.2    The Missouri Compromise   362 11.3    Principal Canals Built by 1860   364 11.4    Mexico’s Far Northern Frontier in 1822   366 11.5    The Cherokee Nation After 1820   373 12.1    Western Trails   393 12.2    Population Change in Ireland, 1841–1851   395 12.3    The Grand Migration   397 12.4    Expansion of the Cotton Belt and Slave Trading Routes, 1801–1860   399 12.5    Indian Removal   402 12.6    The U.S.–Mexican War   423 13.1    Territorial Expansion in the Nineteenth Century   445 13.2    The Kansas–Nebraska Act, 1854   449 13.3    The Underground Railroad   459 14.1    Slavery in the United States, 1860   464 14.2    The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861   466 14.3    Mescalero Apaches Battle Confederates, Central New Mexico, 1861   480 14.4    The Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863   489 14.5    African Americans in Civil War Battles, 1863–1865   493 14.6    Sherman’s March to the Sea, 1864–1865   496 15.1    Radical Reconstruction   513 15.2    High Plains Indian Wars, 1865–1900   519 15.3    The Compromise of 1877   533 16.1    Agricultural Regions of the Midwest and Northeast   544 16.2    Population of Foreign-Born, by Region, 1880   549 16.3    Some Places Where Chinese Located, 1865–1880   551 17.1    Southern Tenancy and Sharecropping, 1880   579 17.2    Buffalo Soldiers   582 17.3    Indian Lands Lost, 1850–1890   585 18.1    Indian Territory and the State of Oklahoma, 1885–1907   609 18.2    Population Density, 1890   610 18.3    Indian Reservations, 1900   613 18.4    Compulsory School Attendance Laws, by State   616 18.5    Manufacturing in the United States, 1900   621 18.6    The Spanish–American–Cuban–Filipino War of 1898   632 19.1    Foreign-Born Population, 1900   645 19.2    Areas Excluded from Immigration to the United States, 1882–1952   648 LIST OF MAPS xxviii ${bmicon}   19.3    Russian and Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1910   651 20.1    U.S. Interests and Interventions in the Caribbean Region, 1898–1939   675 20.2    Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico   679 20.3    Prominent National Parks of the American West   683 20.4    World War I in Europe and the Western Front, 1918   691 20.5    Europe after World War I   695 21.1    The Mississippi River Flood of 1927   719 21.2    Americans on the Move, 1870s–1930s   728 22.1    Dust and Drought, 1931–1939   745 22.2    Areas Served by the Tennessee Valley Authority   754 23.1    The Internment of Japanese Americans During World War II   777 23.2    Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camps   785 23.3    World War II in Europe   791 23.4    World War II in the Pacific   794 24.1    Occupation of Germany and Austria, 1946–1949   811 24.2    Europe Divided by the Cold War   813 24.3    Asia After World War II   824 24.4    The Korean War, 1950–1953   828 25.1    Major Events of the African American Civil Rights Movement, 1953–1963   848 25.2    Cold War Spheres of Influence, 1953–1963   852 25.3    The Nuclear Landscape   858 26.1    Percentage of Population Living Below the Poverty Line, 1969 (by State)   871 26.2    The American War in Vietnam   881 26.3    Major Social and Political Protests, 1962–1971   883 26.4    The San Francisco Bay Area   888 27.1    Nuclear Weapons Before Détente   904 27.2    The Gradual Liberation of Southern Africa from White Minority Rule   923 27.3    Building Nuclear Power Plants   926 28.1    Trouble Spots in the Middle East, 1979–1993   940 28.2    Federally Owned Lands in the West   947 28.3    The Soviet Bloc Dissolves   964 28.4    The Gulf War, 1990–1991   966 29.1    States with Large Numbers of Undocumented Immigrants, 1995   976 29.2    Population of Major Metropolitan Areas, 1990   983 29.3    The Breakup of the Former Yugoslavia   994 29.4    The Contested Election of 2000   996 30.1    Top Ten U.S. Trading Partners (Ranked, with Total Value of Imports and Exports Combined for January–February 2001)   1010 30.2    Water Sources in the American West   1015 30.3    Asia as a Focus of U.S. Foreign Policy   1023 30.4    State Population Growth, 1990–2000   1028 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES xxx ${bmicon}   15-4    National and International Union Members of the National Labor Union (with dates of each union’s founding)   530 15-5    The Election of 1872   532 15-6    The Election of 1876   532 16-1    Amount of Forest Clearing Each Decade, by Major Region, 1850–1909 (in thousands of acres)   545 16-2    How Indians Used the Buffalo   547 16-3    Immigration by Country of Origin, 1831–1940   550 16-4    Number of Firms by Number of Employees per Firm, 1850 and 1880   553 16-5    The Election of 1880   564 16-6    The Election of 1884   565 16-7    The Election of 1888   567 17-1    Percentage of Farms Operated by Tenants or Sharecroppers   580 17-2    Estimated Membership, by State, of the National Farmers’ Alliance, 1890   587 18-1    The Election of 1892   619 18-2    Work Hours Needed to Produce Specified Amounts of Wheat, Corn, and Cotton, 1880 and 1900   619 18-3    The Election of 1896   622 18-4    Categories of Employment, 1880–1910   623 19-1    The Election of 1900   663 19-2    The Election of 1904   664 19-3    The Election of 1908   666 19-4    The Election of 1912   667 20-1    The Election of 1916   685 21-1    The Election of 1920   723 21-2    The Election of 1924   723 21-3    The Election of 1928   724 22-1    The Election of 1932   749 22-2    Key New Deal Legislation, 1933–1938   752 22-3    