1 History and Culture of the United States.

UNIT 1 EARLY AMERICA:

1.1. NATIVE AMERICAN PEOPLES:

Native American came to North America during the last ice age from the Asian continent, from Siberia to Alaska, when the sea levels dropped and a land bridge was uncovered in the Bering Strait. They lived scattered in tribes and as far as language is concerned, there were over three hundred languages. Native Americans were fine crafts workers, making pottery, baskets, carving, wove cotton and plant-fibre cloth. Perfected techniques of farming, hunting and fishing. They developed structures of political power and religious belief, and engaged in far reaching networks of trade and communication. They believed that the world was immersed with spiritual power and sacred spirits could be found in all kinds of living and inanimate things. Religious ceremonies aimed to control supernatural forces to serve their interests. 1.2. EUROPEAN EXPANSION: ENGLANDS EMPIRE:

A few years after Christopher Columbus had discovered America, the most powerful European nations began to claim areas of the American continent and established colonies there. Adam Smith, English political economist in his great work, The Wealth of Nations (1776), apart from considering that the discovery of America brought to the Old World, he also pointed out that it marked a division in the history of mankind. England was willing to experience Spains success so the English turned to America by 1570s in order to obtain the profits of the New World. 1.3. NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES:

They have some common features; in every colony, political jurisdiction and issues fell within one of the three levels of government, the king and the Parliament, the Colonial government, or the local government. 1.3.1 - JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA: This was the 1st English colony founded in America in 1607, and set the pattern for English colonization. There were disagreements within the Virginia Company in the first years of the colony. The principal founder who was Captain John Smith disagreed with his fellow councilors on the running of the settlement. The colony survived and started to ship tobacco to England in 1614 and tobacco became its main export. 1.3.2. THE PURITAN COLONIES: PLYMOUTH: English Puritans established in New England, escaping religious persecution in their homeland and founded a colony with their own religious

2 History and Culture of the United States. ideals seeking to purify the Church of England. They wanted to establish a city set upon a hill. One of these puritans, the so called the Pilgrims crossed the Athlantic in the ship called Mayflower and settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. The principal founder was William Bradford who wrote the experiences of the group in Of Plymouth Plantation. The Mayflower compact was signed on November 11th 1620 to found selfgovernment in the colony. It was an agreement that proved of those English emigrants to live under a rule of law, based on the approval of the people. It is the earliest known case in American history of people establishing a government for themselves by mutual agreement. MASSACHUSETTS: In 1629, Massachusetts Bay Colony, a joint-stock company resident in England, received its charter and was founded with the purpose of being a refuge for English Puritans who did not accept the Church of England and wanted to practice their own religion. The principal founder was John Winthrop, who became governor, leading the community by strict puritan laws. He expressed that the New England Puritans would be a model for other colonists and other Puritans to emulate but this writing has also meant the hope that America would be a beacon upon a hill for other peoples. CONNECTICUT: In 1635, the Colony of Connecticut was founded. It received a royal charter in 1663, but self-government preceded official recognition. The principal founder was Thomas Hooker. CHALLENGES TO PURITAN ORTHODOXY AND THE FOUNDATION OF RHODE ISLAND: Puritans who protested that the state should not interfere with religion such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were forced to leave Massachusetts Bay. Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams guaranteeing religion freedom and the separation of church and state. 1.3.3. FOUNDING OF THE CAROLINAS: In 1663, eight proprietors received a royal charter from Charles II to found a colony to the North of Florida. Thus, Carolina was founded with a commercial and a political purpose. The principal founder was Anthony Ashley Cooper. He required the assistance of the philosopher John Locke to devise the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina in 1669 to establish an aristocracy hat governed the colony. He also planned an elected assembly of landowners, the Council of Nobles. The Carolina proprietors were planning to organize Carolina along the lines of a feudal state. In 1719, the colonists overthrew the last proprietary government, and in 1729, the king created separate royal government in North and South Carolina. 1.3.4. THE MIDLE COLONIES: NEW YORK: Dutch settlers purchased Manhattan island from Indian chiefs in 1626 and built the town of New Amsterdam in 1664. This settlement was

3 History and Culture of the United States. made English colony and renamed New York. The principal founder was Peter Stuyvesant, Duke of York. The purpose of this foundation was commercial. NEW JERSEY: Founded with the purpose of consolidating new English territory. The duke of York awarded this land to two courtiers, Sir George Cartaret and Lord Berkerley although legally only the King could establish a colonial government. PENNSYLVANIA AND DELAWARE: In 1681, Pennsylvania was founded with the purpose of being a refuge for English Quakers and the principal founder was William Penn. Charles II awarded him a charter making him the only proprietor of that area. In 1682, he bought the Three Lower Countries that finally became Delaware. Swedes had founded the colony of Delaware with a commercial purpose in 1638. The Quakers were pacifists and believed all persons possessed the spirit of God, a powerful Inner Light and that all persons were equal in the sight of God and everyone could be saved. They were very humble and wore very austere clothes. 1.3.5. MARYLAND, A SETTLEMENT FOR ENGLISH CATHOLICS: In 1634, Maryland was founded and established as a proprietary colony by George Calvert, known as Lord Baltimore, a catholic who thought of this colony as a refuge for English Catholics persecuted elsewhere. The Maryland toleration act was signed in 1649 and this colony was characterized by religious acceptance but the Act Concerning Religion, which institutionalized toleration, provided impermanent protection for Catholics. In the 18th C the Church of England became the established church. 1.3.6. GEORGIA, THE LAST FOUNDATION: In the 1730s, Georgia was the last of the colonial English settlements. Founded with the purpose of discouraging Spanish expansion, since it was an appealing territory and the British thought that the Spanish could move from Florida to occupy that area. The principal founder was James Oglethorpe, a British general and Member of Parliament. The charter was issued in 1732. The colony was named Georgia for the King.

UNIT 2 REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE AND THE FORMATION OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC:

2.1. BRITISH POLITICS AND THE COLONIES IN 1763 1774: Voting was restricted to white males who owned lands. Most American colonists worked on small farms. In the southern colonies, there was the system of slavery and black people worked on large plantations. By 1733 there were 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast, from New Hampshire in the North to Georgia in the South.

4 History and Culture of the United States. The Seven Years War was a global conflict that had an enormous repercussion for Great Britain in spite of her victory over France. As a result of the war, Great Britain had an important national debt; victory came at a great cost. American colonists evaded regulations on trade and navigation. Tensions between Britain and the colonies started when they began to charge taxes and punish smugglers. By the mid-1770s, relations between Americans and the British administration had become strained and bitter. 1764, Parliament enacted the Sugar Act. 1765, Passage of the Stamp Act. Special stamps had to be attached to all newspapers, legal documents created in colonies, pamphlets and licenses. On June 6, 1765, the Massachusetts House of Representatives resolved to propose an intercolonial meeting to resist the Stamp Act and on June a circular letter was sent to the assemblies of the other colonies to meet in October to consider of a general and united, dutiful, loyal and humble representation of their condition to His Majesty and the Parliament; and to implore relief. Due to the Quartering Act of 1765, it was compulsory for colonial assemblies to house and supply British soldiers. In 1717, Parliament also enacted the Townshed Duties. The British also established a board of customs commissioners, whose purpose was to stop colonial smuggling and the corruption of local officials involved in such illegal trade. Taxes were removed except the one on tea in order to relieve tensions. Intolerable Acts these acts included in the provisions closing the port of Boston, restructuring the Massachusetts government, restricting town meetings, ordering troops quartered in Boston, ordering that British officials accused of crimes should be sent to England or Canada for trial. 2.2. THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1775-1783: 2.2.1. - THE WAR FOR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE: In April 1775, there were battles in Concord and Lexington and the war of American Independence started. In May, 1775, a second Continental Congress met at Philadelphia and the Colonists continued resistance. In June the Continental Congress founded a Continental Army and appointed George Washington as Commander. In December, the British Parliament passed the Prohibitory Acts, which declared Britains intention to force American Colonists into submission. It was not until July 1776, when the Congress voted for independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote a formal declaration that was accepted on July 4. In 1778, a French-American alliance was signed and that was decisive to win the war. The year 1781 was significant for the American Revolution. Between 1778 and 1781, British military operations focused on the South because the British assumed a large percentage of Southerners were

5 History and Culture of the United States. loyalists who could help them subdue the American colonists. The Americans and British signed a preliminary peace treaty on November 30, 1782; they signed the final treaty, known as the Peace of Paris, on September 10, 1783. The treaty was generally quite favorable to the USA in terms of national boundaries and other concessions. The treaty of Paris signed in 1783, recognized the independence of the USA and fixed for the nation all the territory North of Florida, South of Canada and East of Mississippi River. 2.2.2. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES, JULY 4, 1776: The Declaration of Independence is a state document and it is considered the basis of American political beliefs. On July 4, 1776, the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence that stated that the United States Colonies ought to be Free and Independent States. The intellects behind the Declaration of Independence were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The intention of the Declaration according to Jefferson was to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assentNeither at originality of principles or sentiments, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind. Paine: The Principal arguments in support of independence may be comprehended under the four following heads: 1st, the natural right of the continent to independence, 2nd, Her interest in being independent; 3rd, the necessity; and 4th, the moral advantages arising there from. The Declaration presented a public defense of the American Revolution and the main idea was freedom and independence, the most important factors of all that have been present throughout the history of the United States. The Declaration of Independence had a religious and moral tone, stating they represent the people of the colonies with the support of the Supreme Judge of the World: God. 2.3. FROM COLONIES TO CONFEDERATION, 1775 1789: ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION: Since 1781, the Articles of Confederation, a constitution that set up a very weak central government that could not make laws or raise taxes, governed the thirteen colonies. The Articles of Confederation had been introduced by the explicit statement that the authority of that document was derived from sovereign states. The Articles of Confederation had not measured up to the exigencies of the union. 2.3.1. THE OCNSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1787: In May 1787, it took place in Philadelphia a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. This Constitution established the principle of a balance of

