Deck 33: Historical Perspectives on American Politics and Society

Question 1

The Civil War brought significant changes to the South during the 1860s, and Reconstruction promised many more. What impact did these events have on the direction of the economic and political development of the nation as a whole between 1865 and the 1890s? Which groups in the United States were the war's real losers, and which were its victors?

Answer 1

Answer would ideally include:
Economic Results of Northern Victory: Republicans in the federal government, without the substantial opposition that would have been presented by southern Democrats, revolutionized the American economy by creating a national currency, a system of national banks, sweeping tax laws, a system of public universities, and wartime legislation aimed at developing the West. The Pacific Railroad Act of July 1862 provided federal funds for building a transcontinental railroad, which bolstered the railroad industry, the steel industry, the oil industry, and the telegraph industry. The banning of slavery in the West opened the territory to the development of other northern businesses as well, including mining, lumbering, ranching, and farming. The economy of the North boomed as a result of efforts to supply the troops and because of new efforts to integrate the West into the country. Essentially, the economic changes that stemmed from the Civil War led to the expansion of American business, the growth of the corporation, and the consolidation of northern industrial capitalism that would usher the country into the twentieth century.
Political Results of Northern Victory: In addition to paving the way for the power of northern industrial capitalism, the Civil War and Reconstruction brought substantial political change to the United States. Northerners' attachment to the Union created a stronger national spirit and attachment to national rather than regional identities. Because of the need to mobilize for war, the federal government grew substantially in size and power. In the first few years after the war, it established the Freedmen's Bureau to ease the transition of blacks from slavery to freedom; oversaw the ratification of the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution; and aimed to reduce aristocratic privilege, increase democratic equality, and expand the states' responsibility for general welfare. Nevertheless, the triumphant U.S. government ultimately failed to use its newly realized size and power to reintegrate the South in a way that protected the rights of the newly freed African Americans. In order to reduce strife and restore the Union, the federal government opted against redistributing land and resources to freed slaves and failed to disfranchise ex-Confederates, enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and protect black citizenship and voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments.
War's Winners: The North won the war and, in doing so, ensured the growth of American business and industry across the nation. Business owners and industrialists, who gained new opportunities for expansion and federal funds to support them, were the biggest victors. Although slavery came to an end, southern plantation owners were, for the most part, not defeated by the Civil War and Reconstruction. Most retained property and political rights and power, and also maintained a plantation workforce based on sharecropping.
War's Losers: Although the South officially lost the war, the biggest losers in the decades after it were African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans in the West, and small farmers in the South and West. Freed slaves faced violent opposition to efforts to improve their political, social, economic, and legal statuses. Failure to give them land or monetary compensation for their role in developing the nation's economy ensured their dependence on whites and their continuing poverty. In the West, violent conflict between whites and Native Americans devastated Indian populations and cultures. Expansion into the West also meant that Mexican Americans lost their land and economic autonomy. Small farmers throughout the nation also faced a decline in their economic and social status as urban and industrial development became increasingly dominant.

Question 2

One interpretation of American westward expansion in the nineteenth century posits that it "can best be understood in the global context of imperialism and colonialism." How did the rhetoric and practices of the federal government in conquering the American West shape its approach to its interactions with Cuba, China, and the Philippines between 1890 and 1900? To what extent did U.S. imperialism outside of continental North America mirror its actions in the West?

Answer 2

Answer would ideally include:
Federal Government's Approach to Western Conquest: The United States in the period 1860-1900 extended its authority and wealth by expanding its borders and culture into the West, conquering the Native Americans and Mexicans who already lived there and displacing and ruling over them. The U.S. government saw Native Americans in the West as an obstacle to westward expansion and a problem that needed a solution. Native Americans were viewed as inferior to whites and a group that needed to be civilized, Christianized, and assimilated in Indian schools and on reservations. The U.S. government also saw at least some Indians as hostiles who should be controlled and even attacked. Violent conflict between whites and Native Americans devastated Indian populations and cultures. Growth and expansion of industrialization-especially mining, railroads, and commercial farming-increased U.S. wealth, furthered urbanization, and improved quality of life for some whites.
The United States and China: U.S. Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door Policy marked the beginning of the United States' explicit competition with the colonial powers of Europe for trade in the Eastern Hemisphere. Whereas in the early nineteenth century the United States had remained relatively isolated from Asia and removed from European efforts to colonize it, the Open Door Policy marked the beginning of American efforts to expand and defend its presence in Asia and the Pacific. Rather than staying out of Asia and Europe's domination of the region, the Open Door Policy declared that the United States, like Europe, had every right to trade with China and that it would do so. Unlike American expansion into the West, however, the nation's new role in China did not include the displacement of Chinese people or the establishment of a far-flung colonial empire.
The United States and Cuba: In Cuba, the United States was interested in "liberating" the country from Spanish colonial rule, in large part because American businesses wanted to protect their economic interests and trading partnerships there. The Spanish American War in Cuba ended almost as soon as it began and brought the United States the possessions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Cuba became free from Spanish rule, but the United States, which saw Cubans themselves as inferior to white Americans, dictated the Cuban constitution, which included the Platt Amendment. The amendment guaranteed the United States the right to intervene to protect Cuba's "independence," power to oversee Cuban debt, and a ninety-nine-year lease on the naval base at Guantanamo. The United States also implemented an extensive sanitation program to clean up the island to make it more attractive to investors. As in the West, racism, missionary zeal, and economic interest motivated U.S. involvement in Cuba. Unlike the West, Americans did not decimate the Cuban population, nor did they establish large American settlements there.
The United States and the Philippines: As in Cuba, the United States gained possession of the Philippines after it defeated Spanish colonial rulers on the islands. Emilio Aguinaldo's Filipino revolutionaries, who had fought along with U.S. troops against Spain, turned against Americans when it became clear that they planned to take control of the islands and use them as a stepping-stone to Asia. Fighting continued in the Philippines for seven more years, resulting in the deaths of 4,000 Americans and 20,000 Filipinos. Again, racism, economic interests, and missionary zeal played a substantial role in motivating American actions in the Philippines. There was violent conflict and American cultural infiltration, as was the case in the West, but no actual American settlement.

