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Chapter 1: The Meeting of Three Cultures Learning Objective: Understand how Western Europe emerged from the medieval period into the modern era. 12th century: Several simultaneous developments began to change Western Europe: 1) The breakdown of the political system of feudalism & the replacement of this system with the concept of the nation state. 2) The weakening of the economic system of the middle ages�manorialism�and the development of capitalism. 3) The development of scientific principles and their application of the these principles to society as a whole � the Renaissance & the concept of humanism. 4) The Reformation. These events were intertwined. Feudalism was the political system of the Middle Ages. It was a system of local government that developed in the absence of an organized state. Beginning in the 9th century after the death of Charlemagne, local nobles established control over their immediate region � the largest of these encompassing several hundred square miles. The smaller landholders accepted the count's protection by becoming his vassal. The count was his lord. In return for the lord's protection, the vassal would provide men for combat, give the lord food and services, and give him advice in his court. During the medieval period a feudal lord would try to tie his subjects' loyalty to his family so that when he died his heirs would be able to rule without discontent. To accomplish this goal he took actions that developed the concept of nationalism, with the prince representing the state. During the feudal period, loyalty was individual � a subject swore an oath to his liege lord. Monarchs replaced this individual loyalty with a national loyalty. To rebel against your prince was not just violating an oath of allegiance, it was treason, and all the resources of the state would be brought to bear against you. Monarchs wanted the power of the nobility reduced so that theirs could increase. During the feudal period a ruler had to share power with the nobility because he needed military assistance. The horseback mounted knight was the key to military success. But technology, and after the plague of the 1300s, an increase in the European population, changed this method of warfare. The development of the longbow, massed infantry with pikes, and later, muskets and cannon, destroyed the military power of the nobility. On- the-other-hand, the infantry needed to be paid and fed. Often they were mercenaries. The burgeoning middle-class had the capital that the king needed to fight his wars and conduct his royal business. The development of the middle class reduced the economic and political power of the nobility and correspondingly increased the power of the king and the nation. As nationalism increased the power of the Catholic church decreased. During the middle ages the Church had become the largest land holder in Europe. With political loyalty during the feudal period based on personal relationships, many church bishops were also powerful lords. When the concept of nationalism developed this condition could not be allowed to continue�a person had to have a primary allegiance to either the church or the nation. In every nation the church was subjugated to the State. For example, in England, King Henry VIII solved this problem by becoming the head of the Church. In Spain the church and the government worked together to establish a national consensus. In France, a bitter civil war resolved the issue. Before capitalism could develop, Europe had to develop a surplus in both food and population � the entire population could not be engaged in food production. The invention of a more efficient plow, the horse collar, the horse shoe, and later, the replacement of the horse with oxen to pull plows all increased production (oxen are twice as efficient as horses). The three field system, and the planting of more beans (a source of protein for people, and nitrogen for the soil) increased nutrition. The new methods of production caused new lands to be put under the plow and helped increase the population of Europe. This increase in population lead to a gradual emancipation of the serfs. Serfs moved onto new lands with the understanding that a reward for doing this extra hard work would be gradual emancipation. The increase in population and food also led to an increase in internal commerce. For example, raw wool would be sent from England to Flanders, made into cloth, and sold to Germans in exchange for iron and lumber. Italian merchants would sell eastern goods in Europe and wool to the East. During the middle ages Venice had continued to trade with the East. The Crusades established Genoa and Pisa as commercial centers. By the end of the l2th century long range trade between the East and the West through the Mediterranean Sea was common. Goods were also exchanged through the caravans across the Sahara. Beginning in the 13th century, merchants began to attend fairs to exchange goods. Towns also began to grow to provide this function. With the increase in trade the circulation of money greatly expanded. Because trade was so risky the Italians developed the ideas of the joint-stock-company and letters of credit. The emergence of a money economy helped to transform medieval society. Increasingly the peasant became a tenant farmer instead of a serf. As early as the l3th century some of the characteristics of capitalism were in place in Western Europe: the concentration of wealth in the hands of investors; the profit motive; the acquisition of wealth from the investment of capital rather than from land; and, an increase in trade. Beginning in the 15th century labor became a purchasable commodity and modern capitalism truly began. During this period labor became specialized, and production became standardized. For example, one woolen cloth manufacturing firm in Florence had twenty different types of laborers to turn out a finished product. With excess capital available, banking became a profitable industry, and lending money to kings increased the power of the capitalists and weakened the power of the nobility. Lending money to kings was often risky business since the kings would often renege on their debts. By the l5th century money had replaced land as the most important source of wealth, but noble birth was still the main determinant of one's social status, regardless of wealth. ________________________________________ Learning Objective: Understand the Iberian phase (1500-1600) of Western European expansion. Portugal took the lead in overseas expansion in the fifteenth century. Portugal's small size and its location on the Atlantic coast oriented it toward the Atlantic rather than toward Europe. Lisbon was on the route of the Genoese and Venetian sea traffic with Flanders that sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and many Italian captains and pilots were in the Portuguese navy. Their superior knowledge of navigation helped the Portuguese lead the way. Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) began sending ships down the coast of Africa in search of gold. By 1460 the African coast had been explored down to Sierra Leone, and a number of coastal stations had been established. European trade with the East was controlled by the Moslems. Therefore, with the exception of the Venetians, who profited as middlemen, the Europeans eagerly sought a new route to the East Indies and its spices. Prince Henry had not thought of India when he first began his operations, but as the Portuguese reached father down the coast it was natural that India would become their ultimate goal. It was the advanced navigational knowledge of the Portuguese that caused them to reject Christopher Columbus in 1484 when he came to them and proposed reaching India by sailing west. By the l5th century people knew the world was round. The question was the size of the Earth and what precise relationship its continents bore to the oceans. Columbus had concluded that less than 3,000 miles of ocean separated Europe from Japan instead of the 9,000 miles that actually exist. Accordingly, he believed that the shortest and easiest route to Asia was across the Atlantic. The Portuguese were convinced that the globe was larger than Columbus held, that the oceans were wider, and that the shortest route to the Orient was around Africa rather than across the Atlantic. The Spanish lacked the experience of the Portuguese and in August 1492 they allowed Columbus to sail westward with three small ships manned by reliable crews with capable and seasoned officers. Ten weeks later Columbus landed at one of the Bahamian Islands. On December 23, 1492 Columbus anchored off the island of Hispaniola and 1,000 Arawak Indians canoed out to inspect Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria. The Spanish sailors stayed up all night trading beads, brass bells and even shoelace tips for gold. By the night of the 24th the entire crew of about 50 sailors was exhausted from their trading and partying the night before. The cabin boy was given the helm and everyone else, including Columbus went to sleep. Around midnight the ship hit a reef which ripped out the bottom of the boat and caused it to sink. The dismantled wreck was used to build a fort at Navidad. Thirty-nine sailors remained there when Columbus returned to Spain in early 1493. Columbus made three additional trips to the New World. Columbus' discovery did not directly benefit the Spanish until they conquered the rich Aztec Empire in Mexico in 1521, but it did prod the Portuguese to circumnavigate Africa and reach India by sea in 1498. ________________________________________ Learning Objective: Understand why the Spanish and Portuguese influence in exploration and colonization declined and England rose to take their place. In the period between 1600 and 1763 Spain and Portugal were overtaken and surpassed by the powers of Northwestern Europe � Holland, France, and Britain. The countries of Northwestern Europe were to dominate the world � politically, militarily, economically, and to a certain degree, culturally � until 1914. The domination of the world by Northwestern Europe did not actually materialize until after 1763. But it was during the years between 1600 & 1763 that the basis for domination was laid. The British gained their first foothold in India, the Dutch drove the Portuguese out of the East Indies, all the northwestern powers set up stations on the coasts of Africa, and the French and British became the masters of North America above the Rio Grande and controlled much of the commerce of the Iberian colonies to the south of it. One reason for the Iberian decline was their involvement in the religious and dynastic wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. Spanish manpower and treasure were squandered by Charles V and Philip II to fight the religious wars against the Protestants, the recurring campaigns against the Turks, and the dynastic struggles against rival royal houses, especially the French. In waging these campaigns the rulers of Spain fatally overextended themselves. A second reason for the Iberian decline was that they became economic dependencies of Northwest Europe. The economic dependence of the Iberian countries was a part of the general shift of the economic center of Europe in the late Middle Ages from the Mediterranean basin to the north. By the l6th century the Dutch controlled the Atlantic trade. In this new trade pattern, the dependent economic status of the Iberian states was evident in their exports, which were almost exclusively raw materials � wine, wool, and iron ore from Spain, and African gold and salt from Portugal. In return the Iberians received back their own wool, which had been manufactured abroad into cloth, as well as metallurgical products, salt, and fish. Thus the Iberian states, like the Italian, were declining at this time from the status of developed to underdeveloped societies relative to the burgeoning capitalist economies of Northern Europe. In 1496 John Cabot sailed from England and discovered the Grand Banks � the sea off Newfoundland was teeming with fish. The regular supply of immense quantities of cod was a great windfall for a continent where many people lived near starvation for part of every year. Northwest Europeans supplied up to 90 percent of the manufactured goods imported by Brazil and Spanish America, as well as a high proportion of similar goods consumed in the Iberian peninsula itself. First the Dutch, and then the British, controlled most of the carrying trade with the Iberian colonies. The net effect of Spanish overseas enterprise was to fuel the booming capitalist economy of northwest Europe, while in the Iberian peninsula it provided just enough wealth to forestall the basic institutional reforms that were long overdue. The economically backward Iberian states were able to take the lead in overseas expansion only because of a fortunate combination of favorable geographic location, maritime technology, and religious drive. But their expansion was not based upon economic strength and dynamism, which explains why the Iberian states could not exploit their new empires effectively. One reason for the decline was the great inflow of treasure which produced a sharp inflation. Prices and wages rose approximately twice as high in Spain as in northern Europe. The inflation penalized Spanish industry, making its products too expensive to compete in the international market. At least as important as the price and wage inflation was the ruinous influence of the Spanish aristocrat, on the national economy and values. Although the aristocrats, together with the higher churchmen, comprised less than 2 percent of the population, they owned about 96 percent of the land. The nobility had all the social status and prestige. And because the nobility looked down upon careers in commerce as demeaning for any gentleman, this became the national norm. Consequently, the ambition of successful merchants was to acquire estates, buy titles, which were sold by the impoverished crown, and thus abandon their class and become hidalgos. As a result of these attitudes, the economic spurt that occurred in Spain in the first half of the l6th century ended in failure. Protestant England under Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) opposed Catholic Spain. For political and religious reasons the English supported the Dutch in their rebellion against Spanish control. Another cause of conflict between Spain and England was the English intrusion into the Spanish empire in America. The Spanish forbade foreigners trading with their colonies. In 1562 the Englishman John Hawkins disregarded the law and picked up slaves in Sierra Leone and exchanged them in Hispaniola (Haiti) for hides and sugar. The profits were so great that Queen Elizabeth secretly invested in his second voyage. He followed the same procedure as before and returned with a cargo of silver that made him the richest man in England. The Spanish strongly protested this illegal trade, and on his third voyage in 1569 Hawkins lost three of five ships to Spanish naval action, and he barely made it back to Britain. During the following decades Protestant sea captains visited the Spanish Indies as pirates and privateers rather than as peaceful, though illegal, traders. In 1581 Francis Drake took his ship through the Strait of Magellan, captured a Spanish treasure ship off the Pacific coast of South America, then sailed up to California and from there to the South Pacific Spice Islands and to the Cape of Good Hope; thus, when he returned to England after an absence of three years, he had circumnavigated the globe. The queen knighted Drake, and no wonder; his cargo of Spanish treasure was worth twice Elizabeth's annual revenue. In 1585-1586, with the official backing of his government, Drake took a fleet of 30 ships once more into the Caribbean to vandalize and plunder the Spanish. Formal war with Spain gave the Protestant powers the opportunity they needed to move openly into the Iberian colonies. By 1586 Phillip II of Spain could