APUSH HOME

Part Four

Forging an Industrial Society

1869-1909

Oshkosh, 1890s

 

Chapter 23

Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age,

1869-1896

 

 

Chapter Summary

After the ideals and sacrifices of the Civil War, the post–Civil War era spawned disillusionment [dis-i-loo-zhuhn]. Federal, state and local politicians were often surrounded by corruption and scandal, while problems afflicting industrializing America festered beneath the surface.

Popular war hero Grant was a poor politician with a corruption administration. Despite some futile reform efforts, party patronage fattened Gilded Age politics. The parties competed for spoils, but essentially agreed on most national policies. Cultural differences, different constituencies, and local issues fueled party competition and unprecedented voter participation. Periodic complaints by Mugwump/ [muhg-wuhmp] reformers and soft-money advocates had little effect on politics.

The contested 1876 election led to the sectional Compromise of 1877, which ended Reconstruction. The South began an oppressive system of tenant farming and racial supremacy and segregation, enforced by sometimes lethal violence. Racial prejudice against Chinese immigrants was also linked to labor unrest in the 1870s and 1880s.

Garfield’s assassination  /[uh-sas-uh-ney-shun] by a spurned office seeker spurred early civil-service reform, making politics more dependent on big business. The first Democratic president since the Civil War, Cleveland, made lower tariffs the first real post-war issue in national politics, but the Panic of 1893 eclipsed his mild reform efforts. That crisis made suffering farmers and workers protest a government and economic system which seemed biased toward big business and the wealthy.

 

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the political corruption of the Grant administration and the mostly unsuccessful efforts to reform politics in the Gilded Age.

2. Describe the economic crisis of the 1870s, and explain the growing conflict between hard-money and soft-money advocates.

3. Explain the intense political partisanship of the Gilded Age, despite the parties’ lack of ideological difference and poor quality of political leadership.

4. Indicate how the disputed Hayes-Tilden election of 1876 led to the Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction.

5. Describe how the end of Reconstruction led to the loss of black rights and the imposition of the Jim Crow system of segregation in the South.

6. Explain the rise of class conflict between business and labor in the 1870s and the growing hostility to immigrants, especially the Chinese.

7. Explain the economic crisis and depression of the 1890s, and indicate how the Cleveland administration failed to address it.

8. Show how the farm crisis of the depression of the 1890s stirred growing social protests and class conflict, and fueled the rise of the radical Populist Party.

 

Key Names and Terms

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Federal legislation that prohibited most further Chinese immigration to the United States. This was the first major legal restriction on immigration in U.S. history. (549)

 

 

Civil Rights Act of 1875

The last piece of federal civil rights legislation until the 1950s, the law promised blacks equal access to public accommodations and banned racism in jury selection, but the Act provided no means of enforcement and was therefore ineffective. In 1883, the Supreme Court declared most of the Act unconstitutional. (546)

 

 

Compromise of 1877

The agreement that finally resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction. In exchange for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, winning the presidency, Hayes agreed to withdraw the last of the federal troops from the former Confederate states. This deal effectively completed the southern return to white-only, Democratic-dominated electoral politics. (545)

 

 

Crédit Mobilier scandal (1872)

A construction company was formed by owners of the Union Pacific Railroad for the purpose of receiving government contracts to build the railroad at highly inflated prices—and profits. In 1872 a scandal erupted when journalists discovered that the Cr?dit Mobilier Company had bribed congressmen and even the Vice President in order to allow the ruse to continue. (541)

 

 

Gilded Age (1877-1896)

A term given to the period 1865–1896 by Mark Twain, indicating both the fabulous wealth and the widespread corruption of the era. (543)

 

 

grandfather clause

A regulation established in many southern states in the 1890s that exempted from voting requirements (such as literacy tests and poll taxes) anyone who could prove that their ancestors (“grandfathers”) had been able to vote in 1860. Since slaves could not vote before the Civil War, these clauses guaranteed the right to vote to many whites while denying it to blacks. (559)

 

 

Homestead Strike (1892)

