Semester 1

Unit One

Chapter 1 - The world before 1492
CHAPTER 2 - First encounters, first conquests

Unit Two

Chapter 3 - Settlements, alliances, and resistance
Chapter 4 - Creating the culture of british north america

Unit Three

Chapter 5 - The Making of A revolution
Chapter 6 - Creating a nation
Chapter 7 - Practicing democracy

Unit Four

Chapter 8 - Creating a new people, expanding the country
Chapter 9 - New Industries, new politics
Chapter 10 - Democracy in the age of jackson
Chapter 11 - Manifest destiny: Expanding the nation

Unit Five

Chapter 12 - Living in a Nation of changing Lands etc
Chapter 13 - the politics of separation
Chapter 14 - And the war came: The Civil War
  • Both Union and Confederate soldiers were excited and anxious to begin the war. Both sides thought it would be very short lived, and that they’d win. It was lighthearted, but not for long.
  • The Civil War is imporant pretty much.
Fort Sumter to Antietam, 1861-1862
  • Both sides sought to understand the other after Ft. Sumter, so no major battles took place for about 2 months afterwards. The Confeds only needed to win battles in the South, while the Union needed to protect the Union!
  • General Scott of the North proposed what would later be called the Anaconda plan. Lincoln and others thought that a quick attack on Richmond would end the war.
  • The first serious battle was First Bull Run/Manassas, which took place on July 1861. Union troops went from D.C. to Virginia, of course with a bunch of people who thought it would be fun to watch. Union was McDowell, Confederacy was Beauregard. The Union surrounded the Confeds, who screamed that horrible scream of theirs. The Union kinda scattered and mixed in with the people who had come to watch. The Confederacy won.They started to get a little cocky.
  • Lincoln and others began to realized this wouldn’t be so easy. The Union called for a million new volunteers and fired McDowell. The army was reorganized as The Army of the Potomac, which McClellan was then in charge of. Grant later became in charge in 63. They went down the Mississippi.
  • Jefferson Davis, who at heart was a hopeless romantic (that’s not really relevant) wanted the South to do what Washington had done during the Revolutionary War--- just survive, really. The South thought that Britian would help out cos they needed cotton, but Britain didn’t really like slavery.
  • McClellan thought there were like three times the amount of Confederate solders than there actually were. Nerd.
  • The Union had a really good navy. By November 61, they had control of all islands off of South Carolina.The South was losing access to the Atlantic. They had to make a new ship. They put iron on the Merrimack and renamed it the Virginia. I do belief this is an ironclad? Also the North had the Monitor which was a crazy little thing. Bro.
  • The Union had the Northern part of the Mississippi. Grant (army) and Foote (navy) overwhelmed the Confed Ft. Henry in Feb 62. Grant was a hero even though he was a drunk. The Union had most of Kentucky and Tennessee. The Union got New Orleans in April 62 and kept it for the rest of the war.
  • Grant was heading down to Corinth, Mississippi, which was a railway hub, but the Confeds attacked at Shiloh before he made it there. The Union won. But it was a high casualty rate on both sides-- can it be called a Pyrrhic victory? It made morale on both sides bad :( People realized the war would be a long one. Grant spent the next year at Vicksburg.
 
  • The South’s main thing was the Army of Northern Virginia, which was supposed to protect Richmond. McClellan sneaked on over during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862 to capture Richmond, but really he was too slow.
  • Stonewall Jackson was over winning stuff in Tennessee, even though it was a Northern sympathizer kind of place. Northern troops had to divert attention to Tennessee instead of Richmond cos people were hurt :(
  • Lee and Jackson were at the Second Bull Run. It was a Confederate victory and it made the North all sad, cos the Confeds were getting close to D.C.
  • And then Antietam, which was in September 62. Again, like everyone died so it doesn’t count as a victory for either side. Cannae was still bloodier though. ;) No more McClellan after that one.
The Road to Emancipation
  • Lincoln said a whole buncha buncha times that the Federal gov couldn’t take away slaves. His main goal during the war was to keep the union, with or without slavery. But personally he didn’t like slavery I mean honestly who did???
  • Escaped slaves from the South were called contraband of war cos they were technically property of the Southerners, so they could be seized by the Union.
  • Folks still enforced the Fugitive Slave Act in D.C. though. Fremont of the Union said he was going to empancipate any slave he came across. This made Lincoln mad :(
  • Lincoln was thinkin’ a little bit about colonization, which Jeffy had also wanted to do btw. Supposedly not popular with slaves but what about Liberia, huh?
  • Black Americans were cool with fighting, but white America didn’t really dig that too much so they kept it on the DL.
  • Antietam made Lincoln act!! Because then it made it look less desperate. The Emancipation Proclamation declared all slaves in rebel states free... which didn’t really do much, now did it?
  • Peace Democrats, aka Copperheads (as in the snake) wanted to just let the Confederacy go. They said the Emancipation Proclamation was making the war even longer and bloodier, thanks Lincoln >:(
  • Lincoln signed it on 1 January 63. It freed about three million slaves (of the four million in the country). And also black soldiers could fight it they wanted to. And a lot of em did.
  • Fifty-Fourth and Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts were black regiments that accepted everyone from the North. They got paid, too, which was good. Yeah. Hey remember Robert Gould Shaw? Yeah I think I do remember!! Cool!
The Home Front- Shortages, Opposition, Riots, and Battles
  • Confederacy never really got its financial state in too much order, cos they didn’t like taxes. You know them!! Inflation was 12 per cent and the War bonds that everyone was encouraged to buy were only at 8 per cent. The financial assets of the South were not money or near moneys ;) So the Confederacy decided to print money?? STUPID! Yup yup yup, that means inflation. Take macroeconomics, everyone!
************* This is a note by senior me. Do not take macroeconomics.********************
  • Women had to manage the homefront. There were pretty much no men on the Southern homefront. The ladies led bread riots in spring 63 cos really that had no money. 
 
  • The North was more stable cos most of the fighting took place in the South. And it had a good tax system up. They did need money though, cos wars are expensive. And so the best thing of them all, the IRS, was created on 61 and so then income taxes and then money not back by gold or silver, called greenbacks, was introduced.
  • New York had a large Irish Catholic population that didn’t like black Americans cos they meant competition. They didn't want the slaves to be freed. And so they revolted cos they didn’t want to be drafted in a war they didn’t support. This was called the New York Draft Riot. It was the worst riot in history up to that point.
  • There were some little battles out in the middle of nowhere. Jesse James was a follwer of a dude, Quantrill, who killed Union sympathizer in Missouri.
  • And of course Native Americans. You know them!!!
From Gettysburg to Appomattox and Beyond
  • The Union had had quite a few wimps-- McClellan, Hooker, Meade.... Then finally Lincoln promoted Grant. The South had had Lee since early on.
  • In Spring 63, Hooker and Jackson fought in Chancellorsville. It was a major Confederate victory. Cos Hooke was a wimp. But Jackson died, rip.
  • The rebels were feeling good in June 63. They were marching through Penn.
  • And so Gettysburg in July. On the first, Confeds drove the Union to Cemetery Hill. On the second, Lee ordered an attack but the Union held its ground. On the third day, Pickett’s charge. It was a Union victory. It made the South sad and they never had the same presence up North again :(
  • And then Vicksburg!!!!! You go, Grant!! The Confeds surrendered there after being surrounded for a year. And now the Union had the Mississippi river and the South was cut in half.
  • Nobody won the Battle of the Wilderness, whatever it was.
  • War of attrition was killing and wounding as many soliders as possible. And of course there were advances in weaponry.
  • Lotsa people had disease. Doctors knew pretty much nothing (even though Fred Stowe had medical training, fyi) and spread disease even more. Women began to nurse, even though it had been almost solely a man’s job previously. The Sanitary Commission was created in 61 ro improve the medical servies and reatmnent for sick and wounded Union soldiers during the war.
  • McClellan was nominated by the Democrats in 64.
  • Sherman’s march to the seeeeaaaa! He just kept marching, avoiding any major battles. He took Atlanta. Farragut (Union) hit a torpedo and said Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead.
  • Hey, guess what! Lincoln won the election! The March started on 15 Nov by the way.
  • Sherman gave Savannah to Lincoln as a present ;)
  • The South began to lose hope, poor rebel babies.
  • And of course Appomattox Court House. Grant let the rebels keep their horses. And he gave em some rations. Davis was captured on 10 May.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment got rid of slavery. Cool.
  • OMG THERE IS ACTUALLY ONE LINE ABOUT HIS ASSASSINATION 

Conclusion
Early on, both sides thought they were going to win. I mean, yeah, both sides were cocky. Lincoln was president, as you know, and early on the war wasn’t really about slavery. The South was fighting a defensive war. That’s where most of the battles were!! The Union had some pretty wimpy dudes early on, so that may have had something to do with it. The Union kept on losing, man, so then everyone began to realize this was going to take a long time. The book didn’t say anything about photographs, which is kind of ridiculous, cos they were actually really important. Also lots of people died from disease cos no one knew what they were doing. There were advancements in guns so lots of people died. The North had bigger numbers and also the book didn’t really talk about Britain too much, either. At the end, the Union and the Confederacy somewhat started going more all out (looking at you Sherman) and how long can I make this run on sentence? Also I think Harriet Beecher Stowe should have been mentioned more, dig? Oh also spoiler alert the Union won. The end. Also Ironclads. The actual end.
Chapter 15 - Reconstruction

Unit Six

Chapter 16 - Conflict in the west
Tribes of the West and the U.S. Government
  • Comanches were the most powerful western tribe in the 1860s. They liked the Civil War because the whites had to leave. They used guns and horses. They made alliances and trades and fought. They were about the size of Mexico or the US. During the Civil War they traded stolen Texan cattle with the Union. New Mexicans they traded with were called comancheros. Comanches traded women as brides, also. 
  • The US met with the Comanches and other tribes met. Sherman told them to stop stealing. They signed the Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty which said that they had to live on a reserve. It was interpreted very differently on both sides.
  • The US decided to just attack the Comanches from 1871 to 73. Native spiritual leaders (Parker, Isa) said “we need to stop dealing with the whites,” and so they attacked some bison hunters. The US attacked them back and they began to surrender.
  • The Apaches and Navajo were attacked during the Civil War, and the Apaches went to the Bosque Redondo, while Carleton/Carson attacked the Navajo and forced them on the reservation, too. In 1868, the Navajo were moved. The Navajo became the Navajo nation. Their numbers grew.
  • The Modoc people tried to rebel because they wanted to go back to their home part of California, but they lost eventually and had to go back. Half of the Nez Perce lived on a reservation, half didn’t. The non progressive ones were hunted while they tried to go to Canada and were sent back to a reservation.
  • The Lakota Sioux (Red Cloud) agreed to not go to war in the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Sitting Bull criticized it. The whites found gold and so the Great Sioux War of 1876-77 began. Custer attacked at Little Bighorn. And all of his people died. But then right after Sheridan defeated them.
  • The Sioux were sad. They began to start doing the Ghost Dance. Some Natives rebelled and they didn’t apologize because of the ghost dance, so whites went berserk and killed some folks. Wounded Knee.
  • The Homestead Act of ‘62 gave anyone who wanted it some land out west. 
  • The Indian Peace Commission negotiated treaties. The Western tribes could only be pushed so far West. Grant’s Peace Policy was a nice effort that made reservations for Natives. He wanted to help the Natives become American-like. Natives did not like this.
  • Crazy Horse was at Little Bighorn. He was killed as a scout in ‘77. Sitting Bull went to Canada, then Buffalo Bill, then was killed during the Ghost Dance.
  • The Dawes Act was an 1887 law terminating tribal ownership of most reservation land and allocating some parcels to individual Indians while the remainder was opened for white settlement. It pushed natives to become farmers.
  • Pratt and Mather made the Carlisle Indian School which was a boarding school that taught kids to dress, act, and be American.

The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad, 1869
  • The Transcontinental railroad idea became super popular in the 1850s. Its starting and ending points caused a lot of debates. The Civil War meant that it’d start in the North. The labor was done by Irish and Chinese. They had to go through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The lines were connected in Spring 1869. More cities were added later.
  • Technology extended the railroads (like the air brake system). A person could go from coast to coast in 10 days. Time became important! Time zones. 1883. The US became connected to the entire world.

