History of the USA

dramatically during the 1840s, the nation's population was leaping upward:

from 9.6 million in 1820 to 23 million in 1850 and 31.5 million in 1860.

Domestic Politics: 1815-46

In a nationalist frame of mind at the end of the War of 1812, Congress

chartered the Second Bank of the United States in 1816, erected the first

protective tariff (see TARIFF ACTS), and supported internal improvements

(roads and bridges) to open the interior. President James MONROE presided

(1817-25) over the so-called Era of Good Feelings, followed by John Quincy

ADAMS (1825-29).

Chief Justice John MARSHALL led the Supreme Court in a crucial series of

decisions, beginning in 1819. He declared that within its powers the

federal government could not be interfered with by the states (MCCULLOCH V.

MARYLAND) and that regulation of interstate and international commerce was

solely a federal preserve (GIBBONS V. OGDEN and BROWN V. MARYLAND). In

1820, in the MISSOURI COMPROMISE, Congress took charge of the question of

slavery in the territories by declaring it illegal above 36 deg 30 min in

the huge region acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. Witnessing the Latin

American revolutions against Spanish rule, the American government in 1823

asserted its paramountcy in the Western Hemisphere by issuing the MONROE

DOCTRINE. In diplomatic but clear language it stated that the United States

would fight to exclude further European extensions of sovereignty into its

hemisphere.

During the presidency of Andrew JACKSON (1829-37), a sharp bipolarization

occurred again in the nation's politics. Of Scots-Irish descent, Jackson

hated the English, and he was, in turn, as thoroughly disliked by New

Englanders, who thought him violent and barbaric. He made enemies in the

South, as well, when in 1832 South Carolina, asserting superior STATE

RIGHTS, attempted to declare null and void within its borders the tariff of

1828 (see NULLIFICATION). In his Nullification Proclamation (1832), Jackson

declared that the federal government was supreme according to the

Constitution. He skillfully outmaneuvered the South Carolinians, forcing

them to relent. In 1832 he vetoed the rechartering of the Second Bank of

the United States on the grounds that it caused the booms and busts that so

alarmed the country and that it served the wealthy while exploiting the

farmers and working people. To oppose him, the old Federalist coalition was

reborn in the form of the American WHIG PARTY. With a DEMOCRATIC PARTY

emerging behind Jackson and embodying the old Jeffersonian Democratic-

Republican coalition, two-party rivalries appeared in every state. By the

1840s modern mass political parties, organized down into every ward and

precinct, had appeared.

Led by Henry CLAY and Daniel WEBSTER, the Whigs called for protective

tariffs, a national bank, and internal improvements to stimulate the

economy. Moralists in politics, they also demanded active intervention by

state governments to maintain the sanctity of the Sabbath, put down

alcoholic beverages, and "Americanize" the immigrants in the public

schools. Yankees, who by now had migrated in great numbers into the

Midwest, leaned strongly toward the Whigs. Many southerners admired Yankee

ways and tended to vote for Whig candidates, too.

Democrats continued to condemn banks and tariffs as sources of corruption

and exploitation, and in Jefferson's tradition insisted on cultural laissez-

faire, the freedom of people to live as they desired. The minority out-

groups--Irish Catholics and Germans--concurred, voting strongly Democratic

in order to ward off the imposition of Yankee morals. During the presidency

of Martin VAN BUREN (1837-41), Democrats succeeded in entirely separating

banking and government in the INDEPENDENT TREASURY SYSTEM, by which the

government stored and controlled its own funds. A brief Whig interlude

under William Henry HARRISON (1841) and John TYLER (1841-45) was followed

by the presidency of the Democrat James K. POLK (1845-49), who in the

Walker Tariff (1846) brought the United States closer to a free-trade

basis.

Growing Sectional Conflicts

President Polk's war with Mexico ripped open the slavery question again.

Was it to be allowed in the new territories? The WILMOT PROVISO (1846),

which would have excluded slavery, became a rallying point for both sides,

being voted on again and again in Congress and successfully held off by

southerners. Abolitionism, led by William Lloyd GARRISON and others and now

strong in many northern circles, called for the immediate emancipation of

slaves with no compensation to slaveowners. Most northern whites disliked

blacks and did not support abolition; they did want to disallow slavery in

the territories so they could be preserved for white settlement based on

northern ideals: free labor, dignity of work, and economic progress.

In 1848 northerners impatient with both of the existing parties formed the

FREE-SOIL PARTY. By polling 300,000 votes for their candidate, Martin Van

Buren, they denied victory to the Democrats and put the Whig Zachary TAYLOR

in the White House (1849-50; on his death Millard FILLMORE became

president, 1850- 53). The COMPROMISE OF 1850 seemed to settle the slavery

expansion issue by the principle of POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY, allowing the

people who lived in the Mexican cession to decide for themselves. A strong

FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW was also passed in 1850, giving new powers to

slaveowners to reach into northern states to recapture escaped slaves.