A strike at a Carnegie steel plant in Homestead, P.A., that ended in an armed battle between the strikers, three hundred armed “Pinkerton” detectives hired by Carnegie, and federal troops, which killed ten people and wounded more than sixty. The strike was part of a nationwide wave of labor unrest in the summer of 1892 that helped the Populists gain some support from industrial workers. (557)

 

 

Jim Crow

System of racial segregation in the American South from the end of Reconstruction until the mid-twentieth century. Based on the concept of “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites, the Jim Crow system sought to prevent racial mixing in public, including restaurants, movie theaters, and public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation. (547)

 

 

panic of 1873

A world-wide depression that began in the United States when one of the nation’s largest banks abruptly declared bankruptcy, leading to the collapse of thousands of banks and businesses. The crisis intensified debtors’ calls for inflationary measures such as the printing of more paper money and the unlimited coinage of silver. Conflicts over monetary policy greatly influenced politics in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. (542)

 

 

patronage

Practice of rewarding political support with special favors, often in the form of public office. Upon assuming office, Thomas Jefferson dismissed few Federalist employees, leaving scant openings to fill with political appointees. (230)

 

 

Pendleton Act (1883)

Congressional legislation that established the Civil Service Commission, which granted federal government jobs on the basis of examinations instead of political patronage, thus reigning in the spoils system. (553)

 

 

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

An 1896 Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of segregation laws, saying that as long as blacks were provided with “separate but equal” facilities, these laws did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision provided legal justification for the Jim Crow system until the 1950s. (547)

 

 

sharecropping

An agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a certain “share” of each year’s crop. Sharecropping was the dominant form of southern agriculture after the Civil War, and landowners manipulated this system to keep tenants in perpetual debt and unable to leave their plantations. (547)

 

 

Tweed Ring

A symbol of Gilded Age corruption, “Boss” Tweed and his deputies ran the New York City Democratic party in the 1860s and swindled $200 million from the city through bribery, graft, and vote-buying. Boss Tweed was eventually jailed for his crimes and died behind bars. (540)

 

 

“waving the bloody shirt”

The use of Civil War imagery by political candidates and parties to draw votes to their side of the ticket. The Republican party particularly benefited from reminding voters of Democratic treachery during the secession crisis. (539)

 

 

 

Chapter 24

Industry Comes of Age, 1865-1900

 

The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Link at Promontory Point,

Utah, May 10, 1869

 

 

Chapter Summary

Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

Government subsidies and loans aided construction of the first transcontinental/ [trans-kon-tn-en-tl] rail line in 1869. This and other parts of a national rail network opened new markets and prompted industrial growth. Railroad power and corruption led to public demands for regulation, with minimal success.

New technology and business organization spawned huge corporate trusts, pioneered by Andrew Carnegie [kahr-ney-gee] in steel and John D. Rockefeller/ [rok-uh-fel-er] in oil. The oil industry initially supplied kerosene /[ker-uh-seen] for lamps, before expanding into gasoline production to fuel automobiles. Cheap steel transformed industries from construction to rail building, while railroads dominated the economy and reshaped American society.

The benefits of industrialization were unevenly distributed. The South remained underdeveloped and dependent, growing class divisions placed industrial workers at the bottom of American society. Independent producers and farmers became dependent wage earners, vulnerable to illness, industrial accidents, and unemployment.

Attempts to organize labor were generally ineffective. The Knights of Labor disappeared after the Haymarket bombing, but Gompers’ /[gom-perz] AF of L successfully organized skilled craft laborers while ignoring most industrial workers, women, and blacks.

 

Learning Objectives

1. Explain how the transcontinental railroad network provided the basis for an integrated national market and the great post–Civil War industrial transformation.

2. Identify the abuses in the railroad industry and discuss how these led to the first efforts at industrial regulation by the federal government.

3. Describe how the economy came to be dominated by giant trusts, such as those headed by Carnegie and Rockefeller in the steel and oil industries, and the growing class conflict it precipitated.