6 History and Culture of the United States. power among the three branches of government, legislative, executive and judicial. On September 1787, the final draft of the New Constitution was read to 42 delegates still at the convention. Of the 42 men present, 39 affixed their signatures to the document and notified the Confederation Congress that their work was finished. The Constitution was accepted in 1788. The amendments guaranteed freedom of religion, a free press, and free speech, the right to bear arms, the right of a fair trial by jury, protection against illegal house searches and protection against cruel and unusual punishments. The basic premises on which the Constitution was framed, the protection of individual rights and liberties, limited government with separation of powers and checks and balances, the federal system, and judicial review remain at the heart of the document. 2.4. THE PRESIDENCIES OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, JOHN ADAMS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON: The first President of the USA was GEORGE WASHINGTON, a Federalist who favored strong central government. He vindicated the independence of Presidential office. He had 2 main interests: military arts and western expansion. In May 1775, when the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, Washington, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his troops to embark upon the War of Independence. Finally, in 1781, he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. As President, one of his main concerns was foreign policy. He warned against long-term alliances. When the war between France and England he wanted the Unites States to be neutral. In domestic policy, a national bank was set up under his Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton who became the champion of executive initiative and a broad construction of the Constitution. In 1797, JOHN ADAMS, another Federalist President, succeeded G. Washington. He was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. When he became President, the war between the French and the British was causing trouble for the USA on the high seas. During his presidential period, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in 1798. President Adams did not call for a declaration of war, but hostilities began at sea. Long negotiations ended the quasi war. In the campaign of 1800 the Republicans were united and effective, the Federalists badly divided. Nevertheless, Adams polled only a few less electoral votes than Jefferson, who became President. In 1801, a Republican, THOMAS JEFFERSON, was elected president. He exercised the presidential power vigorously. He was eloquent but not a public speaker. Known as a silent member of the Congress, he drafted the

7 History and Culture of the United States. Declaration of Independence. HE wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786. Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785. There was a sharp political conflict and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong centralized Government and championed the rights of states. He cut the budget, reduced the national debt, eliminated the tax on whiskey and slashed Army and Navy expenditures. During his second term, he tried not to involve the USA in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1803, he bought Louisiana from France, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of land. After winning their independence, Americans contributed to experiment with how to govern themselves under the Articles of Confederation. 2.5. THE WAR OF 1812: The War of 1812 was an economic conflict based on the concept of freedom of the seas. Great Britain wanted to control a large area of the North Atlantic Ocean, this avoiding the USA to trade freely with Europe. Jeffersons successor as President, James Madison (1809 - 1817) one of the authors of the Constitution led the new nation through the War of 1812 with Great Britain. During this war, the British Navy blockaded American ports destroying American commerce, although American warships had some victories, which were widely celebrated on the American side. Canada was scenario of the War and North American forces tried to invade this territory although, in some occasions, they were expelled by the British army. Great Britain was worried about the struggle in Europe but in 1814m after defeating Napoleon, Britain invaded the USA seizing Washington D.C: In December 1814, Britain and the USA agreed on a compromise peace since both did not want to carry on with this war. The consequences of this treaty was that the border lines were established in their dormer place and that Canada made clear that it would stay within the British rule for as long as it pleased. The war of 1812 was considered the Second War of Independence.

UNIT 3 CONSOLIDATION AND TERRITORIAL EXPANSION:

8 History and Culture of the United States. 3.1. A NATIONALIST ERA: After the War of 1812, the period of peaceful relations with Great Britain gave way for a period of rapid economic expansion and a great flow of nation building with potential wealth and power. A national network of roads and canals was built and the first steam railroad opened in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1830. The USA planned to be neutral in wars between European powers and in wars between a European power and its colonies and expected Europe to stay out of the affairs of Americas. 3.1.1. AN EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN EXPANSIONISM: In 1830 immigration was prohibited. In 1834, General Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna established a dictatorship in Mexico, and the following year Texans rose in rebellion. Santa Anna defeated the American rebels at the celebrated siege of the Alamo in early 1836, but Texans under Sam Houston destroyed the Mexican army and captured Santa Anna a month later at the Battle of San Jacinto, ensuring Texan independence. For almost a decade Texas remained an independent republic, becoming the 28th State in 1845. Since the attempts of the USA to buy the New Mexico and California territories had failed, the USA declared war in 1846. It was only after the resignation of Santa Anna that the USA could reach a deal with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, this treaty in 1848, ended the war with Mexico that ceded the Southwest region and California for 15 million dollars to the USA which gained land including present day Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. 3.2. MISSOURI COMPROMISE: The Missouri Compromise measures were passed by the Congress of the USA in 1820-1821, ratified by the House of Representatives and the Senate, specified the conditions under which the territory of Missouri would be admitted to the Union as a State. Those measures were passed by the USA Congress to end a crisis that took place due mainly to the issue of the extension of slavery. By 1818, Missouri Territory had gained sufficient population to warrant its admission into the Union as a state. In February 1819, James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment to a statehood bill brought before the House of Representatives. The Tallmadge amendment would prohibit importation of slaves and would bring about the ultimate emancipation of all slaves born in Missouri. This amendment was rejected by the Senate. The South demanded that the North recognize its right to have slaves as secured in the Constitution. A bill to admit Maine as a state was passed in the House of Representatives in January. 3.3. JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY:

9 History and Culture of the United States. In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected president, becoming the 7th President of the USA. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, Andrew Jackson was 9 years old and at 13 he joined the Continental Army as a courier. In June 1796 Tennessee was separated from North Carolina and admitted to the Union as the 16th State. Jackson was soon afterward elected the new states 1st congressman. The following year the Tennessee legislature elected him a U.S. senator, but he held his senatorial seat for only one session before resigning. General Jackson emerged a national hero from the War of 1812, primarily because of his decisive defeat of the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson prospered satisfactorily to buy slaves and to build a mansion, the Hermitage. He was the 1st man elected from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, and he served briefly in the Senate. In 1824, Jackson was a military hero of the War of 1812 against Great Britain and was popular although he lost those elections. Jackson was elected by popular vote; as President he sought to act as the direct representative of the common man. This method proved successful and Jackson defeated Adams in the 1828 election and four years later defeated Henry Clay in the election of 1832. He was very eloquent in his public statement in spite of having little formal education. He has a strong personality and revolutionized the presidential office. One of the worst sings of that authoritarism was the Indian Removal Act of 1835. Jackson made land available to Western settlers by forcing Indian Tribes to move. As National politics polarized around Jackson and his opposition, 2 parties grew out of the old Republican Party, the Democratic Republicans, or Democrats, adhering to Jackson; and the National Republicans, or Whigs, opposing him. Jacksons views won approval from the American electorate; in 1832 he polled more that 56% of the popular vote and almost five times as many electoral votes as Henry Clay. In January 1832, while the President was dining with friends at the White House, someone whispered to him that the Senate had rejected the nomination of Martin Van Buren as Minister to England. This fact enraged Jackson who fought against it. 3.4. INDIAN REMOVAL: With the election in 1828 of Andrew Jackson, a new period stated pushing the Indians further West to lands less desirable to settlers, and if necessary doing so by force. The new cotton kingdom, stretching across the soil of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi was highly appealing to settlers. Only the Indian tribes of the region stood in their way. The Removal Act of 1830 authorized the president to transfer Eastern Indian tribes to the western territories promised (falsely) in perpetuity.

10 History and Culture of the United States. On December 7, 1935, Andrew Jackson declared in his 7th Annual Message to Congress that the plan of removing the aboriginal people who remained within the settled portions of the USA to the country west of the Mississippi River approached its consummation.

UNIT 4 THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT, THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION:

4.1. THE TWO SECTIONS AND THE ECONOMIC CONFLICT: 4.1.1. ECONOMIC AND MORAL CONFLICT: In the 19th century, there was an economic disparity between an agrarian South and an industrializing North. The Northern states had a dynamic and industrial economy, with workers who were paid for their work. Industries were expanding; the export market was on the up. They were in favor of high tariffs and a federal bank. New England and the Middle Atlantic states were the main centres of manufacturing, commerce and finance. Products were textiles, lumber, clothing, machinery, leather and woolen goods. The South, was relatively compact political unit featuring an economy centred on agriculture, tobacco, rice, sugar, cotton. As far as slavery was concerned, northerners were against slavery, but also they thought that it was preventing industrialization and economic diversity. They gradually abolished slavery, and the importation of slaves was outlawed in 1808. Equality was an important ideal. Southern states were in favour of slavery, seeing in it an economic need. Their society was almost feudal like and had a rural society, based on plantation agriculture and slave labour. 4.1.2. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONFLICT: Tension emerged due to the different ideas of the states. In the period between 1780 and 1790 slavery was declared illegal in Vermont and Massachusetts; in 1787 the North West Ordinance prohibited slavery in all west territory and in 1808 the Congress abolished the slave trade with Africa. In 1819, there was a world reach financial break that affected specially the USA. Congress agreed on a compromise; Slavery was permitted in Missouri and Arkansas. In Southern states, people talked about the right to human property. According to the 10th amendment of the Constitution the powers that the Constitution, that is to say, the competencies which are not given to the central power correspond to the states. The abolitionist movement that emerged in the early 1830s was combative, uncompromising and insistent upon an immediate end to slavery. The leader was William Lloyd Garrison, who was joined by Frederick Douglass, an escaped slaved who organized Northern audiences as a spokesman for

11 History and Culture of the United States. the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and later as eloquent editor of the abolitionist weekly newspaper, Northern State. Underground Railroad a way to help slaves to be free, an elaborate network of secret routes was firmly established in the 1830s in all parts of the North, with its most successful operation being in the old Northwest Territory. The immediate results of Douglass measure were significant. The Whig Party disappeared and a powerful new organization arose, the Republican Party, whose primary demand was that slavery had to be excluded from all territories. In 1856, it nominated John Fremont, who was well known due to his expeditions into the Far West. Although Fremont lost the election, the new Republican Party swept a great part of the North. Abraham Lincoln had long regarded slavery as an evil. In a speech in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, he declared that all national legislation should be framed on the principle that slavery was to be restricted and eventually abolished. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. In 1858 Lincoln opposed Douglass for the election to the USA Senate from Illinois. Douglass won the election by a small margin, but Lincoln had achieved stature as a national figure. Sectional state of conflict grew more. As a result, the split between the South and the North became a war. 4.2. THE CIVIL WAR OF 1861: The American Civil War was a sectional conflict in the USA that lasted from 1861 to 1865 between the Union, the federal government, led by President Abraham Lincoln and the Confederate States of America, led by President Jefferson Davis. There are many caused for this war, differences between the industrial North and rural South. Legislative power if the USA lay in the North and many southerners felt that governing powers did not reflect their needs. At the heart of this problem was slavery. Northern States pressured on the South states to abolish slavery, there were rebellions in the South defending the right to own slaves. Southern states declaring their desire of Independence from the Union. 11 Southern States decided to leave the Union and proclaimed themselves as an independent nation, creating the Confederate States of America (1st one South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina.) To Northern liberals, the war was about liberty and civil rights and the freedom of slaves from tyrannical landowners. However, President Lincoln was more interested in preserving the union and not allowing the union to break up. On January 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which