The Election of 1936   761 23-1    The Election of 1940   774 23-2    The Election of 1944   792 24-1    The Election of 1948   819 24-2    The Election of 1952   830 25-1    The Election of 1952   849 25-2    The Election of 1956   849 25-3    The Election of 1960   859 26-1    The Election of 1964   869 26-2    The Election of 1968   894 27-1    The Election of 1972   907 27-2    The Election of 1976   921 28-1    The Election of 1980   941 28-2    The Election of 1984   946 28-3    The Election of 1988   963 29-1    The Election of 1992   988 29-2    The Election of 1996   990 29-3    The Election of 2000   996 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxxi ${bmicon}      Lost at Sea   39    Colonization Then and Now   64    Homeland Security and Deep Fears of the Enemy Within   98    Reparations for Slavery?   120    Sounds Around Us: The Lost World of High Fidelity   172    Movement Building Against the Odds   200    Uncanny Similarities: Britain’s Vietnam?   234    Equal Representation?   280    Civil Liberties Under Siege During Wartime and Other National Crises   300    Revolutions in Transportation   346    The Strange Career of the Monroe Doctrine   368    Diasporas   396    Systems of Unfree Labor   453    Civil Disorders During Wartime   490    Two Presidents Impeached   516    Persuading People to Buy: Advertising in American History   561    Rural Protests and Rebellions   590    Systems of Education   614    Rose Freedman   643    The League of Nations and International Security   696    The Persistence of the Ku Klux Klan   710    Presidents and the Media   750    The Atomic Bomb: Political and Cultural Fallout   796    The Origins of the Cold War   814    Anticommunism   860    Wars and Social Reform in the Twentieth Century   875    Energy Use in the United States   914    Is Material Success Corrupting?   950    Voting   998    The Internet and the World Wide Web   1006      “These Gods That We Worship Give Us Everything We Need”   31    Anne Bradstreet: “The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America”   69    “They Are Really Better to Us Than We Are to Them”: Tension on the North Carolina Coast   108    “Releese Us out of This Cruell Bondegg”   139    “Pastures Can Be Found Almost Everywhere”: Joshua von Kocherthal Recruits Germans to Carolina   160    “Exert Your Selves This Once in Our Favour”: Petition Signed by 30 North Carolina Regulators, October 4, 1768   204    “Revoking Those Sacred Trusts Which Are Violated”: A Declaration Signed by 15 Grand Jury Members in South Carolina, May 1776   224    Demobilization: “Turned Adrift Like Old Worn-Out Horses”   259    A Sailmaker Discusses “Means for the Preservation of Public Liberty” on the Fourth of July, 1797   314    Cherokee Women Petition Against Further Land Sales to Whites in 1817   343    José Agustin de Escudero Describes New Mexico as a Land of Opportunity, 1827   375    Senator John C. Calhoun Warns Against Incorporating Mexico into the United States   424    Professor Howe on the Subordination of Women   442    A Virginia Slaveholder Objects to the Impressment of Slaves   472    A Southern Labor Contract   510    Andrew Carnegie and the “Gospel of Wealth”   568    Platform Statement of Presidential Candidate Belva Lockwood, 1884   600    Proceedings of the Congressional Committee on the Philippines   634    Defining Whiteness   654    African American Women in the Great War   693    Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim   730    Songs of the Great Depression   742    Zelda Webb Anderson, “You Just Met One Who Does Not Know How to Cook”   789    NSC-68   825    Rachel Carson, Silent Spring   857    Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam War   882    The Church Committee and CIA Covert Operations   920    Religion and Politics in the 1980s   954    Vermont Civil Union Law   980    The Slow Food Movement   1022 Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxxii ${bmicon} Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxxiii ${bmicon} “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….” Ever since the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the noble sentiments expressed in the document have inspired people in the United States and around the world. The Founding Fathers conceived of the new nation in what we today would consider narrow terms—as a political community of white men of property. Gradually, as the generations unfolded, diverse racial and ethnic groups, as well as women of all backgrounds, cited the Declaration in their struggle to achieve a more inclusive definition of American citizenship. American history is the story of various groups of men and women, all “created equal” in their common humanity, claiming an American identity for themselves. In fact American history consists of many stories—the story of territorial growth and expansion, the story of the rise of the middle class, the story of technological innovation and economic development, and the story of U.S. engagement with the wider world. Created Equal incorporates these traditional narratives into a new and fresh interpretation of American history, one that includes the stories of diverse groups of people and explores expanding notions of American identity. The book’s basic framework focuses on the political events and economic structures discussed in most American history textbooks. Created Equal aims not to overturn the familiar chronology of American history, but to incorporate into it a variety of groups and