Chapter 19 condensed notes
Introduction:
➔ US was a formidable empire by 1900
◆ Conquest of Hawaii expanded territory halfway across Pacific
◆ Colonization of Philippines and Puerto Rico as well as Guam, American Samoa,
and Virgin Islands increased US population by 7 million
◆ But still had small colonies compared to Britain, France, and Germany
➔ By 1913, US produced 65% of world’s petroleum, 56% of copper, 39% of coal, and 36%
iron ore
➔ “Open door” → free flow of trade, investment, information, and culture
◆ Key principle of American foreign relations
➔ Americans thought of US as emerging great power and worldwide embodiment of
freedom
➔ Liberal internationalism → Wilson’s foreign policy that rested on the conviction that
economic and political progress went hand in hand
◆ So increased American investment and trade abroad would mean greater
worldwide freedom
An Era of Intervention
➔ “I took the Canal Zone”
◆ Progressive presidents projected American power to other countries
◆ Roosevelt became more active in international diplomacy
● Negotiated settlement of Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (awarded
Nobel Peace Prize)
◆ Big Stick Diplomacy → “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
◆ Roosevelt wanted a canal to facilitate movement of naval and commercial
vessels between two oceans
● Colombia refused to cede land for the project, so Roosevelt helped a
Panama uprising and Panama got independence
● Panama signed treaty giving the US the right to construct and operate a
casual and sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone (10 mile wide strip
of land through which the canal would run)
○ Canal was the largest construction project in American history
● Canal reduced sea voyage from East and West Coast of US by 8,000
miles
➔ The Roosevelt Corollary
◆ Roosevelt Corollary → United States had right to exercise “an international
police power” in the Western Hemisphere
● Roosevelt ordered American forces to seize the customs houses of
Dominican Republic to ensure payment of debt to European and
American investors
● Dispatched troops to Cuba to oversee a disputed election
◆ Taft landed marines in Nicaragua to protect government friendly to American
economic interests
◆ Taft’s Dollar Diplomacy → best way to spread American influence was
economic investment and loans from American banks
➔ Moral Imperialism
◆ Wilson’s moral imperialism → US foreign policy should teach others about
democracy
● Sent marines to occupy Haiti after government refused to allow Americna
banks to oversee its financial dealings
● Seized control of Haitian finances, forced dissolution of national
assembly, rewrote Haitian Constitution
America and the Great War
➔ Introduction
◆ In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, resulting in a huge
war in Europe (WWI)
● Before this, European countries had been getting as many colonies as
they could, constructing alliances to seek military domination in Europe
● Britain, France, Russia, and Japan got into war with Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire
● New technologies like submarines, airplanes, machine guns, tanks, and
poison gas killed many people
➔ Neutrality and Preparedness
◆ War caused internal conflict in America too; British Americans sided with Britains,
and German Americans sided with Germany
◆ Wilson proclaimed American neutrality, but War still affected America
● Britain’s naval blockade of Gemany stopped American merchant vessels
● German submarine sank the Lusitania resulting in death of 1,198
passengers and 124 Americans
➔ The Road to War
◆ Germany announced suspension of submarine warfare against noncombatants
◆ Wilson wanted to go to war so that “the world must be made safe for democracy”
➔ The Fourteen Points
◆ Communist revolution headed by Vladimir Lenin overthrew Russian government
◆ The Fourteen Points → Wilson’s plan for peace after WWI, including
self-determination for all people, freedom of the seas, free trade, open diplomacy,
readjustment of colonial claims to give colonized people “equal weight” in
deciding their futures, creation of “general association of nations” to preserve
peace
● Led to League of Nations but failed
◆ American entry into the war helped defeat the Germans
◆ 10 million soldiers were killed total
The War at Home
➔ The Forgotten Pandemic
◆ A flu pandemic killed 20-40 million people, and wartime mobilization contributed
to the virus spread
● Passed a mandatory mask ordinance but Anti-Mask League opposed it as
a violation of personal liberty (CCOT: Covid-19)
➔ The Progressive’s War
◆ War offered possibility of reforming American society along scientific lines
◆ Progressives supported Wilson
➔ The Wartime State
◆ Selective Service Act of May 1917 → 24 million men were required to register
with the draft
◆ War Industries Board → presided over all elements of war production from