12 History and Culture of the United States. granted freedom to all slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy. That was followed by the Civil Rights Act, and all that worsened the conflict. In the Presidential election of 1860 the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate. The Democrats were not united. Southerners split from the party and nominated Vice President John C. Brekenridge of Kentucky for President. Douglass was the nominee of Northern Democrats. Diehard Whigs from the Border States formed into the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John C. Bell of Tennessee. On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president of the USA. The Union and Confederate Armies met at Antietam, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, in the bloodiest single day of the war: more than 4000 died on both sides and 18000 were wounded. Despite his numerical advantage, however, McClellan failed to break Lees lines or press the attack, and Lee was able to retreat across the Potomac with his army intact. Antietam Creek also gave Lincoln the opening he needed to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in states rebelling against the Union were free. In practice, the Proclamation had little immediate impact; it freed slaves only in the Confederate states, while leaving slavery intact in the Border States. Politically, however, it meant that in addition to preserving the Union, the abolition of slavery was now a declared objective of the Union war effort. The final Emancipation Proclamation, issued January 1863, also authorized the recruitment of blacks into the Union Army, which abolitionist leaders such as Frederick Douglass had been urging since the beginning of armed conflict. There were more than 3000 Union soldiers and almost 4000 Confederates who died at Gettysburg; wounded and missing, more than 20000 on each side. The Northern victories at Vicksburg and Gettyburg in July 1863 marked the turning point of the war, although the bloodshed continued unabated for more than a year and a half. After the Union victory at Gettyburg, which was a decisive victory, the South never again invaded the North. In 1864, a union army under General William T. Sherman marched across Georgia, destroying the countryside. For the North, the war produces a still grater hero in Abraham Lincoln a man willing, above all else, to fuse the Union together again, not by force and repression but by warmth and generosity. In 1864 he had been elected for a second term as president, defeating as his Democratic opponent, George McClellan, the general whom Lincoln had dismissed after Antietam. The war of Secession devastated the South and was, without doubt, the major constitutional crisis of the USA. The union won and the USA remained

13 History and Culture of the United States. a single nation. The war resolved two questions. The first one was that it ended slavery, which was completely abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. The second question was that it settled for all time the issue of disunion, deciding that America was a single indivisible nation. 4.3. RECONSTRUCION. 1865 1914: During the Reconstruction era, Lincoln and the Congress differed over their powers in reconstructing the South. Lincolns plan was more aggressive since they wanted to get a more democratic South that guaranteed the right of the black and to finish with the privileges of the Southern aristocracy. Three amendments to the Constitution introduced by which all slaves were emancipated and that deal with the black civil and political rights. In spite of this, towards 1870 North and South were united against the black, some mechanisms were introduced to impede their ascension such as the black codes, imposing racial segregation. Ku Klux Klan was created in Tennessee in 1865 and violence remained in the post-war South so that in 1865-66, Black people held conventions in which they discussed their problems and appealed for support from the people of the nation since they faced problems of marginalization and discrimination in society. To deal with the condition of former slaves, Congress in March 1865 established the Freedmens Bureau to act as guardian over African Americans and guide them toward self-support. And in December of that year, Congress ratified the 13th Amendment to the USA Constitution, which abolished slavery. The Congress passed a 14th Amendment to the USA Constitution (citizens rights) was approved by the Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868 to entitle all persons born or naturalized in the USA to citizenship and equal protection under the laws of the USA. It states that All persons born or naturalized in the USA and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the USA and of the states in which they reside. The 15th Amendment, passed in congress in 1869 and ratified in 1870 by State legislatures, provided that The rights of citizens of the USA to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the USA or any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. The Civil Right Act was enacted by Congress in 1875 to provide black people with the right to equal treatment in public places and transportation. In 1870 increasing disorder led to the passage of an Enforcement Act severely punishing those who attempted to deprive the black freedmen of their civil rights. The last quarter of the 19th century saw a profusion of Jim Crow laws in Southern states that segregated public schools, forbade or limited black access to many public facilities, such as parks, restaurants and hotels, and denied most blacks the right to vote by imposing poll taxes and arbitrary literacy tests.

14 History and Culture of the United States.

UNIT 5 INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE GROWTH OF CAPITALISM:

5.1. INDUSTRIAL AMERICA: In the period between the Civil War and World War I, the USA experienced an enormous economic growth. By 1913 the USA had become a leading industrial power in the world. There was a period of enormous growth between 1870 and 1914 and between 1870 and 1900 the population doubled, the main cause was the arrival of immigrants from Europe. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power emerged. It is a period of important inventions (telephone, telegraph and mimeograph). 5.2. AMERICAN CITIES: Population lived in cities, some of the causes are: quick industrialization, the construction of railroads, immigration, and migration of farm workers who were attracted by cities. Because of the expansion of industry, USA cities grew by about 15 million people in the two decades before 1900. Industrial expansion and population growth radically changed the cities that became noisy, with traffic, slums, air pollution, and health problems. Trolleys, cable cars, and subways were built, and skyscrapers began to overlook city skylines. New communities, known as suburbs, started to be built just beyond the city. 5.3. WORKERS AND IMMIGRANTS: 5.3.1. ORGANIZED LABOUR: As the factory system grew, workers started to from labour unions to protect their interests. Workers had low wages and they wanted to have better working conditions. In 1869, a national labour organization was founded by a group of Philadelphia clothing workers, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. In 1881, as the Knights pf Labor shrunk after meeting strikes with defeat, a new labour organization was formed by Samuel Gompers, the American Federation Labor (AFL). In 1905, another labor organization was founded in Chicago by Eugene V. Debts, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This was a revolutionary union that wanted to beat capitalism through strikes and boycotts. In 1917, the union was prosecuted. Progressives and the AFL pressured state governments to establish laws to protect women and children. Many states passed laws to improve safety conditions at work.

15 History and Culture of the United States. 5.3.2. IMMIGRATION: Population increased tripling between 1860 and 1920, this growth was due to the arrival of immigrants. As far as wages is concerned, immigrants were usually paid less than other workers. In 1882, Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act that excluded Chinese labourers for a period of 10 years but really finished Chinese immigration for almost a century. In 1924, Congress banned Japanese immigration completely. In 1921, an act was passed to limit the proportion of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, the Immigration Act. 5.4. THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER: The term frontier was applied to the unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of Americans. 5.4.1. THE RAILWAY: Apart from affecting industry and agriculture, the Railway interacted with western migration and produced a great change, having an enormous repercussion in creating a firm economy and organizing politically the territory since it brought a permanent farmer population towards the west. In 1830, the American railroads started to function. The railway had a great influence in the development of the cities. On July 1862, the first Pacific Railroad Act was signed by President Lincoln. This act made possible the construction of a transcontinental railroad by two corporations the Union Pacific, which built westward, from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the Central Pacific, which built eastward, from Sacramento, California. The construction started in 1865 and ended in 1869. By 1883 there were three other transcontinental lines that reached the Pacific: The Northern Pacific, the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe. 5.4.2. THE SUPPRESSION OF NATIVE AMERICANS: Most frontiersmen thought that he only good Indian was a dead Indian. Indians and millions of buffaloes were slaughtered on the Greta Plains. Between the years of 1872 and 1874, the buffaloes were hunted to near extinction. The buffaloes used to supply the Indians with food, shelter, bedding, clothing, shields, ropes, saddles, and other wants. Large areas of Indian land were acquired, estranged by treaty or by sale. In 1924 Congress approved citizenship to all Indians. It was under the government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt when Native Americans got a New Deal.

UNIT 6 TOWARD EMPIRE:

6.1. BECOMING A WORLD POWER: AMERICAN EXPANSIONISM: The USA focused on Reconstruction, the movement westward, and the growing industrial system. Throughout the 19th century, Americans enjoyed their free security. By the 1870s, the USA began taking an increased interest in events abroad. The growing idea of internationalism stemmed in

16 History and Culture of the United States. part from the telegraph, telephones, and undersea cables that kept people better informed about political and economic developments in distant lands. In the 19th C, large navies were vital in the scramble for colonies, but in 1870s the USA had almost no navy. In 1890, was promoted the construction of offensive battleship navy capable of challenging the strongest fleets of Europe. 6.1.1. THE PACIFIC ISLANDS: HAWAI: Americans interest in the Pacific came to focus on the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii had been discovered by Captain Cook in 1778, and was an important port in the China trade and a station for American whalers and missionaries. By 1875 the USA concluded the reciprocity treaty which granted exclusive trading privileges to both nations and guaranteed the independence of the Hawaiian islands against any 3rd country; 12 years later it was signed a new treaty renewing these privileges and ceding the use of Pearl Harbor to the USA. The debate over Hawaiian annexation continued throughout the 1890s. In July 1898 came the annexation by a Joint Resolution. In 1900, an organic act conferred American citizenship and the full status of Territory of the USA, eligible for statehood, on the Hawaiian island. 6.1.2. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR: By the 1890s Cuba and Puerto Rico were nearly all that remained of Spains once vast empire in the New World. President McKinley ordered the battleship Maine to go towards Havana to evacuate American citizens if it was necessary. In March 1898, McKinley asked Congress for $50 million in emergency defense appropriations, a request Congress approved. On March 27, President McKinley cabled Spain his final terms. In 1898 Congress passed a joint resolution declaring Cuba independent and authorizing the President to use the army and navy to expel the Spanish army from the island. On April 25, Congress passed a declaration of war, and late that afternoon McKinley signed it. In the end, the conflicting national interest of the two countries brought them to war. In conclusion, the Spanish-American War established the USA as a world power for the 21st century. It brought colonies and millions of colonial subjects and confirmed the long-standing belief in the superiority of the New World over the Old. 6.1.3. GUERRILLA IN THE PHILIPPINES: This was lasted from 1899 to 1902. The Filipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo had worked for an American victory in the Spanish-American war. By late 1899, the American army had defeated and dispersed the Filipino army, however, Aguinaldo and his followers started a guerrilla war. Filipinos moved toward independence, which came on July 1846, nearly 40 years after Aguinaldo proclaimed it. 6.2. THE POLITICS OF PROGRESSIVISM:

17 History and Culture of the United States. Voices of change echoed a genuine transformation of popular sentiment. American of all classes began calling themselves Progressives and sought to reform captured their attention. The Progressive era was a period of explosive economic growth and the increase of industrial production, a rapid rise of population and the expansion of the consumer marketplace. The focus of the Progressive politics and the new mass-consumer society was the city. 6.2.1. THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS SQUARE DEAL: By 1900 the crises of the 1890s had passed. Prosperity has returned. The nation also reveled in its new international power following the Spanish-American War. At that time, a number of problems came to the surface in American society; Unequal distribution of wealth income. Working conditions were equally horrifying in the different industries. American housing conditions were even worse. The middle-class had their economic grievances. Prosperity increased the cost of living 35% in less than a decade, while many middle-class incomes remained fairly stable. The great democratic experiment seemed to have run away. People came to believe that they had to find political solutions to the nations problems.