THE CIVIL WAR ERA

As the 1850s began, it seemed for a time that the issue of slavery and

other sectional differences between North and South might eventually be

reconciled. But with the westward thrust of the American nation, all

attempts at compromise were thwarted, and diverging economic, political,

and philosophical interests became more apparent. The resulting civil war

transformed the American nation.

Political Fragmentation

In 1854 the KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT threw open the huge unorganized lands of

the Louisiana Purchase to popular sovereignty, repealing the Missouri

Compromise line of 1820. The North exploded in rage. Thousands defected

from the Whig party to establish a new and much more antisouthern body (and

one wholly limited to the northern states), the REPUBLICAN PARTY. The

Republicans were aided by an enormous anti-Catholic outburst under way at

the same time, aimed at the large wave of Irish Catholic immigration. Anti-

Catholicism was already draining away Whigs to a new organization, the

American party, soon known as the KNOW-NOTHING PARTY. When in 1856 it

proved unable to hold together its members, north and south, because of

disagreements over slavery, the anti-Catholics joined the Republicans.

In Kansas civil war broke out between pro-slavery and anti- slavery

advocates, as settlers attempted to formalize their position on the

institution prior to the territory's admission as a state. The Democratic

presidents Franklin PIERCE (1853-57) and James BUCHANAN (1857-61) appeared

to favor the pro-slavery group in Kansas despite its use of fraud and

violence. In 1857 the Supreme Court, southern dominated, intensified

northern alarm in its decision in the case of DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD. The

Court ruled that Congress had no authority to exclude slavery from the

territories and thus, that the Missouri Compromise line had been

unconstitutional all along. Thousands of northerners now became convinced

that a "slave conspiracy" had infiltrated the national government and that

it intended to make slavery a nationwide institution.

In 1860 the political system became completely fragmented. The Democrats

split into northern and southern wings, presenting two different candidates

for the presidency; the small CONSTITUTIONAL UNION PARTY attempted to rally

the former Whigs behind a third. The Republicans, however, were able to

secure the election of Abraham LINCOLN to the White House.

Southerners had viewed the rise of the Yankee-dominated Republican party

with great alarm. They were convinced that the party was secretly

controlled by abolitionists (although most northerners detested the

abolitionists) and that Yankees believed in using government to enforce

their moralistic crusades. In 1859, John BROWN led a raid on the federal

arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., hoping to incite a slave insurrection. His

action--and his subsequent deification by some northerners- -helped

persuade southerners that emancipation of the slaves, if northerners

obtained control of the country, was sooner or later inevitable.

Secession

Southern leaders had threatened to leave the Union if Lincoln won the

election of 1860. Many South Carolinians, in particular, were convinced

that Republican-sponsored emancipation would lead to bloody massacres as

blacks sought vengeance against whites. In order to prevent this horror

South Carolina seceded in December 1860, soon after the victory of Lincoln,

an undeniably sectional candidate; it was optimistic about the eventual

outcome of its action. Before Lincoln's inauguration (March 1861) six more

states followed (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and

Texas). In February their representatives gathered in Montgomery, Ala., to

form the CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. On Apr. 12, 1861, when President

Lincoln moved to reprovision the federal troops at FORT SUMTER, in

Charleston Harbor, Confederate shore batteries launched a 34-hour battering

of the installation, forcing its surrender. The U.S. CIVIL WAR had begun.

The War between the States

Lincoln moved swiftly. On April 15 he called the remaining states to

provide 75,000 troops to put down the Confederacy; Virginia, Arkansas,

North Carolina, and Tennessee reluctantly seceded. The capital of the

Confederacy moved to Richmond. On July 21, 1861, the first major battle

between Union and Confederate forces occurred--at Bull Run (see BULL RUN,

BATTLES OF), south of Washington, D.C.--resulting in a dramatic southern

victory. Thereafter, both sides settled down to a long conflict.

It became an immense struggle. With a total U.S. population of fewer than

32 million, the number of dead reached 620,000 (360,000 northerners out of

an army of about 1.5 million and 260,000 southerners in an army of about 1

million). In contrast, during World War II, when the American population

was 135 million and its military forces fought for 4 years throughout the

world, the total dead reached 400,000. In 1861 about 22 million people

lived in the North, as against some 9 million people in the South, of whom

3.5 million were black. Although the North possessed a vigorous system of

industry and a well-developed railroad network, Europeans were highly

skeptical of a northern victory because the Confederacy was practically as

large as Western Europe and fought with a determined passion for its

independence. The North had to invade and defeat the opposition in order to

win; the South had only to defend its borders. The conflict was not so

uneven as it seemed.