distribution of raw materials to price of manufactured goods
● Established standardized specifications for everything from automobile
tires to shoe colors
◆ Railroad Administration took control of nation’s transportation system
◆ Fuel Agency rationed coal and oil
◆ Food Administration instructed farmers on modern methods of cultivation
◆ War Labor Board pressed for establishment of minimum wage, 8 hour workday,
right to form unions
● During war, wages rose substantially, working conditions improved, union
membership doubled, taxes increased
➔ The Propaganda War
◆ Private agencies like the Union Leagues, the Loyal Publication Society, and
others mobilized prowar public opinion but Wilson also created the Committee
on Public Information
◆ “Democracy” and “Freedom” were key terms of wartime mobilization
◆ Propaganda also portrayed Germany as barbaric
➔ The Coming of Woman Suffrage
◆ In 1916 Wilson endorsed votes for women, but most advocates of the suffrage
movement were against war
◆ Women sold war bonds, organized patriotic rallies, worked in war production jobs
◆ National Woman’s Party → led by Alice Paul when the British suffrage
movement adopted a strategy that included arrests, imprisonments, and vigorous
denunciations of male-dominated political system
● Compared Wilson to the kaiser and striked against him
◆ But even though women got the right to vote some people were still against Black
people voting so they enforced poll taxes and other voting laws
➔ Prohibition
◆ Many women supported Prohibition because they thought it would prevent
alcoholic husbands and employers hoped it would create a more disciplined labor
force, urban reformers believed it would promote more orderly city environment
and undermine urban political machines
◆ Eighteenth Amendment → prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating
liquor
➔ Liberty in Wartime
◆ What is the balance between security and freedom?
◆ Does the Constitution protect citizens’ rights during wartime?
◆ Should dissent be equated with lack of patriotism?
➔ The Espionage and Sedition Acts
◆ Espionage Act of 1917 → prohibited not only spying and interfering with the
draft but also “false statements” that might impede military success
◆ The Sedition Act → made it a crime to make spoken or printed statements that
intended to cast “contempt, scorn, or disrepute” on the “form of government” or
that advocated interference with the war effort.
● Someone was jailed after saying that German soldiers killing innocent
women and children was no worse than what the US did in the Philippines
◆ Eugene V. Debs was convicted under Espionage Act for delivering an antiwar
speech
➔ Coercive Patriotism
◆ 33 states outlaws the possession or display of red or black flags (symbols of
communism and anarchism) and 23 outlawed “criminal syndicalism” which was
the advocacy of unlawful acts to accomplish political change
◆ Schools were required to teach patriotism and required teachers to sign loyalty
oaths
◆ American Protective League → helped Justice Department identify radicals and
critics of war by spying on their neighbors and carrying out “slacker raids”
◆ Some Progressives protested individual excesses
● Civil liberties were never major concern of Progressives
Who is an American?
➔ The “Race Problem” and the “Science” of Eugenics
◆ “Race problem” → tensions that arose from the country’s increasing ethnic
diversity
● People thoguht of immigrants as violent, undisciplined, and incapable of
assimilation
◆ Eugenics → studied alleged mental characteristics of different groups of people
● People tried to establish “purity of the gene pool” and warned of people
with “inferior blood”
● Indiana passed law authorizing doctors to sterilize the disabled people so
they wouldn’t pass those genes to children
◆ Buck v. Bell → Supreme Court allowed for those eugenics cases to happen
● Carrie Buck sued to prevent her sterilization because it violated her right
to equal protection of the laws but the court said “Society can prevent
those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind”
◆ Nazi Germany was inspired by this
◆ The Melting Pot → a play by a Jewish immigrant writer that promoted
newcomers to merge their identity into existing American nationality
➔ The Anti-German Crusade
◆ German-Americans were discriminated because of the war
● Changed popular German words and even outlawed German music
◆ IQ tests claimed that Black people and new immigrants had lower IQ than white
Protestants
➔ Fighting for Rights and Freedom
◆ Non-white immigrants, nationals of US overseas territory, and Black people could
never really achieve full American freedom
◆ Segregation was still common, not only for Black people but for Mexican, Asian
and First Nations as well
◆ Mexicans also were lynched
● Discrimination led to the La Gran Liga Mexicanista de Beneficencia y
Proteccion which aimed to improve conditions of Mexicans in the US
