The United States

The United States won its independence from Britain in 1783. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the Mississippi River marked the western boundary of the new republic. As the original United States filled with settlers, land-hungry newcomers pushed beyond the Mississippi. The government helped them by acquiring new territory for settlement. Meanwhile, tensions between northern and southern states over the issues of states’ rights and slavery continued to grow and threatened to reach a boiling point.

## Unit 2

### Americans Move West

In the 1800s, the population of the United States had mainly been established along the East coast. With a growing population, the newly independent country statred exapnding to the west. Between 1801 and 1861, exploration was encouraged as the US underwent vast territorial espansion and settlement.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from France. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the new republic and extended its boundary to the Rocky Mountains. In 1819, Spain gave up Florida to the United States. In 1846, a treaty with Great Britain gave the United States part of the Oregon Territory. The nation now stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

#### Mexican-American War

The annexation of Mexican-claimed Texas by the US in 1845 led to a war between Mexico and the US. Between May 1846 and February 1848, war raged between the two countries. Finally, Mexico surrendered. As part of the settlement of the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded territory to the United States. The Mexican Cession included California and a huge area in the Southwest. In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico brought the lower continental United States to its present boundaries.

#### Manifest Destiny

Many Americans believed in manifest destiny, the idea that the United States had the right and duty to rule North America from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Government leaders used manifest destiny to justify evicting Native Americans from their tribal lands.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 made such actions official policy. This law enabled the federal government to force Native Americans living in the East to move to the West. Georgia’s Cherokee tribe challenged the law before the Supreme Court. The Court, however, ruled that the suit was not valid. The Cherokees had to move. Most of them traveled 800 miles to Oklahoma, mainly on foot, on a journey later called the Trail of Tears. When the Cherokees reached their destination, they ended up on land inferior to that which they had left. As white settlers moved west during the 19th century, the government continued to push Native Americans off their land.

### American Civil War

America’s westward expansion raised questions about what laws and customs should be followed in the West. Since the nation’s early days, the northern and southern parts of the United States had followed different ways of life. Each section wanted to extend its own way of life to the new territories and states in the West.

The North had a diversified economy, with both farms and industry. For both its factories and farms, the North depended on free workers. The South’s economy, on the other hand, was based on just a few cash crops, mainly cotton. Southern planters relied on slave labor. The economic differences between the two regions led to a conflict over slavery. Many Northerners considered slavery morally wrong. They wanted to outlaw slavery in the new western states. Most white Southerners believed slavery was necessary for their economy. They wanted laws to protect slavery in the West so that they could continue to raise cotton on the fertile soil there.

Conflict between the North and South reached a climax in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Southerners fiercely opposed Lincoln, who had promised to stop the spread of slavery. One by one, Southern states began to secede, or withdraw, from the Union. These states came together as the Confederate States of America.

Four years of fighting followed (1861-1865), most of it in the South. Although the South had superior military leadership, the North had a larger population, better transportation, greater resources, and more factories. These advantages proved too much, and in April 1865, the South surrendered.

#### Abolition of Slavery

Early in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in the Confederate states were free. At first, the proclamation freed no slaves, because the Confederate states did not accept it as law. As Union armies advanced into the South, however, they freed slaves in the areas they conquered. The Emancipation Proclamation also showed European nations that the war was being fought against slavery. As a result, these nations did not send the money and supplies that the South had hoped they would.

In the aftermath of the war, the U.S. Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments extended the rights of citizenship to all Americans and guaranteed former slaves the right to vote.

##### Reconstruction

From 1865 to 1877, Union troops occupied the South and enforced the constitutional protections. This period is called Reconstruction. After federal troops left the South, white Southerners passed laws that limited African Americans’ rights and made it difficult for them to vote. Such laws also encouraged segregation, or separation, of blacks and whites in the South. African Americans continued to face discrimination in the North as well.

#### Post War Economy

The need for mass production and distribution of goods during the Civil War speeded industrialization. After the war, the United States experienced industrial expansion unmatched in history. By 1914, it was a leading industrial power.

##### Immigration

Industrialization could not have occurred so rapidly without immigrants. During the 1870s, immigrants arrived at a rate of nearly 2,000 a day. By 1914, more than 20 million people had moved to the United States from Europe and Asia. Many settled in the cities of the Northeast and Midwest. Others settled in the open spaces of the West.

##### Railroads

As settlers moved west, so did the nation’s rail system. In 1862, Congress had authorized money to build a transcontinental railroad. For seven years, immigrants and other workers dug tunnels, built bridges, and laid track. When the railroad was completed in 1869, railroads linked California with the eastern United States.