On September 6, 1901, anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley and 8 days later, Theodore Roosevelt was president. He was a conservative but he declared The only true conservative is the man who resolutely sets his face toward the future. He shared 2 progressive ideas; one was that government should be efficiently run by competent people. The other was that industrialization needed an expanded government action. As a result of these two ideas, Theodore Roosevelt revitalized the executive branch, modernized the army structure and the consular service, and pursued the federal regulation of the economy that has characterized 20th C America. In 1904 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Parker, campaigning on the promise to provide a Square Deal to all Americans. His first priority was to control the railways by expanding the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) with the Helburn Act of 1906. Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act the same day of 1906. 6.2.2. WILLIAM H. TAFT AND HIS QUIET PROGRESSIVISM: Republican. In 1904, Roosevelt appointed him secretary of war. Taft started his term with an attempt to curb the powerful Republican speaker of the House, Joseph

18 History and Culture of the United States. Uncle Joe Cannon of Illinois, but Cannon threatened to block all tariff bills, so President Taft stopped the anti-Cannon campaign for Cannons pledge to help with tariff cuts. President Taft was very interested in railway regulation. He promoted a bill in 1910 to empower the ICC to fix maximum railways rates. The Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 gave the ICC power to set rated and placed telephone and telegraph companies under ICC jurisdiction. The Act also created a Commerce Court to hear appeals from ICC decisions, an addition that pleased conservatives. Progressive republicans wanted to amend the bill to strengthen it, but Taft raised the issue of party loyalty and further alienated the progressives. He Backed laws to regulate safety in mines and on railways, create Childrens Bureau in the federal government, establishing employers liability for all work done on government contracts, a mandate an 8h workday for government workers. 6.2.3. WOODROW WILSON AND HIS NEW FREEDOM PROGRAM: Democrat. Wilson argued that the president must be as much concerned with the guidance of legislation as with the just and orderly execution of the laws. Like Roosevelt, he believed in strong presidential leadership. He collaborated with Democrats in Congress, and his legislative measures placed him among the most effective presidents. He called Congress into special session to lower tariff. In 1913, the 16th Amendment was ratifies, allowing the imposition of a federal income tax. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a compromise. It established the Federal Reserve System of 12 regional banks owned by bankers but under the control of a appointed Federal Reserve Board. In 1914, Harrison AntiNarcotic Act was passed. It required a doctors prescription for the sale of any drug on a list of controlled substances. In September it established the Federal Trade Commission to replace the Bureau of Corporations. He decided to make peace the key issue in his bid for reelection in 1916. 6.3. WOMEN IN PROGRESSIVISM: Middle-class women led in the organization reform. Local organizations flourished and in 1980 joined to form the General Federation of Womens Clubs. Progressive social reform had two aims: control and justice. 1905; National Womens Trade Union League. In 1900, more than 5 million women worked. 6.4. AN ERA OF INTERVENTION: THE ROAD TO WORLD WAR I: Most Americans felt relieved when President Woodrow Wilson issued an official declaration of neutrality on August 1914. Domestic politics reinforced Wilsons determination to remain neutral. In 1914, the USA stood at the end of 2 decades of bitter social and political debate.

19 History and Culture of the United States. In 1917, Wilson urged both sides to embrace his call for peace without victory, but neither welcomed his ideas. Any hope for a negotiated settlement ended when Germany announced that after February 1917, all vessels caught in the war zone, neutral or belligerent, armed or unarmed, would be sunk without warning. The President signed the declaration of war in April 1917. WWI sowed the seeds for WWII. In conclusion, we can say that the 20th C began with great optimism about the power of human beings to shape their destinies. MIRAR TABLAS p. 146 147.

UNIT 7 PROSPERITY AND DEPRESSION:

7.1. LIFE IN AMERICA IN THE 1920S: The 1920s marked a major transition in American politics as well as in social and economic development. From 1922 to 1929 economy bloomed. Telephones made communication easier, washing machines, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners reduced the demand for domestic servants. An aggressive advertising campaign and the prohibition of manufacturing and sale of intoxicating liquor that was ratified in 1919 and went into effect at the beginning of 1920, made Coca Cola a symbol of American life. The national per capita annual income increased in 1929. Sports became a national mania in the 1920s as people gained more leisure time. Sex was another important point, Victorian values began to crumble. 7.1.1. A REPUBLICAN DECADE: The tensions between the urban and the rural areas also shaped the course of politics in the 1920s. It was a Republican decade, this party controlled the White House from 1921 to 1933 and had majorities in both houses of Congress from 1918 to 1930. The Republicans established a friendly relationship between government and business and halted further reform legislation. In the American electorate, the Democrats divided into 2 wings, urban and rural. The rising tide of urban voters showed a fundamental shift away from the Republicans toward a new Democratic majority. The Republican Party won the election in 1920. During the campaign Warren G. Harding had urged to normalcy. Congress passed an emergency tariff act in 1921 avoiding a flood of postwar European imports. The Republicans were forced to seek new solutions for the American farming crisis. The end of the WWI brought the problem of overproduction and the decline in farm prices again.

20 History and Culture of the United States. On President Warren G. Hardings death, Vice President Calvin Coolidge assumed the Presidency, but in contrast to his predecessor he seemed to exemplify Yankee honesty. He thought his duty was to preside not to govern the nation. The election of 1928 showed the growing influence of the urban faction of the Democratic party and the power of the city. Alfred E. Smith was the candidate, the Governor of New York. He was the prototype of the urban Democrat. He was Catholic and wet and wanted to end Prohibition. Herbert Hoover was a Protestant and dry who stood for efficiency and individualism. Hoover won the support of may conservative Democrats who fared the city. The 1928 election was a dubious victory for the Republicans, Herbert Hoover won clearly. The Republican administrations of the 1020s were pioneering a close relationship between government and private business. 7.1.2. THE NEW URBAN CULTURE: Continuing migration from farms to factories. The skyscraper soon became the main feature of the city, it came to symbolize the new American mass culture. Business began to join people in moving to the periphery, creating a new kind of multicentered metropolis that undetermined the old centers, eroded tax bases and contributed to weaker school systems, higher crime rates, a reduced commitment to maintaining old neighborhoods and their cultural institutions. The worse expression of rural protest against the city was the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. Its membership was limited to native born Protestants, white and gentile Americans. They exploited postwar confusion and fear things un-American. They punished blacks, women, immigrants who refused to conform. 7.1.3. CULTURAL LIFE AND MASS MEDIA: Many writers and artists found themselves out of sort with the moralizing self-satisfied America of business under the Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. A great number of them expatriated to Europe. The reading audience was expanding as the fraction of Americans attending college grew exponentially, toward the end of the decade. Radio and movies added a national element to American culture. 7.2. THE COMING OF WOMENS SUFFRAGE: After the passage of the 19th Amendment, Congress wanted to please this mass of new voters, establishing a Womens Bureau in the Department of Labor in 1920, granting women equal citizenship rights with men, passing the Cable Act in 1922. Under the Sheppard-Towner Act, passed in 1921, the federal government established state programs for maternal and infant health care. Women had won the right to vote in 1920, but the 19th Amendment proved to have less impact than its proponents had hoped. There was a generation change on feminism in the 1920s. They adopted the flapper image. Women cut their hair short, raising their skirts above their knees, binding their breasts and reduced their hips and achieve a

21 History and Culture of the United States. fashionable boyish shape. They wore makeup, smoked and drunk as signs of emancipation. New techniques of birth control enable couples to limit their offspring. More married women worked outside the house. 7.3. IMMIGRANTS IN THE 1920S: After armistice, Americans thought that a flood of European people wanted to emigrate to the USA, so Congress responded by passing an Emergency Immigration act in 1921. Cultural fears favoured a new wave of nativism. In 1924, Congress adopted the National Origins Quota Act, establishing an annual immigration quota of 2% of each national group counted in the 1890 census. This legislative measure passed Congress with rural support. This quota system would survive until the 1960s. 7.3.1. AFRICAN-AMERICAN MIGRATION: Between 1910 and 1920, half a million blacks left the South and 1.5 million southern moved from the rural areas to the cities. This great migration had many causes, of which we are going to list: Higher wages in northern factories than were available in the South. More opportunities for educating their children. To escape from the threat of lynching in the South states. Prospect of exercising the right to vote. Social and economic freedom. Most of them were so disappointed in the North. Their dreams did not become reality. They found restricted employment opportunities for black workers and exclusion from unions, housing segregation and racial hostility like in the Southern states. The movement for African-American pride found its cultural expression in the Harlem Renaissance. The real Harlem was a poor community where its residents were confined to low-wage jobs but paying very high rents because housing discrimination barred them from other neighborhoods. 7.4. THE GREAT DEPRESSION: During the 20s, American people looked forward with optimism and it existed an increasing flow of consumer goods and a better way of life. In 1929, this tendency changed, factories closed, machines stopped, and millions of American people walked the streets doing nothing, looking for jobs that did not exist any more. 7.4.1. THE ELECTION OF 1928: Calvin Coolidge, silent Cal, who was not a strong president and left the administration to his cabinet members, the courts, and the Congress to devise strategies for consummating the

22 History and Culture of the United States. marriage between business and government, announced his retirement from politics in 1928. The Republican party nominated Herbert Hoover, while Democrats chose Alfred E. Smith. Both parties adopted similar platforms, but the opponents defined the two faces of America, one rural and other urban. Herbert Hoover in 1922, as Secretary of Commerce, he published American Individualism, which condemned government regulation. He accepted the reality of industrialization, technology, global markers and governmental activism, and believed the president should lead the country. Democratic candidate was Alfred E. Smith, which emerged as the symbolic spokesman of the new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. He served 3 terms as governor of NY. Hoover had an easy victory. Smith had failed to solve the urban-rural split in the Democratic party, his opposition to prohibition and the Anti-Catholic sentiment. 7.4.2. THE COMING OF THE DEPRESSION: In 1929, the American economy appeared to be extraordinary healthy. Employment was high and inflation was virtually nonexistent. The USA accounted for nearly half the worlds industrial output, but the seeds of the depression were already present in the boom of the 1920s. There was no single or simple cause of the Great Depression. Multiple domestic and international factors, converged to transform a cyclical downturn into a prolonged economic crisis; The structural weakness of a banking system that had many independent units and few mechanisms for opposing up banks that were in difficulty. The inability of borrowers to repay loans led to a contagious epidemic of bank failures that erased saving accounts, reduced the credit supply, and accelerated the downward plunge of the economy. The unequal distribution of wealth and income, which had been accentuated by the boom of the 1920s. The concentration of resources in the hands of the wealthy reinforced the crisis. The economic crisis hit at a moment when the economy was shifting from a reliance on traditional industries, steel and textiles, to being propelled by newer industries, such as processed food, automobiles and tobacco. The agriculture had been mired in depression since 1921. Farm prices had been depressed ever since the end of WWI when European agriculture revived.