4. Describe how new technological inventions fueled new industries and why American manufacturers increasingly turned toward the mass production of standardized goods.

5. Indicate how industrialists and their intellectual and religious supporters attempted to explain and justify great wealth, and increasing class division through natural law and the Gospel of Wealth.

6. Explain why the South was generally excluded from American industrial development and remained in a Third World economic subservience to the North.

7. Analyze the social changes brought by industrialization, particularly the altered position of working men and women.

8. Explain the failures of the Knights of Labor and the modest success of the American Federation of Labor.

 

Key Terms and Names 

American Federation of Labor

A national federation of trade unions that included only skilled workers, founded in 1886. Led by Samuel Gompers for nearly four decades, the AFL sought to negotiate with employers for a better kind of capitalism that rewarded workers fairly with better wages, hours, and conditions. The AFL’s membership was almost entirely white and male until the middle of the twentieth century. (589)

 

 

closed shop

A union-organizing term that refers to the practice of allowing only unionized employees to work for a particular company. The AFL became known for negotiating closed-shop agreements with employers, in which the employer would agree not to hire non-union members. (589)

 

 

Haymarket Square (1886)

A May Day rally that turned violent when someone threw a bomb into the middle of the meeting, killing several dozen people. Eight anarchists were arrested for conspiracy contributing to the disorder, although evidence linking them to the bombing was thin. Four were executed, one committed suicide, and three were pardoned in 1893. (589)

 

 

horizontal integration

The practice perfected by John D. Rockefeller of dominating a particular phase of the production process in order to monopolize a market, often by forming trusts and alliances with competitors. (575)

 

 

interlocking directorates

The practice of having executives or directors from one company serve on the Board of Directors of another company. J. P. Morgan introduced this practice to eliminate banking competition in the 1890s. (575)

 

 

Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

Congressional legislation that established the Interstate Commerce Commission, compelled railroads to publish standard rates, and prohibited rebates and pools. Railroads quickly became adept at using the Act to achieve their own ends, but the Act gave the government an important means to regulate big business. (573)

 

 

Knights of Labor

The second national labor organization, organized in 1869 as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. The Knights were known for their efforts to organize all workers, regardless of skill level, gender, or race. After the mid-1880s their membership declined for a variety of reasons, including the Knights’ participation in violent strikes and discord between skilled and unskilled members. (588)

 

 

National Labor Union (1866-1872)

This first national labor organization in U.S. history was founded in 1866 and gained 600,000 members from many parts of the workforce, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks. The organization devoted much of its energy to fighting for an eight-hour workday before it dissolved in 1872. (587)

 

 

Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)

A law that forbade trusts or combinations in business, this was landmark legislation because it was one of the first Congressional attempts to regulate big business for the public good. At first the law was mostly used to restrain trade unions as the courts tended to side with companies in legal cases. In 1914 the Act was revised so it could more effectively be used against monopolistic corporations. (580)

 

 

Social Darwinists

Believers in the idea, popular in the late nineteenth century, that people gained wealth by “survival of the fittest.” Therefore, the wealthy had simply won a natural competition and owed nothing to the poor, and indeed service to the poor would interfere with this organic process. Some social Darwinists also applied this theory to whole nations and races, explaining that powerful peoples were naturally endowed with gifts that allowed them to gain superiority over others. This theory provided one of the popular justifications for U.S. imperial ventures like the Spanish-American war. (579)

 

 

Standard Oil Company (1870-1911)

John D. Rockefeller’s company, formed in 1870, which came to symbolize the trusts and monopolies of the Gilded Age. By 1877 Standard Oil controlled 95% of the oil refineries in the U.S. It was also one of the first multinational corporations, and at times distributed more than half of the company’s kerosene production outside the U.S. By the turn of the century it had become a target for trust-busting reformers, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered it to break up into several dozen smaller companies. (578)

 

 

trust

A mechanism by which one company grants control over its operations, through ownership of its stock, to another company. The Standard Oil Company became known for this practice in the 1870s as it eliminated its competition by taking control of smaller oil companies. (575)

