American Nation A History of the United States Since 1865 Primary Source Edition Book

Additional Primary Source Documents can be found at the end of this Table of Contents.

Detailed Contents.

Maps and Graphics.

 

Features.

American Lives.  

Re-Viewing the Past.

Mapping the Past.  

Debating the Past.

Preface.

 

About the Authors.

 

Prologue: Beginnings.

16. Reconstruction and the South.

Presidential Reconstruction.

Republican Radicals.

Congress Rejects Johnsonian Reconstruction.

The Fourteenth Amendment.

The Reconstruction Acts.

Congress Supreme.

The Fifteenth Amendment.

“Black Republican” Reconstruction: Scalawags and Carpetbaggers.

The Ravaged Land.

Sharecropping and the Crop-Lien System.

The White Backlash.

Grant as President.

The Disputed Election of 1876.

The Compromise of 1877.

Mapping the Past.

The Politics of Reconstruction.

Debating The Past.

Were Reconstruction governments corrupt?

17. In the Wake of War.

Congress Ascendant.

The Political Aftermath of War.

Blacks After Reconstruction.

Booker T. Washington: A “Reasonable” Champion for Blacks.

White Violence and Vengeance.

The West After the Civil War.

The Plains Indians.

Indian Wars.

The Destruction of Tribal Life.

The Lure of Gold and Silver in the West.

Big Business and the Land Bonanza.

Western Railroad Building.

The Cattle Kingdom.

Open-Range Ranching.

Barbed-Wire Warfare.

American Lives.

Nat Love.

Debating The Past.

Was the frontier exceptionally violent?

18. An Industrial Giant.

Essentials of Industrial Growth.

Railroads: The First Big Business.

Iron, Oil, andElectricity.

Competition and Monopoly: The Railroads.

Competition and Monopoly: Steel.

Competition and Monopoly: Oil.

Competition and Monopoly: Retailing and Utilities.

American Ambivalence to Big Business.

Reformers: George, Bellamy, Lloyd.

Reformers: The Marxists.

The Government Reacts to Big Business: Railroad Regulation.

The Government Reacts to Big Business: The Sherman Antitrust Act.

The Labor Union Movement.

The American Federation of Labor.

Labor Militancy Rebuffed.

Whither America, Whither Democracy?

Mapping the Past.

Were the Railroads Indispensable to Economic Growth?

Debating the Past.

Were the industrialists “robber barons” or savvy entrepreneurs?

19. American Society in the Industrial Age.

Middle-Class Life.

Skilled and Unskilled Workers.

Working Women.

Farmers.

Working-Class Family Life.

Working-Class Attitudes.

Working Your Way Up.

The “New” Immigration.

New Immigrants Face New Nativism.

The Expanding City and Its Problems.

Teeming Tenements.

The Cities Modernize.

Leisure Activities: More Fun and Games.

Christianity’s Conscience and the Social Gospel.

The Settlement Houses.

Civilization and Its Discontents.

Mapping The Past.

Cholera: A New Disease Strikes the Nation.

Debating The Past.

Did immigrants assimilate?

20. Intellectual and Cultural Trends.

The Knowledge Revolution.

Magazine Journalism.

Colleges and Universities.

Revolution in the Social Sciences.

Progressive Education.

Law and History.

Realism in Literature.

Mark Twain.

William Dean Howells.

Henry James.

Realism in Art.

The Pragmatic Approach.

Re-Viewing the Past.

Titanic.

Debating The Past.

Did the frontier engender individualism and democracy?

21. Politics: Local, State, and National.

Political Strategy and Tactics.

Voting Along Ethnic and Religious Lines.

City Bosses.

Party Politics: Sidestepping the Issue.

Lackluster Leaders.

Crops and Complaints.

The Populist Movement.

Showdown on Silver.

The Depression of 1893.

The Election of 1896.

The Meaning of the Election.

Mapping the Past.

The Election of 1896.

Debating The Past.

Were city governments corrupt and incompetent?

22. The Age of Reform.

Roots of Progressivism.

The Muckrakers.

The Progressive Mind.

“Radical” Progressives: The Wave of the Future.

Political Reform: Cities First.

Political Reform: The States.

State Social Legislation.

Political Reform: The Woman Suffrage Movement.

Political Reform: Income Taxes and Popular Election of Senators.

Theodore Roosevelt: Cowboy in the White House.

Roosevelt and Big Business.

Roosevelt and the Coal Strike.

