Unit 7: 1890-1945
An increasingly pluralistic United States faced profound domestic and global challenges, debated the proper degree of government activism, and sought to define its international role.
Key Concepts
7.1: Governmental, political, and social organizations struggled to address the effects of large-scale industrialization, economic uncertainty, and related social changes such as urbanization and mass migration.
7.2: A revolution in communications and transportation helped to create a new mass culture and spread “modern” values and ideas, even as cultural conflicts between groups increased under the pressure of migration, world wars, and economic distress.
7.3: Global conflicts over resources, territories, and ideologies renewed debates over the nation’s values and its role in the world while simultaneously propelling the United States into a dominant international military, political, cultural, and economic position.
Chapter 22: Gilded Age Politics and Agrarian Revolt
Which groups were loyal to the Republican and Democratic parties in the late nineteenth century?
What functions did the federal government perform in the late nineteenth century?
Rutherford B. Hayes
Civil service reform
Roscoe Conkling---Stalwarts
James G. Blaine---Half-Breeds
James A. Garfield
Chester Arthur
Pendleton Act (1883)
Mugwumps/goo-goos
Grover Cleveland
Wabash case
Interstate Commerce Act (1887)---ICC
Benjamin Harrison
Sherman Anti-trust Act (1890)
Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890)
McKinley Tariff (1895)
“billion-dollar” Congress
Oliver H. Kelley
The Grange
Granger laws
Munn v. Illinois (1877)
Farmers’ Alliances
Populists (People’s Party)
Mary Elizabeth Lease
Tom Watson
Omaha Platform (1892)
James B. Weaver
“free silver”
“Crime of ‘73”
Panic of 1893
Coxey’s Army
William McKinley
William Jennings Bryan
Cross of Gold speech
Dingley Tariff (1897)
Gold Standard Act (1900)
Chapter 23: An American Empire
Causes of imperialism
-Manifest Destiny
-fear of possible loss of territories to European powers
-desire for new markets
-desire for naval power
-desire for resources
-international Social Darwinism
-missionary impulse
Henry Cabot Lodge
Albert J. Beveridge
Theodore Roosevelt
Captain Alfred T. Mahan
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783
Rev. Josiah Strong
Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis
Seward’s folly
Samoa
How did the United States encroach upon and eventually annex Hawaii?
“Cuba Libre”
Valeriano Weyler
Yellow journalism---William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer
How did the U.S. react to the Cuban fight for independence from Spain in 1895?
De Lome letter
U.S.S. Maine
Teller Amendment
Commodore Dewey---Manila Bay
Battle of San Juan Hill
Treaty of Paris (1898)
Emilio Aguinaldo
American Anti-Imperialist League
William Howard Taft
Foraker Act (1900)
Jones Act (1917)
“insular cases”
Platt Amendment
John Hay
Open Door policy
Boxer Rebellion
Big-Stick Diplomacy
Panama Canal
Roosevelt Corollary
Treaty of Portsmouth
Elihu Root
“Gentlemen’s Agreement” (1907)
“Great White Fleet”
Chapter 24: The Progressive Era
Describe the central ideas of progressivism
Muckrakers
Henry Demarest Lloyd, Wealth against Commonwealth (1894)
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)
Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (1904)
Ida Tarbell, History of the Standard Oil Company (1904)
Initiative and referendum
Direct primary elections
Recall
Seventeenth Amendment (1913)
Frederick Winslow Taylor and “Taylorism”
Municipal reform
Commission system
City-manager plan
“Wisconsin idea”
“trust-busting”
Lewis W. Hine
Florence Kelley and National Consumers’ League
Lochner v. New York
Muller v. Oregon
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
United States v. E.C. Knight and Company (1895)
Northern Securities case (1902)
Anthracite Coal Strike (1902)
Elkins Act (1903)
Hepburn Act (1906)
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
Meat Inspection Act (1906)
Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature
How did Roosevelt work to conserve natural resources and federal forest lands?
Gifford Pinchot
John Muir and the Sierra Club
How did Taft alienate the progressive wing of the Republican party while he was president?