23 History and Culture of the United States. The decline in farm income reverberated throughout the economy. Rural consumers stopped buying farm implements. Even before the onset of the Depression, business investment had begun to decline. Residential construction boomed between 1924 and 1927, but in 1929 housing starts fell to less than half the 1924 level. During the 20s, manufacturers expanded their productive capacity and built up excessive goods. At the decades end, they cut production back sharply, directing their surplus funds into stock market speculation. Another important factor was what economist John Kenneth Galbraith had called the poor state of economic intelligence. Republican tariff policies damaged the economy by depressing foreign trade. To protect American industries from foreign competitors, Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff in 1922 and the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in 1930, raising tariff rates to unprecedented levels. The Federal Reserve played a critical role in weakening the economy. In an effort to curb stock market speculation, it slowed the growth of the money supply, then allowed that supply to fall dramatically after the stock market crash, producing a wrenching liquidity crisis. They slowed the economy by reducing the amount of money available to consumers to spend. The depression was international and was caused by misguided policies adopted by both European and American governments. USA and GB, and most other countries in Europe and Latin America insisted on clinging by the Gold Standard, after the interruption of WWI, again provided the framework for international financial relations, Each countrys currency had a fixed value in relation to gold. The Great Depression was the worst economic catastrophe in American history. It hit rural and urban areas, white and blue-collar families alike. The USA had no federal system of unemployment insurance. 7.4.3. HOOVERS FIGHT AGAINST THE BIG CRISIS: Herbert C. Hoover opposed on principle to direct federal intervention in the economy. While the President remained hopeful voluntary measures would work, business struggle for survive, forcing employers to lay off workers. Hoover could not bring himself to sanction large-scale federal public works programs because he honestly believed that recovery depended on the private sector, because

24 History and Culture of the United States. he wanted to maintain a balanced budget, and because he feared federal relief programs would undermine individual character by making recipients dependent on the state. In 1932 Congress created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and authorized it to loan $2 billion to banks, saving and loan association, railways, and life insurance companies. The same idea applied to the Federal Home Loan Bank System (FHLBS), created by Congress in July 1932 to end up $500 millions to savings and loan associations to revive the construction industry. By early 1933 Hoovers agencies had failed to make a dent in the Great Depression. The real problem was the poor demand for goods. It was a vicious cycle. 7.4.4. EFFECTS OF THE DEPRESISON: The human cost of the Great Depression is too difficult to measure. Families lived without meat or fresh vegetable for months, existing on soup and beans. The poor of all hues survived because they knew better than most Americans how to exist in poverty. Many Americans rode the rails in search of jobs, hoping freight trains to move South in the winter or West in the summer. The homeless could find a place to eat and to sleep in the hobo jungles, where they could find people with whom to share their misery. President Hoover was the Depressions most prominent victim. Meanwhile, the nations banking structure approaches collapse. Bank customers responded to rumors of bankruptcy by rushing in to withdraw their deposits, thereby causing bank failures to rise steadily. Everywhere, Americans longed for a new president.

UNIT 8 THE NEW DEAL AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR:

8.1. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL: The man who stepped forward to meet this national need was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was elected governor of New York in 1928. Roosevelt worked to convert New York state into a laboratory for reform, involving conservation, old-age pensions, public works projects, and unemployment insurance. Roosevelts dominant trait was his ability to persuade and convince other people. He took advantage of the political opportunity offered by the Depression. With the Republicans discredited, he united the Democratic party. After winning partys nomination in 1932, he broke with the tradition by flying to Chicago and accepting in person, telling the cheering delegates, I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people. His speech contained few

25 History and Culture of the United States. concrete proposals but he gave many desperate voters hope promising to e experiment. It is common sense to take a method and try it, if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. Roosevelt not only met the challenge of the Depression but also solidified the shift to the Democratic party that would dominate American politics for half century. Roosevelts broader political goal was breaking the political dominance of the Republican Party by assembling a new coalition of progressive reformers, industrial workers, and the inevitably Democrat South. 8.1.1. THE FIRST NEW DEAL: By early 1933 Hoovers agencies had failed to make a dent in the Great Depression. Like most Democrats, he favoured lower tariffs, and he signaled the orthodoxy of his economic views by criticizing Hoover for incurring deficits in the federal budget. His most innovative proposal was his support for government-sponsored unemployment insurance and old-age insurance, ideas that progressive reformers had begun to place on the agenda a decade and a half earlier. 8.1.1.1. THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS: In his inaugural address, Roosevelt expressed confidence that his administration would end the depression. He took clear aim at the countrys mood of despair and anxiety. He declared, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. He called Congress into a special session and demanded broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. In his first 100 days in office, he pushed 15 major bills through Congress, which would redefine every feature of the economy, from banking and industry to agriculture and social welfare. The first item on his agenda was the banking crisis. The Emergency Banking Act was approved. On March 12, the day before banks were reopened, Roosevelt addressed the nation by radio in the first of his Fireside Chats. He became the first President to use radio broadcasts to reach the American public. The Revenue Act meant that beer was sold legally on April 7 for the first time in more than one decade. Led by secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, a respected authority on farming, the administration drew up the Agricultural Adjustment Act, an omnibus bill that incorporated many reform ideas that had been circulating since the 1029s to solve agricultural problems. Its fundamental goal was to decrease the output of the nations farm while having other sectors of the economy subsidise farmers who left some of their fields fallow. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a public corporation whose central goal was to generate electric power along the Tennessee River and to make and distribute fertilizer from an already existing plant. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which puts jobless young men and veterans to work in forestry

26 History and Culture of the United States. and flood-control projects. A more controversial program was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), involving federal government for the first time in a direct relief of unemployment. On June 16, near the end of the 100 days, Roosevelt promoted a centerpiece to revive the economy, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). This piece of legislation was created to stimulate production and to authorize producers in the nations industries to meet together to fix codes of fair competition, permitting them to set the prices and divided markets. These codes had to be approved by the National Recovery Administration (NRA) which was a political compromise, grounded largely in the debate over monopolization and the trusts that had been so prominent between 1890 and 1915. 8.1.1.2. ROOSEVELTS CRITICS: During his first 2 years in office, FDR had concentrated on fighting the Depression by shoring up the sagging American economy. He was developing a new concept of government, responding to pressures from organized groups such as corporations, labour unions, and farm organizations while ignoring the needs of the dispossessed who had no political voice. Father Charles Coughlin, Dr. Francis Townsend, Huey Long. 8.1.2. THE SENCOND NEW DEAL: Roosevelt alarmed by his critics, abandoned the idea of reconciling the conflicting demands of widely diverse interest groups behind the New Deal and started turning to the left. In 1935, the focus of the New Deal changed from relief and recovery to reform and he moved far enough to the left to overcome the Challenges of Father Coughlin, Dr. Townsend and Huey Long. His reforms improved the quality of life in America significantly. 8.1.2.1. THE SECOND HUNDRED DAYS: When the New Congress met in January 1935, FDR proposed a series of legislative measures designed to start several reforms following some of the national dissidents demands. Many of the Democrats in Congress were to the left of Roosevelt, favouring to increase federal expending in national programs. The Congress passed in the spring of 1935, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. This legislative measure was a federal program that would relieve the urgent need of the unemployed by paying them to perform meaningful work. It was created a new agency, the Works Progress Administration, later Works Projects Administration (WPA). The Social Security Act was most relevant legislative measure enacted in 1935. The USA had never developed a welfare system to aid the aged, disabled and the unemployed. Roosevelt had succeeded in establishing the principle of governmental responsibility for the aged, the handicapped, and the unemployed. The Social Security Act was a landmark of the New Deal, creating a new system to provide for the welfare of individuals in a new complex industrial society.

27 History and Culture of the United States. The other major reform measure was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, Senator Robert Wagner of NY introduced some legislation in 1934 to outlaw company unions and other unfair labour practices in order to ensure collective bargaining for unions. The Wagner Act led to the revitalization of the American labour movement and a permanent change in labourmanagement relations. 3 years later, the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed to establish both minimum wages and maximum hours of work per week. The creation of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in 1935 reflected Roosevelts belief that electricity was no longer a luxury but a necessity. The goal of REA was to bring electricity to rural areas. 8.2. THE IMPACT OF THE NEW DEAL: Working conditions for women and minorities showed a huge advance. It reached its highest point in 1936 when Roosevelt was reelected and the Democratic party strengthened its hold in Congress. This political triumph was so ephemeral because the President met with a series of defeats in Congress and a deep economic relapse known as the Roosevelt Recession. By the end of 1938 the reform spirit was gone. A conservative alliance of southern Democrats and northern Republicans in Congress blocked all efforts to expand the New Deal. The New Deal did nothing to expand change the basic distribution of wealth and power in the nation. The most important experiment in regional planning was the TVA program of construction and electrification. Roosevelts politics united the rural and urban Democrats and attracted new groups to the Democratic party, mainly blacks and organized labour. 8.2.1. THE NEW DEAL AND AMERICAN WOMEN: The more advanced are for women in the 1930s came in the government. An outstanding figure was Eleanor Roosevelt. The First Lady worked tirelessly to persuade her husband and the head of the government agencies to introduce well-qualified women in the government departments. FDR appointed women as ambassadors and federal judges for the first time, and some women were elected to the Senate and the House of Representatives. 8.2.2. MINORITY GROUPS: Until the New Deal, African-Americans had shown their traditional loyalty to the party of Lincoln by voting Republican. By the end of Roosevelts first administration, one of the most dramatic voter shifts in American history had happened. Blacks abandoned their historic ties to the Republican party, in 1936, 75% of black voters supported the Democrats. Most New Deal programs helped blacks survive the Depression, but it never tried to confront the racial injustice built into federal relief programs.