The Transformation of the West
  • Cowboys!
  • Texas longhorns :) and unbranded cows were called mavericks! Fun facts.
  • Cowboys grazed their cows on communal land that was owned by the government. Americans began to eat more beef. 
  • And so there began cattle towns that cows went through. Prostitution?
  • New ways to keep beef cold and new meat packers opened up.
  • The era of the cowboys was between the civil war and the turn of the century.
  • Deadwood Dick was a famous African American cowboy. Many cowboys were Civil War veterans, African Americans, or Natives. Mexican cowboys could be paid less. Archers that carried food for cowboys were called Chuck Wagons.
  • Barbed wire killed the cowboy. It made fights between them, famously in the Johnson County War of 92. Also fewer people were eating beef because of a recession.
  • Rich people put up fences, and poor people tore them down? This is Latino resistance.
  • Gregorio Cortez was a famous Mexican.
  • More Americans of different backgrounds moved West, i.e. Mormons,Norwegians, Ukrainians, African Americans, and all sorts of people. But that wasn’t good for the natives.
  • Miners! The Gold Rush, the Silver Rush, the Black Hills... Also copper, too. Boom towns started popping up. Most of the money made actually came from buying mining equipment.
  • Earp brothers (ex-Union) vs. Clinton brothers (ex-confeds)
  • Billy the Kid was not 21 when he died.
  • Buffalo Bill was cool. He showed the East what it wanted to see. And Annie Oakley.
  • In Wyoming, women could vote.
  • Brigham Young was territorial governor of Utah. Plural marriages. You know the deal. It was admitted as a state after polygamy was banned. ​
Chapter 17 - The gilded age
  • The Centennial International Exhibition of Industry took place in Philly in 1876. Lots of inventions and countries. It told the rest of the world that the US was an industrial power.
  • Business, manufacturing, and technology pretty much took over most aspects of American society.
Technology Changes the Nation
  • Alexander Graham Bell was a teacher for the deaf. He got a patent for the telephone in March 1876, and showed it at MIT and the World’s Fair. The telephone replaced the telegram and took over the nation.
  • Thomas Edison made a diplex and a quadruplex and a stock printer and the light bulb and also ways to record sounds.
  • Additional inventors: Westinghouse and Tesla.
  • The first cars and General Electric started in 1892. And also the first moving pictures and disks and players.
  • The rise of automobiles began in the early 1900s and so there were new jobs and less need for horses.
  • Henry Ford started specialization in the automobile industry, which the textbook said made workers’ jobs boring. 
  • The Wright brothers! Flight wasn’t efficient yet but it let everyone know that anything was possible.
Corporations and Monopolies
  • Corporations exploded after the Civil War.
  • Mark Twain called the era the Gilded Age-- a term applied to America in the late 1800s that refers to the shallow display and worship of wealth characteristic of the period.
  • Jay Cooke saved the finances of the Union during the war, but then ruined it after. He told European investors that investing in the railroad would bring grain to the rest of the world, meanwhile many railroad were not profitable and grain prices were dropping. He declared bankruptcy and this lead to the Panic of 1873. Bank runs and a pause in the stock market. Railroads and banks controlled the economy, pretty much.
  • Vanderbilt made a steamboat empire before the Civil War. He took people around the U.S. and also from Nicaragua to California. After the war, he started in railroads. He didn’t build; he bought. He was the richest man in America when he died.
  • Daniel Drew was a stock guy. He teamed up with Gould and Fisk to corner the nation’s gold reserve. They joined up with Butterfield (who worked with Grant) and drove the price of gold way way up. Grant found out, so he was about to sell a lot of the nation’s gold when the other guys suddenly sold all of theirs first. They got even richer!
  • Investors in gold called this Black Friday.
  • Rockefeller refined oil rather than mining it. He worked with Flagler and was a savage.
  • Horizontal integration/monopoly is the merging of competitors. 
  • Eventually they bought out producers of oil, too.
  • Carnegie's secret was put all of your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.
  • Carnegie had a vertical monopoly of the steel industry-- he bought out all parts of the process. Rich man.
  • Morgan was a banker.
  • A rope company was failing, which caused the panic of 1893. Farmers didn’t have a lot of money, and  Europe was taking its money out of the US. Morgan partially fixed it though.
Lives of the Middle Class in the Gilded Age
  • The Middle class began to form. 
  • Christmas became more popular.
  • City Beautiful movement is a cute idea :)
  • City planners, no matter what their style was, brought fresh drinking water to cities. 
  • And so the rise of suburbs.
  • It’s fun to stay at the YMCA, which saw a rise along with Protestant Christianity during this time period.
  • Stalwarts were a part of the Republican party. I don’t really understand what they did. Maybe they didn’t care about big businesses? Maybe they liked Reconstruction?
  • Mugwumps liked Grover Cleveland. So did Willy Vilas <3333
  • There were some scandals going on with Grover Cleveland and then also Blaine (from the state of Maine)?
  • Benny Harrison beat Grover Cleveland after his first term
  • I really like William Vilas.
  • Americans began to send out missionaries. 
  • The US had some interest in Cuba. 
  • The US kinda helped to kick France out of Mexico.
  • The US just traded with everyone. As one does.
Immigration
  • People came to the United States because usually they were very poor in their home country.
  • People came from Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Switzerland, etc.... mostly just Northern Europe.
  • Lots of people left Russia. 
  • Pogroms were anti-Jewish attacks and the reason that a lot of people left for the US. 
  • Italians hoped to return to Italy one day.
  • The Chinese Exclusion act was exactly what it sounds like.
  • Ellis Island was in the East, Angel Island was in the West. I suppose the Chinese were crossing the international date line? 
  • Ellis island was mean, but really they didn’t exclude that many people.  
  • Names were anglicized.
  • The melting pot is that people from other countries ought to assimilate and their cultures should melt away. 
  • Sweatshops were exactly what they sound like, too. Sweaty production places often filled with immigrants.
  • Japanese people went to Hawaii and the Italians who came to the US were poor and from the South. 
​
chapter 18 - Responses to industrialism, responses to change
  • Eugene Debs was a socialist. He got six percent of the vote in the election of 1912.
  • People were angry from 1977-1914. 
Conflict in the New South
  • Henry Grady was a young Southern newspaper editor who went to a conference in New York to tell everyone that the South had changed-- it was the New South. Its main points were that the South didn’t miss slavery and plantations anymore, and they were going to start out all new with an economic system. But the catch was they didn’t want the North to interfere with their racial segregation.
  • 1875 through 1900 were good for white southerners, even though the price of cotton was falling. They weren’t so agricultural anymore and they built railroads. Investment in Southern railroads was from the North and from Europe.
  • Railroads made it easier for people and farmers to go to cities and for cities to be connected to one another.  
  • Stores sometimes sold stuff on store credit (making them like banks), and cotton could be collateral for loans.
  • And so the rise of sawmills and turpentines camps. And also tobacco, textiles, iron and steel.... also Coca-Cola!
  • Old southerners were still salty about the lost cause of the confederacy and complained about it a lot. They romanticized the way life used to be.
  • Religion was an important part of the South. They didn’t actually attend church more than the North, but they talked about Jesus more.
  • Black Americans began to make their own churches in the South.
  • White people too, somewhat.
  • White and Black people were segregated in the South after the defeat of Reconstruction, but segregation on trains became the focus. There were two train cars-- first class, which was for ladies and men who didn’t smoke, and second class, for men who did smoke and poor people. Sometimes Black Americans rode in first class, but this usually caused little riots among white passengers.
  • In Tennessee there was a law that said black people had to sit somewhere else in first class. Because white men wanted the white women to be safe.
  • There were two parts to segregation. The first was in the 1860s and 1870s, when white, conservative democrats began to take power. But black Americans could still vote! And so the second part was figuring out ways to prevent black people from participating in politics at all. This fear began with the Populist movement. The Solid South referred to the South being solidly white and Democratic. People began to use literacy test, a poll tax, or a property qualification to prevent black people from voting.
  • Mississippi said you have to have lived in a certain place for a certain time, so sharecroppers couldn’t vote. The grandfather clause said that you could always vote if your grandfather could vote. Williams v Mississippi said that all of this was okay.
  • Then came the rise of public lynching. Ida B Wells challenged the notion of lynching, and one of the first to do so. A white mob destroyed her printing press but she kept on.
  • Booker T. Washington said cast down your bucket where you are. He suggested that black people should create an economic foundation for themselves before anything else. He was realistic. This was the Atlanta compromise.
  • WEB DuBois hated Washington. He said that black people should take action NOW!
  • DuBois and others went to the Canadian side of Niagara and began a campaign called the Niagara Movement in 1905. Later helped organize the NAACP (which totally could’ve been called the NAAAA), which enforced the 14th and 15th Amendments.
The Politics of Conflict- From Populist Movement to Populist Party.
  • Farmers lived the hard life. Hayseed was a bad term the agrarian ideal was a thing of the past 
  • Farmers were very in debt in the 1880s.
  • The grange was an organization by farmers for farmers. Its goal was to make farming better.
  • The Agricultural Wheel was an organization that was more militant than the Grange, and sought to advance farmers’ economic status.
  • The Farmers’ Alliance was a broad mass movement in the rural South and West during the late 1800s, encompassing several organizations and demanding economic and political reforms. It helped to create the Populist party. They wanted to be a monopoly!
  • Black Americans weren’t allowed in the Farmers’ Alliance, so they made their own Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union. Catchy! They organized through black churches. It had more members but it was less powerful.
  • Both organizations let men and women join. The Grange had only certain spots that could be filled by ladies.
  • Marion Cannon said that railroads should be publicly owned. Marion Todd said that railroads should be managed like post offices.
  • The subtreasture system was a proposal for a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department (or subtreasury) to own warehouses that would store farmer’s crops until prices rose. Macune was the leader of something, by the way.
  • Farmers were upset by federal fiscal policy. The gold standard! The Government temporarily used greenbacks (fiat money) during the Civil War. And also money was backed by silver. Then after the war, money was only gold-backed.
  • Leo Polk of NC lobbied for the creation of a state department of agriculture. And he published a newspaper.
  • The Knights of Labor and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union created the People’s Party, AKA the Populist party. Pretty much they were progressives, it seems. They wanted money reforms.
  • Polk won the vote for the leader of the farmers’ alliance, I think? The Populist Party was going to nominate him for president but then he died. So they nominated James Weaver and James Field instead. But still in 1892, Cleveland died. 
  • The Populists were everywhere! William Jennings Bryan was a Democrat but he was pretty similar to the Populists. You shall not crucify us on a cross of gold ;) The democrats nominated him and adopted a silver policy. The populists nominated him, too.
  • The Republicans nominated McKinley. They said a vote for Bryan was a vote against the country. McKinley won, but it was kind of close. The Populists never recovered.
Workers Protest and the Rise of Organized Labor
  • There was a railroad strike in Maryland and West Virginia in 1877.
  • The strike was super violent. Hayes said it was okay to attack the strikers :( Women played a crucial role.
  • The Knights of Labor was a labor union that included skilled and unskilled workers regardless of gender or race. Founded 1869. They tried to avoid violence. Powderly was a powerful dude.
  • The American Federation of Labor was an organization founded in 1886 as a federation of smaller elite craft unions. Gompers! They fought for immediate stuff.
  • They haymarket was the name given to the strike, rally, and bombing that took place around Haymarket Square in Chicago, as well as to the subsequent executions of four leaders of the incident (Spies, Parsons... and others)
  • The Homestead Strike was against Mr. Carnegie. Frick said the union could cut their salary. They said no, so he fired everyone and built a wall around the plant. Pinkerton. Then all the workers were unionized. Carnegie was mad :(
  • Coxey’s Army was a protest march of unemployed workers, led by businessman Jacob Coxey, demanding a public works highway program and guaranteed jobs during the depression of the 1890s.
  • Debs was a NERD
  • Pullman was CRAZY
  • Debs founded the socialist party...
  • The United Mine Workers of America was a new union organized in 1890 to bring together mine workers in the eastern half of the US in one organization that eventually became a national union.
  • People were still using lead??
  • The Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as Wobblies, was organized in 1905 to bring together the nation’s workers in “one big union” to fight for a radically different economic system that favored workers over owners. Big Bill Haywood.
  • The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was a fire in the factory in 1911 that killed 146 workers and that later led to new factory inspection and safety laws.
  • The Bread and Roses Strike was a spontaneous strike of mill workers in 1912 in Mass. The Wobblies’ biggest success.
  • Ludlow Massacre was during a strike in CO in 1914. 30 people were killed. ​
Chapter 19 - Progressive movements, progressive politics
  • Teddy Roosevelt rejected the radicalism of democrats (WJ Bryan) or socialists (Debs). He liked corporate leaders cos they created wealth. He wanted to change what was causing strikes, and he wanted to change urban/industrial conditions and protect the environment :)
  • He, Taft, and Wilson were progressives.
The Revolt of the Intellectuals
  • People were thinking about how to respond to immigration, urbanization, and rapid industrialization. These people were upper class reformers, newspaper reporters, ministers, writers, college professors...etc.
  • Henry George was a journalist who saw the railway strike in 77 and wrote Progress and Poverty. He proposed a 100 percent tax on any increase in the value of land or any rents on land. He thought it would reduce the value of land, causing people to farm, causing fewer industrial workers, causing higher wages. This was called the single tax movement.
  • Edward Bellamy, also a journalist, wrote Looking Back. It described a perfect society with no classes, poverty, wealthy, lawyers, or politics. 
  • Ignatieff Donnelly wrote Caesar’s Column, which described a very sad, large, working class, where the only happiness came from the Greenback Party, The Knights of Labor, etc.
  • John Dewey was an educational reformer. But his larger goal was about industrialism. He was invited to Chicago but the railways were shut down because of the Pullman strike. He was against Social Darwinism- survival of the fittest. Poor people are poor because they’re unfit, and rich people are rich for the opposite reason. The government is unable to change this in this theory.
  • Willy Graham Sumner thought that Social Darwinism was good. Any interference would be bad, he said. Herbert Spencer thought the same thing.
  • Ely was opposed to it. He was focused on economics. Small was something with sociology, and he wrote that action is the supreme teacher.
  • Pulitzer made the New York Evening World a really big newspaper.
  • Hearst made the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Morning Journal big by pointing out corruption. Others copied these two boys.
  • Roosevelt coined the term muckraking, saying they stirred it up but didn’t offer any solutions. Muckrakers wore the term with pride. Henry Demarest Lloyd was a super early one. He talked about the 1877 railroad strike.
  • Ida M. Tarbell wrote in McClure’s about Oil and still.
  • Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle,  said “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Meat consumption decreased greatly.


