CHAPTER 25—“America Moves to the City” (1865–1900)
AP Focus
Industrialization sparks urbanization, and cities become magnets for immigrants. Those who can afford
to leave behind the hustle and bustle of urban life move to the budding suburbs. See the table in The
American Pageant (13th ed., p. 560/14th ed., p. 598). Demographic Changes is an AP theme.
The late nineteenth century sees a surge of immigration, now from eastern and southern Europe. Most
encounter living and working conditions not appreciably better than what they had left. The tenement
floor plan (13th ed., p. 561/14th ed., p. 599) shows typical living conditions for impoverished urban
workers.
As it was for earlier immigrants, those who immigrate in the post–Civil War era are generally not
welcomed by those whose families established roots in America in an earlier period. Asians, Eastern and
Southern Europeans, and Jews often face hostility from those who consider themselves culturally
superior and who maintain that American culture is being weakened by these new immigrants. Take
note of President Grover Cleveland’s critique of this exclusionary sentiment (13th ed., p 571/14th ed., p.
609), and keep in mind that American Diversity is an AP theme.
Disappointed with the premature end of Reconstruction and the continuing struggle of blacks to achieve
social acceptance and political and economic equality, black leaders suggest various ways to defeat
racism. Some black leaders, such as Booker T. Washington, advocate a gradualist approach, while W. E.
B. Du Bois is committed to a more aggressive, confrontational approach.
Incensed by the expanding gap between wealth and poverty, corruption in government, and a host of
other social, economic, and political concerns, reformers put pen to paper and educate millions of
Americans about these problems. Books and journals, such as The Nation, provide readers an alternative
perspective to more widely known mainstream political ideas. Reform is an AP theme.
The foundations of the twentieth-century women’s rights movement are laid in the nineteenth century
by advocates, such as Victoria Woodhull and Jane Addams. The struggle over women’s suffrage is one
facet of the strain between those who identified with the notion of Victorian womanhood and those
who celebrated the new, modern American woman.
Take note of the following:
1.
The prohibition movement attracted those who claimed that alcohol consumption was immoral
and unchristian. Some contemporaneous critics of the movement refuted this perspective as a veiled
attempt to impose a set of social of social and cultural values on society.
2.
In 1909, W. E. B. Du Bois helped found a black civil rights organization that is still in existence,
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Chapter Theme
Theme: In the late nineteenth century, American society was increasingly dominated by large urban
centers. Explosive urban growth was accompanied by often disturbing changes, including the New
Immigration, crowded slums, new religious outlooks, and conflicts over culture and values. While many
Americans were disturbed by the new urban problems, cities also offered opportunities to women and
expanded cultural horizons.
Theme: African Americans suffered the most as the south lagged behind other regions of the country
with regard to educational improvements and opportunities. Two schools of thought emerged as to the
best way to handle this problem. Booker T. Washington advocated that blacks should gain knowledge of
useful trades. With this would come self-respect and economic security—Washington avoided the issue
of social equality. W.E.B. Du Bois demanded complete equality for blacks, both social as well as
economic.
CHAPTER 26—“The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution” (1865–1896)
AP Focus
Federal land grants entice whites to seek out new lives in the West, which brings them into conflict with
the Indians, many of whom had earlier been pushed west by the U.S. government. See the sardonic
observation made by one Indian in The American Pageant (13th ed., p. 596/14th ed., p. 635), and the
maps (13th ed., p. 602/14th ed., p. 642) showing the Indians’ vanishing lands.
By the end of the century, the frontier is closed—all of the land in the continental United States is
settled or can no longer be considered frontier, according to the Census Bureau.
As commercial farming overtakes the smaller family farm, the nation dramatically expands its agrarian
sector, producing a bounty of crops while driving out smaller farms. Small farmers and others are hurt
by a deflationary cycle, which drives many into debt and ultimately foreclosure.
Outraged that their profits are consumed by unregulated and unrestrained railroad companies, grain
storage and elevator operators, as well as the government’s failure to address the deflationary cycle
that has ruined many of them, farmers in the West establish the Grange. The Grange and other
grassroots organizations coalesce into a political party, the Populists.
One key political conflict of the post–Civil War era, especially late in the century, is over currency.
Debtors, farmers, the Democratic Party, and others favor silver-backed specie, which is inflationary.
Gold-backed specie is favored by, among others, businessmen and the Republican Party. William
Jennings Bryan, an opponent of the gold standard, passionately advocates the silver standard in his
famous Cross of Gold speech. The textbook quotes one scathing view, British (13th ed., p. 622/14th ed., p.
662). A map (13th ed., p. 623/14th ed., p. 663) shows how the country voted in the 1896 presidential
election; the Republicans captured the more heavily populated Northeast, which was essential to their
victory.
Take note of the following:
1.
Adding to the already considerable woes of the nation’s Indian population, the Dawes Severalty
Act of 1887 compelled Indians to relinquish legal control of their land.
2.
Coxey’s Army was a dramatic, if not necessarily effective, illustration of the plight of the nation’s
unemployed in the midst of the deepest depression the nation had yet experienced.
Chapter Themes
Theme: After the Civil War, whites overcame the Plains Indians’ fierce resistance and settled the Great
West, bringing to a close the long frontier phase of American history.