put up with England's interference in Spanish affairs no longer and he began his plan to invade England. In July, 1588 the Armada with a fleet of 130 ships and 30,000 men reached the coast of England. The English had as many ships as the Spanish and better guns and sailors. The English defeated the Armada, destroying, with the help of a storm, about half the fleet. The defeat of the Spanish Armada began the decline of Spain even though the war would drag on until 1604. In 1648 the Netherlands finally won their independence from Spain. The French also joined the European race to colonize North America. In 1608 Quebec was established. By 1680 French explorers had canoed from Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Mississippi. The land claimed by France was named Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV. ________________________________________ Learning Objective: Understand the Slave Trade Europe had a long history of contact with Sub-Saharan Africa through the Saharan caravan trade. The Saharan trade began in the third or fourth century AD when the Berbers of the Maghrib began using the camel to transverse the 1,000 to 2,000 kilometers that separate the two edges of the desert. From the above description, it is obvious that the economic motivation for the risky and expensive transSaharan trade had to be significant. And, indeed it was. Gold and slaves were the motivating factors for the trade. Other goods were imported from the Sudan � ivory, ostrich plumes, kola nuts � but these were insignificant when compared to the gold and slave trade. Ivory, for example, could be procured more efficiently from eastern Africa. Until the sixteen century and the exploitation of American gold, the Sudan was the paramount source of gold both for the Muslim world and for Europe. Estimates suggest that at the peak of the Sahara gold trade over a ton of gold reached the Mediterranean annually. In return for the Sudanese gold and slaves, the Berbers, and later, Arab traders, transported the goods of the Mediterranean and European world south. Much of the trade across the desert to the south was probably in luxury goods � books, paper, horses, tea, coffee, sugar, spices jewelry, perfumes, needles, scissors, and later, guns. These commodities had a high value to weight ratio in order to maximize profit. Europeans, especially those in the Mediterranean basin, knew of the West African gold fields and were eager to exploit them. Portugal was the first nation to take advantage of the explosion in European maritime technology. By 1490, the Portuguese had regular trade relations with the West African coast. Other European nations soon followed. Between 650 and 1600 about 2 million slaves were exported across the Sahara to the north coast of Africa and the Middle East. Millions more were taken from East Africa by Arab traders. This trade continued into the twentieth century. These slaves were often individuals who had been captured during warfare. In other cases, they were political exiles or criminals who were sold because their labor or special skills they had acquired had market value. In addition, the incidence of drought and famine caused the destitute to sell themselves or their children into slavery. These factors for enslavement would also hold true when the Europeans dominated the slave trade. Domestic African and Middle Eastern purchasers of slaves valued women more highly than men, since the social productivity of women (not only as domestics, concubines, and wives, but also as laborers) exceeded the economic productivity of men (as agricultural or artisan laborers). The highest priced slaves in the Middle East were eunuchs, which serves to accentuate the basically female orientation of slavery in that region. With the discovery of the Americas, and the expansion of the plantation system, men, not women, became the gender that was the most in demand for slavery. To understand slavery in the New World, one must first look at the European "world view" of labor during the "Age of Exploration. In sixteen century Europe agricultural labor was not "free," as we would define the term today. He still had to serve, to cultivate the land which was always controlled by a feudal overlord. He was free, but everywhere the state demanded taxes from him, the Church tithes, and the landlord feudal dues. In eastern Europe the system of serfdom was reestablished. Eastern Europe, like the New World, was being pushed into a colonial-like existence as a supplier of raw materials for western Europe. To insure an adequate labor supply for the production of these raw materials (primarily grain) the upper classes of eastern Europe abolished many of the freedoms the peasant classes had gained since the 13th century. Europeans realized that the first European country that could first circumvent the Arab middle-men that controlled the access to the gold of subSaharan Africa would, in effect, control the specie that backed Europe's supply of money. Portugal was uniquely situated to be this country. It is located on the Atlantic, right next to Africa. Furthermore, the ocean and wind currents are such that it is difficult for sailing ships leaving port farther north than Portugal and southwest Spain to travel due south. Portugal had significant previous experience with long-distance trade throughout the Mediterranean basin. The Portuguese had established commercial connections with the Italian city-state of Genoa and this connection gave the state access to the capital necessary for expansion. During the fifteenth century, Portugal was the most stable state in Europe. She knew peace when her potential rivals knew internal warfare. For a small state like Portugal expansion was the most likely route to the expansion of revenue and the accumulation of glory.Thus, Portuguese mariners went down the African coast looking for gold, not slaves. It was the discovery of the New World that made African slaves a valuable commodity. The availability of slaves for sale was an unexpected by-product of the gold trade. The Atlantic African slave trade began in 1442 when two captains of Prince Henry the Navigator took twelve African slaves to Lisbon. The Portuguese proceeded to ship thousands of African slaves to their homeland. Prior to the discovery of America, the plantation system had already been established on the Atlantic islands (the Azores, the Madereiras, the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and S�o Tom�), and it was easy to transfer the system to the tropical climate region of the New World. ________________________________________ Learning Objective: Understand why Africa was the major source of unfree labor for the New World. Why did the trans-Atlantic slave trade develop in sub-Saharan Africa and not elsewhere? The answer is primarily based on economics, not race. As indicated earlier, labor was unfree everywhere during this time period. It has been estimated that between one-half to two-thirds of all the immigrants to the British North American colonies came as indentured servants. Other races besides black Africans had been traditionally enslaved (the word slave itself probably comes from the fact that many of the slaves in the pre-Atlantic era were Slavs. In the Ottoman Empire all the members of the sultan's household, from highest field commander to humblest Janissary [foot soldiers], were slaves, recruited mainly from Christian peasant villages located in the mountainous wild west of the Balkan peninsula). Expansion involves its own economic imperatives. The ability to expand successfully is a function both of the ability to maintain relative social solidarity at home and the arrangements that can be made to use cheap labor far away (it being all the more important that it be cheap the further it is away, because of transportation costs). Europe needed a source of labor from a reasonably well-populated region that was accessible and relatively near the region of usage. But it had to be from a region that was outside its world-economy so that Europe could feel unconcerned about the economic consequences for the breeding region of wide-scale removal of manpower. Western Africa filled the bill best. In 1510 the first shipload of African slaves was shipped to the New World. The venture was highly profitable, for there was urgent need for labor in the Americas, especially on the sugar plantations. Portugal dominated the trade in the sixteenth century, Holland during most of the seventeenth, and Britain during the eighteenth. The West African coast was dotted with about forty European forts which were used for defense against the rival trading nations and for storing slaves while awaiting shipment across the Atlantic. Textbooks often show a map of African commerce with a typical triangular voyage. The first leg was from the home port to Africa, with a cargo including metal products, cloth, firearms, hardware, beads, and rum. The goods were bartered for slaves brought by Africans from the interior to the coast. The slaves were shipped across the Atlantic on the so-called "Middle Passage." The average death rate during the "Middle Passage" ranged from 10 to 55 percent, depending on the length of the voyage, the chance occurrence of epidemics, and the treatment accorded the slaves. The final lap was the voyage home with the plantation produce such as sugar, molasses, tobacco, or rice. Philip Curtin points out that the above model is too simplistic since "a variety of multilateral trading voyages was possible." For example, a "French ship might make the outward voyage to Africa, pick up a cargo of slaves, but sell it in Spanish America for bullion. The bullion in turn would find its way to the Compagnie des Indes for shipment to southern India in return for indigo-dyed cloth of a kind much in demand in Senegal. This cloth might be sold in Senegal � not for slaves, but for gum and for Senegalese cloth in demand further down the coast in Dahomey (Benin). The Dahomean slaves would be sold, in turn, in the New World, and variants of the same cycle could be played out again." A large local supply of labor for the American plantations was not available. It was not through a lack of effort. From the beginning, the Spanish and Portuguese planned on using the Native Americans as an unfree work force. The Iberians were in desperate need of labor for their sugar plantations and mines and it could not be supplied from the Mother Countries, therefore several different systems of unfree labor were instituted. The mita system was built on the forced labor system of the Incas, and it required one- seventh of the Native adult male population of the old Inca empire to work in the silver mines of Potos� every year. The encomienda system allocated a chieftain and his people to a Spaniard. Amerindians had to supply labor, and later, cash tributes to their Spanish overlords. Both the Spanish and the Portuguese attempted to enslave Amerindians, but in the lowlands, where the plantations were located, most of the Native Americans died from European diseases. The population losses were rapid and are estimated as high as 90 percent for the Americas as a whole. On the Caribbean islands the natives were totally wiped-out. High Native American death rates were the case in North America too. For example, at the beginning of the eighteenth century one European estimated that in only fifty years smallpox and rum had reduced the number of Amerindians living within 200 miles of Charleston, SC, by over 80 percent. Estimates on the number of PreColumbian Native Americans vary from 30 to 100 million. At the time of Columbus, Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals had only 80 million people, with Spain's population perhaps 7 million. While 100 million may seem like too high an estimate, it is important to remember that the Americas had one-fourth of the earth's land surface and was rich in sources of food. It seems sensible to begin with the assumption that there were a lot of Americans in 1492. ________________________________________ Learning Objective: Understand slavery in British North America. In British North America the use of Indian labor was never a viable option. Indians were too few in number, and they were not organized into large agricultural groupings as were the Native Americans of Latin America. Partially because of the Enclosure Acts, Britain, unlike the Iberian countries, had a "surplus" population to ship to the New World. The Virginia company granted 50 additional acres of land for every new tenant an investor imported to Virginia. Such land grants were know as "headrights," since the land was apportioned per each "head" imported. The settler would then pay off his passage by working for the investor who paid his way (often by clearing the additional 50 acres). This is the beginning of the famous "indentured servant" system. So-called because the terms of contract were written in duplicate on a piece of paper in England. It would then be ripped-apart prior to the voyage with one half given to the servant and the other half to the owner's representative (often the ship captain). When the "indentures" on the ripped document matched, servant and master knew they had found each other. Usually the servant worked from four to seven years. From the master's point of view this was a good system. For four to seven years of labor he only had to pay out room and board and passage from England. It cost a master between �10-�12 to bring over a servant. He would recoup his investment after only two or three years. In 1619 one Virginia master with six servants made a profit of �1,000. Unusual perhaps, but not impossible. For servants in early Virginia life was hard. First, there was a terrific mortality rate. The majority probably died after one year, and any servant, poor as he was to begin with, was in no position to protect himself from abuse. He had bound himself for a definite period of time. Running away, or disobedience, was severely punished, and almost always added time to one's contract. The government, including the court system, was controlled by the planter class. Africans were first imported into British America at Jamestown in 1619 by a Dutch warship. Prior to 1660 the legal status of blacks is unknown � it seems that some were held as slaves and some were servants. Other blacks were either given their freedom or were able to purchase it. Only during the 1660s did the Virginia assembly begin to pass legislation that set up legal definitions of slavery. Historians are not certain why legal slavery did not develop earlier in Virginia, especially since the planters were in desperate need of labor. Richard Dunn has conjectured that it was because slaves were not available. The African slave trade was just beginning and the journey from Africa took 4-6 weeks longer to Virginia than it did to the Caribbean Islands where the demand for slaves was heavy. If traders sailing from Africa had a ready market in Barbados, why sail all the way up to Virginia? The slave traders may not have found the effort worth it. Edmund Morgan has suggested that because of the high mortality rate in early Virginia, the extra cost of slaves over indentured servants was wasted money. Both slaves and indentured servants would die in two or three years, so the planters bought the cheapest labor. It was only when the mortality rate fell to acceptable levels in the 1650s that the advantage of life-long labor (and the labor of any offspring) caused the Virginian planters to move away from indentured servants to chattel slavery. Prior to the 1650s landless freemen where uncommon in Virginia and the other Southern colonies. In the last half of the seventeenth century the situation began to change as more of the indentured servants began to survive their term of labor. While some of them, after working out their terms, did manage to get land and begin the process of upward social mobility, many were never able to rise out of the servant class. If an individual did get land, it was likely to be marginal. Instead of becoming their own masters, many became tenant farmers on