Transformation of the Cities
  • The United States at 75 million people in 1900. There were lots of births and lots of immigrations. Lots of people lived in cities.
  • “Urban Politics took root.” Immigrants needed help finding a job?
  • And so the creation of the political machine. That means a trade off between favors and votes.
  • Tammany Hall was the political machine of Democratic New York. Boss Tweed was an infamous early leader. I mean, with a name like that, how couldn’t he be? Maybe he stole, maybe he didn’t. Supposedly he and others after him robbed New York of $45 million. They made jobs when they needed the poor vote.
  • Thomas Nast attacked him :) You go Tommy :) Tweed was put in jail, but Tammany kept on keeping on like a bird that flew. Plunkitt?
  • Political machines were often Irish-Dominated.
  • Progressives could seem heartless? Perhaps it was an effort by an older Protestant and native-born elite to reclaim power from more recent immigrant groups, especially the Irish, who build up their own political organizations.
  • Grover Cleveland was mayor of Buffalo as a Democrat. He was honest. Pingre was mayor of Detroit as a Republican reformer. He made railways cut their prices to the people of Detroit and he convinced people out of work to plan. Potato Patch Pingree.
  • Golden Rule Jones was the mayor of Toledo. He built nice things like kindergartens and parks :) He also didn't like political parties.
  • State reformers created ideas like initiative-- citizens can introduce a subject for legislation (usually through petition), referendum- a submission of a law to a direct popular vote, and recall--- the process of removing an official from office by popular vote (after a petition, usually).
  • Wagner and Smith were the Tammany Twins. Seth Low was the president of Columbia.
  • Murphy (who was in charge of Wagner and Smith) did something
  • John Dewey and his wife and Ms. Flagg Young tried to make schools more about the needs of the child. Yup, lots of other people reformed in other ways, and they were still progressive. One name couldn’t fit them ;)
  • Jane Addams lived at the Hull House for more than 20 years. It was a settlement house, and she wanted to help as a part of the community, not from above. It took the side of the poor in legal disputes, and launched a women’s boarding house.
Religious Responses to the Gilded Age
  • Many reformers were Protestant.
  • And so the women’s fight against alcohol. Frances Willard was an organizer of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. 
  • Carry Nation was a crazy lady with a hatchet.
  • The Eighteenth Amendment banned the manufacture and sale of liquor, and the Nineteenth Amendment said ladies could vote :)
  • When a movement like temperance tapped into protestantism, it could go far!
  • Charley Sheldon wrote “What Would Jesus Do?” 
  • And so the beginning of the Social Gospel, which was the application of religious ethics to industrial conditions. 
  • Some first generation Jewish people pitched in, too, to reform labor and stuff :)
Progressive Politics on the Nation Stage
  • A turning point was the assassination of McKinley (by an anarchist), RIP Gone but not Forgotten :(
  • That damned cowboy is President of the United States! None other than everyone’s boy, Teddy.
  • TR said that there were real and grave evils from the power of big corporations.
  • The Sherman Antitrust Act was the first federal antitrust measure, passed in 1890; sought to promote economic competition by prohibiting business combinations in restraint of trade or commerce. He wanted to keep competition alive to keep prices low :)
  • The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was a law of 1883 that reformed the spoils system by prohibiting government workers from making political contributions and by creating the Civil Service Commission to oversee their appointment on the basis of merit rather than politics. Chester Arthur didn’t really like it :(
  • Teddy liked nature a whole lot. The Strenuous Life said that Americans needed to get outside!
  • Teddy really liked nature. He made lots of national parks. 
  • Teddy invited Booker T. Washington over for dinner >>:))) and he helped race relations a little. A little, the book emphasizes.
  • Roosevelt wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral
  • Roosevelt was super duper popular but didn’t want to do more than two terms. Good for him.
  • Taaaaaaft. Taft was a big boy. Teddy made him run in 1908 against Bryan and Debs.
  • Taft put new people in office. And he wanted to lower the nation’s tariff rates. But then Congress passed bills to lower the tariff, Taft vetoed them, losing Roosevelt fans as supporters.
  • Taft was a trustbuster and he shortened the work day, though.
  • La Follette hinted that he was going to run against Taft for the republican nomination in the election of 1912. La Follete gave a super duper long speech and lost his audience and the vote. Then people asked Teddy to run again, and so he did. Taft and Teddy duked it out. But then somehow Taft won? Whoa.
  • And then Woody Wilson campaigned???  And also Debs, nerd.
  • Wilson won. Okay. He had the program called New Freedom- the 1912 program for government intervention in the economy to restore competition by curtailing the business monopolies, thereby providing opportunities for individual achievement.
  • Wilson had four initiatives for his administration: conservation, access to raw materials, banking and finance, and the tariff/taxes.
  • Wilson got that tariff through and he also created the Federal Reserve pretty quickly. He was the real trustbuster.
  • The Federal Trade Commision was an agency established to provide regulatory oversight of business activity. ​

