Civil War
Main page: American Civil War
The Battle of Antietam was a bloody Civil War battle.
Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Porter discussing about the Civil War
In the 1840s and 1850s, people in the Northern states and people in the Southern states did not like each other very much, mostly due to the issues of slavery in the territories (parts of the United States that were not yet states) and the power of the federal government. People in the government tried to make deals to stop a war. Some deals were the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but they did not really work to keep the Union together. People in the South were angry at books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin that said that slavery was wrong. People in the North did not like a Supreme Court decision called Dred Scott that kept Scott a slave. People from the South and people from the North started killing each other in Kansas over slavery. This was called "Bleeding Kansas".One of the people from Bleeding Kansas, John Brown, took over a town in Virginia in 1859 to make a point about slavery being wrong and to try to get slaves to fight their owners.
In the election of 1860, the Democratic Party split and the Republican candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, was elected. After this, many Southern states quit the Union. Eventually, eleven states quit. They started a new country called the Confederate States of America, or the "Confederacy". A war broke out between the Union (North) and the Confederacy (South). The South had better generals than the North, but it had fewer railroads and almost no weapons factories. Not having factories made it harder for Southern soldiers to get guns or uniforms. The South could not get supplies because Northern ships blockaded the Southern coast.
Early in the war, Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson won battles over Union generals such as George B. McClellan and Ambrose Burnside who were not as good. In 1862 and 1863, the Union Army tried to take the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia several times, but failed each time. Lee's army invaded the North twice, but was turned back at Antietam and Gettysburg. In the middle of war, Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation, which supposedly freed all slaves in the Confederacy, and started letting black men fight in the Union Army. The war started going the Union’s way after the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg in 1863. Gettysburg stopped Lee from invading the North, and Vicksburg gave the Union control over the Mississippi River. In 1864, a Union Army under William T. Sherman marched through Georgia and destroyed much of it. By 1865, Union General Ulysses S. Grant had taken Richmond and forced Lee to give up the fight at Appomattox.
Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
See also: Reconstruction of the United StatesIn April 1865, Lincoln was shot and killed while watching a play. The new president, Andrew Johnson, had to go through the process of Reconstruction, which was putting the United States back together after the Civil War. During this time, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed, freeing slaves, making them citizens and allowing them to vote.Congress was run by "Radical Republicans", who wanted to punish the South after the Civil War. They did not like Johnson, and almost removed him from office. They also sent many soldiers to the South, installed unpopular "scalawag" governments, and made the South pass the 14th and 15th Amendments. The South did not like this, so they made "Jim Crow" laws that placed blacks in lower roles and made them work as sharecroppers. White Southerners started a group called the Ku Klux Klan that attacked blacks and stopped them from voting.
The Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the first skyscraper in the world
During this time, many people moved to the United States from other countries, such as Ireland, Italy, Germany, Eastern Europe, and China. Many of them worked in large factories and lived in big cities, such as New York City, Chicago, and Boston, often in small, poor, close-together apartments called "tenements" or "slums". They often were used by "political machines", who gave them jobs and money in exchange for votes.
Scottish businessman, Andrew Carnegie, made America a "steel empire"
Major politicians were chosen by political machines and were corrupt. The government could do little, because the Presidents did not have control of Congress. Leaders of big businesses often had more power than the government. At this time, there were several very big businesses called trusts. People who ran trusts made millions of dollars while paying their workers low wages. Some of these people were John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan.
After the Civil War, people continued to move west where new states were formed. People now could get free land in the West due to an 1862 law called the Homestead Act. Most of the land in the West was owned by the government, railroads, or large farmers. The Transcontinental Railroad, finished in 1869, helped get people and goods from the west to the rest of the country. Chicago became the center of trade between West and East because many rail lines met there. There were problems between the white settlers and the native Indians as more people began to move west. Because of this, many more Indians were killed at battles such as Wounded Knee. Almost all the Indians' land was taken away by laws like the Dawes Act.
Many Americans thought the railroads charged farmers so much money that it made them poor.Workers led several strikes against the railroad that were put down by the army. Also, farmers started groups to fight the railroad, such as the Grange. These groups became the Populist Movement, which almost won the presidency under William Jennings Bryan. The Populists wanted reforms such as an income tax and direct election of Senators. The Populist Party died out after 1896. Many of the things the Populists wanted would happen during the Progressive Era.
Progressive era and imperialism
See also: Spanish-American War
The Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War
In the United States, progressivism is the belief that the government should have a larger role in the economy to provide good living standards for people, especially workers. Imperialism was the belief that the U.S. should build a stronger navy and conquer land.
In the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries, the U.S. started being more active in foreign affairs. In 1898, the United States fought a war with Spain called the Spanish-American War. The United States won, and gained Puerto Rico, Guam, Guantanamo and the Philippines. Combined with the purchase of Alaska and the taking-over of Hawaii, the United States had gained all the territory it has today, plus some it would later lose after World War II. Around this time, the U.S. and European nations opened up trade with China. This was because they had beaten China in the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. The U.S. and Europe were able to trade with China through the Open Door Policy.
Roosevelt was President during most of the 1900s
In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became President. He had been a soldier in the Spanish-American War. He called for a foreign policy known as the “Big Stick”.This meant having a large navy and exercising control over Latin America.Between 1901 and 1930, the United States sent soldiers into Latin America several times. When Roosevelt was president, work was begun on the Panama Canal, a link between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans that made travel around the world much faster.
During this time, people started to notice the poor condition of American cities. A group of people called the “muckrakers” wrote books and newspaper articles about subjects like the power of big business, unclean practices in factories, and the condition of poor people. Roosevelt and Congress answered their concerns with laws such as the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Act controlled the way food was made to make sure it was safe. Another response to the muckrakers was something called “trust-busting”, where big businesses were broken up into smaller ones. The biggest business broken up this way was the Standard Oil Company in 1911.
In 1912, Woodrow Wilson became President. He was a Progressive, but not quite the same as Roosevelt. He fought the “triple wall of privilege”, which was big business, taxes, and fees on goods coming into the United States. During this time, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were passed. They allowed for a federal income tax and direct election of U.S. Senators.
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