land owned by the person who had owned their indenture. For these reasons, Morgan concluded that Virginia's freemen were "an unruly and discontented lot." The problems, actual and anticipated, with this growing and dangerous class of free labor, may have been another of the reasons that Virginians switched from unfree English labor to unfree African labor. ________________________________________ Learning Objective: Understand how the African slave trade was conducted. Most slaves were employed on sugar plantations and producing this crop, before modern machinery, was very labor intensive. Planters estimated that they needed one worker for each acre cultivated. Although sugar must be "cured" as soon as it is cut to remove the plant's water (it begins to decompose as soon as it is cut), once concentrated, it had a long shelf life and a high value-to-bulk ratio. This means that it could be profitably transported from America to Europe. In the seventeenth century the cost of slaves was low in Africa. So low in fact that Brazilian and West Indian planters believed that it was cheaper to work their slaves to death and buy new ones, than it was to raise them from birth. If a slave lived two years, a planter got his money's worth of labor. With the exception of the British North American colonies, this attitude, the prevalence of tropical diseases, and the high ratio of men to women, insured that the American slave population could only be maintained through the continued importation of more slaves. We do not know why the North American colonies were an exception to this rule. (It might have to do with the cost of slaves. Because the United States was so far north, it was on the periphery of the slave trade. It took months longer for ships to reach the American south from Africa than it did to reach Brazil. The death rate on the middle passage was as much as 50 percent higher, and therefore the cost of slaves would be more, perhaps making it more economically desirable to not work one's slaves to death). At the mouth of the Gambia River in the 1680s a young male slave sold for goods worth about �5.50. According to Philip Curtin "Five pounds sterling would have bought 17 trade muskets or 200 liters of brandy or 349 kilograms of wrought iron. The cost of slaves was so low because "the economic model for enslavement is one of burglary, not of production. In economic terms, the value of the slave is not a real cost [e.g. how much it cost to raise the slave to a saleable age] but an `opportunity cost.'" If an African king captured a neighbor's village in war he was entitled by law and custom to enslave the inhabitants. The captives were "free" booty from the war and were essentially without cost to the king (assuming he was fighting the war for political objectives). While the women and young men might be kept as local slaves, keeping recent enemies of fighting age around was dangerous. The usual practice was either to kill the captive immediately or to sell him a distant point. We do not have enough evidence to know whether some West African wars were caused by the desire to capture slaves, or if the captives were simply a by-product of wars fought for other reasons. Most Africans were sold into bondage by other Africans. There were several reasons for this. First, tropical diseases were extremely deadly to Europeans when they reached West Africa. Europeans wanted to get in and get out of the region as fast as possible. The sparse historical evidence available indicates that during a slave trading voyage it was not uncommon for the death rate to be higher among sailors than slaves. This high mortality rate precluded Europeans from sending expeditions ashore to capture slaves. This high mortality rate is also why the Europeans did not establish formal colonies in West Africa until the late nineteenth century, when modern medicine finally made the European death rate from tropical diseases politically and economically acceptable. Second, African leaders wanted to control the slave traffic. They wanted the profits they could achieve as middle-men, and they wanted to insure that the people sold into bondage were the ones they wanted to sell. By keeping the trade in their own hands, the African rulers who controlled the trade guaranteed that their subjects were not the ones sold into slavery (some exceptions to this rule are discussed below). The third reason ties in with the first two. It was cheaper for the Europeans (who had a tremendous amount of capital tied up in their ships and trading goods) to pay Africans for slaves rather than spending the time and resources in capturing them themselves. To the slave-ship owner, slaves were a commodity (like sugar, tobacco and textiles) to be transported. It was someone else's job to get the commodity to the dock. The corrupting influences of the slave trade affected Africans as well as Europeans. Many African societies sold condemned criminals into the slave trade. Such prisoners also included political opponents of the king and his friends. In some societies an adulterer could be sold to the profit of the husband. It was not unknown for a husband to use a young and attractive wife to snare a victim. If the police power of a region was weak, bands of young men would raid well away from their own village trying to pick up individuals or small groups that were unable to defend themselves. In southeastern Nigeria people were "sacrificed" to important oracles � they were not killed but were sold into slavery. Higher slave prices meant that slaves could be taken farther away from the coast. All the costs of slavery � guards, food, taxes and tribute paid to different rulers for protection � increased the farther inland one went. At peak prices slaves came from as far as 1,000 miles from the African coast. The total African slave trade took about 28.7 million Africans from their homes over a period of centuries (650-1920). Out of this total, 12 million were involved in the Atlantic trade (the others were taken through the Red Sea, from the Swahili Cost, and across the Sahara). An additional two million West Africans were killed in the course of enslavement, and an estimated 4 million became slaves within Africa. In 1700, West Africa had an estimated population of 25 million. Prior to 1650, the trade was rarely more than 10,000 per year. From the late seventeenth century to the 1750s, driven by the growing demand of the sugar plantation system, slave prices began rising at an average rate of 2 percent per year and this increase drove up the number of slaves shipped. In the peak decades of the 1780s and 1790s the trade averaged 100,000 slaves a year. Historians are not sure of the impact of slavery on West Africa, but some speculations can be made. If warfare was initiated for the primary purpose of capturing slaves (something that historians are unsure of) it would have disrupted the social and economic fabric of the region. Some ethnic groups (e.g. the Aja in the Bight of Benin) lost substantially amounts of population. Since the Atlantic trade shipped twice as many men as women for economic reasons, a surplus of women developed. Polygamy was reinforced, and women took over jobs traditionally done by men. The fear of enslavement may have encouraged men to marry at a young age, and to take a second wife at a younger age. Africa's population would surely have been greater without the slave trade. ________________________________________ Learning Objective: Understand the culture of the Americas c. 1500. The Indians crossed into North America across the Bering Sea at least between 20,000-40,000 years ago (recent research indcates that it may have been as long as 100,000 years ago, and that they may have come by sea). American Indians differed greatly in the languages they spoke�about 2,000 distinct Indian languages have been classified. This represents almost as much variation in speech as in the entire Old World, where about 3,000 languages are known to have existed in l500. Indian cultures can be classified into three groups: 1) hunting, gathering, and fishing cultures; 2) intermediate farming cultures; and, 3) advanced farming cultures. The advanced farming cultures were located in central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Andean highland area (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile). The intermediate farming cultures were generally in adjacent regions, while the food-gathering cultures were in more remote regions � the southern part of South America, and the western and northern part of North America. Indians domesticated over 100 plants, about as many as were domesticated in all Eurasia. About 50 percent of the crop tonnage of the world today is from plants first domesticated by Indians: tobacco, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, yams, and manioc (tapioca) are all New World crops. Horses, cows and pigs came from Europe, and turkeys and llamas came from the Americas. When Hernando Cortes landed on the Mexican coast in 1519, the Aztec empire was at its height. The Aztecs had developed a harsh and efficient military system that allowed them to conquer all of central Mexico. Their domination provoked constant rebellions among the tribes they subjugated, from whom they extracted slaves and human victims for their gods. In one especially dry season, the Aztec ruler, Montezuma I, claimed that "the gods are thirsty," and 20,000 Indians were sacrificed. The Aztec social system rested on a rigid class structure with most manual work being performed by slaves captured during military campaigns. Their capital city of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, was described by the conquering Spaniards as being equal to any in Europe. The Inca civilization was the most advanced of the Indian cultures. It was a totalitarian state that systematically expanded its power � at the time of European discovery the Incas controlled an area of more than 350,000 square miles. At the head of the system was the ruling god-emperor, called Inca. Under him was a highly structured noble class and priests, followed by lower level officials. All property was owned by the state and all work was organized on a communal basis. Through a system called "mita" (which the Spanish adopted) all members of the lower classes had to work free for the empire for a period of four months a year. The capital of Cuzco ("navel" in the Inca language) had enormous palaces and temples, many of which were gilded with gold, and other imposing dwellings which housed the elite. The Aztec Empire had a population of over 10 million, and the Inca Empire over 6 million, yet all three Indian civilizations were destroyed by a comparative handful of Spanish adventurers. Why? There are many reasons: the advanced technology of the Europeans � the Indians were a stone age culture, without firearms or horses. The different Indian tribes were not united and often fought each other instead of the Europeans. Yet, even with these disadvantages, the numbers were on the Indians side � they should have been able to kill the first few hundred Europeans to arrive. It was European, and later, African diseases that allowed the Indians to be so easily defeated. Because of their geographical isolation, the Indians had no natural immunity to Old World diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, malaria and yellow fever. Hernando Cortes' conquest of Mexico in 1519 illustrates the role disease played in the European domination of the Americas. The Aztec ruler, Montezuma, did not fight Cortes and his fewer than 600 men, but instead allowed them to enter his capital Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). The Spaniards took Montezuma hostage and controlled the city. Later, the Aztecs revolted. The Spaniards killed Montezuma, and retreated to a safe haven. But, they left smallpox behind and an epidemic swept the city. After a seventy-five day siege, Tenochtitlan again fell to Cortes. According to a contemporary account when the Spaniards entered the city: "the streets, squares, houses, and courts were filled with bodies, so that it was almost impossible to pass. Even Cortes was sick from the stench in his nostrils." Historians use the phrase "Colombian Exchange" to describe the exchange of plants, microorganisms, and animals between the Americas and the Old World. 2. Colonial America & the Revolution I. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand why the British established colonies in North America. � Markets for English goods--the theory of Mercantilism: a country should export more than it imports. � Access to raw materials. � Increase security. � Spread its ideology. Importance: English law, customs and ideology are the foundation of the future United States; and, colonial dissatisfaction with English colonial objectives (e.g. control of trade), helped lead to the American Revolution. II. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the British North American colonies. The British colonies were established by private joint stock companies. Jamestown was established in 1607 by the London Company. With the development of the tobacco industry and African slavery in the late 17th century the economy of VA soared. Plymouth colony was established in 1620 by the Pilgrims (Separatists-- they wanted to separate from the Church of England because it was too "Catholic"). Massachusetts Bay colony was established in 1630 by Puritans (they wanted to "purify" the Church of England of its Catholic ritual and dogma). Georgia, the last colony, was organized in 1732. The following environmental factors influenced European settlers: � the Indians � space & distance � the geography of the New World--New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South. Importance: Virginia and Massachusetts were the leading colonies in Colonial America. Puritanism has a lasting effect on American culture. The environment helped create a unique American culture. III. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand why there was conflict between Native Americans and Europeans. Differences between European and Native American cultures: Europeans Indians Christians non-Christians central governments lack of central Indian government private ownership of land communal use of land economies based on trade subsistence economy advanced technology stone age culture Cultural conflicts existed between the Indians and Europeans because the Europeans: � demanded that the Indians live under their laws � tried to convert the Indians to Christianity � took the Indians' land � destroyed the Indians' self-esteem through the use of alcohol � European diseases decimated the Indians. Importance: The above factors cause over 200 years of misunderstandings and warfare between European-Americans and Native Americans. By the end of the 19th century European-Americans have removed the Indians from all territory that they wanted to control. IV. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand how a constitutional government developed in England and how the development of this system affected colonial America. In 1642 a 46-year civil war broke out in England. During this period the American colonies suffered a period of "benign, or salutary, neglect." The 1688 Glorious Revolution established the principle of parliamentary supremacy and that Englishmen had certain rights--no matter where they lived. Importance: Englishmen in America began to believe that they had the same rights as Englishmen living in England--self-representation. This belief was a major cause of the American Revolution. V. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand how conflict began to develop between the British North American Colonies and Britain. Colonial government was based on the English model � Governor appointed by the king � Governor appointed a council � Lower house elected by freemen of colony (free, white, males, 21 years or older, and property owners; some colonies had religious qualifications to vote)--VA House of Burgesses 1st legislature � Lower house had the power to tax The Navigation Acts of 1660 & 1696 were used by the British to try and enforce mercantilism. These acts restricted American trade in the following ways: � all overseas trade had to be shipped on British vessels � only British citizens could trade with America � major colonial commodities could be exported only to Britain. Because Britain was preoccupied with events in Europe the colonists were able to avoid complying with the Navigation Acts until after the French and Indian War ended in 1763. The French and Indian War started in 1754 over whether France or Britain would control the Ohio River Valley. France controlled Canada and Britain controlled the "13 colonies." The war ended with the Peace of Paris, 1763: � France lost all its territory in North America � Britain had a large war debt � The British colonies no longer needed the British to protect them from the French or Indians � Ex-French territory was available to American colonization. Importance: The French and Indian War was a direct cause of the American Revolution--Americans wanted to move west, have less British control, and avoid taxation. British goals were the opposite. VI. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the events leading to the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776). 1) The Proclamation of 1763--Colonists could not move west of the Appalachian mountains.. 2) The Sugar Act of 1764--first British attempt to raise revenue. 3) Enforcement of Navigation Acts--hurt American trade. 4) The Stamp Act of 1765--affected colonial leaders: lawyers, businessmen, and tavern keepers. Repealed in 1766 after the colonists met in the Stamp Act Congress, but Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, which reaffirmed its supremacy. 5) The Townsend Acts of 1767--repealed in 1770 except for tea tax. 6) The Boston Massacre of 1770--colonial propaganda victory. 7) The Gaspee Incident (1772)--Colonists burned a British customs ship. 8) The granting of the British East India Company a monopoly on tea in 1773 led to the December Boston Tea Party. 9) The Intolerable (Coercive) Acts of 1774--passed in response to the Boston Tea Party. Provisions: � closed the port of Boston � suspended self-government in Massachusetts � moved colonial trials to other locations � soldiers quartered in private homes. 10) The Quebec Act of 1774--blocked western expansion & gave rights to Canadian Catholics. 11) The battles of Lexington & Concord, April 1775 started the Revolutionary War. 12) In Common Sense Thomas Paine argued that all kings were tyrants and that independence was the only solution to the colonists' problems. 13) In the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) Thomas Jefferson attempted to rally support to the rebels' cause from sympathetic Englishmen, and other countries, and to justify the revolution. Importance: Understanding the causes of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence enables us to understand what the Americans and British were fighting over, and it enables us to understand the ideology of early America (and, by extension, modern America). VII. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the American Revolution and the results of the war. America achieved its independence because: � French aid--the battle of Saratoga (1777) convinced the French the rebels could win � the colonists fought on their home ground � the colonists did not have to defeat Britain, they just had to avoid defeat themselves � there was a lack of support for the war in Britain � the British army and navy leadership made some major errors � the generalship of George Washington. The Battle of Yorktown, VA (1781) was the last major battle of the war. The war was terminated with the Treaty of Paris, 1783. In the treaty: � The U.S. received all British land north of Florida, south of Canada, and east of the Mississippi River � Britain recognized the independence of the United States. The American revolution did not change the social or economic system of the United States. France benefited little from the war. America became a symbol of freedom and opportunity. Importance: The American Revolution led to an independent America, future world-wide revolutions, and set the example that "the people" could be trusted to run their own government. 3. The Creation of a New Government
I. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the increase in regionalism. 1) Called the �Era of Good Feelings� because of the lack of organized political opposition�the Federalist party disappeared because of its opposition to the War of 1812 , and its opposition to programs that benefit the West and South. 2) Each section developed different, yet interdependent, economies. The Northeast developed a manufacturing base, the West�s economy was based on small family farms, and the South developed a plantation/slave economy. 3) The Missouri Compromise (1820) illustrates the increase in regionalism. Missouri came into the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state, preserving the balance of power in the Senate. Slavery was prohibited north of 36�30� in the Louisiana Purchase. Importance: Regionalism is a major cause of the Civil War. II. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the presidential elections of 1824 & 1828. 1) Four candidates ran, all from the Democratic Party: a) Andrew Jackson, 99 electoral votes b) John Q. Adams, 84 electoral votes c) William Crawford, 41 electoral votes d) Henry Clay, 37 electoral votes. Since none receive a majority of the electoral vote, the election was decided among the three top vote getters in the House of Representatives. Clay, the Speaker of the House, insured the election of John Adams, but his election helped split the Democratic party, because Jackson thought a "corrupt bargain" took place when Adams made Clay his Secretary of State. 2) In 1828 Jackson defeated Adams. Enemies of Jackson created the Whig party. Importance: The elections of 1824 & 1828 reinstate the two party system. Andrew Jackson is the strongest American president before the election of Abraham Lincoln. Jackson is the first president that was not from MA or VA. His election illustrates the growing political power of the West. III. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the political issues of the �Jacksonian Era.� 1) Contrary to the political propaganda of the time about this being �the age of the common man,� economic inequality increased during the period. 2) Jackson initiated the "spoils system" of patronage to reward his followers. Corruption grew until corrected by the Pendelton Civil Service Act (1883) caused by the assassination of President Garfield in 1881. 3) The Indians of the Southwest were removed west of the Mississippi River to "Indian Territory" (Oklahoma) by Jackson on the "Trail of Tears" after the Supreme Court ruled that the Indian land could not be legally taken away from them. Jackson moved the Indians for political reasons and for their "protection." 4) The Tariff controversy of 1828-1833 pitted South Carolina against the national government. John C. Calhoun restated the theory of nullification in The South Carolina Exposition & Protest. SC was angry over high tariffs--50% ad valorem in 1828 (the "Tariff of Abominations"). A compromise tariff was passed in 1833 that ended the crisis, but with SC's nullification of the Force Act, the Constitutional issues were not resolved. 4) Andrew Jackson, and many of his political supporters, had been financially hurt by the Panic of 1819. They blamed the Second Bank of the United States when the Bank called in their loans. The war over the 2nd Bank of the U.S. helped create the Whig party led by: a) Henry Clay b) John Calhoun c) John Quincy Adams d) Daniel Webster. Whigs tended to be the party of the elite and they supported the National Bank. After Jackson vetoed the recharter of the bank in 1834 he put the government's money into state "pet banks." 6) The election of 1840 was the first "modern" election. The Whigs used the Panic of 1837 and modern election techniques to defeat Martin Van Buren and win with William H. Harrison--"Tippecanoe & Tyler too." Harrison died in 6 weeks and VP John Tyler became president. Importance: The political conflicts of the Jackson era deal with civil rights (e.g. Indian removal), and sectional conflicts. These conflicts, while important in their own rights, foreshadow the larger conflicts that lead to the Civil War and later reform movements. IV. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand United States continental expansion. 1) In the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842) Daniel Webster, U.S. Secretary of State, and Ashburton, British ambassador to U.S., resolved conflicts over the Maine-Canadian border and improved Anglo-American relations. 2) Both Britain and the U.S. claimed the Oregon Territory. James K. Polk (Democrat) won the presidency in 1844 on an expansionist program (�54�40� or fight�). In 1846 Britain and the U.S. compromised over the territory. Both sides achieved their primary goal�a port on the Pacific (Seattle for the U.S., Vancouver for Britain). 2) Americans moved into Texas and declared their independence in 1835-- Texans did not want to give up their slaves, religion, and language. Although the Mexican president, Santa Anna, killed all the defenders at the Alamo, he was defeated by theTexans at San Jacinto (April, 1836), and he recognized Texas independence. He later reneged on his recognition. Presidents Jackson and Van Buren refused to admit Texas into the Union because of the slavery issue and they did not want to antagonize Mexico. Texas admitted into the Union in 1845 by Polk & this action helped cause war with Mexico. Texas came into the Union for the following reasons: a) Texas cotton was competing with U.S. cotton b) Texans had convinced the U.S. that it might be interested in becoming a British colony c) Manifest Destiny (God & nature intended Americans to possess all of North America) d) Free Oregon would be counterbalanced by slaveTexas in the Senate. 4) The United States declared war on Mexico in 1846. The U.S. wanted California (especially for its harbors). The U.S. captured Mexico City and easily defeated Mexico in the war. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) Mexico ceded the land north of the Rio Grande River to the U.S. for $15 million. The Wilmont Proviso, by attempting to ban slavery in the Mexican Cession, illustrates the controversy over slavery that the Mexican War caused. The Mexican War divided the nation. Northerners saw it as a plot to spread slavery. Southerners, who did most of the fighting, resented the Northern attempts to stop the spread of "the Southern way of life." 5) The Gadsden Purchase (1853). Last area of contiguous 48 states. Northern Senators turned down 9,000 square miles of Mexican territory to prevent the spread of slavery. Importance: During this time period the U.S. became a continental and Pacific power. Continental expansion led to U.S. expansion overseas later in the 19th century, and poor relations with Mexico throughout the 19th and early 20th century. The acquisition of territory greatly strengthened the U.S.. V. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand ante-bellum reform. 1) Ante-bellum reformers believed in the perfectibility of society. Transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that humans could transcend their weakness and achieve perfection through education. Using civil disobedience, in which people would follow a higher law, human awareness would be raised. 2) Reformers like Dorthea Dix tried to improve American society. 3) The Seneca Falls Declaration of 1848, under the leadership of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an attempt to increase the rights of women. 4) The abolitionist movement was formed to abolish slavery. William Lloyd Garrison, and Fredrick Douglass, an escaped slave, were two famous abolitionists. 5) Prohibition was both a moral and anti-immigration and anti-Catholic movement. Immigration increased from 8,400 Europeans in 1820 to 370,000 in 1850. Because of the Irish potato famine, most of the new immigrants were Catholic. The increase in Irish-Catholic immigration led to the formation of the American (Know Nothing) party. 6) The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival that democratized America religion by preaching that everyone who repented, and not just the "Elect," could gain salvation. 7) The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith of Vermont in 1830. Smith moved the Mormons to Nauvoo, Illinois where he was murdered in 1844. To escape persecution, Brigham Young moved the Mormons to Salt Lake City (then part of Mexico). After the abolition of polygamy, Utah became a state in 1896. Importance: Ante-bellum reform raised many American�s awareness about social injustices. Although many of the problems were not solved during this era, the philosophy of social reform became ingrained in America, and things like slavery, discrimination toward women, and ill-treatment of the insane were no longer accepted by many Americans as �natural.� 6. The Civil War and Reconstruction Learning Objective: Understand why the South seceded from the Union & why the North objected to secession. Lincoln supported a constitutional amendment to: � protect slavery in the states where it already existed with NO interference by federal government; could NOT be repealed. � would allow no further expansion of slavery. This compromise was not acceptable to the South. Feb 1861 Seven states suceceded, set up �the Confederate States of America� elected Jefferson Davis as president. Mar 1861 Confederacy taken most federal property in the South except: Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. Lincoln wanted the Confederacy to fire the first shot so they would appear to be the aggressor. This action would help unite the North and make it easier for the border states to choose to stay in the union. When Lincoln found out that the garrison was running out of food he sent a re-supply ship to the fort . April 12, 1861 Confederate forces opened fire on the fort on Fort Sumter which surrendered the next day and the war began. The Confederate attack forced every state to choose between the Union and the Confederacy and the upper south states seceded at this time. Few in the North approved of slavery, but even fewer approved of black equality. The North was anti-slavery and anti-black. But, the South, by secession, changed the issue from one of slavery to the survival of the republic. To the North the support of slavery was wrong, but the support of secession was treason. Secession united the North. The root cause of the conflict�the issue of race relations�was not even perceived as an issue. Learning Objective: Understand the military aspects of the Civil War. Northern resources were much greater than the South's. These resources allowed the North to win a war of attrition. The NORTH: � Agriculture 2/3 nation's improved farmland was in the North. � 3X horses (war end: Union army lost 500 per day). � New York produced 4X manufactured products as Confederacy. � Connecticut made More firearms than entire South. NORTH - Union SOUTH - Confederacy 22,200,000 population 10,600,000 (including 3,500,000 slaves) 1,300,000 industrial workers 110,000 22,000 railroad mileage 9,280 5 Army ratio 2 110,000+ 128,000 industrial firms 18,026 South�s crucial handicap: North could replace equipment faster. South's equipment was from the North or Europe, could not be replaced. Southern military and political strategy was flawed by three basic errors: First Major Error: Romantic Concept of War: Extension of the medieval tournament � a test of bravery on the battlefield VERSES: a matter firepower, transport, commissary, and logistics. The Civil War stood at the dividing line between: � the old and the new � a war fought by men and a war fought by machines � Preindustrial and Industrial culture Second Major Error: Faith in King Cotton to Win British Support. � Britain imported 700/900million lbs. cotton from south per year � 2/5 Britain's exports > manufactured cotton