Lincoln launched an all-out effort: he declared a naval blockade of the

Confederacy; worked hard to maintain the loyalty of the slaveholding border

states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri); invaded Tennessee to

gain a base of power in the heart of the Confederacy; cut the South in two

by taking the Mississippi River; and looked for a general who could win.

This last task took him 2 years. Gen. George B. MCCLELLAN proved

disappointingly conservative, and his successors were bumblers. After Gen.

Ulysses S. GRANT won major victories in the western theater, Lincoln

brought him to Washington in 1864 to face the brilliant Confederate

commander, Robert E. LEE.

By mid-1863 the South was in desperate straits, lacking both food and

supplies. A great northward thrust was turned back at Gettysburg, Pa., in

July of that year (see GETTYSBURG, BATTLE OF). Thereafter, Grant mounted a

relentless campaign that hammered down toward Richmond, at hideous cost in

casualties. Union Gen. William T. SHERMAN, meanwhile, was slashing through

Georgia to the sea, leaving a wide swath of total destruction, and then

turning northward through the Carolinas. By April 1865, Grant had finally

rounded Lee's flank, and on the 9th of that month, Lee surrendered at

APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE. Confederate president Jefferson DAVIS intended to

fight on, but it was hopeless. The Civil War was over.

A Nation Transformed: The North

The war had transformed both North and South. On Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln had

issued his EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, declaring slavery dead wherever

rebellion existed (in the border states, it was terminated by later local

action). In addition, the enormous war effort taught the North lessons in

modern organization and the use of large corporations. In Washington the

Republican majority enacted a classically Hamiltonian program: high

protective tariffs, lavish aid to capitalists to build railroads and

exploit natural resources, free homestead grants for settlers, and banking

and currency legislation that created one national system of paper money.

The MORRILL ACT of 1862 provided grants of land for the establishment of

land- grant universities in each state to train the agriculturalists,

engineers, and other professionals needed to run an industrialized economy.

The two-party system survived in the North despite the war. Democrats never

sank below 40 percent of the vote because many northerners opposed the

conflict, or at least Republican policies. In the DRAFT RIOTS of 1863,

Irish Catholics and other New Yorkers fiercely protested the new

conscription law, which seemed a special hardship to poor people. The

rioters, as well as many other northerners, were hostile toward abolition;

they feared that Republican policies would send hordes of freed slaves

northward to compete for jobs. Democrats also opposed the powerful

centralizing tendencies of the programs pushed by the Republicans, as well

as their aid to capitalists.

Reconstruction

A week after Appomattox, Lincoln was assassinated. Now Andrew JOHNSON

assumed office and moved quickly to establish a plan for RECONSTRUCTION. He

asked southern whites only to repudiate debts owed by the Confederacy,

declare secession null and void, and ratify the 13TH AMENDMENT (which

declared slavery illegal). When Congress convened in December 1865, newly

elected southerners were already on the scene waiting to be admitted to

their seats. Many of them had been elected on the basis of BLACK CODES,

established in the southern states in 1865-66 to restore a form of quasi-

slavery. To the shocked and angered North, it seemed that the sufferings

endured in the war had been in vain: politics as before the war--only now

with a powerful southern Democratic bloc in Congress--would resume.

The Republican majority in Congress refused to admit southern legislators

to their seats until a congressional committee reexamined the entire

question of Reconstruction. Soon, Radical Republicans (those who wished to

use the victory as an opportunity to remake the South in the Yankee image)

were in open conflict with Johnson. He attempted to terminate the

FREEDMEN'S BUREAU (an agency established in 1865 to aid refugees) and to

veto legislation aimed at protecting the civil rights of former slaves (see

CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS). In the congressional election of 1866 a huge majority

of Republicans was elected, and the Radicals gained a precarious

ascendancy. Senator Charles SUMNER of Massachusetts and Representative

Thaddeus STEVENS (New England-born) of Pennsylvania were among the leaders

of the Radical cause.

The 14TH AMENDMENT (enacted in 1866; ratified in 1868) made all persons

born or naturalized in the country U.S. citizens and forbade any state to

interfere with their fundamental civil rights. In March 1867 all state

governments in the South were terminated and military occupation

established. Federal commanders were charged with reconstructing southern

governments through constitutional conventions, to which delegates were to

be elected by universal male suffrage. After a new state government was in

operation and had ratified the 14th Amendment, its representatives would be

admitted to Congress. In February 1868 an impeachment effort sought

unsuccessfully to remove President Johnson from office.