 

 

vertical integration

The practice perfected by Andrew Carnegie of controlling every step of the industrial production process in order to increase efficiency and limit competition. (575)

 

 

Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois (1886)

A Supreme Court decision that prohibited states from regulating the railroads because the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. As a result, reformers turned their attention to the federal government, which now held sole power to regulate the railroad industry. (573)

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 25

America Moves to the City, 1865-1900

 

Lower Broadway, 1875

 

Chapter Summary

America Moves to the City, 1865–1900

Americans moved from the country to the city in the post–Civil War decades. Urban development caused both excitement and severe social problems, including overcrowding and slums.

After the 1880s New Immigrants flooded cities, mostly from southern and eastern Europe. Their strange customs and non-Protestant religions engendered nativist/ [ney-ti-vizt] hostility and discrimination.

Religion adjusted to social and cultural changes. Roman Catholicism and Judaism/ [joo-dee-iz-uhm] gained strength, while Protestant churches divided over conflicts about evolution and biblical interpretation.

American secondary and graduate education expanded rapidly, while blacks and immigrants had limited success in using education as a path to upward mobility.

Conflicts arose over moral values, especially relating to sexuality and women’s role in society. The new urban environment expanded opportunities for women but created difficulties for families, which grew more isolated as the divorce rate rose and average family size shrank.

American literature and art reflected a new realism, while popular amusement became a big business.

 

Learning Objectives

After mastering this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Describe the rise of the American industrial city, and place it in the context of worldwide trends of urbanization and mass migration (the European diaspora).

2. Describe the New Immigration, and explain how it differed from the Old Immigration and why it aroused opposition from many native-born Americans.

3. Discuss the efforts of social reformers and churches to aid the New Immigrants and alleviate urban problems, and the immigrants’ own efforts to sustain their traditions while assimilating to mainstream America.

4. Analyze the changes in American religious life in the late nineteenth century, including the expansion of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Judaism, and the growing Protestant division between liberals and fundamentalists over Darwinism and biblical criticism.

5. Explain the changes in American education and intellectual life, including the debate between DuBois and Washington over the goals of African American education.

6. Describe the literary and cultural life of the period, including the widespread trend towards realism in art and literature, and the city beautiful movement led by urban planners.

7. Explain the growing national debates about morality in the late nineteenth century, particularly in relation to the changing roles of women and the family.

 

Key Names and Terms 

land-grant colleges

Colleges and universities created from allocations of pubic land through the Morrell Act of 1862 and the Hatch Act of 1887. These grants helped fuel the boom in higher education in the late nineteenth century, and many of the today’s public universities derive from these grants. (614)

 

 

liberal Protestants

Members of a branch of Protestantism that flourished from 1875 to 1925 and encouraged followers to use the Bible as a moral compass rather than to believe that the Bible represented scientific or historical truth. Many Liberal Protestants became active in the “social gospel” and other reform movements of the era. (610)

 

 

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

An organization founded in 1890 to demand the vote for women. NAWSA argued that women should be allowed to vote because their responsibilities in the home and family made them indispensable in the public decision-making process. During World War I, NAWSA supported the war effort and lauded women’s role in the Allied victory, which helped to finally achieve nationwide woman suffrage in the Nineteenth Amendment (1920). (624)

 

 

New Immigrants

Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who formed a recognizable wave of immigration from the 1880s until 1924, in contrast to the immigrants from western Europe who had come before them. These new immigrants congregated in ethnic urban neighborhoods, where they worried many native-born Americans, some of whom responded with nativist anti-immigrant campaigns and others of whom introduced urban reforms to help the immigrants assimilate. (600)

 

 

pragmatism

A distinctive American philosophy that emerged in the late nineteenth century around the theory that the true value of an idea lay in its ability to solve problems. The pragmatists thus embraced the provisional, uncertain nature of experimental knowledge. Among the most well-known purveyors of pragmatism were John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and William James. (616)

 