Ballinger-Pinchot controversy
In what ways did Taft achieve progressive reforms as president?
Sixteenth Amendment (1913)
Seventeenth Amendment (1913)
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
Woodrow Wilson
Election of 1912
New Nationalism
New Freedom
Underwood-Simmons Tariff (1913)
Federal Reserve Act (1913)
Clayton Anti-trust Act (1914)
How did Wilson deal with the social justice issues of progressivism?
How did the progressive movement deal with issues of racial inequality?
Louis D. Brandeis
Federal Farm Loan Act (1916)
Warehouse Act (1916)
Smith-Lever Act (1914)
Smith-Hughes Act (1917)
Federal Highways Act (1916)
Keating-Owen Act (1916)
Chapter 25: America and the Great War
Moral diplomacy
How and why did the United States intervene in the Mexican Revolution?
“dollar diplomacy”
Why did the U.S. initially struggle to maintain neutrality in WWI?
Lusitania
Arabic pledge
Sussex pledge
“He kept us out of war”
“peace without victory”
How did the U.S. react to the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans in 1917?
Zimmerman telegram
“The world must be made safe for democracy.”
Liberty Loan Act
General John J. Pershing
Selective Service Act of 1917
Food Administration-Herbert Hoover
War Industries Board-Bernard Baruch
How was the American labor force transformed by involvement in WWI?
Committee on Public Information-George Creel
How were civil liberties affected by U.S. involvement in WWI?
Espionage Act (1917)
Sedition Act (1918)
Schenck v. United States (1919)
Fourteen Points
League of Nations
Treaty of Versailles
Why did the United States Senate choose not to ratify the Treaty of Versailles? What effects did this refusal have on the post-war world?
Henry Cabot Lodge
“irreconcilables”
Spanish flu pandemic
Red Summer of 1919
Red Scare
Palmer Raids
Chapter 26: The Modern Temper
What fueled the growth of nativism in the 1920s?
Sacco and Vanzetti
Emergency Immigration Act of 1921
National Origins Act of 1924
Ku Klux Klan
How did the changes in modern society result in tensions within Protestantism in the 1920s?
Fundamentalism
Scopes trial (1925)-Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan
Eighteenth Amendment
Al Capone
How did the “noble experiment” of prohibition work itself out in practical terms?
Why was the decade of the 1920s such a fertile period for art, music, and literature?
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
H.L. Mencken
Jazz Age
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“new woman”
“flapper”
Margaret Sanger
Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
Alice Paul---National Woman’s Party
Carrie Chapman Catt---National American Woman Suffrage Association
How did voting rights impact the lives of American women?
Great Migration
“the New Negro”
Harlem Renaissance
Marcus Garvey---Universal Negro Improvement Association
W.E.B. DuBois---National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The Crisis
What strategies did the NAACP adopt to combat discrimination in the 1920s? How successful were those strategies?
How did scientific discoveries impact Americans’ understanding of the world in the 1920s?
Modernism
Armory Show (1913)
T.S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
Gertrude Stein
Lost Generation
Ernest Hemingway
Southern Renaissance
Thomas Wolfe
William Faulkner
Chapter 27: Republican Resurgence and Decline
Warren G. Harding
“return to normalcy”
“Ohio gang”
How did Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon’s policies impact the American economy and people?
Characterize the relationship between government and big business during the 1920s.
Teapot Dome
Calvin Coolidge
Mass consumer culture
How did the popularity of movies and radio transform American popular culture in the 1920s?
Birth of a Nation (1915)
Describe the impact of advances in airplane technology in the 1920s.
Charles Lindbergh
Henry Ford
How did the proliferation of the automobile affect the economy and society of the 1920s?
Herbert Hoover and “associatonalism”
What caused the agricultural depression of the 1920s?
McNary-Haugen Bill
How were workers and unions affected by American economic growth in the 1920s?
“welfare capitalism”
Gastonia Strike (1929)
Al Smith
Agricultural Marketing Act
Hawley-Smoot Tariff
What factors led to the stock market crash of 1929?
