Chapter 17 condensed notes
Introduction
➔ Companies began creating policies where only workers who don’t join the union can
work at the company
◆ Homestead steelworks strike → Amalgamated Association had violent protest
and were disbanded
➔ In 1890s, there was imposition of new racial system in the South that kept African
Americans in second-class citizenship, denying them many of the freedoms of white
people
The Populist Challenge
➔ The Farmers’ Revolt
◆ The sharecropping system kept millions of tenant farmers in poverty
◆ Farmers’ Alliance → largest citizen’s movement in the 1800s where farmers
sought to remedy their poor economic conditions
● Proposed the subtreasury plan → that federal government establish
warehouses for farmers to store their crops until they were sold and issue
loans to farmers at low interest rates
● This would end farmers’ dependence on bankers and merchants
➔ The People’s Party
◆ Populists → party that attempted to speak for all “producing classes”
● Last great political expression of the nineteenth century vision as a
commonwealth of small producers whose freedom rested on the
ownership of productive property
● Embraced modern technologies that made large scale cooperative
enterprise possible
➔ The Populist Platform
◆ The Populist platform of 1892 → classic document of American reform and
spoke of a nation “brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin” by
political corruption and economic inequality
● Proposed long list of proposals to restore democracy and economic
opportunity:
○ Direct election of US senators
○ Government control of currency
○ Graduated income tax
○ System of low cost public financing to allow farmers to market
their crops
○ Recognition fo the right of workers to form labor unions
○ Public ownership of railroads to guarantee farmers inexpensive
access to markets
➔ The Populist Coalition
◆ Populists tried to unite Black and white small farmers
● White people were still racist, but were willing to unite with Black people
to break the Democrats’ hold on Southern power
○ Democrats tried to prevent their union by warning white people
about “Black supremacy”
○ CCOT: Chinese Exclusion Act where Chinese and Irish were both
being discriminated but didn’t work together
◆ Populists also had a lot of women from farm and labor backgrounds
◆ Populist governor of Kansas, Lorenzo Lewelling, said “I have a dream a time is
foreshadowed when liberty, equality, and justice shall have permanent abiding
places in the republic”
● CCOT to Martin Luther King Jr.
➔ The Government and Labor
◆ Coxey’s Army → band of several hundred unemployed men who marched to
Washington demanding economic relief
● Federal government deployed soldiers to disperse them
◆ Pullman Strike → Workers in Pullman striked to protest reduction in wages, and
American Railway Union refused to handle trains with Pullman cars. Boycott
crippled national rail service, so President Cleveland ordered strikers back to
work
➔ The Rise of the AFL
◆ American Federation of Labor → federation of unions comprised of mostly
skilled white native born male workers
● Business Unionism → Unions didn’t seek economic independence and
did not pursue the utopian dream of creating a “cooperative
commonwealth” or form independent parties to achieve power in the
government; instead, they wanted to negotiate with employers for higher
wages and better working conditions for their workers
◆ Labor movement became less inclusive; restricted membership to skilled white
male native-born workers
◆ AFL focused on small competitive businesses and had little presence in basic
industries like steel and rubber or in large scale factories
➔ Populism and Labor
◆ Millions of voters abandoned Democratic Party of President Cleveland as
economic depression deepened
◆ Rural people liked Populist votes but urban workers liked Republicans because
they raised tariff rates that would protect manufacturers and industrial workers
from competition of imported goods and cheap foreign labor
➔ Bryan and Free Silver
◆ In 1896, Democrats and Populists joined to support William Jennings Bryan
● “Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up
again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and grass will grow in the
streets of every city in the country”
● Called for “free coinage” of silver → unrestricted minting of silver money
● Condemned the gold standard: “You shall not crucify mankind upon a
cross of gold”
◆ Farmers liked Bryan because printing more money would raise prices and
farmers would pay off debts easier
◆ Bryan was influenced by Social Gospel movement
➔ The Campaign of 1896
◆ Republicans insisted that gold was the only “honest” currency and that
abandoning the gold standard would destroy business confidence and prevent
recovery from depression
● Because creditors wouldn’t be certain of the value of money
◆ Republicans were terrified by Bryans’ claims and campaign, so spent a lot of
money ($10 million) on their campaign
● Industrial America now voted solidly Republican
◆ Republicans passed the Dingly Tariff of 1897 → highest level of tariff rates in
history
The Segregated South
➔ The Redeemers in Power
◆ Redeemers → coalition of merchants, planters, and business entrepreneurs who
dominated Southern politics after 1877
● Tried to undo a lot of Reconstruction
◆ New laws authorized arrest of anyone without employment and increased