Question 3

President Harry Truman's Fair Deal, an ambitious program of social welfare legislation proposed in 1946 to extend the New Deal, floundered badly in the late 1940s, and most of it went down to defeat. Why did Truman's plan fail, and what changed to make it possible for Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs-which adopted many of the same aims-to alter American society twenty years later?

Answer 3

Answer would ideally include:
Fair Deal: Truman's domestic agenda proposed bold and forward-looking initiatives in employment (Employment Act of 1946), civil rights (Committee on Civil Rights), housing (Housing Act of 1949), education (G.I. Bill), and health care. The Fair Deal failed in large part because of the Republican party's gains in the election of 1946, when Republicans captured control of Congress for the first time since 1932. The Republican Eightieth Congress weakened reform programs, enacted tax cuts favoring higher-income groups, and passed the Taft-Hartley Act. Even after Truman's surprising reelection in 1948, he could not gain adequate support for his Fair Deal proposals, especially after southern Democrats joined Republicans to reject civil rights measures, proposals for a federal health care program, and aid to education.
Great Society: President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs took up many of the same causes as Truman's Fair Deal, including racial and gender discrimination, poverty, education, medical care, housing, and consumer and environmental protection. Although twenty years had passed since the defeat of most of the Fair Deal programs, Johnson succeeded in enacting legislation such as the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Higher Education Act, the Medicaid and Medicare programs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These programs were approved because the social and political landscape had changed in the years between the Truman and Johnson administrations. A large and visible civil rights movement had brought the issues of racism and segregation to the fore and built support for civil rights legislation. Johnson had the support of large Democratic majorities in Congress and the political capital drawn from his landslide 1964 victory against Barry Goldwater. Johnson also had a wealth of political experience and was able to use the country's grief over the Kennedy assassination to further some of the causes that Kennedy had championed, which brought him support from some conservatives who might not have joined him otherwise. The booming economy of the 1960s probably also made it easier for some political leaders to support Johnson's legislation.

Question 4

American workers struggled between the 1870s and the 1930s to improve their wages and working conditions, increase their control over the work process, and reduce their working hours. By the late 1930s, many American workers saw significant improvements in their work lives and standards of living. How did these changes come about? How did workers' actions and government mandates interact to bring about improvements in the status of working Americans?

Question 5

How did the experience of World War I influence the American response to the outbreak of World War II and shape the country's decision to get involved? Be sure to distinguish between the federal government's response and public opinion in your answer.

Question 6

Compare and contrast the goals and achievements of the Populists, progressives, and Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealers, making sure to consider each group's efforts on behalf of those who experienced discrimination. Which issues raised by Populists in the 1890s persisted into the 1930s and which did not, and why? How did ideas that seemed so radical when Populists proposed them in the 1890s become the basis for federal policies by the 1930s? Explain your answer.

Question 7

How did Richard M. Nixon's political approach to the 1968 election and his conduct during his one-and-a-half terms as president influence the U.S. presidency between 1968 and the present?

Question 8

How did the experience of World War II-on the home front and abroad-lay crucial groundwork for the civil rights movement and African Americans' greater access to "the American promise" in the 1950s and 1960s?

Question 9

The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 and the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 represented two major victories for women activists who had worked since the mid-nineteenth century for temperance and suffrage. Why did women work for these changes, and what did they hope they would accomplish? What did women's activism and political power look like in the 1920s and 1930s, and what does it reveal about the extent to which these constitutional amendments brought about real change in women's political status?

Question 10

Before 2001, the history of American international relations from 1945 to the end of the twentieth century was framed primarily in terms of the Cold War. The events of September 11, 2001, require us to look at post-1945 American foreign relations in a new way. How does U.S. foreign policy since World War II help to explain the creation of a world in which the September 11 attacks could happen?