28 History and Culture of the United States. In American agriculture the situation was particularly difficult. Most of sharecroppers and tenant farmers were black and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) acreage reduction hit blacks hard. Another important minority, the Mexican Americans, received few benefits from the New Deal. Engaged primarily in agricultural labour, these people found their wages in the Californian fields dropping steadily. Native Americans, after decades of neglect, fared slightly better under the New Deal. The treatment of Indians was the only bright spot in the Democratic administrations treatment of minorities. 8.2.3. THE RISE OF ORGANISED LABOUR: Trade Unions were so weak at the beginning od the Depression, with a membership of fewer than 3 million workers. American Federation of Labour (AFL). John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, took the lead in organizing unskilled workers in mass production industries by forming the Committee of Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1935. The Wagner Act had helped open the way, but labour leaders deserved most of the credit for the gains that were achieved. 8.2.4. CULTURE IN THE NEW DEAL: The popular culture of the 1930s was contradictory. It was a decade of traditionalism and of modernist experimentation in which many Americans grew increasingly interested in tradition and folk culture. At the same time, Americans in the 1930s needed heroes. Popular culture offered many; superheroes like Superman and Batman, who appeared in the new comic books of the 1930s. The Great Depression was a powerful unifying experience. A new slogan the American way of life was used. 8.3. FIGHTING FOR THE FOUR FREEDOMS: WORLD WAR II: (Fear, Speech, Peace and Religion): On August 27, 1928, US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, and representatives of 12 other nations met in Paris to sign a pact outlawing war. A senator called the Kellogg-Briand Pact. The Pact of Paris was the result of a determined American effort to avoid involvement in the European alliance system. In June 1927, Briand had sent a message to the American people inviting the US to join with France in signing a pact to outlaw war between the 2 nations. The invitation struck a sympathetic response, but the State Department feared correctly that Briands true intention was to establish a close tie between France and the USA. Kellogg proposed Briand that the pledge against war have to be extended to all nations. Briand had no choice but to agree, and so the diplomatic actions culminated in the elaborate signing ceremony in Paris. The pact was the symbolic of American foreign policy after WWI. 8.3.1. TOWARD INTERVENTION: During the Great Depression, isolationist sentiment urged. Isolationist ideas spread through American popular culture during the mid-1930s. The growing danger of war abroad led to rising

29 History and Culture of the United States. American desire for non-involvement. In August 1935, Congress passed the 1st of 3 neutrality acts. The 1935 law banned the sale of arms to nations at war and warned Americans not to sail on belligerent ships. In 1936, a 2nd act added a ban on loans, and in 1937, a 3rd neutrality act made these prohibitions permanent and required, on a 2year trial basis, that all trade other than munitions be conducted on a cash-and-carry basis. President Roosevelt in January 1938, he used his influence to block a proposal to require a national referendum before Congress could declare war. By 1938, pacifist sentiment was fading. For 2 years, the USA tried to remain at peace while war raged in Europe and Asia. President Roosevelt pledged American support for Britain and its allies. In early September, Roosevelt announced the transfer of fifty old destroyers to Britain in exchange for rights to build air and naval bases on 8 British possessions in the western hemisphere. Americans gradually came to agree with interventionists. Congress approved the increasing of the defence budget from $2 billion to $10 billion during 1940. President asked for a peacetime draft, the first in American history, to build up the army, and the Congress consented. German submarines were sinking tons of shipping a month. Great Britain needed the help of American navy to cross the U-boat infested water of the North Atlantic. Germany wanted to avoid drawing America into the European war, but the incidents stated son and an undeclared war quickly followed. German submarines damaged the US destroyer Kearney and sank the Reuben James. Then Roosevelt issued orders for the destroyers to shoot U-boats on sight. By December 1941, war with Germany seemed inevitable. Roosevelt played for time, inching the county toward war while waiting for the Axis nations to make the ultimate move. Japan finally obligated at Pearl Harbor. The Nazi power in Europe and the Japanese expansion in Asia finally led the USA to enter WWII. On December 7, 1941, just before 1p.m. Washington time, squadrons of Japanese carrier-based planes caught the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, totally by surprise. In a little more than an hour, the Japanese crippled the American Pacific fleet and destroyed its base at Pearl Harbor, sinking 8 battleships and killing more than 2400 American sailors. American armies were soon fighting on 3 continents, the US Navy controlled the worlds oceans, the countrys factories were sending a big amount of war supplies to more than 20 Allied countries. Speaking before Congress, on December 8, President Roosevelt termed the December 7 a date which will live in infamy and asked for a declaration of war against Japan. ON December 11, Germany and Italy declared war against the USA, the nation was now fully involved in WWII. 8.3.2. THE HOME FRONT: The belligerent international situation affected domestic policies. President FDR run for an unprecedented 3rd term in 1940.

30 History and Culture of the United States. He had against him German, Irish, Italian Americans, and in the farms and country towns of the Middle-West and lower-income and blue-collar groups supported him. His decisive victory made it clear that much of the nation remained happy with Roosevelt and supported his departure from neutrality. After election, President Roosevelt asked Congress to pass a new program to lend and lease goods and weapons to countries fighting against aggression. By 1940, to mobilize the patriotic public opinion the world was freedom. To Roosevelt, the 4 Freedoms expressed deeply help American values worthy of being spread worldwide. Freedom from fear, speech, space and religion. In 1942, Roosevelt appointed Donald Nelson to head the War Production Board (WPB). Through tax incentives for industrialists and rationing of import products, American industries were able to meet the needs of the military. In 1944, he captured his partys nomination for a fourth term and his choice of Harry S. Truman of Missouri for the Vice-presidency. Republican candidate was Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of NY. Unwilling to switch leaders while at war, the Americans stuck with Roosevelt to see the crisis through. 8.4. THE DOMESTIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE WORLD WAR II: When victory came in 1945, the USA was the most powerful nation in the world. WWII produced important changes in American life. The most significant was the tremendous increase in mobility. The war had a big impact on women. The most visible change involved the sudden appearance of large numbers of women in uniform. We have for the 1st time in history married working women. Outside employment did not free from domestic duties. Women who put in full days in offices and factories went home to cook, clean and care for the children. Marriage rate increased, birth rate increased (1946 baby boom), divorce rate increased. During WWII, blacks waged battles in 2 fronts. They helped the country win the war overseas and pressed for equal rights at home. Most blacks in the federal bureaucracy worked as janitors, and the armed services treated his coloured soldiers as second-class citizens. Many African-American responded to the rising tensions by joining civil rights organizations, during WWII, the NAACP intensified its legal campaign against discrimination. Rejecting legal action, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in 1942, organized a series of sit-ins. Despite outbursts of violence and discrimination, WWII, benefited the poor of all races. Thanks to full employment and progressive taxation, people at the bottom had income redistributed in their favour.

31 History and Culture of the United States.

UNIT 9 THE POST WAR PERIOD:

9.1. THE UNITED STATES AND THE COLD WAR: The USA had the most powerful navy and air force after WWII, it also possessed the atomic bomb. Roosevelt thought that the USA could lead the rest of the world to an international cooperation, expanding democracy, and increasing living standards. To promote these goals, new institutions like the United Nations and World Bank had been created. American prosperity required global economic reconstruction and its security depended on the security of Europe and Asia. The only country that could rival the USA was the Soviet Union, whose armies occupied the eastern part of Germany and other countries of the European area. In the East countries, the Soviet army tried to impose communist government loyal to Moscow in all the eastern countries. The USA insisted on national self-determination and Stalin set up a series of satellite governments. The Soviet Union consolidated its control on eastern Europe in 1946 and 1947. The climax came in March 1948 when a coup in Czechoslovakia overthrew a democratic government and gave the Soviets position in central Europe. One of the results of WWII was the division of Europe. No agreement was possible between the two countries. In January 1949, Harry S. Truman called for a defense pact. Ten European countries joined the USA and Canada in signing North Atlantic Treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which has 2 main features: first, the USA committed itself to the defense of Europe in case of an attack, extending its atomic shield over Europe. The second feature was designed to reassure worried Europeans that the USA would honour this commitment. In 1950, General Eisenhower was appointed to the post of NATO supreme commander, stationing four American divisions in Europe to serve as the nucleus of the NATO army. The NATO escalated the developing Cold War. It represented a reaction to the Soviet danger although there was no evidence of any Soviet plan to invade western Europe. The Western military alliance intensified Russian fears of the West and increased the level of international tension. The USSR and its sphere nations responded to NATO with the Warsau Pact. The rivalry between the USA and the Soviet Union grew in the late 1940s and the early 1950s. By the time President Truman left office in early 1953, the Cold War had taken on the global proportions. 9.2. THE TRUMAN PRESIDENCY AND THE FAILURE OF THE FAIR DEAL:

32 History and Culture of the United States. In the 1948 presidential elections political experts expected America to vote Republicans because Harry S. Trumans previous policies had angered liberals, labour, Southerners and most of the Congress. Truman won the presidential elections as a testimony of legacy of Roosevelt as well as Trumans scrappiness. In 1949, President Truman announced a plan known as the Fair Deal. It was a legislative package included an expansion of Social Security, federal aid education, federal budget for public housing projects, a higher minimum wage, a national plan for medical insurance, civil right legislation and other measures to foster social and economic justice. President Truman contributed to the ultimate failure of the Fair Deal to achieve its objectives. Republicans and Southeners joined forces in opposition to civil rights and government expending programs, but Truman demonstrated an inability to work with Congress on domestic issues. In addition, by 1949 foreign policy dominated the president attention and claimed an increasing share of the federal budget. On March 12, 1947, Truman declared that the USA would provide military and economic aid to allies faced by external aggression or internal subversion. During the Trumans years, there was a bad period for female workers. 9.2.1. THE MARSHALL PLAN: In January 1947, General George G. Marshall became Secretary of State. The Democratic administrations experts drew up a plan for the massive infusion of American capital to finance the economic recovery of Europe. At the Harvard University commencement speech on June 5, 1947, Secretary of State, George C. Marshall announced a plan to give Europe financial aid. He suggested the America could not afford to send a Band-Aid to cover the deep European wounds. Marshall also proposed American aid to foster the political and social conditions in which the institutions can exist. It was time to extend American economic power in Europe to stop the Soviet Unions expansionism and create a basis for political stability and economic well-being. The administrations pointed out that the Marshall Plan would help the USA by stimulating trade with Europe. In early 1948, Congress approved a plan, to be sent over the next four years for the European Recovery Program (ERP), more popularly called the Marshall Plan. This plan rebuilt the economic infrastructure of Western Europe and restored economic prosperity to the area. As a conclusion, the Marshall Plan served both Americas Cold War strategy and plans for an economic internationalism. 9.2.2. THE ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE: McCARTHYISM IN ACTION: Joseph R. McCarthy won election to the Senate in 1946. McCarthy capitalized on the anti-communism issue but he refused to release this list but amid the growing fear of internal subversion. McCarthy never identified a single person guilty of disloyalty but hold hearings and charges against individuals as well as the Voice of America, the Defence Department and other