TR’s Triumphs.

Roosevelt Tilts Left.

William Howard Taft: The Listless Progressive, or More Is Less.

Breakup of the Republican Party.

The Election of 1912.

Wilson: The New Freedom.

The Progressives and Minority Rights.

Black Militancy.

American Lives.

Emma Goldman.

Debating The Past.

Were the Progressives forward-looking?

23. From Isolation to Empire.

Isolation or Imperialism?

Origins of the Large Policy: Coveting Colonies.

Toward an Empire in the Pacific.

Toward an Empire in Latin America.

The Cuban Revolution.

The “Splendid Little” Spanish-American War.

Developing a Colonial Policy.

The Anti-Imperialists.

The Philippine Insurrection.

Cuba and the United States.

The United States in the Caribbean and Central America.

The Open Door Policy.

The Panama Canal.

Imperialism Without Colonies.

American Lives.

Frederick Funston.

Debating The Past.

Did the United States acquire an overseas empire for economic reasons?

24. Woodrow Wilson and the Great War.

Wilson’s “Moral” Diplomacy.

Europe Explodes in War.

Freedom of the Seas.

The Election of 1916.

The Road to War.

Mobilizing the Economy.

Workers in Wartime.

Paying for the War.

Propaganda and Civil Liberties.

Wartime Reforms.

Women and Blacks in Wartime.

Americans: To the Trenches and Over the Top.

Preparing for Peace.

The Paris Peace Conference and the Versailles Treaty.

The Senate Rejects the League of Nations.

Demobilization.

The Red Scare.

The Election of 1920.

American Lives.

Harry S. Truman.

Debating The Past.

Did a stroke sway Wilson's judgment?

25. Postwar Society and Culture: Change and Adjustment.

Closing the Gates to New Immigrants.

New Urban Social Patterns.

The Younger Generation.

The “New” Woman.

Popular Culture: Movies and Radio.

The Golden Age of Sports.

Urban-Rural Conflicts: Fundamentalism.

Urban-Rural Conflicts: Prohibition.

The Ku Klux Klan.

Sacco and Vanzetti.

Literary Trends.

The “New Negro.”

Economic Expansion.

The Age of the Consumer.

Henry Ford.

The Airplane.

Re-Viewing The Past.

Chicago.

Debating The Past.

Was the decade of the 1920s one of self-absorption?

26. The New Era: 1921–1933.

Harding and “Normalcy.”

“The Business of the United States Is Business.”

The Harding Scandals.

Coolidge Prosperity.

Peace Without a Sword.

The Peace Movement.

The Good Neighbor Policy.

The Totalitarian Challenge.

War Debts and Reparations.

The Election of 1928.

Economic Problems.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Hoover and the Depression.

The Economy Hits Bottom.

The Depression and Its Victims.

The Election of 1932.

Mapping the Past.

FDR’s Political Revolution.

Debating The Past.

What caused the Great Depression?

27. The New Deal: 1933–1941.

The Hundred Days.

The National Recovery Administration (NRA).

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA).

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The New Deal Spirit.

The Unemployed.

Literature in the Depression.

Three Extremists: Long, Coughlin, and Townsend.

The Second New Deal.

The Election of 1936.

Roosevelt Tries to Undermine the Supreme Court.

The New Deal Winds Down.

Significance of the New Deal.

Women as New Dealers: The Network.

Blacks During the New Deal.

A New Deal for Indians.

The Role of Roosevelt.

The Triumph of Isolationism.

War Again in Europe.

A Third Term for FDR.

The Undeclared War.

Mapping the Past.

Isolationism of the 1930s.

Debating The Past.

Did the New Deal succeed?

28. War and Peace.

The Road to Pearl Harbor.

Mobilizing the Home Front.

The War Economy.

War and Social Change.

Minorities in Time of War: Blacks, Hispanics, and Indians.

The Treatment of German and Italian Americans.

Internment of the Japanese.

Women’s Contribution to the War Effort.

Allied Strategy: Europe First.

Germany Overwhelmed.

The Naval War in the Pacific.

Island Hopping.

Building the Atom Bomb.

Wartime Diplomacy.

Allied Suspicion of Stalin.

Yalta and Potsdam.

Re-Viewing the Past.

Saving Private Ryan.

Debating The Past.

Should the United States have used atomic bombs against Japan?

29. The American Century.

The Postwar Economy.

The Containment Policy.

The Atom Bomb: A “Winning” Weapon?