individuals whose stories help us to provide an accurate, comprehensive, and compelling view of the past. Four Themes We have chosen to highlight four significant themes that run throughout American history. • Diversity. In considering the theme of diversity, we acknowledge that the formation of social identity is a central element of the American story. We examine how individual Americans have understood and identified themselves by gender, religion, region, income, race, and ethnicity, among other factors. Native Americans, African Americans, Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the Southwest, Chinese immigrants, members of the laboring classes, women of all groups—all of these people have played a major role in defining what it means to be an American. At the same time, diverse forms of identity are by no means fixed or static. For example, in the early twentieth century, a Russian immigrant garment worker on New York’s Lower East Side might think of herself in any number of ways—as a Jew, an employee, a union member, a single woman, a resident of a thriving city—and these forms of identity might change over time, depending on the woman’s circumstances. • Class and systems of power. These have also shaped American society in profound ways and an understanding of them is fundamental to understanding events in American history. Those systems take many forms. The institution of slavery denied people of African descent basic human freedoms. Class differences based on income and formal education mocked broader ideals of social equality. Some groups used the law to deny other groups the right to participate in the political system. Popular ideas related to alleged social differences and innate inferiority served to justify the treatment of certain groups as second-class citizens. U.S. military leaders launched military campaigns against vulnerable peoples within and outside the nation’s borders. By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States boasted the largest and most comfortable middle class in the world—and yet the most substantial political and PREFACE xxxiv ${bmicon} economic power was distributed among a relatively small contingent of white men. During the twentieth century, Americans dismantled the legal system of inequality that reduced blacks, women, and other groups to second-class citizenship. Nevertheless, a growing gap between the rich and poor continued to mock the notion of true equality. • Environment. The role of the environment in American history has been significant. The physical landscape has profoundly shaped American society, and has in turn been shaped by it. The theme of the environment is key to understanding cultural, political, and economic developments. Many Native American groups shared a sense of oneness with the land; for them, the material and spiritual worlds were intimately related. In contrast, many European Americans saw the land as a means of making a living or making money, or as the source of valuable raw materials—in other words, as a thing to be bought, sold, and used. The vast richness of the American landscape has provoked violent conflict over the years, even as it has formed a key component in American wealth and power. We examine regional differences in all geographical areas—not just the eastern seaboard. • Globalization. Finally, the increasing globalization of the United States’ economy and society in recent decades reminds us of how deeply the country has always been engaged with the rest of the world. Since the earliest days of colonial settlement, Americans have traded goods, cultural practices, and ideas with peoples outside their borders. As an immigrant nation and the modern world’s superpower, America’s foreign and domestic relations have always been intertwined. After World War II, Americans’ fears of Communism and the Soviet Union exerted a profound effect upon the country’s politics and society. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, all Americans were forced to confront the role of the United States in the larger world, with all the opportunities and dangers that role entailed. These four themes serve as the lenses through which we view the traditional narrative framework of American history. Readers of Created Equal will understand the major political developments that shaped the country’s past, as well as the role of diverse groups in initiating and reacting to those developments. Chapter 13, for example, which focuses on the 1850s, includes a detailed account of the effects of the slavery crisis on Congress and the political party system, as well as a discussion of shifting group identities affecting Indians, Latinos, northern women, and enslaved and free blacks. Chapter 18, focusing on the 1890s, covers the rise of the Populist Party and stirrings of American imperialism, as well as a discussion of barriers to a U.S. workers’ political party and challenges to traditional gender roles. Thus Created Equal builds upon the basic history that forms the foundation of most major textbooks and offers a rich and comprehensive look at the past by including the stories of all Americans, in addition. Chronological Organization One of the challenges in writing Created Equal has been to emphasize the way in which the four major themes come together and influence each other, affecting specific generations of Americans. Thus, the text is organized into ten parts, most of these covering a generation. Many textbooks organize discussions of immigrants, cities, the West, and