33 History and Culture of the United States. government agencies. Encouraged by the attention, he faced a reelection campaign in 1952, McCarthy went on a spree of raising reckless charges against alleged Communists in government. In the federal government, Truman imposed loyalty and security requirements for employees. In 1950, Congress passed an Internal Security Act that compelled Communist organizations and their members to register with a new Subversive Activities Control Board and the members were ineligible for jobs in government or defence. Truman vetoed the bill because it was the greatest danger to freedom of press, speech, and assembly since the Sedition Act of 1789, but Congress overrode the veto by sweeping majorities. Many Republicans supporting his rampage as a weapon against Truman administration but after election of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower as president in 1952, McCarthy became an embarrassment to the Republican party. McCarthys downfall came in December 1954, when a Senate committee investigated his charges that the army had harboured communists. McCarhys success was based on the simple solution he offered to the complicated Cold War. He proposed to defeat the enemy at home rather than continue to engage in costly foreign aid programs and entangling alliances abroad. Freedom of expression was inhibited, and the opportunity to try out new ideas and approaches was lost as the USA settled into a sterile Cold War consensus. 9.3. THE POST-WAR PROSPERITY: THE EISENHOWER YEARS: Republicans felt it was time for a change. The Democrats had occupied the White House for the previous 20 years. In 1952, Republicans capitalized on a growing sense of national frustration to capture the presidency. In Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican party found the prefect candidate to unite the divided nation. In 1952 campaign the Republican campaign slogan was I Like Ike and the strategy was summarized in a formula K1 C2. Eisenhower promised that if elected he would first end the war in Korea then battle communism and corruption at home. Eisenhower concentrated his efforts on the Cold War abroad and to play an active role in dealing with Congress. Eisenhower extended Social Security benefits and raised the minimum wage. In 1953, he consolidated the administration of welfare programs by creating the Department of Health, Education welfare, but he opposed Democratic plans for compulsory health insurance and comprehensive federal aid to education. Moderation was the keynote of the Eisenhower presidency. In 1955, Ike met with Nikita Khrushchev, the new soviet leader, in Geneva at the first summit conference since Postdam a decade earlier. In 1958, the two countries agreed to a voluntary halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. The paused lasted until 1961. In 1959, Khrushchev toured the USA and had a friendly meeting with Eisenhower at Camp David. By the spirit of

34 History and Culture of the United States. cooperation ended abruptly in 1960, when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane over their territory. In 1957, Eisenhower extended the principle of containment to the Middle east, issuing the Eisenhower Doctrine, which pledged the USA to defend Middle Eastern governments threatened by communism or Arab nationalism. In domestic policy, Eisenhower brought the military style to the White House. Decisions of administration in his own hands. During Eisenhowers presidential years the country made steady and at times spectacular economic progress. In 1955 the minimum wage was raised from 75 cents to $1 per hour. Work was plentiful. 9.4. THE STRUGGLE OVER CIVIL RIGHTS: During the Cold War year, in the USA there was a big contradiction between the denunciation of the Soviet Union for its human rights violations and the second-class status of the African Americans began to arouse the national conscience. Harry S. Truman was the first American President who tried to change the pattern of racial discrimination in the USA. President Truman had been unable to secure any significant legislation measure to improve blacks situation, he had succeeded in adding civil rights to the Democratic agenda and was able to use his executive power to assist blacks seeking redress of grievance in school and housing issues. The USA in the 1950s was still a segregated society. 9.4.1. THE BROWN CASE: The nations schools soon became the primary target of civil rights advocates. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP), concentrated first on the Universities, successfully waging a legal battle to win administration for qualified blacks to graduate and professional schools. Marshall declared that even substantially equal but separate schools did profound psychological damage to black children and thus violated the 14th Amendment. In 1951, the NAACP challenged the citys segregated public schools on behalf of several black families, including that of Oliver Brown. 9.4.2. THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT: The most dynamic force of change came from blacks themselves. An incident in Montgomery, Alabama, shifted from legal struggles in the courts to black protest in the streets. Rosa Parks was arrested, convicted, and, having refused to pay a $10 fine, was given a suspended prison sentence. The black churches, the heart of spiritual and social life in the black community, supported the boycott and they found a young, eloquent leader in the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. MLK Jr. brought to the Montgomery bus boycott a socially transforming courage and vision. He organized that non-violent tactics against in justice could arouse public opinion and stimulate sympathy for the black cause. In mid-November 1956, the Supreme Court held that the city ordinances

35 History and Culture of the United States. governing bus seating violated the 14th Amendment. Before Christmas 1956, 13 months after the boycott began, MLK Jr. sat with a white man at the front of a bus. The Montgomery action demonstrated that they could press the issue of freedom by direct, non-violent action. It also produced a new leader of protest in MLK JR. In January 1957, black ministers from 11 states gathered in Atlanta and founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), with as its president. In 1957, Eisenhower proposed and Congress passed a bill creating a permanent Commission for Civil Rights, one of Trumans original goals. It also provided for federal efforts aimed at securing and protecting the right to vote. A second civil rights act in 1960 slightly strengthened the voting rights section. 9.5. AMERICAN CULTURAL ISSUES IN THE 1950S: Median family income rose 30%, Americans came to enjoy middle-class standing, owned homes, television set, running water or indoor plumbing. There was a Golden Age. His major goal from the outset was to restore calm and tranquility to a badly divided nation. He had no commitment to social change or economic reform, yet he had no plans to dismantle the social programs of the New Deal. He tried to balance the budget, to keep military spending in check, to encourage as much private initiative as possible, and to reduce federal activities to the bare minimum. Eisenhower defined his domestic policy as Modern Republicanism. He identified his partys agenda with Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression, and the indifference to the economic conditions of ordinary citizens. In 1955, millions of agricultural workers became illegible for Social Security for the first time. Eisenhower introduced the idea of mixed economy in which the government played a major role in planning economic activity was widely accepted throughout the Western countries. His main legislative achievement was the Highway Act of 1956. The 1950s decreased the labour conflict of the 2 previous decades. The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 had reduced labour militancy. In 1955, the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and CIO merged to from a single organization representing 35% of all workers except agricultural ones. Eisenhower was sensitive to the nations economic recessions developed in 1953 and 1957. Then, he quickly abandoned his goal of a balanced budget introducing a policy advocating government spending to restore prosperity. 9.5.1. YOUTH REVOLT: In the 50s Hollywood was producing movies that contributed to fear that something was terribly wrong with the youth of America. Congressional investigators and FBI reports reinforced the theme of the moral decline of Americas adolescents. They linked the rise in juvenile delinquency to the decline in the influence of family, home, church, and local community institutions.

36 History and Culture of the United States. Who was corrupting the youth of America? The Republicans blamed the New Deal, which took place more than two decades before. The Communist Daily Worker said it was the fault of Wall Street, bankers, and greedy politicians. Other Americans, without being too specific, simply felt that here was some ominous force working within American against America. 9.5.2. WOMEN AT WORK: During the 1950s, many American women reacted against the poverty of the Depression and the upheavals of WWII placing renewed emphasis on family life. Young women married earlier than had their mother, had more children, and bore them faster. The preference for the stay-at-home woman was reinforced at the top of the government. Eisenhower placed only 38 women in high government posts, including one to his cabinet and one as ambassador to Italy. Yet while many women accepted the stereotypical 1950s housewife figure, others admitted to discontent. Economically, women workers were concentrated in low-paying service and factory jobs. The great majority worked as secretaries, waitresses, beauticians, teachers, nurses and librarians. There were some social changes that would contribute to a rebirth of feminism. A dramatic increase took place during the 1950s in womens education and employment. In 1957, the birth rate began to drop as women elected to have fewer children.

UNIT 10 FROM THE SIXTIES TO THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY:

10.1. THE SIXTIES: Decade of social changes and political activism. Thousands of men and women claimed to freedom. The USA reconsidered the nations foreign policy and introduced claims to freedom into several areas of life. 10.1.1. JOHN F. KENNEDY AND THE NEW FRONTIER: The television debates were only one of the many factors influencing the outcome of the 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon faced each other in the nations first debate between two presidential candidates. Kennedy, an unknown Democratic challenger, had proposed the debate. Nixon, who was confident of his mastery, accepted. Although the rules were limited the first decade to domestic issues, Kennedy argued that foreign and domestic policy were inseparable and Nixon seemed to agree with Kennedys assessment. The election of John F. Kennedy marked the arrival of a new generation of leaders born in the 20th C who had entered the political life after WWII were in charge of national affairs. Inauguration day 1961, John Kennedy declared

37 History and Culture of the United States. in his address that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, and he memorably proclaimed: Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Kennedys administration included grow-oriented investment bankers, efficiencyminded management experts, professors and intellectuals. Kennedy was primary concerned with foreign affairs, he pledged We shall pay any price, beat any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, opposed any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. 10.1.1.1. KENNEDYS FOREIGN POLICY: President Kennedy was eager to foster pro-democratic sympathies in Third World countries by helping their economic development. He established warm relations with leaders in postcolonial Africa. The main idea was flexible response to include fighting brushfire wars in underdeveloped areas, training conuterinsurgency forces and increasing research in biological and chemical warfare. In the first weeks of his administration, Kennedy focused his attention on Cuba. Kennedy took full responsibility for the disaster and the administration established a secret CIA effort named Operation Moongoose. The CIA continued to devise plans to assassinate Castro. Meanwhile, Kennedy decided to stop the Communism in Latin America by pressing for social reform in the area. At the same time, the instability grew up in former French Indochina. Kennedy refused to intervene military in Laos, but he considered vital to American interests to defend the antiCommunism government of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, assuming that the Soviets and Chinese were backing Ho Chi Minhs drive to liberate the South. The problems abroad continued. Berlin was an island of Western capitalism deep in East Germany and a magnet for the East Germans feeling to the West. The Cuban Missile Crisis was another problem that Kennedy dealt with. 10.1.1.2. JFKS DOMESTIC POLICY: Kennedy gave a higher priority to the sluggish American economy. He was determined to recover quickly from the recession he had inherited and to stimulate the economy to achieve a much higher rate of long-term growth. The stimulation of the economy, however, came not from such social programs but from greatly increased appropriations for defence and space. By 1962, over half the federal budget was devoted to space and defense; aircraft and computer companies in the South and West benefited, but unemployment remained uncomfortably high in the older industrial areas or the Northeast and Midwest. He passed a major cut in taxes to stimulate consumer spending and give the economy the jolt it needed. When enacted by Congress in 1964, the massive tax cut led to the longest sustained economic advance in American history. Kennedys economic policy was successful.