## Unit 3

### U.S. Economic Imperialism

Latin America’s long struggle to gain independence from colonial domination between the late 18th and the mid-19th centuries left the new nations in shambles. Farm fields had been neglected and were overrun with weeds. Buildings in many cities bore the scars of battle. Some cities had been left in ruins. The new nations of Latin America faced a struggle for economic and political recovery that was every bit as difficult as their struggle for independence had been.

Political instability was another widespread problem in 19th-century Latin America. Many Latin American army leaders had gained fame and power during their long struggle for independence. They often continued to assert their power. They controlled the new nations as military dictators, or caudillos. They were able to hold on to power because they were backed by the military. By the mid-1800s, nearly all the countries of Latin America were ruled by caudillos.

The caudillos faced little opposition. The wealthy landowners usually supported them because they opposed giving power to the lower classes. In addition, Latin Americans had gained little experience with democracy under European colonial rule. So, the dictatorship of a caudillo did not seem unusual to them. But even when caudillos were not in power, most Latin Americans still lacked a voice in the government. Voting rights—and with them, political power—were restricted to the relatively few members of the upper and middle classes who owned property or could read.

#### The Monroe Doctrine

Many Latin Americans feared that European countries would try to reconquer the new republics. The United States, a young nation itself, feared this too. So, in 1823, President James Monroe issued what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine. This document stated that “the American continents . . . are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” Until 1898, though, the United States did little to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.

#### Spanish-American War

The Caribbean island of Cuba was one of Spain’s last colonies in the Americas. In 1868, Cuba declared its independence and fought a ten-year war against Spain. In 1878, with the island in ruins, the Cubans gave up the fight. But some Cubans continued to seek independence from Spain.

The United States had developed substantial business holdings in Cuba, therefore it had an economic stake in the fate of the country. In addition, the Spanish had forced many Cuban civilians into concentration camps. Americans objected to the Spanish brutality. In 1898, the United States joined the Cuban war for independence. This conflict, which became known as the Spanish-American War, lasted about four months. U.S. forces launched their first attack not on Cuba but on the Philippine Islands, a Spanish colony thousands of miles away in the Pacific. Unprepared for a war on two fronts, the Spanish military quickly collapsed.

In 1901, Cuba became an independent nation, at least in name. However, the United States installed a military government and continued to exert control over Cuban affairs.

After its defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain turned over the last of its colonies. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines became U.S. territories.

#### The Panama Canal

By the 1870s, the transcontinental railroad connected its east and west coasts. But land travel still was time-consuming and difficult. And sea travel between the coasts involved a trip of about 13,000 miles around the tip of South America. If a canal could be dug across a narrow section of Central America, however, the coast-to-coast journey would be cut in half.

In 1903, Panama was a province of Colombia. Roosevelt offered that country $10 million plus a yearly payment for the right to build a canal. When the Colombian government demanded more money, the United States responded by encouraging a revolution in Panama. The Panamanians had been trying to break away from Colombia for almost a century. In 1903, with help from the United States Navy, they won their country’s independence. In gratitude, Panama gave the United States a ten-mile-wide zone in which to build a canal.

The Panama Canal finally opened in 1914. Ships from around the world soon began to use it. Latin America had become a crossroads of world trade. And the United States controlled the tollgate.

#### The Roosevelt Corollary

Its presence in Cuba and its large investments in many Central and South American countries strengthened the foothold of the U.S. in Latin America.

To protect those economic interests, in 1904, President Roosevelt issued a corollary, or extension, to the Monroe Doctrine. The Roosevelt Corollary gave the United States the right to be “an international police power” in the Western Hemisphere. The United States used the Roosevelt Corollary many times in the following years to justify U.S. intervention in Latin America. U.S. troops occupied some countries for decades. Many Latin Americans protested this intervention, but they were powerless to stop their giant neighbor to the north. The U.S. government simply turned a deaf ear to their protests.

### The Golden Door of Immigration

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States experienced major waves of immigration. The newcomers -mainly Chinese,Japanese, and Northern and Eastern Europeans- left their home countries looking for economic opportunities, religious and political freedom,and a better future.

Rapid economic growth, abundance of cheap land, and scarce labor force turned the United States into a strong magnet to immigrants. From 1845 to 1954 the great influx of 2.4 billion immigrants entered the US. That made about 14.5 percent of the total population in 1845.