 

settlement houses

Mostly run by middle-class native-born women, settlement houses in immigrant neighborhoods provided housing, food, education, child care, cultural activities, and social connections for new arrivals to the United States. Many women, both native-born and immigrant, developed life-long passions for social activism in the settlement houses. Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York City were two of the most prominent. (607)

 

 

Tuskegee Institute

A normal and industrial school led by Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, Alabama. It focused on training young black students in agriculture and the trades to help them achieve economic independence. Washington justified segregated, vocational training as a necessary first step on the road to racial equality, although critics accused him of being too “accomodationist”. (613)

 

 

Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Founded in 1874, this organization advocated for the prohibition of alcohol, using women’s supposedly greater purity and morality as a rallying point. Advocates of prohibition in the United States found common cause with activists elsewhere, especially in Britain, and in the 1880s they founded the World Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which sent missionaries around the world to spread the gospel of temperance. (626)

 

 

World’s Columbian Exposition

Held in Chicago, Americans saw this World’s Fair as their opportunity to claim a place among the world’s most “civilized” societies, by which they meant the countries of western Europe. The Fair honored art, architecture, and science, and its promoters built a mini-city in which to host the fair that reflected all the ideals of city planning popular at the time. For many, this was the high point of the “City Beautiful” movement. (629)

 

 

yellow journalism

A scandal-mongering practice of journalism that emerged in New York during the Gilded Age out of the circulation battles between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. The expression has remained a pejorative term referring to sensationalist journalism practiced with unethical, unprofessional standards. (617)

 

 

 

Chapter 26

The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865-1896

 

 

 

Chapter Summary

Immediately after the Civil War, Indians who hunted buffalo on horseback still occupied the Great Plains and Mountain West. They fought white encroachment on their land and way of life, but whites’ railroads, mining, and livestock broke up Indian territory, while diseases cut their strength and numbers. Environmental destruction and intertribal warfare undermined Indian resistance and soon threatened Native Americans’ existence. The federal government used poorly conceived treaties and sporadic warfare to force the Indians onto largely barren reservations.

The Dawes [dawz] Act attempted to coerce Indians into adopting white ways by ending tribal land ownership, while insensitive humanitarians [hyōō-mān'ĭ-târ'ē-ənz] set up Indian boarding schools, which eroded traditional culture.

Mining and cattle industries dominated western history until farmers, lured by free homesteads, railroads, and irrigation, settled the frontier. The 1890 census declared the frontier /[fruhn-teer] closed, ending a formative phase of American history. Less of a safety valve than many believed, the frontier West was actually the most urbanized region of the United States by the 1890s.

In the 1870s, farmers began to settle the treeless prairies beyond the 100th meridian [/muh-rid-ee-uhn], using dry farming techniques that gradually contributed to soil loss. Irrigation projects, later financed by the federal government, allowed specialized farming in many arid western areas, including California. The frontier’s close in 1890 ended traditional westward expansion, but the Great West remained a unique social and environmental region.

Mechanized agriculture accompanied the opening of new lands, making farmers more dependent on specialized production and international markets. Debt dependent farmers protested declining prices and other woes through the Grange [greynj], Farmers’ Alliances, and the People’s (Populist) / [pop-yuh-list] party.

The Panic of 1893 deepened class conflict and spurred farmer and labor strikes and unrest. Pro-silverite William Jennings Bryan won the Democratic Party’s 1896 nomination, but lost both urban workers and the election to goldbug Republican William McKinley [muh-kin-lee]. The election transformed American politics, as the city and middle class dominated the new party system, which downplayed monetary issues and engendered Republican dominance for two generations.

 

 

 

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the nature of the cultural conflicts and battles that accompanied the white American migration into the Great Plains and the Far West.

2. Explain the development of federal policy towards Native Americans in the late nineteenth century.

3. Analyze the brief flowering and decline of the cattle and mining frontiers, and the settling of the arid West by small farmers increasingly engaged with a worldwide economy.

4. Summarize Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis regarding the significance of the frontier in American history, describe its strengths and weaknesses, and indicate the ways in which the American West became and remains a distinctive region of the United States.