goods � 4/21 million of population were employed in textile industry. This policy failed because l) British had stockpiled a year's supply of cotton 2) British economy stimulated by the Union demand for British goods 3) Britain was dependent on northern wheat 4) End of 1862: Union army penetrated South > shipped cotton to Britain 5) the Emancipation Proclamation won sympathizers in Britain 6) Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg convinced Britain that the North would win Third Major Error: Fighting a Defensive War. Confederacy believed: � Northern sentiment was too divided to support a war of invasion against the South � Southern invasion of the North would unite the North. � In tactical terms, defensive warfare is less costly. Successful attack requires 4-1 ratio of men against the defense. � Invading army has to maintain supply lines. The role of the railroads in resupply was underestimated by the South. � Confederacy did not need to win but to prevent. The war would continue until the North tired, but, the South would use up its resources in a long war and be exposed to the ravages of war while the North would not. The MILITARY 1862 Both sides resorted to conscription (draft), but, both armies primarily made up of civilian volunteers. North: could hire a substitute to serve in his place or pay $300 >> "rich man's war, poor man's fight." South: plantation owners could avoid service to oversee their slaves. � 25% of the 776,829 men failed to report � 200,000 men deserted � 90,000 went toCanada (30,000 deserters, others draft dodgers April, 1861 U.S. army was 16,000 (most fighting Indians in the west). In the Civil War armies: � were 10X larger then any prior U.S. force � lacked experienced officers � lacked officer-candidate schools to train officers � lacked coordinating machinery to coordinate brigades The SUPPY SYSTEM was primitive. � Hardtack was staple food of the Union army. (3" hard,solid nourishing cracker, 1/2" often with weevils). � Sanitation poor > 220,000 Union soldiers died of disease > � 50% of death: intestinal ailments: typhoid, diarrhea, & dysentery >50% pneumonia and tuberculosis Technical improvements led to high battle attrition � Weapons design >great increase in fire power > defense heavy advantage over the attack. fall 1862 both sides used rifled Springfield muskets >effective range of 250 yards (50 caliber bullet), the rifled musket >could kill advancing troops 4- 5X further away �generals could often break up an attack before it even started. Old field tactics still used: sending massed troops over the enemy line > infantry charge was based on getting close enough to enemy to bayonet their opponents or force retreat. (No longer effective) Northern strategy: 1) divide the South along the Mississippi River; 2) penetrate Confederacy heart > Georgia (Sherman's March) 3) capture the Confederate capital of Richmond 4) blockade the Confederate coast. July l861 Battle of Bull Run: 35,000 Union soldiers, under General McClellan were defeated at Richmond. McClellan was relieved of his command. Using superior naval forces, Union seized Confederate island positions off southern coast. March 1862 Confederate ironclad vessel Merrimack attacked Union blockade ships, sank two of them. The next day the Union ironclad, the Monitor, fought the Merrimack to a standstill, thereby neutralizing her. After that time Union naval superiority was never challenged. March 1862 After extensive and bitter fighting, by the Confederates were driven out of Missouri. January 1862 the Confederates were forced out of eastern KY. February 1862 Major General Ulysses S. Grant, who had once been dismissed from a captaincy in the peacetime army because of frequent drunkenness, captured the Confederate forts of Henry and Donelson where the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers entered the Ohio. This action opened the Cumberland river as a highway for the Union forces into the heart of Tennessee, and most of Tennessee was back in the Union within nine months of secession. Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson as military governor. April 24, 1862 Admiral David Farragut ran the Confederate forts south of New Orleans and took the city. By the time McClellan started seriously engaging the Confederates outside of Richmond, the Union had: � already won most of Missouri, West Virginia, and much of Kentucky and Tennessee. � occupied the Confederate island & defeated the South's bid for naval supremacy through the use of ironclads � captured the largest city in the Confederacy � gained control of the Mississippi River south as far as Memphis and north as far as Port Hudson, Louisiana. The Southern army under Robert E. Lee succeeded in keeping a session of Union commanders from taking Richmond. But the fierce battles took a heavy toll of Southern men that could not be replaced. July, 1863 Lee moved north hoping to cut northern railroad lines, and force Lincoln to move more troops to the defense of Washington (and away from Richmond). At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 2 and 3 the Confederate army made its supreme effort which failed � after loosing over 25,000 men, Lee was lucky to get the remainder of his army back to Virginia. On the balance, despite all the heroic action, the fighting in the east was inconclusive. Inconclusive results spelled defeat for the Confederacy. The Army of Northern Virginia's great offensive power was forever broken. July 4, 1863 After a 47 day siege, Vicksburg surrendered, yielding 30,000 prisoners and northern control of the Mississippi River. The war would go on for another 21 months, but in effect the result was assured � the Confederate forces were hopelessly overpowered. March, 1864 Grant was made general-in-chief. Grant, using his superior forces relentlessly, drove Lee back into a defensive position at Petersburg where he stayed until the last week of the war. Simultaneously, William T. Sherman began his march to the sea, destroying everything of use to the Confederacy in a swath sixty miles wide. December 10, Sherman reached Savannah. Resupplied from the sea, Sherman then turned north to join Grant. During these final campaigns, the Confederacy had no hope of winning. The only reason they continued to resist was the hope that the North might grow weary of the heavy losses and therefore choose not to finish the war that it had won. after June 1864 Grant's heavy casualties drop sharply, and the capture of Atlanta in September caused the Northern public morale to soar. November 1864 Lincoln was reelected with 55 percent of the vote. April 1865 Richmond was captured and burned. on, April 9, 1865 Lee surrendered the remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House. Civil War Costs: � the lives of 40% of the total combined forces for both sides. � 618,000 soldiers died and almost 500,000 were wounded: 360,000 Union and 258,000 Confederate deaths (World War II deaths: 405,000). � The Battle of Gettysburg killed more men (7,058) than had died in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 combined. � One out of 11 men of service age was killed in the war. � About 1 out of 6 was either killed or wounded. Because of the smaller population base during the Civil War, had World War II produced the same proportion of casualties as did the Civil War, over 2.5 million men would have died. April 14, 1865 President Lincoln attended a play at Washington's Ford Theater. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a pro-Confederate fanatic. Yet among Lincoln's papers historians have found a 1854 document which stated: "If A can prove conclusively that he may of right enslave B � why may not B snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A is white and B is black. It is color then; the lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color, exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of blacks, and therefore you have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own. But you say, it is a question of interest; and if you make it your interest, you have the right to enslave others. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you." Learning Objective: Understand Northern racial views. Southern secession transformed the issue in America from a question of slavery or race to a question of Union, on which most of the North could unite. Northern support of the war was based upon a coalition of Unionists who knew they could not defeat the secessionists without antislavery support and antislavery men who knew they could not abolish slavery without the unionist support, nor without defeating the Confederacy. --The victory of the coalition put an end to its reason for existence, for the two allies ceased to need one another. --The Confederate surrender did just what secession had done, but in a reverse direction: it transformed the issue back again from a question of union to a question of the status of blacks, and on this question blacks had far fewer supporters in the North as freedmen than they had ever had as slaves. --Whenever a successful coalition breaks up after a war because of dissension among the victors, the vanquished find an opportunity to assert themselves. This is what happened in the defeated South. Abraham Lincoln's racial views illustrate the ambivalence that many northerners had concerning slavery and blacks. The strongest evidence of the racist strain in Lincoln's thinking appeared in one of his debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1865. Lincoln said: "I will say then, that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white man." Lincoln also stated in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates that the Republicans looked upon slavery as "a wrong. . .a moral, social, and political wrong." Thus, to Lincoln, and many northerners, it was not the racial prejudice and discrimination that bothered them about slavery, it was the institution itself. Segregation and legal inequality were acceptable, but slavery was not. Lincoln spelled out the question of the priority of his values to Horace Greeley in an August, 1862 letter: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone [which is exactly what he did in the Emancipation Proclamation], I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help save the Union. . . . I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere be free." For Lincoln: one belief : value of the Union > more important than belief: the moral wrong of slavery. � Lincoln never lost sight of the fact that he was fighting a war supported by an unstable coalition of conservative Unionists and radical antislavery men, and that if the coalition ever broke down, he would lose the war. � The other crucial circumstance was that the border slave states were on hair-trigger, and the slightest false step would send them into the Confederacy. � with this in mind�. September 22, 1862 1- Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation after the Northern victory at Antietam, stating that in those areas still in rebellion against the United States on the first of January, 1863, all slaves should be emancipated. The document did not physically free anyone, even after three months, because it applied only to areas over which the Union government had no control. The Proclamation was one last attempt by Lincoln to get the seceding states to cease their resistance and thus save their slaves. Slavery was legal in Kentucky and Delaware until 8 months after the war, when the ratification of the 13th amendment brought it to an end. 2 - Lincoln also knew that the Proclamation would make it difficult for Britain and France to support the Confederacy once the Civil War became a war of slave emancipation. 3 �The North was becoming sickened by the high casualties of the war. The Proclamation allowed the Union to use freedmen in the army. About 179,000 blacks served in the military � 12 percent of the total Union force at the end of the war was black. They were paid about $7 a month (half of white pay). Learning Objective: Understand the goals and objectives of the different plans of reconstruction put forth by President Lincoln, President Johnson, and the "Radicals" in Congress. During Reconstruction (1865-1877) the nation had to grapple with the following problems: 1) what role would the freedmen play in American society? 2) how much power should the ex-Confederates be allowed in southern and national polity 3) which branch of the federal government � executive or legislative�would dominate the national government? The different plans of reconstruction were attempts to deal with these problems. Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction (December 8, 1863). When 10% of the whites of a state took an oath supporting the Constitution, the Union, and the wartime measures emancipating slaves, they might organize a republican form of government for the state, which would be recognized as the true government of the state, and they might receive a full pardon for any service to the Confederacy "with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves." The process of reconstruction would be managed by former Confederates. Lincoln did not anticipate black participation in the forming of these governments; the proclamation contained no guarantees of rights for blacks, beyond the recognition of emancipation. Tennessee came back into the Union in 1866 under this plan. The Wade-Davis Bill (July, 1864). An attempt by the Republicans in Congress to take the reconstruction process away from the executive branch and to insure that ex-Confederates would have little power on the national level. Required 50% of the body of citizens eligible to vote (excluding ex- Confederates by requiring an oath of continuous past loyalty: the so- called "ironclad oath") to petition to form a new government. Implicitly the Radicals did not encourage a speedy restoration to the Union for it was unlikely that any former Confederate state could easily meet these demands. Blacks were excluded from participation. Vetoed by Lincoln. This bill drew the issue not only as to what the policy of reconstruction should be, but also where the authority for deciding policy lay�with the Congress or the President. The Johnson Plan for Reconstruction (May, 1865). Andrew Johnson was a Union Democrat from Tennessee. He was a rigid, anti-black, anti-southern planter, and he never understood the attitudes of northerners. He was selected as Vice President by the Republicans in an attempt to prove that it was a Union Party in the broadest sense. In April 1865 John Wilkes Booth made him President for a term only 40 days short of the full four years. Johnson issued two proclamations while Congress was in recess. He granted amnesty to former Confederates who took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and federal laws. Their property was restored to them, except for slaves and any lands and goods that were already in the process of being confiscated. 