38 History and Culture of the United States. 10.1.2. LYNDON B. JOHNSON PRESIDENCY: The New Frontier ended suddenly on November 22, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK in Dallas. Just hours after Kennedys assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in to succeed him aboard Air Force One on return flight to Washington, D.C. President Lyndon B. Johnson moved quickly to fill the vacuum left by Kennedys death. He concentrated on securing passage of Kennedys tax and civil rights bill in 1864. 5 days after the tragedy, Johnson spoke to a special joint session of Congress, asking Congress to enact Kennedys tax and civil rights bill as a tribute to the fallen leader and declaring, Let us here highly resolve that JFK did not live or die in vain. He was even more influential in passing the Kennedy civil rights measure. Johnson encouraged liberal amendments that strengthened the bill in the House and counting on growing public pressure to force northern Republicans to abandon their traditional alliance with southern Democrats. The Civil Rights Act was signed on June 2, 1964. On Election Day, November 1964, Johnson received 61.1% of the popular vote. The Democrats gained in Congress, breaking the Conservative grip on Congress for the 1st time in the last 25 years. Johnson promoted two traditional Democratic reforms, health care and education. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided over $1 billion in federal aid. Now, African-Americans could attend integrated schools, enjoy public facilities. One of the most difficult test of Johnsons presidency was the Civil Rights issue. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. This legislative measure banned literacy tests in states and countries in which less than half the population had voted in 1964 and provided for federal registrars in these areas to assure blacks the franchise. The full-scale American involvement in Vietnam began in 1965 to prevent a North Vietnamese victory. In February 1965, Johnson ordered a longplanned aerial bombardment of select North Vietnamese targets. For the next 3 years, Americans had an intensive war in Vietnam to prevent a Communist victory. Johnson came to the conclusion that the war would end in stalemate. In a speech to the nation on Sunday March 3, 1968, he outlined his plans for a new effort at ending the war peacefully and concluded by saying I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president. As a Conclusion, the Vietnam War revealed the need for a throughout new examination of the basic premises of American foreign policy in the Cold war. 10.1.3. THE NIXON PRESIDENCY: The main beneficiary of the Democratic debacle was Richard Nixon. Positioning himself squarely in the middle, he quickly became the front-runner for the Republican nomination. In the

39 History and Culture of the United States. campaign, Nixon played the peace issue to advocate an end to the Vietnam conflict. He chose the role of reconciler for a nation torn by emotion, he promised to bring a divided country together. Richard Nixon took office as the 36th President on January 26, 1969. Nixon stressed the need for a restoration of law and order. He proclaimed himself a spokesman for the silent Americans. Nixon won the presidency by a very narrow margin over the Democratic candidate Humphrey. Nixons policy was a return to the politics of accommodation that had characterized the Eisenhower era. Nixon focused on making federal bureaucracy function more efficiently. He shifted responsibility for social problems from Washington to state and local authorities. Nixon travelled to China in February 1972. He met with the Communists leaders and ended more than two decades of Chino-American hostility. The Soviets, who viewed China as a dangerous adversary, responded by agreeing to negotiate an arms control pact with the USA. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) has been under way since 1969. During a visit to Moscow in May 1972, Nixon signed two vital documents with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The first limited the two superpowers to two hundred antiballistic missiles (ABMs) apiece; the second froze the number of offensive ballistic missiles for 5 years period. The SALT agreements were most important as a symbolic first step toward control of the nuclear arms race. President Nixon inherited a rising inflation rate. He opposed to the idea of federal controls and opted for a reduction in government expending while encouraging the Federal Reserve Board to curtail the money supply, forcing up interest rates and slowing the rate of business expansion. Economy underwent its major recession since 1958. 10.1.3.1. THE ELECTION OF 1972 AND THE WATERGATE SCANDAL: Operating under a siege mentality that justified any measure necessary to defeat its opponents, the White House went to extreme lengths to guarantee Nixons reelection in 1972. Only President Richard Nixon knew the truth about his victory. In the campaign, it was formed the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), headed by Attorney General John Mitchell. Specialists in dirty ticks harassed democratic contenders, while a group of plumbers developed an elaborated plan to spy the opposition. The plan included bugging the Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington. In the early morning hours of June 17, James McCord and 4 other men working under the direction of Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, were caught by police during a break-in at Watergate. The continuing abuse of power had finally culminated in an illegal act that threatened to bring down the entire Nixon administration. The president was deeply implicated in the attempt to recover up the involvement of White House aides in the original burglary. He ordered the

40 History and Culture of the United States. CIA to keep the FBI off the case, on the specious grounds that it involved national security. And he urged his aides to lie under oath if necessary. John Dean revealed Nixons involvement. The House Judiciary Committee, action on evidence uncovered by the senate committee, voted 3 articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with obstruction of Justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress. The tapes implicated him in the cover-up, then Nixon finally chose to resign on August 9, 1974. Richard Nixon had appointed him to vice presidency after Spiro Agnew resigned to avoid prosecution for accepting bribes while he was governor in Maryland. Gerard R. Ford tried to restore public confidence in the presidency when he replaced Nixon in August 1974. On September 8, 1974, he shocked the nation by announcing he had granted Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for all federal crimes he committee or may have committed or taken part in during his presidency. Fords plan was to end the Watergate scandal, but his gesture eroded public confidence and making him seem complicit in the scandal. Ford had to fight to reestablish the CIA prestige because it had been involved in plot to assassinate foreign leaders. Then, he appointed a respected former congressman, George Bush, as the new CIA director and issued an executive order outlawing assassination as an instrument of American foreign policy. Congress also increased its own surveillance of the CIA. 10. 2. JIMMY CARTED AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS: In November 1976, Carter won an extremely narrow victory. He carried the South and key northern industrial states. President Carter was more successful than President Gerard Ford in adjusting to the growing nationalism in the world, particularly on Central America, where the USA had imposed order for most of the 20th C by backing reactionary regimes. During Jimmy Carters presidency, the USA began to show a growing regard for the human rights practices of its allies. Carter was convinced that American foreign policy should embody the countrys basic moral beliefs. In 1977 Congress started requiring reports on human rights conditions in countries receiving American aid. The new national consensus was symbolized by the War Power Act of 1973, which required the president to consult with Congress before sending troops into action overseas. In 1980, Carter signed a SALT II agreement with the USSR that decreased the ceiling on nuclear delivery systems to 2250 launchers. On January 1, 1979, the USA and China exchanged ambassadors, completing the reconciliation that Nixon had begun in 1971. Jimmy Carter was a leader who had benefited from Vietnam and Watergate issues and had now been betrayed by events. National frustration over the hostages in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the energy crunch

41 History and Culture of the United States. and the rampant inflation eroded public confidence in the Carter administration. 10.3. THE REAGAN-BUSH ERA: Republican Ronald Reagan capitalized on the citizens frustration. When he ran for the presidency against Jimmy Carter in 1980, he asked Americans Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? On Election Day, Americans answered with a resounding no. Reagan won; the Democrats lost the Senate for the first time since 1954. In politics, he started out as a liberal, supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, however, he became concerned about Communist infiltration of the labour movement in Hollywood. In 1952 and 1956 he voted for Dwight Eisenhower and in 1960 he led Republicans for Nixon. When President Reagan took office he promised to cut in inflation, rebuild the nations defences, restore economic growth and decrease the size of federal government by limiting its role in welfare, education and housing. He pledge to end exorbitant union contracts to make American goods competitive again, to cut taxes to stimulate investment and purchasing power, and to decontrol business strangled by federal regulation in order to restore competition. The President embraced the concept of supply-side economics as the proper remedy for the nations economic problems. Reagan favoured a reduction in both federal expenditures and revenues. He wanted to restrict government activity and reduce federal regulation of the economy. His administration cut spending on a variety of social welfare programs. He also eliminated cash welfare assistance for the working poor and reduced federal subsides for child-care services and for low-income families. The 1982 recession undercut the rosy assumptions of the supplysiders. The economic boom that began in 1983 came just at the right time for the Republican party. Ronald Reagan was even more determined to reverse the course of American policy abroad than at home. Under his administration the Penthagon flourished. By the end of 1987, Reagan made a remarkable recovery by reversing the course of Soviet-American relations. The change in leadership in the Soviet Union proved fortunate with Mikhail Gorvachev. Reagan and Gorvachev in Washington in December 1987 signed to remove and destroy all intermediate-range missiles and to permit on-site inspections to verify the process. The election of 1988 confirmed the pollsters projections. George Bush won in the South, carried most of the West, and defeated Democrat candidate Michael Dukakis in such key industrial states as Pennsylvania and Michigan. His victory reflected the continuing Republic dominance of the elections. The Democrats increased their margins in both the House and the Senate. Most of Bushs time was taken with two pressing domestic problems. First,

42 History and Culture of the United States. the nations savings and loan industry, based on US government-insured deposits, was in grave trouble as a result of lax regulation and unwise, even possibly fraudulent, loan policies. The continuing budget deficit provided an even greater challenge. The nation simply spent beyond its means, with deficits still running more than $150 billion a year. Finally, the President and Congress reached agreement on both issues. In 1992, a presidential election year, the persistence of the recession that had started 2 years earlier became the dominant political issue. Economists warned that the interest payments on the debt would become the largest single budget expenditure by the end of the 1990s, thereby threatening the USAs economic future. 10.4. FROM WILLIAM J. CLINTON TO GEORGE W. BUSH: The candidates in the 1992 presidential election, were Republican President George Bush, Independent H. Ross Perot, and Democrat William J. Clinton. Arkansas Governor, Bill Clinton defeated several challengers for the democratic nomination by becoming the champion of economic renewal. Clinton stressed the need for investment in the nations future, rebuilding roads and bridges, training workers for high-tech jobs, and solving the growing national health-car crisis. Clinton succeeded in unifying the Democratic and became the front-runner, leaving Bush behind. In his first 2 years in office, President Clinton turned away from some of the social and economic policies of the Reagan and Bush years. He appointed several women and blacks to his cabinet, including the first female attorney general, Janet Reno. Clinton named two supporters of abortion rights to the Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The main policy proposal of Clintons first term was to address the rising cost of health care and the increasing number of Americans who lacked health insurance. The plan died in 1994. In 1994, American voters turned against the administration. For the 1st time since 1950s, Republicans won control of both Houses of Congress. It was the Freedom Revolution. President Clinton rebuilt his popularity by campaigning against a radical Congress. In his state of the union address on January 1996, Clinton announced that the era of big Government is over, embracing the Republican antigovernment ideas. In 1996 he approved the Telecommunications Act which deregulated broadcasting and telephone companies. Clintons main political interests concerned domestic, not international affairs. Tried to concentrate his efforts on human rights. In the 2000 election, Republicans chose George W. Bush, governor of Texas and son of President Bush with former secretary of defence Dick Cheney as his running mate. The 2000 election revealed the end of the decade of democracy. George W. Bush came into office without a broad popular

43 History and Culture of the United States. mandate. He had received fewer votes than his opponent Al Gore. President Bush pursued a strongly conservative agenda. In 2001, he persuaded Congress to enact the largest tax cut in American history. In foreign policy, Bush focused on American freedom of action, unrestrained by international treaties and institutions. Bush announced plans to push ahead with a national missile defence system. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 changed not only the international situation but also the domestic policy and the Bush presidency as well. It appeared an upsurge of popular patriotism. The Bush administration benefited from this patriotism and identification with the government. On September 20, 2001, Bushs speech announced a new foreign policy principle, which became known as the Bush Doctrine. The USA started a war on terrorism. In March 2003, without obtaining approval from the United Nations for attacking Iraq, the USA went to war with Great Britain as its sole significant ally. Its purpose was to defend our freedom and bring freedom to others.