5. Describe the economic forces that drove farmers into debt, and describe how the Populist Party organized to protest their oppression, attempted to forge an alliance with urban workers, and vigorously attacked the two major parties after the onset of the depression of the 1890s.

6. Describe the Democratic party’s revolt against President Cleveland and the rise of the insurgent William Jennings Bryan’s free silver campaign.

7. Explain why William McKinley proved able to defeat Bryan’s populist campaign and how the Republicans’ triumph signaled the rise of urban power and the end of the third party system in American politics.

 

 

Key Terms and Names 

 

 

Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

An act that broke up Indian reservations and distributed land to individual households. Leftover land was sold for money to fund U.S. government efforts to “civilize” Native Americans. Of 130 million acres held in Native American reservations before the Act, 90 million were sold to non-Native buyers. (639)

 

 

fourth party system (1896-1932)

A term scholars have used to describe national politics from 1896–1932, when Republicans had a tight grip on the White House and issues like industrial regulation and labor concerns became paramount, replacing older concerns like civil service reform and monetary policy. (664)

 

 

Gold Standard Act (1900)

An act that guaranteed that paper currency would be redeemed freely in gold, putting an end to the already dying “free silver” campaign. (665)

 

 

Homestead Act (1862)

A federal law that gave settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by, for instance, building a house on it. The act helped make land accessible to hundreds of thousands of westward-moving settlers, but many people also found disappointment when their land was infertile or they saw speculators grabbing up the best land. (479)

 

 

Little Bighorn, Battle of (1876)

A particularly violent example of the warfare between whites and Native Americans in the late nineteenth century, also know as “Custer’s Last Stand.” In two days, June 25 and 26, 1876, the combined forces of over 2,000 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians defeated and killed more than 250 U.S. soldiers, including Colonel George Custer. The battle came as the U.S. government tried to compel Native Americans to remain on the reservations and Native Americans tried to defend territory from white gold-seekers. This Indian advantage did not last long, however, as the union of these Indian fighters proved tenuous and the United States Army soon exacted retribution. (637)

 

 

mechanization of agriculture

The development of engine-driven machines, like the combine, which helped to dramatically increase the productivity of land in the 1870s and 1880s. This process contributed to the consolidation of agricultural business that drove many family farms out of existence. (654)

 

 

mining industry

After gold and silver strikes in Colorado, Nevada, and other Western territories in the second half of the nineteenth century, fortune seekers by the thousands rushed to the West to dig. These metals were essential to U.S. industrial growth and were also sold into world markets. After surface metals were removed, people sought ways to extract ore from underground, leading to the development of heavy mining machinery. This, in turn, led to the consolidation of the mining industry, because only big companies could afford to buy and build the necessary machines. (644)

 

 

Populists

Officially known as the People’s party, the Populists represented Westerners and Southerners who believed that U.S. economic policy inappropriately favored Eastern businessmen instead of the nation’s farmers. Their proposals included nationalizing the railroads, creating a graduated income tax, and most significantly the unlimited coinage of silver. (657)

 

 

Pullman strike (1894)

A 1894 strike by railroad workers upset by drastic wage cuts. The strike was led by socialist Eugene Debs but not supported by the American Federation of Labor. Eventually President Grover Cleveland intervened and federal troops forced an end to the strike. The strike highlighted both divisions within labor and the government’s new willingness to use armed force to combat work stoppages. (658)

 

 

reservation system

The system that allotted land with designated boundaries to Native American tribes in the west, beginning in the 1850s and ending with the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Within these reservations, most land was used communally, rather than owned individually. The U.S. government encouraged and sometimes violently coerced Native Americans to stay on the reservations at all times. (635)

 

 

Wounded Knee, Battle of (1890)

A battle between the U.S. Army and the Dakota Sioux, in which several hundred Native Americans and 29 U.S. soldiers died. Tensions erupted violently over two major issues: the Sioux practice of the “Ghost Dance,” which the U.S. government had outlawed, and the dispute over whether Sioux reservation land would be broken up because of the Dawes Act. (639)

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 27

Empire and Expansion, 1890-1909

 

Crucible of Empire

One     Two     Three     Four     Five

Chapter Summary

Several factors made previously isolated America turn its attention overseas in the 1890s. Changes behind the new imperialism / [im-peer-ee-uh-liz-uhm] included demand for new economic markets, the sensationalism of the yellow press, missionary fervor, Darwinist / [dahr-wuh-nist] ideology, great-power rivalry, and naval competition.