14 classes of persons were excepted from the general amnesty, including the highest-ranking civil and military officers, all those who had deserted judicial posts or seats in Congress, and persons whose taxable property was worth more than $20,000. These men had to make individual applications for amnesty (this clause illustrates Johnson's hatred of the planter class). In the second proclamation in which Johnson outlined his requirements for the reconstruction of North Carolina, and which foreshadowed the policy he would follow in future proclamations to other states, Johnson appointed a unionist provisional government, with authority to hold an election for a constitutional convention to reorganize the government of the state. Eligibility to vote in this election was restricted to those who had taken the loyalty pledge (which admitted ex-Confederates), and who were eligible under the laws prior to secession (which excluded blacks). The southern states had to nullify their ordinances of secession, show their acceptance of the abolition of slavery by ratifying the 13th amendment, and repudiate the Confederate war debts (again attacking the planter class). Johnson failed to enforce these terms (for example MS failed to ratify the 13th amendment) yet Johnson nevertheless recognized the reconstructed governments. In elections of 1865 the voters of the South sent many prominent ex- Confederates to Congress including 4 former rebel generals and the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens. Congress rejected Johnson's plan because they wanted to insure black participation (for their Republican votes), and they wanted to reduce the power of the planter class (who were the leaders of the southern Democrats). The Southern congressmen were turned away at the door. The Radicals informed Johnson that they would not welcome traitors into their midst. Congress also wanted to regain the power that it had lost to the Executive during the Civil War. In an attempt to continue to regulate black labor the Southern states passed a series of "black codes" that restricted the rights of blacks. In some states, blacks were permitted to work only as domestic servants or in agriculture. Other states made it illegal for blacks to live in urban areas. In no state were blacks allowed to vote or bear arms. Mississippi required freedmen to sign 12 month labor contracts before January 10 of each year. Those who failed to do so could be arrested, and their labor sold to the highest bidder. The Republicans in Congress were determined to assert their authority over the South and the president. They passed a Freedmen's Bureau Act (1866) that oversaw the welfare of the freedmen, exercised military jurisdiction in the South by taking a case involving a freedman out of the civil courts and dealt with it by military law. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 sought to protect the freedmen's rights by bringing such rights under federal jurisdiction. March 1867The Radicals then took control of reconstruction by imposing military reconstruction upon the South. The South was divided into 5 military districts with a general of the army in charge of each. The military governors were to conduct a voter registration, for which blacks would be eligible, but whites who held public office before the Civil War and supported the Confederacy would not. When the registration was completed, the governors were to hold elections for new constitutional conventions for each state. These conventions were required to write black suffrage into the new state constitutions. When the constitutions had been drafted by the conventions and ratified by the voters and when the 14th amendment had been ratified by the state, the state's constitution might be submitted to Congress for approval. If approved, the state would be readmitted. The fight for control of the national government led to the impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson. In 1867 Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act forbidding the President from removing officeholders who had been appointed by him and confirmed by the Senate (in 1926 the Supreme Court ruled that Congress can not interfere with the President's control over the executive branch). Johnson removed Secretary of War Stanton who had been appointed by Lincoln. He was working with the Radicals in Congress in an attempt to undermine Johnson's authority. March 1868 House of Representatives (vote of 126 to 47) impeached Johnson on 11 counts. Nine of these counts dealt with the Tenure of Office Act and two of them accused Johnson of trying to discredit Congress. The Senate tried the President. The vote to convict him was 35 to 19, one short of the 2/3 majority required for conviction. With this result the independence of the executive branch was maintained and the attempt to remove Johnson from office collapsed, but for the rest of his term, Congress, not Johnson, made the major policy decisions for the country. Learning Objective: Understand the "Civil War amendments" to the Constitution. The "Civil War amendments" were an attempt by Congress to insure that the goals of Reconstruction could not be overturned by southern state legislatures after ex-Confederates had regained control. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery and gave Congress the power of enforcement. The Fifteenth Amendment proclaimed that neither the federal nor the state government could deny the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of slavery. If the Republicans could outlaw disfranchisement of blacks on a nationwide basis by a constitutional amendment, there would be several advantages: 1) it would avoid arousing the electorate in the northern states�the state legislatures understood the advantage of the of the black vote to the party 2) they would fight one battle instead of a whole series 3) the amendment would gain them black votes as a partial offset to the anti- black votes which they had already antagonized by their southern policies. Black enfranchisement added about 146,000 voters to the Republican party and these voters were strategically distributed in states that usually were very close in presidential elections. Learning Objective: Understand the Compromise of 1877. The presidential election of 1876 marked the official end of Reconstruction. The Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, and Democrats Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote (52% to 48%), but Republican-controlled election boards in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana claimed victory � despite higher Democratic votes. They claimed that blacks had been prevented from voting in those states. Without the electoral votes of these states, Tilden had 184 undisputed votes � 1 short of the majority he needed. If the disputed votes all went to Hayes, he would have the 185 necessary to win. Congress appointed an Electoral Commission consisting of 15 men selected from the House, Senate and the Supreme Court. Since the Commission divided on strict party lines, 8 Republicans to 7 Democrats, in all of its decisions, it lost any moral authority which it might have had. Democrats were convinced, probably correctly, that the Republicans were stealing the election they had fairly won. Because they controlled the House of Representatives, they were in a position to prevent the completion of the count of votes by refusing to meet with the Senate in a joint session, which is constitutionally required for receiving the electoral votes. The Election Commission awarded the Presidency to Hayes and the Democrats agreed not to try block the election (since Tilden would not be elected anyway) and the Republicans agreed to withdraw the last remaining troops from the South (which Hayes was probably going to do after the election anyway). Southern Democrats gave great publicity to their action in "ransoming" the last two of the states (SC & LA) which were still "unredeemed," but they said much less about the fact that they had also extorted from Hayes a promise to support large subsidies and perhaps railroad land grants for a Texas and Pacific railroad, which would permit southern financial adventurers to enjoy some of the governmental largesse which they had been denouncing the Republicans for receiving. With the Compromise of 1877 the Democratic ascendancy completely subordinated Southern blacks. They were a subordinate caste, not yet legally segregated, but segregated in practice, and legal segregation would come by 1900. The Civil War was not fought for black rights. It was a conflict between two forms of society over which one would dominate the American system. Slavery was seen as a impediment to future American progress by the North. Most Northerners thought of the freedmen simply as a local southern problem, and during Reconstruction considered policy for them primarily as an aspect of protecting the program and the power of the Republican party. White Southerners did not want blacks to have social, political, or economic equality and their programs reflected that goal. Thus, neither side was committed to black rights. When the Republicans realized that they could remain in power without the black Southern vote, they abandoned them. When Southerners regained local control in the 1880s they insured that blacks would be disfranchised and segregated. It was not until the 1960s when a growing northern black vote became important, and television showed the world southern racism, that blacks gained the legal rights that had been denied them since they had been brought to the New World. Thus, while the American people had achieved what Lincoln called his "paramount objective"�saving the Union � they had not been able to resolve a dilemma which was perhaps insoluble in any case � the dilemma of reconciling the sections without sacrificing the quest for a new life by American blacks, or of creating the basis for such a new life without making the hostility between the sections permanent. To the North, the reconciliation of the white Southerner to the Union was more important the protection of the legal, social, and political rights of the black Southerner. Learning Objective: Understand the economy of the South after Reconstruction. Southern political leaders hoped to copy the economic success of the North. � invited Northern business people to invest money in industry and transportation in the South. � limited advances, however, the South remained a "colony" of the North. � The South essentially produced raw materials for Northern factories. � So rapid was the expansion of the North and West that by 1900 the South had a smaller percentage of the nation's factories and capital than it had in 1860. Throughout this period, Southerners were poorer and less urbanized than Northerners. In 1860, the income of the average Southerner was about 72 percent of the national average�in 1900 it was 51 percent. Only 8.5 percent of the population of the South Atlantic states below Maryland was urban in 1890, as compared with 51.7 percent of the population of the North Atlantic states from Pennsylvania up. In 1880 the estimated per capita wealth in the South was $376 as compared with a national average of $870. In 1919 it was estimated that per capita income in the South was about 40 percent lower than the national average. Closely related to Southern poverty was a lag in literacy, education, libraries, public health, and living standard. The South also lost political power during this period. During the 72 years between Washington and Lincoln, Southerners controlled the presidency for 50 years. In 60 of those years the Chief Justice had been from the South. The South had also furnished about half of the Supreme Court justices, nearly half of the men of Cabinet rank, and more than half of the Speakers of the House of Representatives. During the next 50 years no Southerner was elected president or vice president, and Southerners made up only about 10 percent of the Supreme Court justices, diplomats, and Cabinet members. Well into the twentieth century, the South remained a satellite of both northern industry and northern politics. I. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the role of the national government during the period 1877-1890. 1) The national government was inactive during this period for the following reasons: a) Presidents had a narrow view of government b) Control of government was split between Democrats & Republicans c) Lack of a national consensus d) State and local governments dealt with most issues e) The national government lacked the money, information & personnel necessary to do effective work. 2) The patronage system (giving government jobs to political supporters) was a contentious issue. The 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Act created the civil service system. 3) The control of the money supply was debated. The issue was fundamentally was over whether the policy of the government would be one of inflation (silver backed currency) or deflation (gold backed currency). 4) Farmers tried to reduce high tariffs (38-58%). They failed. 5) Corruption was a major issue, especially during the Grant Administration. It was not as bad during the rest of the era. Importance: During the �Gilded Age� the national government played a minor role in most people�s lives. II. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the characteristics of the transMississippi West. 1) Native American tribes varied greatly in culture. Most Plains Indians were nomadic hunters dependent on the Buffalo. White man's diseases were devastating. Constant warfare between Indians and whites from 1607 until the defeat of Geronimo in 1886. 2) In 1887 Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor which led to the Dawes Severalty Act. This act made Indians citizens and reduced Indian land from 138 acres to 48 million acres. 3) It was difficult to get capital to move west. The resources of the frontier fueled U.S. expansion. Two groups moved west--those who used nature & those who subdued nature. West of 98th meridian rainfall is generally less than 10 inches a year; timber was not available to settlers and a entire new way of life had to be created. 4) Trappers were the first group to exploit the frontier. Big business. Rendezvous was a method by which trappers got their furs to market. Trapping frontier ended in 1830s. 5) The mining frontier lasted about 40 years (1848-1896). Mining provided the capital necessary for U.S. industrial expansion, and helped open up the West. 6) The cattle frontier lasted from 1867-1890s. The long drive got cattle to Kansas railroads and caused conflict between Texas cattlemen and Kansas farmers. The winters of 1885-87, the invention of barbed wire, and the movement of farmers to the frontier killed the cattle frontier. 7) The lack of national police caused violence to be greater on the American frontier than on the Canadian or Australian frontier. The vigilante dealt with law and order. Importance: During this period, the transMississippi West was settled by European-Americans. Native American tribes were defeated either in battle or by disease, and through a succession of frontiers, the West was transformed. III. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the impact industrialization had upon America. 1) The U.S. had the resources needed for industrialization: a) natural resources�raw materials were abundant b) capital resources�provided through the reinvestment of profits, large financial institutions, and government assistance c) human resources�numbers, education, health & attitude effect human resources. 2) Industrialization was caused by the need to reduce the price of goods so they would be competitive in the largest possible market. 3) The railroad (1850s) and the steamship (1870s) enabled manufacturers to penetrate previously closed markets. Led to regional specialization (an area concentrates on those goods it can produce the most efficiently). Importance: Industrialization brought about the most fundamental transformation of human existence in history. IV. IV. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the social consequences of early industrialization. 1) Industrialization drastically increased population. Population was redistributed from rural to urban for the following reasons: a) More efficient to put the worker near the sources of raw materials b) The size & cost of machinery c) The desire to concentrate manufacturing facilities for efficiency d) City life was perceived as better than country life. 2) Work became structured and depersonalized. Most labor moved from skilled to unskilled. Although wages were low (average of $8.37 a week in 1900) and hours long, real wages rose and the price of goods declined. 3) Industrialists responded to competition with: a) Pools a group of producers limit production or set prices b) Trusts a board runs several companies without legally being the owners of the companies c) Vertical integration a firm controls all aspects of extraction, manufacturing and distribution d) Horizontal integration a firm acquires control of other firms that make the same product. 