Semester 2

Unit Seven

Chapter 20 - FOreign Policy and war in a progressive era
  • Woodrow Wilson campaigned in 1916 with the slogan “He kept us out of War.” That was pretty much his goal. All of Europe was involved in the war.
  • Teddy wanted to go to war, but Woody beat him in the 1912 election. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
  • Many Americans wanted greater influence in the world. Teddy had gotten the Panama Canal Zone.
Continuing Expansion
  • Alfred Mayan of the Navy said that all the greatest countries in history had great navies! It was really influential in the development of foreign policy. His book was The Influence of Sea Power upon History.
  • The US Navy became the third biggest in the world and also annexation of Hawaii and Puerto Rico and control of Samoa, Philippines, and Cuba. This was the age of US imperialism; some Americans didn’t wanted to be left behind, some thought that white people were the best.
  • Mr. Bering (Danish but working for the Russians) moseyed around Alaska and that area. The US assumed ownership of “Russian America.” Russia had kinda given up there by that point. Seward (who Paine didn’t kill) bought it in 1867. It was a district in 1884 and there was a gold rush around then, too. The homestead act was expanded there and it became a territory in 1912.
  • James Cook had moseyed around Hawaii (aka the Sandwich Islands), which had a little monarchy up and running by that time, 1778. In the early 1800s is was a good dock and Hawaiians mingled with Americans. And also missionaries. Longer boats are coming to win us. But Hawaiians were a minority in their own county because of all the sugar plantations. Queen Liliuokalani said “Hawaii for the Hawaiians!” and wanted to reduce Americans in it. Americans made an annexation club and overthrew the poor lady. But Cleveland said not to. Lily wanted to kill all the rebels, so the US gov ignored her. McKinley wanted Hawaii and he made it a territory in 1898.
The Splendid Little War... with Spain-- Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, 1898
  • The Spanish-American War was in 1898. Spain had all of that land but people revolted and after the war it lost the last of its land. 
  • The war started in Cuba. The US had been looking at it for a pretty long time, and a lot of trade was to the US.
  • The Cuban economy boomed, then busted because of Spain and then the US. José Martí (who was living in NY) revolted!! They burned stuff and killed people, so the Spanish made CONCENTRATION CAMPS??? It was to separate the Cubans from the rebels. It wasn't a good time. 
  • McKinley wanted Spain outta there, so then began yellow journalism. It was craaaaazy.
  • USS Maine blew up for some reason, and the US blamed Spain. Congress declared war. The US Army wasn't managed too well, and the fighting was slow. More died from disease than in combat.
  • McKinley approved sending ships to the Philippines, where they beat the Spanish super easily. Also Guam. And then the last Spanish outpost was Puerto Rico, where the Puerto Ricans were kinda happy.
  • Spain was ready to ask for peace. Congress had the Teller amendment, which said the US could not annex Cuba, so they went for Puerto Rico instead.
  • The Treaty of Paris of December 1898 said that Spain ceded control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to US for a payment. Suddenly, the US was a world power.
  • McKinley maximized US involvement in Cuba. Also, PS the US was in control of 7 million new people. McKinley said, we have to educate the Filipinos, uplift and civilize and Christianize em. Protestant Christianity.
  • But the Filipinos didn't want to be annexed. They revolted in the Philippine Insurrection, and more people died then than they did in the war with Spain.
  • The Anti-Imperialist League said no more war in the Philippines! Andrew Carnegie offered to buy the Philippines if it meant they’d be independent. Pretty much a lot of Americans said get outta the Philippines.
Foreign Policy, Foreign Adventures, 1900-1914
  • Teddy inherited the war with the Philippines and the canal in Central America from poor McKinley.
  • Teddy decided he wanted it in Panama. The Panama Canal. The UK helped a little. Previously he had gotten some Europeans to get out of there.
  • Teddy made the Roosevelt Corollary, which was an expansion of the Monroe Doctrine. It said that the US could hang around in Latin America. Panama was kinda splitting off from Columbia and Teddy helped a little. Then US paid Panama and they started on the Canal.
  • Russia was expanded, and then so was Japan. Japan wanted Russia to stay away from Manchuria and Korea. Japan attacked a little, and then some more. The US declared neutrality, and after a little bit, Japan asked the US to help it out a little. Roosevelt got them to make up and the little war ended, and Teddy got a Nobel Prize :)
  • The US told Russia to stop being mean to Jewish people, and then Russia and Japan said “look who’s talking, ur sooooo racist.” Japan and China were mad at anti-Asian sentiment in the US, so they kind of suggested a war, but then it fizzled off with the Great White Fleet, a fleet of white ships sent around the world to show how great the US was :)
  • Taft had the Dollar Diplomacy, which was private investment in other countries to promote American diplomatic goals and business interests :)
  • China was supposed to get a loan and some railroads, but nope. Also there was almost another war with Japan but they calmed down, too.
  • The elected Mexican leader had just been killed by a military coup and Woodrow Wilson and Will J Bryan were both like “nope thx”
The United States and the Great War
  • The war to end all wars did not end soon enough.
  • Right after he was elected, Woody was like “wouldn’t it be funny if there was some FOREIGN affair during my presidency cos I only know how domestic stuff works lol”
  • Franz Ferdinand (AUSTRIA HUNGARY) was assassinated by a SERBIAN but we LIKE THE SERBIANS for some reason cos they liked RUSSIA
  • GERMANY and AUSTRIA HUNGARY and TURKISH OTTOMAN EMPIRE were the CENTRAL POWERS
  • RUSSIA and FRANCE and GREAT BRITAIN were the ALLIES
  • ARMS AND ALLIES AND colonization?
  • France and Germany hid in their trenches for a couple years. Except when they played footy on Christmas :)
  • Trench foot! Mustard gas! Flamethrowers! Tanks! Artillery!
  • The US was neutral
  • American farmers kinda had no place to sell their stuff. Morgan sold really expensive stuff to Britain, and Willy J Bryan  was like “stop it!!!!!” so he had to stop. Britain and France were like “we need that stuff still, m8s” so then Woody Wilson and Willy J were like “okay commercial credit.”
  • Teddy said that we needed to get ready to fight for the French and English!!
  • American leaders in charge of Germans were worried 
  • The U-Boat was a German submarine. They said they’d attack anything around Britain. They attacked the Lusitania and killed some Americans!! Woody Wilson and Willy J Bryan were upset. Bryan was making a whole bunch of ideas of what to say, and Woody Wilson was knocking them all down, so Bryan quit. 
  • Ellen Wilson died in 1914, and her widower was sad, but then he quickly married another lady, Edith. Wilson was almost not going to run, but then he did anyway. Hughes ran against him but we see how that went.
  • Germany sent a letter to Mexico seeing if Mexico wanted to attack the US :) This was the Zimmerman Note. The US was like OMG WHAT and then the US hated Germany.
  • The US went to war in 1917.
  • Wilson made the Committee on Public Information, which was just lovely lovely propaganda.
  • Herbie Hoover was like “eat less for the boys over seas :)”
  • The American Protective League likes the war? They listened in on calls and opened mail looking for traitors.
  • LIBERTY CABBBBBBBAAAAAAGGGGGGEEEEEEEEE
  • The Sedition Act of 1918 made it illegal to say something bad about the US. And the Espionage act, too. Similar to the Alien and Sedition acts of John Adams.....>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>:(((((((
  • Americans were called doughboys...? It took a while to train them American boys, but they were needed, fast!!!
  • Schenck v. United States was the first of several decisions by the US Supreme Court upholding the Sedition and Espionage Acts.
  • THE RUSSIANS TURNED COMMIE AND WANTED OUT
  • Americans hopped on over and the war ended :)
  • Woody and Mrs. Woody headed over to Europe and paraded around in France. They got a message that Teddy had died and Woody was like “too bad”
  • Wilson’s Fourteen Points were the proposed points outlining peace offered by Woody after WWI. The treaty agreed to at the Versailles peace conference did not included all 14.
  • Wilson made the League of Nations, which was open to everyone?
  • Also there was a Pan-African meeting but that didn’t seem to work too well, I think.
  • Henry Cabot Lodge was the biggest threat to the treaty. He hated Woody!!!
  • Article X?
Chapter 21 - a unique, prosperous, and discontented time
  • The 1920s were known as the Jazz Age not only for the music, but because the music provided the background for the era in which many Americans wanted to forget the past and just have some fun :)
  • It was the time between WWI and the stock market crash. It was good for some people, bad for others.
The Prelude- The Red Summer of 1919
  • Commies had Russia. Some Americans liked that, but a lot more were worried. Some Black Americans didn’t want to go back to the South after fighting.
  • Seattle had some strikes, the largest strike in American history. There was also the Bread and Roses strike.
  • Bombs came in the mail to the Postmaster general, the attorney general, members of the senate, and some other people. No one was hurt but nobody knows who did it...
  • And so the influenza! Half a million people died from it (which was more than in WWI) and it just killed everyone.
  • Communism was spreading a whole lot. Palmer did some research into communism in the U.S. The Lever Fuel Act was extended, which prohibited the obstruction of coal distribution...
  • The Palmer Raids were a series of raids by US government agents in 1919-20 to find, arrest, and sometimes depots people considered to be dangerous radicals. J Edgar Hoover lead it. Emma Goldman was deported. Bye bye, commies!
  • There were some racial issues after a kid crossed race lines in Lake Michigan. This was a race riot and one of the first where black people fought back. There was also one in South Carolina and in Texas.
The 1920s- The Exuberance of Prosperity
  • Claire Fiance was arrested for having whiskey, and she was a symbol of two important shifts in the 20s: attitude toward alcohol and the place of women in society.
  • Harding’s normalcy was a work coined by Harding to convey what he though the country wanted-- a new normal free from war, international entanglements, and reform efforts.
  • Some Americans really loved alcohol. Some really really hated it. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union encouraged people to stop drinking. The Anti-Saloon League sought to banish alcohol.
  • Immigrants did not appreciate prohibition.
  • The Anti-Salooners made support of prohibition a test of patriotism, and so they sneaked a clause about alcohol in the Lever Act.
  • The Eighteenth Amendment said no manufacturing, transporting, or selling liquor! Prohibition!
  • The Volstead act applied that to anything that was .5-1% alcohol.
  • Major loophole was that you could possess it, just not manufacture or transport or sell it.
  • People who liked alcohol majorly stocked up on it the day the 18th amendment went into action, and those who didn’t like it rejoiced.
  • And so began organized crime.
  • Gangs pretty much ran a whole lot of stuff.
  • Al Capone controlled Chicago. He was in charge of the police, politics, the courts, and really he had lots of people bringing alcohol in from Canada. Bugs Moran tried to take some of his business away, so they murdered him and six other people on Valentines day.  
  • Herbie Hoover got the Treasury to put Capone in jail for tax evasion in 1931.
  • Ponzi had an investment scheme where he would pay the old people with money from the new people. ! He was deported though in 1920.
  • The Gov set apart some oil reserves. Harding didn’t like to say no, so when his secretary of the interior asked him to move the oil from the navy department to the dept. of the interior, Harding said yes. Sinclair and Doheny used this to their own personal gain in the Teapot Dome Scandal.
  • The 19th amendment gave women the vote for the presidential election of 1920. It really shaped the 20s :)
  • Carrie Catt was the president in the NAWSA for a while. The National American Woman Suffrage Association. She wanted suffrage as a war measure. If they were fighting for democracy, shouldn’t they have it at home? She didn’t do very much for black ladies :(
  • By the time the amendment passed, it’d been 72 years since El Cad Stanton had proclaimed their right to vote. Charlotte Woodward was the only surviving signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration.
  • Flappers were determined to have equal freedom as men. Women became more involved in politics and got new jobs. Margaret Sanger was a birth control advocate. And also she started what would become Planned Parenthood.
  • Also Americans began to travel around more and youngins could drive off for some hanky panky. Sedans! Media became very widespread. The amount of cars tripled, Radio became widespread. Auto-related stuff boomed. Also Suburbs boomed, too. Movies! And Newspapers! And baseball! And planes and swimmers! And guess who wrote Great Gatsby in 1925? You guessed it :)
  • Black Americans began to move to the industrial North during the Great Migration. Good for them. The South is crazy. Thus started the Harlem Renaissance, which saw the growth of blues (and rhythm) in New York.
  • Mr. Garvey made the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League. He wanted black people to be responsible for their own fate and better everything!! But then he was put in jail. Let’s not talk about that :(
The 1920s- the Conflicts about American Ideals
  • The gosh-darned KKK hated everything and everyone that wasn’t a white protestant male. But it liked prohibition! And there was a women’s spinoff, the WKKK.Terrible. They did lots of terrible stuff. (Also poor Henry Ford didn’t like Jewish people :(((( )
  • The Catholic Knights of Columbus and stuff challenged the Klan’s “pure Americanism” with their own “true Americanism.”
  • Eugenics. Helen Keller liked eugenics, btw. And so did Margaret Sanger. It made people feel better and reason that some people were better “scientifically.” This time also saw the rise of the IQ test.
  • Also people didn’t like immigrants, so immigration was cut. Literacy tests, same old, same old. Congress set the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921 to limit immigrants. This was the first quota of its kind. Northern Europeans weren’t restricted so much, but everyone else was. “No foreign government has the right to tell the United States who we shall or shall not admit.”
  • Sacco and Vanzetti were very symbolic for immigrants 
  • WWI had made crop prices increase, which was good for farmers. And some got running water and stuff :) But then Europe didn’t need uniforms or wheat anymore. Poor farmers. But not dairy farmers! Milk and ice cream became more popular and so did some veggies! There was a lot of overproduction though of staple crops, poor farmers. The spring of 1927 had a lot of lot of rain.
  • High schools began to pop up in rural places. Origin of Species was being taught a little, which scientists liked, but Fundamentalism came along and they didn’t like it. The Scopes Monkey Trial was about a biology textbook that had been influenced by Darwin called A Civic Biology.
Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover- National Politics and Policies in the 1920s
  • Harding was normalcy, remember? How is gosh dang Debs still around???
  • The Washington Conference was called by the US in 1921 that led to the adoption of the Five Powers Treaty in 1922 in an ultimately ineffective effort to limit the growth of the world’s navies and thus preserve peace.
  • Andrew Mellon was probably the greatest secretary of the treasury ever. But then the Great Depression, soooooo....
  • Coolidge took the oath in a farmhouse. There was prosperity during his era, which was after Harding cos he had died. Silent Cal.
  • The Dem. party was split between the south/western wing that was white, rural, protestant, and pro-prohibition, and the northern white Catholic/Jewish anti-prohibition.
  • Coolidge's vp was Dawes in his term when he was voted in. A French dude proposed an alliances, and this turned into the Kellogg-Briand Pact that said no aggression or war! It wasn't really enforced, believe it or not.
  • In 1928 the republicans nominated Hoover. He and the opponent Smith were pretty similar. Coolidge had called Hoover a commie? But Hoover was dry and Smith was a wet. Smith was Catholic, too. Poor Hoover, though, cos you know what was coming? This election was based heavily on anti-Catholic sentiment. 
Chapter 22 - Living in hard times
  • The stock market crashed in Oct 29. It didn’t immediately affect common folk, but it led to deflation and fewer industrial jobs. For many farmers, the depression had started a few years before.
The Coming of the Great Depression
  • The Great Depression was worldwide. It hit Japan, Chile, Germany, Great Britain,  Canada, and of course the US.
  • Prices rose far above value (like those Dutch and their tulips), and it all came crashing down in the Great Crash. By Hoover’s election, stock prices were rising a whole lot.