◆ Theodore Roosevelt repealed law that all Asians had to be in the same school
after the Japanese government protested but then he made an agreement with
them to end migration to the US
◆ California barred all aliens incapable of becoming naturalized citizens from
owning or leasing land
◆ “Asiatic barred zone” banned immgrants from much of Asia
● Nonetheless many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders served in the
military “to bring honor to the people of our race”
➔ Native Americans and World War I
◆ Many First Nations also served in the military
● Some saw it as an opportunity to win freedom and citizenship but many
viewed it as assault on their sovereignty
● First Nations were given dangerous tasks such as scouting
➔ The Color Line
◆ Black people excluded from nearly every Progressive definition of freedom and
couldn’t participate fully in emerging consumer economy
➔ Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race
◆ Roosevelt appointed many Black people to federal office, but when there as an
incident where a Black soldier killed someone (possibly by accident), Roosevelt
ordered dishonorable discharge of three Black companies
◆ The Birth of a Nation → glorified the Ku Klux Klan as defender of white
civilization during Reconstruction, premiered at the White House in 1915
➔ WEB Du Bois and the Revival of Black Protest
◆ WEB Du Bois tried to reconcile contradiction between “American freedom for
whites and the continuing subjection of [Black people]”
◆ Organized the Niagara Movement → sought to reinvigorate the abolitionist
tradition
◆ National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peopleb → advocated
for enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
● Bailey v. Alabama → Supreme Court overturned southern “peonage”
laws and made it crime for sharecroppers to break their labor contracts
➔ Military Service and the Promise of Freedom
◆ Wartime language of freedom inspired hopes for radical change in country’s
racial system
➔ The Great Migration
◆ Increased wartime production and drastic falloff of immigration opened many
industrial jobs to Black laborers, resulting in migration from South to North (half a
million)
● But they faced very restricted employment opportunities, exclusion from
unions, rigid housing segregation, violence
➔ Racial Violence, North and South
◆ Employers recruited Black workers to weaken unions
◆ The Tulsa Massacre → more than 300 Black people were killed and over 10,000
left homeless after a white mob
➔ The Rise of Garveyism
◆ Marcus Garvey was a recent immigrant from Jamaica
◆ Believed that freedom meant national self-determination
◆ Government wanted to deport him as an “undesirable alien” and was convicted of
mail fraud in 1922 and deported
1919
➔ A Worldwide Upsurge
◆ Lenin’s government had nationalized landholdings, banks, and factories and
proclaimed the socialist dream of worker’s government
◆ Strikes demanding fulfillment of wartime promises of “industrial democracy” took
place in Belfast, Glasgow, and Winnipeg
◆ Anarchist peasants began seizing land
◆ Indians challenged British rule
➔ Upheaval in America
◆ Racial violence was widespread
◆ More than 4 million workers engaged in strikes
◆ The 1919 Steel Strike → united 365,000 immigrant workers demanding for union
recognition, higher wages, and eight hour workday
➔ The Red Scare
◆ The Red Scare of 1919-1920 → short-lived but intense period of political
intolerance inspired by social tensions and fears generated by the Russian
Revolution; communist paranoia
● Some people were convinced that the steel strike was a communist
conspiracy
● Palmer Raids → Palmer dispatched federal agents to raid the offices of
radical and labor organizations throughout the country, arresting and
deporting many innocent people
◆ Socialist Party crumbled
➔ Wilson at Versailles
◆ Versailles Treaty → established the League of Nations, the body central to
Wilson’s Fourteen Points, also declared Germany morally responsible for the war
and set astronomical reparations payments (between $33 billion and $56 billion)
which crippled the German economy
➔ The Wilsonian Moment
◆ Wilson was seen as a “popular saint”
◆ During the war, British had encouraged Arab nationalism against Ottoman empire
and pledged to create homeland in Palestine for persecuted Jewish people
● Victors of WWI divided Ottoman territory into many new territories
➔ The Seeds of Wars to Come
◆ Some leaders turned to communism like Ho Chi Minh
◆ Many revolutions from colonies were inspired by American Revolution
◆ German resentment over the peace terms led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and World
War II
➔ The Treaty Debate
◆ Wilson had a stroke and Edith headed government for next seventeen months
◆ Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty
◆ American involvement in WWI laid the foundation for one of the most
conservative decades in nation’s history