foreign diplomacy (to name a few topics) into separate chapters that cover large time periods. In contrast, Created Equal integrates material related to a variety of topics within individual chapters. Although the text adheres to a chronological organization, it stresses coherent discussions of specific topics within that framework. This provides students with a richer understanding of events. Chapter 15, for example, which covers the dozen or so years after the end of the Civil War, deals with Reconstruction in the South, Indian wars on the High Plains, and the rise of Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxxix ${bmicon} Created Equal tells stories across generations, regions, and cultures, integrating the lives of individuals within the economic, political, cultural, global, and environmental vectors shaping their lives. These tales of simple courage breathe life into history, bringing an immediacy and vibrancy to the past. We cherish the telling of stories for it is within these tales that we remember the ánimo y sueños (spirit and dreams) of the American people. VICKI RUIZ PETER: It started with a videocassette. The Longman history editor taped a lively conversation with a dozen exceptional history teachers from very different backgrounds. They were all energized about teaching U.S. history in new ways, but they felt frustrated by their current texts. Then Longman sent the video to me. The video was not great cinematography, just talking heads. But their voices were so articulate, and I shared so many of their concerns. I remember watching the cassette on a Sunday night, and it set my mind spinning. I couldn’t get much sleep. Here were real teachers like me who wanted a dramatically different text. And here was a major publisher, Longman, saying, “What do you think?” At the time, I was teaching one of those special classes, a group of history majors that really clicked. Four of the best students had parents from other countries—South Africa, Mexico, Haiti, Vietnam—and all four were fascinated by American history. I remember thinking, “I’d love to be part of a team of historians who developed a text that would excite Darlene Aquino from Texas and Minh-Thu Pham from North Carolina.” I called Longman and said, “Let’s find a way to do it.” JACKIE: I thought that writing a new kind of text would be a real intellectual challenge. We have the opportunity to rethink and reconfigure the traditional American history narrative, and that’s exciting. PETER: I was not eager to write a “feel good” text. American history has not been a big happy rainbow. I was convinced that we could be much more open and inclusive than most current texts. We could also be more direct and matter-of-fact in many areas. It is important to be frank about differences and contradictions in the American story in a way that actually helps explain things. THOMAS: Writing a textbook was attractive because it’s so complementary to what I do in the classroom, particularly teaching the introductory American history survey. Having the chance to try to tell the entire story of the American past was exciting as a balance to the other work we do. PREFACE xxxv ${bmicon} the women’s and labor movements, stressing the relationships among all these developments. To cite another example: Many texts devote a chapter exclusively to America’s post–World War II rise to global power; Created Equal integrates material related to that development in a series of six chapters that cover the period of 1945 to 2000. Each of these chapters illustrates the effects of dramatic world developments on American social relations and domestic policy on a decade-by-decade basis. This approach allows readers to appreciate the rich complexity of any particular time period and to understand that major events occur not in a vacuum, but in a larger social context. Special Features The book includes a number of features designed to make American history clear and engaging to the reader, and to encourage students to “do” history on their own. These features include: • Parts and timelines. Created Equal consists of ten parts covering three chapters each. An opening section that lays out the basic themes of the period introduces each part. Each part opener also includes an illustrated timeline highlighting major events covered in the three chapters that follow. • Chapter introductory vignettes and conclusions. Each chapter begins with a story that introduces the reader to groups and individuals representative of the themes developed in the chapter. Among the chapter introductory vignettes are the stories of a Norwegian immigrant woman in Wisconsin (Chapter 12), a group of runaway slaves accused of treason by Confederate authorities in wartime (Chapter 14), Spanish-speaking inhabitants of Northern New Mexico struggling to retain their culture in the face of an onslaught of European American settlers (Chapter 17), and a Sioux Indian boy at a government boarding school (Chapter 18). At the end of each chapter, a concluding section sums up the chapter’s themes and points the reader toward the next chapter. • “Connecting History.” Created Equal encourages students to think outside the boundaries of specific periods by including in each chapter a boxed feature called “Connecting History.” A topic is examined at two different periods, or as it evolved over time. Several of these mini-essays span the entire sweep of American history. Topics include the history of naval navigation, civil