Charters of Freedom
Declaration of Independence - Thomas Jefferson, Bill of Rights - James Madison, the Constitution - James Madison, Alexander Hamilton
(stored in National Archives Museum)
Woodrow Wilson’s plan of peace
Fourteen Points 1918
- want to shape an effective peace settlement
- domination of postwar peace conference
- change from isolation to engagement of the USA
Erie canal
- canal era 1825 - 1860
- reduction od transport costs
- 2/3 financed by the government and 1/3
financed via bonds bought by European banks - The completion of the Erie Canal spurred the first great westward movement of American settlers, gave access to the rich land and resources west of the Appalachians and made New York the preeminent commercial city in the United States
American Identity
- based on: flag, patriotism, passion for freedom, Charters of Freedom (Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Constitution)
- The Pledge of Allegiance - Francis Bellamy
Sharecropping
- a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop
-> paying a fixed ration of the crop to landowners
Crash crops
- plants which are primarily grown in order to generate an income
- cotton
- tobacco
- sugar
-potatoes - general decline in south agricultural economics
Antebellum Period
- the time between the formation of the U.S. government and the outbreak of the American Civil War -> pre Civil War
- huge polarization between abolitionists and pro-slavery, focus on individualism, industrial revolution period north, south doubled down on plantations
Antebellum South: characterized by slavery, largely plantation based; as the country expanded westward, propagation of slavery became an issue and eventually boiled over to Civil War
1840-1850s transport development
- rapid development
- horseback, road network -> canals (Erie canal) -> river transport, steam vessels -> railroads across the whole country, transcontinental railroad
Most important transport before the Civil War
railroads, more intense in the North
The Great Migration
- Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration
- movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970
- pursuit of living
Main message of Gettysburg Address
- Abraham Lincoln’s 2-minute speech
- referred to the DoI, description of happenings, synonymous words for holy used by different means, deflecting criticism, ultimate form of devotion, sacrifice
- ideals are worth dying for and it is up to the living to carry on the work of those who have died to protect the ideals
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir
- meetings led Roosevelt to expand federal protection of Yosemite
- inspired him to sign into existence five national parks, 18 national monuments, 55 national bird sanctuaries and wildlife refuges, and 150 national forests.
Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller
- 1st American public intellectual: Emerson “Nature”
- replacement of defunct Christian myth with the myth of nature
- religion taken to the open air, naturalized and democratized it
- idealism, belief in future, belief in human perfectibility, possibility of reforming society
- similarities to Romanticism
Sod
- upper layer of turf
- used to build sod houses
- common alternative to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the Great Plains of Canada and the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s
The Great Depression causes
- lack of diversification of the economy
- heavy speculative investment in the stock market
- unequal distribution of purchasing power
- credit structure (mortgages, buying on credit, consumer debt, borrowing on margin to purchase stocks), illusion of profit via the market
- international trade
- international debt structure (war-debt policies, diminished markets for US goods)
- some branches of the economy already in crisis: farming, coal mining, car industry
Black Friday
- stock exchange crash, laymen trying to get rich through stock exchange, overdone it, irresponsible spending
Trail of Tears
President Andrew Jackson
- forced displacement of Natives, bypassed congress
- travel to Indian territory
Fireside Chats
- radio broadcast by Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- about recovery from the Great Depression
Common Sense
- 1776
- a book/pamphlet by Thomas Paine
- advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies
Harpers Ferry Attack
- John Brown, abolitionist
- led to Civil War
- raid at the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry 1859, slave revolt
Segregation and disenfranchisement
- immediately after Recon ended (in the 1890s completely)
- Poll tax and property qualification
- Literacy and understanding test
- Jim Crow laws
main products of agriculture in South Carolina
rice, tobacco, indigo
Black Friday
- stock exchange crash, laymen trying to get rich through stock exchange, overdone it, irresponsible spending
The Bonus March
- Hoovervilles and the Bonus Army
Bonus: Congress promised a special reward to WWI veterans, payable in 1945 -> demanded in 1932 - passed, then voted against by the Senate
demonstrations, general McArthur - defiance of orders, arson and brutality
-> war veterans requiring immediate payment instead of certificates redeemable in 1945
Prohibition
- 18th amendment adopted, the Volstead Act (1920) implemented it
- upper classes flaunted the law
- a boost to organised crime, underground distribution of alcohol
- 21st amendment overruled it