penalties for petty crimes
◆ Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery but allowed “involuntary servitude” to
continue for those convicted of crime
◆ Government placed a portion of its convicted criminals in the hands of private
businessmen
● Railroads, mines, and lumber companies took advantage of this cheap
labor
➔ The Failure of the New South Dream
◆ New South → era of prosperity based on industrial expansion and agricultural
diversification
● While planters, merchants, and industrialists prospered, the region as a
whole became poorer
● Cotton factories offered jobs to entire families of poor whites, but convict
labor was more convenient
● Birmingham, Alabama, became important center for manufacture of iron
and steel
● Other Southern cities were mainly export centers for cotton, tobacco, and
rice with little industry or skilled labor; dependent on the North for capital
and manufactured goods
● Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the South as the nation’s “number one
economic problem”
➔ Black Life in the South
◆ Black farmers suffered the most: Upper South offered some opportunities in
mines, iron furnaces, and tobacco factories, and former plantations gave Black
people some land
◆ Institutions created after the Civil War served as foundation for increasingly
diverse Black urban communities and supported the growth of the Black middle
class
◆ Labor market was rigidly divided along racial lines
● Black people were excluded from supervisory positions in factories and
workshops and white-collar jobs
➔ The Kansas Exodus
◆ Kansas Exodus → migration of 40,000 - 60,000 Black people to Kansas to
escape the oppressive government of the New South
● Most migrants ended up as unskilled laborers in towns and cities
➔ The Transformation of Black Politics
◆ Political opportunities for Black people became more and more restricted
◆ It was only until the 1990s when number of Black legislators in the South
approached the level seen during Reconstruction
◆ But this decrease in Black male opportunity caused Black women to rise to
political leadership
● National Association of Colored Women → brought together local and
regional women’s clubs to press for both women’s rights and racial uplift
○ Aided poor families
○ Offered lessons in home life and childrearing
○ Battled gambling and drinking in Black communities
○ Challenged racial idology and consigned all Black people to the
status of degraded second class citizens
➔ The Emergence of Booker T. Washington
◆ The Atlanta Compromise → Booker T. Washington’s widely praised speech
about Black people abandoning agitation for civil and political rights and instead
obtain farms or skilled jobs
◆ Booker T. Washington urged Black people not to try to combat segregation: “In all
the things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as
the hand in all things essential to mutual progress”
● Advised his people to seek assistance of white employers who would
prefer a docile, dependable Black labor force to unionized white people
➔ The Elimination of Black Voting
◆ Disenfranchisement → depriving someone their right to vote
◆ Black southerners continued to cast ballots in large numbers; Republicans
formed biracial political coalitions to challenge Democratic rule
● Democrats got scared so between 1890 and 1908, every Southern state
enacted laws or constitutional provisions meant to eliminate Black vote
○ Poll tax
○ Literacy tests
○ Requirement that a prospective voter demonstrate to election
officials an “understanding” of the state constitution
○ Grandfather clause → exempted people who were descendants
of eligible to vote people before the Civil War (which was only
white people of course)
◆ Supreme Court invalidated it for violating Fifteenth
Amendment
● These laws also caused many white people to lose suffrage, causing rich
planters and urban reformers to gain more political power
➔ The Law of Segregation
◆ In 1883, Supreme Court invalidated the Civil Rights Act of 1875 → which
outlawed racial discrimination by hotels, theaters, railroads, and other public
facilities
◆ Plessy v. Ferguson → Supreme Court allowed for “separate but equal” laws
after a black person was removed from a “white” train car
● Resulted in states passing segregation laws in every aspect of Southern
life, from schools to hospitals, waiting rooms, toilets, and cemeteries
● Black facilities were much lower quality
◆ Segregation reinforced other white supremacist ideals: disenfranchisement,
unequal economic status, inferior education
◆ In some parts like Mississippiwhere Chinese laborers were present, there were
three separate school systems: white, Black, and Chinese
● In California, White, Black, Hispanic, and First Nation people were in the
same school but Asian people had to have a different school
● In Texas and California, Mexican people were barred from many
restaurants, places of entertainment, and other public areas
➔ The Rise of Lynching
◆ Lynching → murdered by a mob
◆ Black people who sought to challenge the system were often lynched
● As justification, people often invented false accusations such as raping a
white woman
◆ Ida B. Wells said that this is the same ideas of the Confederates who, despite
having been defeated, still stuck to their white supremacy beliefs
➔ Politics, Religion, and Memory
◆ Civil War was remembered as Southerners trying to protect their local rights and