liberties, education, advertising, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Internet. • “Interpreting History.” This feature consists of a primary document on a topic relevant to the chapter’s themes. Through this feature we hear the voices of a variety of Americans—a seventeenth-century slave, a sail maker in post-Revolutionary New York City, a Mexican lawyer visiting New Mexico in the early nineteenth century, a group of Cherokee women in early nineteenth-century Georgia, an antebellum southern professor, industrial titan Andrew Carnegie, and the environmental activist Rachel Carson. The “Interpreting History” feature takes many different forms—letters, sermons, court decisions, labor contracts, Congressional hearings, and songs. Students thus have an opportunity to analyze primary documents and to better appreciate the historian’s task—to read materials critically and to place them in their larger socio-historical context. • Maps, charts, pullout quotes, and artifacts. Illustrations—photographs, tables, pictures of objects from the time period, and figures—enhance the narrative. Large maps offer greater geographical detail and invite students to see the relationship between geography and history. Highlighted quotes help the reader grasp the chapter’s major themes. PREFACE xxxvi ${bmicon} • “Sites to Visit” and “For Further Reading.” At the end of each chapter is a list of “Sites to Visit,” identifying sites on the World Wide Web relevant to the chapter and occasionally listing the location of important historical sites and landmarks as well. There is also a list of suggested works related to each section of the chapter. These features encourage students to follow up on major topics on their own—either on the computer or in the library. Created Equal introduces students to recent scholarship in social history as well as providing a firm grounding in the traditional political narrative. In recent decades social identity has emerged as a central theme of American history. However, exclusive attention to cultural and social diversity can overshadow the political and economic structures of American society. Students should gain an understanding of our nation’s social diversity but also learn about the power relations that have shaped that past—which groups have had influence and how they have maintained and wielded that influence. Placing these issues at the forefront, Created Equal tells the dramatic, evolving story of America in all its complexity—a story of a diverse people “created equal” yet struggling to achieve equality. The Authors Created Equal, 1e Multimedia Edition xxxvii ${bmicon} Jacqueline Jones was born in Christiana, Delaware, a small town of 400 people in the northern part of the state. The local public school was desegregated in 1955, when she was a third grader. That event, combined with the peculiar social etiquette of relations between blacks and whites in the town, sparked her interest in American history. She attended the University of Delaware in nearby Newark and went on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she received her Ph.D. in history. Her scholarly interests have evolved over time, focusing on American labor, and women’s, African American, and southern history. One of her biggest challenges has been to balance her responsibilities as teacher, historian, wife, and mother (of two daughters). One of her proudest achievements is the fact that she has been able to teach full-time and still pick up her daughters at school every day at 2:30 in the afternoon (thanks to a flexible professor’s schedule). She is the author of several books, including Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks (1980); Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and Family Since Slavery (1985), which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize; The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses Since the Civil War (1992); and American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor (1998). In 2001, she completed a memoir that recounts her childhood in Christiana: Creek Walking: Growing Up in Delaware in the 1950s. She teaches American history at Brandeis University, where she is Harry S. Truman Professor. In 1999, she received a MacArthur Fellowship. Peter H. Wood was born in St. Louis (before the famous arch was built). He recalls seeing Jackie Robinson play against the Cardinals, visiting the courthouse where the Dred Scott case originated, and traveling up the Mississippi to Hannibal, birthplace of Mark Twain. Summer work on the northern Great Lakes aroused his interest in Native American cultures, past and present. He studied at Harvard (B.A., 1964; Ph.D., 1972) and at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar (1964–1966). His pioneering book, Black Majority (1974), concerning slavery in colonial South Carolina, won the Beveridge Prize of the American Historical Association. Since 1975, he has taught early American history at Duke University, where he also coached the women’s lacrosse club for three years. The topics of his articles range from the French explorer LaSalle to Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. He coauthored Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks, and he has written Strange New Land, a book about early African Americans. In 1989 he coedited Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast. His demographic essay in that volume provided the first clear picture of population change in the eighteenth-century South. Dr. Wood has served on the boards of the