A Turning Point in Greece.

The Marshall Plan and the Lesson of History.

Dealing with Japan and China.

The Election of 1948.

Containing Communism Abroad.

Hot War in Korea.

The Communist Issue at Home.

McCarthyism.

Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Eisenhower-Dulles Foreign Policy.

McCarthy Self-Destructs.

Asian Policy After Korea.

Israel and the Middle East

Eisenhower and Khrushchev.

Latin America Aroused.

The Politics of Civil Rights.

The Election of 1960.

Mapping the Past.

Planning Nuclear War.

Debating The Past.

Did Truman needlessly exacerbate relations with the Soviet Union?

30. From Camelot to Watergate.

The Cuban Crises.

The Vietnam War.

“We Shall Overcome”: The Civil Rights Movement.

Tragedy in Dallas: JFK Assassinated.

Lyndon Baines Johnson. 

The Great Society.

Johnson Escalates the War. 

Opposition to the War.

The Election of 1968.

Nixon as President: “Vietnamizing” the War.

The Cambodian “Incursion.”

Détente with Communism.

Nixon in Triumph.

Domestic Policy Under Nixon.

The Watergate Break-in.

More Troubles for Nixon.

The Judgment on Watergate: “Expletive Deleted.” 

The Meaning of Watergate.

Mapping The Past.

School Segregation After the Brown Decision.

Debating The Past.

Would JFK have sent a half-million American troops to Vietnam?

31. Society in Flux.

A Society on the Move.

The Advent of Television.

At Home and Work.

The Growing Middle Class.

Religion in Changing Times.

Literature and Art.

The Perils of Progress.

The Costs of Prosperity.

New Racial Turmoil.

Native-Born Ethnics.

Rethinking Public Education.

Students in Revolt.

The Counterculture.

The Sexual Revolution.

Women’s Liberation.

Mapping the Past.

Roe v. Wade and the Abortion Controversy.

Debating The Past.

Did mass culture make life shallow?

32. Running on Empty: The Nation Transformed.

The Oil Crisis.

Ford as President.

The Fall of South Vietnam.

Ford Versus Carter.

The Carter Presidency.

A National Malaise.

Stagflation: The Weird Economy.

Families Under Stress.

Cold War or Détente?

The Iran Crisis: Origins.

The Iran Crisis: Carter’s Dilemma.

The Election of 1980.

Reagan as President.

Four More Years.

“The Reagan Revolution.”

Change and Uncertainty.

AIDS.

The New Merger Movement.

“A Job for Life”: Layoffs Hit Home.

A “Bipolar” Economy, a Fractured Society.

The Iran-Contra Arms Deal.

American Lives.

Bill Gates.

Debating The Past.

Did Reagan end the Cold War?

33. Misdemeanors and High Crimes.

The Election of 1988.

Crime and Punishment.

“Crack” and Urban Gangs.

George H. W. Bush as President.

The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.

The War in the Persian Gulf.

The Deficit Worsens.

Looting the Savings and Loans.

Whitewater and the Clintons.

The Election of 1992.

A New Start: Clinton.

Emergence of the Republican Majority.

The Election of 1996.

A Racial Divide.

Violence and Popular Culture.

Clinton Impeached.

Clinton’s Legacy.

The Economic Boom and the Internet.

The 2000 Election: George W. Bush Wins by One Vote.

Terrorism Intensifies.

September 11, 2001.[U1] 

America Fights Back: War in Afghanistan.

The Second War in Iraq.

The Election of 2004.

The Imponderable Future.

Mapping The Past.

Twenty Years of Terrorism.

Debating The Past.

Do historians ever get it right?

Appendix.

The Declaration of Independence.

The Articles of Confederation.

The Constitution of the United States of America.

Amendments to the Constitution.

Presidential Elections, 1789–2004.

Picture Credits.

 

Index.