Causes of the Great Depression
Lack of economic diversification
Unequal distribution of wealth
Weak consumer demand
Overproduction
Reduction in the workforce
Unstable credit structure
Decline in European demand for American goods
International debt structure
World agricultural depression of the 1920s
Adherence to the gold standard
What effects did the Great Depression have on the American population?
Hoovervilles
How did Hoover attempt to combat the Depression? How successful were those attempts?
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (1932)
Glass-Steagall Act (1932)
Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932
“trickle-down” economics
“Bonus Expeditionary Force”
Chapter 28: New Deal America
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Bank holiday
Emergency Banking Relief Act
Economy Act
Twenty-first Amendment
Hundred Days
Relief, recovery, and reform
Farm Credit Administration
Home Owners’ Loan Corporation
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Securities and Exchange Commission
Civilian Conservation Corps
Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Harry L. Hopkins
Work relief
Civil Works Administration
Works Progress Administration
Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933
Dust Bowl
United States v. Butler
Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938
Public Works Administration
National Recovery Administration
Tennessee Valley Authority
How did the Depression affect women and children?
What were the effects of the massive internal migration sparked by the Depression and Dust Bowl?
How did New Deal policies affect minorities?
Indian Reorganization Act
Grovey v. Townsend
Scottsboro boys
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Richard Wright, Native Son
“fireside chats”
“talkies”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Describe criticisms of the New Deal from both the right and left.
American Liberty League
Huey P. Long, Share-the-Wealth
Francis E. Townsend
Father Charles E. Coughlin
Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States
National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)
Social Security Act
Revenue Act of 1935
How did the election of 1936 exemplify the formation of a new electoral coalition for the Democratic party?
“Court-packing”
Why did the AFL splinter in 1935?
John L. Lewis, Congress of Industrial Organizations
“sit-down strike”
Walter Reuther
Why did the economy fall once again in 1937?
John Maynard Keynes
Farm Security Administration
Fair Labor Standards Act
Committee on Un-American Activities (Dies Committee)
How did the New Deal transform the function of the federal government in American life? In what ways did it fall short of its transformative goals?
Chapter 29: From Isolation to Global War
How did the tangle of war debts and reparations from WWI contribute to the Great Depression?
Johnson Debt Default Act
Washington Naval Conference (Five-Power, Four-Power, and Nine-Power Treaties)
Kellogg-Briand Pact
“Good Neighbor” Policy
How did most Americans react to the growing aggression in foreign nations during the 1930s?
Trade Agreements Act of 1934
Official recognition of the Soviet Union (1933)
Francisco Franco
Spanish Civil War
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo “Axis”
Anschluss
Nye Committee, “merchants of death”
Neutrality Act of 1935
Neutrality Act of 1936
“moral embargo”
Neutrality Act of 1937
U.S.S. Panay
Neutrality Act of 1939, “cash and carry”
How did Roosevelt react to the growing world crisis of the 1930s?
National Defense Research Committee
Destroyers for bases deal
Internationalism vs. isolationism
America First Committee
Wendell Willkie
“arsenal of democracy” speech
Lend-Lease Act
Atlantic Charter
U.S.S. Greer and “shoot on sight”
U.S.S. Reuben James
How did Roosevelt react to Japanese aggression in the Pacific? What was Japan’s response?
Cordell Hull
Pearl Harbor
Chapter 30: The Second World War
How did the U.S. plan to counter the Japanese offensive in the Pacific?
Battle of Coral Sea
Battle of Midway
How did the U.S. restructure its economy in order to finance World War II?
War Production Board
Office of Price Administration
How did the war effort impact the New Deal?
Women’s Army Corps (WAC)
Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES)
How did WWII impact the roles of women in American society?
How were race relations and the lives of African Americans impacted by WWII?
A. Philip Randolph, March on Washington
Fair Employment Practices Commission
Smith v. Allwright
Bracero program
“zoot-suit riots”
Executive Order 9066
Korematsu v. United States
Teheran Conference
D-Day
Battle of Leyte Gulf
Yalta Conference
Why were reports of the Holocaust generally disregarded in the United States even when credible evidence existed?