Highlander Center, Harvard University, Houston’s Rothko Chapel, the Menil Foundation, and the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg. He is married to colonial historian Elizabeth Fenn; his varied interests include archaeology, documentary film, and growing gourds. He keeps a baseball bat used by Ted Williams beside his desk. Thomas Borstelmann, the son of a university psychologist, has taught at the elementary, high school, and college levels. He taught second-grade physical education, taught and coached high school lacrosse, soccer, and basketball, and since 1991 has taught American history at Cornell University. In addition to his teaching experience, he also served as “Head Maid” of a conference center near Lake Tahoe. He lives with his wife and two sons in Syracuse, New York, where his greatest challenge—and delight—is doing the bulk of childcare while commuting 60 miles to Cornell. An avid bicyclist, runner, and cross-country skier, he earned his B.A. from Stanford University in 1980 and Ph.D. from Duke University in 1990. MEET THE AUTHORS xxxviii ${bmicon} He became a historian to figure out the Cold War and American race relations, in part because he had grown up in the South. His first book, concerning American relations with southern Africa in the mid-twentieth century, won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize of the Society for Historians of Foreign Relations. His second book, The Cold War and the Color Line, appeared in 2002. His commitment to the classroom remains clear at Cornell University, where he has won a major teaching award: the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship. He found writing Created Equal a natural complement to what he does in the classroom, trying to provide both telling details of the American past and the broad picture of how the United States has developed as it has. A specialist in U.S. foreign relations, he is equally fascinated with domestic politics and social change. He is currently working on a book about the 1970s. Elaine Tyler May grew up in the shadow of Hollywood, performing in neighborhood circuses with her friends. She went to high school before girls could play on sports teams, so she spent her after-school hours as a cheerleader and her summer days as a bodysurfing beach bum. Her passion for American history developed in college when she spent her junior year in Japan. The year was 1968. The Vietnam War was raging, along with turmoil at home. As an American in Asia, often called on to explain her nation’s actions, she yearned for a deeper understanding of America’s past and its place in the world. She returned home to study history at UCLA, where she earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. She has taught at Princeton and Harvard Universities and since 1978 at the University of Minnesota. She has written four books examining the relationship between politics, public policy, and private life. Her widely acclaimed Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era was the first study to link the baby boom and suburbia to the politics of the Cold War. The Chronicle of Higher Education featured Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness as a pioneering study of the history of reproduction. Lingua Franca named her coedited volume Here, There, and Everywhere: The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture a “Breakthrough Book.” She served as president of the American Studies Association in 1996 and as Distinguished Fulbright Professor of American History in Dublin, Ireland, in 1997. She is married to historian Lary May and has three children who have inherited their parents’ passion for history. Vicki L. Ruiz is a professor of history and Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California, Irvine. For her, history remains a grand adventure, one that she began at the kitchen table listening to the stories of her mother and grandmother and continued with the help of the local bookmobile. She read constantly as she sat on the dock catching small fish (“grunts”) to be used as bait on her father’s fishing boat. As she grew older, she was promoted to working with her mother selling tickets for the Blue Sea II. The first in her family to receive an advanced degree, she graduated from Gulf Coast Community College and Florida State University, then went on to earn a Ph.D. in history at Stanford in 1982, the fourth Mexican American woman to receive a doctorate in history. Her first book, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives, received an award from the National Women’s Political Caucus, and her second, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in 20th-Century America, was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 1998 by the American Library Association. She is coeditor with Ellen Carol Dubois of Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History. She and Virginia Sánchez Korrol coedit Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, and both were recognized by Latina Magazine as Latinas of the Year in Education for 2000. Active in student mentorship projects, summer institutes for teachers, and public humanities programs, Dr. Ruiz served as an appointee to the National Council of the Humanities. She has also served on the national governing bodies of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Histories, and the American Studies Association. The mother of two grown sons, she is married to Victor Becerra, urban planner and gourmet cook extraordinaire.