  • When people borrowed money to buy stocks, it was called buying on the margin. Brokers were happy to lend, and there were six billion dollars in loans by 1929. Hoover (who’d just been elected) and a man named Babson were worried about a crash. But no, that couldn’t happen, could it?
  • And then Black Tuesday-- 29 October, 1929. The worst single day in the history of the stock exchange. People didn’t have any money to pay back the loans.
  • Farms were foreclosed, even though farmers resisted a little. One out of four people was unemployed, and there were shanties and stowaways and breadlines.
  • Hoover had only been president for seven months when the market crashed, and given his background, he seemed to be ideal for such a crisis. He called for voluntary action and supported public works.
  • Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which launched the U.S. into a trade world with the rest of the world.
  • People criticized Hoover no matter what he did. Of course, they called shanty towns "Hoovervilles."
  • And then out of nowhere, the Bonus Army (which was WWI vets) demanded to be paid money that wasn’t due until 1945.
The New Deal
  • It was thought that whoever the Democratic nominee was for 1932 was, they’d be president cos everyone was upset with the Republicans like Hoover. Hoover lost by a whole lot. FDR won, suprise suprise.
  • The New Deal was made of the programs and legislation developed during FDR’s administration aimed to end the Great Depression.
  • The time between the election and inauguration was long and terrible. Banks had worthless paper because loans wouldn't be repaid and also they had worthless land too. There were lots of bank runs, so on inauguration day, all of the major banks declared a bank holiday. THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF!
  • A fireside chat was a speech broadcast over the radio where FDR would talk about complex issues and stuff in simple language.
  • FDR was paralyzed cos of polio, but the media made sure no one knew he couldn’t walk ;) Also he and Eleanor were a power couple :)
  • The Glass-Steagall Act made the FDIC which guarantees bank deposits :) and it also separates commercial and investment banks.
  • FDR had his brain trust which was a group of smart people who lead his decisions. In FDR’s first 100 days, congresses passed the Economy Act and amended the Volstead Act (beer was okay!!), which brought lots of new tax money in. Also he made the CCC and got rid of the gold standard.
  • Also also congress passed the National Employment System Act, the Homeowners Refinance Act, the Railroad Coordination Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act. Publics Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration!
  • Lewis Mariam studied Native American policy, and called to reform it. Collier was commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the Indian Reorganization Act, which was later a part of what was known as the Indian Reorganization Act. Legal rights were recognized, tribes had more power, and tribes could hold lands.
  • The Depression first hit Black Americans pretty hard. Sometimes laws were biased against them, including when the NRA set minimum wages. Black sharecroppers created the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and Black Americans began to vote Democratic.
  • Roosevelt created the Black Cabinet-- an informal network of high-level African-American officials and advisors to the Roosevelt administration who worked together to influence government policy. Mary McLeod Bethune was very prominent, especially.
  • The plains farmers had it pretty bad in the Depression. The Dust Bowl began in late 1932 after super plentiful harvests. Lasted until 35. Farmers just up and left, mostly to California. They were migrant workers and called Okies. They sometimes took jobs away from Mexican and Filipino workers, who made unions.
  • The WPA was made in 1935, and they made roads, theaters, laid out parks... that sort of thing. Eleanor made it include jobs for artists, too.
  • The Wagner Act expanded the rights of union members. Some union laddies wanted big unions for whole categories, rather than small unions, but the AF of L said no thanks! They made the Congress of Industrial Organizations instead. John L Lewis was kind of in charge, I think.
  • Also sit-down strikes started at this time. Genius! There was a giant strike against GM for.... something? It was really big and impressive, though.
  • The du Pont family owned some major shares of General Motors, and they didn’t really like FDR. They made the American Liberty League to oppose the New Deal. Hoover refused to join. The National Association of Manufacturers opposed it, too.
  • There were communists at this time, too. Dang pinkos.
  • Francis Townsend suggested that there should be a pension for old people to retire so that young people could have their jobs. What an idea this was! Upton Sinclair ran for governor of Cali with his EPIC platform, and he got the nomination but didn’t win.
  • Coughlin was a Catholic who talked on the radio, and he supported Roosevelt. But then he changed his mind and didn’t! He said that Roosevelt had out Hoovered Hoover. He didn’t like Jewish people.
  • Long was practically the dictator of Louisiana who called FDR Frank. He was a populist and very much for the little guy. He made the Share Our Wealth Society.
  • Ms. Frances Perkins aimed to find some way to make old people retire. Congress passed the Social Security Act that established old-age pensions.
  • Huey long was assassinated in Sept 1935, and his clubs became the Union Party. The Republicans nominated some Kansas guy, Landon, but FDR still won by a long shot.
  • But in his second term, FDR didn’t get as much done. He wanted to add one more Supreme Court Justice for every one that was over 70 so that the court couldn’t overturn the New Deal. This was called packing. Was this a step toward dictatorship? Unemployment rose in 1937 and 38.
The Deep Roots of War- The USA, Europe, and Asia
  • Europe had really been hurt by the Treaty of Versailles, especially the Germans. Meanwhile, Mussolini wanted to restore Italy to the glory it once had.
  • Also there was hyperinflation in Germany.
  • The Nazi (national Socialist) party had been the Brown Shirts previously. Hitler was elected as Chancellor, and wanted to get rid of Jewish and Slavic people :((((((((((((((((((( The Nazi party ended free speech and assembly in Germany. The Gestapo was the Nazi police. And then the Kristallnacht was in November 1938, which Jewish people had to pay for.
  • Hitler made an army, invaded Rhineland and then Austria. Then he took over Czechoslovakia.
  • Spain was Fascist, too?????
  • Japan didn’t like the US and wanted Asia for the Asians. It took over a lot of Asia (except for China)
  • The League of Nations was useless, oops? France and Britain didn’t resist very much.
  • Isolationism was very popular in the US. It was what it sounded like. Everyone was like “nope, we're not gonna fight” and Congress passed some stuff to prevent the US from joining.
  • America kept on sending its junky stuff to Japan, making it stronger... And quotas on both sides limited Jewish migration. And oh boy, Lucky Lindbergh couldn’t keep his mouth shut. RIP his baby son, by the way.
  • Fascist Europe just kept on spreading. And so WWII had begun.
Chapter 23 - Living in a world at war
  • Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese in 1941. Lots of soldiers and sailors died, battleships were sunk, and planes and vessels were destroyed. The next day the U.S. declared war on the Japanese, and then Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S.
Preparedness and Isolation, 1939-1941
  • Britain and France declared war on Germany when it attacked Poland in 1939. Germany beat Poland quickly, and this little quarrel was called the Phony war.
  • Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, and then in the Blitzkrieg, it attacked Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, who surrendered. This is in 1940.
  • Germany went into France (passing the Maginot line) and headed for Paris. Italy declared war on France, too, and then it surrendered quickly. Northern France was run by a puppet government. The South of France (Vichy) was run by Petain, a WWI hero.
  • Great Britain was still against Germany. But then Dunkirk :(((( Churchill and Roosevelt tried to keep everyone strong!
  • Then Germany attacked Britain. London was in flames and Churchill asked FDR for help!! There was American opposition to helping the Brits, though. Charles Lindbergh didn’t want the US to help. The America First Committee wanted the US to stay neutral. Roosevelt wanted to help, though.
  • In late 1940 FDR made a destroyers for bases deal, which was an agreement between the U.S. and GB that traded obsolete ships to Britain for a lease on British Navy bases. Was this unconstitutional?
  • The presidential election was between FDR (a third term???) and Wendell Willkie, who didn’t like the New Deal or the destroyers for bases deal. In the middle of his campaign, FDR started a draft, which Willkie supported (so he lost)
  • In a fireside chat, FDR said that if GB went down, the US would be in major trouble. He said that we must be the great arsenal of democracy.
  • Roosevelt later proposed the Lend-Lease legislation that gave GB stuff, and he said that American action must secure four freedoms-- speech/expression, worship, from want, and from fear. That was much more popular than his Lend-Lease, which was approved in the Senate.
  • Hey, there goes the Great Depression! There was lots of spending and stuff, which provided a stimulus to the economy and lots of job opportunities!
  • Hitler attacked the USSR, and so even though Americans didn’t like the commies, they extended the Lend-Lease thing to Russia.
  • Germans were attacking American boats to Britain super quickly.
  • Roosevelt and Churchill men in Canada and made the Atlantic Charter, which was a commitment to national self-determination for other countries. It planted the seeds for the UN ;)
  • The US didn’t want a two-ocean war (in the Atlantic and Pacific), so they tried to seek peace with Japan. However, they kinda liked China and were kind of reckless. The US helped the Chinese air force, but also sent exports to Japan.
  • Japan signed an alliance with Germany and Italy. Nazi governments in other countries gave them access to resources, some in Asia. And there was a new Japanese Prime Minister, and then suddenly they declared war on the US. They attacked Pearl Harbor! Japan thought it could win a quick war. Americans decided that they needed to fight in the war-- even Lucky Lindy :)
Mass Mobilization in a Society at War
  • It was decided that the US should first try to help out GB.
  • Japan also had attacked lots of other American and European islands during Pearl Harbor. Lots of the islands surrendered, and yeah I suppose it was pretty tough, wasn’t it? The Japanese were super duper mean to Americans. Like, super mean.
  • Italy and Germany’s declaring war on the US was a little weird, cos if they hadn’t, the US would have focused on its islands rather than GB. Is the textbook giving advice to the axis????  Germany, Italy, and Japan were the Axis powers, and the US, GB, and the USSR were the Allies, along with some French stragglers.
  • The US and GB kinda won in the Battle of the Coral Sea, you know, they tried? They decoded a code and stole some Japanese airplanes to make better ones. Ha, ha!
  • It seemed like the Allies weren’t really going to win, cos the Germans were pretty strong, you know? And hey, so was Japan.
  • The US Marines and the Navy held Guadalcanal and then the Japanese abandoned it.
  • The Selective Service ran the draft. They decided that some guys couldn’t fight. Oh, and then of course, there are individual stories, but whatever. Also God bless the Tuskegee airmen. The Selective Service wanted white people... so they dipped pretty deep into the white pool. Those in college didn’t have to fight, or farmers, or some religious people. Men who didn’t participate cos of religion were called COs. Also, some men got married so that they wouldn’t have to fight.
  • And we all know there were ladies helping out! The US let women decide if they wanted to serve or not. Branches of the military made non combat roles for ladies.
  • Women began to take on more difficult jobs and began to make more money. Women actually weren’t riveters very often. And hey, pants!!
  • Many African Americans were still sharecroppers, and many Latinos lived in poverty. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters tried to prevent discrimination in the armed forces. People were still racist, though, and remember that the 50s are still to come.
  • Randolph, whoever he is, was going to make a super huge march for Black Americans, which was scaring a lot of white people. FDR signed an executive order, the Fair Employment Practices Committee, which was supposed to curb racial discrimination. It was an economic Emancipation Proclamation.
  • Zoot suiter were Mexican-American gangs that showed resistance to white culture. Unpatriotic? Probably. Some LA white people attacked the Latinos, and thus began the zoot suit riots. But in a completely other point, some minorities got more opportunities for jobs.
  • And why can’t we have nice things? You guessed it-- Japanese Internment. Immigration from Japan was limited, but many Americans kinda liked the Japanese, especially the young ones. But of course this changed, and the Japanese were accused of stuff that they did not do. Everyone was kind of not liking the Japanese, and so they were put in camps.
Industrial Strength, Industrial Prosperity
  • The US and Stalin were kinda friends ;)) Stalin said that the US was super important because of its machines, even though the USSR had been throwing people at the war. The US needed better machinery than the Axis, FDR said!!
  • After the Depression, the US was back at ‘em as a manufacturing powerhouse. Germany had overly-complex machines that were difficult to make, while the US made simpler and fewer types of machines. Good!
  • Liberty Ships were important-- the “Model T of the Seas.” The US was just cranking those bad boys out.
  • Yeah, yeah, there was some inflation, but it wasn’t that bad. And there were no strike pledges.
  • Americans made more money during WWI than ever before in American history. There were ration stamps to limit stuff, but people were living the good life. Macy’s!
  • Americans didn’t know the horrors of war because it’d never been bombed. FDR said a few German bombings would wake everyone up. NO, FRANK, NO. Some people escaped Auschwitz and told about the Holocaust, but Americans simply couldn’t believe it. Few Americans actually believed the Holocaust until after the war.
  • Higher taxes? And bonds, ha ha. The US wasn’t really hurt economically after the war.
Winning a World War-- North Africa, Europe, Asia, the Pacific, 1943-1945
  • In late ‘42, the Soviet Union said that the westerners had to attack Germany, cos Russia was really feeling the burn. But Churchill said no! GB and the US kept on bombing Germany, and also attacked the Germans in North Africa. And so the victories began!
  • FDR went to Casablanca to meet with Churchill. They decided that they’d keep bombing  Germany, that they’d attack Italy (instead of France) after North Africa, and that a third of new forces/supplies would go to the Pacific. And also any surrender from Germany, Italy, or Japan had to be unconditional.
  • After the Soviets (and their winter) defeated the Nazis in Stalingrad in 1943, the tide of the war began to change. The Soviets went on the offensive, and the German military machine Wehrmacht began to retreat. Later that year, the US and GB began to attack the Nazi center of Europe. Patton <3 and stuff attacked Italy. Mussolini was arrested, but the Germans in Italy kept on fighting. The Allies got Rome in 1944.
  • The British just kept bombing stuff cos it was too hard to kind really good targets. Americans bombed during the day, the Brits bombed at night.
  • FDR met with Churchill, and then Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek at the Tehran Conference. Stalin wanted a promise that the US and GB would invade France in 1944, called Operation Overlord.
  • Bombs weren’t dropped to stop the Holocaust :(
  • I like Ike! He lead American invasion into France, and voila, D-Day. That was the first stage of Operation Overlord. Lots troops were cut off from their commanders, and yeah lots of war-y stuff. Paris was liberated. Patton sent tanks to the Rhine River and Germany. Americans were surrounded and “nuts” was mistranslated into “go to hell”?
  • Americans and Soviets began to liberate Nazi death camps. The Nazis had killed 6 million Jewish people and 6 million other people.
  • The US and GB bombed Dresden, so it goes.
  • The Soviets attacked Berlin and Hitler shot himself. Serves him right >:(((
  • FDR had been elected to a fourth term, but he died before inauguration. Wallace had been his running VP, but then everyone was like nah, let’s do Truman instead. Truman didn’t know any government secrets, like the A Bomb or anything. But hey, he ended the war.
  • The US pumped out those ships, man. The Pacific war was brutal, cos the Japanese soldiers didn’t surrender ever. Kamikaze! The US got Iwo Jima in Feb/March 1945 brutally!
  • The Manhattan Project was a code name for developing an atomic bomb. Niels Bohr was like “the only way you can make an A Bomb is if you make America into a factory.” Then he said “you made America into a factory.” And then the Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Then Nagasaki was three days later. Then the Japanese surrendered. The end!
​