American intervention in the Venezuelan boundary dispute of 1895–1896 reflected an aggressive new assertion of the Monroe Doctrine, which forced Britain to accept American domination in the Western Hemisphere. White American planters culminated longtime American involvement in Hawaii/ [huh-wahy-ee] in 1893 by fomenting a revolution against native rule by. President Cleveland refused to annex the islands, but the annexation question triggered the United States’ first full-fledged imperialistic debate.

American outrage over Spanish oppression of Cuba triggered the Spanish-American War in 1898, exacerbated by the yellow press. Public passion over the Maine explosion in February 1898 pushed a reluctant President McKinley into war, even though Spain was ready to concede on the major issues.

Admiral Dewey’s naval victory in the Spanish Philippines /[fil-uh-peenz] in May 1898 set the stage for American troops, assisted by Filipino rebels, to captured Manila /[muh-nil-uh]. American forces overcame mass confusion to overwhelm the Spanish in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Proimperialists narrowly won a bitter national debate over American imperialism in the Senate, and the United States took the Philippines and Puerto Rico as colonial possessions. Despite serious doubts about imperialism, the United States asserted itself as a new international power.

America annexation of the Philippines aroused violent Filipino/ [fil-uh-pee-noh] resistance, as they had expected independence. The ensuing, brutal was longer and costlier than the Spanish-American conflict.

Imperialist competition deepened America’s role in China. Hay’s Open Door policy kept the great powers from carving up China, while U.S. and international forces suppressed the Boxer Rebellion.

Theodore Roosevelt brought new assertiveness to American foreign policy. When the Colombian Senate frustrated his plans to build a canal in Panama, he promoted a Panamanian independence movement which brought his plans to fruition. He also added the Roosevelt Corollary [kawr-uh-ler-ee] to the Monroe Doctrine, declaring an American right to intervene in South America.

Roosevelt angered both parties while negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, one of several incidents which demonstrated U.S.-Japanese competition in East Asia.

 

Learning Objectives

1. Explain why the United States suddenly abandoned its isolationism and turned outward at the end of the nineteenth century.

2. Describe the forces pushing for American overseas expansion and the causes of the Spanish-American War.

3. Describe and explain the unintended results of the Spanish-American War, especially the conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

4. Explain McKinley’s decision to keep the Philippines, and list the opposing arguments in the debate about imperialism.

5. Analyze the consequences of the Spanish-American War, including the Filipino rebellion against U.S. rule and the war to suppress it.

6. Explain the growing U.S. involvement in East Asia, and summarize America’s Open Door policy toward China.

7. Discuss the significance of the pro-imperialist Republican victory in 1900 and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt as a strong advocate of American power in international affairs.

8. Describe Roosevelt’s assertive policies in Panama and elsewhere in Latin America, and explain why his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine aroused such controversy.

9. Discuss Roosevelt’s foreign policies and diplomatic achievements, especially regarding Japan.

 

Key Terms and Names

 

Anti-Imperialist League (1898-1921)

A diverse group formed in order to protest American colonial oversight in the Philippines. It included university presidents, industrialists, clergymen, and labor leaders. Strongest in the Northeast, the Anti-imperialist League was the largest lobbying organization on a U.S. foreign-policy issue until the end of the nineteenth century. It declined in strength after the United States signed the Treaty of Paris (which approved the annexation of the Philippines), and especially after hostilities broke out between Filipino nationalists and American forces. (682)

 

 

Big Sister policy (1880s)