4) Workers responded to industrialization by attempting to bargain collectively (unions). Government opposition to unions, and Welfare Capitalism (companies give benefits in return for labor docility), kept unions ineffective. 4) First national union was the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor (1869). Founded for �all who toiled.� Industry and government used the Haymarket Affair of 1886 to kill the union. 5) The Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) was a socialist union that appealed to the workers in the most dangerous and lowest paid jobs. Government repression during World War I and the 1917 Communist revolution in Russia killed it. 6) The American Federation of Labor (AFL) formed in 1886 for skilled workers. The most successful of all unions until the New Deal (1930s). Importance: Industrialists and workers try to adjust to the new world created by machines. Industrialists were much more successful than workers. 8. 1890s: Populism, Race & Foreign Policy I. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the Populist movement. 1) Agriculture declined because technology allowed increased production and world wide competition to reduce prices. Mortgaged & tenant farms increased. In the South, the lien system (farmer mortgaged future cash crop for goods) was the rule. Staple crop farmers (cotton, grain) hurt the most. 2) Farmers blamed the railroads, national banks, corporations, and the tariff for their problems. They thought there was a conspiracy against them. 3) The Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890) required the treasury to purchase 4 .5 million ounces of silver each month to inflate currency. Failed to stop deflation. 4) Populist (People�s) party formed in 1892. Advocated: � "Subtreasury system" where government would store crops and lend farmers money � Abolition of national banks � Free coinage of silver � Graduated income tax � Reduction of tariff rates � Direct election of senators � Government control of the railroads and telegraph companies. 5) The Populists tried to build a class alliance between South & West, blacks & whites, farmers & labor. They failed. 6) The Panic of 1893 enabled the Republicans to gain control of the national government until 1930. 7) In the election of 1896 the Democratic Party and the Populist party "fused" and both parties nominated William Jennings Bryan as their candidate. Fusion destroyed the Populist party when the Republican William McKinley won the election. Importance: The Populist movement was the �farmers� last gasp.� It was their attempt to respond to the changes being brought about by industrialization. They were not successful in their attempts, although many of their proposals later became law. II. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand race relations in America after Reconstruction. 1) After 187, the federal government allowed Southern whites to control local race issues. Blacks were subjugated to second-class citizenship. 2) Southern blacks were allowed to vote & hold minor political offices until around 1900. When the Populists appealed for black votes along class lines, Southern conservative Democrats used black votes to defeat them. Once blacks held the balance of power between conflicting groups of Southern whites they were disfranchised. 3) In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the Supreme Court sanctioned segregation. 4) Under the "Mississippi Plan" blacks were disfranchised though the poll tax, literacy tests, and residence requirements. About 2,500 African- Americans were lynched between 1884-1900. Importance: The Populist movement and white racism led to institutionalized discrimination. African-Americans were disfranchised, segregated and lynched. The aftermath of these policies still affect America. III. OBJ: Understand why Booker T. Washington�s philosophy was accepted by whites during the era of segregation. 1) Booker T. Washington advocated that blacks accept social inequality in return for economic opportunity from whites (the so-called "Atlanta Compromise"). Washington said what whites wanted to hear and he became the accepted spokesman for blacks. 2) Washington controlled Republican patronage in the South and he used it to maintain his influence. 3) W.E.B. Du Bois was the major opponent of Washington. He demanded that blacks be given the franchise, civic equality and the chance for an equal education and economic advancement. He helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Importance: The triumph of �Atlanta Compromise� meant blacks would accept second-class citizenship until the 1960s. IV. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand why the United States went to war with Spain in 1898. 1) Cuba was a Spanish colony fighting for its independence. 2) The "de Lome Letter" and the sinking of the U.S. warship Maine in Havana harbor increased pressure for war on president McKinley. 3) U.S. went to war for the following reasons: a) Panic of 1893; b) ports & markets; c) looking for "new frontiers"; d) to ensure a weak, independent Cuba; e) protect U.S. investments; and, f) to spread U.S. ideology. 4) The Teller Amendment to the declaration of war said that the U.S. would not make Cuba a colony. After an easy victory the U.S. made Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Wake & Guam colonies, and Cuba a protectorate. The U.S. received a military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in �perpetuity.� 5) Philippines insurrection took two years to subdue. More Americans died than the Spanish-American War. 6) The 1902 Platt Amendment kept Cuba under U.S. domination until Fidel Castro took power in 1959. 7) In Hawaii, American citizens revolted and took over the country in 1893. The islands were annexed as a war measure in 1898 so the U.S. could control Pearl Harbor. Importance: With the Spanish-American War the United States became a world power. V. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand U.S. policy toward China prior to World War II. 1) The Open Door Notes of 1899 and 1900 were successful attempts by the U.S. to insure the Western powers equal access to the China market. 2) The Boxer Rebellion (1900) was a failed attempt by Chinese nationalists to remove foreign domination from their country. The rebellion was put down by European, Japanese and U.S. troops. Importance: The �Open Door� became the foundation of American economic policy. VI. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand how and why the U.S. acquired the Panama Canal. 1) France had a contract with Columbia (which controlled Panama) to build a canal across the isthmus. The French canal company was going bankrupt and wanted to sell its rights to the U.S. 2) Columbia rejected a U.S. offer of $15 million, and an annual rent for the canal zone. The U.S. and the French canal company encouraged Panamanians to revolt and gain their independence. In 1903 the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty with Panama granted the U.S. a 10 mile wide canal zone. In 1977 the U.S. agreed to return the Canal Zone to Panamanian sovereignty in 2000. Importance: The Panama Canal greatly benefited American trade and security. The way the U.S. got the canal led many Latin American countries to distrust the U.S. VII. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand U.S. relations with Latin America prior to World War I. 1) The "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine grew out of the 1904 Dominican Republic debt crisis. In the corollary the U.S. asserted that the U.S. would intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American states (collecting debts, maintaining order, etc.), but European nations (and later the Japanese) were not welcome. 2) Under Dollar Diplomacy President Taft hoped that U.S. financial supervision would promote order in Latin America. 3) These policies led to U.S. Marines staying in Nicaragua during 1912-33; in Haiti during 1915-34, and the Dominican Republic during 1916-24. 4) In 1916 the U.S. bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark. 5) Mexico was ruled by the dictator Porfirio Diaz, 1876-1911. Francisco Madero, a Liberal, overthrew Diaz. Madero was murdered by Victoriano Huerta in 1913 and Huerta took over the government. Civil War broke out between the "Constitutionalists," led by Venustiano Carranza & Pancho Villa, and Huerta's government forces. The U.S. supported the Constitutionalists. In April 1914, the U.S. navy attacked and occupied Veracruz, and Huerta fell from power in July. 6) After Carranza seized power, Pancho Villa led the fight against him. In March, 1916 Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, killing 19 Americans in an attempt to discredit Carranza. The U.S. Army invaded Mexico to chase Villa. U.S. troops finally left Mexico in January, 1917. Importance: U.S. intervention in the Caribbean and Mexico allowed the U.S. to dominate the region. Led distrust of the U.S. by Latin Americans. 9: Notes, Progressive Movement & the 1920s I. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the circumstances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America that led to the progressive movement. 1) The progressive movement was a white, middle class, Protestant, "native" American movement prior to World War I caused by: 1) urbanization--most rapid growth in U.S. history; 2) industrialization and technological change 3) immigration--during 1901-1910 "New Immigrants" from Southern and Eastern Europe were 71% of total (8,795,191). These factors caused the "progressives" to lose social, economic and political power in many northern cities. The progressive movement was an attempt to regain control over the American agenda. Importance: The progressive movement illustrates how people respond to change by using the political system. II. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the outcomes of the progressive movement. 1) Prior to World War I in many cities, immigrants, through the Democratic party, gained control of the political system. Under the name of "reform" the progressives attempted to throw out the Democratic "Machine." During this period, graft and corruption were ways of getting access to political decision-making power. In return for jobs and social help the immigrants gave the Democratic party their vote. 2) Progressive "reforms" made the American political system less democratic and more efficient. Recall (electorate can remove a politician from office), referendum (electorate votes on a political issue), and initiative (electorate can put an issue on the ballot) all took power from elected officials and gave power to interest groups. 3) Municipal civil service centralized power and made it difficult for the Democratic party to "reward" its followers with jobs. Power of immigrant groups was reduced and voter turnout decreased. 4) Zoning laws had the unintended effect of segregating people by wealth. 5) The 17th Amendment (1913) allowing the direct election Senators, and the 19th Amendment (1919) giving women the vote, were attempts to help the middle- class gain power. Importance: These outcomes are still a major part of the American political system. III. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the general character of the United States during the first two decades of the 20th century. 1) The �New Immigration" caused great concerns and conflict: � 1882: Chinese barred. � 1908: "Gentlemen's Agreement," > Japanese immigration restricted � 1917 a literacy test established for immigrants � 1921 / 1924 quota systems established that favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. 2) The modern Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1915. It was Anti- Catholic Black Immigrant Semitic 3) Prohibition was an attack on the immigrant and urbanization. In 1919 the 18th Amendment forbade the selling of intoxicating liquors. The 21st Amendment (1933) ended prohibition. 4) Fundamentalism, (1925 Scopes trial) was another attempt to preserve traditional American values. 5) Per capita income rose from $480 to $567 from 1900 to 1920, but wealth was maldistributed. 6) Electricity, the phonograph, radio, movies, and the automobile had a great effect on American culture. Young people were significantly affected and traditional values were questioned. The popularity of jazz and the Harlem Renaissance are two examples of changing cultural values. Importance: Whenever a dominate culture believes that it is under attack, it will respond with measures that it hopes will protect its fundamental values. The America of the 1920s was no exception to this rule. IV. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the Red Scare of 1919-1920. 1) The success of the 1917 Communist revolution in Russia, increased immigration, the desire to use the fear of radicals to gain political power by some politicians (especially Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer), and post World War I labor unrest all helped cause the first Red Scare. 2) The failure of unions after the war to gain power, immigration restriction, the excesses of politicians, and the strength of organizations like the Klan caused the Red Scare to decline. Importance: The Red Scare of the 1920s foreshadows the Red Scare of the 1950s and illustrates the fear of Communism that permeated America. V. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand American national politics during the 1920s. 1) Republicans controlled the national government. Conservative and pro- business. Democrats split over the cultural issues of the day (prohibition, religion, race and immigration). In the 1928 presidential race the Herbert Hoover (Rep) defeated Democratic Al Smith (Dem), the first Catholic candidate for president. This election personified the cultural issues of the era. 2) Under President Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) corruption prevailed. The Teapot Dome scandal was the worst of several incidents. 3) President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) got rid of corruption, and was very pro-business. The policies of his administration helped cause the Great Depression. Importance: The economic and political policies of the Republican party in the 1920s illustrate the cultural conflicts of the decade. Republican policies are blamed for the stock market crash of 1929, and the party suffered because it was in power when the Great Depression started.