Theme: The farmers who populated the West found themselves the victims of an economic revolution
in agriculture. Trapped in a permanent debtor dependency, in the 1880s, they finally turned to political
action to protest their condition. Their efforts culminated in the Populist Party’s attempt to create an
interracial farmer/labor coalition in the 1890s, but William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in the pivotal
election of 1896 signaled the triumph of urbanism and the middle class.
CHAPTER 27—“Empire and Expansion” (1890–1909)
AP Focus
Thinking Globally (The American Pageant, 14th ed., pp. 694–695) looks at how the United States came
late to empire-building, which European powers had used to colonize large parts of the world in the
nineteenth century.
Social Darwinism is one key justification for U.S. territorial expansion.
Having expanded to the Pacific Ocean by the late nineteenth century, the United States will go on to
establish a global empire. The first step is to defeat Spain and take over its crumbling empire. This is
accomplished in the Spanish-American War, when the United States ostensibly comes to the aid of
Cubans who are seeking to break the chains of Spanish imperialism. Having defeated the Spaniards and
wrested from them their empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the United States faces an insurgency
by people who earlier were its allies, notably the Cubans and Filipinos, who bridle at what they see as a
new hegemonic power.
Despite nearly coming to blows over the Venezuelan boundary dispute, the United States and Britain
establish a cordial relationship that has endured. War and Diplomacy is an AP theme.
To protect U.S. economic interests in China, Secretary of State John Hay proposes the Open Door policy
to guarantee equal trading and commercial rights in China for all. The Chinese, however, are not
consulted; this exacerbates tensions between China and the western powers. Globalization is an AP
theme.
McKinley’s assassination thrusts Theodore Roosevelt into the spotlight and the Oval Office—a man
whom most conservative Republicans distrust. Many advocates of U.S. imperialism are not disappointed
by Roosevelt’s policies, such as the construction of the Panama Canal and a corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine that strengthens U.S. hegemonic influence in Latin America.
Take note of the following:
1.
Hawaii came under U.S. control when the reigning monarch, Queen Lilioukalani, opposed
American economic and political presence in her island country.
2.
The Spanish-American War facilitated the reconciliation of the North and South as both sections
now had a common foreign-policy objective. An example of this development is that ex-Confederate
General Joseph Wheeler fought in a war that was in part orchestrated by Lincoln’s former aide, later
McKinley’s secretary of state, John Hay. Take a look at the photograph in The American Pageant (13th
ed., p. 632/14th ed., p. 675). Ironically, a former Confederate officer who once fought to maintain slavery
in the South later supports Cuban freedom fighters.
Chapter Themes
Theme: In the 1890s, a number of economic and political forces sparked a spectacular burst of
imperialistic expansionism for the United States that culminated in the Spanish-American War—a war
that began over freeing Cuba and ended with the highly controversial acquisition of the Philippines and
other territories.
Theme: In the wake of the Spanish-American War, President Theodore Roosevelt pursued a bold and
sometimes controversial new policy of asserting America’s influence abroad, particularly in East Asia and
Latin America.
CHAPTER 28—“Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt” (1901–1912)
AP Focus
Corporate abuses and the government’s attempt at patchwork reforms—Reform is an AP theme—over
the previous decades convince progressives that stronger action is needed.
Muckrakers galvanize Americans through exposés and novels describing, for example, the abuses of
major corporations. President Roosevelt, however, is not enamored of these writers—see the quote in
The American Pageant (13th ed., p. 659/14th ed., p. 704). Culture is another AP theme.
The American political system undergoes a revolutionary transformation that will lead to women getting
the right to vote in 1920 (Nineteenth Amendment). Also, election of senators by state legislatures is
replaced by the much more democratic direct election (Seventeenth Amendment).
Wisconsin becomes the model for reform at the state level, with Governor Robert M. La Follette in the
vanguard. Again, Reform is an AP theme.
Legislation had been passed to protect the American worker, though widespread abuse continues,
sparking strikes. One of the most important is the Anthracite Coal Strike, and it is significant because the
federal government does not instinctively take the side of management.
Roosevelt spearheads efforts to impose regulations on corporations and eliminate unfair competition,
but his record as a trust-buster is uneven, as a political cartoon suggests (13th ed., p. 666/14th ed., p.
715).
Roosevelt is a unique political leader, especially when it comes to his interest in protecting the nation’s
resources through conservation. Take note of a point in his message to Congress (13th ed., p. 668/14th
ed., p. 716).
Conflict between Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, once political allies, divides the Republican Party.
Take note of the following:
1.
Upton Sinclair, author of a novel that exposed abuses at a meatpacking plant, had written The
Jungle to awaken Americans to socialist ideas, but had to settle for the public’s outrage at the abuses he
described in vivid and graphic detail, which led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food and
Drug Act, and other consumer safety legislation.
2.
At times, it took a tragedy to awaken the American people to the exploitation and dangerous
working conditions that workers faced on a daily basis. A haunting image (13th ed., p. 664/14th ed., p.
711) of the burned and broken bodies of the mostly young female victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
in New York (1911) is one vivid reminder that laws were necessary to protect vulnerable workers.
Chapter Themes
Theme: The strong progressive movement successfully demanded that the powers of government be
applied to solving the economic and social problems of industrialization. Progressivism first gained
strength at the city and state level, and then achieved national influence in the moderately progressive
administrations of Theodore Roosevelt.
Theme: Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor, William H. Taft, aligned himself with the Republican Old
Guard, causing Roosevelt to break away and lead a progressive third-party crusade.