Intolerance & Civil Liberties
Red = loss of liberty/intolerance Black = expansion of liberties/rights
• 1791: Bill of Rights ratified
• 1798: Alien & Sedition Acts
• 1828: Andrew Jackson’s election begins era of
expanding voting to the common man
• 1848: Seneca Falls convention
• 1853: Know Nothing Party
• Civil War: suspension of Habeas Corpus
• 1868: 14th Amendment (equal treatment clause)
• 1870: 15th Amendment gives black men the vote
• Reconstruction: black codes and Ku Klux Klan
• End of 19th Century: literacy tests, poll taxes,
residence requirements
Intolerance &Civil Liberties
Red = loss of liberty/intolerance Black = expansion of liberties/rights
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1917: Espionage Act, Sedition Act; affirmation in Schenck v U.S.
1919: Red Scare
1920: 19th Amendment gives women the vote
1920s: Ku Klux Klan, Sacco & Vanzetti, Immigration act of 1924
WWII: Japanese-American Internment; Korematsu decision
1950s: McCarthyism
1953-1969: Warren Court rulings
1964: 24th Amendment outlaws the poll tax
1965: Griswold v. Connecticut gives right to privacy
1971: 26th Amendment lowers voting age to 18
1973: Roe v. Wade expands reproductive rights
1989: Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (and 1991’s
Casey v. Planned Parenthood) restricts reproductive rights
• 2001: Sept. 11 attacks and the Patriot Act
Rise of Political Parties
• 1792: Creation of first parties; split into
Federalists & Democratic-Republicans
• “The Bank”
Anti-federalists vs Federalists
– Poorer classes; Western;
rural; farmers & frontier
folk
– State’s Rights devotees
opposed the stronger
federal government
– Thomas Jefferson; Sam
Adams, Patrick Henry &
Richard Henry Lee
– Alarmed by the lack of a
Bill of Rights; Demanded
one for Constitutional
passage
– The “Establishment”;
East Coast; merchants &
manufacturers;
Wealthier; more
educated
– War & Shay’s Rebellion
convinced them of need
for more gov’t power
– George Washington, Ben
Franklin, James Madison
– Promised a bill of rights
by amendment
From two to one and back to two…
• 1816: begin Era of Good feelings (Federalists
fade away)
• 1824: controversial election of John Quincy
Adams splits country into Whigs and
Democrats
Democratic-Republicans become
Democrats and Whigs appear
Democrats
Whigs (early 1830s to mid-1850s)
• Favor local rule & limited • Favor Henry Clay’s American
government
System (national bank, a high
• Free trade (low tariffs)
protective tariff, & federal funding
of internal improvements)
• Equal economic
opportunity (for white • Make moral issues part of
males)
policies: oppose immorality, vice
• Distrust of elite (bankers
& crime (some of which they
& industrialists especially) blame on immigrants)
• Southerners, westerners, • New Englanders & mid-Atlantic &
small farmers, urban
upper-Mid-West; Protestants (of
workers
old-English heritage); middle-class
urban professionals
Return to Two (or more)
Political Parties
• 1840-1854: Several third parties in response
to immigration (American) and the lack of
resolution to slavery (Liberty, Free Soil,
Republican)
• 1860: first electoral victory of modern
Republican party (Whigs gone by now)
• 1890s: Populists
Political Parties
• 1900-1920: Progressives in both Democrat and
Republican parties (brief Bull Moose Party)
• 1936: Democrats become the new majority as a
result of FDR’s new coalition (ends long era of
Republican rule)
• 1948: Dixiecrats
• 1968: American Independent Party and realignment
of the South (after Democrats pass the 1964 Civil
Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act)
• 1980/1994: Reagan’s election (1980) and
Republicans retake Congress (1994) usher in the
“New Right”
Political Parties
• 1860-1932: Republican dominance of the
presidency (only Democratic exceptions are
Grover Cleveland & Woodrow Wilson)
• 1932-1980: Democratic Dominance of the
Presidency (only Republican exceptions are
Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon; but is
Jimmy Carter in 1976 a fluke of Watergate?)