A foreign policy of Secretary of State James G. Blaine aimed at rallying Latin American nations behind American leadership and opening Latin American markets to Yankee traders. The policy bore fruit in 1889, when Blaine presided over the First International Conference of American States. (670)

 

 

Boxer Rebellion (1900)

An uprising in China directed against foreign influence. It was suppressed by an international force of some eighteen thousand soldiers, including several thousand Americans. The Boxer Rebellion paved the way for the revolution of 1911, which led to the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. (688)

 

 

Foraker Act (1900)

Sponsored by Senator Joseph B. Foraker, a Republican from Ohio, this accorded Puerto Ricans a limited degree of popular government. It was the first comprehensive congressional effort to provide for governance of territories acquired after the Spanish American War, and served as a model for a similar act adopted for the Philippines in 1902. (683)

 

 

Great Rapprochement

After decades of occasionally “twisting the lion’s tail,” American diplomats began to cultivate close, cordial relations with Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century—a relationship that would intensify further during World War I. (672)

 

 

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (1901)

A treated signed between the United States and Great Britain, giving Americans a free hand a free hand to build a canal in Central America. The treaty nullified the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1850, which prohibited the British or U.S. from acquiring territory in Central America. (691)

 

 

Insular Cases (1901-1904)

Beginning in 1901, a badly divided Supreme Court decreed in these cases that the Constitution did not follow the flag. In other words, Puerto Ricans and Filipinos would not necessarily enjoy all American rights. (683)

 

 

insurrectos

Cuban insurgents who sought freedom from colonial Spanish rule. Their destructive tactics threatened American economic interests in Cuban plantations and railroads. (673)

 

 

Maine (1898)

American battleship dispatched to keep a “friendly” watch over Cuba in early 1898. It mysteriously blew up in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, with a loss of 260 sailors. Later evidence confirmed that the explosion was accidental, resulting from combustion in one of the ship’s internal coal bunkers. But many Americans, eager for war, insisted that it was the fault of a Spanish submarine mine. (674)

 

 

McKinley Tariff (1890)

Shepherded through Congress by President William McKinley, this tariff raised duties on Hawaiian sugar and set off renewed efforts to secure the annexation of Hawaii to the United States. (672)

 

 

Open Door note (1899-1900)

A set of diplomatic letters in which Secretary of State John Hay urged the great powers to respect Chinese rights and free and open competition within their spheres of influence. The notes established the “Open Door Policy,” which sought to ensure access to the Chinese market for the United States, despite the fact that the U.S. did not have a formal sphere of influence in China. (688)

 

 

Platt Amendment (1901)

Following its military occupation, the United States successfully pressured the Cuban government to write this amendment into its constitution. It limited Cuba’s treaty-making abilities, controlled its debt, and stipulated that the United States could intervene militarily to restore order when it saw fit. (683)

 

 

Roosevelt Corollary (1904)

A brazen policy of “preventive intervention” advocated by Theodore Roosevelt in his Annual Message to Congress in 1904. Adding ballast to the Monroe Doctrine, his corollary stipulated that the United States would retain a right to intervene in the domestic affairs of Latin American nations in order to restore military and financial order. (693)

 

 

Root-Takahira agreement (1908)

Signed on November 30, 1908, the United States and Japan agreed to respect each other’s territorial possessions in the Pacific and to uphold the Open Door in China. The Agreement was credited with easing tensions between the two nations, but it also resulted in a weakened American influence over further Japanese hegemony in China. (696)

 

 

Rough Riders (1898)

Organized by Theodore Roosevelt, this was a colorful, motley regimen of Cuban war volunteers consisting of western cowboys, ex-convicts, and effete Ivy leaguers. Roosevelt emphasized his experience with the regiment in subsequent campaigns for Governor of New York and Vice-President under William McKinley. (677)

 

 

Teller Amendment (1898)

A proviso to President William McKinley’s war plans that proclaimed to the world that when the United States had overthrown Spanish misrule, it would give Cuba its freedom. The amendment testified to the ostensibly “anti-imperialist” designs of the initial war plans. (676)