The Republican majority in Congress made no significant effort to create

social equality for blacks, but only to give them the vote and to ensure

them equal protection under the law (trial by jury, freedom of movement,

the right to hold office and any employment, and the like). This political

equality would give blacks an equal start, Republicans insisted, and they

would then carry the burden of proving themselves equal in other ways. Yet

Republicans well knew that antiblack attitudes persisted in the North as

well as in the South. Until ratification (1870) of the 15TH AMENDMENT,

which made it illegal to deny the vote on the grounds of race, most

northern states refused blacks the vote.

A Nation Transformed: The South

Like the North, the South was transformed by the Civil War and its

aftermath. Southerners had learned lessons in the effectiveness of a strong

central government and realized the impossibility of continuing the old

ways of the antebellum period. Former Whigs in the South, often called

Conservatives, pushed eagerly to build industry and commerce in the Yankee

style. Meanwhile, reconstructed southern state governments enacted many

reforms, establishing free public schools for all, popular election of all

officials, more equitable taxes, and more humane penal laws.

Republican Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868 with electoral

votes gained in occupied southern states. Democrats alleged that Radical

Reconstruction was not genuinely concerned with aiding black people, but

with using southern black votes to keep the Republicans in power in

Congress and to retain their protective tariffs and other aids to

industrialists. When evidence of corruption surfaced during the Grant

administration, Democrats declared that it proved that the outcome of

Republican friendliness to capitalists was graft and plunder.

By 1870 the antisouthern mood that had supported Radical Reconstruction had

faded, as had the surge of concern for southern blacks. New domestic

problems were pushing to the fore. A resurgence of white voting in the

South, together with the use of violence to intimidate blacks and their

white sympathizers, brought southern states back into Democratic hands.

Northerners, awakened to economic questions by the great depression that

began in 1873 and lasted for 5 years, tacitly agreed to return the race

issue to the control of southern whites.

After the disputed election of 1876, amid evidence of electoral corruption,

the Republican presidential candidate promised to withdraw the last federal

occupation troops from the South. The election was decided by a

congressional electoral commission, and Rutherford B. HAYES became

president. As promised, he withdrew (1877) the troops; Reconstruction was

over.

THE GILDED AGE

The era known as the GILDED AGE (1870s to 1890s) was a time of vigorous,

exploitative individualism. Despite widespread suffering by industrial

workers, southern sharecroppers, displaced American Indians, and other

groups, a mood of optimism possessed the United States. The theories of the

English biologist Charles Darwin--expounded in The Origin of Species (1859)-

-concerning the natural selection of organisms best suited to survive in

their environment began to influence American opinion. Some intellectuals

in the United States applied the idea of the survival of the fittest to

human societies (SOCIAL DARWINISM) and arrived at the belief that

government aid to the unfortunate was wrong.

Industrialization and Large-Scale Exploitation of NaturalResources

During the Gilded Age ambitious and imaginative capitalists ranged the

continent looking for new opportunities. Business lurched erratically from

upswings to slumps, while the country's industrial base grew rapidly.

Factories and mines labored heavily through these years to provide the raw

materials and finished products needed for expansion of the railroad

system. In 1865 (as construction of the first TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD was

underway; completed 1869) approximately 56,000 km (35,000 mi) of track

stretched across the United States; by 1910 the total reached about 386,000

km (240,000 mi) of interconnected uniform-gauge track. By 1890 the United

States contained one-third of the world's railroad trackage.

After new gold and silver discoveries in the late 1850s, until about 1875,

individual prospectors explored the western country and desert basins in

search of mineral riches. Then mining corporations took over, using hired

laborers and eastern- trained engineers. Indians were either brutally

exterminated or placed on small reservations. Warfare with the Great Plains

Indians broke out in 1864; these INDIAN WARS did not entirely subside until

after the slaughtering of the buffalo herds, the basis of Indian life,

which had occurred by the mid-1880s. Through the DAWES ACT of 1887, which

forced most Indians to choose 160-acre (65-ha) allotments within their

reservations, reformers hoped to break down tribal bonds and induce Indians

to take up sedentary agriculture. Unallocated reservation lands were

declared surplus and sold to whites.

Cattle ranching was the first large-scale enterprise to invade the Great

Plains beginning in the late 1860s. By the 1880s, however, the open range

began to give way to fenced pastureland and to agriculture, made possible

by the newly invented barbed- wire fence and by "dry farming," a technique

of preserving soil moisture by frequent plowing. Millions of farmers moved

into the high plains west of the 100th meridian. So huge was their grain

output that slumping world prices beginning in the mid- 1880s put them into

severe financial straits. Meanwhile, the vast continental sweep between

Kansas and California became filled with new states.

By the early 1900s the nation's economy, tied together by the railroads

into a single market, was no longer composed primarily of thousands of

small producers who sold to local markets. Rather, it was dominated by a

small number of large firms that sold nationwide and to the world at large.

With great size, however, came large and complex problems. In 1887,

Congress created the INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION to curb cutthroat

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