What was the motivation behind the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan?
How did World War II affect the United States politically, socially, and economically?
Critical Thinking Questions/Possible Essays
Political movements in the U.S. often reflect a yearning for the past. Support, modify, or refute this statement in reference to the Populists.
In what ways were the late nineteenth century Populists the heirs of the Jacksonian Democrats with respect to overall objectives AND specific proposals for reform?
Both the Jacksonian Democrats during 1824-1840 and the Populists during 1890-1896 attacked and sought out special privilege in American life. The Jacksonian Democrats attained power and succeeded; the Populists failed. Support, modify, or refute this view. Give roughly equal attention to the Jacksonian Democrats and the Populists.
Analyze the reasons for the emergence of the Populist movement in the late nineteenth century.
How and why did the Monroe Doctrine become the cornerstone of United States foreign policy by the late nineteenth century?
Both the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War were premeditated affairs resulting from deliberately calculated schemes of robbery on the part of a superior power against weak and defenseless neighbors. Support, modify, or refute this statement citing specific historical evidence.
Compare the debates that took place over American expansionism in the 1840s with those that took place in the 1890s, analyzing the similarities and differences in the debates of the two eras.
To what extent was late nineteenth century and early twentieth century United States expansionism a continuation of past United States expansionism and to what extent was it a departure?
In American politics the most significant battles have occurred within the major parties rather than between them. Discuss this statement with reference to the periods 1850-1861 and 1900-1912.
The Progressive movement of 1901 to 1917 was a triumph of conservatism rather than a victory for liberalism. Support, modify, or refute this generalization citing specific historical evidence.
Analyze the ways in which state and federal legislation and judicial decisions, including those of the Supreme Court, affected the efforts of TWO of the following to improve their position in society between 1880 and 1920.
African Americans
Farmers
Workers
Although many Americans between 1870 and 1915 blamed political corruption at the state and local level on public indifference or greedy politicians, such corruption reflected a serious crisis of traditional institutions in dealing with social and economic problems of modern America. Support, modify, or refute this generalization citing specific historical evidence.
Compare and contrast the attitudes of THREE of the following towards the wealth that was created in the United States during the late nineteenth century.
Andrew Carnegie
Eugene V. Debs
Horatio Alger
Booker T. Washington
Ida M. Tarbell
How successful were progressive reforms during the period 1890 to 1915 with respect to TWO of the following?
Industrial conditions
Urban life
Politics
The United States entered the First World War not “to make the world safe for democracy” as President Wilson claimed, but to safeguard American economic interests. Support, modify, or refute this statement citing specific historical evidence.
Assess the relative influence of THREE of the following in the American decision to declare war on Germany in 1917.
German naval policy
American economic interests
Woodrow Wilson’s idealism
Allied propaganda
America’s claim to world power
It was the strength of the opposition forces, both liberal and conservative, rather than the ineptitude and stubbornness of President Wilson that led to the Senate defeat of the Treaty of Versailles. Support, modify, or refute this statement for the period 1917 to 1921.
To what extent did the United States achieve the objectives that led it to enter the First World War?
The 1920s were a period of tension between new and changing attitudes on the one hand and traditional values and nostalgia on the other. What led to the tension between old and new AND in what ways was the tension manifested?
To what extent did economic and political developments as well as assumptions about the nature of women affect the position of women during the period 1890-1925?
Describe and account for the rise of nativism in American society from 1900 to 1930.
In what ways did economic conditions and developments in the arts and entertainment help create the reputation of the 1920s as the “Roaring Twenties?”
The economic policies of the federal government from 1921 to 1929 were responsible for the nation’s depression of the 1930s. Support, modify, or refute this generalization citing specific historical evidence.
Why did socialism fail to become a major force in American politics between 1900 and 1940 despite widespread dissatisfaction with the social and economic order and significant support for radical movements during that period?
Analyze the primary causes of the population shift from a rural to an urban environment in the United States between 1875 and 1925.
Some historians have argued that the New Deal was ultimately conservative in nature. Support, modify, or refute this interpretation, providing specific evidence to justify your answer.