Unit Eight

Chapter 24 - The world the war created
  • The atomic bombs created a new era of such warfare following WWII. Also, the UN held its first meeting to preserve peace. The world changed, man.
The United States in 1945
  • Everyone wanted to get home fast. Some women wanted families, some wanted to keep working. For industrial people, post war meant new profits, and for government people, it meant managing alliances, specially with the Soviets.
  • Penicillin and Streptomycin were “wonder drugs” that greatly reduced battlefield deaths. There were a lot of other new drugs, and vaccines, too. Whooping cough, diphtheria, mumps, measles, polio... Goodbye! People were getting taller, too. The lifespan increased!
  • There were also lots of little inventions that were everywhere now that the war was over-- like washing machines, freezers, ballpoint pens, dishwashers, you get the idea. And since there were no new cars during the war, everyone wanted a new one! Also, everyone was getting a TV, too.
  • But ah ha, remember the bomb? Truman said that the US should be the only country with nuclear bombs. BUT guess what? The Soviets tested a bomb of their own. GB and France did, too, but it was the Soviet bomb that scared everyone. The US wanted a bigger bomb (the H bomb) but some people opposed it (like Einstein). Truman asked if the Soviets could make one, and when his panel said yes, he said we have to, too. New people started working on the H bomb (including JOHN VON NEUMANN!!!). The US tested their thermonuclear bomb, and then the USSR did, too, 9 months later.
  • Soldiers got home after the war and struggled a lil bit. Divorce skyrocketed. The government made the GI Bill of Rights that gave veterans educational and employment benefits. It helped them get into college!! And the Veterans Administration and Federal Housing Authority, too.
  • The baby boom! There were lots of babies. Such a baby boom had never happened before. Baby Boomers were born between 45 and 60. And of course, what’s a baby boom without suburbia? There was a suburban boom! Levittown is a good example. And people moved from the East to the West.
  • Of course, minorities really struggled, cos often they weren’t allowed in housing developments. Many had to stay in urban areas. And also gay and lesbian people struggled, cos it was the 50s. And the beat people simply didn’t like suburbia.
  • Many black Americans lived in cities by this time, and sharecropping began to disappear. There was the invention of the cotton harvester, which made it obsolete, and black Americans moved to big cities. Segregation and discrimination became a national issue.
  • White people lived in suburbia, so black people lived in cities. And also the Federal Housing Authority kinda said to keep one race in one neighborhood.
  • Many Puerto Ricans moved to New York. Braceros (helping hands) were let into the United States in order to help out at farms. They were expected to go back to Mexico but not all of them did.
  • Mexican-Americans fought for desegregation and political rights in the Southwest.
  • US and GB thought that making Germany so economically terrible after WWI was what caused WWII, so they decided not to do that again. The Bretton Woods agreement made the International Monetary Fund to maintain exchange rates. And also the World Bank.
  • The UN was started with leadership from US, USSR, GB, and China. The Soviet refused to directly meet with the Chinese guy. The UN would be made up of the security council (which was those countries and France, too) and other rotating delegates. Anybody could veto. Also there was a General Assembly that couldn’t enforce anything.
  • FDR decided that Arthur Vandenberg could go to the first meeting in Cali, cos he didn’t want to be like Woody and not bring a Republican. But then FDR died. But Truman said keep on, and thus the UN.
The Cold War Begins
  • A lot of Americans like the Soviet Union in 1945, even though the Gov kinda didn’t.
  • The USSR kinda wanted most of Eastern Europe during WWII, and they also wanted stuff from Germany. The US wanted Germany to recover. FDR wanted to discuss this, but that never really happened.
  • Truman roasted Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, cos the commies had supposedly violated promises. Stalin took control of Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.
  • The Long Telegram was by an American diplomat in the Soviet Union. Pretty much he just complained about the USSR and that the US should adopted containment, making sure that communism didn’t spread.
  • Churchill said Europe was split by an “iron curtain.”
  • Truman merged the War and Navy departments into the Department of Defense.
  • Greece and Turkey was having some commie issues, so when GB had to back out, the US made the Truman Doctrine saying that the US would help other countries that were facing external pressure or internal revolution.
  • The Marshall plan was the European Recovery Program (1949), which economically helped some European countries so that the USSR would leave em alone. Stalin said that this plan was a direct assault. The USSR made Hungary and Czechoslovakia Soviet coups and cut off GB, the US, and France from Berlin. The Berlin Airlift was the American plane plan that sent supplies into West Berlin.
  • The Senate ratified American membership in NATO. Cool. Peacetime partnership. West Germany was admitted. The USSR made the Warsaw pact, which was pretty much the same thing, but Eastern Europe.
  • The Soviets exploded their own atomic bomb and China was overthrown by commies. The US recognized the previous Chiang Government now based in Taiwan until the 70s.
  • A bunch of people were accused of being Soviet spies. WI senator Joseph McCarthy said he had a list of commies in the government and everyone FREAKED! Hiss and Greenglass and Rosenberg were charged of being Soviets. The Rosenberg were the only Americans ever executed under the Espionage act. Turns out that they actually probably were Soviets. McCarthy was CRAZY!
  • The House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated Nazi/Commie sympathizers. Richard Nixon was a part of this?? He continued the search into entertainment, which Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra did no so much like. Civil Rights groups and schools got rid of commies.
  • In 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea. The Soviets had gotten the top part and the Americans the bottom after the war. The Soviet backed Kim Il-Sung.
  • The Soviets started boycotting the UN cos China’s cote was still the old Chinese government, even though it was communist now.
  • The US left Korea, and so the North attacked the South. The UN said it was a war, but almost all of the fighting was between the US and Korean troops. Lots of American supported action. MacArthur (US/UN) made an amphibious landing at Inchon, which turned the war in favor of South Korea. But then the Chinese attacked!! It was a stalemate after that... Truman fired MacArthur. The war kinda just stayed. Americans didn’t care.
Politics, 1948 and 1952
  • Truman was a wild guy. After Japanese surrender, he implemented FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.
  • Robert Taft didn’t like Truman.
  • In the election of 48, Truman wanted to maintain the New Deal, and he made it include black Americans and Jewish people. He desegregated the armed forces. And he liked Israel :)
  • Henry Wallace ran against Truman under the Progressive Party. Thurmond (Dixiecrat) ran against him too. And the Democrats nominated Thomas Dewey. Truman won.
  • Truman made the Fair Deal, which continued the New Deal. It repealed the Taft-hartley Act, supported farmers, raised the minimum wage, etc. ​
Chapter 25 - Complacency and change
  • Eisenhower ended the Korean War and solidified New Deal policies. His term was a stable time but also a time of great change.
Eisenhower’s America, America’s World
  • The Cold War was daunting because the US and the USSR could destroy each other and all life on Earth.
  • There was an arms race, and Eisenhower suggested that the U.K., US, and USSR give up some of their weapons, but nothing came of that plan.
  • Eisenhower tried to make a policy to avoid war. Part of it was massive retaliation, aka brinkmanship, meaning that the US was on the brink of retaliating if the soviets stepped out of line.
  • The second part of the plan was the CIA, which was reformed by Eisenhower to spy internationally in potentially commie counties.
  • The CIA got a pro-Western guy to be leader of Iran in 1953.
  • The CIA overthrew the guys in Guatemala (Arbenz) and Laos, and had plans for Congo and Indonesia, and Cuba of course.
  • The French tried to reclaim Vietnam, and the US sided with em, even though they sided with Vietnam before. Vietnam was split into the North and South. SEATO!
  • There were issues in China, and some islands became nationalist. The US didn't do anything but it pointed to larger threats.
  • In July 1955, Eisenhower met with Khrushchev and Brits and French. Optimistic though it accomplished little.
  • Khrushchev wanted the de-Stalinization of the USSR, which could be good!
  • The Arab nationalist leader of Egypt, Nasser, wanted funding from the US and the USSR for a Nile dam. US said no so Nasser took the Suez Canal, hurting the U.K. and France. They supported Israel in attacking Egypt. US was not happy, as was USSR. There was some bombing in Egypt and France and the UK weren't involved in the Middle East after.
  • There was also a Hungarian uprising. Americans thought it proof of Soviet tyranny.
  • Eisenhower won the election of 1956.
  • The Soviets launched Sputnik, then Sputnik II and Laika. Space race! The US made NASA and closed the gap. They had better resources. Also the US passed NSEA, which improved science and math education.
  • More kids went to college.
  • Spirit of Geneva was something confusing. Commitment to coexist? Khrushchev toured the US.
  • A US spy plane and its pilot was shot down over the USSR and yeah. The U-2 incident. Khrushchev said Eisenhower couldn't visit.
  • Republicans nominated Nixon in 1960. Democrats had Kennedy. They had TV debates. Kennedy won with the support of black people. Youngest president. Rip, lol.
A culture on the move
  • Television became important. Blah blah blah. Gender role shows, etc. Ed Sullivan, Beatles, blah blah. The quiz show was rigged. TV became bland.
  • Cars, blah blah. Cooler looking cars. The guy who wrote this book just called cars sexy. Awful. Highways went up, too. Eisenhower made the Interstate Highway System, blah blah. Travel was cheaper. Fast food, motels, gas stations, etc!
  • Religion boomed, too. Churches sprang up. Praise Jesus. And of course, Billy Graham. Evangelical, great! No segregated revivals! And Catholics! They still didn't like protestants but not as much! Hey, Jewish folk were in the uprising, too! Yeah! And Islam. yeah. Nation of Islam. And some Hindu folk, too. One nation under God and in god we trust we added in 54 and 55.
  • Day was a commie who suddenly turned Catholic?!
  • Elvis!!! Nasty!!
  • Everybody’s doing it mentality with Alfred Kinsey. Aaaaaand Playboy.
  • What on Earth?!
Race and Civil Rights
  • Brown v. Board of Education said that separate but equal in schools was not okay!!! 1954
  • NAACP. Marshall was a leader and the first black Supreme Court justice. Segregation was being chopped down. Little Rock Nine.
  • Rosa Parks, bien sur. She was already a civil rights activist. There was a bus boycott.
  • King, Abernathy, and other ministers made the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Nonviolent, veterans of the bus boycott.
  • And so, a sit-in. Sit-ins, plural. They spread quickly and were often student run.
  • Freedom riders were beaten. Bobby Kennedy said that a bus or train that crossed state lines could couldn't be segregated.
  • Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Bull Connor. NAACP field secretary was murdered.
  • March in Washington. I Have a Dream speech. Iconic. Ella Baker shaped the SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
  • Malcolm X, you know. The usual. He made the Muslim Mosque Incorporated. And UAAU. He was assassinated in 1965.
  • Mutually Assured Destruction is the principle that two nuclear powers would eventually obliterate each other (and potentially the world) if they were to start a nuclear war. They could take each other out.
  • Brinkmanship is the policy of pushing a conflict to its limits to extract what you want in a situations, while being sure it doesn’t spill into full-out war. ​
Chapter 26 - Lives Changed

  • SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was organized during the 1960 election. It was white kids. It marked a new time of activism for white kids. 
New Voices, New Authorities
  • Jane Jacobs wrote about city planning. The Death and Life of Great American cities. Neighborhood friendly stuff. 
  • Rachel Carson is fraudulent
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-truth-about-ddt-and-silent-spring
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-rachel-carson-cost-millions-of-people-their-lives
https://spectator.org/48925_ddt-fraud-and-tragedy/

  • Harrington wrote The Other America about poverty.
  • Bettye wrote the Feminine Mystique. 
  • Bob Dylan! 
  • The baby boom meant that there were lots of kids who were in college in the 60s. Lots of student movements started. Berkeley was important for student protest.
Camelot, the White House, and Dallas- The Kennedy Administration
  • JFK was a pretty popular guy. His administration made the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities, headed by LBJ. Kennedy had promised more civil rights, but he was kind of slow to move that way. White voters weren’t that interested.
  • JFK’s New Frontier was his domestic policy. He raised the minimum wage. Equal Pay Act. And mental health stuff, too. He promised a man on the moon in the next 10 years and funded NASA more.
  • JFK was Catholic, so he was kind of hesitant around religion. Engel v. Vitale said no mandated prayers or Bible readings in public schools. That stuff had been added because people were afraid of godless commies. This freaked Christians out.
  • JFK cared a lot about Foreign Affairs. Castro had overthrown the Cuban government, which at first Americans had liked (he was on Ed Sullivan), but then he killed some people and seized lands that belonged to some American companies. Americans did not like that. Dang commie!
  • Dulles was a CIA guy and said to do the bay of pigs. It did not work out. Dulles was fired.
  • JFK met with Khrushchev and Khr. gloated about the first man in space and the bay of pigs. Two months later, Khrushchev ordered the Berlin Wall to be put up. The US put up tanks, but Kennedy said he’d rather have a wall than a war. The Berlin crisis of 1961 was over.
  • The Cuban Missile Crisis- October 1962. The US had missiles in Turkey. They were ready to attack the Soviets. Then it fizzled down. The Soviets removed their missiles and stopped the quarantine of Cuba. The US promised to not invade and to remove its missiles from Turkey.
  • The Green Berets were created. Operation Mongoose, 33 assassination plans for Castro.
  • Kennedy made the AID and the Peace Corps.
  • Lee Harvey Oswald shot jfk, and Jack Ruby shot him. The Warren Report said that Oswald had acted alone.
The Coming of Lyndon B. Johnson
  • LBJ got to know Congress really really well.
  • His first thing was the civil rights bill, which he wouldn’t compromise on. Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • LBJ’s domestic program was called the Great Society. Federal Aid to education, Medicare/Medicaid, immigration reform, and a voting rights act.
  • It didn’t look like LBJ could win an election without running with Bobby Kennedy. He didn’t like Bobby, so he ran with Hubert Humphrey instead. The parties were divided that year. The Republicans were divided between Rockefeller and Goldwater (the conservative).
  • LBJ won!  He did the Great Society and education. Citing Rights Act.
  • Americans had little missions against the North Vietnamese Army and the National Liberation Front. Diem the leader of the South Vietnamese Regime. He was Catholic and anti-commie, but he was also corrupt. The CIA had a military coup against him, and the CIA killed him. Johnson wasn’t really sure about foreign policy, so he just kept JFK’s guys.
  • The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution said that the US could use force to protect US interests in Vietnam. It was after the North Vietnamese supposedly fired on the Maddox. The US started bombing some more too a little later. There was distrust between Congress and Johnson cos he didn’t straightforwardly ask for more troops. There was an increased draft. The troops didn’t understand the purpose of what they were doing because they were killing, but taking no land. Black American troops were dying disproportionately.
  • College students were freaking out back home. 
  • The Tet Offensive was a giant North Vietnamese assault on American bases throughout Vietnam. The North won, even though it lost a lot of troops. No one really like Johnson after that. Vietnam was a stalemate and a sinkhole.
  • In the 1968 election, it was Gene McCarthy, Bobby K. LBJ didn’t run.
  • Then MLK was killed. There were riots and sit ins and crazy stuff. Things were going well for Bobby, though, and he was making friends with minorities. Then he was shot, RIP. 
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FUQZd2VAQ0
  • Nixon won from anti-Johnson sentiment. Working Americans have become the forgotten Americans. 
Chapter 27 - Rights, reactions, and limits
The New Politics of the Late 1960s
  • Kevin Phillips said that white suburbia was republican cos they didn’t like the civil rights movement. Suburban conservatism was new, but its roots in earlier conservative stuff wasn’t.
  • Before the 60s, there were conservatives and liberals in both parties. After 1960, liberals became democrats and conservatives became republicans. Goldwater was a conservative. 
  • Nixon lied a lot. People voted for him cos he was kinda conservative, but then his administration was liberal. He did lots of liberal things, like medicare and caid and soc sec. And he made the EPA. And other green stuff. And folk art. FAP (family assistance plan) was kind of defeated. It was gonna replace welfare. He’s no conservative!! He was more “win-at-all-costs” than anything else. He didn’t like protestors.
  • LBJ started the Paris Peace Talks-- talks with North Vietnam that led to an agreement by the Nixon administration to withdraw all US troops from Vietnam in ‘72.
  • Nixon-Kissinger bypassed people.  Nixon expanded N. Vietnam bombing and stuff. It didn’t do much. Cambodia’s prime minister Lon Nol did overthrow Prince Sihanouk. The latter tried to get Cambodians to turn commie and join Khmer Rouge. Civil War! The commies won. They tried to make Cambodia preindustrial. It ended during the Vietnam invasion.
  • Nixon removed troops and had volunteers instead so people wouldn’t hate it so much.
  • Vietnamization was the policy of turning the fighting of the Vietnam war over to South Vietnam in exchange for greater US financial support.
  • More and more protests. Four dead in Ohio. Kent State. Then two more after in Jackson State.
  • The war was almost over, but then it wasn’t. American troops left after the ceasefire in 27 Jan 1973.
  • Nixon started to normalized US relations with commie China. Also there was some progress made on the USSR front, too. Reduced tensions in Berlin. Then the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). Reduced nuclear weapons.
  • Other parts of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy were not too good. Nixon liked Saudi Arabia and Iran. He didn’t like Indira Gandhi tho. The CIA got rid of the Allende government in Chile. 
  • Nixon made the New Economic Policy, which ended the decades long plan in which all other currencies would be based on the US dollar.
Movements of the 1960s and 1970s
  • More ladies were elected to political positions. All of these ladies were democrats. Bra burnings, pageant protests... the usual. No bras were actually burned. Bunny was turned down a university job, so she sued. Betty Friedan. Ms. became a marriage neutral term. Roe v. Wade declared anti-abortion laws unconstitutional.
  • United Farm Workers, led by Cesar Chavez
  • American Indian Movement (AIM). In 69, some natives led a siege on Alcatraz for some reason. Also a takeover of Wounded Knee. Dennis Banks and Russell Means. Also a sit in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
  • White people left cities, so black people took up political decisions.
  • The Bakke decision of 78 limited but did not end affirmative action programs to achieve racial diversity in a university's student body. Reverse discrimination! Lau v. Nichols reeled that schools must help kids who don’t speak English. Also the Handicapped Children Act.
  • Gay rights. Elaine Nobel and Allan Spear came out of the closet. 
  • Woodstock
  • Jim Morrison lol ded
The Culture Wars of the 1970s
  • Phyllis Schlafly was Catholic and worked for Goldwater and pretty much hated liberals. She single handedly shot down the Equal Rights Amendment.
  • Social issues were important.
  • Reverend Jerry Falwell made the Moral Majority. Conservative, pretty much. Thought Goldwater was too liberal?!?!?
Politics, Economics, and the Impact of Watergate
  • The economy was good in the 60s, but it was better in other countries. Unemployment was high in the 70s. Stagflation! Less disposable income! The rust belt!
  • Watergate was the crisis that began with an illegal break-in at the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate complex and ended with Nixon’s resignation. Nixon could’ve just admitted the burglary happened and fired em, the whole thing could have been avoided. Nixon had tapes?? Saturday Night Massacre? I am not a crook??? Impeachment?? He resigned???
  • And so Ford became president. And he pardoned Nixon. Ford tried to fix the economy, but...
  • Detente was the policy of building better understanding and a more peaceful relationship between the US and the USSR.
  • Laos turned commie in 75. South Vietnam turned commie.
  • Reagan ran in 76 but couldn't beat Ford for the ticket. But guess who won? Jimmy Carter. Jimmy promised to never tell a lie.
  • Three mile island, RIP. Lots of gas problems.
  • Camp David Accords was an agreement between Israel and Egypt that brought mutual recognition between the countries and a step toward peace in the middle east.
  • SALT II
  • The US and 60 other countries boycotted the 1980 summer olympics.
  • Iranian hostage crisis- the invasion of the American embassy in Iran by revolutionary guards who then took 66 hostages, holding them from Nov 79 to Jan 80. 
  • Credibility Gap- the American public believed that there was a gap between what the government was saying and the reality of the Vietnam war. ​