the North wanted to preserve the Union; and slavery was a “minor issue” and not
the war’s fundamental cause
● Reconstruction was known as a regrettable period of Black rule
◆ The Lost Cause → romanticized version of slavery, the Old South, and the
Confederate experience
● Religion offered a way for white Southerners to accept defeat in the Civil
War without abandoning White supremacy
● Death of Confederacy was equated with the death of Christ
● Southern churches perpetuated Lost Cause
Redrawing the Boundaries
➔ The New Immigration and the New Nativism
◆ 3.5 million people immigrated during the economic depression, majority of which
came from southern and Eastern Europe, which were not traditional
● Were described as a “lower level of civilization”
➔ Immigration Restriction
◆ New immigration caused racial nationalism
◆ Immigration Restriction League → made sharp distinction between old and
new immigrants and blamed new immigrants for problems like urban crime and
poverty to mass unemployment
● CCOT: Know-Nothings of the 1850s who also didn’t like immigrants and
blamed them for all the misfortune
● Called for reducing immigration by preventing illiterate, “insane people”,
epileptics, poor people, and anarchists from coming
● And also excluded the Chinese
◆ Created a “secret” ballot to protect voters’ privacy and limit the participation of
illiterates (who could not receive help from party officials)
◆ Several states didn’t allow immigrants to vote before becoming citizens
● Suffrage was becoming a privilege, not a right
➔ Chinese Exclusion and Chinese Rights
◆ Political leaders of both parties said that the Chinese were “odious, abominable,
dangerous, revolting”
◆ Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 → Congress excluded all immigrants from
China from entering the country
◆ Chinese were required to carry identification papers and register with the
government or else they’d be deported
● Use of photographs for personal identification first came into widespread
use to enforce Chinese exclusion
○ These photographs looked like “mug shots”, criminalizing Chinese
people and creating a “national rogues’ gallery” of Chinese
residents
◆ In 2012, Congress passed Resolution of Regret apologizing for this exclusion
and acknowledging their racism
◆ On the West Coast, Chinese suffered intense discrimination and mob violence
where they were expelled from their towns, killed by white co-workers (who were
white immigrants themselves)
◆ Tape v. Hurley → ordered San Francisco to admit Chinese students to public
schools after they originally declined
● State legislature passed a law that authorized segregated education
◆ United States v. Wong Kim Ark → Court ruled that Fourteenth Amendment
awarded citizenship to children of Chinese immigrants born on American soil
◆ In the government, some people favored Black rights and disfavored Chinese
rights and others favored Chinese rights and didn’t favor Black rights
● Majority had to agree with United States v. Wong Kim Ark because
limiting birthright citizenship would question the status of millions of
American born immigrants from Europe
◆ Supreme Court also allowed Congress to set racial restrictions on immigration
◆ Fong Yue Ting v. United States → Supreme Court allowed federal government
to expel Chinese immigrants without due process of law
● In 1904, Court cited this case to barr anarchists from entering
● Shows how restrictions on the rights of one group can become a
precedent for infringing on the rights of others
➔ The Women’s Era
◆ Changes in women’s movement reflected some of the same combination of
expanding activities and narrowing boundaries
◆ “Women’s era” → three decades during which women enjoyed larger
opportunities than in the past for economic independence and played a greater
role in public life
◆ The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union → era’s largest female
organization that demanded prohibition of alcoholic beverages and other
economic and political reform movements, including suffrage
● Led by Frances Willard who said that women should abandon the idea of
weakness and be more assertive
● Still had racist ideologies
○ Women reformers said that extending vote to native-born white
women would help counteract the power of “ignorant foreign vote”
in the North and dangerous potential for second Reconstruction in
the South
Becoming a World Power
➔ The New Imperialism
◆ Age of Imperialism → last quarter of nineteenth century when European
empires colonized a bunch of areas
● Belgium, Great Britain, France, Germany colonized Africa, Asia, Pacific
and Middle East
➔ American Expansionism
◆ Americans were increasingly aware of themselves as emerging world power
● “We are a great imperial Republic destined to exercise a controlling
influence upon the actions of mankind and to affect the future of the
world” - Henry Watterson, influential newspaper editor
◆ Considered Western Hemisphere an American sphere of influence, and the last
territorial acquisition was Alaska
◆ Americans wanted to colonize to expand trade, not territory because of the
country’s increase in agricultural and industrial production
● Singer Sewing Machines and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil
Company marketed abroad
● Middle-class American women wanted more clothing and food from
abroad
➔ The Lure of Empire
◆ Religious missionaries spread nation’s influence overseas to “bring light to