11: Notes, The Great Depression & the New Deal I. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the causes of the Great Depression. 1) The Great Depression was triggered by the U.S. stock market crash of 1929. 2) Reasons for the Great Depression: a) World War I caused countries to increase their industrial capacity thereby reducing post-war trade b) high tariffs inhibited trade c) wealth was maldistributed--the masses had inadequate purchasing power d) too many people invested in the stock market without adequate capital to cover losses e) there was no government regulation of the stock marketf f) the money supply was inadequate to sustain economic growth g) the interdependent nature of world-wide loans caused the depression to spread throughout the world from the U.S. Importance: After the crash, politicians and economists changed many of the nation�s economic policies because of the factors that led to the Great Depression. The Republican party was blamed for the Great Depression and it lost political power because of that perception. II. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the presidency of Herbert Hoover. 1) While Hoover did attempt to respond to the depression, his actions were too little, too late to halt the continuing economic decline. 2) Hoover�s order to the army to drive the veterans of the Bonus Army out of Washington, DC in the summer of 1932 illustrated his lack of rapport with the people. 3) In the 1932 presidential election the governor of New York, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, easily defeated the Republican Hoover. Importance: Hoover�s inability to deal with the depression during his four years in office further weakened the Republican party. III. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the New Deal during the first term of FDR. Roosevelt immediately began attacking the causes of the depression. He had Congress reorganize the banking industry, � give government loans and subsidies to farmers (AAA) � start relief through government subsidized jobs (FERA, WPA, CCC) � create the Tennessee Valley Authority � save people's homes with the Home Owner's Loan Corporation � guaranteed bank deposits (FDIC) � establish federal regulation of the stock market (SEC) In 1935, to help his reelection campaign: � rural America was electrified (REA) � under the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act unions were guaranteed the right to collective bargain & strike � . The Social Security Act insured workers against unemployment, injury on the job and old age. Importance: The programs of the New Deal fundamentally changed the role of government in America. The popularity of these programs with many people strengthened the Democratic party. IV. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the presidential election of 1936. 1) Conservatives in the Liberty League and wealthy businessmen hated FDR. Roosevelt used anger at them because of the depression to his political benefit. 2) Senator Huey Long (D-LA) led the fight on the Left against FDR. He started Share the Wealth Clubs that had great appeal to the most downtrodden members of American society. Assassinated in 1935. 3) Father Charles Coughlin was a Catholic priest with a popular radio show who attacked Roosevelt for his refusal to inflate the money supply. Censured by the Vatican. 4) Dr. Francis Townsend rallied the elderly with his proposal of a monthly payment of $200 to all Americans over the age of 60. Social Security undercut his appeal. 5) Roosevelt easily defeated the Republican nominee Kansas governor Alf Landon. 6) This election created the New Deal Democratic political coalition that kept Democrats in power until the 1960s: urban ethnic groups, northern blacks, union members, small farmers, and Southern whites. Importance: The election of 1936 encouraged FDR to pass several liberal programs in order to �steal his opponents thunder.� It made the Democratic party the country�s majority party. V. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand why the New Deal ended. 1) The court packing scheme, in which FDR tried to add members to the Supreme Court, caused Roosevelt to lose public support, and allowed politicians who opposed his policies to safely attack them. 2) Sit down strikes in 1937 caused middle class Americans to fear for the safety of private property. 3) The recession of 1937 caused people to lose faith with the New Deal. 4) Conservatives in Congress began to seriously oppose FDR�s programs�the 40 hour week & minimum wage (40 cents an hour) increased alienation. Roosevelt tried to purge Southern conservative Democrats from Congress; when he failed a Southern Democratic-Republican conservative coalition controlled Congress after the 1938 elections--FDR could get little legislation passed. 5) World War II, which began in 1939, ended the Great Depression and the demand for new domestic social and economic programs. Importance: These events show the inherent conservative nature of most Americans. When the economic crisis ended they did not welcome social or economic change. VI. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the impact of the New Deal on American society. 1) With the creation of the Executive Office of the Presidency the President significantly increased his power. 2) The federal government became much more involved in people's lives. 3) Interest groups increased their influence on government. 4) The government guaranteed most of its citizens minimum economic standards (a �safety net�). 5) It helped protect America from a radical takeover during the 1930s. Importance: Before the New Deal the federal government played a minor role in most people�s lives. The New Deal greatly increased the power of the presidency and the national government. For the first time the federal government became seriously involved in social and economic justice. I. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany. 1) The Great Depression caused Germans to move to extremist parties like the German National Socialist Labor Party (the Nazis). 2) The middle class was looking for a savior from Bolshevism. The Depression inflamed German hatred of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler denounced the Communists, the Weimar Republic, and the Jews as the basis of Germany's problems. 3) In July, 1932 the Nazis became the strongest party in the Reichstag (the German parliament), and on January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. 4) Using arson of the Reichstag building as an excuse, Hitler abolished civil rights. The Ordinance for the Protection of the People and the State was issued in Feb., 1933. It placed restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, and the rights of assembly; it violated the privacy of postal and telephonic communications; warrants were no longer needed for house searches, or for confiscating or restricting private property. The Communist party was outlawed. Anti-Nazi leaders were arrested. After March, 1933 Hitler ruled without the Reichstag. To help achieve total power (totalitarianism) the Nazis used a political police (the Gestapo), private thugs (the SS corps), and propaganda. Importance: Hitler used legal means to come to power by playing on the fears of the German people. Illustrates the power of demagoguery. II. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the European causes of World War II. 1) In 1935 Hitler began to rearm Germany. In 1936 German troops marched into the Rhineland. The allies appeased Hitler (appeasement: yielding to the demands of the dictators in the belief that once these demands were satisfied the dictators would turn into good members of the international community). The World War I post-war generation was pacifistic. In addition, France was weakened by internal dissent. 2) In 1935 Italy took Ethiopia; the condemnation of the League of Nations pushed Mussolini into Hitler's camp. 3) In July, 1936 Civil War broke out in Spain between the left-wing republican government and fascists led by General Francisco Franco. Germany and Italy supported Franco, the Soviet Union supported the government. Franco won the war in March, 1939. 4) In March, 1938 Austria was incorporated into Germany. In the spring of 1938 Germany began to make demands on Czechoslovakia for the Sudeten region. Czechoslovakia was prepared to resist and was allied with the Soviet Union and France, but at Munich in January, 1939 the British and French gave into Hitler. By March, 1939, all of Czechoslovakia was under Germany control. 5) In August, 1939 Germany and The Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact and agreed that in case of war Poland would be divided between them. On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland officially starting World War II. Importance: The failure of the European powers to stand up to Hitler and Mussolini prior to World War II probably led to war, and would also have a profound affect on Western post war attitudes toward the USSR. III. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the war in Europe during 1939-1941. 1) With Soviet help, Germany easily conquered Poland. 2) In October, 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland. Finland capitulated in March, 1940. 3) In April, 1940 the Germans took Norway and Denmark, and in May Germany attacked France through the Low Countries. France surrendered 6 weeks later. The British managed to save about 338,000 troops through the evacuation at Dunkirk. Italy joined the war on Germany�s side, attacking France, Greece, and the British in North Africa. 4) In the summer of 1940 Germany began bombing Britain to try to gain air superiority for an invasion. Hitler lost the Battle of Britain and his chance to invade England. 5) In September,1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact. In October, Hungary, Romania, & Bulgaria allied with Germany. 6) After going to Italy�s aid in the Balkans, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941. Importance: The easy victories of 1939-41 made Hitler overconfident and greatly alarmed the people of the United States. If Great Britain had been defeated, the Axis might have won the war. IV. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand Japanese aggression that led to World War II. 1) The following factors were responsible for Japanese imperialism: a) the desire for equality with the Western powers b) getting access to raw materials and markets c) the instability of East Asia. 2) World War I upset the balance of power in Asia. In 1915, while the European powers and the United States were preoccupied with the war in Europe, Japan presented The 21 Demands to China. These demands were an attempt by Japan to gain hegemony over China. The U.S. opposed these demands. 3) At the Versailles Peace Conference Japan believed that it was still not being treated as an equal world power. 4) At the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 the size of the navies of Japan, Britain and the U.S. was agreed upon, the U.S. and Britain promised Japan they would not increase their armed forces in Asia, and the 1905 British-Japanese Alliance was terminated. 5) The Great Depression caused Japan to attempt to increase its power in China. China was undergoing increased nationalism under Chiang Kai-shek, and it resisted Japan's advances. Nationalism became a run away force in Japan. The Manchurian Incident of September, 1931 gave Japan the excuse to take all of Manchuria and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. Importance: Japanese objectives in Asia were in direct conflict with the United States. V. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand United States� foreign policy prior to its entry into World War II. 1) During the early 1930s Americans were isolationist--the 1934 Senate Nye Committee investigation had convinced Americans that World War I had been fought for greedy bankers. 2) The July 1937 "China Incident" began to bring America out of its isolationist mood. The U.S. began to put pressure on Japan to respect the integrity of China. 3) After the fall of Poland, Congress passed the "Cash and Carry Act.� 4) The fall of France moved FDR to run for a 3rd term. Congress appropriated over $10 billion for the military, and passed the first peacetime draft in the nation's history. 5) In September, 1940 the U.S. gave Britain 50 WWI destroyers in exchange for eight Western Hemisphere military bases. 6) In March, 1940 Congress passed the "Lend Lease Act,� and in April and July 1941 American troops occupied Greenland and Iceland. American warships began to convoy U.S. shipping half-way across the Atlantic. After the September, 1941 "Greer Incident" U.S. warships began to escort British merchant ships, and the U.S. navy was issued orders to "shoot on sight" any German submarine. An undeclared war existed in the Atlantic. 7) Japan's goal was hegemony over China and the establishment of a "New Order" for Asia under Japan's guidance. In April, 1941 Japan and the USSR signed a neutrality pact. In July, 1941 Japan occupied French Indochina. The U.S. responded with a ban on the sale of aviation gasoline and scrap iron to Japan and gave China a $100 million loan. The U.S. fleet was moved to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Trade ceased between the two countries by July, 1941. 8) With only a year's supply of petroleum on hand, Japan either had to come to terms with the U.S. or strike for an independent supply. The December 7, 1941 attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor was an attempt to by Japan to gain time to overrun its targets in Southeast Asia. Importance: In both Europe and Asia the United States did not want any country to gain hegemony. By the end of 1941, the U.S. had done everything short of war to hinder German and Japanese war objectives. VI. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the war in Europe 1941-1945. 1) The U.S. used its great industrial capacity to become the "Arsenal of Democracy." 2) The blitzkrieg (lighting war) soon changed to a war of attrition. Casualties were huge. 3) The British wanted to attack Germany on the periphery, the U.S. wanted a direct assault. The Soviets demanded an immediate second front on the continent. The invasion of North Africa in November, 1942 (Operation Torch) was a compromise that allowed American troops to become involved in the war at an early date, but it postponed the cross channel invasion until June, 1944, and it greatly increased the power and the hostility of the Soviet Union in the post war world. 4) The battle of Stalingrad (October, 1942-January, 1943) was "the end of the beginning" for Germany. Germany was mass bombed from the air. In July, 1944 a group of German military officers attempted to assassinate Hitler they failed. The Battle of the Bulge (December, 1944) slowed the Allied advance, but the Rhine was crossed at Remagen on March 7, 1945. In April the Soviets moved into Berlin's suburbs. On May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered. Importance: Misunderstandings between the Allies during World War II helped lead to the Cold War. The war was one of total destruction and slaughter. VII. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. Near the end of the war the concentration camps were liberated and the full horror of the Holocaust was discovered. Beginning in late 1941 Hitler began a systematic extermination of European Jews. An estimated 6,000,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Importance: The Holocaust had great impact upon the democracies of the world after the war, in that they had stood by and let millions of people be exterminated. VIII. OBJECTIVE: The student will understand the war against Japan, 1942-45. 1) By the spring of 1942 the Japanese controlled much of Asia. In the battle of Midway (June, 1942) the Japanese lost air and naval superiority in the Pacific. Guadalcanal (August, 1942) was the first American offensive against the Japanese. The U.S. military effort was hurt by the country�s Europe first policy. 2) Mass bombings against the Japanese and a naval blockade created severe hardships for the Japanese people. The Japanese organized suicide (kamikaze) attacks on American warships. On August 6, 1945 the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. After the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945. At the Yalta Conference the Soviet Union promised to come into the war against Japan 3 months after the defeat of Germany. The USSR entered the war after the bombing of Hiroshima. 3) Much of Europe, China, Japan and the Soviet Union had been destroyed by the war. Sixty million people were dead. World War II destroyed Europe's wealth and influence, and helped the Communists gain power in China. After the war the USA and the Soviet Union would both attempt to dominate the earth. Importance: Because of racial and cultural hatred on both sides, the war in the Pacific was a �war without mercy,� culminating in the use of atomic weapons. IX. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand the domestic policy of the U.S. during World War II. 1) Like World War I, World War II was a total war in which the U.S., and all other nations involved, mobilized all their resources for war. WWII ended the Great Depression--real wages rose 50% during the war. The size of the government grew rapidly. Women moved into the workplace. As blacks moved north for war jobs, racial tensions increased. 2) People of Japanese decent were imprisoned. Of the 112,000 locked-up, 71,000 were American citizens. Over 20,000 Japanese-Americans fought in Europe. Importance: World War II led to profound social changes in the United States. The status of minorities and women began to improve. The standard of living rose to previously unimaginable heights. |
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