Unit Nine

Chapter 28 - The reagan revolution
 
  • The people who voted for Reagan were diverse. Working class white people who didn’t like the protests of the 60s and 70s. Also middle/upper class people who voted cos of taxes. And also Christians because of his stance on abortion and gay rights and prayer and stuff. They all disliked commies and thought the past presidents were too soft.
A Rapidly Changing U.S. Government
  • The Reagan Revolution was the major changes in American politics under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, including cuts in taxes and domestic spending and increased military spending. Less tax, more federal debt, and the gov wasn’t so friendly to labor unions.
  • Reagan was an actor, and said he would’ve made more movies if not for the high tax bite. He married and divorced Jane Wyman. First divorced president! He was the president of the screen actors guild, where he ratted out commies. He married Nancy in ‘52, and started working as a spokesman for GE, where he became a Republican. He ran and won in 1980, beating Jimmy Carter.
  • Reagan wanted to increase military spending, cut domestic spending, and cut federal income taxes. He justified the tax cut using supply-side economics. This means stimulating the economy, but not federal spending, but by cutting taxes to foster investment. And also the Laffer curve. He called for a 30 percent tax cut and Bush called it voodoo economics. Democrats in congress joined the Republican minority to pass it. Reaganomics!
  • Also domestic spending was reduced, and some programs for the poor were cut, including CETA, which had government sponsored jobs. But also AFDC and federal tax credits grew.
  • Air traffic people went on strike, and Reagan said go back to work or get fired. A lot of them were fired, and the union was destroyed. Organized labor no longer had a friend in the White House. Also a strike for meat packers in Minn.
  • Reagan told Volcker to curb inflation no matter what, and as a result unemployment increased. Homelessness doubled. It kinda hurt Reagan’s popularity, but he told everyone to Stay the Course!
  • There was a rapid growth in the federal deficit. This was his biggest failure? The US was the biggest debtor nation.
  • In 1984, it was Reagan vs. Walter Mondale, the latter of which who had a lady for his VP. Too bad. Conservatives were a little little disappointed but they had no alternative.
  • The economy started to turn around by 1983. The first space shuttle was launched, too. Yeah, then the Olympics in LA! Things were looking up for Reagan! It was Morning Again in America! He was shot and joked about it! Lots of people voted for Reagan! Democrats had the house, though.
  • In his second term, Reagan had the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and he focused more on foreign policy.
  • Reagan didn’t like the commies! He called the USSR the “evil empire” and had an arms buildup. He did little things, like imposed sanctions and getting rid of a parking spot.
  • Reagan announced the SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was a program to defend the US with sophisticated technologies. Also called Star Wars.
  • Reagan wanted to have defense against Soviet missiles and stuff. The Soviets were totally freaking out and one time went into an accidental full military alert. Ha, almost WWIII.
  • Reagan was pro-Israel.
  • Stuff in Afghanistan? Freedom Fighters? The US supplied them with stuff, and the Soviets withdrew? Libya? Gaddafi liked messing with the US, and the US retaliated? Lebanon?
  • There was an uprising in El Salvador, and the US worried it was commie-related, and supported the other side. Also Nicaragua? Kirkpatrick? Also Grenada? Contras are good?
  • The Boland Amendment said that the US couldn’t seek to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. Also no more help for the Contras.
  • Oliver North? He helped the Contras by finding donations. The Iran-Contras scandal was a plan to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages held in Lebanon and to use the profits to provide aid to the Contra forces of Nicaragua.  North testified well before Congress.
  • A bunch of Soviet leaders died all in succession, so Reagan was like “lol how am I supposed to deal with the Russians if they keep dying lol” But then Gorbachev!
  • Chernobyl. RIP.
  • Gorbachev wanted perestroika Перестро́йка (restructuring of Soviet political and economic systems) and glasnost гла́сность (openness and freedom for Soviets). He thought an arms race would bankrupt the USSR, so he didn’t.
  • Gorbachev and Reagan bonded :) mR gOrBaCHeV tEAr DoWN tHiS waLL
  • Trust, but verify! You repeat that at every meeting :) Gorby fever??
  • “George Herbert Walker Bush was a child of privilege.” RIP Barbara :(
  • Bush the elder regretted saying.....Read my lips. No new taxes.
The Changing Nature of the American Economy
  • In 1987, Reagan proposed an Economic Bill of Rights.
  • A couple people got super rich. Boesky and Milken were cheating the system a lil.
  • There wa sa Dow Jones crash on Black Monday. The Fed made it okay but it still scared people.
  • “The best way to rob a bank is to own one”
Changes in the Rest of the Country
  • Live Aid, whatever. I don’t like the 80s. They’re gross. Rock musicians came to dominate the world? This guy is bogus. That started in the 60s, honestly. Maybe even the fifties. The baby boomers controlled the charts then, which really gave the teens of that time a new power that hadn’t been felt by people of their age before. The 80s are nasty and I won’t take any of this. Whatever. I’m not even reading the rest of this. I don’t like the 80s.
  • Lol, Tipper Gore. That’s good stuff. That is good.
  • The Christian Coalition...?
  • Lots of immigrants started coming to the US, mostly family members because of a loophole. And of course that means undocumented immigrants, too. This guy is super... chill about all of this.
  • Gambling transformed many American Indian communities in the 1980s.
  • Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Okay.
  • And why can’t we have good things? Because SIV enters the human race and becomes HIV, which becomes AIDS. RIP lil buddies. People were totally freaking out. Rock Hudson had AIDS. ACT-UP.
  • The end.
Chapter 29 - a new World order
A New World Order

  • There started to be a fall of the USSR after Bush the Elder’s inauguration. A New World Order!
The Bush Administration
  • Bush the Elder was a former ambassador to China and a former head of the CIA. He was interested in foreign policy.
  • Bush the Elder’s team was James Baker, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell.
  • Bush thought that Germany had a right to be united. He didn’t really care about the Lithuanians though.
  • Gorbachev was arrested by a military coup! Boris Yeltsin saved him. But then the USSR ended in December of 1991. Hammer and sickle was replaced.
  • Bush wanted to build closer ties with China, but then the in China, students protested in Tiananmen Square for more freedom and were run over by tanks. Bush was horrified! The result was an inconsistent China policy.
  • Saddam Hussein (Iraq) took over Kuwait in 1990, meaning that they were in charge of 20% of the world’s oil. They said there were simply reuniting the countries. This will not stand! The UN said that that if negotiations didn’t work force could be used.
  • Operation Desert Storm began in 1991 and destroyed Iraqi stuff in Kuwait and forced the Iraqis out. Kuwait was re established. The war was over.
  • Bush made a no fly zone over the Kurds in the North, saying that the US would shoot down Iraqi planes there. In the rest of the country, people who were against Hussein were expecting US backing, but they never got it and Hussein killed them :(
  • The US put some troops in Saudi Arabia, which Muslims didn’t like >:( Including Osama bin Laden, who made al-Qaeda.
  • Also, Bush decided no more Noriega as dictator in Panama. He was anti commie, which was good, but he was also corrupt and brutal. He annulled an election when his party didn’t win, so a US assault team flew in there and arrested him and put the elected guy in charge.
  • Bush also made the North American Free trade Agreement, which would substantially reduce barriers to trade.
  • Bush had said that he wanted the US to be kinder :)
  • Bush was an education guy, unlike Reagan. He also supported the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
  • Rodney King in 1991 was an example of police brutality, and the coppers were found not guilty. This led to riots in Los Angeles. And also OJ Simpson, who black people said was totally innocent, while white people said he was totally guilty?
  • Bush’s biggest failure was the US economy. “It tanked” -Todd. Also, taxes rose :(
  • Bill Clinton. Bleh. He and Al Gore. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
  • Perot entered as third party, and got a fair amount of votes.

The Clinton Presidency
  • Clinton was elected cos of the economy, and he knew that.
  • He wanted to reform the nation’s health insurance system to close the gap between rich and poor. But he didn’t get his health care >:(
  • Don’t ask, don’t tell.
  • David Koresh, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms...?
  • Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act. Americorps or something, too.
  • Goals 200 was legislation that set thought new goals over the coming decades to improve the quality of American schooling.
  • Also the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
  • Clinton’s budget had raised taxes (not good for the conservatives) and little for federal programs (not good for the liberals)
  • Labor unions didn’t like NAFTA, but that didn’t stop Billy :)
  • Newt Gingrich “looks like this *frowns*”. He was a Republican speaker.
  • The Person Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program.
  • The Defense of Marriage Act said that no state had to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state. Declared unconstitutional in 2013.
  • Clinton got a second term.
  • The Oslo Accords were a 1993 agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation organization in which Israel agreed that the PLO could govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip in exchange for PLO recognition of Israel’s right to exist.
  • Things were not going well for the US in Haiti and Somalia. Same for Rwanda. And Yugoslavia.
  • The Dayton Peace Accords- a November 1995 agreement that began the process to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia.
  • Clinton ordered a missile strike on Baghdad after he found that there was an assassination attempt on former president Bush.
  • Good Friday Accords- a 1998 peace agreement to prince a peaceful settlement to the long-standing battles between Catholic and Protestant factions over the government of Northern Ireland.
  • The Oklahoma City bombing was by McVeigh and Nichols. Four years later, the first school shooting. And a World Trade Center bombing in 1993 by Muslim Terrorists killed six.
  • MoNiCa lEwInSkY?!? TrOoPeRgAtE? “i dId NoT hAvE sExUaL reLaTioNs wItH tHaT wOmAn??”
  • Al Gore ran against Bush the Younger. “Gore had been deeply offended by the Monica Lewinsky affair.” Oh, really, Al? That offends you? Hm.
Technology Dominates an Era
  • I think we’re still in that era, quite frankly.
  • You know, computers used to be HUGE. Like, actually. ENIAC. Texas Instruments made the pocket calculator. And Intel. The first PC was the MITS Altair 8800, which wasn’t much of a user friendly computer. 1975 for that bad boy. Homebrew had a political agenda. And it also had the Woz and Steve Jobs :) they made the Apple I and then the Apple II. And don’t forget about IBM! They were doing stuff too. Microsoft, ha ha nerds.
  • Don’t forget the Y2K scare! Everybody thought that all electricity would shut down, pretty much. Nothing happened though. Bus tickets stopped working in Australia and a slot machine in Delaware stopped, too.
  • The Internet is a system of interconnected computers and servers that allow the exchange of e-mail, posting of websites, and other means of instant communication :)
  • Google becomes a verb I’m dead
Chapter 30
Surprise! You don't have to take notes on chapter 30. 
​Congrats on finishing Apush :-) 
The following is a list of things that I would like readers to know. They pertain to my notes and to the study of American history in general. 

My statement on Thomas Jefferson: 
Slavery cannot be justified. That is without a doubt. 
Thomas Jefferson was a very important figure in the founding of our nation, as well as an interesting character in his personal life. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, served as our third president, expanded the nation's size and sent off the Corps of Discovery. He spoke many languages, played the violin, and founded the University of Virginia. In these ways, and many others, his accomplishments and abilities are impressive. But Thomas Jefferson also kept slaves, including some thought to be his own children. During his life, Jefferson took the easier, wealthier, and less confrontational path of supporting the status quo of his time: man enslaving his fellow man. As I previously said, this cannot be justified. He championed liberty but personally denied it to hundreds of people. 
Jefferson, like many other Founding Fathers, is a complex person. He and the others were so important to the start of the United States, but at the same time, committed the horrendous crime of slavery. It is my belief that both aspects of the Founding Fathers should be kept into consideration at all times.
Jefferson's achievements should not be ignored because he was a slaveholder. Jefferson's status as a slaveholder should not be ignored because of his achievements. He was a Founding Father and a slaveholder. 

My statement on William Henry Harrison: 
At the time that I took this class last year, I liked Harrison because, like many other students, the only thing I knew about him was his short presidency. I thought this was funny, and I did not think there was more to him than that. 
After recently learning more about Tecumseh and Prophetstown,  I now realize that Harrison was blind to his own hypocrisy: a Christian carrying out savage and inhumane acts against his fellow man. He viewed Native Americans as sub-human. His actions towards Natives during the Battle of Tippecanoe were repulsive, and I regret that I did not know the extent of this terror sooner. I have no respect for William Henry Harrison, and I am sorry that I ever did. 

My statement on Harriet Beecher Stowe: 
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the first American best-seller. Her identity as a woman who sparked a war and changed history is amazing, and she is one of my favorite historical figures to study. That being said, I acknowledge that many prominent black Americans, like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, spoke poorly of her because she was a white woman writing of slavery that she had never experienced. It can easily be argued that she was in no place to write a book like Uncle Tom's Cabin when there were many people who could attest to slavery's horrors themselves. But she did write it, and that is history. She could have been more progressive, but she was not. These are important things to remember. 
I like Harriet Beecher Stowe not because of the subject matter in the book she wrote, but because she was an influential woman in history who truly seems more human to me than many other figures. Her son Fred was permanently injured from the war that she had helped to start. Her son Charley lived in her shadow and even wrote a little himself (and he married a girl from Wisconsin). Harriet Beecher Stowe and her family have flaws. But that is what makes them real. 
You can read more about Fred, Charley, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's other children in my history section, coming soon.  

How to be a good student of history

You probably don't want to hear this, but the best way to be a good student of history is to actually be interested in what you're learning! I was able to get a better understanding by reading a lot of books and taking lots of notes. 
But I also watched a lot of television. I attribute my 5 on the AP test to this. 
Below is a list of my favorite things to watch that also make you smarter :)

-Liberty's Kids is an animated PBS show about Colonial America. I know, it sounds lame, but I really like it, and I can say without a doubt that if I had not binged this show before the test, I would not have scored the way I did. It has famous actors as the voices of famous historical figures, like Ben Stiller as Thomas Jefferson and Sylvester Stallone as Paul Revere. A lot of the dialog is actual quotes said by that person. And Native Americans on the show are voiced by actual Native Americans! Who doesn't love that? You can watch it for free on Youtube, and you will have no regrets if you do. 

-Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen is really good, too. It has only four or five episodes, and they focus on people like Kit Carson, Davy Crockett, and Lewis & Clark. I watched this after taking the AP test, and many of the events are not in the curriculum. Nonetheless, it really helps you to contextualize everything you're learning in class, and the actor for Daniel Boone is cute. It is the sister show of simply Men Who Built America, and that one is good, too. It's about Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford and the like. 

-Legends and Lies: The Patriots was pretty good, too. It was about the Revolutionary War. But it's Bill O'Reilly and I don't think they even air it any more. Men Who Built America is better anyway. The Internet says there is also a Civil War version but I never watched that.