heathen worlds”
◆ Naval officer Alfred T. Mahan and other naval commanders wanted powerful navy
operating from overseas bases
● James G. Blaine, secretary of state during Harrison’s presidency, urged
president to acquire Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Cuba as naval bases
◆ Hawaii was independent but closely tied to the US through treaties that exempted
imports of its sugar from tariff duties and provided establishment of American
naval base at Pearl Harbor
● Economy dominated by American-owned sugar plantations that employed
workforce of native islanders and Asian laborers under contracts
● Early 1893, American planters overthrew Hawaii government of Queen
Liliuokalani, but President Grover Cleveland did not annex it because
Hawaii residents didn’t want that
● In the midst of Spanish-American War, US finally annexed Hawaiian
Islands
◆ The depression in 1893 encouraged Americans to engage in foreign policy to
stimulate American exports
● Rituals like Pledge of Allegiance and standing for the Star Spangled
Banner came into existence
◆ “Yellow press” → newspapers that mixed sensational accounts of crime and
political corruption with aggressive appeals to patriotic sentiments
➔ The “Splendid Little War”
◆ There were rumors that Spain was rounding up Cubans into detention camps so
the US decided to help Cuban rebels
◆ U.S.S. Maine → American battleship that was blown up in Havana harbor with
270 deaths, probably accidental
● Spain rejected American requests of cease-fire and eventual Cuban
independence, so President McKinley asked Congress for declaration of
war
◆ Teller Amendment → stated US had no intention of annexing or dominating
Cuba after helping it win independence
◆ Spanish-American war lasted only four months and fewer than 400 American
deaths, happened at Manila Bay int he Philippines
➔ An American Empire
◆ Theodore Roosevelt felt that war would unite the Americans and restore some
national spirit
◆ President McKinley decided that US could not return the Philippines to Spain nor
grant them independence because the inhabitants were “not prepared”
● Said that Americans had a divine duty to “uplift and civilize” the Filipinos
and train them for self government
● US acquired Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific island of Guam
◆ Platt Amendment → authorized the US to intervene militarily whenever it saw fit
in Cuba
● US acquired permanent lease on naval stations in Cuba
◆ Puerto Rico and Cuba were gateways to Latin America and strategic outposts for
American naval and commercial power
◆ Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii were routes to markets of Japan and China
◆ Open Door Policy → equal trade in China; free movement of goods and money
● Previously, European powers had established spheres of influence in
China
● Ironic because US had banned immigration of Chinese into the country
but still wanted access to the markets
➔ The Philippine War
◆ Cubans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans welcomed American intervention to break
Spain’s long hold on these colonies, and greater access to American markets
● Admired American democratic ideals and believed that American
participation in destruction of Spanish rule would lead to social reform and
self government
◆ But Americans still wanted to exercise continued control so locals didn’t like them
anymore
◆ The Philippine War → American military suppressed Filipino independence
movement after the Spanish-American war, so the Filipinos waged war that cost
more than 100,000 Filipino and 4,200 American lives
◆ After taking control, the US “modernized” their colonies by expanding railroads
and harbors, bringing in American teachers and health officials, and new tech
● Under American rule, Puerto Rico became a low-wage plantation
economy controlled by American corporations and were among the
poorest in the entire Caribbean
➔ Citizens or Subjects?
◆ British writer Kipling urged the US to take up the “White man’s burden” of
imperialism and that white supremacy will progress citilization worldwide
◆ There was much debate regarding American colonization
● Principles of the right to self govern was important in Declaration of
Independence
● “Empire of liberty” assumed that new territories would eventually be
admitted as equal states and their residents become American citizens
◆ Foraker Act of 1900 → declared Puerto Rico an “insular territory” and its 1
million inhabitants were defined as citizens of Puerto Rico, not America
◆ Insular Cases → series of cases where Supreme Court decided that American
constitutional rights did not apply to insular terrotiries
● Defied “no taxation without representation” (CCOT)
◆ Hawaii was admitted as a state
◆ Nationalism fueled “Anglo-Saxon” fraternity while Chinese exclusion fueled
anti-Chinese laws in Canada
◆ Anti-Imperialist League → coalition of anti-imperialists to protest American
territorial expansion
● Writers and social reformers believed American energies should be
directed at home, businessmen were afraid of the cost of maintaining
overseas outposts, racists did not wish to bring non-white people to the
US
● League declared that the goal of America was to “help the world by an
example of successful self-government” not to conquer others
◆ Democrats opposed Philippine War because America was going against
American ideals