 

“How to Analyze Primary Source Documents”

 

Primary Source Documents

Document 16.1  Carl Schurz, Report on the Condition of the South (1865)

Document 17.1  Accounts of the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890s)

Document 18.1  Samuel Gompers, The American Labor Movement: Its Makeup, Achievements and Aspirations (1914)

Document 19.1  Richard K. Fox, from Coney Island Frolics (1883)

Document 19.2  Adna Weber, “The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century” (1899)

Document 20.1  Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “If I Were a Man” (1914)

Document 21.1  Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883)

Document 21.1  Mary Elizabeth Lease, from Populist Crusader (1892)

Document 22.1  Mother Jones, “The March of the Mill Children” (1903)

Document 23.1  Ernest Howard Crosby, “The Real ‘White Man’s Burden’” (1899)

Document 23.1  William McKinley, “Decision on the Philippines” (1900)

Document 24.1  Eugene Kennedy, “A ‘Doughboy” Describes the Fighting Front” (1918)

Document 24.1  Henry Cabot Lodge’s Objections to Article 10 of the Treaty of Versailles (1919)

Document 25.1  John F. Carter, “’These Wild Young People’ by One of Them” (1920)

Document 26.1  Edward Earle Purinton, from “Big Ideas from Big Business” (1921)

Document 27.1  Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (1932)

Document 28.1  Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The Four Freedoms” (1941)

Document 28.2  Albert Einstein, Letter to President Roosevelt (1939)

Document 29.1  Ronald Reagan, Testimony Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947)

Document 29.2  Executive Order 9981 (1948)

Document 30.1  The Southern Manifesto (1956)

Document 30.2  John Lewis, Address at the March on Washington (1963)

Document 31.1  National Defense Education Act (1958)

Document 31.2  Shirley Chisholm, “Equal Rights for Women” (May 21, 1969)

Document 32.1  President Ronald Reagan, Address to the National Association of Evangelicals (1983)

Document 33.1  George W. Bush, Address to Congress (September 20, 2001)

Maps.

The Compromise of 1877.

Indian Wars, 1860–1890.

Loss of Indian Lands, 1850–2000.

The West: Cattle, Railroads, and Mining, 1850–1893.

The Forging of U.S. Steel.

Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century New York.

The Advance Women's Suffrage.

The Advance of Prohibition.

Election of 1912.

The Course of Empire, 1867–1901.

Spanish-American War, Caribbean Theater.

Spanish Debacle at Santiago, July 3, 1898.

The United States in the Caribbean and Central America.

The U.S. Panama Canal.

The Western Front.

Europe Before World War I.

Europe After World War I.

The Making of Black Harlem: 1911, 1925, and 1930.

The Tennessee Valley Authority.

Japanese Relocation from the West Coast, 1942–1945.

The Liberation of Europe.

Nazi Concentration Camps.

World War II, Pacific Theater.

European Recipients of Marshall Plan, 1948–1952.

Air Relief to Berlin.

U.S. Defensive Perimeter in the Pacific, January 1950.

North Korean Offensive, June–August 1950.

Southeast Asia, 1954–1975.

Failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, 1972–1982.

The Middle East.

Success of Republican "Southern Strategy."

The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.

The Middle East.

Additional maps, listed by topic, appear in the “Mapping the Past” features, listed on page xxx.

Maps for every presidential election from 1789 to 2004 appear in the Appendix, pages A00–A00.

Graphs.

Southern Agriculture, 1850–1900.

Immigration, 1860–1910.

U-Boat Campaign, 1914–1918.

Casualties of the Great War.

Unemployment and Federal Action, 1929–1941.

High School and College Graduates, 1870–1983.

Features.

American Lives.

Nat Love.

Emma Goldman.

Frederick Funston.

Harry S. Truman.

Bill Gates.

Re-Viewing the Past.

Titanic.

Chicago.

Saving Private Ryan.

Mapping the Past.

Were the Railroads Indispensable to Economic Growth?

Cholera: A New Disease Strikes the Nation.

The Election of 1896.

FDR’s Political Revolution.

Isolationism of the 1930s.

Planning Nuclear War.

School Segregation After the Brown Decision.

Roe v. Wade and the Abortion Controversy.

Twenty Years of Terrorism.

Debating the Past.

Were Reconstruction governments corrupt?

Was the frontier exceptionally violent?

Were the industrialists “robber barons” or savvy entrepreneurs?

Did immigrants assimilate?

Did the frontier engender individualism and democracy?

Were city governments corrupt and incompetent?

Were the Progressives forward-looking?

Did the United States acquire an overseas empire for moral or economic reasons?

Did a stroke sway Wilson's judgement?

Was the decade of the 1920s one of self-absorption?

What caused the Great Depression?

Did the New Deal succeed?

Should the United States have used atomic bombs against Japan?

Did Truman needlessly exacerbate relations with the Soviet Union?

Would JFK have sent a half-million American troops to Vietnam?

Did mass culture make life shallow?

Did Reagan end the Cold War?

Do historians ever get it right?