* Irish Immigration:

Between 1845 and 1855, over one million Irish people arrived in the United States. They became the largest group of immigrants of thisperiod. The Catholic Irish reached the Americas escaping from famine and economic depression produced by a parasite that had destroyed the potato crops in Ireland. This event is known as the Potato Famine.

* German Immigration:

The new German migration peaked just a few years after the Irish, in 1854, when 215,000 arrived. These included independent farmers, skilledworkers, and shopkeepers. These immigrants had some means that helped them get skilled labor or some land to work on. Among this groupthere were some professionals that had escaped the German revolutions of 1848-49.

* Chinese Immigration:

By the 1850s there was a numerous Chinese community in California. They had come lured by the gold rush. Most Chinese were employed in mines and railworks.

#### Ellis Island

In 1892, a federal immigration station was established in Ellis Island, New York.

This was an effort by the government to control the massive influx of people coming into the country. Here, immigrant underwent medical and legal inspections.

At its peak, in 1907, about 1.25 million people would be processed at Ellis Island.

#### Regulation

With this massive influz of people coming to the country, the U.S. sought for ways to limit the amount of immigrants.

Founded in 1894, the Immigration Restriction League lobbied for legislation.

##### The Chinese Exclusion Act

Passed by congress in 1882, the act was fueled by racial suspicion and hatred towards Chinese immigrants and an anti-Chinese sentiment among native-born Americans.

The act suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization.

##### Immigration Act of 1917

Fueled by the Immigration Restriction League, it established requirements of literacy tests for potential immigrants in an effort to limit the "quality" of the immigrants that came into the country.

It also further limited immigration from Asia, barring Asiatic laborers.

##### Immigration Act of 1924

This was the most stringent immigration policy. Under this new law, immigration remained open to those with a college education and/or special skills.

Entry was denied to Mexicans, and disproportionately to Eastern and Southern Europeans and Japanese. By establishing national origin quotas, the act favored immigration from Northern and Western Europe.

### The Gilded Age

The "Gilded Age" term came into use in the 1920s and 1930s and was derived from writer Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's 1873 novel *The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today*, which satirized an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding.

It was a period where greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth and opulence at the expense of the working class. In fact, it was wealthy tycoons, not politicians, who inconspicuously held the most political power during the Gilded Age.

The enormous railroad expansion of the 1800s resulted in rail companies and their executives receiving lavish amounts of money and land—up to 200 million acres, by some estimates—from the United States government. In many cases, politicians cut shady backroom deals and helped create railroad and shipping tycoons.

#### Robber Barons

These men used union busting, fraud, intimidation, violence and their extensive political connections to gain an advantage over any competitors. Robber barons were relentless in their efforts to amass wealth while exploiting workers and ignoring standard business rules—and in many cases, the law itself.

They soon accumulated vast amounts of money and dominated every major industry including the railroad, oil, banking, timber, sugar, liquor, meatpacking, steel, mining, tobacco and textile industries.

#### Industrial Revolution

The Gilded Age was in many ways the culmination of the Industrial Revolution, when America and much of Europe shifted from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Millions of immigrants and struggling farmers arrived in cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Chicago, looking for work and hastening the urbanization of America. By 1900, about 40 percent of Americans lived in major cities.

Most cities were unprepared for rapid population growth. Housing was limited, and tenements and slums sprung up nationwide. Heating, lighting, sanitation and medical care were poor or nonexistent, and millions died from preventable disease. Many immigrants were unskilled and willing to work long hours for little pay. Gilded Age plutocrats considered them the perfect employees for their sweatshops, where working conditions were dangerous and workers endured long periods of unemployment, wage cuts and no benefits.

The industrialists of the Gilded Age lived high on the hog, but most of the working class lived below poverty level. As time went on, the income inequality between wealthy and poor became more and more glaring. Some moguls used Social Darwinism to justify the inequality between the classes. The theory presumes that the fittest humans are the most successful and poor people are destitute because they’re weak and lack the skills to be prosperous.

#### Muckrakers

Muckrakers is a term used to describe reporters who exposed corruption among politicians and the elite. They used investigative journalism and the print revolution to dig through “the muck” of the Gilded Age and report scandal and injustice.

Helped by the muckrackers and the White House, the Progressive Era ushered in many reforms that helped shift away power from robber barons, such as:

* trust busting
* labor reform
* women’s suffrage
* birth control
* formation of trade unions
* increased conservation efforts
* food and medicine regulations
* tax reform
* civil rights
* election reform
* fair labor standards